If we could eliminate the Kraken’s main weapons, its tentacles, then we could kill it.
I rooted around in my pocket for the touch of metal, feeling Alaric’s yo-yo. The comforting weight in my hands was sticky with blood. This might be the final time I ever held it. It was better to choose to let it go, than to wait for life to rob me of another precious thing.
I spared a second to mentally bid the keepsake farewell. To say one final goodbye to my baby brother.
Thank you, Alaric.
The Arc heaved itself right again. I grabbed my harpoon from where it had fallen against the rail before it could gooverboard. Pain sliced through the back of my hand at the movement.
Twining the yo-yo’s string around the harpoon, I turned and took aim.
Heaving the harpoon upwards, I spent every fragment of focus I had on Luck, spearing it into the nearest tentacle. The metals gleamed in the gloom. My miserable aim hadn’t prevailed, the yo-yo and harpoon were lodged in the tentacle.
A bellowing burst of light blinded and deafened me as lightning crashed down. The smell of smoke briefly overpowered the stench of muck from the miasma as it lit up from the reflected lightning. My ears were ringing as my vision slowly returned.
The Kraken pulled a charred, smoking tentacle inward toward its body.
Trying not to think about the yo-yo as melted metal slag made me picture it even more vividly.
With another nerve-shattering bellow, the Kraken reared back its other tentacles, punching them down on the prow of the Arc in a berserk frenzy. I clutched at the nearest railing with one hand as the Arc tipped precariously far forward. The ship groaned under the pressure, before a tremendous crack rang out.
The prow splintered off the ship, sending up another wave of miasma as it collapsed down.
The Arc careened again, this time tipping forward toward where the prow had fallen. Below, I could see the prow, floating in the miasma.
Sarina caught Corra before she fell in. At some point I hadn’t noticed, she must have joined the fray. Seeing her again was an urgent and intense comfort amidst the pervasive terror swimming through me.
The Kraken was still beating the Arc with its tentacles in a blind rage, its horrible shrieking cry now a continuous auditory assault.
Three people were slicing and chopping at its tentacles, and I caught sight of Henrik, Georlan, and Pasha among them.
Pasha ran forward, a longsword raised above her head. She threw her entire weight into a vertical slash, cleaving one tentacle on her way down. I clenched my teeth against the horrible roar the Kraken released, as the blast burrowed into my brain.
We can do this!
The remaining stubby lump spasmed and thrashed, pulling taut before knocking Pasha sideways like a battering ram.
A flit of movement and Pasha went airborne. Shock stamped her face.
She tumbled past the railing and downward beyond where I could see.
Someone screamed her name.
Pasha was gone.
My mind couldn’t process what had just happened. I stared at the hunk of tentacle she’d severed.
At least two people were dead, and many more looked wounded already. The Kraken had lost the use of two tentacles, but it had nearly a dozen more. Determination clenched my jaw. We had to keep going.
Blood blackened with ink saturated the deck.
“Sanguirs!”
I turned, seeing half a dozen Sanguirs spread across the floorboards near where the prow had been. They moved like frenzied roaches toward the severed tentacle and injured crewmates.
The swaying and pitching of the Arc must have gone low enough for them to jump over the defensive spikes below the rails.
There weren’t enough of us to divide our attention between the Sanguirs and Kraken.
