Sheesh, all this waiting wasnotdoing her nerves any good. Couldn’t the kraken just get on with it and attack them already?
She looked back at Pierce, for want of anything else better to look at, and something suddenly struck her. She hadn’t noticed at the time, what with the tremors and everything, but Pierce was decidedly… under-dressed for the weather, you could say. She felt cold just looking at him!
“Uh… Pierce?”
“Yes?” he replied.
“Aren’t you cold? I mean,” she gestured broadly in his general direction, trying to indicatehimin general, “you’re not, ah, wearing anything. On top, I mean.”
It was true. He’d pulled on his jeans when they went up to look at the wards, and then everything else had happened so quickly, he obviously hadn’t had time to grab anything else to put on. And she’d stolen his sweater! He must befreezing.
“Hmm? Oh,” he said indifferently, “that’s not an issue. Shifters run warm. A lot of what we wear is just for show, so we don’t stand out amongst the humans.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “I see. So, you could just be wandering around shirtless pretty much all of the time?”
Pierce raised an eyebrow. “Hypothetically, yes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, then.”
Celeste supposed that if they were going to die here, then at least she might as well take in the scenery before everything started going to hell. He reallywasan awfully well-built man, still muscular and trim despite his advancing years. She despaired at all the time they had missed out on together, and swore in that moment that if they survived, she would spend every second of the rest of her life making up for it.
The very slightest feeling of vibration in the soles of her feet caught her attention, and her head snapped up, looking out over the ocean. The surface of the water quivered slightly, like a half-set bowl of Jell-O, and that was the only warning she got before the earth tore itself apart and the sea erupted, hurling both her and Pierce to the rocky ground.
This was no tremor – this was an outrightearthquake, and it was happening right below them.
She closed her mouth and clung onto the ground for dear life as water poured over both of them, battering them, and the sea groaned and heaved around her. Amongst the maelstrom she was aware of Pierce’s hand reaching out for hers, and she gripped it with all her strength.
When the water receded and she had gasped in enough pained, sputtering breaths to regain her equilibrium, she summoned her courage, and looked up.
And up.
It took her several long moments to realize that the reason she couldn’t see anything was that the monstrous shape before her was so large that it was blocking out the dim, yellow glow of the clouds. The sound of the water that was still pouring off it and crashing into the ocean was deafening, the spray washing over her.
So… it’s not like a hermit crab, then.
It occurred to Celeste in that moment that, until now, she had never truly known fear in her life. She’d thought she had, but this was so far beyond anything she had ever experienced. This was pureterror, to the point where she thought she might exit right out the other side and enter a state of trance-like calm, her brain shutting down in the face of what she was seeing.
Because what she was seeing – ornotseeing, in the darkness – was something beyond her comprehension.
Though, as she gazed upward, she found that her eyes were slowly adjusting… and she really wished they weren’t.
The kraken glistened in the unearthly glow, a dark, looming, glimmering mass. Celeste realized with a shudder that the movement she could sense – and hear, a slick, slithering sound – must be its tentacles. Any one of those things could crush either of them in an instant. She couldn’t see how even Pierce, with all the powers that came from being a shifter, could defeat that thing.
I don’t want to abandon my post… but is there any point in just dying here, when I might be able to at least raise an alert and send for help if I flee?
Unless… unless I…
She frantically racked her brain, even as she was increasingly aware of the monster’spresencerising up before her, seeming, impossibly, to get even larger with every moment. Then suddenly, through the panic, a thought came to her, clear as a bell.
Maybe I’mnotcompletely helpless, after all.
Sure, she wasn’t the one who had created the wards, but shehadbeen their guardian for over twenty years. She knew more about them than almost anyone else on earth.
Yes, she had spent the past twenty-two years re-reading every book in the lighthouse… but that meanteverybook. Including the magical ones. She had kept up with her studies, written the occasional letter to Great Aunt Marian, and pondered things in a hypothetical way. She had never fiddled with the magic of the wards, not wanting to somehow mess it up with her tinkering, but she had certainly thought very hard about how they worked.
To the point where, theoretically, it was possible –possible– that she just might be able to create her own wards.
The idea was terrifying. But, really, what other option did she have? To lie here and get turned into mincemeat by some kind of eldritch horror? To fail the people of Portsmith, and potentially beyond?
