Page 110 of When the Sky Breaks

“Should we check?” Sorcha pressed.

“Follow the trail,” Ansel instructed, gesturing at the blood splatters tracking along the floorboards.

Halfway between the engine room and the railing, in a dank, narrow passage leading out to the gunwales, we turned a corner and came face to face with a young, terrified engineer on his hands and knees, scrubbing at the trail of blood with a strong, tallow soap mixture that reeked of ammonia. His sleeves were pushed up, his hands cracking and bleeding from the chemical, and there on his inner arm was a tattooed eye and spiral.

“Stain don’t want to come out,” the boy muttered then went utterly still as he looked up and realized who we were.

Ansel grabbed the young man by the collar and hauled him against the wall.

“Stain from what exactly?” he asked.

The boy scrabbled against Ansel’s hold for a futile moment, then went limp. Soapy water streaked with blood dripped off his fingertips.

“I’m not supposed to tell nobody,” he said.

Ansel gripped tighter, pushed him harder against the wall.

“I’d reconsider,” he growled.

There was a massive splash, then a single scream cut off mid-wail.

Ansel dropped the boy onto the soapy ground and rushed forward, Sorcha and I close on his heels.

We emerged onto the open deck just in time to watch a massive violet tentacle emerge from the waves. There were six engineers, cultic symbols painted on their skin, and one unconscious young woman on the deck between them. She was bleeding from a wound on her head, and from dozens of cuts lined up methodically along her arms and legs.

One of the engineers bent and licked blood directly from the young woman’s face before reciting something out toward the emerging sea monster—his words obscured by the creak of the steel hull and the lapping of waves.

Another of the engineers shoved a pig carcass into the churning sea, eye and spiral carved at least a dozen times on the flesh. Four more carcasses—of various butcher-shop animals in various states of disassembly and decay—lay on the deck.

“Summon something,” Ansel hissed.

“There’s nothing to summon,” Sorcha insisted. “Everything left half an hour ago.”

“They were fleeing the kraken,” Ansel said. “Clearly. But something must be close enough for you to try?”

“Ansel, we are in the middle of the ocean and my magic doesn’t properly work on fish,” Sorcha snapped.

“It worked on a spider!” Ansel snapped.

“One single time,” I hissed back.

“How about a whale?” Ansel suggested.

“I thought we said no summoning giant animals until further notice?” I countered.

“Fine,” Sorcha muttered. “I’ll try.”

“Is this not the exact situation when you could use that Ironmoot-forged gun and kill it?” I asked.

“With our things in the hold,” Ansel replied, “she’s all we’ve got. Unless you’d like to try regular lead rounds and see how far those get you.”

Sorcha dug in and focused.

But there was nothing nearby—she’d told me as much every night at this time. And the growing frustration on her face just proved it. The ocean was big. And there just wasn’t time, because the engineers had pushed two more of the carcasses into the sea. More tentacles emerged.

A few moments later the last two carcasses were shoved into the waves and a massive beak broke above the roiling sea. All but one of the engineers dropped to their knees, still chanting. And the last engineer picked up the unconscious young woman from the deck and shoved her over the gunwale, into the waiting beak of the monster.

“No,” Sorcha cried, but I clamped a hand over her mouth. Ansel and I rushed back down the hall, pulling Sorcha with us. But it was too late. The engineers-turned-cultists turned and followed after as the beaked kraken disappeared back below the waves.