Xane felt as if he was surrounded by water. This could not be true since he could breathe fine. A glance up, however, showed the familiar sight of the sun refracting through the water. This made him panic. What was happening? Where was he or even the ship?

Xane swam straight up. At least he thought he was. The shimmering light above never got closer. Panicking, he desperately looked around hoping to find salvation. He felt like something was looking at him from the darkness. He started wildly looking around. What he saw was a small and faint light in the darkness below. He felt compelled to go to it even though he couldn’t see anything.

The faint light grew slowly brighter, but he couldn’t hold his breath any longer. The closer he got that sense of losing breath came to him. Xane doubled back, able to breathe once again. The desire to go to it didn’t vanish and one last try he breathed in.

Xane went as fast as he could. Mere inches away and without his permission, his mouth opened, blackish water spilled in and he drowned.

Xane woke up with a start. It was a dream? Where am I? He tried to look around but the darkness enveloped everything. He knew he was somehow on land by the soft sand he was laying in. “Von!” is what he tried to say but all that came out was salty water and fits of coughs. He didn’t even feel the water till he tried to speak. He called out Von’s name again and this time his voice carried through the mostly quiet night.

Nothing but his own faint echo called back. Still feeling the waves lick his leg he struggled to get up. This action took him a minute with his tired body. Thinking of his body made him very thirsty. However, he knew any water near here wouldn’t be any good.

Xane decided crawling was the best option to get up the slight hill that he only knew was a hill due to the sense of escalation. His eyes adjusted just enough to see a few feet in front of himself. He was happy about this since he saw a large rounded rock was in front of him.

The rock looked way dryer than the wet sand he was tromping around in. Xane reached the rock, fell upon his back and saw the stars. One last thought occurred before sleep took. I don’t remember that constellation. And he knew that those stars were not right; he always had a near perfect memory and knew it wasn’t right.

Light pierced Xane’s eyelids and Xane tried to cover his face with a blanket. All his hands touched was a hard rough surface. Undeterred he didn’t open his eye but decided to grope around to find it. This time he found a wet grainy substance. Piecing one and two together his eye’s slammed open. It wasn’t a bad dream. He regretted this action as the sun’s rays hit his eyes. The water also reflected the light making it feel worse. The headache he was feeling didn’t help either.

Slowly he adjusted to be able to see his surroundings without needles stabbing his brain. It was rather beautiful. The sun had been up for a few hours, and only a couple of clouds dotted the sky. If this wasn’t a dream then where is Von and Sierra’s Song? Xane honestly didn’t know which one he was more worried about. He had put so many hours into building that ship; while, Von was his closest friend.

Remembering his failures of the previous night Xane decided to call out to Von. After 5 minutes of useless yelling, he started remembering another thing. He was really thirsty. Looking around a bit he saw a higher hill than the one he was on and knew that it would be his best bet to find something.

It took him longer than he first thought it would get to the hill. This was mostly due to his lack of energy and the fact that some rocks were sharp as a knife. He did not want to add ‘large cut’ to the ever growing list of bad.

The hill was higher up than he first thought. Xane could see that it wasn’t even the tallest one, but it didn’t need to be. Xane saw his target. Sierra’s Song was not far away from his location. Why was he so far from it? The ship looked to be a mile trek from his current position.

“Well more walking for me then!” Xane exclaimed out loud cursing whatever could hear him.

Something did happen to hear him. A mound similar to the one he had slept on the previous night started to move. Sand vibrated hopping around. Xane could kind of feel the earth tremble.

“This does not bode well,” whispered Xane.

As if the world heard him again, what looked like the largest crab to ever exist emerged from the ground. The crab’s eruption from the earth tossed sand everywhere. Xane almost screamed but held back what would have surely killed him. The crab was at least 8 feet in height and its claws looked perfect for chopping him in half.

The crab didn’t move. Just stood there. Xane thought this his chance to leave. This was not the correct move. Xane was to focus on the giant crab to see that a rock he was stepping past. He screamed in pain as his leg was scratched by the rock and a warm liquid seeped down his leg. The pain was aggravating but manageable. It was less of a scratch and more of a deep gash but Xane told himself it was but a scratch.

The crab didn’t turn fast but chose to slowly turn to the offending noise. This wasn’t a problem for the crab as an eye just snapped into Xane’s direction. This elicited a less manly yell as Xane turned and ran towards his ship. “Shit.”

He could feel as well as hear the crab give chase. Adrenaline-fueled Xane ran as fast as he could. Chancing a glance behind he saw that the crab wasn’t acting like a crab as it was running forward instead of sideways. What was even odder was the fact that it had two more appendages than normal. These legs he assumed helped it run forward instead of the usual trope.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Xane stopped staring at the monstrosity and decided that faster was a good idea. Large and sharp protrusions were scattered on this island. Forcing Xane to weave through them. Cutting his arms and legs as he did so. The sharp protrusion of what was probably made of coral was no obstacle for Xane. And as some turn of luck stopped the big crustation. If not for a second as it took its massive claws and broke them.

The ship was now in sight. Just a few more feet. Xane reached the ship. Even with the extra legs the crab lost ground on Xane and Xane had just enough time to scramble onto the ship which was at least double the size of the crab. The crab just stopped, staring at Xane with contempt. Claws clacking in anger.

Fueled with adrenaline Xane yelled the first thing that came to his mind, “Nice to make your aquaintance but I’ll sea you later.” With that Xane turned towards the door below deck. Perhaps Von was inside. Apparently the crab didn’t want to sea Xane later as a claw gripped the edge of the boat and within a moment an eye stalk peaked over latching sight on Xane.

Xane’s stamina was waning at that point and he struggled to limp towards the door. Which he found was blocked by a large piece of wood. He tried with what little strength he had to push it away but it was round and just rolled back into place. Xane despaired. This could be the end. A small voice in his head screamed. You idiot it opens inward. Xane listened to that voice and tried to open the door. Click!

Of course it was locked. Xane typed into the keypad with the incorrect code. Precious time was taken by this action and the crab was tentatively taking steps towards Xane. “Got it.” the door beeped and allowed him to open it.

Breathing heavily Xane pushed open the door and launched himself inside. A second later a claw followed him nipping at his legs. Xane scrambled backwards. This crab won’t give up. A wild claw pinch nearly cut his foot in two. The giant crab couldn’t break the reinforced hull of the ship but it did try with all it had. Repeated strikes hit the doorway.

After a moment of respite the crustation seemed to be taking a break. Xane used this moment to slam the door shut and heard the bolts lock into place. As well as more slams against the door. Xane looked out through a small window. For 30 minutes the crab stayed its ground waiting for its meal to leave its hiding hole. But it seemed to get bored and a loud thump could be heard as it landed onto the beach. Xane let out a deep sigh of relief.

As if just remembering something Xane started to frantically look around. “Von!...Are you in here! Hello!” He had looked through the entire ship not finding Von anywhere. Where could he have gone? Was he somewhere else like how Xane had washed up away from the ship.

Remembering that he had a gun hidden under his bed Xane went and grabbed it. He never liked guns much. The smell of gunpowder wasn’t his favorite smell. His father though, was a weapons fanatic of all sorts with a huge collection of swords to guns. His father even joked about having a small nuclear bomb hidden away in his collection. Xane didn’t know if that was true.

On his 16th birthday Xane was gifted an old Colt. 45. Xane might not have liked guns but old westerns and their style were aesthetically pleasing. Xane did get training on proper use of them and was pretty good with them as well due to his fathers insistence.

Xane preferred fencing when it came to extra activities but assumed that a flimsy fencing sword that he didn’t even have wouldn’t work on a crab the size of a truck. With that in mind he was for once happy that his dad forced him to bring it with him, his exact words being, “You never know what might happen. Maybe pirates will attack or maybe giant crabs that want to cut you in two.” Ok the last part wasn’t real and Xane really hoped that no pirates would be trying to take his ship.

Safety in check his thirst came back in full force draining what was left of his strength. Slowly moving to his fridge he grabbed an ice cold bottle of water. Luckily the power still worked. It seemed to be on the fritz a bit with lights flickering occasionally but Xane chalked it up to something being thrown loose from the crash.

Next was hunger. After downing a bottle he was really hungry. “The body demands food? I will provide food.” Reopening the fridge he grabbed some jelly. “It’s peanut butter jelly time.” Xane said this out loud and slunk a bit when he remembered Von wasn’t currently with him to complain.

He knew that he couldn’t help Von if he himself was starving and dehydrated. Von would just need to hold on. It was 3 whole sandwiches later that he finally was done eating. That was the most sandwiches he had ever eaten in a short period of time. Truly he could have had another but didn’t want to get sick. And also the fact there wasn’t an infinite supply of food.

Deciding to take a look out he went to one of the many computers in the boat. Accessing the cameras he started looking around. If you were to ask Xane if he put way too much technology into his ancient looking boat he would say,”Nope”.

The ship was state of the art. Which is why he was so confused on why the feeds were all just wavy lines with barely any detail. The monitors themselves were bugging out. Xane wasn’t a technological expert, being a more structural and mechanical engineer, but he was sure that it shouldn’t be doing that.

Of course he tried the best solution to problems. Unplugging and replugging it in. Didn’t work. He then tried the age old smack. That worked. Except he didn’t want it to work. Xane jumped back in fright as he saw the giant crab right in front of the moving camera. Before he could bring himself together the feed went black as the creature turned and broke the lens.

Xane didn’t know if it did it on purpose or accident but that didn't matter. He only had one camera facing that way. The computer was really freaking out at this point. It seemed that it was overheating. Not wanting it to break he just turned it off. Something was off but he wasn’t skilled enough in this area to fix it.

With the crab still out there Xane didn’t feel safe enough to go out and look for Von. He did think about using the colt but didn't know if it would be powerful enough to kill the beast or not.

Xane had been sitting for a bit and without something to distract him he finally truly noticed something. There was a slight blinking at the top most of his peripheral vision. At first he thought it was due to dehydration, hunger or stress. But with two of the three solved it was still there.

It was really starting to get annoying the more he thought about it. It had been happening ever since he woke up. He assumed it was similar to when you stare at a light for too long. A spot forms in your vision and every time you try to focus on it the spot moves away. But it didn’t, focusing on the spot a flood gate was opened as a deluge of words floated in front of his eyes.

He started blinking and shaking his head. It was shocking and a bit nauseating. Calming down he opened his eyes to see nothing. The words were gone. However the blinking was still there. Trying again but kinda knowing what was going to happen he focused on the blink.