Grim was thrown free, her arm a mangled mess, one of the fishmother’s eyes impaled on her scythe, she held it up like a trophy with a victorious grimace, her damaged arm limp and bloody at her side. ‘Grim! Clear a path!’ He shouted. Grim looked at him hard, before nodding. She gave a piercing whistle, the pirates looked up, responding to her signal and making way. Viisvang walked up to his fishmother, his feet steady. She was convulsing, caught in the throws of agony at her lost eye, mouth wide and shrieking. He lined up the throw, arm cocked. There would only be one chance. If he missed, he would bring the biggest storm he had ever made down on them all.

‘Mother!’ He called, raising his voice as much as he could, but she was lost to the world in her suffering. He pursed his lips. Not good. He took a fallen sword, and with a deep steadying breath, plunged it into her side. She screamed again, her head snapping towards him, her lone good eye focused on him with shock and rage. ‘Precious one?’ she gasped in a moment of lucidity. It was painful to hear her call him that, to be reminded of how much she loved him as he was planning her death. But maybe it was better this way. Her last sight would be him, the one who loved her rather than a pirate bent on her destruction. He threw the pearl.

It arced, glittering in the sunlight, capturing all eyes in the clearing, watching its perfect arch as it careened towards the fishmother’s gaping maw, landing in the back of her throat.

With a glug she swallowed it, choking in surprise. There was a hush over the entire clearing, all waiting for something, anything to happen. ‘Was that it?’ a crew member said, her confused voice breaking the spell. Åma’s cackle was audible to all, a triumphant, unhinged sound. A gurgling sound drowned it out, coming from deep in the fishmother’s belly, slowly swelling, stretching out well past its limit. The fishmother groaned, rolling over with her stomach to the sky. Sparks flew along her body, electricity snapping down her length, the very air fizzing. And her belly just kept growing, bulging and churning, movement visible through the increasingly thinning skin.

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With a sudden wail from the fishmother, the storm breached, her skin snapping like an overstrained rubber band, a tornado of blood ripping through her, splattering everything in radius with Åma-corrupted blood, thick, dark, and curdy. The sounds of the storm, now unmuted from her flesh, raged, crackling lightning and intense booms of rumbling thunder. With one final tremor the fishmother lay back, the violence of the storm dwindling as she took her dying breaths, as if pacified by the damage it had done.

And then all was quiet.

Viisvang stood still, facing his fishmother’s cooling corpse. He had done this to her. Had killed her. Murdered her. The weight of his actions hadn’t yet descended, but he could feel it there, on the edges of his consciousness, waiting like a storm just over the horizon. Matricide.

Grim made her way over to him, looking at the fishmother’s carcass. She sighed, wiping the streaked blood on her sleeve, though soaked as it was the action had little effect. ‘Viisvang,’ she said softly, the tone so unlike her usual one he almost didn’t register it. She seemed to struggle with the words. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finally said, the breath coming out of her as if defeated.

He looked up at her, eyes unseeing, focusing somewhere past her. ‘She…wasn’t herself. This wasn’t…how she was.’ He finished lamely. He needed Grim to know. To know that his fishmother wasn’t a monster, hungry for blood. She was a god, yes, and took her tribute where due, but this wild savage bloodthirsty demon was not her, not as she had been. Grim looked down at him, her eyes sad, sorrowful for his loss. She settled her hand on his shoulder, her grip firm and warm, giving him comfort as best as she was able. He turned to her, wrapping his arms around her waist, burying his face in her blood splattered shirt, sobbing into her stomach, big salty heaving tears. They turned into fish as they left his face, watery flying fish that swam around his head, a whole school made up of his grief and heartache. She was gone.