Chapter 165: Land

The dark smudge resolved into shapes the closer it got.

Malik counted at least six distinct masses rising and falling with the swell, each one trailing black water in its wake like oil spreading across the surface. Too large to be normal sea life. Too coordinated to be anything natural.

"Captain."

His voice carried across the deck, certain enough that heads turned.

"I am sure that you have picked it up by now, but those aren’t whales."

The captain had already pulled a spyglass from her coat, pressing it to her eye, and Malik watched her face shift from confusion to something closer to dread.

"Gods."

"Demons."

Malik corrected, not unkindly.

"Or close enough."

Through the salt-crusted lens, even without the spyglass, he could see it now.

Bloated, segmented bodies breaching the water in rolling arcs, skin the color of old bruises, dozens of eyes scattered across their backs like barnacles.

Abyssal leftovers.

The kind of thing that occasionally slipped up from the wave.

"Full sails!"

The captain barked.

"Every hand, now!"

The crew scrambled into motion, ropes creaking, canvas snapping taut overhead as the ship lurched forward with new speed.

Malik grabbed the nearest line without being told, hauling alongside Tarek, who’d gone pale as bone.

"W-what are those things?"

"Trouble, young one. But do not worry too much and keep pulling."

The ship picked up speed, but so did the shapes behind them.

Faster than they should have been able to move.

Faster than anything that size had any right to move through open water.

Malik’s eyes narrowed as the first one breached fully, launching clear out of the water in an arc that sent spray fountaining in every direction.

For a split second, he got a clear look at it.

Yes, it was not a whale. Not even close.

A writhing mass of limbs and teeth, vaguely serpentine, vaguely insectoid, its mouth splitting open sideways to reveal row after row of needle teeth arranged in a spiral pattern that would have made any stomach turn.

It crashed back into the water with a boom loud enough to rock the ship.

"MOVE FASTER!"

The captain screamed, but everyone already was.

There wasn’t a faster setting.

Malik glanced over his shoulder as he hauled on the rope, doing the math in his head.

Six of those things, closing distance, and a wooden trading vessel with sails that could only catch so much wind.

’This isn’t going to work, not without my help at least.’

Though exhausted beyond measure, he could still fight.

He had Spine Splitter at his hip, fire in his blood, and enough tricks left in his arsenal to kill every single one of those things given time and space.

But he didn’t have time, and he definitely didn’t have space, not on a crowded merchant ship with thirty terrified sailors who had no idea their deckhand could do anything more than coil rope.

’I need to keep it subtle for now.’

Another one of the creatures breached, closer this time, close enough that Malik could make out individual eyes rolling independently across its segmented back, tracking the ship with predatory focus.

It dove back under.

"They’re herding us."

The captain had heard him.

"What?"

"They’re not attacking yet. They’re herding us somewhere."

He didn’t like how that sounded out loud. Didn’t like it even more when he looked ahead and realized the ship’s course had been subtly, gradually bending, the wind pushing them towards a direction nobody had actually chosen.

Towards a gap between two jagged rock formations jutting from the water.

"Captain, hard turn, now—"

Too late.

Something slammed into the ship’s hull from below.

The entire vessel lurched sideways, wood groaning in protest, sailors screaming as they lost their footing and tumbled across the deck.

Malik grabbed the railing just in time, boots skidding against wet wood, and watched in grim fascination as a tentacle, thick as a mast, curled up over the side of the ship.

It wasn’t attached to any of the six creatures he’d already spotted.

Something bigger was down there.

"Everyone get below deck!"

The captain’s voice cracked under the strain.

Half the crew scrambled for the hatches. The other half froze, staring as the tentacle slammed down onto the deck, splintering wood and crushing a crate of cargo flat.

Malik didn’t freeze.

He drew Spine Splitter.

"Beard, what are you—"

Tarek’s voice cut off as Malik moved, faster than any normal sailor had any right to move, closing the distance to the tentacle in a single stride.

Golden fire bloomed along the blade as he swung, and the steel bit clean through rubbery flesh, severing a section of the limb in one smooth motion.

Black blood sprayed across the deck.

The severed section thrashed once, then went still.

That was when somewhere below the ship, something screamed.

A sound so deep it vibrated up through the hull itself, shaking loose cargo from its ties.

The entire ship rocked violently, and Malik had to plant his feet just to stay upright.

"What was that?!"

The captain shouted at him, no longer bothering to pretend he was just a deckhand.

"Something that’s going to be very angry in about three seconds."

Malik took a stance.

"Brace yourselves."

The water around the ship erupted.

A massive shape breached the surface, far larger than the six abominations that had been chasing them, its body a horrifying amalgamation of the smaller creatures’ features scaled up a hundredfold.

Dozens of mouths.

Hundreds of eyes.

Limbs that didn’t match, stolen and stitched together from countless different things that had never been meant to share a single body.

’Oh. There’s a mother.’

Of course there was.

The thing let out another ear-splitting shriek, and the six smaller creatures that had been herding the ship suddenly surged forward in unison, closing the remaining distance in seconds.

Malik didn’t have time to be subtle anymore.

"Everyone hold onto something!"

He didn’t wait to see if they listened.

Devil’s Footsteps ignited beneath his boots, and he was moving, golden fire trailing behind him as he launched himself off the deck and straight at the nearest of the six smaller creatures as it breached again.

Spine Splitter carved through its exposed throat in a single pass, and it collapsed back into the water, already dissolving.

One down.

The massive creature’s attention snapped toward him.

’Good. Focus on me instead of the ship.’

It lunged, jaws the size of a small building snapping shut where Malik had been standing a half-second earlier, Devil’s Footsteps carrying him clear in a burst of flame.

He landed on one of its many limbs, running up the length of it before it could react, Spine Splitter trailing fire the entire way.

Malik reached its main body and drove the blade deep.

The creature’s scream this time was loud enough to crack the surface of the water around them, sending waves crashing against the ship’s hull hard enough to nearly capsize it.

Malik held on, letting the thrashing carry him, waiting for an opening.

Behind him, he could hear the captain barking orders, trying to steer the ship away from the chaos, trying to buy distance while her deckhand apparently turned out to be something far more dangerous than a shipwrecked passenger.

’Sorry about the cover story.’

He would explain later.

Maybe.

The creature bucked hard, nearly throwing him loose, and Malik dug his fingers into its flesh, using Goliath’s Fall to anchor himself in place even as his frame swelled to compensate for the force trying to shake him off.

Ember’s Touch flared.

Golden fire spread from the wound he’d already opened, racing along the creature’s flesh in branching veins of light, and it thrashed harder, more desperate now, the pain clearly registering even through whatever twisted biology held it together.

Two more of the smaller creatures broke off from circling the ship, diving instead toward Malik, trying to pry him loose from their mother’s back.

He didn’t give them the chance.

Scorpion’s Sting.

The golden fire along his blade darkened, curling into something hungrier, and when the first creature lunged close enough, Malik swung without hesitation, the black flame eating through flesh and bone without leaving anything behind to regenerate from.

It didn’t even have time to scream.

The second one hesitated, something like caution flickering through its too-many eyes, and Malik used the pause to drive Spine Splitter even deeper into the mother creature’s back, twisting hard.

The ship, meanwhile, had put real distance between itself and the fight.

’Good, good.’

That was the point.

The mother creature’s thrashing grew weaker, more labored, black blood pooling across the water’s surface in an ever-expanding stain.

Malik held on grimly, fire still spreading, still consuming, refusing to let go even as exhaustion crept into his limbs.

Finally, with one last shuddering convulsion, the creature went still.

Malik rode it down as it began to sink, waiting until the last possible moment before kicking off and launching himself back toward the surface, Devil’s Footsteps carrying him in a long arc through open air.

He landed hard on the ship’s deck, rolling to absorb the impact, and came up breathing heavy, blood and black ichor streaked across his clothes.

Silence.

Thirty sailors stared at him.

Nobody moved.

Nobody spoke.

Malik straightened, sheathed Spine Splitter, and offered the only explanation he figured they deserved.

"A storm wasn’t the only thing I survived."

Nobody laughed this time.

The captain approached slowly, her expression somewhere between awe and suspicion.

"Who are you?"

Malik considered several answers.

Most of them would have caused more problems than they solved.

"Someone who wants to reach land, the same as you."

In the distance, finally visible through the thinning fog, a dark line broke the horizon.

Land.