Ariel leaned over the edge of the ship, staring into the depths of the sea. Archangel Grass was leaning on the railing to her right. Trying to take her mind off of the life she left behind, she asked Grass, “So, if magic and everything is all real, does that mean sea monsters are real, too?”

        There was the familiar scrape of graphite on paper, and a note was passed to Ariel.

        Obviously. There are krakens, terrabone sea turtles, large colonies of jelophagi, primeval sharks, and the myriad of aquatic demons. Don’t worry about those, though. The only ones Archangel Harley isn’t capable of killing would be the jelophagi and terrabone sea turtles, and they are both docile. Well, I suppose the larger aquatic demons would be on that list, but they’re rather rare. If you want to know more, you’re best off talking to Harley. He’s in the hull, probably sleeping.

        Ariel smiled, and passed back Grass’s paper. “I might just go do that,” she said.

        Ariel stepped away from the ship’s railing, and made her way towards the nearest opening to the hull. A few members of the crew, a surprisingly even mix of men and women, waved to her as she passed. She did, of course, wave back.

        As she opened up the hatch imbed in the deck, she noticed Archangel Harley was already on his way up the ladder.

        She said, surprised, “Oh, Mr. Harley, I was just looking for you!”

        Harley laughed as he pulled himself topside. Still laughing, he exclaimed “That’s Captain Archangel Mr. Harley to you, lass!” He paused to laugh some more. It doesn’t matter that Harley laughed at his own joke. He’s way cooler than that guy who kicked in Ariel’s door and pretended he was cool. As his laughter died down, Harley continued, “Honestly, lass, you don’t have to be callin’ me mister or captain anything. I’m just Harley!”

        Ariel returned a slight chuckle, and got straight to the point, “I wanted to ask you about sea monsters. Grass said they were real, and he referred me to you. He mentioned aquatic demons?”

        “Ah, yes. Demons.” Captain Harley stopped a moment to stroke his whitened beard. He continued, “Well, we aren’t on the best terms with the Hell, so demons are occasionally sent here, to Earth. The Archangel division exists to combat demons, and to replace… Well, it exists to combat demons.

        Ariel asked, “If Hell is real, does that mean God and Satan are also real?”

        “Well… there are multiple gods and multiple devils, but we’ll give you the full story when we get to Appastarea.”

        “Oh, wow. Okay…”

Ariel tried her hardest not to let the existential dread set in. Quickly, she asked, “What about the kraken?”

        “Ah, yes! Those are my specialty! Well, kraken are octopods. By default, their main body is about three meters tall, and about one meter across. They have eight tentacles, as you can imagine, each somewhere like 5 meters long.”

        “Oh, cool,” Ariel said, mentally converting the numbers into the imperial system she grew up around, “But that doesn’t seem big enough to bring down ships, like everyone says.”

        “Well, that’s because it’s not! See, the fun thing about kraken, when you cut off more than half of a tentacle, two more grow in its place! When these new tentacles grow, the kraken grows to accommodate the increased amount of tentacles over the next few days. Even the tentacles themselves grow. Most kraken you find around are around about 3 times as big as an adolescent one, with about 15 to 20 tentacles. Luckily, all it takes is a nice stab to the eye to take them out, or at least repel them.”

        “So they’re like a hydra?”

        “A hydra?”

        “You know, the things where you cut off one head and it grows two more in its place?”

        “I’ve never heard of one of those before. Not everything you hear of on the Mortal Continents are real; someone’s got to be creative. At any rate, having more than one brain is just a silly thing to have. If I had more than one head and only one body between us, we’d be yelling at each other all the time!

        “Oh, and that reminds me, have you been filled in on our schedule?”

        Ariel thought for a moment, before saying, “We’re to continue on this ship until reaching… Appastarea?”

        “You’re half right, but there’s been a change of plan. This morning, we got a missive from our boss. I’ve actually got it right here.”

        From a pocket within his pristine white jacket, he procured an envelope. Ariel opened it and read the contents, as follows:

Gallant Archangel Grass, Savant Archangel Harley:

        Savant Archangel Etta has had his ankle badly wounded in a minor accident. Being unable to fight, he has returned to Division headquarters, and Savant Archangel Nyrta has been sent as a temporary replacement at the City of Giants. He is still capable of using Sykta, however, and will thus be picking up the package to save time and resources. If at all possible, I would like the two of you to complete the expedition as normal. As per usual, please return any technologies that you believe may be safely integrated into our own society.

                                                                        Best of luck, Lord Cartoph

        Ariel handed back the note and noted, “I could only read about half of that. From what I could read, someone named Etta is going to rendezvous with us on a different ship?”

        Harley gave a slight chuckle, noting in turn, “You pick up on Lord Cartoph’s handwriting pretty quickly, but I have to say, this is far from the worst organized scribbling he’s willing to pass as a missive. It was nice of him to send it in English, even if it is a bit informal. Now, as for the rendezvous, you’re mostly correct, but you’ll see why in a second, because the rendezvous is in about five minutes and I forgot to tell you of it until now, heh.”

        Though Ariel feigned being upset, she was glad to have something to do to take her mind off the vast homesickness and growing existential fear. What she felt at that moment was eerily akin to what ancient civilizations felt when they looked up and saw what looked like something eating the sun. As per Harley’s request, she went down to the ship’s living quarters and got her things together, and had rushed back topside.

        At Harley’s fault, by the time Ariel was ready, she was a few minutes late. Upon arriving on deck, she was greeted by Grass, and witnessed Harley trying his hardest to make a very nervous man lighten up. Though he was playing along, he was still very clearly distancing himself from the conversation. He noticed Ariel, and said to Harley, “Ah, she’s here! We’re already behind schedule so we should be going. A pleasure as always, bye!”

        He hobbled over with the assistance of a set of crutches. This new arrival wore ornate white plate armor with a gold trim and blackened chainmail functioning as joints. In place of his right boot, there was instead a thick layer of bandages, presumably a cast. It looked ridiculous. His face was narrow and pointy, much like his ears, and his hair was a jet black contrast to his armor.

        Before Ariel could note his eye color, he at last arrived and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Let’s go!” He shouted before jumping off the ship’s railing with Ariel in tow. As soon as they had flown off the ship, the water came rushing at them at an alarming speed. Not because the description of their falling was a cliché one, but because something very large was emerging, pushing the frigate away and scaring the bejesus out of Ariel.

        They landed safely on the bulge of water as it began to clear away. They were on a soft, white surface. When she looked around, she saw the platform she was on resembled a massive rounded heart, and was tiled with large, scale-like plates. On either side of the platform, three gold-tipped spikes rose crookedly, facing away from the platform’s “point.” A large, golden “V” shape stretched from between the two sets of spikes all the way to the “3” shaped part of the heart.

        A serpentine forked tongue flecked with yellow splotches made a brief appearance the heart’s point.

        Ariel, too innocent for this world, demanded instantly, “What was that!?”

        The newest side-character of this story answered kindly, “That was his tongue. Do you not have snakes where you’re from? Because snakes have tongues they use to taste the air”

        Upon second inspection, the shape of the platform they were on was exactly the shape of a python’s head. The point was the nose, and the 3 spikes on either side were really crests above the creature’s eyes. Panicked, she turned around to try to make out how big the monster was, but the rest of its body was too deep to see.

Ariel, alarmed, shouted, “This is a snake!?”

The man answered, seeming confused, “Yeah, you should have been able to tell from the size of it. Surely, you must have these kinds of snakes on the mortal continents?”

A disembodied voice made itself known. It said, “Yes, my kind are everywhere. You really haven’t seen a snake like me before?”

Ariel, too pure, demanded again, “It can talk!?”

“Ah, yes, that reminds me. I never introduced myself. I am Archangel Etta of the Serpent. This is Sykta of the Epic Beasts”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Leonne,” Sykta said, still very disembodied.

Ariel’s mind couldn’t comprehend that the creature she was on was, in fact, a creature. Every instinct buried within her told her, “No, nothing of this size can be alive,” but her senses screamed, “Thing is very much alive!”  She realized she had entered the fetal position when Etta grabbed her attention.

“Miss Leonne? Are you okay?”

“Uh… Yeah, I’m fine.” She quickly decided her only way to feel better about being on a creature so large was to ask questions, as she did with Harley and Grass. She opened with, “So, if Sykta and his kind are everywhere, what do they eat to support their population?”

Etta began to speak, but Sykta interjected, “I was merely joking with you. I am an epic beast, which are incredibly rare instances of giant animals. One only appears every 1-200 years, so the effect on the environment is minimal. While I am here, however, I usually eat demons. Since I am technically a demon myself, as well as an asset to the Archangel Division, this works out quite well.”

There it is again. Demons. She wasted no time to ponder that aspect of Sykta’s answer, and chose instead to immediately follow with another, “How do you talk with a snake mouth?”

“I’m not talking.  We’re swimming and my mouth is underwater. Epic Beasts are able to use illusion magic, so I can trick your mind into hearing voices. I’ve chosen this deep, echo-ey voice to represent myself because it suits my size and gender. I can’t talk, but I can fake it.”

At this, Ariel pondered. As Sykta talked, it occurred to her that there was no source to be put to his voice. Her mind quickly took a cynical turn, thinking about how casually Sykta got into her mind. She feared mind reading, which led to intrusive thoughts, which she interrupted with her newest installment in her expansive series of questions: “Etta, why are you an Archangel but Sykta isn’t? Is it human only?”

Etta, looking glad to be included in the conversation, quickly obliged her question. “Well, I’m not— That is, the Archangel Division exists to fight demons. Even if Sykta wasn’t technically a demon, sentient beings that can be rapidly transported aren’t allowed to be Archangels, since they could go rogue and the Division would be none the wiser. It’s also the reason I’m not very close to Lord Cartoph like Grass and Harley. Hell, the only reason Harley outranks me is because he’s half our navy, and Grass is, well, Grass.” Etta mumbled something about copycatting and demons that Ariel didn’t quite catch.

The serpent evidently did, because he jested, “Don’t act so indignant. He has seniority over you so if anything you’re the copycat. Not to mention he’s more powerful than the two of us.”

Ariel was confused. As her final question, she asked, “What are you talking about?”

Etta was the one to answer. “Grass is, without a doubt, the nicest guy in the division. Albeit he plainly doesn’t trust us all that much, with all that shit he wears, but he is still a good guy to go out and grab a drink with. The problem is, I had cleanup duty during the aftermath of a war a few years ago. The places where Archangel Grass fought were always the worst. Dude scares the hell out of me. Not to mention our skill as Archangels both revolve around serpentine creatures.”

Ariel changed the subject, and persisted with her curiosity for the next several hours, when at last Etta remarked, “Oh, cool, we’re here.”