Page 53 of When Monsters Fight
The creatures stopped attacking us and backed away.
This wasn’t our doing. This was because of the scream. The command. Yep, something was coming. Something more powerful. Something that these fuckers obeyed.
The mist parted and thinned as a tall, painfully thin figure stepped out of it. Flowing dark locks floated around its frame as if each tendril was alive. This creature had a feminine energy with skin as white as bone and large dark eyes that reminded me of an abyss, desperate to swallow me and keep me. Her mouth was a thin line that extended almost from ear to ear. The top half of her body was stark white skin threaded with a network of black veins, and the bottom half was scaly, like the tail of a fish. She glided toward us on tentacles that moved across the deck like slippery spider legs.
My stomach knotted with terror, but I held my ground. “Get off my ship. Now. You’re not welcome here.”
She hissed, showcasing so many teeth that my heart almost stopped. “These are my waters. And all that pass belong to me.” The words held a bubbling quality that made my stomach ache with fear.
I tamped down on the terror, injecting authority into my tone. “Not this ship. And not us. But, hey, if you want to die, then stick around. We can make that happen.”
Her gaze flicked to the dead bodies of her minions, then back to us. “We are many.”
“Yeah? Good, more for me to kill, then. Trust me, my power isn’t going to run out.”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered the odds, and there was intelligence in that look. This was more than a predator.
When she spoke, her tone slipped into a conversational one. “You speak our tongue. You wield strange power. You are not Gehennan.”
“No. We’re travelers from another world, and we’re hereon an important mission, so you can either get out of our way, help us, or die. Your choice.”
“There has not been a ship in our waters for decades. Not since the lands were swallowed by the sea. Before that, the Gehennans would provide offerings to pass through our lands. Several offerings every month. The sweet flesh of the betrayer. We hunger now, and you have cargo filled with sweet flesh. Give us the males, and you may pass unchallenged and with our protection.”
“Protection from what? From being attacked by you? No thanks. And those males aren’t cargo. They’re my friends. You can’t have them. So for the last time, get out of our way, help us, or die. Pick one. Now.”
“Wait,” Jilyana said. “Listen, even if we gave you the males?—”
I squeezed her hand sharply. “What are you doing?”
She shook her head. “Trust me.” Then to the tentacle woman, “Even if we gave you the males, what then? You’d be starving again soon enough. There won’t be any more ships. Any more offerings. Your world is broken. But we can fix it. That’s why we’re here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Something is wrong with our world…”
She sensed it too.
“Yes,” Jilyana continued. “There are fractures in your world, and in ours. These fractures have disrupted the balance of your world. That’s why the seas swallowed the land which forced the Gehennans to leave.”
Jilyana had the tentacle woman’s attention. She’d defused this situation, and hope bloomed in my chest. “If you want to fix things, if you want the ships back, then you need to help us. Help us to fix this, and everything can goback to how it was. You can have your regular offerings again. You won’t have to starve.”
“You can make the ships return? You can fix this?” the woman asked.
I had no clue if fixing things would mean the Gehennans returned, but fuck it. “Yes. I can.”
The creatures began to mutter amongst themselves.
“Silence!” their leader snapped. “How will you fix it?”
She wasn’t stupid. She wanted details. I was happy to give them to her. “I can seal the fractures and allow your world, and mine, to heal. But I need something. Something that fell into your circle two decades ago. A fragment of an important relic. Have you seen it?”
The creatures started to murmur again, and this time the leader took a little longer to hush them. Finally, she raised her hand, and they quietened.
“Something glows on the shores of Perinady,” she said. “Perinady was once a city, and now all that remains is a strip of land leading to the gate.”
“The gate to the fourth circle?”
“Yes. But that strip of land is now home to the Ioness. They nest there now. I believe this light, this…relicis what has drawn them. They guard it. They…worship it. They will not let you claim it.”
“They won’t have a choice.”
