Mosquitos drifted around in clouds as the old man prodded his paddle against the floor of the swamp and pushed our little Jon boat along. Logan grimaced as he swat into the air, trying oh so desperately to keep the bugs from bleeding him dry.

I on the other hand didn’t pay mind to the pests. Money was to be made, and I wouldn’t lose to that old crone back in Long Soir city. All we needed was to ride on the floor of a cramped boat, catch a crawdad, and we were home free.

Looking back to Jing, I asked “So, when are we gonna get there?” Since a few hours ago, our conversations were taking place completely in Mandarin. We spoke it better than he understood English, and once he could actually say what he meant to, Jing turned out to be a pretty alright fella.

Jing shook his head. “Patience is a bitter plant, but it’s fruit is sweet.”

My response took a minute. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, really. “That’s a nice proverb, but I think I’d rather like to know an ETA.” Besides, I was extremely patient already. I made sure to only ask him when we’d get there every few minutes.

The old man sighed, then squint as he looked into the distance. “We had a few fishing shacks on stilts set up near here. That is our destination.”

I sighed. It had been a balmy and bug-ridden boat trip out here. We had gotten ever so slightly closer to the hot side of Dualis, and you could feel it. Even if it was a few ramshackle sheds in the middle of the swamp, it would feel good to be on something solid for a bit.

In the distance, I saw something among the skinny trees sticking out of the muddy water. A cluster of old and weather-worn buildings that nearly blended in with the plants due to how rustic they were.

Logan pulled his sweater over his nose. The swarm was far too big to shoo away, so the best he could do was keep them out of his mouth. I on the other hand felt dandy, especially since I got to watch my older brother go through every stage of grief when a bug buzzed past his ear. Logan noticed me smile at his torture and grimly muttered out “It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair my friend.” I said, leaning back against the sloped wall of the Jon boat. Now I was just gloating.

Logan moaned in agony as he curled into a ball. “For once I see why you wear that cologne. Keeps insects away just as good as women.”

“How dare you bad mouth my fragrance.” I said, putting a hand on my chest and gasping offendedly.

Then, out of the blue, Jing spoke out. “Put your differences aside. We are at our destination.”

With that, Logan and I switched our attention from banter to the dock we were quickly approaching. Logan grabbed the anchor and prepared to grab on to the dock post and tie us down. I slid closer to the back of the boat with Jing so I could grab the box of fishing equipment he brought.

Once we brushed against the dock and Logan began tying us secured, I noticed something strange about the box. It smelled… Wrong. I didn’t know if I was going crazy, but I smelled something that wasn’t just rotten bait. Something familiar.

I lifted the tarp covering the wooden box and indeed saw what I thought had to be under there. Among a bucket of fish guts, I didn’t see any crab traps, but multiple sticks of dynamite. I looked back to old man Jing, “Is there a reason you decided to bring explosives on this fishing trip?”

Jing looked back at it and nodded like it was nothing. “It’s to catch the crayfish.”

Hang on a second. Wait just a minute. The crayfish? Singular? I questioned the old man as Logan got on the dock. “You mean to say we’re trying to catch a specific crawdad?”

Jing sat his paddle down and made his way to the dock as well. “Of course. We call him Goliath.”

I picked up the box and moved along. As I stepped onto the port, I noticed plenty of the boards were snapped, missing, or in multiple pieces. They looked more splintered than degraded, too. “So… Uh… I don’t suppose you and your fishing buddies decided to call him Goliath for a particular reason.”

Jing carefully stepped past the many holes in the dock as he spoke curtly. “Size.”

“Yeah… I was hoping it wasn’t that…”

“Do not worry. The strength of numbers outweighs the power of the mighty.” Another piece of fine wisdom, but I was only growing more concerned with each step.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Logan was ahead of us, and even if he didn’t overhear, he had definitely pieced it together on his own. Even the bugs didn’t seem to want to follow us to the ramshackle fishing huts. Oh well, with the amount of dynamite we had, I doubt anything would live long enough to cause us trouble. It wasn’t too uncommon to have especially big game in the outer systems, either. Not a lot of thought was put into terraforming, so most times they just threw a load of animals and plants on a planet and saw what stuck.

The center ring of The Coin was almost nothing but swamps, marshes, bayous, and great lakes, so things that liked them had a propensity to just take over and get real nice and fat. One thing I knew for sure though was that even if this crawdaddy was as big as I was, it wouldn’t be bigger than my desire to keep two hundred dollars.

Jing moved past Logan and made his way into one of the broken-down sheds. I spoke to my brother in English while we waited for the old man to get whatever he was looking for. “We’ve got dynamite in here.”

He just looked back at me with an eyebrow raised. “Come again?”

If my hands weren’t busy, I would’ve taken off the tarp so Logan could see, but my only option was to jostle it and hope he could make out the noise. “Dynamite. Explosives. Old fella wants to blow the crawfish into smithereens.”

Logan sighed. “A bit overkill if you ask me. Seems like if they were so desperate for money they wouldn’t be bringing explosives to catch an overgrown lobster.”

I shrugged. They could waste their own money all they liked as long as we kept ours.

Jing came back from the shed holding a bundle of flares. “Let us see if he still resides in these waters.” Was all he said as he moved down the rickety wooden walkways to a part of the camp closer to the open water.

We followed him as we went past a few more buildings, a rickety staircase, and then another dock on the opposite side of the fishing camp. The water went from somewhat muddy to completely brown. Overgrown trees covered in moss jutted out of the swamp as snakes swam out of their jostling dens as we swayed the dock.

Without a word, Jing ripped the cap off the flare and tossed the burning red flames into the muck. It was slowly swallowed by the mud-water, and soon bubbles hissed as the surface tension broke again and again. Ripples began to form, and not from the flare. The entire dock started to rumble as quakes of water spread out in circles from where the marsh was disturbed.

That ain’t a crawdad, that’s a goddamn swamp monster.

I dropped the wooden crate and pulled out my revolver. As much as I would’ve loved to use the dynamite right there and then, I firstly didn’t have enough time to get my lighter from my pocket, and secondly would kill us all in the collateral if I weren’t careful. Logan as well took a step back and pulled out his old magazine fed wartime pistol. Jing was fully hoofing it behind both of us.

The water broke and from the brown depths came a very angry, brown-shelled, menace. The thing had to have been as big as an elephant, and as angry as an old man in the deli. Its massive pincer clutched the flare as it swiveled around and looked back and forth.

Logan and I both let loose with our pistols, but the bullets either glanced off or barely cracked its body. We both tried aiming for the eyes, but they were so well hidden in its shell that there was no way we were making the shot, not with footing like the nearly collapsing dock.

Even though we only barely cracked the shell, it seemed to keep the crawfish from completely destroying the pier we stood on. It let go of the flare as it floated backward, and eventually began submerging itself into the bog. The most terrifying thing was, after it went down, there was absolutely no way to tell the difference between its brown shell and the muddy water. It was invisible while submerged and moved in such a way that you didn’t even see ripples on the surface until it was too late.

I holstered my gun and grabbed onto the crate full of explosives. Jing had already climbed up the stairs to the higher boardwalk, and Logan was quick behind him. I high tailed it with him, making sure to keep my balance on the halfway-sunken dock. We needed to figure something out that wasn’t gunfire. Our pistols saved us right then, but it was like an ant bite. Eventually he’d get angry enough to not care.

Logan got to safety, then immediately turned to make sure I was right behind him. The whole dock started to fully submerge as I got to the higher boardwalk. With that, Logan turned to Jing. “What the hell was that!?”

Jing answered calmly. “That’s Goliath.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah, no shit! You could’ve let us know he was going to be the size of a cruiser shuttle.”

Jing walked up to me slowly and plucked the bucket of chum from inside the crate as he responded, “Listening well is as powerful as talking well, and is also as essential to true conversation.”

I dropped the crate on the boardwalk and groaned. “Now is not the time for that! What are we supposed to do?”

Logan looked over to the Jon boat at the other end of the fishing camp. “We get the hell out of here, that’s what we do.”

Jing shook his head. “We cannot do that now. Goliath is angered and will break whatever may disturb the waters.” Then, for the first time since we met him, Jing smirked. “And you want your two hundred dollars, do you not?”

Logan and I glanced at one another. My look was asking if we could push him off the boardwalk, while Logan’s reminded me that the old man was probably right.

With a sigh, I pulled my lighter from my pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes from the other. I began to light up as I spoke, “Alright then. I guess we should probably wait until he calms down first.” I looked at the others to gauge their reactions, but they stood perfectly still and stared worriedly at me.

Slowly looking down, I realized the crate with half a dozen sticks of dynamite was still at my feet. I cautiously pushed the box away with my shoe, then repeated, “Should probably wait until he calms down before we do anything.”

Logan and Jing stopped holding their breath, then the old man responded. “Yes. You wait and be prepared. I will lure him to somewhere more open with the bait.”

I nodded at that and sat on the edge of the stairs that now led to the completely underwater dock. Logan kneeled beside the crate of dynamite, looked at me smoking, moved the crate slightly farther away, then began rummaging through it.

My cigarette glowed orange as I took a deep breath. Out of all the ways I expected to spend that evening, I didn’t anticipate spending it hiding from a giant crawfish.