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Even as the boat rocks rhythmically to the waves, I hear a distinct splash, like an errant eddy on the water’s surface that rouses my senses. Dread courses through my veins like sludge, and I’m tuned in to every little sound.
He’s coming.
It’s not a thought, exactly, just a sudden jolt of clarity.
Nervousness gets the better of me, and I rise again, trying to shake off my mounting terror. Several hands grab at me, and I nearly escape them when a real splash makes us all freeze.
I see him first, those strange yellow eyes.
I think a scream escapes me, but it’s drowned out by the chaos that erupts when the dark elf is snatched up and dragged under by merciless tentacles. The men grab for spears and planks and anything that’s not bolted down as blood rises from a rush of bubbles beneath the water. Lightheadedness strikes again, and I waver before falling back onto the boat’s bottom.
Shouts to organize are met with more screams of agony.
The boat rocks dangerously to one side as the monster tries to board, his claws and tentacles shearing through canvas and wood alike. His pointed teeth are bared as he snatches up another man. Four more attack, concealing the monster from my view.
But blood flies, and sense abandons me.
I rush to the stern of the boat as if to leap off, finding myself frozen between a massacre and the endless deep. My heart is racing, and there is nothing to defend myself with. Once he’s done with the men, he’ll come for me.
I tried to warn them, and now they’re dead and dying.
Beneath my hand is an oar. It takes my numb fingers a moment to realize what it is before I wield it close to my chest. I doubt it will do anything against the creature that tears another man to pieces, his throat still working on a scream as his head rolls too close to me.
A yelp escapes me, and I scramble behind the mast.
One of the men, not yet joined the fight, takes hold of me and shakes me hard. “You brought this bad luck on us, you little –”
Tentacles burst through him from behind, and his eyes widen in fury and shock as his organs spill at my feet. In my shock, things begin to slow down, and I watch with a morbid sort of curiosity how his body is torn in two.
It’s unnatural, almost comical.
But what stands beyond him is a creature made for the slaughter. His mouth is dripping with the blood of fishermen, and his bright gaze lands on me. We’re surrounded by murder, and the boat finally goes quiet.
All I can hear is my short, rapid breathing echoing in my ears.
Splinters bite into my hands as I hold tight to my crude weapon. But when I move to swing, tentacles coil around the handle, tearing it from me in one swift motion.
I stumble backward, realizing I have no screams left.
He is all I can witness, his brackish flesh caked in gore, his claws dripping with blood. This creature is a solid mass of muscle and tentacles, standing taller than even Vyrtun did when he was in one piece.
The urge to surrender forces me to my knees even as I shield my eyes.
A blood-soaked tentacle reaches for me, and I think it’s going to wrap around my neck and strangle the air from me. But the boat is quickly filling with water, mixing with the blood to create a cold stew beneath us.
The craft yawns, then cracks beneath us, and the water rushes up over me.
I lose sight of the monster, the oar, and the bodies, as I find myself floating among the wreckage. The sun glitters on the pink water above, and there are shadows all around. I can’t tell which one is the monster I’ve come to fear, but I push to the surface, holding out hope that he’s lost interest in this slaughter.
But even as my fingers breach the surface, something coils around my leg, pulling me down, down, down. The pressure rises as a roar of bubbles escapes me.No,I want to cry out, but there is no air left down here, only darkness.
My lungs burn when I try to take a breath, forcing them to seize.
Those tentacles curl around me again, binding my legs together and pinning my arms to my sides. When I issue a final jerk, it is pathetic, like a pilla’s in a yillese’s vise grip. I think I see a flash of those yellow eyes, boring into me.
It’s a cold, hard stare, one I can’t quite read.
But consciousness is fading. Even the fear and the horror of what I’ve witnessed falls away, and the sea rushes in. I have to let it. I have no other recourse down here in its cold embrace.
