"I don't think we're going to escape that thing!" Erich yells as the ship dart through the ice trap, but unable to create distance between them and the enormous eel. The group had tried to attack the floating ice, but all their attacks did was chip some off. Now Sydra was gritting his teeth as he spun the wheel back and forth to get past each one.
"It's not like we can fight that thing instead," Robert says as he looks back at the sheer size of the eel. By now the eel is close enough to the bottom of the clouds that the group can make out its distinct shape. It is at least three times as long as the ship, and unlike the smaller eels that only have two fins, this one has six ice blue fins that have spikes at the tips.
"We may have to," Sydra says as he points in front of them at a large blockade of ice. It seems the path he had been following was leading them into a trap, and they couldn't turn the ship around. 'It seems these eels have a bit of intelligence,' Sydra thinks as he has the others drop the sails and lower the anchor.
At the moment, the emperor rank eel was still a few miles behind them, but it was quickly catching up to them now that they were stuck. Once the group had finished anchoring the ship, they hall headed to the top deck and looked back at the eel through Sydra's spyglass.
"So... What's the plan?" Erich asks as he passes the spyglass to Robert who peered through it.
"I was thinking we Cidre and I could fly you and Robert to the back of the creature, and we attack it from there. It should have a blind spot somewhere along its back that we can exploit," Sydra says as the others listen to his plan. Although what Sydra said made sense, it was incredibly risky to do. For one thing, there were still a few of the smaller eels left alive that they would have to take out, and no one knew what dangers might lurk on the Emporer eel's back.
"It may not be our only option, but that plan has the highest chance of success," Cidre says, as the others reluctantly nod their heads in agreement.
"Alright, let's do this," Sydra says as he and Cidre grab the other two and fly up into the sky. Getting close to the eel proves more difficult than they first thought, as every time it waves its fins the wind it generates pushes the group back a few meters.
"Erich, do you think it is possible that you could dissipate the puss ack effect of the winds by absorbing its kinetic force?" Sydra asks as the group lands on one of the floating icebergs. Looking back, they have only managed to get one thousand meters away from the ship.
"I can absorb the kinetic force from the wind, but I can't cover everyone's body with it. Do you have an idea?" Erich asks as he demonstrates absorbing the wind's force. While the others are continuing to have their clothes and hair whipped around by it, Erich appears to be standing in a completely calm area.
"You can send your kinetic force through your mace, right? Does that mean you can also absorb kinetic force through things as well?" Sydra asks as he pulls out a shield that is larger than Erich, and hands it to him. Holding onto the shield, Erich turns to face the winds and attempts to absorb the force pushing against it. After a few seconds, the shield stops resisting the wind and instead begins funneling its force into Erich.
"I can! But there is so much kinetic force being absorbed into my body that I'd have to spell it every five minutes," Erich says as he looks back at the group, excited about the fact that there are more uses to his power than he thought before.
"That's fine, with the wind no longer pushing us back we can easily make it to the back of the eel within fifteen minutes. Every five minutes send your kinetic force into this, it should be able to contain it all," Sydra says as he pulls out a small void obsidian ball and hands it to Erich. The black ball fits perfectly in Erich's hand, and at the top, there is a purple indent that has lines leaving like a vortex.
"What is this?" Erich asks while sending the built-up kinetic force into, only for it to disappear into what seemed to be an endless void. Rolling the ball around his hand, Erich studied it closely.
"That is something I found in the plasma temple a while ago, but I wasn't surer what it did. When I sent my different auras into it, they seemed to be devoured, and by pressing the purple indent I got them back. It seems like it can store an incredible amount of aura, and you can choose how much of it you want to take back out. This could work as a storage type thing for you, so you can retrieve kinetic force whenever you need it," Sydra says as Erich test out taking aura back out of it.
"Cool, but why didn't you bring this out sooner?" Erich asks as he puts the ball into his pocket, and the group gets back to flying towards the eel. This time Sydra is carrying Erich in front of the group, and Cidre and Robert are hiding behind them.
"I honestly forgot about it, until just now. There were so many things going on back then, that something that can absorb my aura wasn't really important," Sydra says as the group flies through the clouds until they finally pop out of the top of them.
"Wow, that thing is huge," Robert says as he looks at the top of the eel that seems to be calmly floating through the clouds like their water. The eel is large enough that only half of it was submerged in the clouds, and its entire back can be seen above them. The eel's back is covered in a long ice spike that is angled towards its tail, and the top of its head is protected by an icy helmet.
"The air around here is a bit cold," Cidre says as the group lands on the back of the eel, and begins looking around. The area they are standing on was so wide that the four of them could stand ten meters apart from each other and still have ten meters on either side left.
"Of course it's cold, we're standing high in the sky, on top of an eel that has ice spikes covering its back. What we need to do now is figure out how to take it down, before it destroys our ship," Robert says as he covers himself in a light layer of fire to keep the cold out.
The others nodded and began walking towards the head of the eel, which was the most vulnerable part of the other eels. However, when they reached the head, the group noticed that all the weak points were covered by the ice helmet.
"Now what?" Erich asks as he tries to chip away some of the ice, but his mace just bounces off it. Shaking his head, Sydra hops up onto the ice helmet and looks around.
"Hey, I think I see something," Sydra says as the rest of the group climbs up onto the helmet and looks at the hole that Sydra is pointing at. The hole is in the middle of two large blue horns, and there is a sloped path that leads down into the skull beneath them.
"It can't honestly be that easy right?" Erich asks as the group carefully scouts out the area around the hole. Seeing nothing, the group decides to venture into the hole, but not before Sydra creates a straw golem to go first.
"Who made this path?" Cidre asks as he notices that the tunnel seemed to have been man-made. There were multiple scrapes along the path, and at one point the group noticed a broken hammer on the ground.
"Who knows, could have been anyone, but it looks like we're almost at the end," Sydra says as he points at the dark enclosure in front of them. By now the group was deep into the ice helmet of the eel, and they had placed lanterns along the tunnel on the way down. They didn't need to carry the lanterns with them though, because Robert was lighting up the area with his flame armor.
At the end of the tunnel was a long room that was situated on top of the bones from the eel's skull. The room was held up by decorative ice pillars, and at the end of the room was a alter with a crystal skull sitting on top of it. Feeling a vibration from his pocket, Sydra pulled out the white box and opened it.
"What was that?" Cidre asks as the crystal eye that had been in the box flew out and inserted itself in the crystal skull. As the eye melded into the skull, it, and the other eye that was already in the skull, began to glow a deep red.
"That doesn't look good," Erich says as the skull floated up into the air.