"Fifteen thousand years since The Sundering. Ten thousand years since since The Darkening. Five thousand years since The Deafening."

The loud voice echoed over the courtyard of people crowded together, hundreds of thousands of people crammed into the open square in front of the grand temple. Thousands more lining the roofs of nearby buildings to watch, and looking down from the windows and roof spaces of the temple itself. The words of Archbishop Dor rang out for them all to hear as he held his hands high for all to see.

"In two days time, my children, the day will be upon us that has been foretold. Our civilization has survived since the apocalypse, alone on this barren remnant of a world we call Void. In just two days, we celebrate the next step in our history, the birth of a new age. We shall hear the voice of the gods, and they will tell us what is to come."

The cheers of the men in the high towers and in the temple were a deafening roar, and the women in the square and the low houses shouted for joy in response to his declaration.

"Soon, my daughters, the most beautiful and brave among you will be selected to make the ultimate sacrifice. You will take the long journey to the surface, to see the air and the sky. The gods will see you with their eyes, and you will be taken to them as a gift, to live in the heavens forever with them. You will lavish in their cities high in the air, far away from the water, where we only ask that you will remember us when you speak to the masters."

Four columns of specially trained monks came out of the temple, moving among the hordes of ecstatic women. Some they took in hand to inspect, while others they pushed aside. Many of the women they inspected would quickly be discarded to the side of the column, and the monks would continue on their path. All the women shoved out of their way let out cries of dismay and sorrow as their peers pulled them back into the crowd, pushing in around them to get to the monks so they might have their chance. Some of those rejected screamed to the monks or to the bishop pleas that they might be reconsidered, and guards and soldiers, also women, would move in to remove the more hysterical ones from the area. The monks would sometimes latch onto these guards and soldiers, looking them over, and when they too were cast aside they would act the same as the other women.

Dor spoke over the pandemonium. "Fret not, my daughters, for we all have a purpose. In two days, the celebration begins, and with it will come the final sacrifices. The last five we must feed to the Mouth of Saldor. If you are the most blessed, the most righteous among us, you may be the ones selected to feed him."

The few who the monks did select, nine young women, were carried off toward the temple, hands reaching out from the crowd just to touch them one more time, crying out blessings. Those family and friends, or anyone who knew the ones selected, shouted laudations of the one they knew who had been selected, how they were honored to have known them. And as the columns of monks reentered the temple, the large temple doors began to close behind them. The archbishop gave his congregation one last edict.

"Spend these two days in prayer. Give your worries to Saldor. Let him consume them so that your joy may be everlasting." The last of the girls being carried in let out a scream for help just as the doors closed. Whoever might have heard it was quickly reminded by the archbishop, "This is the greatest honor for our people, to be chosen." He turned and entered the temple, disappearing from the sight of the people.

On the balcony overlooking the great temple sanctuary, Dor looked over the sea of monks and bishops, the priests and acolytes, and the nine women being carried to the back of the temple. The great columns wrapped in carved tales of the ancient myths, the mosaics on the arched ceiling that portrayed their god Saldor, the tapestries across the walls that displayed countless rituals of the past, this was all about to change. Why would they need to maintain an image of Saldor, when the real Saldor would be here in the flesh in just two days time, with the offering of the last five sacrifices. Yes, the records had kept immaculate score, and they were only a few days from finally reaching that loftiest of numbers. Ten million souls fed to the great god Saldor. Ten million to the great ravenous blood fiend of the astral plane.

He looked down and saw the last of the nine young women being carted off to the back of the temple. She was fighting back, trying to free herself from the monks. There was literally no way for her to escape, so he wasn't worried. He leaned over to one of the bishops standing next to him. "Make sure to flog that one for making a scene, and then collar her for the leader of the party. If she must act like an animal, she shall be treated as one."

"Yes, your worship, it shall be done."

Without another word, he went around the inside balcony, to the back of the temple where his private room was kept behind closed doors. He entered a small alcove at the back of the room, closing the curtain behind him and opening a hidden hole in the wall. Inside the hole, which was no bigger than a foot in diameter, was a book which he took out and opened. His hands hovering over the pages, he chanted a wordless spell, and a faint glow came off the ancient paper.

A voice came from the book, ephemeral whispers chanting lowly. "Eoh. Hetan'desa hluk'lurh. Os'brillal spetah teo sionna. Kahella ruk'hona shahratn eukho. Eoh. Vis haitlo'hka fhtagn."

"Eoh. Eoh." The archbishop repeated back to the book.

Robyn could have gone back to the conference room, or gone for a rest in the bed she'd been given, but this nearby sea monster had her too worried to leave the bridge. She watched the sonar screen, trying to learn how it worked so she could at least keep up with Weiss and the sonar operator. He was doing a lot of other things around the screen, so it clearly wasn't his only duty, which she thought was odd. If picking up the presence of a threat this large was so important in the ocean deep, then the person doing the job shouldn't be distracted by other things. At least, that's what Robyn thought. She knew she might be wrong about that. However, it seemed too obvious for that to be the case, so she kept that opinion so long as no one explained to her a reason why she was wrong.

She was at a loss to describe the sonar screen anyway. It wasn't at all like a radar screen, so she had no idea how anyone could tell what was where. When Weiss stepped back from learning as much as she possibly could about the sonar technology and readout, Robyn asked her. "How can you tell what it even is, or how big it is? I can't make heads or tails of that thing."

Weiss huffed, looking back over to the sonar station. "It is... complicated, to say the least. I don't think I'd be a good person to explain it to someone else." That was probably a fair take, since Robyn was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to do that either, even if she did know what was going on. Robyn was about to say as much when Weiss held up her hand, stepping up to the sonar station. "Hold on, is that...?"

The sonar operator nodded quickly. "It is. Unknown is coming about! It's approaching us!"

A man in a commander's uniform appeared, looking over the sonar operator's shoulder. "Distance?"

"Still out twenty miles, but it's headed this way now."

"Keep an eye on it. If it comes within fifteen, we need to turn to face it."

"Yes sir!"

As the commander left the station, Robyn looked to Weiss in the hopes of an explanation. Weiss just shrugged. "I don't know." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Okay, my best guess is that we can outrun it if it's a whale, but at its size it can do some serious damage to us. We'd have to come about and torpedo it if it gets too close."

"But it won't be able to get that close if it's just a whale, right?" Robyn asked, just to be sure. Weiss nodded. "So if it starts gaining on us, it's probably a Grimm."

"In which case we have to take it out so it doesn't follow us to the platform."

Robyn hadn't even considered that, but it made sense. A giant Grimm wouldn't think twice about following them to the deep sea platform so it could destroy that as well. "Weiss..." She'd been wondering ever since the sonar operator mentioned it. "Just how big are we talking about here?"

"Uh... about one hundred and thirty feet long. That's not nearly as big as the Nautilus, but it's more than big enough to hit us hard enough to damage the hull, and when that happens... it's game over. At least it's not a small target."

That was true enough. If it turned out to be a hostile Grimm coming for them, it was big enough that they wouldn't have too hard a time tagging it with a torpedo. Most Grimm at that size wouldn't have the ability to act quickly enough to knock a torpedo aside. It was not to be, however, as the captain returned to look at the sonar screen. He shook his head miserably and muttered something under his breath.

Turning to General Ironwood, the captain pointed to Weiss and Robyn. "Take them back to the guest quarters and tell everyone to stay quiet. We need to run silent for a while."

"Understood." Ironwood motioned for the two Huntresses to follow him. "Let's let the crew do their job." As he led them back to their rooms, he explained something that had escaped their attention. "Unfortunately, if it is a Grimm, we don't actually have a way to defend ourselves. Opening one of the torpedo tubes at this depth would compromise the hull enough to kill us all. So at this point, we have to just hope it's a really big whale and that's all." They reached the conference room, and Ironwood opened the door for them. "Tell the others to stay quiet. Every sound echoes through the hull."

Once he closed the door behind him, Weiss hurried to go do as they'd been told. Fiona and May moved past her to get to Robyn and find out what was happening from her. She explained the situation to them as best she could, but it only reinforced the idea they'd all gotten that coming along might have been more trouble than it was worth. They were in hostile water, and now they might have encountered a hostile creature. If none of them ever returned, no one would know why. All they could do right now, though, was sit quietly and wait.

It seemed like hours, though it was probably only a few minutes, while they waited to hear back from Ironwood. Either the large creature would be getting closer as high speeds, in which case they likely had no chance to defend themselves, or it would wander off on its own way and live out the rest of its uneventful life without killing anyone. They would probably never find out what exactly it was in either case, since death would be instantaneous, and survival meant it stayed well away from them. Of course, if it wasn't an especially large whale, there wasn't exactly anything bigger that it could be besides Grimm. At these depths, most whales were well beyond where they could safely dive, and so were most Grimm. So it was literally out of its depth, whatever it was, but then again so were they.

Finally, it was over, when Ironwood opened the door and stepped back into the room. Everyone who had gathered in the conference room, unable to sleep while they waited to find out if they were going to live or die, let out a collective sigh of relief, and he answered the question they were all waiting to have answered. "We are all the envy of every marine biologist. What we thought was one animal was in fact two. A very large predatory species of whale battling a colossal squid. This is also the deepest either species has been recorded."

There was a moment of silence, and then Yang piped up. "Wait, so the thing we were all worried about being a giant Grimm was two normal animals?"

"I wouldn't call them normal." Ironwood shook his head. "This species of whale is regularly sixty feet long, and this particular specimen is over eighty feet. The squid, which had a body in excess of fifty feet long, was attached to the whale's face. It was a life and death struggle between two abnormally large individuals of already very large species."

Joanna was the one who picked up on the subtle hints. The squid was being spoken of in past tense. "So... the whale won."

"I would assume so." Ironwood said. "We watched the squid break apart and fall away. That's when we realized what it was we were seeing."

"Well, that was a lot of stress for my heart." Weiss said, taking a seat at the table and resting her head on her arms in front of her. "Let's not get into any fights with giant whales, okay? I'm going to sleep."