by Mike Truk
We were doing it.
Swimming down to an ancient galleon in search of treasure in a dangerous new environment, a place as magical and wondrous as anything I’d ever seen. We’d found a way to defy the lampetramen, to assay the impossible in a bid to enter the ruins against all odds.
For the first time in what felt like days, I felt confidence surge within me. We could do this. We could defy Lady Fortuna again and again, and always count on her smile.
She did, after all, love rogues, madmen, and children.
The Hammer rose into view. She’d been a beautiful ship, as far as I could tell. More like one of the frigates that had chased us out of Port Gloom than a full-bellied galleon. Her main mast still rose at an oblique angle from her deck, tatters of her rigging and sails gently moving in the water as if the ship itself breathed. Her hull was wreathed in weeds and overgrown with lumps of coral, and a great rent in her bow showed where the sea had poured in and ruined her.
Shoals of fish swam slowly about her stern, as if unimpressed by her grandeur, and her mizzen and foremast lay strewn across the muddy bed of the bay, barely visible under the coral and kelp beds.
Yashara slowed as we drew close, clearly studying the scene for signs of danger. I did the same, peering into the shadows that wreathed The Hammer’s hull, the darkness within her, the murk at the edges of my vision. The light from above us filled the water like a great lambent cloud, a bright, formless mass of azure that paled to white just beneath the surface itself, making it so that I could barely make out the jolly boat’s keel. My friends were arrayed above me, swimming down cautiously, and with a deep inhalation of water I turned back to The Hammer and saw that Yashara was gesturing for me to swim down.
Iris reached me just as I began to dive once more, and together we kicked and surged through the cooler waters till The Hammer was massive and right before us. What a spectral ship - after weeks spent aboard the Bonegwayne, I felt a slight familiarity with how ships should operate, and seeing the torn rigging, the shattered yards, the ghostly remnants of the sails, the scarred and barnacled decks and overgrown sides instilled me with a sense of grandeur and melancholy.
Scimitar in hand, Yashara swam slowly to the hole in the ship’s side.
The darkness roiled; a great tentacled shape exploded out into the water, bulbous and so fast I barely had time to react. A great cloud of black ink filled the water before the ship, and I saw a glowing arrow scythe through the water after the retreating form.
Krakenia? No. Focusing on it at last, I saw an octopus the size of a cow retreating across the floor of the bay.
Heart hammering, I turned back to Yashara. She was waving her arm through the ink, seeking to dissipate it. Down I swam, reaching her side, and as the ink thinned and disappeared we approached the great hole together.
“She tore her guts out entering the last stretch,” I said. “Water must have poured in faster than they could react. No wonder they abandoned everything on board.”
Yashara, apparently, didn’t think it was an opportune time to make chit chat. She swam into the hole itself, reaching out with one hand to brace herself on the rotten, shattered planks, and as I followed after I realized that our magical vision dispelled darkness as well. Or perhaps it was already dark down here at the bottom of the bay, and I’d not realized it? What should have been pitch-black was merely subdued, the colors washed out.
The hull was in far worse condition than I thought; great horizontal holes showed where planks had fallen away, and her internal ribs were evident. Peering into the hold I saw a mass of crates, or their remains, all of them covered in a thick layer of sediment and looking to have settled into a mass of rotten wood.
“The locket would be in the captain’s cabin,” I said. “Best access it from the deck.”
Yashara nodded, pushed away, then swam up the curving side of the ship to clear the tilted gunwales and out over the deck.
I followed, Iris just behind, trying not to glance nervously in every direction. It wasn’t just Krakenia that we had to worry about. Who knew what might be taking notice of us down here and swimming closer to take a better look?
Yashara swam confidently down the sloping deck to the rear cabin door set in the stern castle. The door hung open, reduced to sodden planks that were barely held together by the massively rusted iron bands. Reaching out, Yashara grasped the door and pulled it away, tearing the hinges from the frame, turning to push it out into the water so that it drifted a few yards before settling on the deck.
I followed her inside. Our magical eyesight allowed me to make out the spacious cabin; not the captain’s. The Hammer was larger than The Bonegwayne, and so the door led into officers’ quarters, I guessed, from the cots set against the walls and the table bolted down in the center of the room.
Yashara swam forward, toward a rear door, and this she shouldered aside and then passed through. I followed after, only to freeze when Yashara let out a cry of alarm. She shoved back through the door, movements panicked, but quickly gathered herself.
“A huge fucking snake,” she said. “Just a snake. Damnit. Surprised me, is all.”
“Underwater snake?” I moved past her, peering into the gloom. “You mean an eel?”
The captain’s cabin was a mess. The rear, diamond-pane windows were for the most part broken out and covered in algae and ribbony seaweed. The floor was encrusted with barnacles, and coral had grown over the walls so that it seemed almost a natural cave. In the rear, a massive eel was glaring at me, angular mouth open as if stunned, its body as thick as my thigh.
The damn thing had to be at least ten yards long.
“Suggestions?” I asked, turning back to the half-orc.
“One moment,” said Iris. She was floating but a foot off the floor, tunic rippling slowly about her body, hair held firm by her tight braids. Arms extended, she simply hovered there - until movement stirred in the doorway behind her.
I don’t know what I’d expected to see. Skeletons in pirate hats, rusty cutlasses in hand? Instead, a skeletal shape swam gracefully into the room. At first I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. It was composed of a massive spine perhaps two yards long, with a ribcage and huge shoulder blades at the end, with strange, stubby bone hands just below the shoulders like shovels. But the head. It reminded me of a pelican, with huge eye holes, extended, pointed beak, and a fan of bone emerging at the top of the skull like a mohawk.
It swam past Yashara and I and into the cabin. We both crowded in, and saw the skeletal - fish? Pelican snake? Rush at the eel, putting on a burst of speed at the last.
The eel drew back, snapped its jaws at the skeleton, then burst forth from its lair to dart out the window. A ripple of its muscular sides and it was gone.
“Effective,” said Yashara approvingly. “Let’s find the locket and go.”
We swam into the cabin, and I quickly realized we were going to need to pry things free from the coral. Yashara moved to the large desk. Iris began to explore the floor around the bed, while I moved to the remains of an old dresser bolted against the wall. Using the tip of my sword I tried to lever a drawer free, but it was so swollen and overgrown that I might as well have been trying to pry a block out of a castle wall.
For the next five minutes we chipped, hacked, and levered the cabin apart. I found a variety of other objects; ruined scroll tubes, a blocky compass whose copper was so verdigrised it looked like a massive emerald, a handful of gold coins embedded in the heart of the coral, and a sword whose blade must once have been massive but had now been reduced to an insignificant squiggle of rust.
“Here,” said Iris, rising up from where she’d been crouched by the bed, a gold oval in hand, chain trailing from its top. “This looks like a locket.”
“Don’t open it,” I said, extending a hand toward her. “If there’s a painting inside, perhaps its been preserved if the locket’s airtight -”
A shout of warning sounded from outside - Cerys? And then The Hammer shudde
red as if it had been rammed by another underwater ship. Invisible waves of force rippled over us, causing the three of us to jostle within the cabin, and deep, plaintive groans arose from the depths as the galleon settled deeper into the seabed, accompanied by the loud cracks of huge timbers finally wrenching apart.
“Out,” said Yashara, swimming swiftly to the broken windows. “Hurry!”
I needed no encouragement. The three of us, accompanied by Iris’ skeletal pelican fish monster spinal thing, swam carefully through the ruined windows, contorting ourselves to avoid the still sharp edges, and out into the bay’s expansive waters.
And that’s when I saw her.
There could be no doubt.
Krakenia.
She hovered a good thirty yards away, slightly above us, a regal conflagration of deep, smoldering crimson tentacles that not only grew in great number from her lower half, but which also extended in much larger variety from her back and the rear of her head, creating a dark, writhing corona of octopoidal flesh that framed her paler torso and face.
I couldn’t help but stare. She was magnificent. As large if not larger than Yashara, she was gazing at where Cerys, Tamara, and Netherys hovered, her aristocratic features cast in an expression of disdain and haughty annoyance. A crown of coral was set upon her hairless brow, and crimson markings flared across her harsh cheekbones, cut down vertically through her eyes. Her lips were of the same blood-red, a crimson that covered her shoulders, the backs of her arms, and wrapped around her so that like flickers of flame they extended here and there over her high breasts, her slender torso, both of which were the same pale soapstone green as her face.
In one hand she held a harpoon twice the length of her already considerable body, and this she raised to point at my three friends.
Iris pointed her finger at Krakenia, and her bone pelican spinal monster thing sped forward like a hurled spear, its body streamlining as it flew at Krakenia, growing more slender and pointy as it put on speed, beak extending out like the tapering point of a lance.
Krakenia caught sight of its approach, brought her harpoon around, and then channeled what looked like a tornado of swirling water down its length to send a vortex at Iris’ creature.
The two collided by ten yards from where Krakenia hovered. The vortex tore the skeleton apart, shattering bone and knocking it into a disparate cloud of fragments that immediately began to fall toward the bay floor.
Only to pull together and reknit themselves into a new form; a knobblier, uglier version of its original incarnation.
Krakenia’s eyes narrowed, and then she looked past it at where Yashara, Iris, and I hovered just outside the captain’s quarters.
The weight of her regard was such that I felt as if a great leaden hand had suddenly clamped itself on my shoulders.
My sword felt really, really inadequate, and suddenly I really missed Havatier.
“Yashara?” I began swimming away from her so as to not provide a bunched up target. “What do we do?”
An arrow came sizzling down from above, ensorcelled with purple and blue, trailed by a ferocious stream of bubbles only to be snagged out of the water by one of Krakenia’s four back tentacles.
But a second came right behind it, not as quickly as if fired normally in the air, but quick enough that it slammed into Krakenia’s side, embedding itself deep into her hip.
Her tentacles snapped out to their full length, and she screamed, a sound not of pain but fury, indignation. She raised her harpoon and a pulse of power flared out from its tip in all directions, washing over me and resonating deep in my chest. I hesitated, unsure if something terrible was going to happen next - but nothing did.
“What was that?” I glanced to my friends.
Iris was peering pensively up at our foe, and I saw the pelican spinal monster suddenly fall apart just as it drew close to Krakenia and collapse into a dozen small spheres like the heads of maces, mostly composed of the great vertebrae. These flew at our enemy, and scored a dozen gashes before she swirled her harpoon about her, unleashing another pulse of power that caused the bones to pulverize into dust and disappear.
“Drat,” said Iris, tone clipped with annoyance.
Cerys unleashed another arrow just as a cloud of darkness settled about Krakenia, its swirling mass shot through with faint glimmers of purple. Netherys’ work? The arrow slid into the cloud, only for a dozen vortexes to fly out in the direction of my friends; most missed, but one clipped Cerys on the shoulder, sending her spinning as blood erupted from the wound in a dark cloud, while a second hit Netherys in the head, knocking her into a slow backwards summersault from which she made no move to recover.
Hovering down by the ship wasn’t doing anything for anybody. I kicked forward and began swimming as fast as I could toward the distant thread of the anchor’s rope. My chest grew tight with exertion, but I swam on, hoping Krakenia - who had swum clear of the dark cloud - wouldn’t sight down at me just yet -
Yashara was swimming valiantly right at her. A glance up showed Tamara moving to Netherys’ side. Cerys was swimming toward the rope as well, but just then a great shape came sliding down with terrible ease and speed to coil around her - the conger eel from the ship.
Or it’s fucking brother.
Cerys screamed, her bow trapped against her side, and began pounding her fist ineffectively against the eel’s side. I stared up, helpless, horrified, too far to do anything, as the coils cinched tighter. Cerys screamed again, and I thought I saw a faint cloud of dark smoke emerge from her mouth.
The anchor rope. I pressed on. The water shuddered around me as something vast swam overhead - a great shadow that I chose to ignore. I had to reach the rope. Just then something coalesced out of the darkness just beyond it - a large, terrifying shape whose great tail waved from side to side as it propelled its brutal, pale bulk forward.
A shark.
A massive, massive shark.
Its upper half was a light gray, while its lower jaw and belly were a pale white. Even at this distance I could make out its seemingly lifeless, black eyes. Maw cracked open so that I could make out the endless rows of triangular teeth.
Something about it caused my heart to clamp up painfully, my gut to tighten, my whole body to seize up as if I’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. A primal reaction. The sight of that huge shark coming right at me was fucking terrifying.
But fuck me if I hadn’t faced worse over the past few weeks. I shook my head, gathered my wits, and forcefully reminded myself that I’d been swallowed by a behemoth from the Dead Man’s Trench only a week ago. Compared to that, a great white shark was child’s play.
I drew my blade and stopped swimming. Waited, legs and arms slowly keeping me in place.
Watched as the massive shark kept swimming right at me.
There was nowhere I could go. No way to charge it first. Nothing I could throw at it. Closer it came, huge tail wafting from side to side, a turgid, primeval threat, and the rest of the fight faded away as I focused on its pointy nose, the mouth that was large enough to bite me in half.
At the very last it put on a burst of speed, exploding forward, huge tail thrashing from side to side, and I screamed in horror and determination, stabbing at an eye as it slammed into me.
I must have missed, but nor did it get part of me into its mouth. I was forced through the water at a terrible speed, its mouth open right before my stomach, my whole body bent around its nose, the point of my sword stuck somewhere along the side of its head.
Straining, fighting to keep from sliding into its maw, I screamed again and wrenched my blade free, stabbed it into the side of its neck, right into its gills, and then was tossed away as the shark thrashed and darted aside.
Tumbling head over heels, I saw it swim out in a circle, blood streaming from its wound.
Heart in my mouth, my whole body jittery with fear and excitement, I made a break for the anchor rope. It was just ten yards away. I swam, the blade clumsy in my grip, my body ach
ing from the battering it had received.
Where was the shark? I glanced all around, couldn’t see it.
Five yards to the anchor.
Four.
Three -
A battering ram slammed into me from the side, sending me spiraling, twisting in the water, and a huge, crushing force slammed down upon my side. If I’d been holding my breath, I’d have screamed it all out right there and then.
I was torn through the water, ripped past the rope, driven before the shark, its huge maw closed about me -
Desperate, drowning in pain, and flung out my hand. Reached, screaming, and felt my fingers close around the rope for but the briefest second. There was no give to its slimy length - my grip was immediately torn away, and then I was being carried deeper into the bay, down, down, as the shark’s teeth ground into my flesh, the pressure terrible, the pain so vast I couldn’t even register it.
Not thinking, flailing wildly, I hacked at the shark’s head, my attacks made clumsy by the water resistance, and then the blade was gone, torn from my fingers.
Down we went into the murk. Frenzied, I twisted, feeling flesh tear, and attacked its black eye.
It was like digging my thumb into thick mud. I shoved it in as deep as I could, felt the smooth, cartilaginous edges of its socket, and then the shark opened its mouth and was gone, speeding away into the darker waters.
I floated, propelled by momentum, and stared down at my chest. Blood was wafting up like smoke from a dozen small fires. My insides felt liquid and strange. I couldn’t even breathe in water. Dazed, I stared up.
Krakenia had swum down to engage Yashara, but the fight was horribly unequal. The queen of the waves was able to dance about the half-orc, propelled by her wealth of tentacles, wielding her harpoon with savage efficiency, cutting and probing at the half-orc’s defenses with ease.