Page 115 of Tiger's Voyage
I used my power to blast the kraken’s mouth. The beast shook angrily in response and clacked its razor beak several times. The long green tubules wrapped around my throat, waist, and arms, pinning them to my sides and drawing me closer. I was trapped. I couldn’t use my lightning power anymore. I was going to be eaten by the kraken. The tentacles squeezed me roughly a final time, shook me, and let me go, trusting that I was sufficiently incapacitated by the green tongues.
I writhed back and forth, desperately trying to free my hand, but I was beaten. I couldn’t move. I tried to turn my head to see if Ren or Kishan were near, but I couldn’t twist enough. My mask was torn off as the creature shifted me. It was apparently going to eat me feet-first. I squinted in the murky water, trying to see without my mask. I thought I saw a golden blur near me, but I wasn’t sure it if was the trident or Fanindra.
Something brushed my arm, a long sinuous shape.Probably anothertentacle to give me a final tenderizing.My feet were in its open mouth. I kicked a leg, but my calf hit a serrated tooth. My leg burned. I had the Scarf wrap a bandage around this new wound, which was probably moot as the kraken was going to eat me any second. I waited for my leg bones to crunch, but the creature didn’t bite down.Maybe it wasgoing to swallow me whole?An idea surfaced, and I asked the Scarf to tie both ends of its beak open. The threads raced up, wrapped around the creature’s body above and below, and then wrapped several times around the top and bottom of the monster’s beak to hold it open.
The kraken thrashed and moved, shaking violently like a shark trying to rip the flesh from a whale. When its razor beak started ripping through the threads, I asked the Scarf to reinforce it, but I knew it was just a matter of time. The kraken would eventually get angry enough to bite through the thread all the way and cleave me in half.
As my body was whipped back and forth in the water, I briefly wondered what my parents would have thought about the way I was going to die. I thought about the afterlife and wondered if people shared death stories. If so, I’d have the coolest story ever.You died in your sleep?Drunk driver? Cancer, huh? World War II? Well … yeah, those deaths aregreat and all, but wait till I tell you what happened to me. Yeah … that’sright … I said a kraken.
I should have panicked. I should have drowned. But I just drifted in the wake of the surging limbs and calmly waited for the creature to swallow me.What was taking so long? Sheesh. Get on with it already.
The kraken’s body gave off a strange sort of glowing light as if it had tiny winking bulbs under its skin. I could see its black outline in the water, barely.
I felt like someone had thrown me into a giant washing machine. I could feel the smooth flesh of tentacles, the rubbery discs of suction cups, and the sharp sting of teeth as they whirled past me in the wash. I heard the screeches and felt the surging of the agitated water and the pulpy slick probing of the tongues as they continued to slather me in oil. I hung like a fish caught on a line, waiting to be reeled in—but something was distracting the fisherman. I cracked open my eyes and saw black whirling tendrils of blood.
Wriggling shapes shot past me, one golden.Fanindra.She lit the area, although I decided I’d rather be in darkness. The monster loomed over me like a fleshy purple cloud in the water, ready to destroy me with the violence of a hurricane. I watched her as she swam over to a tentacle and bit. The creature shivered.
More long shapes swam toward me—yellow-and-black striped, black-and-white striped, gray, green, long, thin, thick—sea snakes. The cave was full of them. They attacked the beast, swarming over it like needles in a pincushion. In fact, I watched as several snakes followed Fanindra’s example. Some of them bit savagely into the purple flesh and wriggled their way inside. They moved under the squid’s skin like worms, biting and tearing as they went.
The creature screamed and filled its mantle. Black ink jetted out from the funnel and coated me in warm waves. It stung my eyes. I quickly shut them and almost threw up as the funnel pushed water again. Suddenly, the kraken moved dozens of body lengths away from where it had been, dragging me violently along with it.
In the confusion, the kraken loosened its grip on me. I had shifted out of its mouth, but it still held me paralyzed in the grip of its tongues. It was just in time too, because the monster’s movements snapped the threads clean through.It would have sheared me in half.As I pondered my lucky state, I watched the snakes that were still attached to its skin. I saw Fanindra bite the skin next to the giant, black eye, and the beast shook itself. Tentacles flailed back and forth in the water, desperately trying to dislodge the snakes.
Something touched me, and I flinched but then felt a hand squeeze my arm. Ren grabbed a green tongue and removed it from around my neck. The powerful muscle began to wind itself around his arm, but he tugged hard and got it off. Kishan swam up to us and sawed through the green tubes. Slick, oily liquid gushed over us as he severed the tongues from the creature’s body. He freed my legs while Ren freed my arms. Kishan wrapped an arm around me in the distressed swimmer grip and started swimming away, tugging me along with him.
Bent on violence, Ren swam up to the beast. He thrust the trident deeply into the creature’s maw over and over again. Black blood rushed out in a cloud, and soon I couldn’t see him anymore. Kishan pulled me closer to the rock steps. After we reached them, we turned and watched as the creature jetted murky ink again. The last we saw of it was the blinking lights on the tentacle pads as the kraken descended into the dark chasm below. We waited anxiously another few moments until we first saw the gleam of the trident and then Ren making his way toward us from the black cloudy water.
Sea snakes shot out of the chasm by the hundreds and hovered in a wriggling cloud nearby, Fanindra at the head. A small light high above us indicated a way out. We swam up. Kishan led with me gripping his hand. He broke the surface in a white tiled pool and reached down to pull me up. Ren shot out next to me and removed his breathing apparatus. We all sucked in several deep breaths. Kishan tugged me to the side of the pool. He carefully removed the tank and my flippers and began checking me over.
“Are you okay?”
The question made me laugh hysterically until finally I could shake my head. “No.”
“Where are you hurt?”
“Everywhere. My leg especially. But I’ll survive.”
He took his diving knife and cut off the leg of my wet suit to inspect the damage. I’d used the Scarf to create a bandage. Wes had taught us to leave the bandage on and keep putting more bandages on until the blood stopped. It wasn’t bleeding through, so I had hopes that it wasn’t that severe of an injury. I had the Scarf wrap another layer, and Kishan squeezed my arm.
“How bad is it?”
“It could be worse. I think it will be okay.”
He nodded and stood, looking around.
We were in an underground room, completely enclosed except for a set of stairs. I grunted in pain, and then padded on bare feet to the stairs, limping, and looked up. The stairs were too small for a dragon.It must be able to change into a man like Lóngjn. Motivated to hurry while the kraken was licking its wounds, I started up slowly, favoring my strong leg and the brothers followed.
At first, I leaned heavily on Kishan and bit my lip trying to control the pain. After one flight, he growled and picked me up, carrying me up the rest. We climbed. Ten floors. Twenty steps per floor, but Kishan wasn’t even breathing hard. When we finally reached the end of the stairs, we stepped out onto the stony roof on top of the ruined castle. Kishan carefully set me down on a rocky bench, and he and Ren approached the head of the sleeping blue dragon.
“Wake up!” Ren roared.
The dragon shifted and snored. A cloud of fog descended on the brothers.
Kishan shouted, “Get up. Now!”
The dragon huffed and cracked a lazy eye.What do you want?
Ren worked his jaw angrily. “You will wake and speak with us, or I will ram this trident into your fleshy throat!”
