"Please," Chloe pleaded as she reached a wobbling hand to the glass. "You have to tell me--what happened to you?"

The purple squidman meditated while floating up and down in his glass, but at last, he spoke. "Kid, you may remember the last time you saw me. I wasn't doing so well."

"You were...shot..." Chloe said softly. "But you had rescued me...You were truly a noble pirate..."

"I was indeed," his voice bubbled up from out of the water, "At the cost of being mortally wounded and falling off the tower to my supposed death..."

Chloe was silent with sorrow in her eyes. The octoman added, "but...something intervened..."

The Moonshadow spread his tentacles apart, and floated back like a dead man in the water. "I fell in the tower's moat and as life slipped out of me, a figure, clad all in black, stood above the surface. He beckoned to me..."

Chloe gasped. "Did he have a roving red eye?!"

"Aye..." the octopus man replied, "a red eye that burned so brightly even in the mist of death..."

"Fienmond..." Chloe uttered beneath her breath.

Rosemary replied in a luxorious tone. "There is no other man who dances with death in the glow of the red moonlight..."

"What did Fienmond want with you?" Chloe demanded.

The Moonshadow fetched a spiral shell from the floor of his tank. It was black as shiny cobalt but gleamed an eerie rainbow when he held it. "He gave me this: The shell of the Demollusk."

The Moonshadow held the shell to his purple ear lobe. "'Do you see this mollusk shell?' Fienmond asked me. 'Tell me what you hear.'"

The Moonshadow lowered the shell from his ear. "I told him I heard the ocean. And he told me, 'good, for the ocean is the source of all life. Hail the ocean and you shall return with a new life at hand.'"

The Moonshadow pressed the glass with his sunction print tentacle. "I did, but this is what I've become. A being that is neither human nor sea creature. Neither organic nor artificial."

Chloe held up her hand and shook her head. "That's a fate worse than death, my friend."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"That is why I'm happy I've found you...Chloe..."

The octopus man propelled himself upwards, and shot out of the water. Landing on his tentacles with a loud squishing sound, he smiled for the first time since he saw her.

"Fienmond told me that me that if I came across the child that I saved and I killed her, he would return me to my former human state." His tentacles clutched several rusty knives that lay on the bottom of his tank. As he loomed ever closer to Chloe with them, she backed away slowly from his menacing form.

"Come on, matey," she cried. "You don't want to do this."

"He really doesn't," Rosemary replied. "You really think Fienmond keeps his promises?! Why do you think I'm stuck in your pretty little head rather than back to my old voluptuous self?!"

But the Moonshadow merely shook his head. "I do. I cannot stand this body. It is incredibly irksome to move around eight legs."

"And I don't believe you get much chicks like that," Chloe muttered.

"Oh, you never know," Rosemary sang. "But none here."

"Enough joking around," the Moonshadow said. "I will kill you and walk the land as a human again."

And without warning, he slung his knives like a talented sushi chef. As they flew at her head, energy surged in Chloe's body and time slowed for a split second. She was able to pivot her body away fast enough to avoid becoming sushi herself.

"Whoa..." Chloe gasped. "Witch, did you do that?"

"Lightning fast reflexes is something us demons have," Rosemary cackled. "Why do you think we're called 'speed demons.'"

"Boo to the pun," Chloe responded. "But I'll take it otherwise."

Like the worlds most talented butcher, the Moonshadow propelled himself on two tentacles while his other four knife clutching tentacles sliced, choped and diced directly at her. Chloe's veiny purple arms and legs forced themselves to dodge and do a handstand in order to escape the blades.

I've got to find some way to fight him, Chloe thought to herself. If only I had a blade myself.

The wily wannabe pirate queen gazed at the side of the wall. Several brassy pipes ran down them. Her eyes illuminated in the darkness. "Sorry squidbert!" she mocked. "Chloe alamode is not on the menu!"

Chloe ran and dashed around her foe, pirouetting around another attempt at slicing her up. Catching her breath, she made it to the metallic pipes in the wall. Investing all of her demonic strength, her arms ripped the pipe out of the wall causing an enormous jet of steam to emit from it.

Chloe brandished the pipe with a big grin on her face. She held it in her left arm and toted it in her right. Making a muscle with her left arm she bragged, "I might not have big pirate guns yet but check out my pipes!"

"Clever thinking," the octopus man hissed. "But not clever enough to beat me!"

He ran on the tops of his tentacles with a manic grin. Chloe put both hands on her pipe and wound it up for a swing. Right when he was about to reach her, she swung it, and even if he blocked it, two of his knives went flying out of his hands, shattering his tank.

The octoman hissed and charged right at Chloe and with his extra tentacles, he tethered them around her legs, and tripped her onto the floor. Chloe whacked her head on the ground with a dazed groan.

"Now," the octoman laughed his remaining two knives at her throat. "I may have been your savior, little girl, but in all irony, I am now your slayer!"