- [Maintenance Sailor Keitel] -
The sun creeps over the horizon, its weak light struggling to penetrate the fog-laden sky of the spirit world. Onboard the Breathless Chaplain, dark-elven maintenance sailor Keitel stirs to the sound of the sea slapping against the hull, an almost hypnotic rhythm that echoes through the narrow corridors of the ship. The air is thick with moisture, and the scent of salt is mingling with the faint odor of oil from the engines and the wick of sweat of some thousand poorly washed sailors.
Keitel sits up in her cramped bunk that she shares with three other shifts, so the dampness of the bedding never dries out. The thin — likely disease inducing — foam mattress sags beneath her weight. Rubbing the regulation conform sleep from her eyes, she stretches her long limbs, feeling the gentle ache of muscles that have grown accustomed to the demands of ship life ever since her pre-expedition training back home. The walls of the shared quarters are already adorned with fresh scars— etchings and nicks from drunken fights, tripped faces, and people who just haven’t gotten their sea-legs yet.
“Rise and shine, Keitel!” a cheery voice calls from the port window, his tiny fairy fist knocking on the glass as he stares into the bunk area with a stalkerish obsession. It’s Jaris, a fellow crew member with an upbeat demeanor, is always the first to greet the day with enthusiasm; as such, everyone hates him. She’s the only one who doesn’t let him know it, though, so that makes them friends. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us!”
“Yes, yes, I’m awake,” she replies, groaning and pushing aside the thin sheets and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. The cold sea air bites at her skin as she shuffles to the small basin in the corner, splashing water on her face to wash away the remnants of sleep. By the time she’s done and looks back, a fresh body has already shuffled in and buried itself in the bunk she just left a moment ago.
The gruff voice of the ship’s cook carries through the thin walls as he calls over the intercom. “Breakfast!” is the only thing the orc says, not giving any further context to his message than that.
Groaning with a huff, Keitel dries her face and throws on her regulation maintenance overalls, their fabric stained with grease from countless repairs already. This ship is the state of the art of their fleet, if not the entire military itself, which means its a hack-job construct of unimaginable proportions that threatens to fall apart out on open water at any minute for any one of a thousand reasons. She casts a glance at her reflection in a cracked mirror. Sharp features, just like the broken glass, look back her way. Her skin is marked by the gray dullness typical of her kind, exaggerated by the shadows around her high cheekbones.
— Except the eyes. Those are saggy and round from exhaustion.
On deck, the humid air is heavy with the scent of the sea and something more… arcane. It’s the essence of the spirit world, a blend of iron, sea-salt, and a sense of wondrous enchantment that both invigorates and unsettles the senses, until one remembers that they’re at work and not actually on an adventure. Keitel steps out into the light, the deck crew bustling about, voices of camaraderie swirling around like the fog that drapes the waters.
Just like every day, several faces turn her way with a zealousness to their expressions that she finds exhausting.
“Keitel! You ready to help with the pumps?” Jaris grins from his spot near the ventilation hatch, arms crossed over his chest, radiating energy as if he himself might float away. The logistics of fairies flying aboard the ship are tangled in a messy set of regulations, given all the moving parts and one particularly unfortunate incident of one of them flying too close to the radar dish.
“Only if you promise not to try and drown me this time,” she shoots back, a playful smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth as she does her best to be nice.
Not picking up on that, as is typical of a fairy, he nods with his palms resting on his hips. “Deal! Let’s go!”
She sighs. The two of them navigate through the narrow, slippery pathways on deck, laughter and the smell of breakfast trailing behind them like a waking mist as they pass the galley. A group of sailors stands gathered around a table just by the door, shoveling the remnants of breakfast into their mouths. Keitel snags a piece of cold bread from the table; the crust is hard enough to be welded to the deck.
“Keitel!” a deep voice rumbles from the shadows beneath the main mast. It’s Marza, the ship’s lead engineer, his large frame hunched over a pile of regulation slop. He’s a human, but there’s got to be some potent orc blood deep in there somewhere — maybe his grandparents? She can’t explain his stature otherwise. “You think you can manage those pipes without almost sinking us today?”
“Some words from a man who weighs as much as a flak-cannon,” Keitel retorts. “Surprised the boat doesn’t capsize when you sit down, big man.” Marza grunts, a smile rounded at the corners of his beard, and motions for her to follow him below deck as the men at the table laugh.
One of them looks at his stale toast and throws it overboard.
— An angel swoops in from the deck, catching it before it hits the water.
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The dimly lit corridor leads into the bowels of the ship, with clanking machinery and the distant roar of the ocean vibrating through the metal hull. Keitel takes a breath, the stale air swirling around her, thick with the scent of oil and machinery greasing into a somewhat comforting blend. She likes it down here. It’s quieter than up top.
“Check that gauge,” Marza instructs, pointing to a small, flickering panel. Keitel nods, stepping closer to examine it. The green glow of the numbers is erratic, fluctuating like the waves outside. If something doesn’t stabilize soon, they’ll be in trouble.
As she leans in to adjust the gauge, an energy flickers through her — an unnerving sensation. Keitel rubs her tired face. There’s nothing wrong here.
“Everything look alright?” Marza peers over her shoulder, breaking her concentration.
“Seems like it,” she replies, adjusting the settings with practiced fingers. “But we should keep an eye on it. The vibrations in the hull have been increasing,” explains the dark-elf, knocking on the walls. “There’s something about the water here; it’s different than back home.”
“Always the sensible one, aren’t you?” Marza chuckles as he moves to a nearby gear, gripping a wrench with familiarity. “We wouldn’t want to sink on my watch, now would we?”
“Better yours than mine,” Keitel replies, the man laughing again, the fairy laughing with him.
Her eye twitches. It’s her fault for having made a joke. She should know better.
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Hours stretch on as the last of the day goes by like any other. The ship bobs gently on the waves as it travels the ocean of the spirit world, the sound of splashing water lapping at the hull providing a soothing backdrop to their work. As she gets into the zone, fixing up this and that, Keitel feels the tension of the morning dissipate.
Eventually, after nearly a full shift of work, the sky tinged with muted grey, Jaris flies into the engine room, a fairy-sized mop in hand — it is extremely inefficient work. “Hey, Keitel! Want to challenge me to a race?”
She raises an eyebrow. “A race to do what? First to jump overboard?”
Keitel flies over. “Come on, loosen up!” he asks, flying up right next to her to nudge her arm with his tiny elbow.
“You want me to crack my skull open?” she asks, knocking on a pipe at head height in the tunnel. “No thanks. Shouldn’t you be mopping?”
The fairy sighs, looking down at his tiny mop. “This is taking me forever…” he says, looking over to the patch of wet floor that is maybe a single foot wide in all directions, barely more than a small puddle. “I don’t think Command thought this through,” he ponders, scratching the back of his head.
Keitel shrugs. “Sorry. Orders are orders,” she remarks. “You’d better finish.” She lifts a finger, pointing at him. “You finish up here; I’ll meet up with you later.”
“Can’t you help me?” he asks.
“Sorry, I gotta, uh…” The dark elf reaches up, grabbing her daily to-do list and looking it over for a desperate excuse. “Fix anti-air gun seven. Bye!”
Keitel ducks through the narrow hatch of the maintenance shaft, a slight gasp escaping her lips as the fairy’s voice falls into muffled murmur behind her. The comforting gloom of the corridor envelops her like a familiar cloak, shielding her from life itself.
She loves being down in the hatches. Only a few people are allowed down here, so unlike the anarchy that is everywhere else, these passages are like a secret hole in the wall and she is the scurrying rat getting fat in its tunnels.
Taking a moment to steady herself, she leans against the cool metal wall, breathing deeply to reclaim her composure. The air is thick, carrying stale scents of oil and machinery, punctuated by the faint tang of rust. It’s a world quiet but alive, the thrum of the ship beneath her feet providing a steady reminder that life marches on, even here in the bowels of the vessel.
“All right, Keitel,” she murmurs to herself, shaking off the incredible desire to do nothing at all, now that she’s alone. Sadly, she still has her to-do list, given to her by Marza, and it almost feels like it has a very judgmental pair of eyes. “Time to get some more work done,” she mutters, looking at the last tasks for the day.
She moves further into the maintenance shaft, her footsteps echoing softly against the metal floors. A faint light flickers along the pathway, illuminating the exposed pipes and wires that snake overhead. Keitel pulls her tool belt from her waist, feeling the comforting weight of the tools nestled against her thigh as she reads the signs of wear in the dim light. As she kneels to investigate the nearest junction, her fingers deftly work through a series of checks — tightening screws, assessing the pressure valves, and ensuring the machinery breathes without obstruction.
Above her head is a ventilation shaft. The voices of the sailors on deck launch into a raucous shanty, their song rising and falling like the tide.
“Great,” Keitel groans, rolling her eyes as she tightens a bolt with exaggerated care.
As an introvert, somehow she had thought that naval duty would be the perfect way for her to serve and also find peace and quiet. The ocean is peaceful, right? Unfortunately, she had failed to calculate the space constraints and the number of people who would be here with her — a clear tactical mistake.
She grimaces at the sound of Jaris’ high-pitched voice suddenly breaking through the shanty and the way he sings with wild abandon. It seems like he just gave up on his mopping. It’s not like anyone is going to check anyway. She winces as he takes a high note. “Might just short-circuit the entire engine…" she mutters under her breath, shaking her head as she works, tightening the last bolt and closing the electrical panel again. This one is done. Time to get to the next job.
“Oi, Keitel!” Marza's voice suddenly booms from above, echoing through the duct work. “You hiding down there? Come join us! We’ve got a game going after hours.”
She stares with tired eyes, looking up at the voice.
How did he know?
The dark-elf looks back at the panel she just closed. “Oh, uh, I can’t!” she shouts back, her voice tinged with mock regret as she opens the panel again. “Panel here is a real mess,” she lies, opening and closing the panel door a few times until it makes an audible squeaking. “Gonna be a while for sure until I get out of here!” says the dark-elf, looking at the perfect wiring inside the wall-mounted box.
“Are you flaking on us? Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?” comes his retort from up above, a set of knuckles rapping against the vent.
She groans. “Right, because nothing spells ‘adventure’ like a game of cards with a bunch of drunk sailors and a suspiciously soggy deck,” she quips back up to the vent.
“Does she know we’re not drunk yet?” asks a voice quietly from up above from another man on the side.
Marza knocks on the vent again. “Franz says we’re not drunk yet, Keitel!” he calls down her way, sounding rather informative in tone.
She doesn’t respond with more than an unimpressed thumbs-up to the vent that she knows they can’t see anyway.
With a few last checks on her readings, she finishes her maintenance down here and stands, stretching her back and rolling her shoulders to release the taut muscles.
Time to get over to the anti-air gun.
Her hand reaches up for the hatch, but then seems to get stuck on it.
“...Maybe just a few minutes more,” she concedes, sliding down the wall in peace and just sitting there in silence for a moment as she lets out a long exhalation, feeling her shoulders grow slack.
— The hatch above her shrieks as it spins open, pulled from the other side. A shrill fairy’s voice calls down from just over her head. “Found her!” says Jaris, looking up at Throm.
“Fixed that panel quick, eh?” he asks.
Keitel groans, thudding her head back against the metal wall.
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The night sky stretches over the Breathless Chaplain, heavy with darkness and thick clumps of swirling clouds that blot out the stars. Some clouds look natural, like one would hope a cloud would do. Others stand upright like vertical lines, having the straight-edged shapes of such as well. Others are clearly molded in the shape of animals and things beyond the denial of them only being a vague hallucinated representation as they float through the honey-comb sky. An eerie calm hangs around the ship like a shroud. Keitel stands on deck, moonlight filtering through the clouds, casting pale shadows across her face as she crouches by the broken anti-air gun. The air is damp, clinging to her skin, and she can taste the salt on her chapped lips. The constant exposure to the salty ocean air is wreaking havoc on her hair and skin.
“Sea’s trying to break the both of us,” she mutters to the anti-air gun, her voice barely a whisper swallowed by the darkness. The gun’s internal components lie sprawled around her — metallic arms and gears, tarnished and rusting already with a speed that is certainly, if nothing else, supernatural. The slight breeze carries a chill that curls around her, raising goosebumps on her arms, but she forces herself to focus on the task. At least it’s warm inside of the gun because of all the inner-mechanical workings of it.
Keitel shifts her weight, the deck creaking beneath her boots. She tightens a few screws, the rhythmic clink of metal melding with the gentle slap of waves against the hull.
And the peaceful night is broken by a shrill squeaking. “Keitel! How’s it going down there?” Jaris calls from the railing, his tiny figure silhouetted against the clouds.
“Just trying to piece this together so I can call it a day,” she replies, not sure how the fairy isn’t tired in the least. He was up before she was.
Jaris chuckles to himself. “If it were me, I’d call it a night!” he jokes, pointing up at the moonlit sky.
— There’s a loud clanking as the spanner wrench strikes the railing he was leaning over before falling back down to the deck next to her. “Hey!” yells the fairy. “You coulda squished me!” he argues.
“Sorry,” says Keitel halfheartedly as she continues fiddling with the broken gun’s horizontal rotational mechanism, trying to put it all back together. “Really crazy wave just now. It must’ve slipped out of my hand,” she mutters, the ship rocking back and forth as she turns her head toward the ocean, watching it as if to give credence to her absolutely made-up excuse.
But as she watches the flood-light lit waters, an odd, massive ripple beneath the water catches her attention. There, just at the edge of the ship’s shadow, something swims just beneath the surface. She strains to peer into the inky blackness below. “What the…?” she whispers to herself, the words barely escaping her throat. “Hey. Jaris. Get over here,” she calls, waving with one hand as she doesn’t take her eyes off of the water.
“What?” asks the fairy.
Keitel narrows her eyes, leaning forward and squinting. “You see that?”
“See what?” he asks.
“That,” she repeats, pointing at the unusually flowing water. The waves are broken in an odd manner.
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Silhouetted against the dim light, a shape looms large, moving with an unnatural grace through the depths like a swimming worm. It undulates as it distances itself from the ship, gliding below the hull.
The water returns to normal.
“What was it?” he asks, his tone shifting as he approaches, concern flickering in his eyes. “Some kind of whale?”
Keitel doesn’t have an answer for him. The dark-elf scratches her head, staring around at the waters for a while, a pair of small wings buzzing next to her long ear.
Jaris glances over the water again, uncertainty flickering in his gaze. “Maybe it was just a trick of the light. The waves can play games with your eyes, you know.”
“...Right,” she replies, though doubt hangs in the air. “Whatever. Help me fix this shit so I can go to bed, Jaris,” she sighs, rubbing her exhausted eyes as she crawls back down to the side of the open anti-air gun. “I’m so tire-AAHD!” yells the dark-elf, unable to finish her sentence as she loses her balance and starts to slide as the ship’s bow suddenly rises toward the sky as if it were breaking a gigantic wave. Seconds later, it crashes back down again, with soldiers and night-workers tumbling all over deck as they lose their balance from the disturbance. Water splashes over both sides of the hull with a massive surge, wetting everything.
The tranquil tension of the night shatters as a monstrous roar erupts from the depths, echoing against the bow of the ship. Keitel feels the deck shudder beneath her feet as she stands still, her hands poised mid-air for balance, eyes wide in disbelief. The moon’s pallid light flickers as if recoiling from the manifestation of some drowned person’s final nightmare — a massive sea creature rises from the ocean, breaking the surface with cataclysmic force. The entire ship vibrates, rattling as if possessed by the wails of ten-thousand ghosts, as a deep, guttural animal scream without a single high-note suppresses the sea.
“THE HELL IS THAT?!” Jaris shouts, his voice filled with panic, as he jerks away from the railing, wide-eyed and suddenly frozen in place. The monstrous form crests the surface, revealing glistening scales reflecting the moonlight, slick with salt and brine. Its jaws parted, exposing rows of jagged teeth glinting in the darkness. “Keitel?!”
“Don’t know,” replies the elf, almost numbly.
“KEITEL?!” he shouts, grabbing her uniform’s collar and shaking her.
“I DON’T KNOW!” she screams back at him, shoving him off with three fingers.
Before she can react any further, the alarms blare throughout the ship, shrill and deafening, ripping through the silence like a blade through flesh. Red lights flash into chaotic existence, illuminating the dark corners of the deck and strobing with distant vapors of ruby light over the glistening black monster that towers over the ship — until a dozen spotlights hammer on, casting a blinding shine over the wailing thing and making its perplexingly impossible body more and more visible and yet, at the same time, less decipherable than when it was cast in darkness. The details don’t make sense — the way it moves, the way it is — it doesn’t make sense. Looking at it makes her head scream. Keitel wobbles, wincing as she braces herself on the anti-air gun, unable to hear the fairy’s screaming because of the ringing in her head that is louder than even the ship’s sirens.
“Battle stations! All hands, man, your posts!” the voice of the admiral booms over the intercom.
Just as Jaris finishes, a gigantic shadow surges from the depths, shooting toward the ship with terrifying speed. Massive black tentacles, slick and glistening with seawater, erupt from the surface, grasping hungrily at the hull as the sea monster rises once more. Each tentacle is lined with pulsating suckers as large as a man’s head, dripping with a thick, dark ichor that drips down like ink trailing through the water. The ship rocks, thousands of tracer-rounds flying off into the night in a chaotic hailstorm toward the monster as they threaten to capsize.
Keitel drops her tool, the wrench sliding over the deck and past the railing, into the water with a splash she can’t hear. adrenaline coursing through her veins as she races to join the others, her heart pounding in rhythm with the stirring storm of emotions around her. Crew members dart past, their faces flush, some slipping in the slickness of the deck, others shouting orders that get lost in the cacophony of alarms and gunfire.
— The world shakes. Keitel slips and stumbles, smashing her face into the metal wall next to her as a massive black tendril lands right in their path, blocking it and wrapping itself around the ship’s side. Metal railings bend, flatten, and fold as if they were paperclips in a man’s fingers. Her eyes stare at the throbbing suckers attached to the side of the tentacle — not all of which are latched onto the vessel. Some of them are angled toward her, and they’re nauseating to watch. Her head spinning, Keitel can only sit there, her boots slipping around on the wet deck as she watches the oozing, sphincter-like openings on the appendage pulsate and quiver as it slides around the ship, finding places to latch onto. “Move it, Keitel!” Jaris yells, grabbing her by the back of her collar and pulling on her. It’s no good; he’s much too small to move her by as much as an inch. But his shrill voice does the job from next to her ear, finding its way into her brain. Keitel slips around to her feet, bracing herself on a rattling pipe as she stumbles back the way they just came, a loud sucking and squelching coming from just behind them as the creature finds more things to grab — some of which scream for only just a moment before they’re engulfed in a sloppy wetness that she doesn’t turn her head back around to observe. The monstrous creature roars again, an otherworldly sound that resonates deep within her chest.
Without warning, a column of water erupts alongside the ship, spraying salt and mist across the deck. The beast lunges upward, lunging toward the hull, a massive coil of muscle glistening in the darkness as bullets press into it, sinking into the dripping mass rather than penetrating it. Does it have teeth? She doesn’t know. She can’t tell. Keitel stumbles back toward the anti-air battery, holding on as the ship rocks. Jaris, not having such difficulties, has already flown to the next corridor, hurriedly gesturing for her to pick up the pace. It’s everywhere. Tentacles wrap themselves around the stations, the bridge, the people.
— Keitel dives to the ground, a roar above her head shaking everything she knows as a tendril punches straight through the metal wall of the cabin next to her. She pants, sliding from her side onto her back as she tries to crawl over the floor as a thick ooze globs down toward her. A throbbing, gaping sucker hangs just above her head as she shimmies below the tentacle like she were crawling below a hot pipe in the maintenance shaft, doing her best not to cry. Panting for breath, Keitel stares up at the hole.
Something twitches.
She rolls to the side, screaming as the wet sucker she was just under slams down to the ground, connecting to the slick metal of the ship, splattering ooze in all directions as it makes contact. Frantically, she crawls, pulling her legs out after her just in time as something heavy and damp crushes down on the spot she was just at. Hammering comes from all around her as she runs, slipping around the deck. She can’t tell if the sound is coming from fists, banging against flooding bulges that they’re trapped inside of, or from the creature. The sea rages, water crashing over the side of the ship, the rising waves torn apart by machine-gun fire as they themselves seem to try to escape toward the distant sky, awash in crimson siren-light.
She slips, sliding toward the door.
A shadow crashes overhead, disrupting the moonlight for just a second, and she dives out of the way, tumbling and smashing into a bend railing just as a massive tentacle smashes overhead, completely flattening and crumpling in the entryway back into the galley. Desperately, Keitel crawls through the ooze, starting to cover the deck, her vision spinning from the bleeding in her head, and then moving into a full dance as the corners of her eyes look at the creature. Her hands slapping through black slime, she pulls herself back into the only place that’s left to go — exactly where she began. Except now the voices are louder, whether from mechanicals or from people. She can hear it coming from all directions.
— Worse, she can hear it coming from the tentacles. The sea winds are whispering, but the obscuration screams from the depths.
The quivering suckers that have yet to attach themselves to anything repeat the noises of anything that is horrific, screaming, crying, and shouting. A tentacle slides, slipping over the deck back behind her, and she can hear a serenade of a hundred wet screams coming from its dripping orifices.
It’s all so loud. It’s all too much. She can’t think, she can’t hear, and she can’t see. Her heart is racing in her chest to a painful level, vomit is rising in her gut, and then, following her introvert’s instincts, Keitel drops down and crawls into the broken anti-air gun’s hatch, slamming it shut behind herself as she gasps for air, breathing in the familiar, comfortable smell of a dark, greasy, mechanical space.
She pants, pressing her back to the broken anti-air gun’s internals as she closes her eyes, holding her face as she gasps, trying to numb the over stimulation in her mind. But she can hear something whispering in her head; she can hear voices all around her, even here in the dark, as the ocean rages just outside of this thin metal shell.
After a few seconds, Keitel looks around herself at the surface-to-air missiles of the battery that are lined up in an array-pod. It’s fucked. The rotational mechanism is broken, jammed by the results of the elements. Her tools are outside. It’s not fixable here like this. It’s stuck in the forward facing idle position.
She thinks, her eyes wandering to the service ladder next to her in the cramped tube.
Wait.
Keitel scrambles over, grabs the ladder, and hoists herself up a handful of rungs, opening the hatch. The storm pelts back into her face immediately, sea water splashing in toward her as she looks to the sky, the ship threatening to overturn, her legs dangling freely for a second. A great murmuring fills the air, the vessel rocking back in the other direction a second later. She slams against the sides of the open hatch, holding herself steady and stopping herself from falling out and into the wild sea.
She scrambles, ducking just in time as a whistling piece of scrap metal flies past her, leaving a deep scar in the side of the gun as it impales its way through the bridge’s neck like a knife. The dark-elf clenches her eyes shut, crying and gasping for air as she pulls herself forward on her belly across the corrugated metal walkway to the gunner’s station — as one does during any normal day of work.
It doesn’t matter if the gun can’t rotate.
— As long as its right in front of them.
Keitel drags herself up toward the controls, her fist hammering down on the maintenance fail safe, deactivating the weapon’s lock. Immediately, the amber siren next to her lights up like a single star in the night, having had the grace to fall down from the sanctuary above to share in the horrors of the living with her for just but a solitary wayward night.
She doesn’t want to, but she can’t stop herself. She looks at it, at the creature.
It’s a shapeless mess that is impossible to focus on; the more she looks at it, the less distinct it becomes. Nausea strengthens itself in her gut, and she grasps the side of the railing as the boat sways, vomiting down over the side as her other hand hammers into the anti-air gun’s controls.
The monster’s shape changes, but it also remains the same. She’s not sure what it is in composition, but her eyes tell her it looks like a screaming face with an endless throat, and then they tell her its a black centipede — crawling itself into a knot a thousand times over. She sways back to the gun, a thousand different voices calling in her mind as the eyes see her. It looks like a flat, two-dimensional stain on the canvas of the night sky and then a second later, as her mind tries to process it, her thoughts tell her that the creature looks like a melting world, dripping down over another one. Any sense of scale, of distance, of shape or angle, or any defining characteristic of the thing simply doesn’t process correctly in her mind. It’s wrong. It’s like this thing is wrong on a fundamental level below baseline reality. It’s like a thing from somewhere else that doesn’t belong in either the physical or the spirit world.
The gun wont fire.
Keitel hangs on for life as the storm rages, the ship rocking as it crests a massive wave, rising at a disturbed, sharp angle with a sudden crash and drop to follow immediately after — but the creature never moves or loses its position. It’s like its anchored directly in front of the boat, as if it were a rod sticking out from the sea-floor directly ahead of them, no matter what.
No.
It’s attached to them. It’s holding on the ship.
Her fists desperately hit the controls. The gun wont fire. Why the hell won’t the gun.
— The rockets are still locked. The gun is unlocked, but the munition’s loader is still secured in place with a mechanical stop. She has to remove it first.
Keitel looks back behind herself at the hatch she crawled out of.
It’s done for. That piece of metal that had flown by before gnarled the hatch door into a crumple of steel that has wadded itself into a bent wall plate too thick for her to move even if she had a winch. She can’t get back down from here and back up again.
The dark-elf slowly turns her head back forward, her eyes going wide, because ten-thousand eyes stare directly at her. Tentacles, lined with pulsating, blackwater festering holes, have risen up into the air like siege-ladders, presented for a host to raid the bastions of Heaven itself. She grasps the sides of her head, a sharp toned pulse deafening her senses as she winces, stumbling against the gun and letting out a sharp scream in pain as a knife cuts through her head as long — impossibly long — grasping things reach out for her.
They look like hands, then they look like fingers. Keitel stumbles, blood leaking from her ears and her eyes as she sees visions of her mother reaching out toward her to pick her up — then a flash of lightning, which reveals the horrific shape for just a second. The lightning fades. The illusion returns in another form, then another. People, things, and feelings all reach out for her; they all want her to reach out for them. The dark-elf holds herself against the console, lifting up a hand toward the black ocean to grab hold of a familiar, safe touch as rainwater pours down her face and stained overalls.
She feels so safe now, all of a sudden.
— A shrill voice cracks through the side of her head, more nauseating that any abyssal power has to offer. Jaris. “Hey! Keitel!” shrieks the fairy at the side of her head, yanking on her ear. “Keitel!” he yells.
— Someone socks her with a wrench on the side of the head.
Keitel snaps out of it, grasping her sore skull and looking at the blackness all around them — at the oozing, the pulsating, the wicking slime that drips down in globules around the gun and sickers through the last of the catwalk she’s on. “The rockets are go!” says Keitel, holding the wrench she threw at him before in both arms, barely managing to stay afloat. He uncapped the rockets. She can hear the loader sliding into place. “DO IT!” he yells at her over the storm as flashes of lightning eep through the dense cracks around them. The sky is barely visible anymore, as a cage of tendrils has begun to lower themselves around the two of them, pulsating suckers gasping out, each hungrily trying to be the first to take them in.
A massive tendril hangs ahead of them, a hole in it opening up like the gate to another world filled with nothing but endless darkness and gnashing teeth, the grooved, meaty edges of the hold pulsating like lips drawing in air as it falls their way.
Keitel falls forward, her fist hitting the firing mechanism. “SUCK ON THIS!” screams the sailor, a great hissing of a serpent rapturing the world. A flow of superheated backblast launches out of the back of the battery at the same time as a dozen rockets launch forward in an asynchronous volley that releases in full in the span of a few seconds. The gun’s metal hisses as the rain lands on it. The rockets propel through the air in just a fraction of an instant, like the arrow’s of divine archers toward the heart of a beast. Explosions fill the night, fire racking out in all directions at the ship’s bow, the cruiser steering straight into it as if it were a guiding star on the horizon. Fire blasts out in all directions, the resonations of the sudden eruptions filling the air and rattling through the vessel like a dozen simultaneous strikes of thunderfall.
The roar of the sea monster reverberates through the air, a sound that claws at the edges of Keitel's sanity, scratching at it like a claw against a window at night, begging to be let in for only just a moment. It thrashes the water, sending waves crashing over the deck as pieces of black press through fire, only to be melted and scorched away. The impact throws it back into the dark waters, a spray of foam erupting around them, the ocean swirling like a vortex around the bow of the Chaplain. It begins to vanish, both back beneath the water and into the fire at the same time. Its tentacles rip and shred, some blasting apart and others trying to retreat below the surface of the violent sea.
Endless murmurs fill the air and fill her head. Endless eyes stare empty through the flames and the seaspray as it tries to make its escape and vanishes back below into the depths — the Thing that Grasps.
For a moment, the ship lies still, the echoes of the gunfire mingling with the rolling waves as silence blankets them like a shroud. Keitel stands trembling, breathless.
Then, with a final, deafening, drowning voice that comes from ten-thousand gurgling mouths, the creature fully vanishes beneath the waves, leaving behind ripples that lap against the ship's hull.
The echoes settle into silence, and the tension eases into queasy disbelief. Keitel leans over the railing, vomiting a second time.
“I mean, I guess ‘suck on this’ was kinda cool?” says Jaris at her side, patting her consolingly. “But it seems inappropriate, considering we’re at work here. And it’s a little generic. I think you could’ve done better,” he ponders, sitting on her back as she releases her insides onto the destroyed deck below. “We’ll work on it.”
Her vomit splatters against the deck.
The vaguely beige puddle makes the shape of a face.
— Or maybe it doesn’t.
----------------------------------------
- [Pilot] -
Pilot lies on his back, his eyes twitching as he clenches the bed sheets.
Sirens blaze across the ship. Gunfire and explosions are coming from all across the vessel. It’s a full emergency of extreme severity. They need him out there. He has to go.
— But he can’t. He’s stuck.
The man rolls his head to the side, still not having gotten up. His eyes stare at the two glowing orbs just next to him. Caretaker, given her antlers and her stage of pregnancy, has to sleep on her back. But she has a mean side-eye, and her arm is wrapped over him backwards like a hostage-taker’s rope. She’s strong as all hell when she needs to be. He’s sure his ribs are a second away from cracking.
“I have to go!” he insists. “They need my help!”
Caretaker glares at him, shushing him with her other arm that is wrapped around Luisa, who is sleeping on Caretaker’s shoulder and snoring like a tugboat. That girl wouldn’t wake up if the world was ending, which it may well be doing. “This is a boat. You’re a pilot, Pilot,” she explains, sighing. “So you’re staying here with your family. I won’t let you run away from your responsibilities all the time,” she notes.
“My responsibilities are out there. I need to keep us safe!” he insists. “I can’t just lie here if we’re about to sink!” he argues, trying to wiggle free.
— A man grabs hold of the outside of the porthole window, screaming as he’s dragged along the outside of the ship by a massive black tentacle. His cries fade into obscurity.
The two of them stare for a second and then look back at each other. Caretaker drops her leg over his thighs, locking it down around the side of the bed. “We are safe. I already lost my husband for a full year while he was busy training his stupid army!” she argues. “Now they’re trained. They can handle this. You’re staying right here with your family!” snaps the dryad at him, grabbing both Luisa and him together toward herself. He’s pretty sure one of his ribs actually does crack. Luisa just lets out some satisfied mumbles, rubbing her face into Caretaker’s shoulder with a smile. The girl is still feasting after her long period of love starvation. “This is a precious family moment we’re having!” warns Caretaker in a hiss, so as to not wake up Luisa.
— From outside comes a loud, whispering murmur like whale song, trying to copy the nightmares of people. It speaks in the dead languages of the buried, haunted cultures of the world.
Caretaker and Pilot stare at the empty, black eye of an unspeakable monstrosity staring in through the porthole for a second toward them. Caretaker flicks a finger. The potted houseplant on the table by the window stretches out a vine, snapping the porthole shut and blocking the view.
“Go to sleep,” she says.
Pilot’s eyes twitch. The man, the legend, the deathless black bird of the war that never ends — beaten by something of his own creation.
A series of loud explosions break out outside. Anti-air missiles. He can tell from the sound. He can identify just about every weapon in their arsenal by listening to audio and sensoral queues alone.
This was an array of Sturmwasser surface-to-air missiles. They’re two-meter-long, twenty-one-kilo magic-seeking missiles with a highly explosive five-hundred-gram warhead detonated via a contact fuse. Fueled by hypergolic liquid fuel, they can achieve a maximum speed of three thousand kilometers per hour with a boost time of just two point five seconds. They’re a beautiful marvel of magical engineering, meant to be fired in a swarm rather than as an individual projectile. They were created to solve the problem of dealing with high-altitude monster flights, which flak guns couldn’t reach.
God he loves war.
“…Are you thinking about the missiles?” she asks quietly next to him. Pilot stares at the ceiling and then nods silently once, not giving an answer. She knows. Caretaker slides her head over a side, giving him a half-kiss as best as she can by stretching her mouth but not turning her head. “Love you. Good night.”
The sea becomes quiet. The air becomes quiet. The vessel begins to steady, and the sirens begin to wane.
It looks like they survived.
Lying on his back, Pilot stares up toward the metal ceiling of their family cabin, his arm below the pillow so he can hold his two favorite people, soon to be three.
Everything is quiet.
“…My arm is falling asleep,” mutters Pilot quietly, twitching the fingers below Caretaker’s shoulder to get some blood into them.
There is no response to this problem other than two snores from his side.
His arm goes numb.
— Another casualty of the war that never ends.