The people below stopped fighting. They looked around in awe and horror at the now-countless massive tentacles that rose out of the water and surrounded us. Water poured from those things, and they stood erect out of the water like snakes, waiting, slithering closer, before lashing out at the ship.

The hull popped and creaked and groaned as the sheer force of these writhing meaty tentacles gripped us like pressing down on an empty can.

The pirate captain barked an order, but his men didn't hear. The little wooden pirate boats snapped and drowned when those tentacles drug them under, and even now, the beast tried to pull us in.

Part of me didn't think that this was actually happening. It was just a dream. A nightmare. There was actually no such thing as a Kraken, and those were just old wive's tales told around campfires or bedsides, but nope, here it was--and it was trying to eat us.

Heart of the Masochist activated.

My heart twirled alive when I felt those squishy, slimy tentacles wrap across the skin of my hull. It was still a faint feeling since I wasn't directly tethered, but it was no less tantalizing--and it empowered me.

I aimed my cannons at the far-end tentacle and fired with a rat-tat-tat that snapped the others out of their awe-stricken stupors, and they shook themselves back into reality and rekindled the war. This time versus the beast.

Rebels fired rifles. Pirates protected them against tentacle swipes. Both armed together with spears and guns to wound those meaty things, and even I was quickly running dry on ammo, pouring salvo after salvo into these fuckin' things, and there were countless.

The ship rocked and listed starboard. I started to slide. Some slipped off the deck and splashed into the water. Those poor souls.

The ship pulled port side. Men screamed as they slipped and slid away, and the ship groaned within the monster's grip.

And somehow, finally, after cutting through tentacle after tentacle, the monster withdrew its limbs back beneath the sea, and the world fell quiet.

And the water erupted before the bow of the ship--a geyser--pulsing ring waves around it that the ship bobbed over, and there behind the waterfall of seawater, a monster emerged.

It was the Kraken's face, maw yawning wide to swallow the ship, and judging by the size of that monstrous slimy thing, it could've eaten us whole. Something this big shouldn't be allowed to exist, but it did, there, and I was humbled by it.

The bow-turret wheeled over to aim--Vil was inside--and it fired a heavy anti-tank round right into the pitch black of its mouth. The beast winced and shuddered, continued to press on, mouth widened, ten-thousand-teeth glistening, and I fired everything, all at once, all across its face to stop it.

It wasn't stopping. It was gonna eat Vil! Fuck!

Pirates and rebels alike hurried to the stern, to flee back into the lower decks of the ship, some turning to fire at this world-ending beast, others stumbled and crawled back, their eyes filled with fear, and their hearts filled with desperation--

And four young heroes marched toward it, that beast.

"Well, well!" shouted the knight. "It appears we have a big, smelly monster that is responsible for interrupting my nap."

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The Kraken stared at the knight. This wasn't just shit-talk. It was a provoke spell.

"Fate has not been kind to you, my fishy friend." The knight raised his spear.

The mage enchanted it with lightning and fire.

The archer blurred it with speed.

And the healer gave them protection as the tentacles tried to slap them away.

The knight yelled, "Have at you, beast!"

The fleeing soldiers and pirates halted, their hearts given back their courage at the sight of these young heroes, and they returned to help. Rifles aimed over crates, spears drawn, grenades held at the ready.

The party ran with a warcry and clashed against it--tentacles flailing, the knight stabbing and poking, the archer shooting arrows, and the mage throwing lightning blasts and fireballs. And all behind, two-ship crews' worth of fire support.

All in all, a very typical raid boss fight.

Vil abandoned the turret and withdrew to the back of the ship. I continued to fire my cannons at the tentacles, hoping we could somehow whittle them down to nothing and the Kraken would just, you know, fuck off or something, but it seemed those things were damn near invincible.

The ship slammed again as the Kraken push down on one end and pulled up on the other, and everyone on board slipped and slid across, including the heroes. The Kraken was slowly losing energy, and by this time, its face had been charred black by our attacks. After another burst from the heroes' magic, the tentacles flailed off the ship, and the Kraken pulled back to dodge a beam of light.

But now the ship was free.

I jettisoned the cannon array--the barrels clinked and clanged as they toppled off me--and I jumped down the ladder into the bridge. The rebel leaders were still here, shouting in an argument. Wait. No. They were arguing with Jessie.

"There's no way it'll work," said the Card King. "It'll just blow everything up!"

"Alright, cocksucker," Jessie said. "You got any better ideas?"

I pushed off the old guy from the helm, took his spot, and tethered myself into the ship for full control of the engines.

As soon as I connected, a rush of sensory information dove into me. The cold water splashing against my bottom hull. The humid air across my skin. The slight tickle beneath me by tentacles of this horrible abomination of the deep.

Emergency Power activated.

I pushed the engines into flank speed overdrive, and I swung the wheel hard to the left. The ship dipped over another wave and tried to turn but--

We snagged. The ship jolted back. I slammed my face into the glass, people toppled, and I looked up to see the Kraken back at it again with the gripping tentacles.

"Redrim," Jessie said. "I got all these fuckin' rockets, and he won't let me shoot 'em!"

"Then shoot them, dammit, I'm busy!"

I wheeled over again to the right, trying to dislodge a 1,000-ton metal warship from the grasp of a sea demon, and I glanced back to see Jessie now missing. I caught a glimpse of her laughing villainously down the stairs of the bridge, then across, the deck out of sight.

Then, something hissed. Loudly. A sound followed, a series of breathy blasts, like how I imaged a dragon sneeze to sound like, and a dozen flaming spears shot out to the Kraken and punched deep into its skin with flaming tails, and then, it erupted. Chunks of the giant octopus demon blossomed out in blood and meat and flesh, and the beast winced and writhed around, and it swung its tentacle across the decks to counter, but--

A second volley! Jessie fired another salvo, the spears zipped over--

And the Kraken roared out a shockwave of hot air, a pulse of wind that deflected the rockets. It raised its tentacle for the counterattack as the rockets fell aimlessly around.

The mage reached skyward and cast. A black and white dome covered the heroes, the Kraken, and even the burning rockets. The mage gripped his hand into a fist, the rockets coalesced, reformed, and eased behind him to aim again, and when he released his grip, when the black and white blinked away, the cluster of rockets shot off again--

And dug into the Kraken's mouth.

It jerked back, roaring, rockets still hissing, and dove back into the deep.

We ran outside to watch.

In the deep blue of the sea, the shadow of that creature shrank smaller, and smaller, and tiny, and vanished. After a moment, large bubbles of gas rose up and broke at the surface.

The people cheered, the party, the rebels, even the pirates together. Hell, even I cheered, just not audibly. Sure it was cool, kinda badass, actually, but not badass enough for me to say anything about it.

I put the ship into full speed ahead, and we took off, far, far away from where the Kraken might be.

I had a pirate captain to speak to and a surrender to accept.