“Everyone get inside now, that includes all members of the crew. There is an emergency situation, take cover below deck and wait for further direction.”

The captain made the announcement through the speaker system and everyone scrambled to recover from the sudden impact on the ship. Finlay had barely gotten to his feet when a scream came from the group, huddled around in search of what they thought was a whale. People were yelling at one another and waving towards the water. Keira was already moving to see what was happening and so he followed.

“It’s Anneca, she’s gone overboard,” one of the girls said when they reached them.

He looked out over the water and sure enough, the girl who had been in his group when they first started working together was struggling to swim against the waves and was travelling further down the side of the ship. Someone had attempted to throw a life ring towards her but it had drifted so far she couldn’t reach it.

“What are you all doing, get inside, now!”

Sara had appeared behind them and was motioning for them to go towards the doorway that would lead below deck but then several people shouted about Anneca in the water and she immediately rushed to the rail.

She cursed and spun around to face him. “Finlay, go tell Faye what’s happened,” she turned again without waiting for an answer and lifted herself in a single, smooth motion onto the rail. “The rest of you, get inside now!”

With those words, she dove into the water below. As she descended, the same golden light that erupted around her during his interview surrounded her body and she cascaded into the water with the elegance of a diver.

He turned and started towards the stairs to return to the helm, Keira was right behind him but William had taken it upon himself to encourage the others to go inside. They ran to the stairs and he started to feel an all-too-familiar sensation; the night of the evacuation, his father telling him to get his sister when they were under attack. It was an uncomfortable feeling and he could only hope as he climbed the steps that it wasn’t going to be as bad as back then.

They burst into the helm to find Faye still arguing with the captain who gripped the wheel tight enough his knuckles were white. She turned to them with a fury in her eyes he hadn’t seen before but calmed as soon as they explained Sara had sent them and what had happened. She swore as loud as Sara and started towards the door but stopped to say one last thing to the captain.

“Don’t you dare turn this ship around.”

When she turned back to face them, she stopped. “About time you showed up.”

“I was having a pleasant conversation with the ship’s cook. It’s most unlike you to be so worked up, Faye,” Ronan replied.

The man was standing behind them and he wasn’t sure if the stress of the events stopped him noticing or Ronan was very silent in his movements. Keira apparently hadn’t either as she jumped when he spoke which made the man give her a wide, warm smile.

“Are you going to help?” Faye snapped.

“Of course, this is a perfect opportunity to teach after all.”

“Now’s not the time for that, we need to deal with this thing now.”

“It’s the perfect time,” he walked past them and stood by Faye, placing a hand on her shoulder before facing them. “Finlay, we have something hidden beneath the ocean that needs to be uncovered so we can fight it properly, how might we do that?”

“Hidden, what, you mean Nochd?”

“Precisely, see he’s a quick study. Nochd can uncover what is hidden, the truth is only part of that. However, Nochd’s power is limited, and while it could surely make us see where the creature is, that wouldn’t help much for our little attacker here.”

“Ronan, we don’t have time for this.”

He ignored her and continued. “So if we use Nochd to find it, how would we say, light it up for Faye here to see?”

He didn’t fully understand the spirit’s power yet but the answer was obvious from Ronan’s prompts. “Solast?”

“Correct! I was going to save this for your next lesson, after you had called upon Solast, but the truth is that the power of invocation doesn’t come from calling upon these spirits. It really comes from the combinations you can make when you call upon more than one.”

“Ronan, for the love of—”

“Yes, yes,” he started pulling out the pieces of paper he kept in his coat and placed them in the circle.

“You see,” he continued. “Because Solast and Nochd are so similar in all their other runes, it only takes minor adjustments and you can call upon them at the same time and therefore, combine their power to do wonderful things.”

The ship shook again and there was a groaning noise of steel being bent and broken. The captain swore and started to turn the wheel but Faye snapped at him immediately. Keira made a noise that wasn’t quite a squeak and he looked around to see through the window that there were three giant tentacles extending upward from the water around the front of the ship. Two smashed down on the deck causing another giant wave to shudder the vessel almost knocking them from their feet again. The two limbs wrapped their way around the ship, causing the creaking, groaning noise to get louder as they tightened.

Faye burst through the door and flung herself down the stairs in a heartbeat. Keira flinched, her desire to help overshadowed by her fear. She wasn't ready for this, not yet, not after everything that happened before and he wanted to help her but Ronan spoke first.

“Don’t worry, Keira,” he said, a soothing tone that wasn't familiar. “She can handle a little sea monster.”

He was struggling to know how much danger they were in. Ronan certainly didn’t seem phased, and Faye was more irritated than anything else but the captain was almost desperate to turn and flee. Keira seemed relieved from his words and settled in to watch through the window.

Faye was faster than he could believe; by the time he looked back around, she was already in front of one of the tentacles. Using her as a new reference, the width of it was around that of the trams they rode in and it he was sure it wrapped all the way around the ship. Faye was glowing in a bright red, orange, flame-like aura that was very similar to Keira but the weapon she called upon was like no other he had seen. It was in practical terms, a wide edged, curved sword but the design of metals that wrapped their way around its hilt led up her arm in a protective cover.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Her movements were beautiful, a dance more than a strike, she curved the blade down in a long arc and dropped her body with it to extend the motion. The blade was nowhere near long enough to cut through the creature and yet, in one motion she severed the limb in two and a geyser of blue blood erupted from the wound to pour over the deck. The ocean around the ship seemed to boil as the water was lashing with the fury of the beast below. A soundless cry as it lashed its limbs around at the one who had cut it.

But Faye wasn’t finished and in an equally elegant movement, the blade ripped through the air with the same fiery red light that surrounded her and another tentacle was severed in two. This time she had been even further from her target but the cut was clean as though it were nothing more than a small stick. He could only assume that was part of her contract but he wasn’t sure exactly how it worked.

Ronan showed little interest in the ongoings of the woman and her battle, choosing to continue on his own work. The creature plunged the damaged limbs and the others that had been above the surface back into the depths and it seemed for a moment that Faye’s attack had caused it to flee. Yet she remained alert, scanning the waves in wait for it to reappear.

As if in answer to that thought, the ship was shaking again. The creaking, groaning noise of before erupted from below and it sounded as though the beast was trying to break in from underneath. Both he and Keira struggled to stay on their feet and the captain looked about ready to burst. Ronan again, seemed perfectly content and looked up at Finlay as if nothing were happening around him.

“Now, are you ready to be amazed?”

He looked at the man in a rather bemused manner, still struggling to keep on his feet as he could feel the pressure change in the room. The golden glow that matched his glasses radiated around him and the paper runes disintegrated. There was a different kind of rumbling around them and it felt as though he could hear the heartbeats of Nochd and Solast.

He turned back to the window and stepped back in surprise. Through the dark ocean that seemed so impenetrable before, he could see the creature. It was glowing with the same golden light that Ronan had generated, outlined so clear that every movement was easy to follow. But it wasn't only a glow through the dark ocean, he could see it through the ship itself. The entire shape, the creatures whole body below the ship was visible through the steel as if it were partially transparent. It wasn't a squid or octopus, not something he had ever seen before as it looked more like a jellyfish with more limbs than he could count. They trailed down to the depths below while several extended upwards in the attack of the ship.

Faye reacted to the change in an instant as though she knew it was coming and lept to the very front of the ship. Even from this position, he could easily see the creature which moved below them and Faye was tracking it. Another pulse of the fiery light erupted from around her weapon as she took another swing, and once again he saw a part of the creature cleave off its body and sink to the depths below. The blade that didn’t need to touch its target performed as well through the ship and ocean as though neither were between it and the creature, yet no mark was left on the deck between them.

The beast erupted upwards from the new wound and almost capsized the ship in the process. The wave that burst out swept the deck and as he clambered against the window to keep on his feet, he watched as Faye, who had lept upwards to avoid the rush of water, landed as graceful as a ballet dancer during a performance. As soon as her foot touched the deck, she turned and again swung the blade in a wide arc towards the body of the monster.

The thrashing of the water and shaking of the boat immediately stopped and he watched as the glowing body of the giant creature fell still and silent. The beast, now cut in half, fell apart and drifted into the depths of the ocean as the light faded into nothingness. Faye stood, watching, waiting for some new ressurgance which never came and only turned when every last spec of light had disappeared.

“See now, not a problem. Everyone was getting worked up for nothing,” Ronan said, looking at the captain.

“That was amazing.”

“Isn’t it, Faye is very effective at killing things but if she can’t see it, she can’t cut it. I just had to show her where to strike.”

He looked at Keira who was grinning with joy and relief. It was over as fast as it had happened, the beast of the water was gone and they were safe again. The captain was grumbling about the ship and ordered the crew to confirm any damages over the speakers. He confirmed that it was now safe to leave with caution but to avoid the front of the ship until further notice.

Faye stormed up the steps and entered the room with an even more irritated expression than she had left with. She was covered in the blood of the creature, the inky blue coated her from head to toe along with the deck of the ship as it seemed to resist the wash of the waves that came over them.

“If you hadn’t taken so long, I could have dealt with that thing before it waved its stupid arms around—look at me!”

“Here I am making things easier for you and all you can do is yell at me.”

“You’re lucky that’s all I do!”

She was quite furious and this time the captain decided to avoid her gaze completely. But Ronan just kept laughing at the sight of her and then insisted he should go check Sara managed to swim back to the ship. He had almost forgotten about Anneca and Sara but Ronan reassured him that there was nothing to worry about and Sara probably made it back before he even reached the helm.

They slunk out after Ronan, deciding it was better to stay away from Faye until she had recovered in a hot shower and they both wanted to check on William. It was hard to move on the deck as the blue blood of the giant squid had left a thick coating. The destruction from the gripping tentacle was worse than he realised from above and the people that started to find their way out from below deck were visibly confused and shaken.

When they found William, they were surprised that he was consoling Anneca. He explained that after ushering everyone inside, Sara saw him while swimming back with her and ordered him to help her up. Afterwards, he found her a blanket and was trying to help warm her as she was struggling from the shock of it all. After some of her friends came to offer their support, William decided he was free to leave so went with them back to the front of the deck.

“I didn’t see much of what happened other than, I guess tentacles—what the hell was that thing, what even happened?”

They explained what happened after they went to the helm and how Ronan had cleared the way so Faye could kill it. He was particularly interested in Faye’s cutting technique which he felt must have been similar to his and he declared he’d ask her about it when he got the chance. Finlay felt what he meant was that he’d ask her about it when he had built up the courage but didn’t say anything.

Keira was also enamoured by Faye’s prowess and was expressing how she wanted to be more like her. He was smiling as he listened to her talk because it seemed she was already well on her way to becoming the second coming of their instructor. Their mannerisms weren’t dissimilar; Faye had expressed interest in Keira but it was only now that he got to see her in action that he realised the real reason behind it.

He asked William how Sara was afterwards and he told them that she seemed irritated but not at Anneca or him, not even at the thing that was attacking them. He suspected that irritation was directed towards Faye and the captain but then more likely towards Ronan. They decided to move to the back of the ship as the entire front was covered in that inky blood and it would be impossible to find anywhere to sit.

There were already a few others from their section there when they arrived and they could hear them talking about what had happened. Most of them had been below deck before the beast had risen from the water and from their perspective, it had looked like a whale. They were trying to understand how the front of the ship was covered in that stuff, which they didn’t realise was the blood of the beast and were coming up some strange ideas about the ship leaking.

All three of them laughed which caught the attention of the group but they chose not to explain further. The sky was as clear as it had been when they set off and had he not watched the horror of the attack and the thing from the deep, he could have believed that it never happened.

It was peaceful again but in that moment of thought, he realised that they hadn’t even reached the island and something terrible had already happened. He wondered what more there was to come and as he looked at Keira, it seemed she was thinking the same.

“It feels like a bad omen.”