"Bleh!" he squirted out, still coughing up cold seawater and gasping for air after regaining consciousness.

Everything hurt. He could only squint as blood stinged in his eyes and wet grime scraped his throat. Pain in the legs, pain in the shoulder. His lungs felt like they were filled with acid.

Something was dragging him through muck and mud. He was about to pass out again when a sudden boom and flash revealed half rotten nets around his body and illuminated the surrounding area. Bronn gasped in pain and saw several fish men stagger and become dizzy as the blue hued light of the explosion burst through them like a shockwave. A trithorium explosion, he realized, trying to wiggle a bit. Numbing pain made him stop and surrender to the forces moving his body at that moment.

To his horror, a crooked rusty hook was intruding from under his left armpit, piercing flesh. His right leg was dislocated from the knee, with large wooden splinters sticking out of his foot. He felt helpless, half numb, wrapped and trapped, having to watch the enflamed ship burn as he was dragged further, deeper into the tall dark reeds. Burning sailors jumped ship as shadows danced and twirled around them in a neon blue twilight. It all lasted for a brief moment as the reeds blocked his vision, but the vista was enlivened Bronn, making him grunt in anguish and growl at his fresh captors who were dragging him sluggishly, still in a daze from the exposure to trithorium.

"No! Don't do this. Don't!" screamed someone with a raunchy sailors throat, not far off between the reeds.

"Where are you taking me. No!" the desperate voice continued.

There must be a way out of this. He panicked, flailed his left arm around and managed to rip some of the netting. Feeling around his vest for a small attached stachel with the now freed arm, he found it. It was still intact.

Inside, he knew, was an irregular issue trithorium flare spitter. The Empire handed them out to all the battle barge captains. To be used to measure the depth of water while inside the Gloom.. or to signal for help. It was a one shot thing, crafted by the skilled dwarven smiths stationed at Dimwater Bay and thought up by the hooded sages of the Empire that thrived at being ingenious when it came to overcoming the impossible. An enchanted white powder canister, slotted inside a firing mechanism. It just needed to be cranked up first to make it go bang.

Would it work? The thing was absolutely drenched. Instinct said no, but he had to try.

He pulled the weapon half out from the satchel and started awkwardly pressing down the crank on the side. It made clicking sounds as the firing mechanism was put under more and more pressure every time the crank clicked up again.

He bid his time, being careful not to accidentally shoot the thing through his own face as he was dragged in a chaotic fashion through the muck.

After a short while of playing an unconcious sack of meat, he was taken underground. With squinted eyes, now better adapted to the gloomy darkness, an outline of a tunnel could be made out, leading downward in low angle. The entrance was big enough for him to stand up in, making him suspect something larger was also meant to pass through.

The tunnels did not go too deep. They soon slowly descended into a cavern of sorts. It's tall ceilings were filled with semi-translucent stalactites, giving out a low cold light. Colorful minerals glinted back at him from the slick, smooth walls, bulging and shifting their colors in a peculiar way. Bronn was awestruck for a moment. He snapped out of it quickly though, as the cavern walls also revealed thick, mucus filled sacks, bubbling on the inside.

Will this waking nightmare never end? Had he caught the madness? No. This felt all too real.

He remembered falling off from the deck of his battle barge as the two hit, something rushed him from behind and pushed him overboard. But he had managed to stay put when crashing face first into the side of the burning Stormbird, getting caught in some of the loose hullboards and nets. He lost his rapier that moment. It had slipped from his grasp in the fall, never to be seen agian. Instead of hitting the water, he had managed to hold on to some netting and hang on for a while. Something was pushing that ship. Something big. He remembered the sound of breaking oars as a great force from underneath the ship pushed it forward, ahead of the other ships.

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Little fish like creatures were all over the trithorium candle, pounding at it, cracking the thick glass enveloping it's outer structure, then falling off, lifeless. He fell off as the ship ran aground and was thrust from the side of the hull into the murky cold waters below like a ragdoll. This must have been it, the explosion he saw. Those invaders in the night had caught them off guard and managed to break the damned thing.

"No! Please" echoed through the cavern. A sailor from the other barge was dragged down alongside him. Bronn watched in silence as the man was placed on a black oily slate of stone and held down by their crusty captors. The sailor squirmed under the grappling monsters.

That was it. The time for action had come. If he would have waited any longer, he was sure his arm would not rise to the occasion. Instincts kicked in and pupils dilated in glorious anger, the trithorium flare spitter got drawn and shoved point blank at the lot of them.

"For the Empire!" he roared with a shaky hand, and pulled down on the mechanism's trigger.

Nothing happened. The damned thing did not fire. Instead a metallic clank echoed through the cavern and the trigger only moved half an inch back.

"Well shit." he mumbled and let the flare spitter fall to the ground next to him in extreme distress.

A smack to the face by one of the fish men broke his nose. Another hit cracked a cheekbone. He tasted warm blood in his mouth. Slipping in and out of consciousness, face now mangled, he watched with blurred vision as the otherworldly creatures, clicking with excitement, hacked away at the now dead sailors neck with rusty sharp implements. Bulging bloodshot eyes and utter terror, that's what reflected back to Bronn from the now decapitated sailors face.

After what seemed like an eternity, the head of the sailor was split open on the oily black slate next to the body and carried off to one of the sacks on the walls. The head got dropped into one of the sacks. Tadpole like shadows swirled around the submerged head, biting at it. The thought of his own neck being hacked off and head cracked open to feed the little fish disturbed him to the bone. The fear of imminent doom gripped him.

"This is happening.." he murmured to himself and bit his lips to wake his body up. He managed to wrestle out that last bit of strength he had to grab the flare spitter once again up from the ground. The rotted nets he was covered in teared as Bronn almost freed himself by turning his body and wiggling about. Pulling out the rusted hook was not an option though.. and one of his legs was useless.

"Work damn it!" he let out a loud cry and hit the flare spitter against the ground like a lunatic. The cranking mechanism broke, but the weapon gave out a heavy click. Metal against metal.

He briefly contemplated pointing that thing at his own face.

"Do it, you coward. Pull it." said the same raunchy voice he had heard begging for it's life just minutes ago. He looked back at the translucent sack where the sailor's split head was dropped as his left hand slowly followed, shaking from holding the spitter. The head stared back at him. And spoke again.

"Madness comes for all who cross the cursed sea, captain. You know.. YOU know." it's mouth bubbled and the ever deeper, darker voice echoed through his ears.

"You fell into the dark waters.. forsaken. He pushed you. We know.. we know. Left here to die. Nourishment for the Gloomy One, that's what you.."

"Fuck you, talking head." Bronn gurgled in response.

The cavern lit up in a glorious spectacle of neon blue and crackling white. He laughed hysterically as eggsacks hissed and burst around him, spraying the area with their inside, bits and jello like goo splashed his face. The flare ricocheted and hit the ceiling of the cavern, still lighting up the whole cavern. Stalactites hanging from above reflected blue light onwards in strange angles, boosting the apocalypse unfolding around him. For a brief moment, he saw the world in glorious neon blue. His heart rate spiked and insides twisted. Bronn's eyes hissed like the mucus sacks as his mangled face melted, sculpted by the searing power of the colorful light.

And in the aftermath, all black everything.