35. Rhaek
RHAEK
I t smacked into me, driving me sideways. I caught the shelf edge with both hands and held on.
I looked at the creature.
It had no distinct head. A mass of pale tissue, wide, almost flat, the color of something that had never seen light and had no use for it. It had no eyes I could identify and no mouth.
The limbs came next.
Twelve tendrils. Maybe more. Each one moving independently and wrapping around my left leg and arm.
My arms were spent from the crossing and I could barely lift them.
I wanted to roar, to curse this infernal creature, but keeping the element of surprise was more important than unleashing my rage on the creature.
I drove my claws into its underbelly.
I was surprised the tissue offered up as much resistance as it did. The limb contracted instead of releasing, pulling my hand in deeper. I buried my fist into its entrails and dug around, unsure what to look for .
It screamed without sound, thrashing and attempting to escape. But it was too late.
The contraction brought the center closer. I could feel it now under my right hand — the soft give, right there, a few inches deeper than my claws had reached. My arm was shaking. The grip I could produce was not the grip I needed.
I closed my eyes and found what remained inside me after the crossing and the seam and the sharks and the twenty minutes of holding still while she screamed above me.
There was something there.
Not much. Enough.
I drove my hand in.
Closed my fist.
Pulled.
The entrails came out in a rush — pale, slick, still moving with their own residual signal — and the grip released. Every limb. All at once. The thing dropped off the shelf and hit the water, the surface closing over it.
I wanted to collapse on the rock but I had to get away from the edge. Before another one of those things lurched out at me.
I stumbled back and pressed my shoulder against the spire's face. My chest heaving. The wound on my arm burning in four parallel lines, the tissue around them raised and hot and insistent. The rest of me simply empty.
Below me the water went dark.
Then the others arrived.
They didn't circle. The circling was for assessment and that was done. They hit from every angle simultaneously and the surface churned red. The creature went down in pieces and then the water was still again.
I watched it go .
My hand stung like it’d been numbed. It would have to wait.
I shoved myself off the stone just as Helsa’s scream reverberated from inside.
I ran.