19

Estre nods at you with last-ditch determination. "We'll give it all we can. You and me, we can hold our own."

You nod back. "We'll do better than that," you say, but Estre has already started toward his newest target.

The two of you fall into a rhythm: wedge, separate, dispatch. You start making some good headway. At first, you think you're just getting the hang of this, but then you have to acknowledge that it's definitely the fact that the combat is getting easier. Suddenly, you realize why. The battle has moved upward, and in the shallower water, everything is lit by bright sunlight. That's strange. The squid seem to be doing well, and typically, they'd be trying to force the fight downward, to drown the whales. At any rate, the change in lighting makes the bigger picture easier to see, and things don't look good.

You can see the sloping seafloor. The squid have been driving the fight up it. You realize that they're planning to drive the whales ashore, to kill them that way. Then you hear panicked sonar blasts coming from the shore. It must already be happening. You can feel the massive pulsing of their connected electrical field from the barricade they've created to stop rescued merfolk from joining the fight.

Dealing with this blockade will be important in the long term, but it won't mean much if there aren't enough merfolk to help out or if the whales die before they can be saved.