“I know.”
Dahlia was the strongest and most resilient creature I’d ever met. To hear such broken, entreating words coming out of her mouth was devastating. I pushed up on my hands and pulled her into my arms, hugging her close. It wasn’t rough or demanding or a way to display power. I just wanted to embrace her, for my own sanity and hers. I’d chased away her demons for the day and now she needed me to soothe the wounds they’d left behind. I wrapped my arms fully around her, cradling her spent body against mine.
To know that she could be so dangerous and yet so soft was a part of her only I got to see, and I was richer for it.
“It is getting worse, isn’t it?” I said. “You’ve not been telling me everything.”
“It is worse,” she whispered, locking her fingers together at the small of my back. “Every day is worse.”
“You cannot go in the water anymore.”
She hesitated for a breath and then finally said, “I know,” like a child who’d just heard their beloved pet had to be put down.
It was for the best… but I knew it was going to take a toll.
The first thing I heard was screaming.
All of Theloch would have heard my mother’s suffering cries.
I came into this world from cruel agony.
~Dahlia
The sea was moving. Not with waves, but with the beasts that rode them. Foul monsters prowled the water, thirsting. Every day they could not catch us only made them more voracious.
The whole world was caving in around us. There were enemies on all sides. Danger was in every corner and we were but one ship. I’d been stripped of almost everything I held dear, and Lune saw fit to give me Vidar. I had Meridan… and I had him.
But still, I had to watch him die.
I was bound. I was always bound. The sense of helplessness was always the first horror I had to face. I was stripped of my strength. My control. I was forced to watch all that happened next as if my lids had been peeled away from my eyes. I was forced to stare into the dark water beating the shores and the horrid creatures that uncurled from the waves. Their whispers were needles in my skull. Every sound they made was a violation and reached far deeper than any sound should. It burrowed under my skin and into my lungs and deeper still until it was growing in my soul like mold.
“He will come for you,” a voice said, its malicious tones layered on top of one another. One and many at the same time. “He will always come for you.”
No.
I hung upside down, my arms dragging on the ground. Above me, my tail was wrapped painfully tight in rough twine, but I could not find my legs. They would not come. I was helpless. I struggled against my binds, tearing my flesh against ropes, but to no avail. Across the muddy ground, I saw him cutting a bloody path through droves of wicked xhoth and sirens who’d gone feral at his presence. His bronze cutlass sliced through one after the other. There was madness in his movements. Desperation.
“Vidar,” was all I could muster with my weakened voice.
He pushed forward, a lone force against a hundred foes. Blood painted my vision as he neared and a tiny spark of hope lit up inside me. Just as quickly, it was extinguished as a wave of shadows closed in on him from all sides. I wanted to yell out to him, but my voice was being held hostage by fear. It was as if the ocean had swallowed him up and no matter how long I waited for him to surface, inside, I knew he was gone.
“Vidar,” I whispered, struggling against the ropes only to feel them tighten and cut into my tail.
The masses dispersed and on the muddy ground lay a pile of bones. Ribs protruded like a blossoming flower, flesh still attached. His face had been stripped of the features I adored so much. Ropes of intestines stretched out from his body, leaving him hollow.
“No,” I muttered. Sinister giggles and those horrid voices flooded my ears. The moon above was a red orb like a wound in the sky. “No. No!”
My voice returned, lending shrill volume to the word. It was laced with pain and tore at my throat like shards of glass. And all around me were those ghastly figures. Shadows with no faces. Glowing eyes watched me writhe and in those awful stares was pleasure.
But then I was no longer tied up. No, I was free and I was standing over Vidar’s ruins, my hands bloody. A bone knife—mybone knife—was tightly wrapped in my grip, drenched in red. Suddenly, all of the figures had gone and only one remained. One tall, lanky figure in robes so thin they hung on him like liquid. He stood in darkness, backlit by crimson, and though I could not see a face, I could feel him smiling.
“Look what you’ve done,” a voice whispered.
The sun was barely crowning on the horizon and the cool air of early morning gave me a familiar chill. I dressed in a pair of britches and a cotton shirt too large for my frame. There was no way I was going to put the dress back on. I’d only done it because I knew how Vidar enjoyed the way the bodice hugged my waist, but now he’d torn the thing.
It had been a mere five days since we fled from Gilly Pine. Vidar shared how much money had been taken from Whitton’s lifeless corpse. It was enough to keep the crew sustained until they decided on a new direction. People seemed at ease. Relieved. That included me. Killing the sickening man from our shared nightmare relieved a weight from my shoulders that I didn’t know I was bearing.
Salty sea mist tickled my cheeks as I stood on the bow, staring out at the uncharacteristically gentle water. What had once been my home was now a deadly playground for dark and violent monsters. Things even more violent than myself. The Burning Rose was a hunter’s ship only months ago, her crew nothing but killers who slayed my kind. Now, it was my sanctuary.
