Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I have this to say about the ancient Greeks; they knew how to create some fucked up monsters.
As Cetus slices through the choppy waves at us, I wonder how he was dreamed up.
I imagine some Greek dude, high as a kite, making up shit to scare a friend.
When he has to describe what his fictional monster looks like, he sees a whale rising above the waves and then looks at the roast boar cooking over the spit.
So, he turns to his friend and says, “A boar fucked a whale, and they had a baby.”
Or maybe he had a bad dream. Whatever. Doesn’t matter, because this is the scariest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Cait and Joshua stand on opposite ends of the deck on either side of the monster’s head.
Miko is on a slightly elevated platform behind Joshua.
As discussed, I’m on the crow’s nest of the mainmast with Sylvia, while Guy has the crow’s nest at the foremast. Yet, even from my high angle, I don’t feel far enough away from this beast.
The closer it gets, the clearer its features become.
Wild eyes roll around like unhinged marbles on a face made of hard leather and bristles.
Blood-stained tusks, the height of Christmas trees, jut up from his lower jaw.
That isn’t what’s causing a shiver of terror to creep up every cell of my body, though.
Under its snotty, snorting, crinkled nose, drool hangs from his lips like the pendulums on grandfather clocks.
They’re so viscous that they seem more like rubber than liquid.
The drool’s gelatin clarity displays the residue of its last meal—tail fins, fish skins, wood planks, intestines, and bones.
We’re going to wind up like that if we’re not careful.
Cait stands just a few feet back from the railing on the starboard side, facing the monster and thumping her fist on her chest. As she roars in a completely unnatural way for such a pretty woman, she swings her great axe around.
She’s taunting the monster, a standard tactic tanks use, but one I haven’t seen her use in the past. It’s working.
Cetus directs all his attention toward her and veers his deadly path in her direction until he looms above her.
He huffs, blowing her hair back and spraying her face with his fetid spittle.
Her face remains a contorted mask of rage.
She’s completely unintimidated by her adversary, but it takes everything in me not to rush to Cait’s side and pull her away from the beast.
From Cait’s left, Joshua leaps upward and starts playing his fiddle.
This gives Cait a chance to hack into the beast’s snout with her axe.
Once Cetus notices her attack, Joshua stabs Cetus’s wrinkled temple with his sword.
With acrobatic grace I never expected of him, Joshua uses that sword to swing himself up to the top of the monster’s ear, where he finally pulls his blade free.
It’s a struggle, though, given Cetus’s hide is so thick.
Cetus lunges forward and knocks Cait over with his slimy snout.
This pushes her halfway across the deck, and now the whole ship is rocking like a spinning top that’s beginning to slow down.
I grab onto the mast nearest to me, but with water rushing over the deck, my feet are slipping away, and it’s taking too much of my little strength to keep a firm grip.
My pinkie slips off the wet wood, then my ring finger. Heaving waves pull me away from the only thing keeping me on this ship.
“Sylvia, grab me!” I shout, but she’s so focused on aiming her arrows at Cetus, she doesn’t even notice my cries for help. I lose the battle to keep my middle finger in place and go sailing through the air.
Just as I’m sure I’m about to crash into the tumultuous waves below the ship, Guy shouts, “Lasso!”
Suddenly my body is no longer pulling away.
Instead, it snaps like a magnet against the mast. Something invisible is binding me to the post. I can’t even budge an inch on either side.
I look up to see Guy is in a similar position, his head just a foot above my own.
This lasso spell has proven itself to be pretty strong, and I’m surprised that Guy doesn’t look tired at all.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I open my mouth to say that I am, but the boat rocks in the other direction, causing my head to knock against the mast. A split second later, sea water barrels into my throat. I can’t breathe. I can’t…I can’t…
My heart dances to a disco beat, and every piece of me screams at me to give it air.
It’s hard to think while experiencing this cacophony of panic, but I have to so my Strategy Under Duress skill activates.
I’m not broken, only impaired. I just need to get all this water out of my lungs.
I can’t speak a spell, but I can mentally bring up my menu and look at my spells.
I tap on Heal Minor Wound and, before I even wonder what that will do, I’m vomiting. Seawater and bile erupt from me and fall to the waves below. My lungs grasp onto any oxygen they can get. My throat has suffered quite an assault, so every gasping breath feels like I’m swallowing flames.
My pain isn’t important right now, though. I’m becoming more and more of a cleric every day I live in Peripeteia, so my instinct is to scan the area for my friends. If I barely got out of that, there’s a good chance they’re not faring well either.
Since Guy is so close to me, he’s the first person I see. His eyes are closed, and there’s a bruise on his cheek. But when I place my hand on his chest, I feel steady breathing. He needs help, but someone else might be in a more urgent situation.
To my surprise Joshua is still hanging onto the sword he’d driven into Cetus and is concentrating more on not falling off than using it as a weapon.
Miko has somehow created vines from the planks of wood that make up the deck.
They’re woven into a ladder, which she’s clinging onto.
I don’t see any earth elementals, and I don’t know if she’s abandoned that idea or she just hasn’t had a chance to cast the spell.
Whatever the case, she’s at least surviving.
Sylvia is no longer in the mainmast’s crow nest. Somehow, she wound up on the forecastle, and she’s crawling toward the bowsprit. She’s trying to get the high ground again. There’s little an archer can do from the deck, especially under these conditions.
Cait is…Where’s Cait?
I whip my head this way and that, scanning the deck, the masts, the sails, the waves, everywhere I can. I don’t see her anywhere and fall helpless to visions of her lifeless body sinking to the ocean floor.
A pained, ear-splitting squeal draws my attention back to Cetus, where I discover Cait has somehow gotten back on his head and is burying her great axe into the beast’s furry inner ear.
Holy fuck, she’s impressive!
Cait growls back at the monster and gnashes her teeth as she yanks her weapon out.
Rivers of blood burst from the wound. Joshua chooses that moment to drive his blade into the eye on the other side of Cetus’s face, eliciting another shrill squeal from Cetus.
Even with all this, the beast isn’t even down to half his health bar.
How are we going to survive long enough to kill this guy?
I turn my attention back to Guy, who still seems half asleep. I decide to use my Heal Minor Wound spell again, and he rouses. He mumbles and slurs something that I can’t understand as he blinks at me. Then he turns his weak head to look at Cetus.
“Ice blast…” he mutters with little conviction.
A spray of pebble-like ice falls from his palm and crashes on the deck below. He’s too out of it to be much use in this battle. Still, he saved me with that lasso spell. Without him, I’d be shark bait by now.
The unmistakable whipping sound of an arrow draws my attention away from Guy.
Sylvia is standing on the bowsprit now, with her bow in position to loose another arrow.
This one zips a straight line from her fingers to Cetus’s one good eye.
The beast sputters a pathetic whine. It’s not as loud as the last two, but not because this attack hurts.
No, that barely nudged his health bar down.
His whine is probably from his annoyance with Joshua and Cait, who are still hacking away at him.
Cetus swings his head wildly again, and Joshua loses his grip on his sword.
Before he can crash-land on the ship deck, Cait takes one hand off her lodged axe to grab Joshua by the wrist. Their position is perilous.
If they don’t get off soon, who knows where their bodies will wind up?
Wherever it is, they likely won’t survive it.
As worries strangle me, Miko summons an elemental but not an earth elemental, an air elemental. That must have used up the last of her energy because she slumps against the vines that have her tied in place. If the ship keeps rocking like this, she might drown.
The wispy elemental flits in and out of my vision, frequently blending so seamlessly into the air that it’s indiscernible. It’s vaguely human-shaped but only in the most rudimentary way. It has no face or features; I can only make out what might be a head and two arms on a snakelike body.
The air elemental splits apart, creating a twin.
The pair fly over the boar’s head and extend their arms, one to Cait and one to Joshua.
Though the elementals seem to have insubstantial bodies, they prove to be strong and reliable as they take our combat bard and barbarian into their arms and bring them back to the ship.
At this point, Guy seems a little more with it. He clears his throat and shouts, “Ice Blast!” He flings his palm with force at Cetus, and a devastating volley of icicles shoots forwards, piercing through the boar’s hide.