As horribly and irrepressibly angry as Val felt, she did not have any time to mourn the loss of Foofy.

An uproar of a splash sounded from the other side of the ship.

“It’s back!” a man could be heard shouting.

Val did not bother to look. She did not want to see the draconic form of the sea serpent once again. Its sleek yet massive body, complete with its dazzling scales, would fail to frighten or intimidate her when she only wanted to feel enraged with sadness.

The way that its narrow jaws had spread wide, its gaping maw framed by sharp teeth—that still replayed in her mind. Her heart raced with fear well enough, not even having to take a second look at the oversized fish. Likewise, its ear-splitting shriek still rang around in her head. Val got to hear it anew as the sea serpent belted out a warning screech for its second attack.

A dozen other human cries scattered much like the running feet, all drowned out by another oncoming wave.

Instinctively, Val ducked down again. Her reaction felt more mechanical than anything else. This time, she had no reason to try to reach out and grasp at Foofy in desperation.

He had been right there. Val had watched the wave carry him overboard, practically able to see the terror in the whites of his eyes flashing towards her. If only she had been a little quicker, a little braver, maybe Foofy could still be on the ship with her.

These thoughts tumbled about Val’s mind as that second wave hit her and pummeled her shoulder between the rails.

An audible pop sounded to her water-logged ears. A warmth flooded through her left shoulder, in contrast to the cold water rushing all around her.

By the gods, her enhanced body of a demigoddess had hardly sustained any bodily injuries throughout her life, making Val quite unaccustomed to pain. This searing sensation tore at her shoulder, most likely dislocated, possibly some fractured bones or torn ligaments too. She winced and let out a strangled cry, very much trapped against the rail. The taste of salt water on her lips and tongue reminded her not to breathe yet.

Once the water no longer pinned her, Val wrenched her shoulder out from between the rails. Whichever way that she yanked it, that did not do the injury any good. Her shoulder throbbed all the worse after having torn it free.

Now able to breathe, she gasped with the pain. One hand pressed over her shoulder, while she straightened herself up. Her eyes, all narrowed up in hate, scanned the area in search of the sea serpent, or better yet, any sign of Foofy.

As much as she wanted to keep searching the water, Val needed to get herself to safety. She had two possible abilities to use to this end: Keep the Peace and Mind Blast.

As an offensive ability, Mind Blast let her deliver a physical blow with her mind, but Val doubted that it would do little more than poke the sea serpent and agitate it further. On the other hand, Keep the Peace let her calm the aggressions of hostile creatures, but the largest animal that she had successfully quelled to date was Foofy along with mortal humans. Obviously, neither of her powers would work on a sea serpent.

Therefore, she turned to flee. Val hardly took two steps away before she was intercepted.

For the third time, water spouted up with the surfacing of the sea serpent. A great deal of liquid spattered over her with the serpent having risen up on her side of the ship, this time.

The ship lurched and sent Val stumbling onto her hands and knees. Again, her shoulder lit up with pain, but that did not stop her from crawling forward, clambering to her feet, and flipping around. Val stood between the sea serpent and the rest of the people on the ship who rushed below deck. Her arms drooped lamely at either side of her, and she squinted her eyes up to the sea serpent against the blazing sun.

She alone now happened to be the closest living, breathing, squirming thing for the sea serpent to target.

The serpent danced with a swimming motion to keep itself upright in the water. Its fins fanned out into the air while its deep, yellow eyes stared straight at her.

“Good sea serpent,” Val whispered to herself more so than anything else. While it had been ineffective so far, Keep the Peace was her only option.

She let all of that surging energy pour out of her and into the sea serpent. Then, she tried to back away slowly.

A single snap of its jaws, and off would come her head, or her torso, or her entire body. As much as Val put her heart and soul into Keep the Peace, trying to get this monster to feel a smidgen of sympathy, no look of recognition appeared in its eyes. That fiery, yellow glare maintained all of its destructive force, Nether-bent on ruining the lives on this ship.

With a display of grace, the serpent whipped around and plunged back into the sea. Its long body coiled along after it, delving deeper beneath the surface. Arc after arc of its shining scales, the sea serpent was retreating.

A shard of hope entered Val’s heart in the best of ways. Had she just sent the sea serpent away with Keep the Peace? If so, what kind of gratitude would she receive from the crew and passengers for having averted a sea serpent attack?

She had a sense of victory, withstanding the fact that she had bested the sea serpent in an untraditional and understated sort of way. Val's apparent success already made her impressed with herself, even as the serpent’s tail had yet to disappear beneath the water.

The sea serpent’s body grew thinner. As its body reached the end of its loop with its narrow tail, it swung around like a whip. Water flung around Val’s head, following the same motion that the tail had gone. Then, that bony part of the sea serpent thwacked against the upper part of her shoulders.

Val was sent flying forwards. “Ah!” She cried out from the shock and pain, continuing to scream as she fell longer than she ever should have.

The planks of the ship deck should have struck her by now and knocked all of the wind out of her. Instead, Val lost her air by hollering as she found herself falling over the edge of the ship.

A mortal human would have had their neck snapped in two by the blow of the sea serpent’s tail. While Val’s immortal body endured the hit, her spine ached with an ever-flowing heat that was similar to her shoulder. Her brain felt like it sloshed back and forth in her skull when its tail had struck.

Crashing into the water did nothing good for any of this. Val plunged into the depths of the sea, now submerged in the sea serpent's realm.

With her legs, she kicked out against the water in the direction that she only thought was up. Val could not open her eyes for fear of blinding herself with the salt water. There was no reason to make her eyes burn as well, when everything else hurt so much already. One arm pushed herself forward while her other arm with the dislocated shoulder hung more or less uselessly, despite her attempts to flounder it around just the same.

Val struggled with all of her strength to reach the surface. What with the little progress that she made, she needed to ensure that she propelled herself upward at the very least. Therefore, her eyes forced their way open. As expected, her eyeballs burned like the Nether.

She endured this pain only to see how dark everything looked around her. Above, the sunlight shone through the water’s surface in a few rays of light, seeming so very far away.

Despite her best efforts, Val only seemed to sink deeper into the ocean. The shallow air that remained in her lungs would not last much longer. A demigoddess may have increased lung capacity, but she could still drown. In this case, Val had not even gotten a good breath of air before she had gone under. Already, her chest started to burn. Val continued to fight, trying to move towards the light.

As her time underwater increased with the passing seconds, so too did her chances of survival seem to diminish.