Chapter 40 #2
The Arc careened as a tentacle wider than my shadow cuffed the edge of the rail.
It was grotesque, oily black like a giant rotten noodle with suction cups the size of dinner plates peppering its underside, and double rows of wicked curved hooks framing the sides.
The caustic stench of miasma wafted up off the appendage, burning the back of my throat.
The tentacle thrashed against the barbed rope and crate barricade.
I clung to the main mast, trying to stabilize myself against the lurching of the ship.
Several people rushed forward, stabbing at it.
I joined them, running forward to cut at a suction cup with the end of my harpoon.
The cut I made was shallow, the spongy girth of the tentacle too dense to pierce without my entire weight behind it.
I leaned in, trying to force the harpoon deeper.
The muscular sheath surrounding the curving hook contracted, angling the hook until it dug into the back of my hand. I jerked back before it could cleave its way through my entire hand.
A deep beastial bellow blanked out all thoughts from my head. Slapping my hands over my ears, even with blood gushing over my fingers, the incomprehensible blasting roar of sound drilled itself into my skull.
With shaking hands, I picked up my harpoon as the noise stopped. My grip was slippery with blood.
No time like the present for some Luck and Perception. I activated both. We’d need everything we had to take something this tough down.
The tentacle unfurled as it retreated back toward the main body with a grinding wail and liquid quickness, leaving behind a slimy trail of oozing dark blood.
A human body was dragged after the tentacle, someone unfortunate enough not to release their weapon fast enough. A flash of brown hair, and they were gone.
Their blood curdling scream sent pins and needles up and down my skin, before chaos spread over the main deck. So many people were shouting. Many others were cowering.
Transfixed, I stared at the smears of blood the appendage had left on the edges of a crate.
Determination stiffened my spine.
If it bleeds, it can die.
Miasma belched upwards beside the Arc, screams splitting the air as several people were caught with acidic droplets.
A mountainous primordial mass rose like a shadow breathed into life from a nightmare.
A forest of fleshy tentacles wriggled and flapped like bulbous worms from fresh dirt.
Two deformed black eyes were sunken into hollows on its viscous wrinkled body, one dwarfing the other in scale.
Its head spiralled up in a conical gelatinous structure to a pointed tip.
It was so alien, so arcane and horrifying that I was momentarily struck dumb. My pulse flailed under my skin.
The miasma was bulging and swelling beneath the force of such a large creature, and I lost my grip on the mast to one significant lurch.
Tumbling end over end, I landed on the far side of the main deck, thin rail the only thing separating me from the lethal miasma below.
And the Arc was pointed down toward it. My stomach tried to escape through my mouth.
A loud groan alerted me in time to move, seconds before a crate crashed beside me, cracking open on impact.
The loud buzzing of invisible insects brushed by my ears.
I recognized it now. Perception warning me of lightning, about to strike.
There was a much cherished conductive metal in my pant’s front pocket. Hope swelled up in me.
If we could eliminate the Kraken’s main weapons, its tentacles, then we could kill it.
I rooted around in my pocket for the touch of metal, feeling Alaric’s yo-yo. The comforting weight in my hands was sticky with blood. This might be the final time I ever held it. It was better to choose to let it go, than to wait for life to rob me of another precious thing.
I spared a second to mentally bid the keepsake farewell. To say one final goodbye to my baby brother.
Thank you, Alaric.
The Arc heaved itself right again. I grabbed my harpoon from where it had fallen against the rail before it could go overboard. Pain sliced through the back of my hand at the movement.
Twining the yo-yo’s string around the harpoon, I turned and took aim.
Heaving the harpoon upwards, I spent every fragment of focus I had on Luck, spearing it into the nearest tentacle. The metals gleamed in the gloom. My miserable aim hadn’t prevailed, the yo-yo and harpoon were lodged in the tentacle.
A bellowing burst of light blinded and deafened me as lightning crashed down. The smell of smoke briefly overpowered the stench of muck from the miasma as it lit up from the reflected lightning. My ears were ringing as my vision slowly returned.
The Kraken pulled a charred, smoking tentacle inward toward its body.
Trying not to think about the yo-yo as melted metal slag made me picture it even more vividly.
With another nerve-shattering bellow, the Kraken reared back its other tentacles, punching them down on the prow of the Arc in a berserk frenzy.
I clutched at the nearest railing with one hand as the Arc tipped precariously far forward.
The ship groaned under the pressure, before a tremendous crack rang out.
The prow splintered off the ship, sending up another wave of miasma as it collapsed down.
The Arc careened again, this time tipping forward toward where the prow had fallen. Below, I could see the prow, floating in the miasma.
Sarina caught Corra before she fell in. At some point I hadn’t noticed, she must have joined the fray. Seeing her again was an urgent and intense comfort amidst the pervasive terror swimming through me.
The Kraken was still beating the Arc with its tentacles in a blind rage, its horrible shrieking cry now a continuous auditory assault.
Three people were slicing and chopping at its tentacles, and I caught sight of Henrik, Georlan, and Pasha among them.
Pasha ran forward, a longsword raised above her head. She threw her entire weight into a vertical slash, cleaving one tentacle on her way down. I clenched my teeth against the horrible roar the Kraken released, as the blast burrowed into my brain.
We can do this!
The remaining stubby lump spasmed and thrashed, pulling taut before knocking Pasha sideways like a battering ram.
A flit of movement and Pasha went airborne. Shock stamped her face.
She tumbled past the railing and downward beyond where I could see.
Someone screamed her name.
Pasha was gone.
My mind couldn’t process what had just happened. I stared at the hunk of tentacle she’d severed.
At least two people were dead, and many more looked wounded already. The Kraken had lost the use of two tentacles, but it had nearly a dozen more. Determination clenched my jaw. We had to keep going.
Blood blackened with ink saturated the deck.
“Sanguirs!”
I turned, seeing half a dozen Sanguirs spread across the floorboards near where the prow had been. They moved like frenzied roaches toward the severed tentacle and injured crewmates.
The swaying and pitching of the Arc must have gone low enough for them to jump over the defensive spikes below the rails.
There weren’t enough of us to divide our attention between the Sanguirs and Kraken.
We were going to lose this fight.
There was no time to grieve, barely any time to think. In the frenetic pandemonium, there was only time to react.
The Kraken was reacting too. It was lashing out with violence on instinct to each injury, drawn to whatever did the most damage. Like Orin with his reckless punches, it was striking out on impulse at any perceived threat.
A stick gouged into the Kraken's side, another ricocheting off its flank. No, not a stick, an arrow. They were being fired so fast it looked like they appeared out of thin air.
Another arrow shot out, piercing the larger of the two eyes. Black ichor and pus gushed out of the wound, and the Kraken let out another wailing screech as it flailed. I turned as Zevrial notched another arrow.
Everything caught up all at once. My focus narrowed in.
The Kraken would attack Zevrial next. It would kill him. Then it would continue to slaughter everyone else on the Arc because we kept hurting it. We were keeping its attention on the Arc, and it wouldn’t stop until all of us were dead and the Shadowtide was nothing but chips and slivers of wood.