Like something waking up.
“What is that?” Gyla’s voice has lost its composure. She’s staring at the water with an expression I recognize—the look of someone who’s just realized they’ve made a terrible mistake.
“Listen to me, Gyla. Call for abandon ship.” Aviora’s voice is flat. Calm. “Get everyone off the boats before they go under.”
The first diver jumps.
He’s over the side, but he isn’t swimming for shore. He’s swimming downward with powerful strokes, ignoring the shouts from his crewmates.
More follow.
Three divers, then five, then ten—abandoning their posts, leaping into water that glows with hungry light. They swim straight down, not surfacing, not slowing. The light pulses faster as they descend, as if excited. As if feeding.
I don’t understand what’s happening. Why are they going toward the wreck? We didn’t feel that pull when we were on the surface. Is there something I missed? Is their greed that strong?
“Stop them!” Aviora screams, all pretense of control abandoned. “Tell them to swim toward the shore! Someone?—”
But the men aren’t listening. All across the fleet, sailors are jumping. Deserting their stations, their ships, their lives. The gold must be singing to them. The ancient hunger is feeding.
The first screams start a moment later.
They come from below—from the divers who’ve reached theFortune’s depth, who’ve found what waits in the darkness. Not gold. Not treasure. Something older. Something that’s been sleeping for years and is very, very hungry.
Shapes rise from the deep.
Not drowned. Not wraiths. These are different—ancient things, skeletal and luminous, guardians that protected the treasure for generations. But they’re not guarding anymore. Their eye sockets burn with the same hungry light as the gold.
The ancient hunger has claimed them. Turned them. Made them servants of its endless want.
“What have you done?” Gyla rounds on us, her face contorted with fury and terror. “What have you?—”
The first guardian reaches the surface.
It comes up beneath her flagship like something from a nightmare—skeletal hands grasping the hull, pulling itself upward with inexorable strength. The wood groans. Cracks. Sailors who haven’t jumped scramble for boats, for anything that will take them away from the horror climbing their ship.
I grab Aviora’s arm. “We need to go. Now.”
“Gyla,” Aviora shouts, “come on. We have to get off the ship.”
Gyla spins around and jabs a finger at us. “I hope both of you burn in hell.”
“That’s nice,” Aviora tries to grab the woman, “but hell is exactly where you’re going if you don’t get off this ship now.”
Gyla whips her arm around, backhanding Aviora across the face, sending her sprawling. I gather her up and run toward the rails, toward a longboat that’s been abandoned in the panic. We’re over the side before anyone thinks to stop us, dropping into water that’s gone cold and wrong, swimming for a vessel that might be our only chance at escape.
Behind us, Gyla’s flagship starts to sink.
She’s still screaming orders from the deck—orders no one obeys, orders that mean nothing against the ancient horror she awakened by her greed. The last thing I see before we crest the longboat’s rail is her face, contorted with rage, as a guardian’s skeletal hand closes around her ankle.
Then she’s gone. Pulled under. And the hunger feeds.
I help Aviora into the boat, both of us heaving for air. The look of horror haunts her expression.
“Don’t,” I say. “You told her to get her crew off. You tried to get her to leave, but she refused, even seeing what was happening around her.”
Aviora remains quiet as we row for shore.
Behind us, Gyla’s fleet dies. Ships founder as their hulls are breached from below. Sailors drown as their greed for gold calls them deeper than any human can dive. The guardians rise and rise and rise, their numbers impossible, their hunger insatiable.
