𝓢𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓪𝓻𝓴

Wild, murky waters batter against the hull of the ship. Still awake, his eyes like hard gems, Joachim stares into the veil of darkness, cut only by the dangling lantern on the ship’s prow as it wanes closer and closer to extinguishing. The shadows bounced in and out of sight, much like the nightmares creeping at the edge of his fatigued mind. Around him, the irrepressible snores of the crew came in a staccato discord, taunting as he desperately tried to join.

Each time the weight of his eyelids grew heavy, the smell of burning flesh singes his nostrils.

He jolts awake, only vaguely aware that his breaths come in and out panicked wheezes, when suddenly blackened with the memory of that night.

In the distance, lightning flashes.

Sitting up sharply, the boatswain worries his brow ridge with his thumb and middle finger, pressing as if to wipe the stain of it from his mind. The hopelessness of it rattles his chest more than pneumonia ever could. What he left behind was more than a tragic hamlet hidden in the Ochre mountains.

Ug Bellof, a desolate fishing hamlet ensconced in perpetual mist, clung to the edge of a forgotten coastline. Its ramshackle homes huddle together like mourners, battered by relentless sea winds. The shallow waters surrounding the town cradle rickety dinghies, or floating homes, each one a weathered relic. Hand-woven nets, more spider silk than twine, dangle like ghostly tapestries from sagging poles, seeking to ensnare fish and souls alike. The villagers, weathered by both salt and sorrow, are mere puppets in a stoic dance, awaiting nothingness. The sleepy village, molded by the cruel hands of the sea, echoed with the dirge song of the waves, a lullaby for those who have long surrendered their dreams to the depths. The air is thick and sulfuric.

The marine diet, a monotonous banquet of salted mackerel, herring, and pollock, permeates every facet of life. They exported jewelry and utensils of fish bone and herbal infusions made of fish head soup but were otherwise insular. They still believed in the Old Gods.

Time seemed measured by the ebb and flow of anguish. There was no joy there. Only sacred trees from which small dolls dangled; a macabre tradition that marked the memory of the Last Children. Trade no longer came to the forsaken outpost swallowed by the abyss. Entry to Ug Bellof was marked by the skeletal remains of corpses laid to rest against creaking hulls of broken boats, beckoning travelers to enter their silted embrace beneath the water.

Yet, as the violent sway of the ocean carried the men further and further away, the anchor of home still wouldn’t leave him.

This expedition to the tribes of the Ameerikaz was rumored to be auspicious, filled with rich lands and hedonistic culture. Expeditions into its mainland were novice, its cartography unknownst aside from converging rivers that run four miles in. Yet, the awed whispers told of structures of gold that blinded the eyes beneath the sun, of exotic women with umber skin that traipsed unsheathed of clothes, of animals which produced a terrifying bellow and gave chase.

War had yet to deface these obscure lands, and so the merchants and trappers wove uneasy alliances with the tribes, their hands extended in trade, yet their greedy eyes set upon the demesne’s riches. The natives saw promise in the entente, unaware that the pale pilgrims had come not as friends, but as surveyors of flesh and fortune. Their hands muddied by the orders scrawled across salt-stained ledgers: chart the land, assess and obtain its resources, and when winter gnawed at the bones, cull the weak in silence.

Knowledge such as this was burdensome. Joachim wished he did not know building new colonies required the senseless slaughter of its natives. But his heart could not turn soft to their horrors when starvation robbed compassion from him.

Around him, the respiration of the ship brought little comfort as he watched the stars slowly blink from the sky.

The Miricurios itself was an elegant marvel: a four-masted barque rigged ship, pioneering the new liners that would transition from the oak of old to the sleek lines of steel. The gilded figurehead of Kalliope, an African queen famed for her battles, adorned its bow, pointing forward with her red-tipped spear. The massive vessel was capable of transporting 1400 tons but carried spice, coffee, and wood, and finished manufactures. Below deck, the bulk of the weight came from caches of Winchester lever-action rifles, sabres, and Flintlock Blunderbusses.

Beyond its massive structure, the true technological wonder lies at its center, a compound marine steam engine using high and low pressure cylinders to make its performance more powerful and efficient.

Yet for its magnitude, they found themselves beleaguered. The sea had warned them. Winds shifted without cause, compasses spun aimlessly, and birds abandoned the masts long before land was ever glimpsed. But the crew, drunk on gold-laced promises, did not listen. They did not see. Nineteen days into a projected sixty-six day journey, supplies diminished from rot. Wildlife succumbed to disease. The Captain lost the sun for five days, suspending them in eternal night, as the waters luminated sporadically, revealing silhouettes with tentacles that dwarfed the Miricurios. The men dared not breathe a sigh.

An unnatural pant emits from the boilers before they grow silent. Suddenly, their hull is at the mercy of Nehalennia, the goddess of the sea and vicious is her mood.

The hairs on the back of Joachim’s neck rise.

Danger. The sour taste of it is palpable on his tongue.

An alarmed shout would not stir the men, for tonight was filled with drinking and rambunctious dancing, the passageway to the sunken depths of hard slumber.

His fingers grapple at his bedside, seeking an instrument the length of a woman’s hand. The Boatswain’s Call is an innate series of high, lows, and trills made through piping, a naval practice of passing Orders and information. Any man that chanced the fickleness of the sea knew its resonance by heart.

The boat swings hard to the right, and everything unanchored swiftly relocates opposite. The sound of bursting steel. The boilers rupture. Wood barrels tumble over bedrolls over bodies over the bedframes that crash through rotting softwood below. Steam is spewing from the pipes below; even over the roar of tempest’s howl, he can hear the anguished screams of scorched men.

With another violent lurch, the ship capsizes on its side and is still for a moment. Joachim climbs to his feet, unable for a moment to grasp the sight. The magnificent vessel, now a fragmented skeleton torn asunder by the tumultuous sea, releasing a barrage of metallic shrapnel and wire that indiscriminately cuts through the air. Men and women, tossed like ragdolls in the tempest’s wrath, find themselves entangled in a grotesque ballet of carnage. The ominous symphony of tearing metal mingles with the agonized cries of the wounded as steel fragments and razor-sharp wires cleave through flesh and bone. Some clutch at their wounds, attempting to staunch the flow with trembling hands. Others writhe in agony, indistinguishable from the remnants of the ship. The acrid miasma of burnt flesh and blood thickens the air.

Moonlight pours in from the portholes lined above before being blotted out. A monstrous apparition emerges from the depths, uttering a thundering roar that chills him in a way no earthly thing can. Undulating, centipede-like limbs, wraps around the ship, coiling and constricting with relentless force. As it tightens its grip, the ship splinters and groans, a testament to the futility of man against the elemental rage.

He has a feeling of weightlessness – the last of the stars blink out and they are left afloat in the eerie glow of a bioluminescent yellow. For a moment, even the heavy rain leaves no sound upon the world. Suddenly the hull of the ship splits like an experienced fisherman husking scallops and radiant orbs as piercing as the Sun peers through. The breath in his lungs seized suddenly with the scream that died on his lips and then–

the cold wind biting

metal cutting through rain, his cheek

the pain of bones breaking

Beneath the tumultuous waves, yellow beams filter through the dancing ripples, casting an otherworldly glow that bathes the submerged scene in an eerie calm. The contrast is surreal. Amidst escaping bubbles and the tang of blood, the shadows shift, growing larger…closer…

Panic constricts his chest. Joachim claws for the surface.

Above him, the second mate, Albert, an able-bodied Belgian in his forties, flails in his attempt to ascend. Joachim remembers him as a stoic and handsome man that meticulously groomed his mustache, carved scrimshaw, and abstained from alcohol. Devout in his quiet faith, he often watched through the crew with a guarded gaze. But in another, untroubled life many, many summers ago, he swam lakes like an Olympian and could hold his breath as he apnea dived to its bottoms for opals. Now, attached to his fishing suspenders was his beloved sextant, upon which an apprentice’s headless torso acts as an anchor. The determination to survive hadn’t left him, if only he could detach the instrument, but his forearm dangled useless in the current, tethered by only sinew.

Joachim kicks his feet and can feel the ocean surrendering to his will. The distance between Albert and him closed; his hand firmly grasped the underside of a boot, reaching to dislodge the macabre flotsam. He felt the violent, desperate thrashes jolting through his arm. The water shifted but a moment and he was left grasping a dismembered shin.

As the otherworldly eyes of the bellowing Leviathan cut through the icy depths, Joachim’s eyes strain to catch glimpses of the depths. From the cocoon of darkness, the mesmerizing forms of nereids, their appearances exhibit a dichotomy of allure and malevolence. Some are resplendent hominin beings, their scintillating skin adorned in hues of cerulean, aquamarines, and heliotrope, like living jewels of the moana. With hair like fine strands of pearl, lips like plums, luminous topaz eyes glinting with otherworldly wisdom, they are the epitome of enchantment as they move with a precise and elegant grace. Yet, the beauty belies their dark intent. With languid movements, the once-beautiful creatures now wear a malevolent visage as they converge upon their prey.

The Others that circle are rapacious, taunting its prey, as they transform before his blurring gaze. Instead of threads like moonlight for hair, tangled, seaweed-laden clumps wrapped around gasping throats. Instead of luminous gems, hollow voids gleefully rake over their bounty. Cursed wraiths, with jutting rib cages covered in algae and barnacles and tails resembling coral. They adorn their skeletal heads with broken crowns and the bones of their kills. The lower half of their sunken face and exposed, withered breasts are permanently stained with black ichor. The scent of decay and brine filled his nostrils as their mangled fingers reached out, their touch a searing agony branding his flesh.

He lacked Albert’s athletic grace but his ill-shaped adolescent body developed into a rugged resilience. From childhood, he had been schooled in the art of whaling, mastering the treacherous rhythms of Nehalennia’s merciless undulations. Yet now, the chaotic currents, intensified by the Leviathan’s fury, tossed his body adrift with no direction. Around him, the nereids feast, and he senses the water warming from the blood. Suspended in the infinite blackness, he faced the grim reality: this would be his tomb.

No, his mind pleaded.

The frigid embrace of the abyss constricted his chest, each desperate gasp drawing in more of the ocean’s brine. Saltwater scorched his throat. His limbs, once stalwart from years of whaling, now betrayed him, succumbing to the relentless pull of the depths. Glimpses of hell pierced his vision: his sister’s anguished cries, the haunting image of her clutching her child amidst the flames.

Just as darkness threatened to claim him, a violent surge propels him upward. The Leviathan’s thrashing tentacles inadvertently ensnares his shirt on its ragged scale, wrenching him from the clutches of the deep. Breaking the surface, an involuntary gasp escapes him as his body greedily gulps air. His shriveled lungs hurt as they swell with oxygen.

The world shifts again,

feet over head

as sea becomes sky

becomes…

He is flung through the air and crashes into the water, moments after jetsam has broken the surface. Disoriented, hands seek purchase anywhere, grasp only water until…his vision clears long enough to behold a cracked yawl, the only intact remains of the Miricurios. Weakly, he hoists himself aboard, only able to gain leverage onto the jollyboat once Albert’s mangled, half-devoured skull helps him gain footing.

Collapsing, consciousness waning, he hears his mother’s fragmented voice, recounting the tale of Cærun, the ferryman who escorted souls to the realm of the dead. In a fleeting moment, he ponders his own passage, bereft of coin or offering for safe transit. As the vessel glided silently towards shore guided by phantom pallbearers, he succumbs to the void, oblivious to the horrors that lay beyond the horizon.