It doesn’t take long for Fenrir to realize that swimming on his own is a quick way to get bored.

“I should have brought Rod,” he says to himself, floating on his back now as gentle waters roll underneath him. “I wonder if Rod could turn into a waifu if rocks can turn into dogs.”

Somewhere, Rod is pulsating enough times to signal “no,” and Fenrir’s girlfriends can all tell that he must be thinking of something weird. Even Rock knows to get jealous because of whatever he’s thinking about.

“Oh. I wonder how Aiko is doing. I’ll have to ask Serra how she’s be—”

A small wave crashes into Fenrir and fills his mouth with water.

He can’t drown thanks to the gift bestowed upon him by Nell, but it’s still not pleasant getting a mouth full of salty seawater.

Especially when there’s some seaweed included.

“Gross,” he says after pulling the seaweed out from his mouth.

Back to floating on his back, he looks up at the cloudy sky and focuses on everything that he’s feeling, seeing, and hearing.

White gulls fly above, looking for opportunities to dive into the water to catch prey.

Long, thin clouds decorate the sky and do little to stop the sun from shining down onto the water, creating a sparkling effect and helping to warm the water.

Splashes, small waves crashing onto the shore, and the occasional gust of wind all blend together to create a constant stream of relaxing noise.

The water is gentle, but not so calm that it’s not rocking Fenrir’s body in a consistent motion. That’s not all that he’s feeling, either.

A familiar serpent is approaching.

“I guess I’m not the only bored one,” Fenrir says, rolling onto his front to dip his head underwater.

Surely enough, through the clear waters, he can see the serpent approaching in the distance.

It’s in this moment that he realizes just how terrifying this could be.

Sure, he knows that he has no reason to be terrified since she’s friendly to him and the others, but if she wasn’t friendly?

She’s a monstrous serpent who can outmaneuver all of them in the water. Not only is she large and agile, but she’s like a snake that has the power to shoot highly-pressurized beams of water with fangs that are larger than a human’s body!

Not only that, but she’s heading straight at him.

The only way thing could make this situation any more terrifying is if they were in dark waters rather than clear ones. Then, she’d be able to look as if she’s coming out of nowhere.

Fenrir knows that he doesn’t need to be terrified, but he’d be lying to himself if he said that his heart wasn’t beating just a little bit fast.

Fortunately, he’s not a rowboat, so he believes that she doesn’t intend on killing him.

He’d also be able to sense it if she wanted to kill him.

Speaking of sensing, in the same way that he can sense her approach and intent, she can sense his own feelings.

That includes the feeling of him being ever so slightly scared.

She may not have any plans to kill him, but now she has another plan that she immediately enacts.

Fenrir’s eyes widen, his heart races, and he even tries backing up within the water as the serpent approaches at a far faster speed than before!

She’s even opening her mouth to show off those deadly, massive fangs lining it. There is even a second row of fangs starting to grow behind the first row now that she’s large enough, and the vicious look in her eyes terrifies Fenrir even more despite him being able to sense that she’s not serious.

His mind doesn’t care that she’s not serious.

All his heart cares about is the fact that there is a giant, deadly monster that could easily kill him approaching at a fast speed with her mouth ready to chomp onto him.

Fenrir shouts out in a panic, “H-hey! What are you—"

The serpent closes the distance between them until she’s close enough to strike, and then closes her mouth!

She closes it right in front of him rather than on top of him, of course.

Even so, the sheer force of her snapping her mouth shut in front of him creates a blast of water that knocks him back.

Despite the fact that Fenrir’s tail and ears are completely submerged, his hair is still standing on end just from the shock and fear that she made him experience for her own amusement.

Speaking of amusement, she might not be laughing nor smiling, but he can tell that she is on the inside.

She’s loving how he looks right now.

“You know, I’m getting tired of everybody bullying me,” Fenrir says with a sigh now that he’s realized she’s just screwing with him. “My heart can’t handle this sort of bully play.”

The serpent leans her head forward to nudge his chest with the tip of her head.

He strokes the side of her head with his hands while trying to calm his heart down from beating so fast.

“So, you bored or something to come over here?” he asks.

She shakes her head before establishing a mental link with him to show him that curious memory that she showed him before, only to not show him again until now.

Now, Fenrir gets to see the real serpent in all of its massive, horrifying glory.

His heart had only just finished relaxing before this. Now, it’s beating just as fast as it was when she was screwing with him.

She looks tiny compared to the mighty serpent in the memory that she’s showing him.

“Seriously?” Fenrir asks.

The memory changes to an even more recent one.

Alone and farther away from the land than it is safe to be, a large ship tries sailing eastward in hopes of sneaking past the serpent to discover what lies in the waters beyond.

What Fenrir sees next reminds him of the friendly serpent and her favorite rowboats except with a giant serpent and a large ship.

Watching from the distance, she enjoyed watching the giant serpent devour a ship in one bite.

“That… what is with you serpents and eating boats? But seriously, if that’s one of the four serpents… holy shit that thing is massive. Players have tried taking them down? Seriously?” Fenrir asks.

One more memory gets shown to Fenrir.

It’s of the ocean floor, in a place far yet uncomfortably close, and covering the ocean floor are thousands of figures.

It is too dark for him to properly tell how the monsters look. All he can see are their limbs moving in the ocean’s dark depths and their glowing eyes.

A few have two eyes, others have four, and some have over thirty spread across their bodies.

Some have vaguely humanoid shapes while others have no discernible shape. All they have are masses obscured by the depth’s darkness.

And then the memory ends.

Fenrir finds himself with a heart beating just as fast as before still.

“What – where was that?” he asks. “Why were they all just standing around? It looked like an army – an army that’s just… waiting.”

She shows him a memory of the massive serpent again.

“Are they connected somehow?”

She nods her head and nudges his chest.

“So… that giant serpent, which is already big enough to swallow ships whole and could probably take down entire armies all on its own, also happens to have some freaky army waiting at the bottom of the ocean?”

She nods her head again.

“They’re – they’re just going to stay waiting down there for nothing, right?”

She shakes her head.

“I wish you could have shown me this before we decided to build our own city here.”

She spits a burst of water of him.