Lucius’ bare feet hit the stormy surface and oblivion enveloped him. The clouds had covered the moon, and lightning was yet distant flashes. The sea hit him cold and hard, swallowed him whole. With no ground for footing, he had no stance to take, no way to defend himself until the tidal tug of the ship grabbed him by the chest. The rope went taut and hauled him after it like a giant had taken hold.
He broke the surface once more, skipping up from a wave long enough to suck in breath before going under once more. Twice more and he figured it out. He managed to get his eyes open, to lock gazes with the snake just as it surged up towards him. It saw him, as a lion might see a mouse; less than a morsel. The snake didn’t even open its great mouth as it swam past, pumping its body to charge after its beleaguered prey.
A turn of the rudder from Captain Bodin swung him about like a trailing kite, inadvertently smacking Lucius into the monster. The scales rasped against him. The hydraulic forces hammered him again and again into the body, bouncing and rolling him off of it until his hand found one of the creature’s spines. The first one snapped off, breaking like glass in his hand. The second he found by the base and held on long enough to tear his poisoned blade free.
That he stabbed into the snake’s body, spearing it through the scales and into the undulating muscle. The cut itself was trivial. When he gripped the blade with both hands, letting go of the spine and releasing himself to the water, the drag shoved him down yard after yard. The edge of his sword opened up a bloody gash like tearing a seam through fabric. Salt water rushed in, mixed with the poisoned unguent, and burned the monster’s flesh from the inside.
The snake writhed, head breaching the waves to thrash about and screech. Had that been enough, these monsters wouldn't have been so feared. Sailors of today would not need arm themselves with punt guns and grapeshot off the back. In the mere moments it took for the snake to turn about and spot the little ape thing clinging to it, the wound had already scarred over.
But the poison was in it. My poison.
The snake spotted him the moment the anchoring line went taut and jerked him onwards. Like a fishing lure flashing in the lightning, Lucius flailed in the water, sucked in breath, and braced himself for the strike. One would be forgiven to believe a deep sea creature such as a giant sea boa would have poor eyesight. They would, if they were strictly biological creations. Nothing that large and old remains strictly biological however.
It snapped jaws shut around him with the precision of a diving hawk felling a mouse. Rows upon rows of serrated teeth lamped around him, meshing and scything down to the bone, but not through. He jabbed the tip of his spear up through the beast’s pallet. Hot blood spewed onto him. The jaw muscles jerked back wide. The tongue flicked forward, ejecting him as though it had bitten upon an anchor, which in a sense he was.
Lucius flew out screaming in pain and frenzy both, one leg maimed by the bite. Before he could get his senses, much less before his stigmata could heal him, the snake struck again. Not at him, but at the anchoring line. It grabbed hold and ripped, rolling about itself and twisting the rope as it sawed through. Lucius was spun and snapped free. Into the mass of aquatic flesh he fell, no longer tethered to the Sea Bird’s Rest. The well trained fighter he was, he stabbed again.
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He thrust and cut. Scale and spine battered and cut him to pieces as the two of them turned the sea black with blood. Lightning flashed, cutting the murk in violent hues. He fought with the stomach eating fear of going under, of not coming back up. He fought to keep from drowning, from becoming muck beneath the ocean forever healing and never dying.
And we watched him do it from the Sea Bird’s Rest, sailing away in the storm, unable to turn back for him because the gusting wind had snapped our sails free. The ropes and binding had broken from the sea goddess’ wrath and we had to sail on or fight the waves, which would have broken the ship and sent us all to watery graves.
The beast roared. It circled and dove, slapping its tail through the tides and sending up plums of froth like cannon shots. Lucius had no chance against it in open water, at distance. No way for him to outswim it. He had no choice but to cling to it and stab at it. To grip it by the body and rend it open. He spilled its blood and sapped its life while it sought to grind him apart, to crush him between loops of its own tail. He cut and fought with god-killing ferocity.
When we found the anchoring line slack, the distance to the fight too long, we knew what had happened. It was Aisha, fresh to the rain and red eyed that screamed. With me not in sight, she grabbed hold of poor Honung, who himself was more interested in holding the poison at the ready the moment the waves slowed and it could be put to use. “What have you done? You’ve killed him!”
Scabbed over wounds on her heart burst anew with fear. The lifeline she had found herself clinging to hung slack in her grasp as the anchoring line from the ship. Lucius was her means of safety after the sins of her brother, her path forward. And there, she conceived it lost, him dead, and worse that he had died to protect her. A rational mind would have understood that Lucius needed the ship in one piece as much as her, but mere humans can so rarely see beyond themselves.
In the midst of that storm we saw one thing. We saw the snake retreat, that it dove down and to the depths. It fled for safety. Perhaps it took Lucius with it, or perhaps it realized what a pitiful meal he would make. Even devoid of battle, he was not safe. When the rush faded, the adrenaline waned, he was still caught by waves larger than houses. He was tossed up and down until the salt water scoured not just his burning wounds, but choked his breath and left him nothing but a speck floating in the night.
Either way, it was not us who dragged him from the storm. The gales and waves passed him over as he floated half-conscious in the water, and calm seas did not suck him below. Lantern light drifted over him, illuminating his cold and pallid body before habitual pity descended to fetch the perceived corpse. It was a net from the Aillesterran pirates that fished him out and threw him upon a deck once more. The thump of his ragged body upon the wood jettisoned some water from his chest and brought on a coughing fit enough to shock the crew.
The captain rolled Lucius onto his side and kicked him in the chest, a quick way to clear his lungs. The man held a light to his face, rousing his mind to wakefulness as the Aillesterran looked him over. “Well, what do we have here? I think we got ourselves some bait.”