Devil in the Deep Blue Sea

Devil in the Deep Blue Sea Page 4

by A. J. Markam

“But it’s over 50 miles away,” she protested.

  I stared at her. “WHAT?! Why didn’t you tell me that?!”

  “I just did!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?!”

  “You didn’t ask!”

  “God DAMN it,” I seethed as I headed back towards the shore.

  “Are you angry at me?”

  “No, I’m just pissed at what I’m going to have to do next, that’s all.”

  I didn’t bother to even wring out my Orcish cloak. I just tromped over to the sailor’s table, dripping quarts of seawater along the way.

  The sailor grinned as I walked up. “I see you’re – ”

  “Not another word out of you,” I growled. “How much to charter a ship?”

  The sailor just sat there smirking up at me.

  “…well?!” I demanded.

  “I thought ya said not another word out of me pie-hole, matey.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How much to charter a ship.”

  “Where ya be goin’?”

  “I…”

  I paused, then turned to Alaria, who had followed me inside the bar. “Where are we going?”

  “The Sea of Death,” she said nonchalantly, as though she were talking about the corner store to pick up some beer.

  Immediately a quest window appeared.

  Coooome With Me… Toooo The Sea… of Deeeeeeaaaaaaath…

  Now we were doing old, old, OLD song parodies. Wonderful.

  Book passage to the Sea of Death.

  XP: 2000

  “…great,” I muttered. “Just… great.”

  “Arrr, the Sea of Death! Well, I won’t be doin’ it, but I’m sure you can find a hard-up captain to ferry you that far, for… oh… 53 silver or so.”

  Coincidentally, 53 silver was exactly how much money I had left in my bag.

  53 silver and 17 bronze, to be exact.

  This damn quest was going to wipe out virtually every last cent I had.

  I wondered silently to myself, How could this situation possibly get any worse?

  Which, of course, was a complete failure of imagination on my part.

  Because that’s when Stig puked all down the back of my cloak and onto the floor.

  “BLARGHHHH.”

  I closed my eyes and just sighed.

  Of COURSE he would do that. Of COURSE he would.

  “Urp… sorry,” my imp said, smacking his lips.

  “HAR HAR – wait till ya get outside ta chum the waters, matey!” the sailor hooted.

  Suffice it to say, we weren’t welcome in The Blowhole after that.

  On the plus side, it’s awfully easy to wash imp puke off your cloak when you can swim six miles an hour.

  7

  And that was how we wound up on a tugboat puttering towards the Sea of Death.

  All… fucking… NIGHT.

  It was a little puttering wreck of a ship, made of weathered boards and bound up with rusted iron bands. There was a giant smokestack that continually belched a thick cloud of soot that blotted out the stars and covered me in a fine layer of grit.

  Yay.

  Alaria was somehow able to nap despite the noise from the engine. Stig was still drunk off his ass, so it made sense why he was unconscious. At least he wasn’t puking anymore. That was a blessing.

  So it was just me and Porky Pig.

  That was my informal name for the gnome piloting the ship. His real name was Captain Gurvy. He was a pot-bellied little fellow with a giant, puffy, handlebar mustache that came off both sides of his face like twelve-inch tufts of white cotton candy. Not much else in the way of hair on his head, though.

  It wasn’t his appearance that reminded me of the famous Warner Bros. swine, though. Nor his clothes. At least he wore pants – he wasn’t porky-piggin’ it with a bare ass.

  No, he was a stutterer and nervous as fuck.

  “Buh-duh-buh-duh I don’t like the Sea of Death,” he whined as he steered the tugboat by the stars. “Are you sure you buh-de-buh-de-buh have to go there?”

  I thought about that for a moment. I mean, we did have the ability to swim pretty damn fast now. Swimming ten miles wasn’t nearly as bad as swimming 50.

  “If you’d shave ten silver off the price, I might consider it,” I said. “What’s the closest thing to where we’re going?”

  “Buh-duh-buh-duh the Archipelago of Agony. And then there’s the buh-duh-buh-duh Great Reef of Blood, and the buh-duh-buh-duh – ”

  “Maybe you could let us out before we reach any areas named after pain or mutilation,” I said sarcastically.

  “Buh-de-buh-de-buh too late…”

  ‘2000 XP’ floated up into the air in front of me.

  We just completed the quest, I realized, and sat up and looked out over the water.

  Whoa.

  The crescent moon and stars didn’t provide a lot of illumination, but I could see enough by their dim light: dozens and dozens of ships’ masts in the distance, most of them tilted over at precarious 45 and 60-degree angles. Of those that still had sails, the canvas was ripped and tattered to shreds.

  A graveyard for ships.

  “The Sea of Death?” I asked uneasily.

  “Buh-de-buh-de-buh yep.”

  But why weren’t the boats sinking?

  I got my answer almost immediately when the tugboat’s propeller began to jam. The engine groaned and clanked in protest.

  “Oh buh-de-buh-de-buh no…” Gurvy moaned.

  I looked over the edge of the railing to see a thick, fibrous mat of vegetation floating on the surface of the still water, far as the eye could see.

  Seaweed.

  We were in some sort of Sargasso Sea.

  “I gotta buh-de-buh-de-buh cut the motor,” Gurvy fretted.

  He pulled a lever on his console. There was a clunking, popping, choking from the engine, and then everything died out and was quiet. Just the gentle lap of water against the tugboat’s hull.

  After a second of silence, Alaria sat up bleary-eyed from the deck. Stig just kept snoring, one leg kicking in the air like a sleeping dog having a dream.

  “Wha– what’s going on?” Alaria asked with a yawn. “Why’d we stop?”

  “I think we’re here.”

  She stumbled to her feet and took one look around. “Oh, yeah… we’re here.”

  “Good, I guess we’ll – ”

  BUMP.

  The entire tugboat vibrated a little.

  Everyone froze – except for Stig, who was still chasing flying shot glasses in his dreams.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked.

  “It was in the water,” Alaria whispered.

  “I know it was in the water – but what was it?”

  “Buh-de-buh-de-buh I don’t know, but I’m getting out of here,” Gurvy whined.

  “Hold on,” I said. “We can’t get in the water if there’s something down there that – ”

  BUMP.

  The whole ship shuddered again – but this time, I heard a watery sound, like something breaking the surface.

  I looked over the railing just in time to see a ten-foot-long, scaly shape slither through the seaweed and then submerge.

  I had the distinct impression that I was only seeing a tiny part of whatever the curved hump belonged to.

  “Shit,” I whispered. “Sea serpents. Or… something.”

  “Oh, I buh-de-buh-de-buh hate sea serpents…” Gurvy moaned.

  I gulped. I imagined some hundred-foot-long monster gobbling us up as soon as we put a toe in the water. “Well, as long as we hang out here on the boat, nothing too bad will happ– ”

  WHAM!

  Something slammed against the hull beneath us.

  That one wasn’t a caress-and-tickle.

  That one was a full-on Fuck YOU.

  “Whazza whazzit?!” Stig yelped and jumped up into my arms.

  I turned back to Gurvy. “Hey Gurvy, get us out of… here…?”

  Other than me, Alaria,

and Stig, the tugboat was empty.

  The gnome was nowhere to be seen.

  “It got Gurvy!” I cried out in dismay.

  There was a putt-putt-putt-RRRRRRRR sound, and a little round shape shot out from the rear of the tugboat.

  It looked like a washtub with an outboard motor on it, and Gurvy was piloting the rudder.

  He was so tiny, and the washtub was so small, that he looked like a peanut with a mustache inside a walnut half-shell.

  And he was hauling ass at 30 miles an hour away from the Sargasso Sea.

  “GURVY!” I yelled indignantly.

  “Buh-de-buh-de-buh BYE, folks!” he yelled as the washtub sped away into the night.

  “That little fucker,” I said, as shocked as I was angry.

  “I can hit him with a fireball if you want,” Alaria suggested.

  Suddenly a whole series of impacts rocked the tugboat.

  WHAM!

  WHAM!

  WHAM!

  Wood began to splinter, and tiny jets of water began to leak from the inside hull.

  “We have bigger problems than a cowardly gnome,” I muttered. “Alaria, can you fly us to one of those shipwrecks?”

  “You got it.”

  She grabbed me from behind, spread her wings, and flapped them mightily as we took off. I clutched Stig to my chest, and he clung to me like a frightened monkey.

  We soared away from the tugboat and circled through the air until I said, “That one – the big one that’s almost upright.”

  It was a five-master that still had shredded remnants of sails and moldy rigging. The ship’s hull looked mostly intact, but its bow was partially submerged, and the rest of the ship sloped upwards at a 20-degree angle.

  Alaria deposited me on the ship, where I struggled to keep my footing on the sloping deck. Stig leapt down from my arms like a jumpy cat and immediately went sliding across the slimy, mildewed wood.

  “Ugh,” Alaria muttered as she alighted.

  “Well, at least we’re safe up here,” I said. “Nothing’s going to – ”

  slither slither slither slither

  We all froze.

  “…what was that?” I whispered.

  “Dunno, boss,” Stig whispered back.

  “Maybe we should go to another boat,” Alaria whispered back.

  “Not yet. Let’s figure out what the hell we’re up against first, or it might just keep following us. Can you give us some light?”

  She lifted up her hand and ignited a fireball.

  Down at the submerged end of the ship, I saw something long and snake-like slither out of the water and disappear behind a raised wooden structure.

  “Fuck!” I hissed.

  Stig started running, but his feet skittered and slipped in place like Scooby Doo until he finally got some purchase and scampered back up my cloak. He reached my shoulder and huddled there, his entire body trembling.

  “It may not be BIG sea serpents, but it’s some kind of sea serpent,” I muttered.

  “We could burn the whole ship,” Alaria suggested.

  “I think it’s so waterlogged it wouldn’t catch fire.”

  “What about flying away?”

  “What if those things are everywhere out here, on every single ship? I think we ought to try to kill this one first before we accidentally stumble into a nest of them.”

  Alaria sighed crossly. “Is there anything else you want me to do besides give you advice you’re not going to take?”

  I gave her a little peck on the lips. “Sorry. Would you mind flying up above us and scouting out where it is? Maybe throw a fireball or two to flush it out?”

  She smiled ruefully. “I can do that.”

  Then she gave me a slightly longer kiss and took flight.

  I watched her circle up above us in the sky, a dark silhouette blotting out the stars.

  Alaria launched a couple of fireballs at the ship. One hit the slimy deck and fwooshed! out in a ring before expiring. But the other fireball slammed into the foremast’s tattered sails, which burst into flame.

  Guess it was dry enough to catch fire…

  Now I had a pretty good source of illumination to see by. Flickering yellow light played across the decks, sending shadows jumping every which way. Everything was better lit, but somehow creepier than it had been just seconds before.

  “B-b-b-boss,” Stig chattered right next to my ear.

  “You sound like Gurvy,” I whispered back to him.

  “IAN!” Alaria’s voice rang through the night. “IT’S NOT SEA SERPENTS!”

  “B-b-b-boss!” Stig said, more insistent.

  “Hold on, Stig – WHAT IS IT?” I yelled up into night sky.

  Stig tugged violently at my hair. “Na-na-na-na– ”

  “WHAT?” I shouted angrily at him, then turned in the direction he was pulling me –

  And immediately saw what he’d been trying to point out.

  A massive creature towered over me. It had the lower body of a snake – and by ‘snake,’ I mean something the size of a giant anaconda. But its upper body was humanoid in proportions, with arms, chest, and a head – except its skin was dark green and scaly like a reptile’s, its face looked like a miniature dragon’s, and spiny fins jutted out from both sides of its head like some kind of aquatic dinosaur.

  It also wore bronze bracers around its wrist, a chest plate on its torso, and clutched a pointed trident in one fist.

  “Na-naga,” Stig whispered.

  That’s exactly what it was – a Naga. An underwater race renowned for their intelligence, aquatic speed, and hatred of outsiders.

  “…oh,” I said, staring up dumbly into its red, bulbous eyes glinting in the firelight.

  I selected it automatically and read its stats:

  Naga Warrior

  Level 35

  Health: 7500

  Eight levels higher than me, and almost three times as many hit points.

  I can do this, I thought to myself. With Stig and Alaria’s help, I can do this.

  …maybe.

  Well, we could probably handle one – but 20 feet away, I saw another four Naga Warriors slither up over the railing of the ship.

  And out of the corner of my eye I saw my butt-ugly friend’s 15-foot-long tail slowly curling around me in a semicircle.

  “You will surrender,” the Naga hissed, its forked tongue flickering between rows of curved, inch-long teeth.

  “NOPE!” I said as I unloaded a whole mess o’ Soul Suck right in its scaly face.

  “NOPE!” Stig yelled and added to the party with a fireball.

  “AAAAGH!” the Naga roared, trying to bat away the flames flickering across its face.

  As I turned, the Naga’s giant anaconda tail whipped towards me across the slick deck.

  I immediately STOMPED the end of its tail as hard as I could and ran.

  The reaction I got was not the one I’d been expecting.

  “AAAAAAAAAA!” the thing screamed. Like, in way more pain than it had when we were torching its face and sucking out its soul.

  -1000 floated up through the air.

  What the fuck?! What did I do?

  I glanced over my shoulder and watched the Naga collapse on the deck, curl into a fetal position, and gingerly grab the end of its tail like it was holding an egg.

  Whatever had happened, he wasn’t going to be bothering me for a minute or two – which gave me time to do something crucial.

  I hid behind some kind of rotting wooden structure on the deck and immediately cast my Gravesite spell. Black energy spiraled out of my fingers and formed a tombstone on the rotting deck of the ship.

  If I was going to die in battle, I didn’t want to get transported back to the nearest graveyard – which was quite possibly 50 miles away, next to The Blowhole. So I created my own private ‘save spot.’

  This way if I died, I would come right back to the ship. No wasting another 53 silver and 14 hours getting out to this godforsaken stretch of ocean.