Darkfall: Shadows of the Deep, page 21
There was no ‘head’ or ‘face’ to speak of. Jack could discern no mouth, making the overall appearance seem that much more alien to him.
The huge entity had risen up on the opposite side of the ship to where Jack and Max were hiding. The men on deck were screaming and panicking, some even raising their weapons up to the monster, though it was still some distance away. Jack couldn’t help but think that the men holding those small, pointy objects towards the towering being was the height of futility.
The great legs of the creature moved somewhat, but looked to just be keeping it where it floated, rather than bringing it forward to them.
‘Do the Shadowhand train you for dealing with this kind of thing?’ Jack asked.
Max, still staring up at the monster, just shook his head. ‘This is… I mean, I don’t…’ but he trailed off.
Then there was another thundering sound from the creature, and it cracked through the air like thunder. Jack watched as the top of its torso began to change. It started to pull itself open at the head. A fiery red glow emanated through the cracks of the opening that formed. The edges of the flesh were jagged, resembling huge, uneven teeth either side of a vertical, gaping maw. The newly forming ‘mouth’ split the upper portion of the body in two. Jack then saw more red light within it, changing to a bright amber at its base, the colour of molten metal.
The inside of the mouth was distorted by rising steam. Even from that distance, Jack felt a warmth drift over to him.
‘It’s doing something,’ Max stated.
The fiery glow that spilled up from its gut increased in intensity. Jack could see spurts of what looked like lava spitting, bubbling, and flaring up.
He felt the sense of dread in his gut. ‘Do you think it’s going to—’
Jack didn’t finish. The great behemoth suddenly dropped its form forward a little way, so the huge opening was facing the ship, and then molten liquid inside burst free.
The lava arced through the air, erupting from the mouth with a thunderous rumble. Jack and Max dove to the deck as a huge torrent of the liquid landed on the rear of the ship. It struck with such force that the front section rose up into the air, causing Jack and Max to slide backwards. The rowboat came with them, skidding down beside them.
A great groaning sound came when the front end of the ship dropped back down to the sea with a splash, and then the level of the deck righted itself. The smell of burning wood was potent. Jack looked down the length of the vessel and saw a river of molten liquid burning through the hull with ease, eating away the timber and dissolving it completely. The structure of the ship quickly gave way and plummeted down, ensuring the back end of the ship was completely gone. Heat and smoke surged up from the sea, and with it came an overpowering volcanic smell.
‘The ship’s going to go down!’ Max yelled. He scrambled up to his feet and took hold of the edge of the rowboat. ‘Help me!’
Jack was quickly up as well. He felt the floor beneath him begin to tilt, dipping down once again as water rushed inside the now-open hull to the back. The scene up on the deck was chaos, with some men jumping over the other side to escape the doomed vessel.
Both Jack and Max heaved up the rowboat. ‘Throw it over the edge,’ Max ordered. They moved it to the bulwark, battling hard to keep their balance, and heaved the boat sideways. It fell to the water below. Jack held on to the bulwark as the ship continued to sink, with its top end rising out of the sea again. All the while, the huge creature beyond them simply held its ground, watching the bedlam it had wrought.
Everything stored on deck began to cascade down the length of the ship, with crates, boxes, netting, ropes, and even bodies of the fishermen sliding towards the sea. Smoke continued to bellow into the sky from the cooling lava when it touched the water. Jack and Max gripped the bulwark tightly to keep from falling as well.
Jack cast his eyes upwards and saw that Assandra, the Crimson Lord, and Skivington had all managed to grab hold of something and avoided falling. Assandra and the man in red were gripping the side of the ship, and Skivington had slid away from them, but now clung to the base of the ship's wheel.
The misshapen monolith Assandra had created was beginning to topple, with the thinner end leaning over its fatter base. Eventually, it fell, the top dropping down to the deck, which was reaching an ever more severe angle as the bottom of the boat continued to submerge. The monolith slipped downward, bouncing off the deck and striking one of the sailors, who was desperately holding on to a mast rope, on its way past. It dislodged him and sent him screaming into the frothing water.
The huge creature made another bellowing sound, then tipped forward again.
‘We need to jump!’ Max ordered. Jack looked down to the sea. The rowboat was right-side up with a single oar still inside, but was being thrown about on the violent waters around the sinking ship. However, with more of the molten liquid soon on the way, Jack knew they could either drop or be scorched alive.
‘One!’ Max shouted, beginning the countdown as he climbed over the parapet of the bulwark. ‘Two.’ Jack joined him and they both looked down. ‘Three!’
Both men jumped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Webster Skivington held on to the base of the wheel’s pedestal, gazing down at the ever-increasing incline of the deck.
‘Sir!’ a voice shouted over. He looked to the side, where the great entity stood in the distance. Skivington saw Bull, who was holding on to one of the thick ropes attached to the side of the ship. He was a little farther down the deck, holding an arm up towards Skivington. ‘Can you reach me, sir?’
Skivington judged the distance between them to be about eight feet horizontally, so there was a chance he could slide down and grab Bull’s hand. He looked to the other side and spotted Assandra and Vern climbing over the parapet wall of the ship. He realised they were going to jump into the water.
The huge monster’s insides bubbled with raging lava again. He knew what was coming, and staying on the deck was suicide. But since he was in the center of the deck, there was no clear way to get over the sides, unless he was able to make it down to Bull.
‘I’m coming,’ he shouted. Skivington turned his body to face the deck, then dug his booted toes into the surface. He turned his eyes to the side and again looked at the huge entity farther out at sea.
Its size was terrifying—fuck, everything about it was terrifying. He briefly wondered if it was the great god Vern was trying to contact, but then remembered Assandra’s words as she’d come out of her trance.
She’d called it an emissary.
The thought of the giant monster being a messenger for something even greater filled him with a renewed dread. Everything had been ruined. While the Crimson Lord had obviously been right—there was a great entity beneath the sea—his assertion that he could communicate with it had been proven false in a sea of molten hellfire.
Webster steadied himself, then leapt sideways and dropped, skidding down the sloping deck. He reached out both hands and managed to grab onto Bull’s thick, strong arm.
‘Don’t drop me!’ he cried, wrapping both hands around Bull’s wrist. The larger man gritted his teeth, clearly straining from effort. The ship continued to tip.
‘Can you climb up my body?’ Bull shouted. ‘We need to get over the edge of the ship.’
Skivington looked back to the other side of the vessel—Assandra and Vern were now gone.
‘I’ll try,’ he shouted, and again dug his feet into the sloping floor beneath him. Just before he was about to pull himself upward, he heard a terrifying rumble. Skivington cast his gaze past the bulwark just in time to see another enormous stream of volcanic liquid erupt from the entity and bear down on them like a great wave.
He let out a scream, feeling little as the scorching blanket of lava crashed down and dissolved him and Bull in an instant.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Assandra drew in a lungful of air as she breached the waves again. It had been a constant fight to stay afloat as she tried to swim away from the sinking ship. The water around her was savage, and Assandra felt her strength slipping from her arms as she tried desperately to get away from the swirling current. She was pulled under again, and it took a monumental effort to force herself upwards and break through the surface of the water once more.
The water was cold, so it was a struggle to stop her body from locking up. She bobbed under briefly again as a rolling wave washed over her head.
Assandra had lost sight of her father after they’d both jumped. She could only assume he’d been pulled under.
The exhaustion was taking its toll—her movements were becoming slow and sluggish. She dropped beneath the surface yet again, sinking farther down.
Fight!
She kicked as hard as she could. It was so dark Assandra couldn’t even see where the surface was. Desperation flooded her as her body craved oxygen. Eventually, her head came up, and she pulled in a mouthful of air. However, she was quickly pulled under, her body now too tired to respond.
Is there any point in trying anymore?
Assandra was so far away from the shore she knew she couldn’t swim back. In addition, the emissary was still out there. With a scared resignation, she relaxed her body and started to sink.
No sooner had she done so, however, than she felt something grab her arm. Through the darkness of the sea, she was able to make out a hand holding her bicep. She was pulled, and when she breached the surface she again gulped in mouthfuls of air. Through the matted hair across her face, Assandra was able to see the face of the man that had just saved her.
Jack.
He was hanging over the edge of a rowboat, and she saw Max just behind him.
‘Help me,’ Jack called to his colleague. Max moved forward and reached into the water as well, taking hold of Assandra beneath one of her arms. Both men then heaved Assandra up and over the lip of the boat. She tried to hold herself up on all fours, but simply didn’t have the energy, and collapsed to the floor, coughing and heaving, then vomiting salty seawater. Assandra wanted to ask why the two men had helped her, but couldn’t even summon the strength to speak.
She lay between the two vertical slats in the boat that served as seats, her legs beneath one of them and head close to the other.
‘I assume you aren’t going to try and kill us?’ Jack asked her.
Assandra continued breathing heavily and the only response she could muster was to shake her head. She then turned it to her side to look up.
Jack gave her a smile. ‘Appreciate that.’ Assandra then cast her eyes over to Max, but she noticed his expression was far colder.
Assandra turned her head to see that the huge fishing ship was now all but sunk, with only charred, glowing remains poking through the sheet of dark water. Behind the wreckage, she could see the emissary, standing tall, with its mouth still open and that horrible, fiery glow emanating from within.
Instead of launching another attack, however, the huge, vertical opening began to close, the skin around it fusing together once more. Its huge legs shifted, and the creature slowly began to lower back down into the sea; the resulting wave rolled over to their boat and caused it to shift and bob.
‘Is that the god the Crimson Lord spoke of?’ Max asked.
Assandra shook her head and forced herself up to her elbows. ‘No,’ she managed to say. ‘But it was sent by the god.’
‘Why?’
‘To bat us away,’ Assandra said while taking deep breaths. ‘It had grown tired of us buzzing around it.’
Soon, the huge creature was fully submerged again and the only sound left was the waves around them.
‘What was the point of it all, then?’ Max went on. ‘Communicating with it… what did it achieve?’
Assandra turned her eyes away from him. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she replied in a soft voice.
Jack sat at the front of the boat. Assandra was on the opposite seat along with Max. Everyone was cold and wet and numb—both from the cold and what they’d just seen. Jack took hold of both oars, having retrieved the stray one shortly after jumping from the ship, and started to row. He turned the boat and set off back towards shore.
He remembered seeing Assandra and the man in red plummet from the deck of the ship, but then they’d lost sight of the Crimson Lord. However, Jack had insisted they help the drowning wytch. Max had been hesitant, claiming she’d proven herself a danger by siding with the enemy. Jack could understand the Shadowhand’s reluctance, but the thought of abandoning Assandra and leaving her to drown didn’t sit right with him. So, he raised a point of his own: if they wanted to know anything about what had really happened out there, then she was the only person left to tell them.
As they rowed through the relatively calm waters back to the beach, Jack requested that the wytch tell them more.
‘About what?’ she asked.
‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Start from when we last saw you at Whitby. What happened that brought you out to Kettleness?’
The woman just shook her head. She looked broken. ‘That might take a while.’
Jack looked back over his shoulder to the shoreline. In the distance, he could see the lights of the small hamlet. ‘We aren’t getting out of this boat anytime soon,’ he said. ‘It’s as good a way as any to pass the time.’
So, Assandra relayed her story, sharing how the Crimson Lord—who was actually her father—had come to her house, promising to show her things beyond her comprehension.
Once she had finished, concluding with when she’d seen Jack and Max outside the farmhouse, Jack wasn’t sure what to say to her.
Max, however, did have something on his mind. ‘So you were planning on killing me,’ he said. ‘Adding me to that monolithic abomination you created.’
She turned, held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. ‘Yes.’
Max gave Jack a questioning look.
‘Then there is no difference between you and your sister,’ Max said to her. ‘How many innocent people did you kill by fusing them to that monolith?’
‘Innocent?’ she scoffed. ‘I hardly think anyone in that village, or even in this boat, could be considered innocent. You’ve both killed as well—you’re no better than I am.’
‘Regardless,’ Max went on, ‘I don’t think our original agreement can be upheld. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend you be left alone. Not after this. For Christ’s sake, Assandra, you almost summoned a god!’
‘What were you thinking?’ Jack asked. ‘Out at Dalby, you were adamant the monolith needed to be destroyed. Why the change of heart? What did your father offer you?’
‘The truth!’ she snapped. ‘He told me if I continued Cora’s work, it would unlock secrets beyond my imagination, and it would be important to humanity.’
Jack raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Was it worth it?’
She scowled at him. ‘You know very well it fucking wasn’t.’ Assandra then turned her head away from them to stare out to the sea. ‘But… it wasn’t just that,’ she went on. ‘You people made it clear how you expected me to live after I helped you kill my sister. My father… he gave me a way out of that.’ She turned back to Max. ‘Did you really just expect me to go through with your orders? Who in God’s name do you people think you are?!’
‘Well, you have made things infinitely more difficult,’ he told her. ‘There is no way you will be allowed to live. I’m sorry.’
The laughter she gave was humourless and cold. ‘Are you going to kill me, Max?’ she asked. ‘Is that why you got me on board, to get information from me before you try to take my life?’
‘That isn’t it,’ Jack insisted. However, he noticed Max stayed silent—one of the man’s hands was tucked inside his coat.
‘You’re naïve, Jack,’ Assandra said. ‘Too naïve for the people you work for.’
‘Nothing has to happen,’ Jack stressed. ‘You’ve told us everything you know. Max, we owe Assandra. For Dalby, if nothing else. She can hide. Just disappear. No one knows she survived but us.’
Max said nothing, only clenched his jaw. Assandra’s eyes suddenly went completely white. Jack felt the air around him crackle.
Suddenly, the water below them swelled. It caused the boat to rise up quickly as it rode a large wave. Jack, Max, and Assandra clung on to the edges and the small vessel struggled to stay upright.
‘What’s causing that?’ Jack asked. It didn’t seem like the natural change in the water. It was too sudden. To Jack, it seemed like something shifting beneath the water. But seeing as it affected the water as far as they could see up towards the horizon, there was no way it was the emissary. That creature had been large, but not this large.
The three of them all kept their eyes on the horizon. There, in the distance, they all saw something enormous rise up from the water.
‘Jesus…’ Jack uttered.
It was titanic, towering hundreds of feet high above sea level: a huge mass of writhing parts in an unrecognisable form. Jack dropped the handles of the oars unintentionally. His body trembled. Max and Assandra both scrambled to the back of the boat with him, causing it to tip a little. Even though the entity was miles and miles away from them, and seemingly heading farther out to sea, it terrified Jack—more so than anything he had seen thus far in his life.
Assandra’s earlier comments about being a gnat to it were suddenly put into perspective.
‘Is… is that the god?’ Max asked with a trembling voice.
It was the first time Jack heard true fear in the Shadowhand.
Assandra’s eyes were wide as well, and wet, glinting in the moonlight. She quickly nodded, but said nothing.
All three of them suddenly jumped and covered their ears as a great, booming sound rumbled across the sky. It was so loud it made the water ripple and the boat shake—a deep, terrifying chord of noise that Jack felt vibrate through to his very bones.
