After the treaty was ratified, Koronos has the Kazarians return to their mountain home. Kilokovo leads his warriors back home, he agrees not to loot and pillage villages along the way, and will go far around human settlements, and he is a man of his word, he would rather die before dishonoring himself. However, a few of the Kazarians decided to remain in the lands of men with Koronos. They chose to go to the new kingdom to learn about the ways of men, besides, they look to Koronos as their new chief. Legends of Kazarians will likely be even more so after the citizens witnessed Kilokovo firsthand, he's for all practical purposes, a giant.
Cassi, the new empress of the Octavian Empire, ‘generously’ offers to allow the army to use the Octavian imperial naval ships to be taken back to The Realm of Koronos. This was not out of the kindness of her heart; it was to get the horde of soldiers out of her lands as fast as possible. If they were to march back, they would have to cross the entire length of the empire, and since it’s upriver, it would take four to five weeks. But by boat, even though it’s longer distance-wise, it will take three weeks, if the weather is favorable. So Koronos accepts the offer.
The warrior horde is broken up into five units of about 100 men each, aboard five naval vessels. The boats mainly stay within view of the coastline for easy navigation but there is a large area of reefs that go on for leagues, the waves are a little too big to sail through the area for fear of ripping a hole in the bottom of the boat hulls on the jagged reefs, so they sail out into open blue water to go around.
It’s out here in the open water that they encounter a mighty storm, with mountainous waves, towering over the ships. The driving gale-force wind separates the ships from each other, the lead ship, the Titan Queen, is blown off course, far out into the sea. This is the vessel that Koronos, Shelove and his bodyguards are on. Half the men get sea sickness from the raging waves, even some of the seasoned sailors get sea sickness; puking everywhere, and not always making it to the open deck to vomit over the side or conveniently into buckets. The storm is massive, something from epic tales, it rages on for three days straight, unrelenting, until they are hit with a rogue wave, a gigantic, towering wall of water, the stuff of legends.
Sometime in the middle of the night, during the onslaught of the raging storm, the night watch helmsman is gobsmacked at the sight and frozen with a primal fear when he sees it, horrified as he clings hopelessly to the helm, it’s a sailor’s worst nightmare. Even if he could manage to yell, it’s unlikely that anybody would hear him over the cacophony of the raging wind, hail, rain, thunder cracks and rumbles, and the crashing waves against the creaking wooden hull of the ship. Men tending the lines see it when it’s all but too late. The gigantic wall of water crashes into the Titan Queen with so much force, it breaks her in half, as thunder and lightning rages all around.
When the rogue wave hits, Koronos is in his own cabin, a cabin that is usually for the captain. He is trying to get much-needed sleep in his swaying hammock because he’s exhausted from getting very little sleep these past days. Suddenly he is thrown from the hammock and across the room, anything that wasn’t already tied down becomes debris and even some things that are tied down, because the lines that are holding it in place snap from the violent force of the wave. Water rushes in as the ship's hull breaks away, filling the cabin with water in mere moments, and he is pulled down into the inky black water of the deep sea.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Taking one last deep breath, he grabs his only valuable possession; his sword and straps the scabbard belt across his chest with the sword on his back and starts to make for the surface but senses Shelove is in distress. He darts his eyes, struggling to see in the dark water but manages to find her; she is tangled in ropes and being pulled down ever deeper. Even though the pressure of the depth is starting to hurt his ears and the wind in his lungs is fast running out, he tries to free her, nonetheless. Using his dagger that he always keeps in his belt, he cuts the lines until at last, she is free, and they push for the surface as his vision starts to tunnel and darken from loss of air.
Once at the surface he can finally breathe and gather his senses. They find some debris to cling to, Shelove struggles to climb up on the wreckage, but Koronos helps her up, up here she can easily maintain balance on her four legs in the raging storm. She can swim, but she senses danger below in the depths, there’s something big down there. He senses her fear, so he manages to climb up as well and hold on to some boards as something big moves past their meager debris raft, in the lightning flashes he thinks he can see tentacles sliding past, big tentacles belonging to a massive kraken. He attempts to reach out to it with his mind, but it slams the mental door shut in his face, so to speak. It doesn’t want to communicate with him, it doesn’t like land-things, it is curious about them, but it is not friendly. For the next hour it circles around them, they see flashes and glimpses of it from time to time, but Koronos can feel it, even when it’s out of sight.
In the darkness, peppered with flashes of lightning, with one towering wave after another in the driving rain and hail, they see no other survivors. If there are other survivors, finding them in this hellacious storm is highly unlikely.
Riding out the storm is all they can do, until the gray dawn approaches, this is when they see land in the distance. They search the dark water with their eyes, Shelove’s eyes are better suited for the dark, they look for signs of the sea monster. He reaches out with his mind to it but finds no mental sign of its presence. He says to Shelove, “I don’t sense it anywhere… It’s now or never; if we wait any longer, I may not have the strength to make such a swim, or we might drift past the land and further out to sea again.”
She jumps in first because she trusts him, and they make for the shore with their last remaining strength. It’s a thirty-minute swim in choppy water, neither of them has ever had to swim so far, the only positive thing is that it’s easier to stay afloat in saltwater than the fresh waters of mountain lakes and rivers that they are both accustomed to. As they crawl onto shore and pass out from exhaustion on the cold, wet sand of the beach, they think it’s the most comfortable place they have ever slept. Sunshine comes through the clouds as the relentless storm finally breaks. But, after days of being blown by gale force winds, they could be hundreds of leagues from where they were when the storm hit. Where are they now?