Page 14 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
If I could just catch my bearings.
Zahara barely held the wheel steady. Jun collapsed flat on the deck, gripping the rope Calvin threw around him to keep him on board, his breaths labored. For the first time that I’ve seen, the hood fell from his head, revealing patches of exposed scalp, a scar that cut through him from ear to ear. My heart clenched at the gruesome injury, making sense of the hood he used to hide beneath in shame.
A booming eruption split the air, ringing in my ears like a fractured stricken bell. Calvin blasted a cannon toward the Marrowtwist, narrowly missing. It dove headfirst back into the ocean, playing a twisted game. Its razor-spiked tail shot water across the main deck, slickening it, as it disappeared back beneath the surface.
“Shit!” Calvin screamed, loading another cannon ball into the waiting barrel like feeding a storm.
The serpent lurked around the ship just below the water’s surface, slow at first, then gaining momentum. The ocean churned with unnatural fury, spiraling in wide, violent circles as if something colossal moved just beneath the surface. The Marrowtwist did. The wheel spiraled out of control. Noctis trailed behind, waiting to pounce, but the waves churned too violently, blurring everything beneath the surface.
“Kill it fast!” Zahara screamed from the helm, no longer able to steer the ship. We rocked violently against the waves, barely keeping upright. Jun crashed into the helm’s siding below Zahara, bellowing in agony.
I gripped the railing until my knuckles screamed back in pain, waiting for the Marrowtwist to peek its head above the surface again. I patiently stalked the uprisings in the sea where the water rippled above the beast. It splintered the surface and hurled itself into Calvin’s chest, spiraling them through the air. My lips split to release the roar, and I lunged, ramming the dagger into the scaly serpent’s hole of an ear, a sickening gurgle through the havoc of the sea. It flailed violently, its fangs glinting off the sun’s rays as it hissed. Green ooze dripped from the socket, pooling on the surface of the water. The serpent turned its massive elongated head and narrowed its glare on me.
Then, it pounced. Its cruel game ended. The Marrowtwist prepared to finish its kill.
It battered into me with unyielding might, sending me flying to the other side of the deck alone. The breath in my lungs rushed out, the bones beneath its strike bending and threatening to snap. It spiraled forward, its mouth agape, ready to sink its fangs into me and course its crimson-dripping venom into my bloodstream. Weaponless, I threw my hands before me and pushed with my feet against the wooden deck backward before the beast struck.
The serpent's fangs approached inches from my face, and then its head fell limp on my chest, breath rushing out of my lungs under its weight. Lifeless eyes stared back, each one the size of my head, the auburn-hilted dagger sticking out from its oozing ear. I shoved into its head, attempting to slide from beneath it, but the creature didn’t budge. The serpent's fangs wept poison, each drop a whisper of death sliding across my flesh.
I couldn’t move—couldn’t breathe.
I wrestled under the beast, begging the gods for respite or even a single breath, but I knew my own goddess would never bless the blood she’d marked for sacrifice.
Noctis poked his head above the serpent’s, a grin stretching his smug face. He lifted a finger, and the Marrowtwist’s severed head hovered above us in a gust of wind, mutilated, as if torn from its body by hand.
The memory of me nearly drowning in the sea flashed in my mind as I pulled air back into my lungs. When I begged for death instead.
“Do you trust menow?” The lilt of Noctis’s words shook me from my thoughts.
“I didn’t shove the dagger intoyourear, did I? That’s trust enough.”
“I’ll take that as improvement,” the god said with a slight smirk before tossing the decapitated head back into the sea. It flew and splashed into the ocean, leaving the viridescent sludge dripping behind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Trees barricaded the entrance onto Plumsu Island as the sun set below the horizon the following evening—no harbor in sight, and only one passage in or out of the Myrrwood Forest. I counted each breath, every delicate pull of air misguiding my growing trepidation.
Zahara escorted the ship as close as possible before Calvin dropped the anchors. Jun silently heaved against a water barrel, battling to breathe through the multiple broken ribs riddling his body. The beating he endured drained his energy along with the power that settled in his bones, making him incapable of healing the wounds inside himself.
Calvin, Noctis, and I agreed to enter the forest in search of the Threnai, leaving Jun to rest and Zahara to finish the necessary repairs to the stern before sailing northwest toward the Shadeborne entrance on Waning Isle.
“Is it too late to change our mind?” Calvin murmured, fidgeting the grandiose silver ring around his middle finger.
“Yes,” I answered. Although debilitating dread overwhelmed me, so did the images that flashed into my mind of the bodies crushed beneath the boulders by the Oricaan.
“It’s driven by elven magic,” Noctis murmured at my side as we overlooked the dense forest. I tilted my head, his words bouncing through my nearly empty mind, but they never formed coherency. “The forest isn’t just dangerous. It’s a graveyard inwaiting. Even the elven islanders keep their distance, whispering of creatures that turn on their own without hesitation. As for what waits beyond the trees tonight… no one knows. No one who’s entered has lived to speak of it.”
“Was that supposed to be reassuring?” I asked as my heart nearly beat from my chest.
So, he’s cocky and insincere.
“Please, if I wanted to reassure you, I’d lie. But I have an inkling you’re not the type that needs sugarcoating.”
He was right, though. I’d preferred to be told outright about the danger that lay awaiting us. It was better to step into the truth than be struck by it in ignorance. And if my past self didn’t prefer it, she’d change right along with present me. I got to decide who I became.
“If any of us die, we will haunt you since this was all your bright idea,” Calvin chirped to the god, but the dread in his voice rattled palpably the longer we looked toward the island’s forest wall.
“I won’t let anything happen to either of you,” Noctis assured.
