by Kell Inkston
“Depressed…” The two listen to the chirping swamp insects and peeping frogs as they walk side by side. “I guess you’re right. I just miss my dad. He’s clingy, and I helped out a lot with his job.”
“He was a medical sort, yes?”
“Mhmm. People either loved him or hated him.”
“Oh, some division of opinion?”
“He’s educated, like you, sir- a lot like you, actually. Not everyone likes well-read people; they think they act better than other people or something.”
The Captain scoffs. “I wouldn’t say that’d be a fair comparison, Miss Vereyrty. Your father was likely taught in a college, I learned what I have through hardship.”
Grancis hums. “So which one’s better?”
“Pardon?”
“Is it better to learn through doing things or from studying them?”
“It depends entirely on what you’re learning, my dear. Probably a little of both, frankly.”
“… Right, that makes sense.”
The cacophony of insects chirp on, blanketing the deep swamp with their music as the already aged boardwalk becomes wet and mildewed with the decades gone by of neglect.
“I’m certain your father’s proud of how well you’re taking all of this,” The Captain says, sparing a glance in her direction. As always, it’s hard to judge his expression, but his tone of voice sounds perfectly kind.
She smiles. “Thank you, sir, but I can’t help but worry about him. I like the crew, believe it or not, and Colette… I know she loves it here. Lots of people better than her at roughhousing, so I think she has room to grow.”
He hums as he abruptly turns his gaze right through the deep mangroves. “Good, I’m certain Colette will meet her goals if she meets each challenge with as much vigor as she has so far. That overlord fellow won’t stand a chance… Miss Vereyrty.”
Her brows raise. “Yes, sir?”
“Have your pistol ready.”
“Wh-” she inhales sharply at the sound of a plunking in the water about fifty meters off to the right of them. “Roger,” she whispers.
They quiet themselves and hear, just barely audible over the insects and amphibians, the sound of waving water, steadily becoming louder towards the duo.
“On my mark, you jump back. Aim at the location you’re standing at right now. Do you understand?”
She tenses. “So, like dodge and just aim at our spot?”
“Correct.”
“Rog-” she takes a deep, nervous breath. “Roger.”
There’s a short silence, and then: movement. The Captain leaps over but Grancis is a little slow. “N-”
In only a moment’s time, a splash and loud crack from below reverberate through the boards as an alligator seasort pulls up from the boards. He’s torn to the heavens and weighs in at more than a whole gym’s worth of men; a very intimidating sight. While his massive entry leaves the boards open and in shambles, his landing snaps the walkway into dagger-like juttings of wood. Grancis is sent soaring over to a mangrove and The Captain’s bandages are met by a slew of finger sized splinters.
“Mornin’ t’ye,” the scaled asshole greets with a crocodilian grin, though he’s obviously an alligator – snout’s too wide to be a croc.
“Good day,” The Captain says. “I do say, you really should be more careful when ploughing around. You might hurt someone.”
“Y-” Grancis needs a moment to catch her breath, and both gentlemen look her way to await her response. “Yeah!” she bleats.
Good job, Grancis— really nailed that one.
The alligator man cackles with skewed, clearly-evil-sounding hisses. “I’ll duck in a little next time. See if I can’t eat one o’ ya’ right off.”
“Oh ho!” The Captain exclaims, brandishing his unloaded rifle. “You’re going to have trouble with that! Our pockets are lined with the deadliest disease known to human kind!”
The gator looks perplexed and suddenly awkward as Grancis peeks around into one of her pockets. “You… you sayin’ I need t’ undress ya’ both before I can eat ya’?” The gator-sort asks with not even a twinge of lascivious nature in him, but rather something nearing disgust. Humans are icky, after all.
The Captain animatedly jolts back amidst Grancis’ gasp of horror. “You degenerate ruffian! How dare you even suggest such a thing!” The Captain exclaims.
The gator-man sighs with a long, dense hiss. “I mean… I wasn’t actually reckonin’ eatin’ ya’ in the first place.”
“Oh,” Grancis says with only a hint of relief.
“Disgusting!” The Captain exclaims, not quite on the same page as the other two it seems.
The twelve-foot lizard man growls in thought. “I… I was jus’ assumin’ that’s what’d be hafta’ goin’s on if ya’ both were having-”
“No!” The Captain shouts.
“Yeah!” Grancis chimes in. “No!”
“Eh, then what’re ya’ meanin’ to sa-”
“I mean to say, sir, that you’re already infected!”
The alligator man is the one that jolts back this time, but in measured, awkward shock. He looks at himself, smells his breath, and looks back to The Captain. “You sure’n that one?”
The Captain looks to Grancis, whose expression is frozen in shock, and looks back to the seasort. “Well… I mean it doesn’t have to be a… fast acting disease.”
The seasort guffaws as he draws from his side a long, viciously-serrated knife. “Right you ahh on that one. But this ‘ere stabba’s right good at bein’ mean fast. I’m sure this’ll do jus’ th’ trick.”
The Captain reaches into himself to grab some ammunition for his rifle, but the great walking lizard is already on him. The two tangle viciously, The Captain blocking a deft stab from the scaly opponent by using the length of his unloaded rifle.
“Fire!” The Captain shouts across to Grancis.
She leans back as best she can while keeping a grip on the circumference of the tree. She lines up the shot with a shaking, wavering hold, marked with the ineptitudes of a person’s very first shot, and begins squeezing the trigger with bated breath.
The Captain and lizard exchange a bevy of kicks, punches, butts and shoves to try to get the other one either off their footing or off the boardwalks. It’s clear that the massive force of the giant foe is the greater of the two, however. The Captain’s forced to leap, dodge and climb around to keep himself competitive in the bout, but once he grasps the seasort in a headlock, he’s met with a wonderful surprise.
*BANG*
Amidst the throwing, tossing battle, The Captain inherits a bolt of pure lead, induced perfectly into his face, shattering his glasses and tearing out the other end of his head.
Grancis can’t even bring herself to words as she watches The Captain flinch, pause, and then fall limp onto the swampy pathway.
The gator seasort spares a glance over to The Captain, and then over to the tree with a smug, hundred-toothed grin. “Ay’, well tha’s one way t’ quit ya’ job,” he says, nearing her side of the boardwalk and leaning over the water.
Grancis begins convulsing. She’s getting short on breath. She fires a shot at the seasort, but it glances right off his thick hide with minimal damage.
The gator-man cackles as he raises up his knife for a throw and winks an eye as he lines up his shot. Grancis pulls in a labored, horror-stricken breath as she lines up another shot. She pulls the trigger, sending a shot that hits its mark and pings the knife out of his hand. The little weapon flitters off the into the swampy depths.
The seasort sighs through his fortress of cruel, jagged teeth. “Ay lass, can’t be doin’ that t’ just anybody. Reckon I’ll hafta eat ya’ after all—seein’ as stabbin’ won’t be doin’ much good now.”
“N-no, I taste horrible! My clothes are lined w- I mean, I taste really bad!” She unloads her whole revolver, missing four times and hitting him once in the side, again to no effect.
The sea-sort leans over to di
p in and swim over but hears the sound of a mechanism behind him. In the corner of his eye he spots The Captain, loading his rifle and weakly taking aim. “Get out of our way.”
Before The Captain can make his move, the sea-sort makes his. With a swing and a stomp, the gator pins The Captain’s arm aside and reaches for his limbs.
“You get out’a mine!” the gator shouts as he exerts his muscles in a tearing motion.
“Captain!” Grancis screams as the grueling scene unfolds before her. The Captain’s arms are both torn clean off, and the sea-sort rips The Captain’s upper torso with its jaws. Black sand spews from the injuries as his body is rent with a great, deep tearing noise.
“Miss Vereyrty. Whatever you do, do not give up! Right now is when it counts! Remember Vuuya’s limitations!” Are his final words before the sea-sort swallows his upper body whole.
Grancis does her best to regain her bearing as the sea-sort chokes The Captain down. “Well… damn! He’s a mighty ‘culiar taste.” Clearly enjoying this now, he turns his head with dramatic slowness over to Grancis’ tree. She almost crushes the bark under her grip in horror. “Mayhaps I’ll be needin’ somethin’ t’ wipe th’ ol’ tastin’ buds afta’ ahh,” he says, stretchin’… eh, stretching nonchalantly in preparation for the dive preluding Grancis’ untimely demise.
People are strange, and there are select things that push them over the edge. Grancis is strange like that too. She would gladly die anyway but one, and that’s being eaten, any nightmare she has centers around her being devoured by some horrific beast. It’s not the terror of the teeth and the tearing pain that gets to her, but the thought of perhaps surviving the chewing and being met with the slow, confused, pitch black agony that lies inside the creature’s stomach. She’s pretty sure she’d just suffocate, which isn’t really that bad, but the idea of stomach acid horrifies her.
That’s the little chip of horror in Grancis’ shoulder, and that’s it—that’s the only one. That’s the really strange thing about her. She can’t possibly imagine anything worse than getting eaten. Of course, getting eaten is quite a scary thought, but there is always something darker creeping in the back of the human mind which commands even more fear. For some reason Grancis doesn’t have that, and this will prove to be both a blessing and a curse.
The fact of the matter is, Grancis is different— very different.
The sea-sort dives into the water with a splash, making waves along the calmness of the chirping swamp.
Grancis does the only thing she can think to do, and starts struggling to climb higher. Silently the silhouette of the gator-man traverses just below the surface of the water, watching her with a gleefully murderous gaze. She grasps upward to the best of her ability, ‘til the blood is on the verge of her nails, but she only climbs a couple meters before she hears the loud, bark-crunching grip of the sea sort’s claws latching onto the trunk after her.
“N’where y’ goin, lass? Promise I’m just ‘ere for a snack.”
“P-please leave! Don’t eat me!”
The gator-horror chuckles as it licks his jaws with his long, blackened tongue. “Haven’t felt th’ warm a’ human for a good while. I reckon I’m right entitled t’ a good meal.” Grancis climbs with more will than she’s ever done anything before in her, but it’s not enough.
“That’s not a good reason to do that. Eat fish or something!” She tosses the gun into his face, and he shrugs it off without even a flinch.
“Tha’s what I’m tryin’a do, lass,” he says, wincing in some kind of discomfort from what she assumes is from her thrown gun, but is in fact something quite different.
“W-wait! Let’s talk about this, please!” She cries between gasps as she focuses in on her salvation from the tree trunk.
A meter away from a branch, Grancis climbs for life itself, but the sea-sort is too hungry and too dexterous to allow her the perch. With a leap, the gator flies up and pins into her, pushing her helplessly into the tree and immobilizing her as he holds both of them in place.
“Any las’ words?”
Poor, wide-eyed, clammy Grancis can only squeak as she feels the cold, immense grasp of the predator clutching her.
The seasort grins. “Fine b’ me,” he says right before opening his great mouth, diseased saliva and three hundred teeth ready to meet her blood and viscera.
She squeaks a little louder, as she looks on in blank, horrified awe, but just as she feels the fishy, wet grasp of his tongue, the seasort gags, freezes, and slowly peels off the tree. His eyes are wide with shock as he falls back.
“W-what in th’ n-nam’a-” He plunges back into the swamp frozen by some unknown evil.
Grancis reaches the next branch, climbs atop it, and takes a breather. What stopped the gator? She knows not, but she does know what to do next.
With a scooch across the branch and a few deep breaths, she drops to the boardwalk. The Captain’s disembodied lower torso is still lain next to his rifle with only one shot chambered.
She picks it up, takes a deep breath, and gets up to her feet.
The Witching Book gets “The Lead”
With calm, quiet steps, Grancis moves through the swamp with The Captain’s rifle at the ready. He couldn’t make it out with her, but she’s decided that, official apprentice or not, she’s going to finish the job.
The swampy woodways clear out to reveal a small island amidst the palace of mangroves. Upon this island is a simple wooden house of the most rustic of ornamentations. Witching circles and occult elements litter the yard about the place. Grancis assumes whoever lives here has been busy with all sorts of crazy things.
She raises the rifle to the ready. With the newly-gained distance between the swampy orchestra of insects she can clearly hear the subtle hum of the rifle’s magical ammunition, ringing with excitement to be shot. Nearing the house, she can hear the voice of Colette and… The Captain. Grancis braces herself for a challenge upon her sanity.
Grancis opens the door to the house, producing a loud creak.
“She’s back,” Grancis hears The Captain say. “Get ready.”
“But Gran’s downstairs!” Colette says.
“She’ll be okay, just stick with the plan,” The Captain says.
Grancis quiets her breath as much as she can as she hears Colette clearly say “…Gotcha, she won’t know what hit her.”
Grancis closes the door behind her and takes a moment to think this through just as she spots and aims down the islander who ran away, standing guard at the stairs. He freezes, lifting his hands and dropping his book. She waves him to the side of the room and he complies.
She’s going to have to think this through very, very carefully.
She assumes they’re in wait for her to come up, where Colette, who’s probably been tricked by Vuuya’s illusions, will take a shot at Grancis. Though, what if Vuuya’s tricking Grancis as well, and is masking Colette to look and sound like The Captain, and Vuuya to look and sound like Colette? Perhaps Vuuya’s illusions actually don’t work on Grancis, but she shapeshifted some how to look like The Captain; actually and genuinely sounding like him? Either way, Grancis has no guarantee of not shooting Colette, because thanks to Vuuya, either could be one or the other.
Then, The Captain’s words spring into her mind: “Remember Vuuya’s rules.” She mulls it over in her head a moment. What was Vuuya’s one limiter?
She jolts, scaring the islander. She’s got it. Vuuya can only project illusions without confirmation. What if, however; that the illusion worked counter-intuitively? She’ll take a dive and act the part. It’s a crazy plan, and if her guess is wrong she’ll be shot on sight, but for Colette, the chance of saving her is worth the risk.
She waves the islander over to the stairs, and ushers him up by the barrel of her rifle.
The climb up feels perilously slow, as just around the pitch of this door, Grancis knows she’ll meet Colette with a loaded gun pointed at her. Right before edging over the roundabout of stairs, she
nudges the islander up the stairs.
Colette sighs. “Gran, you’re o- wait.”
Grancis scoffs, realizing Vuuya set the islander to look and sound like herself to Colette.
The islander raises his hands “No! No, it’s me! Don’t shoot,” the horrified man says, stepping forward slowly.
“Yeah?” Colette asks as “The Captain” pats her on the shoulder.
“Relax, it’s her,” he says calmly.
Colette stares on, her gaze trained right the islander. “There’s only one way to find out.”
The islander buckles in horror. “P-please…”
“What’s my favorite animal?” Colette asks with a smirk, finger readied on the trigger of her pistol.
The islander takes an exasperated breath. “I… I-”
“Don’t worry, Colette,” The Definitely Captain says, “It’s obviously Grancis. Hold your fi-”
“Answer me!” Colette demands.
The islander begins tearing up. “I really… I-”
“Wolves,” Grancis says, just before peeking her head over the ridge of the stairs to reveal herself.
Colette flinches her aim over to Grancis, but hesitates. “W-wait…”
“That’s Vuuya,” The So-Totally Captain says, “fire!”
Colette squints as she does her best to perceive the truth. “But… that can’t make sense. Grancis couldn’t answer but Vuuya… could,” she mutters in thought.
“The Captain” inhales sharply. “Young lady, she’s just pulling from your thoughts to answer the question. You will fire that rifle and you will take out Vuuya! You want to be strong, don’t you?”
Colette’s gaze scans around each person in the room, and she looks up to Grancis. “And how old am I?”
“You’re being tricked!” “The Captain” shouts.
“You’re eighteen,” Grancis says, stepping into the room. “Your birthday is Amterna the Twelfth. You loved the pit and roughhousing with the boys back home. You and I are on a quest to defeat an overlord and free us along with our people.”