Bone Lord 4, стр. 36
“After our first 10 days of sailing, we came across the biggest fleet of ships I’d ever seen. There were at least 50 warships. They forced us to stop, and the soldiers boarded and searched the ship thoroughly, and interrogated the captain. I had to translate because the soldiers were Prandish.”
“Were they now,” I murmured darkly.
“It was the Transcendent Sails,” Zhenwan said. “Come to think of it, their warships looked exactly like this one, and …” He looked around him at the signs of the recent battle. “By Xayon,” he gasped, “are you part of that fleet?”
“Would the Lord of Light really choose to ally himself to the Death God?” I asked.
“Of course not. Then. have you commandeered a Church of Light naval vessel?” He looked at me with disbelief, and perhaps a little admiration.
“It’s mine now, yes.”
“Truly, you must be a powerful warrior,” Zhenwan exclaimed. “And you must be who the soldiers were looking for.”
“Those assrags were most likely looking for me,” I said with a nod.
“Then you have made a powerful enemy,” Zhenwan said. “The might of the Transcendent Sails is unequaled across the High Seas.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What happened after those assholes boarded your ship?”
“Well, of course, the warship did not find anything illegal on our vessel, so they allowed us to continue. Things were uneventful for the next few days, until we encountered… it.”
“The kraken?”
Zhenwan gulped and nodded slowly, his eyes darting from side to side. “Yes,” he whispered. “The kraken.”
“How did you come across this beast?” I asked. “They rarely show themselves close to the surface when ships are around.”
“This is true,” he said. “And I was hoping that, in the course of our long voyage across the ocean, we would avoid running into one. The attack happened at night, so I did not get to see the beast too clearly, but I saw it rising from the depths of the ocean to swallow our ship, and that… that is a sight I will never forget, as much as I desperately wish to.”
“Vance,” Elyse whispered, taking me aside, “perhaps you shouldn’t be asking him to relive his trauma.”
I turned to Anna-Lucielle. “You can help ease Zhenwan’s nerves, right?”
She nodded, knelt down, and put her hands on Zhenwan’s temples. Once more I felt her Charm magic, calming, warm, and soothing, dance in the air. The fear faded from Zhenwan’s eyes.,
He was ready to tell his story.
Chapter Thirteen
“It was late at night that the beast came,” Zhenwan said, continuing of his own accord, in a much calmer tone of voice. “I am often afflicted with dream devils, and on that night, I couldn’t sleep. That, I believe, is one of the only reasons I survived. I got up from my bunk and went up on deck to get some fresh air and look at the stars. I was standing near the prow when I noticed two glowing lights in the ocean’s depths. They grew larger and larger, and I became quite alarmed; whatever was down there was rising to the surface, and it was coming up quickly. The lights were a bright, luminous blue, and as they got closer to the surface, they grew larger, like two enormous wagon wheels, and then bigger still.
“I ran to call one of the sailors who was on night watch and showed him the rising lights. His face went pale, and he almost fainted on the spot.
“‘A kraken,’ the sailor whispered hoarsely. ‘A kraken. The ship is doomed. We’re all doomed!’
“From what I knew of the creatures, they ripped entire ships apart, snapping them in half with their monstrous strength and pulling them down into the depths, where they feasted on the many drowned bodies. I guessed that the only way to survive the coming attack was to get off the ship.
“The sailor and I ran to the nearest dinghy while raising the alarm. That was when the first of the gigantic tentacles shot out of the water. Never have I seen anything as horrifying, as utterly terrifying, as those tentacles. Each was easily thicker than the biggest wagon you’ve ever seen, or the trunk of a 200-year-old oak tree. They were slimy and orange in color and looked much like squid or octopus tentacles, covered in suckers. There seemed to be an immense number of them, a dozen or more, all blasting out of the black water, writhing like snakes as they wrapped themselves around the ship.
“I felt a jolt like the biggest earthquake I’ve ever experienced, multiplied a hundredfold. The strength of the beast was beyond immense, and I knew that it would not take much for the creature to smash the ship into splinters. A group of sailors and I jumped into the dinghy and cut the ropes, dropping off the ship into the ocean, and just as we did this, we heard the terrified screams of the passengers inside as they woke to the sound and jolt of the kraken’s attack.
“A gigantic beak emerged from the waves, and a brazen roar louder than any sound I’ve ever heard tore through the night. The sailors and I, driven by sheer terror, paddled furiously to get away from the ship, all of us screaming and weeping like terrified children. The creature, praise Xayon, did not seem to care about us, though; it only wanted the ship.
“It pulled with its tentacles, its two bright blue eyes glowing like two evil moons in the darkness, and it cracked the ship in half. I will never forget the sight or sound of the passengers as they fell screaming out of the wrecked ship, like weevils from a broken biscuit, tumbling into the black water. The huge beast gulped them down with its enormous beak, its many limbs writhing like sea serpents as it pulled the pieces of the ship down into the depths.
“Within minutes, the ship and the passengers were gone, and the foul creature disappeared below the depths. The sailors and I had survived,