Poseidon's Scar

by Matthew Phillion

He slashed a sword across the back of one fish-man’s legs, sending it to the ground; seeing it chomping and biting with its oversized mouth, Artem kicked it, sending the creature tumbling down the giant monster’s belly and into the ocean below.

  The fight began to blur then, becoming nothing more than the sound of sword through flesh until something racked across his back, between the facets of his armor, the pain shocking him into reality. He elbowed the attacker and felt needle teeth splinter against his arm. Something bit his forearm, but the bracers he wore took most of the impact. He used his free hand to stab the attacker through the eye, but the momentary grapple let yet another slash its claws across his thigh, white hot pain turning his vision bleary. He slammed the pommel of his sword down on that creature’s hand, then removed that hand from its body with a flick of the wrist.

  Artem stole a glance skyward, to see where his friends were. He watched, to his horror, as Yuri was snatched up by the car-sized hand of the great colossus, pulled away like a pest. Artem turned his attention back to his own attackers, who seemed to be increasing in number by the second. He saw red for a moment as something sharp pierced his shoulder, and then it began to rain, harder than before.

  No, Artem realized, looking at the drops of moisture hitting his blades. Not rain. The black blood of the giant beast.

  Above, he could see Yuri tearing the monstrous being’s hand to shreds, sending down a storm of sticky blood. The fish-men looked up as well, as if shocked to see that their god could bleed. Some began to crawl up the monster’s chest, pursuing Yuri, as if they could make the pain stop, as if they could save their deity.

  And then the giant cried out in pain.

  It pierced Artem’s mind like a shard of glass, nearly causing him to drop his swords. Fighting it through pure discipline, he gritted his teeth and prepared to keep battling. But the fish-men, too, were not immune to the cry—they hunched and wailed, clutching vestigial ears as the maddening cry persisted.

  Artem muscled his way out of the crowd. It didn’t take long for the fish-men to begin to recover—as the cry subsided, they split their attention, half climbing higher, half still intent on killing Artem.

  Artem backed up another step and felt the ground go out from under him. He slipped and fell, sliding down the monster’s massive shelf of a gut, the surface oily and slick. He instinctually sheathed one sword and plunged the other into the great beast’s hide to try to stop himself from falling, but something worse happened—with a grotesque ripping noise, the blade cut through the flesh, leaving a blood trail behind him as he slid.

  Artem reached the point of no return, the curve where the monster’s belly turned into a steep slide down into the ocean. Seeing the oncoming onslaught of fish-men headed his way, Artem did the only logical thing.

  He let himself fall into the black waves of the ocean below.

  Chapter 53: The ship will defend itself

  “I don’t know if you guys ever truly understand what I’m saying,” Barnabas said to the ghosts all around him as they maneuvered the ship. “But if you can put a little distance between us and the giant walking garbage pile before Echo stabs him in the brain, that would be fantastic.”

  Barnabas had visions of capsizing as the enormous monster thrashed about, the Eye of Dreams rolling off the deck into the ocean. If we can just get a few hundred feet at least, enough to give us some space in case Echo’s brain surgery goes badly.

  He could barely make out what was happening, but remembered the spyglass he kept in his ridiculous pirate’s coat and never used. He pulled the glass out and scanned the giant creature’s body until he saw his friends making their ascent. They really did look like insects, he thought. A caterpillar crawling up a pant leg or shirt. No wonder the creature is paying us no mind. We’re insignificant.

  Then he saw the battle shift, watched as Echo—who he could barely make out by the gleam of the Needle of the Moon—darting off to one side, Yuri staying to do some damage and distract the creature. It wasn’t until Yuri went to work the monster seemed to notice them at all, but when it did.

  “Oh, no,” Barnabas said.

  Orithyia staying close and hugging her bleeding side, overheard him.

  “What? What is it?” she asked.

  “Yuri just got the big guy’s attention.”

  Barnabas watched through the glass as Yuri—like a rabid animal in a trap—went to town on the massive hand that held him, blood and flesh flying away like confetti. He can’t survive this, Barnabas thought. That thing’s going to crush him, or eat him, or rip his arms and legs off like a psychopathic kid with a fly.

  But then something happened. Barnabas couldn’t make it out, exactly, but Yuri disappeared from view for a moment and then…

  The cry was inhuman, deafening, piercing. It cut right through to the core of his mind. A deep roar, yet simultaneously a scream, equal parts rage and pain, coming from the colossus itself. It howled with a sound that transcended hearing, a psychic wave of agony. Barnabas watched helplessly as Yuri was flung away like garbage, tossed aside like scrap. He had no time to worry about his friend, though, nearly struck blind by the psychic backlash of the monster’s screams, eyes watering as he looked to Muireann, who had dropped to her knees, clutching her ears at the sound.

  Muireann, Barnabas thought. Oh, that’s not good.

  Barnabas drew his flintlock and put a hand on Orithyia’s shoulder.

  “We’re going to be boarded. Ready your fighters,” he said.

  “How do you know?” the general said as Barnabas walked past her toward Muireann.

  “Because that feedback we just heard scrambled our brains and I’m not sure Muireann’s spell of invisibility is still doing any good,” he said. He trotted to Muireann’s side, who accepted his help getting back to her feet.

  “It’s not,” she said, gulping loudly and wiping tears of pain from her eyes. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t maintain it with that scream in my ears.”

  “No one could,” Barnabas said. He drew the Eye of Dreams from a satchel he wore at his side and looked up to the giant monster’s shoulders, trying to spot Echo or Artem. “I wish I’d had time to teach you how to use this thing, in case I don’t…”

  “It’s not the sort of magic I can use,” Muireann said. “It takes a…”

  “A scoundrel,” Barnabas said, smirking at her.

  “I was going to say a book-learned magician and not a natural, but if it makes you feel better, yes, I think it needs a scoundrel,” she said, returning his smile. “I’ll watch over you as best I can.”

  Barnabas caught sight of Echo, just a sliver of white in the darkness hundreds of feet above them.

  “All of this might not matter if our fearless leader up there can’t get in a good shot,” he said.

  Before he could say another word, he heard the scrambling of claws on wood and watched as the first of the fish-men climbed up over the rail. Barnabas took a shot with his pistol, a lesser spell than he’d used before, and a bolt of flame exploded against the fish-man and sent it falling backward into the sea.

  “Here they come!” Barnabas said.

  The Amazons sprang into action, evenly spread out across the deck to protect as much as they could. Their archer had taken up residence long before in the crow’s nest with as many arrows as they could find, and was already picking off fish-men as their heads peered over the railing. But there were too many of them, of course, and no matter how many arrows she fired, no matter how many spells Barnabas sent exploding through the flintlock wand, it was only a matter of moments before the fish-men boarded.

  Barnabas watched in horror as one of the Amazon warriors nearly had her throat ripped out, narrowly dodging a fatal blow and falling aside as Orithyia stepped in to defend her, standing over her fallen comrade. He himself picked off a fish-man who had begun trying to climb the main mast to reach the archer.

  It’s getting awfully crowded on this ship, Barnabas thought.

  Then he felt a cool breeze d
rift past his cheek.

  A second later one of the fish-men was thrown like a ragdoll into the ocean, soaring thirty feet in the air.

  The ghosts of the Endless became very visible just then, and the battle began to turn. Barnabas could see one sailor, the pirate who had judged him earlier, choking a fish-man to death with a spectral chain. Another was run through by a ghost in a polo and khaki shorts, one of the racing sailors who inhabited the ghost ship. An old Navy man battered two of the creatures from the deck with a wooden hook. Other ghosts wrapped coils of ropes around the creatures’ necks, stringing them up like Christmas decorations.

  It was a horrific, violent, terrible sight, but Barnabas had never been so happy for the existence of vengeful spirits in his entire life.

  “In any other circumstance, this would be the stuff of nightmares,” Muireann said.

  “Don’t make the restless dead angry,” Barnabas said, hacking down a fish creature that had made its way up the stern to the quarter deck. “I told you the ship would defend itself.”

  A Viking sailor—an old favorite of Barnabas’, one of the first he saw on the ship when he first found it—ran past them, complete with a horned helm, a wild beard, a massive battle axe, charging into the fray like he had been waiting for centuries for this to happen. Perhaps he had.

  “If we get through this, you’re going to have to tell me how to thank them,” Muireann said.

  “Only one way,” Barnabas said. “Never stop sailing.”

  Chapter 54: The Needle of the Moon

  Echo went blind for a moment.

  Not literally, she knew. Instinctually, she sensed her eyes still worked. But the pain in her head, a shattering scream through her synapses, turned the world dark, topsy-turvy, twisted her stomach into knots. She was close enough to feel the vibrations from the scream the giant beast uttered, the guttural roar in pain she knew, just knew, had to be Yuri’s fault. As her vision returned, as the pain in her head turned to a dull ache, she smiled.

  Only Yuri can make someone so mad their frustration strikes people blind.

  It took a moment to get her bearings again. Somewhere on the shoulder, clinging for dear life to striated muscle. She hauled herself up, pushing away the sense of nausea and dull throbbing pain from the psychic attack she’d just weathered, and she felt her skin crawl as she realized exactly where she was.

  She’d reached the creature’s sloping, muscular shoulder. His trapezius muscle was ropy and powerful, but somehow lazy at the same time, a ski slope of a downward angle. From here, she could see the back of the creature’s head. Bald, but with seaweed and old roots clinging to it, some even woven into the skin like piercings, attached over time, she imagined, while the creature slumbered for centuries. One large ear, more of a cavernous hole like a reptile’s, stood out prominently, as well as thick veins like plumbing, pulsating with blood and stress.

  She steadied herself with the gleaming white spear and prepared to charge. This is it, she thought. I’m like six billion feet above the water, and I’m going to stab some cheap Cthulhu knockoff in the skull with a magical spear and this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done and man, I have done some stupid things in the past few months. I miss being normal. When do I get to be normal again?

  She hefted the Needle of the Moon, tempted to throw it like she would her trident, but the idea of missing, or worse, having it not penetrate the skin and bone and bounce off, falling to the ocean below, terrified her. She made sure the chain Grimmin had given her was tethered to it, then bounced on her legs as if preparing to run a race, and took aim, intending to charge for the base of the creature’s skull.

  But then it turned and looked at her.

  And Echo saw into oblivion.

  Thirteen eyes stared at her, eyes that had seen millennia traverse in front of it, eyes that had watched the destruction of land masses, of entire cultures and species and people, eyes that had consumed knowledge and forgotten it. Eyes that had witnessed the world change a million times over and slept through half of it. Those thirteen eyes blinked at her, and Echo saw that this was no unthinking beast, no ravenous creature with no desire other than to consume and destroy, but was something else; something smarter, something far more dangerous and malevolent than she had ever given it credit for.

  She saw a hellscape in those eyes, and she knew now why those creatures in the water below worshiped this monstrosity. There was eternity there, and immeasurable power, and something unexplainable, a calling that she felt in her core, in her soul. But it didn’t want her, and she didn’t want it either. The voice repulsed her, turned her stomach, and she sensed in those eyes that this was a being, not a creature but an entity, that wanted nothing more than to see the end of things. This was the end in every story, the dreams that never wake, the darkness we fear waits for us at the end of all things.

  And it was looking right at her.

  Echo didn’t know why she did it, but she yelled just then, some incoherent challenge. She thought it was nonsense, that she was just stringing together syllables like a madwoman, but no, she realized, it was a language, the old Atlantean tongue.

  Somehow, gazing into the abyss, the genetic memory she carried with her, spoke through her. The same things that let her breathe beneath the waves and fight with a ferocity that came from the past of her people and not the present of her training. The old souls that passed through all Atlanteans, she tapped into that, not deliberately. It gave her a courage she didn’t know she had, didn’t know she needed in this very moment. Something in that shared past had seen what this creature could do, the death it could bring, and it told her to strike. She heard a voice in her head, an old man’s voice, and she knew, knew right then, it was the Atlantean wizard from the story of this creature’s last defeat, offering his courage, telling her she was braver than he ever was.

  The monster fully turned its attention to her now, red-gold eyes burning. The drooping beard covering its mouth came to life, not seaweed or hanging flesh as she suspected but grasping things, like thick vines, squid-like arms, whipping around with a flexibility that hid how powerful they were. Echo could hear the muscles in them stretch and groan like steel cables in the wind, creaking violently. As they lifted, she saw the monster’s mouth, it’s true mouth, a lamprey’s circular maw with row after row after row of endless teeth, a meat grinder that stank of death and decay.

  Again, Echo fought to maintain her consciousness, to keep herself sane, to stay focused. The tendrils around its mouth reached for her and she instinctually swatted them away with the Needle, its long, shining blade hacking those grasping arms from the root, sending them falling away like cut weeds.

  She felt the creature shift again, its shoulder moving beneath her feet, and she saw, out of the corner of her eye, one massive hand—mangled beyond comprehension, but still useful, still a blunt weapon it could strike her down with, rising to smash down upon her head. The tendrils blocked her from getting any closer to the head itself, a wall of whirling arms. I’m not fast enough to get through this, she thought, I’m not agile, I need to fly…

  Above her, the night sky broke, just a sliver of light in the black, black clouds. The moon filtered through, a crescent among the stars, perfect and bright, like a scythe. She felt the Needle come to life in her hand, warming at the touch of the moonlight, as if the weapon had waited for this for centuries.

  The creature bowed its head down to look at her once more, closer, and she knew. She knew it was admiring her, a worthy adversary, another fool it would consume and dream about when it slept. Just another fool of a mortal who thought it could stop the wheels of eternity from spinning.

  Echo unclipped the Needle from her chain and inhaled, focusing like an Olympic athlete, holding the Needle of the Moon like a javelin.

  She reared back, and she threw.

  The spear burst into a streak of white arcane energy, a splash of blinding brightness that obliterated the shadows all around them. She heard a sound, a hissing tear, as
though the blade cut through more than just the air, as if sound and time and space suddenly meant nothing. A crescent followed it, an arcing silvery blade of light, reflecting everything and nothing at once, splitting the space between Echo and the creature’s hungry eyes and mouth.

  The Needle of the Moon struck true.

  The blade pierced the creature’s central eye, an explosion of red and black and white and gold, and the spear kept going, burying itself until the blade disappeared. It disappeared into the skull of the colossus, driving it back with a forceful blow, as if Echo’s throw had been a punch from a fist the creature’s own size. Its head snapped back, and once again Echo heard that terrible howl of pain, worse this time, not just pain but something deeper, a soul-crushing despair, a cry of defeat and surrender and rage. The monster’s body twisted and wrenched, sending Echo tilting and falling. She dug her hands into the wrinkled skin, trying to regain her footing, but now the monstrosity, driven mad by pain and rage, flung its arms desperately about, trying to destroy an enemy it could not see.

  Echo looked to the water below, hundreds of feet beneath her.

  I hope that light show was enough for Barnabas to know it’s his turn, she thought.

  She saw that mangled hand once again searching for her and she knew there was nothing more she could do. Like a champion diver, she leapt from the great beast’s shoulder and shot like an arrow to the ocean below, where darkness awaited her.

  Chapter 55: The Eye of Dreams

  The sky lit up like a phosphorous explosion and Barnabas decided that had to be the sign he was looking for.

  He’d always been what he considered a combat magician, someone who could stay focused on his spells in terrible, distracting conditions, but the situation on the Endless was a bit above and beyond the ordinary. Ghosts howled and wailed as they defended the only home they had left in this world, and that alone, would be enough to throw off Barnabas’ concentration. I’ve been on this bloody ship for years and they’ve never made a sound and now they decide to start crying like the stuff of nightmares? he thought. Thanks, guys. I appreciate your timing.