Seaborn

“He …” Arnnaith said, looking at the cave in that blocked Rhistel inside the island with the long arms of the Charybdis. “He didn’t make it out. I thought … I thought he’d survive anything.”

“Most lives end too abruptly.” I said, myself in shock. I hadn’t gotten a notification of a lost crewman yet, but it was only a matter of time given Rhistel was trapped inside with the monster. “Sea monsters don’t care, we’re a snack like any other beast to them.” Arnnaith looked a bit green, and I had to drag him away. “Come on. We need to gather the crew and make sure they’re safe.”

“No!” Arnnaith said, jerking his arm free. “We have to save him! Do you only ever think of running?”

“Kid,” I said, my patience thin. “Running is usually the smart choice. Heroes are people who’ve found some way to cheat, and death still gets his due from them. I never signed up to be a bloody hero trying to slay dragons and sea monsters! Do I look like a bloody adventurer? Burning sea-foam! I’ve used up more luck than I’m allotted at my level, and don’t have any intention of trying to take the fight to a massive creature over someone who’s already dead!”

Arnnaith wasn’t dissuaded. “We could use explosive bolts, trap it inside the island …”

“It had perception that picked me up the moment I stepped into that pool. You think we’ll be able to take the Consort around and systematically lock it in without it noticing? And you didn’t see it, Arnnaith. I think we could drop what’s left of this island onto it and the thing would survive.”

“Approach it from inside the caves on land, above the water.” He argued. “It didn’t sense us immediately that way!”

“But it did somehow find the wolf-bats in their caves – all the caves it could reach. And if we enter that way, we have no effective means of harming it. As soon as I struck its single arm, it flooded the room with arms. And you’re also forgetting that nearly every competent fighter on board is already dead.”

“But,” Arnnaith said. “But … Rhistel was going to be my chance! He was going to find his honor again, and he could introduce me to the elves of the homeland …”

Oh, kid … you’d be better off locking down the emotions that made you want your homeland – your family. I’d learned that early on as a boy.

I didn’t have the heart to say that to him though.

“Our chance is to get away and get free of these isles as soon as possible. A creature like that belongs in the true deep. These islands are lucky it decided to set up on a forsaken island in the middle of nowhere to grow. Once it finds shipping lanes with steady streams of food, it’ll take a fleet to get rid of it. I don’t intend to pick any fights I can’t win – much less now that I’m down my entire fighting force.”

I saw tears form in the boy’s eyes, but they remained unshed. He still had a mercenary little heart, only deciding to bury the hatchet with the elf once it seemed like he could be useful. That didn’t mean I thought his expression of shock or grief was fake. On the contrary, changing your attitude for your plans and having your plans dashed the next minute could be very hard.

“We need to gather up the hunting party and the repair company. Let’s get going.”

“He could find another way out.”

“What?”

“Rhistel could find another way out! This island has so many tunnels and caves, Rhistel could come out through a different entrance.”

“How would he get past the monster? It would sense him as soon as he enters the water.”

“He doesn’t have to pass it,” Arnnaith said, excited. “Remember when the tunnel forked, we went down but there was a small opening going up! It’s probably one of the ways the monster reached the higher caves. Rhistel could climb up and escape!”

The odds of the elf managing that …

Arnnaith saw my doubt and pressed me. “Have you received a notification of his death yet?”

No. I hadn’t. My mind was trying to deny any shred of hope, feeling like nothing had really gone right for me since I first got my curse, but this was Rhistel! The formal elf who hid his empathy behind formality was dear to every non-racist on board, myself included. I’d brought him here to help him with his quest, I couldn’t leave him behind until I knew that there was no hope at all.

“Alright, we’re going to climb to a vantage point together and find the work parties if we can. You run and tell them of the danger, then have Phillip take squads of fighters to caves above the level of this one. They’re not to explore unless they hear Rhistel! Got it?”

The half-elf eagerly agreed, though I could tell his instincts wanted to run off and save Rhistel himself just like I now did. The difference was that he knew his job was more important for getting help, and as the Captain – and arguably the most capable combatant left – I got to indulge my budding hero complex.

We scouted out the hunting party below us, hanging a dozen gutted flying pigs from any trees sturdy enough to support the carcasses. Burdette was on the barely-a-beach where we’d climbed ashore, organizing the teams lowering logs down the hillside using ropes, pulleys and manpower. Once in the water, the strongest swimmers were tied to the log and pulled it out to sea, above where the Death’s Consort was sitting. The logs would float until they were assigned as my ‘cargo’ and then would perform just like the rest of the magically altered ship, raising or sinking with the rest.

Burdette had one log being swum out and another nearly on the beach. I made a note to Arnnaith to have him ready the ship for departure, though we wouldn’t leave until I made the determination there was nothing else to be done.

With his orders and clear directions to their recipients, Arnnaith rushed off. I had to resist the urge to do likewise, as I’d just find myself rushing from cave to cave hoping to run into Rhistel. Instead, I sat down and focused on my abilities to sense my crew. I’d been able to use it to track the ships of my deserting crewmen, but there was a difference between pointing at the horizon and saying “over there” and pinpointing something closer to “right here.” My senses of everything were also a lot more difficult to use since I wasn’t in the ocean or on my ship.

Facing the island rising up before me and focusing on finding Rhistel, I got an indication of … somewhere in front of me? And was I really seeing that he was a bit higher, or was that wishful thinking on my part?

Oh, what a very helpful and applicable ability.

Fishguts.

Since we’d explored most of the caves on the higher elevations of the island earlier, I decided to try another tactic. I pulled out writing instruments and paper, and tried using my cartography skill.

I put the first stroke down where the cave in was, and tried to draw a rendering of the island where I knew the other caves were. I’d never tried sketching before, but the pencil in my hand was familiar enough given the time I spent plotting courses. How hard could it be to do a map?

I tore up the first attempt and tried again.

I knew where the caves were, the paths we’d taken, and had a good idea of where everything was in relation to each other. All I needed to do was add depth to have a picture of the island, right? Then I could take an educated guess on where the tunnels might lead to.

I tore up another sketch. Drawing was hard.

I decided I’d stick to something I was more familiar with. Instead of drawing a picture, I drew a chart. It took seconds for me to sketch out the edges of the island, given how familiar I was with them after circling around earlier. I made a circle in the island to indicate the major hill I was sitting on, and a smaller one inside it to represent the area where the wolf-bats were roosting in safety – a.k.a. where the Charybdis couldn’t reach. That might be because its arms weren’t long enough, or it might be because there weren’t any intact tunnels left to those caves.

I had the beginnings of a topographical chart.

Or map. I guess they were called maps when they were of land. After so long correcting people to say “charts” I was getting my comeuppance by being on the other side of the coin.

I had to restart again when I realized I’d made too many errors, but fixed them on the second try. What I ended up with would hardly be useful to someone trying to explore the island, but it helped me make some assumptions about the structure of the hill.

Maybe the scientific conversation of the other two earlier was rubbing off on me, but it really was interesting how this island had formed with such a natural hive-like formation. Volcanic activity could only explain so much, right? Surely magic of some sort had been present when this island formed.

No matter, I had three likely caves to check. Then I’d join the rest of my crew checking as many as possibly, hoping just to get lucky.

You have advanced to skill level 2 in Cartography.

Nice advancement on the initial skill levels, my chart … er, map must not be worthless.

I started climbing. How was it that I could swim for days and even fight for hours, but a few minutes of climbing ate through my stamina bar and had my legs burning?

Thankfully, I only had to check two caves.

The second was scarcely more than a hole in the ground. I was glad there was no evidence of wolf-bats, but I was still leery of snakes. The researchers on the island had noted that it took about 4 hours for snake venom to incapacitate a wolf-bat and 7 for a human (making me wonder how they tested that). We’d theorized that with our resistances, it would take 12-14 hours. Not good, but given the healing abilities of myself and Myota, it wouldn’t be deadly for anyone bitten.

Not that I wanted to tumble right into a pit a snakes. I had no idea what kind of havoc a hundred doses of venom would do.

I poked my head in and saw that it opened up, though still cramped. I was about to call out for Rhistel when I saw an outline moving.

The Charybdis had a tentacle waiting in this cave! It was probing at …

It was probing at Rhistel. No, probing was the wrong word. It had its arm extended, and Rhistel grasped it from where he sat. His other hand stroked the prehensile, diamond shaped tip of the long appendage like he was petting it.

I didn’t know what he was doing or why, but interrupting seemed like it could be bad. Instead, I tried to be as stealthy as possible – somewhat of a lost cause when my body blocked most of the light entering the shallow cave while wriggling in.

“Make sure your weapons are stowed,” Rhistel said quietly, surprising me. “It recalls the bite of your sword even if it doesn’t know you. It hasn’t been cut like that before, and your injury disturbed it even if it did little damage.”

“No swords out,” I said in an equally soft tone. I didn’t mention the backup knives I’d replenished, but doubted those were relevant.

“Beware the snakes,” he said, just as a soft hiss warned me that I shouldn’t be focused exclusively on the big serpentine tentacle in the cave when there were smaller but also dangerous serpentine things to watch out for.

“Am I disrupting? Do you need help?”

“Keep too many distractions from interfering, if you would. We have a tenuous conversation, interruptions aren’t productive.”

I found a place clear of serpents – which is to say I was keeping an eye on the closest ones – and settled down. “Talk to me when you can.”

“It’s not too much trouble.” Rhistel responded. “This is a great creature, with incredible intellect even if it’s very young. I tried communicating with it as I was fleeing, and it quickly recognized what I was doing and became curious rather than hostile.”

Not immediately hostile was good. The curiosity of powerful things could still be very, very dangerous.

“Something drove it out of the depths not long ago. I can’t tell if it was instinct, a natural part of the life cycle, or something different. What’s curious is it seems much better suited for preying on surface creatures, I don’t know how it behaves in the depths.

“It had a string of encounters that led it to these islands. It was picking prey from the shores of places nearby before discovering this place and squeezing into the cavern below us. It discovered that these tunnels also had food in them, and squeezed all it could out of them.”

I imagined that was a picture the Charybdis gave, rather than embellishment by Rhistel. The elf was narrating to me, but his focus was obviously on the alien conversation with the young Charybdis.

“It’s not starving, so it’s willing to let potential food go. We should be able to escape if you desire, Captain. However, I propose an alternative.”

“It beats a clean getaway?”

“It involves befriending this creature.”

I let a moment pass before analyzing my friend again. “Rhistel, you don’t have a profession that facilitates that.”

“I know,” the elf replied, a bit testily. “But my Nature’s Empathy perk allows me to communicate on some level with creatures I understand, hence this conversation. Captain, this beast will move on soon if it can’t start grabbing more food. It doesn’t know where, just that it needs to grow and needs whatever it can eat. The Emerald is in these waters – it was designed to hunt down sea monsters before it was repurposed to hound us. This creature may be great, but it is still in its nascent stages. It will be killed.”

“And your perk doesn’t like that.”

“No. But what’s more, when it leaves the island, the balance of nature here will still be skewed. The avian swine are dominating the local ecosystem. I will fail my quest if they remain.” The elf paused, the tentacle moved forward to tap his chest, then retreated again. “If we intervene, we can set the island on a course where the local fauna can act as normal. The serpent population could use some culling anyway, and this whole debacle could have a happy ending.”

“A happy ending that you hope restores your profession? A profession that will let you control this creature?”

“Not control,” Rhistel said. “Befriend. With time, effort and some sacrifice, however, such friendships are much stronger than servitude.”

So long as a temperamental juvenile monster from the deep didn’t smash us to bits first. I had to agree that I preferred this distinction, though. I didn’t have much sympathy for aquatic life – a byproduct of my whaling days and too many dangerous encounters with aquatic predators – but if you gave me the option of having a supportive friend or a indentured slave, I’d choose the former.

“What do you propose?”

“Genocide,” the elf responded. “No, I misspoke. Predation control. The biggest issue are the avian swine: they are the most destructive element on the island. However, simply killing them all will lead to a food shortage for the wolf-bats, whole will depredate the local fauna before migrating away. That will leave the serpents with little food to sustain themselves to recover, risking an environmental collapse on the island.”

“To paraphrase: kill all the pigs we can, and a lot of the wolf-bats but not all. That way the wolf-bats can mop up any remaining pigs and the snakes come out the winners.”

“Yes. Sometimes nature needs some management, as nature’s own course swings through worse extremes.”

“I don’t think the lads will mind clearing out the pigs: avian pork is delicious. We can figure out some ways to clear the wolf-bat nests.”

“Anything we don’t use, we should offer Charybdis.” Rhistel said. “Giving it food will go a long way towards showing friendship and establishing ourselves as a food provider rather than a food source.”

“The more food for it the better,” I muttered. Slowly exiting the cave so as not to alarm any of the current occupants, I crawled through the dirt back into the sunlight.

While I was still brushing myself off, I saw Phillip leading a trio of fighter below me and waved for them to join me.

“Captain?” Phillip asked.

I gestured towards the hole in the hill. “Rhistel is in there. He’s fine, he’s got a perk that lets him talk to the sea monster and they’re having a chat like it’s tea time. I want a pair of guards here to make sure nothing disturbs them, but make sure they stay quiet and don’t bother Rhistel, got it?” At the affirmative nods, I continued to lay out Rhistel’s plan – my plan, now that I was giving the orders – of how we were going to create a big bloody ‘restart’ button on all the animals on this island.

After conferring with the experts on my crew and getting everything organized, it was nearly an entire day before we were ready and the slaughter began. The flying pig nests had been scouted out – they were hardly subtle about where they lived – and when we were all ready they were wiped out with extreme prejudice. Nets tangled the creatures’ wings and spears or swords cut them down. Any creatures that escaped to the air were pin cushioned by arrows and bolts from the remaining crew with an archery skill.

It wouldn’t have gone so smoothly if Phillip hadn’t singled out a man named Thaddeus with the profession of Hunstsman. His skills took a penalty when used for combat, but when it came to organizing the hunt on the island the man was a prodigy. One of his skills boosted the related hunting abilities of anyone in his hunting party for a limited time. Phillip and I shared a single glance with each other before deciding that Thaddeus would be in charge of the first part of this extermination.

I also flexed my leadership skill to create a few relevant quests. For Thaddeus, I created one on leading the extermination of 90% of the flying pigs. As it was an easy quest for him, I couldn’t give him much XP for completing it, but the quest also served to let us know when we’d accomplished our 90% objective. Exterminating every pig on the island was ambitious, and would take a lot more time to hunt down the last stragglers.

The people in the hunting party had a quest to secure kills to feed to the Charybdis. It was a scalable XP reward for the number they fed it, which I hoped would prevent complaining from the crew about me appropriating their food to feed a monster. If they feed it themselves, no complaints. We already had several set aside for the ships’ stores.

Thaddeus was methodical and hit each nest in turn. He shared that while he enjoyed the hunt, he disapproved of the wholesale extermination. I had to convince him using Rhistel’s arguments that this was for the best.

Rhistel stayed in the cave, communicating with the Charybdis. Apparently Rhistel had begun to educate it, teaching it about the types of beings in the ocean and above it. The Charybdis had apparently opened up to the elf in return, nonchalantly telling him of things in the deep that nearly made Rhistel’s hair stand on end.

Once the hunting teams had secured all the known pig nests, we moved to the wolf-bats. Flying pigs could be dangerous, but weren’t even as bad as their land-bound porcine cousins. Wolf-bats were predators, and we were treating them as such.

We’d identified the caves we wished to exterminate and the caves we wished to leave. Rhistel maintained that the flying wolf-bats would migrate when they realized their main food source was gone, we just needed to remove 70-80% of the population so they didn’t have the numbers to overwhelm the snakes’ food sources before they left.

So, with the caves full of wolf bats identified, I had Sadeo take a pair of the scorpion ballistae from the ship and erect it where it could target several.

This wasn’t hunting, this was extermination. Thaddeus had muttered curses and complained about “the spirit of the hunt” when he found out what I’d planned, but he’d declined to face a cave full of the creatures by himself when I’d offered that alternative.

With a selection of poison bolts, we gassed the entrances. Poison bolts weren’t a favorite in ship warfare because you needed to hit a target to poison them directly, and you needed a lot of the bolts in an area to poison a deck before the wind dispersed it. Firing bolts into a cave? Frighteningly effective.

Some wolf-bats tried to flee outside, and these were taken on by the hunting team using similar tactics to the flying pigs. When we saw no more activity, we took out the next cave. We left behind a few people watching the entrances of each to make sure none were able to slip away somehow without our knowing.

The only excitement came when we cleared a cave that was out of sight of our ballista. We’d discussed moving it, but felt confident we could take them out. Throwing torches into the cave at dusk proved sufficient motivation to flush them out, though they immediately faced spearmen, archers, and thrown nets. Still, the creatures wriggled over and around each other as they exited the cave and charged before archers could reload. It was the only time we had some creatures escape our ambush.

The next morning we dragged the corpses of the wolf-bats out of the caves and lined them up with flying pig corpses on the shore, having determined that feeding them to the Charybdis wouldn’t poison it in turn and ruin our goodwill. We gave the word to Rhistel – who was tired but still hanging out with the Charybdis in the cave – and he told our monstrous potential friend about the buffet.

The limb of the Charybdis didn’t dart off immediately. In fact Rhistel seemed to need to prompt it to go look for its food. When it did, the elf gave a great sigh of relief and slumped down. Well, ‘slumped’ while still maintaining dignity.

“Good chat?” I said, half jibe half question.

“I wanted it to have a foundation of good impressions towards humanoids,” Rhistel said. “If it experiences the opposite, it could turn into a much more deadly and uncontrolled monster. Hopefully my efforts weren’t wasted, even if it doesn’t become a companion.”

I nodded. “Let’s go see the show then.”

“Just a moment,” the elf begged off. “Several serpents decided I was a secure source of warmth over the last few hours. I need a few moments to gently move them.”

I made sure that none of my crew were in the water before I gave the word to Rhistel, so there were just under two hundred people – the entirety of my remaining crew – on the island looking down at the protrusion where we’d piled the bodies. People were tense. I didn’t blame them.

Some of us with sharper eyes and a head for the pattern of the surf noticed it first: the presence in the water. I expected to see a few tentacles venture out to scan for prey the way it seemed like it had been hunting for us in the tunnels, but it gave no such indicators. The display was much more fantastic.

9 long tentacles burst out of the water, tough scales covering them. Each smashed into and around the pile of bodies before curling around them and lifting them over the water.

The ocean disappeared.

A cavernous, circular maw opened up, ringed with teeth. The ocean formed a small whirlpool where the creature was sucking the water down. It had to be a magical ability, because there was no chance of any living creature ingesting that much water …

And the corpses were dropped one after the other into the tooth-lined mouth.

The Charybdis first tossed its prey at its mouth, where they were sucked down. Once it realized that its food was indeed already hunted for it and quite dead, it took its time and dropped each carcass in individually, like it was savoring it.

More than one of my crew were green around the gills, seeing such a display. I was just grateful Rhistel had found us a way to avoid being thrown into its gullet ourselves.

I took the opportunity to analyze it properly, now that I could see more of it than the tip of a limb.

That the creature had the most impressive stats I’d ever seen at only level 6 proved that it was monstrous in more than just appearance.

When the last corpse had been thrown in, several tentacles quested about as though searching for still more – as though the hundreds of pounds of flesh had only whet its appetite. Upon finding nothing the maw closed, ending the whirlpool. It withdrew under the surface, its tentacles disappearing behind it.

Someone gave a low whistle, and hushed chatter resumed. I turned to Rhistel, who’d been quiet for some time.

“What now?”

He turned to me and only then did I notice the tears in his eyes. “Captain, I have a profession again.”

I analyzed him and swore, grabbing his hand and shaking it vigorously. No longer was his profession labelled as ‘Edledhron,’ translated as ‘exile’. Now he had the profession of ‘Róven sídh’.

“I have no idea what Róven sídh means in elvish,” I said, butchering the pronunciation. “But I’m going to take it as a good thing!”

The normally taciturn elf slowed my handshake before politely ending it. “It means ‘peacemaker of the wild’.”

“And does it mean that you can befriend that toothy sucker?”

“It means we can try, Captain. It means we can try.”