Chapter 38 The Leviathan
Chapter thirty-eight
The Leviathan
Bash
“Accounts of the Leviathan are rare not due to uncertainty but because nearly all encounters preclude survival.
Its length is immeasurable; its awakening catastrophic.
It should not exist.
And yet—every tide remembers it.”
— From The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive UnderstandingI reached out my hand for Morwenna’s as she crested the top of the Wraith, averting my eyes as she picked up her gown and placed it over her soaking wet body.
She’d warned me that it would only be her who came aboard the Wraith first. That whatever they were going to do would be so that Rose would be able to travel to a place long abandoned by the living.
Iwished I felt relief knowing that it worked.
That the moon above us was dark and the sea was an inky black.
That my wife was one step closer to fulfilling the bargain that would claim her life if she didn’t see this through.
Yet all I could feel was a building dread in my gut that Billy used to call instinct.
“Now we see if the sea chooses her once more,” Morwenna said, pulling her dark hair over her shoulder and turning to watch the midnight sea stretched out before us.
I didn’t ask what happened next or how long it would take. Such questions only created disappointment. What happened next would be one way or another.
“Emille,” I said.
He didn’t hesitate as he came up to stand next to me.
The deck was silent except for occasional whispers.
Most of these people were here for the large sum I’d promised them.
Very few would risk life and limb for anything less.
Those of us who were here for Rose–we barely breathed because where she was now, none of us could follow.
This growing gnawing in my belly was insistent, though. Billy often told me not to second-guess the gifts the gods gave us, and he always said that my intuition was one of those. So even though I wasn’t sure it would do anything in the end, I turned my head slightly to Emille and spoke quietly.
“Ready downstairs with everything you need for an attack.”
Emille met my eyes, and for a minute neither of us spoke. We’d done this dance many a time, but the last time we did it, the consequences had been grave. A lost arm and Billy. What would the cost be this time?
Emille nodded, pressing his hand to my arm as he passed by.
I was becoming tired of this, and Seas knew Emille was.
The last year weighed heavily on him, and while he once found purpose in the life we lived, it was beginning to take its toll.
When this was through, I would bring up the subject of retirement with him.
Wherever he wanted, whatever would bring him peace, I would see it done.
Oscar slid up beside me, wringing his hands together. He rarely showed such tells, but that wasn’t just my wife in that water, but also his sister. The other half of his coin. The two of them weren’t meant to be separated.
“You sent Emille below,” he said, quietly.
“I did,” I answered.
“How do we fight something like this?” he questioned.
The air was silent except for the sound of creaking wood and a breeze that passed through each of us, assessing our worth.
Only the lantern’s light gave any hint of the life we carried on board. I was glad Val was downstairs making sure Kit was locked up tight. He had a tendency to seek out danger, but tonight it would cost him his life. Fuck, it might just cost us all our lives tonight.
“You don’t,” Morwenna said, not turning around. “If it wakes, you die.”
“Fucking delightful she is,” Val said, coming up to my other side.
“Is Kit secure?” I asked.
She snorted. “Yeah, but according to her, that isn’t going to help.”
The sound of whispering grew, and I knew we were being too loud. Our unease would only breed theirs.
“Hold!” I said, my voice soaring above the nothingness around us.
The deck silenced, and the world shook.
It shook like it was a giant waking from a centuries-long sleep. Every bone inside me is quivering with the weight of what shouldn’t be. Just as soon as it came, it stopped, and we all let out a breath that felt like our last.
As if we all thought movement would draw our fate closer, no one moved, but only a few feet from the Wraith, a deep bellow erupted. It was worry and grief, and it stripped all the blood from my body.
“Rose,” I whispered.
Blackbeard, who’d been watching at the edge of the ship, lay down and let out a small mewl that wasn’t like him at all. Of all the omens I'd seen, that was the one that struck the most fear into my heart.
“Her Fylgja knows what we do not,” Morwenna said.
“And what the fuck is that?” Oscar asked, breathing coming quickly.
“She has touched what should not be touched, and now the Leviathan will be her judge,” Morwenna said, her voice hauntingly low. “It will judge us as well.”
She turned to face me, and all I saw was resignation.
“If it will soothe you and your crew’s fears, now would be a good time to strike up your weapons. There is peace in surrendering, though,” she said, walking down below deck as if it were any night.
“Bash,” Oscar said.
I was not interested in surrender. I opened my mouth to give the order, but the sea spoke first.
Something large and impossible slid under the ship, knocking into it and sending us careening portside. Just as quickly, it turned and sent us the other way. If this were judgment, then we were going to have to fight like hell.
“Ready the cannons!” I ordered.
Shouts erupted in the air, and Koinu bellowed something that sounded guttural and angry.
“He’s mad,” Dilly yelled over the sound of chaos.
“It’s better than grieving,” I answered. “It means we still have something to fight for.”
Oscar met my eyes and nodded.
The sea inhaled.
Not a metaphor—not a sailor’s tale uttered in some smoky tavern to frighten green lads. The ocean itself drew breath, a pull so powerful it dragged the air from our lungs and the lantern flames sideways.
Then the water rose.
Not in a wave, not in a swell—but in a shape.
A teal-green wall of scaled flesh erupted upward beside us, casting the Wraith in its shadow. The lanterns flickered once, twice—then died entirely, snuffed out by the sheer force of its arrival.
The Leviathan.
Longer than any map dared mark.
Thicker than the hull of the Wraith by tenfold.
Its body coiled beneath the surface in impossible spirals that pulsed with deep-sea bioluminescence—veins of turquoise and bruise-blue light flickering like heartbeat and hunger.
A single eye broke the surface, round as a cannon hatch, glowing with an inner storm. It fixed on us, on the wood beneath our feet, on the breath in our throats.
On me.
And I knew.
Somehow, impossibly, I knew that it understood everything.
“Fire!” I roared.
The first cannon struck the Leviathan’s flank, a thunderous crack swallowed instantly by the sea. Smoke filled the air. Wood splintered. Men shouted. But the cannonball hit the beast as if it were stone—no, worse, as if the Leviathan barely registered it.
The creature moved.
A whip of its tail—longer than the Wraith herself—surged up from the deep and slammed against the sea beside us. The resulting wave smashed sideways into the hull, heeling us over so violently our crew slid across the deck like spilled dice.
Oscar nearly went over. I caught him by the jacket, hauling him back as another reverberation rippled through the ship.
“She’s taking water below!” someone screamed.
“She’ll take worse if you don’t reload those bloody cannons!” Val shouted.
The Leviathan dove, and the whole sea seemed to collapse inward as its massive length disappeared beneath the surface.
“Brace!” I bellowed.
The water exploded upward.
The creature struck the Wraith from below with such force that the deck buckled, lantern glass shattered, and three sailors were thrown clean off into the midnight-black tide.
Their screams didn’t last long.
The sea swallowed them.
Or the Leviathan did.
“Morwenna said we can’t kill it!” Oscar gasped, clinging to the rail as the ship lurched again.
“We don’t need to kill it,” I said, forcing a calm I didn’t feel. “We just need to survive it.”
Another impact—this time the beast scraped its entire body along the starboard hull, the sound a grinding wail of wood meeting scale. Sparks from dragged cannon chains lit flashes of teal-green through the dark as the Leviathan circled us like prey.
Emille’s voice rose from below deck.
“Pump faster! She's flooding fast—if it breaches again—”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.
The Leviathan’s head surged out of the water directly before the bow—towering above us, dripping gallons of black tide from its ridge-lined snout. Its mouth opened—rows upon rows of curved, ivory fangs—and the air trembled with the force of its roar.
Not sound.
Not merely sound.
A vibration that settled into my bones like a verdict.
“Rose,” I whispered again, because saying her name was the only prayer I had left.
“Captain!” Val screamed. “It’s coming again!”
I lifted my sword—not because a sword would do anything, but because a man should face his death with steel in his hand.
The Leviathan lunged.
Teal-green light surged along its scales, brightening into a terrible, bioluminescent blaze. Water erupted around it as it arced toward the ship, mouth opening wide enough to take the bow in one swallow.
Then—
Somewhere deep below us—deeper than depth, deeper than god or man—a pulse rippled through the sea.
Not from us.
From her.
The Leviathan reeled back, its head jerking mid-lunge, its roar breaking into a shuddering, furious bellow. It thrashed, the water churning so violently that the Wraith nearly capsized.
Oscar grabbed my arm, eyes wide.
“That wasn’t us,” he breathed.
“No,” I said, feeling my heart slam itself against my ribs. “It was Rose.”
It lifted from the sea and, just inches from us, it stilled, listening to something.
A pause in the storm.
A breath.
A heartbeat of silence before the deep decided our fate.
No one dared move, everyone understanding the silent command that the deep required.
That was, no one but Blackbeard moved. Immune to whatever stillness the world asked for, the cat leapt from the ledge of the Wraith and onto the beast in an impressive leap. The leviathan let out a furious roar as Blackbeard scaled it with sharpened nails.
The creature shook its head this way and that, trying to rid itself of the cat, but Blackbeard was relentless, cresting up onto the beast’s head and swiping with his claw at the leviathan’s right eye.
The leviathan bellowed ancient rage and threw itself back into the sea.
There was no sign of Blackbeard as the leviathan sank beneath the waves.
The world was still.
The sea stilled.
But not with peace.
With waiting.
“Hold steady!” I yelled hoarsely, voice cracking with salt and terror. “She’s not done yet. And neither are we.”
Costing it its eye wasn’t enough to survive it. No, whatever it heard before Blackbeard attacked it was calling it back.
Because whatever Rose had awakened, the Leviathan had not fled.
It had answered.
It was going to her.
And gods help us all.