“Looks like the agents found one of our friends first,” The Captain whispers with interest.

  Dunklestein and Cluton stare on with horror while Cole concentrates on another passageway, one that the others aren’t even acknowledging for whatever reason. He aims his rifle down it just to be sure.

  Boris leans forward to speak as softly as he can to The Captain. The lobster takes a long breath, considering his words before whispering: “DO YOU THINK WE ARE OF-”

  “Quiet, Boris!” The Captain snaps back under his breath.

  “BUT THIS IS OF THE-”

  “No, it’s n-”

  The group hears a horrible, truly terrible sound emerge from the hall. It defies proper explanation, but could be reasonably-well described as the sound of an entire fire team of men having their armor raked off by the teeth of some unknown putrefaction of perverse nature. The screams begin, and it’s truly an eldritch noise.

  “So, uh, what’s the plan?” Cluton whispers amidst the screaming, twisting, very fleshy noises just down the passage way.

  The Captain peers on down the passage, but notices Cole. He doesn’t have to look directly at someone to see them; he is the Captain, after all.

  “Mister Ketiere, what the hell are you looking at?”

  Cole doesn’t move his gaze. “Pullin’ security.”

  “Shut up, kip. You’re high,” Dunklestein says with a crass scowl. “There’s nothing there.”

  Sure enough, to everyone else, it just looks like another part of the wall, but to Cole, it’s quite different.

  “Nah, you’re the high one,” Cole explains with a slur in his speech.

  Dunklestein scoffs and is just about to smack him upside the head, when The Captain steps up and pokes his boot at the wall.

  It goes through.

  “Well then,” The Captain says with an impressed tone.

  “No way,” Dunklestein mumbles in dejection.

  “Wh-how’d you know?” Cluton asks, the group not hesitating in the slightest to enter the illusory wall and get some distance from whatever kind of horror is in the middle of feasting on the O.E.L. soldiers.

  Cole’s features sharpen professionally. “Intuition,” he says, right before he stumbles over his feet and falls over.

  “Colette!” Grancis gasps, rushing over to help him up.

  Watching carefully. The Captain leans over to Boris. “Didn’t expect this is how they’d craft their little fun-house.”

  Boris nods.

  “Looks like hallucinating is the only way to see right— crafty.”

  Boris nods again.

  “Alright, Mister Ketiere. Lead the way!” The Captain encourages him with an extravagant shooing forward, akin to releasing a wild stallion out into the prairie.

  Cole sort of blubbers back to his feet. “You got it!” he says, moving like a drunk but with the expression of a champion on his face.

  The group moves through the place unhindered, the cold silence of the cave replaced with the low hums of an actual temple for an eldritch god.

  The cavern floor has formed and buckled lower and lower the further they advance, to the point where it’s a perfectly smooth stone floor, its recesses glowing bluish-purple with intricate markings depicting scenes including unspeakable creatures lurking in the far deep.

  “This must be the cavern proper,” The Captain notes with a whisper, “be on your guards.”

  “Yup,” Dunklestein says.

  “I WILL BE VERY ON THE GUA-”

  Boris is shushed out by everyone but Cole and Cluton, because one’s one with the ground he walks on, and the other has such a frictionless personality that not even a knife could cut it.

  The group creeps along slowly, Cole leading them down a few more “tripping vision only” passages, and over a bridge into a vast, dark clearing of a chamber. It’s almost as though they’re above ground and circling along a lake. The bridge is so low, in fact, that the walkway is just a centimeter higher than the water-level itself.

  “We have to be close,” The Captain whispers, “everything in me is crying out for it. We’re not just close to the flame, we’re there!”

  Then, like a star from the north, the legendary Mermaid’s Tear flashes out from the darkness. It’s glowing an effervescent, electrifying eternal blue containing the mysteries and beauties of the sea, intertwined plainly with things that no human mind would want to remember once discovered; a great prize, and a great danger.

  The gem is cradled in a fountain of wondrously pure teal water, casting the excess down a ziggurat with steps that seem made for a race other than humans, which then lead down to a black, wide, silent pool. That’s where the group’s standing.

  “There it is,” The Captain says, giving Cole a good pat on the shoulder. “Well done.”

  Boris’ whiskers twitch about thoughtfully. “BUT WHERE IS THE ELDRITCHING?”

  The Captain reaches into himself and draws out his rifle, the important one. He hands it to Cole, causing Dunklestein to scoff.

  “Cap, you think he’ll be able to aim that thing?”

  “I have no doubt in my mind, that he’d at least see what’s worth shooting,” The Captain says before turning back to Cole. “Stay here, save the rifle shot for whatever’s biggest. I was a fool again and only brought a single shot for the rifle, so it’ll have to count.” The Captain says. He knows better than any of them that shooting the biggest one isn’t always shooting the deadliest, but it’s generally a good rule of thumb for “false-win” situations like these, where Eldritch feed off the final glimmer of hope from their victims by offering a fake victory of some kind.

  “Got it,” Cole says with an empty stare and a stupid grin.

  Grancis sighs and just watches their backside while the others look about nervous.

  “So uh, hey, Cap,” Dunklestein starts with a frown, his gaze scanning wearily over the water.

  “No, they’d pick you up in a heartbeat.”

  The shark chuckles in embarrassed relief. “Ahh, yeah, not cuz I wouldn’t, ya’ know, I love swimmin through… dark pools and such, but I think you’re right n’ they’d probably catch on.”

  “No, we need someone with a different talent…” The Captain says with a leading tone, slowly, thoughtfully turning about while he weighs his words.

  “I-I could do it,” Cluton says, displaying as much gusto as four Dunklesteins, and thus four times as likely to die horribly in a situation like this.

  The Captain hums.

  “You could, Cap. You could just scatter out n’ put yourself back together on the other side!” Dunklestein recommends, certain that he’d be the only one with the guts to actually go through with it anyway. The Captain’s always the one to do the suicidal stuff; considering he’s basically already dead, after all.

  The Captain hums again, stares for nearly half a minute at The Tear, and looks over to Grancis. “Miss Vereyrty.”

  From her crouched position facing behind them, she glances over her shoulder. “Sir?”

  “…Do you fancy a swim?” he says after a dramatic, intentional pause.

  Her gaze widens.

  The Mermaid’s Tear Upon The Navigator’s Throne

  “W-… me?” she asks.

  Everyone flinches at the idea except the one who suggested it.

  “Pretty sure lil kip’s not up for that,” says someone.

  “Grancis? But isn’t she a… you know? Kind of… human?” another peeps.

  “Gran’s not doing it,” another one states, his hippie smile contorting to a disgusted indignancy.

  Boris says nothing, but he gives The Captain a very rare“look” he reserves for only the most grievous of The Captain’s actions.

  The Captain, being as much eye as he is sand, picks up on all these unique movements, but doesn’t care.

  “Yes, you,” he says with a finalized tone.

  “I…” Grancis doesn’t tremble, or go into shock, she just stares on like she’s confused again. “I’m not a good swimmer, sir.”

  “That’s okay, just keep yours lungs full of air, paddle slowly forward, and don’t panic.”

  Grancis stares on awkwardly when Cole comes swinging from behind. He does his best to knock out The Captain, take control of the situation and save Grancis, but instead he just kind of wobbles into The Captain’s backside and collapses on the ground against the rifle he dropped.

  “Don’t you dare!” Cole says with a puff.

  The Captain slams his boot down on Cole’s neck, holding him in place taking possession of the lad’s rifle.

  “I’ll take that,” he says.

  “Cap, what the hell you doin?” Dunklestein asks incredulously.

  “Not allowing my jobber to hurt himself, obviously,” The Captain says, reaching into his coat and pulling out the very same mixture Cole downed.

  “CAPTAININGS, YOU’RE NOT OF THE ACTUALLY-”

  “I absolutely am, Chef Boris. Mister Ketiere isn’t capable in doing his part of the mission… so I will.” The Captain says, taking out the dropper and putting back three full servings of the tainted laudanum. He holds the rifle at the ready, but not before making his executive decision and tapping his free boot on the floor with a very specific rhythm. “Miss Vereyrty,” he addresses, his other boot still on the struggling Cole’s neck.

  Grancis looks down to The Captain’s boot. He’s pressing down much, much more forcefully than would look necessary. “…Sir.”

  “Enjoy your swim.”

  She gets up. “Yes, sir.”

  Grancis steps promptly over to the end of the bridge, and takes one good look at the water she’s about to enter:

  Pitch.

  Black.

  She takes a deep, reassuring breath, and lowers herself in.

  While the four guard her from behind, and amidst curses from Cole toward The Captain, Grancis takes the advice she was given, and slowly paddles her way forward.

  While Cluton’s and Dunklestein’s internal organs churn with dread, Grancis feels… brisk in the water. Anything could be waiting around or below her, and she would be helpless to do anything about it. All she can trust right now is Boris’ whiskers picking up on danger, and their weird, now quite-inebriated Captain directing the appropriate shots.

  She lets go, like she always have. She wasn’t afraid of the necromancers in the alley, nor the parasites mimicking Colette, nor Irefall’s shambling visage under the power of The Black Eye. She’s not afraid of this, either. What she’s really afraid of, what she’s been reminded of yet again, is the sneaking, ear-close whisper of a suspicion that perhaps it’s not Colette’s humanity that she should be worrying about.

  Grancis swims across the nervous expanse, and nothing happens. She starts pushing up against the current and up the ziggurat steps.

  “Aye, that’s our girl,” Dunklestein says, equal parts dumbfounded and relieved that he can still see her.

  “She… did it.” Cluton adds to the collective awe.

  Cole calms down just a little, but he’s still beating at The Captain’s shins. “How did you know?” Cole croaks out.

  However wavering, The Captain keeps his aim up while ignoring his jobber.

  “If something happened to her, Salt, you wouldn’t know the fuckin’ end of it,” Cole adds with a wheeze.

  The Captain responds by pushing down just a little more on Cole’s neck— the meaning clear.

  At the ziggurat, Grancis is nearly to the radiant blue gem that’s producing the only light in the enormous chamber. She reaches for The Mermaid’s Tear, but stops.

  Could it really be that easy, she wonders.

  She basks in the light of the gem for a moment, focuses on it, and winces with uncertainty.

  “The hell she doin?” Dunklestein asks.

  Cole forces up as best he can to get a peek.

  The Captain just stares on with a certain gaze. “I knew it,” he whispers to himself.

  There’s something about The Mermaid’s Tear that feels, empty to her now that she’s this close to it. She can’t even think of how to better describe it than a sheer fakeness to the way the gem makes her feel. It’s very strange, which she expected from an eldritch artifact, of course, but there’s just something in her that tells her that this isn’t it.

  Grancis steps to the side, and looks past the ziggurat. What a surprise. It’s an identical bridge from the side she came from, and none other is on it than the O.E.L. team leader, Lorn; he’s torn up, but alive, and already aiming at her.

  Grancis ducks back just in time for a gun shot to ring past her neck, cutting through her bun of hair and springing some of it loose.

  “Well, my bad,” the O.E.L. librarian captain mutters with a scoff. “I thought you were one of those freaks. Why don’t you come out with your hands up,” he says, aiming up his rifle for another shot.

  While the others struggle to see what’s going on, Grancis stays put on her side. She’s pretty sure she’s never had a bullet come so close to her before, but she can’t think of anything right now other than not getting shot. She looks back to see how the others are doing.

  Already Boris is off the ground, spanning the lake in a single jump. He lands over Grancis with a dense, but well-stuck crash. She’s never seen Boris move so quickly, and neither has The Captain. “GRANCIS MEAT, BE OF THE GETTING OF THE-”

  “Too late!” Librarian Lorn shouts, a flash of jets emanating from his armor to launch him up to the peak.

  Lorn lets loose a hail of anti-personnel rounds into a boulder-still Boris.

  “Shoot!” Cole screams up at the owner of the boot being pressed hard into his neck. “Shoot, damn you!”

  The Captain stands erect, ready, and with his trigger finger resting firmly, over the rifle’s completing mechanism.

  At first Grancis isn’t sure if Boris will be alright or not, but after about fifty shots she’s certain he won’t be. He’s so still, like a rock-solid frame protecting her from the gunfire all the way until Lorn’s clip runs out. She holds onto his claw to provide some comfort on the small chance that he’s not dead yet. It’s there, though, that she spots it. At her feet along the ziggurat stairs are long sets of stones, and she gets another one of those weird feelings. As if lead by a spirit, she reaches down for one specific stone.

  “Shoot! Why aren’t you shooting?!” Cole screams at other two, just when a deep, ear-curdling scraping sound emanates from the side of the room.

  Cluton, wavering, almost raises his rifle to shoot up, but the barrel is smacked down by Dunklestein. “You’d just hit the cooks,” he says, staring up at the O.E.L. agent climbing all the way up to the gem. “It’s outta our hands now.”

  Lorn grabs the shining, wonderful, encompassing Mermaid’s Tear, and quickly ducks back into his cover.

  “Rondi gives her regards, scumbags!” he shouts with confident victory as he stuffs the gem into a go-bag around his chest, diminishing the light into a dim, muffled glow when it’s zipped up. The hidden boosters in his suit flare up in an azure-white flash for take off and leave them all behind, but from nowhere, truly from nowhere, a giant, grey, semi-humanoid, scaled claw reaches down and forces its grievous black nails through Lorn’s chest.

  The hand raises the shocked-silent Lorn up, high through the air, to a monstrous, infinigram-shaped, yellow-red eye that none of the group had perceived until now. It wasn’t just hidden, or nearby, it wasn’t anywhere, and now it’s suddenly here. The herald to The Navigator God, Glorma, speaks some unintelligible, unrepeatable terms to and into Lorn, and without another second to pass, the man’s body spills out from the damaged parts of his suit; a green, liquefied memory of the Ywn’s loyal librarian agent. Pleased by the display, the heraldic entity reveals the rest of its terrible cosmic being, crouching over the ziggurat, everyone, and even the entire lower portion of the cave with a manic, writhing murder-gaze. Its body simultaneously mighty and frail, ageless and young, dying and birthing, the sight alone of the creature is enough to put a person off any reasonable expectation of reality for the rest of their lives, but these are no common sailors.

  Dunklestein ignores his previous advice and fires up wildly and Cole empties his guts in sheer disbelief that something so hideous could exist, but The Captain watches the putrefied librarian’s entirety drizzle over the ziggurat as sacrifice.

  Certain that all O.E.L. opposition has been taken care of down here, The Captain takes his shot at the herald.

  Its body opens up a void straight on the trajectory of the shot, allowing the precious, anti-occult bullet to pass through. Its gaze locks down on them, flicking the now empty suit of the O.E.L. operator off its long nail; just lengthy enough to accommodate five individuals and a giant lobster.

  The scraping sound picks up in volume sharply, and the sound of what seems like an earthquake is accommodating it.

  The herald of Glorma begins speaking words that only one in the group can understand, but none of them are very preferential to the message.

  The Captain reaches down and covers Cole’s ears, just when the first sentence is subconsciously recognized by the rest.

  Cluton, who’s guts have been admirably in-tact until now, begins screaming and vomiting simultaneously.

  Dunklestein just outright falls to the ground and starts convulsing.

  A regular human would already be dead, and for that, Grancis feels nothing. She can’t understand what its saying, not in the slightest, but it just sounds weird; she’s far more concerned about Boris. She peeks up around his side to check the damage, but instead looks and sees the gaze of the herald, looking down at her with its endlessly-deep gaze.

  She stares up at the abyss.

  The abyss stares back.

  She still stares.

  It raises its hand to impale her.

  Without warning, she feels tightened around, not by the herald, but by Boris. With an explosive lift, Chef Boris raises off the ziggurat and flies with Grancis through the air in a single, incredible pounce backward.

  “CAPTAINING, WE MUST BE OF THE GETTING OUT OF THE HE-”

  “Hold on, everyone!” The Captain says with an excited yell.

 

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