Re: The Eye of the Phoenix
They had forgone the deadly graveyard of ships, skirting through a brief icy pass to land them in what was the perilous exit of the Shardos Straits. “Oh Avo save us.” Melinda said. Above them towered the most massive iceberg they had ever seen, four times as tall as the Knothole Glade tavern, Veros guessed. Bristling ice stabbing out like knifes all over its glimmering surface were jagged and solid, and could tear even the strongest ship to nothing more than wreckage in mere seconds. From its base there jutted a narrow sliver of icy land, a sign that there was unwavering earth below it and that not even Finrar could melt it. The very worst part of it was that the ship was headed straight for the terrifying white mountain. It was then that Veros noticed one detail he overlooked: the earth below it was moving. The land writhed for a moment, rising out of the frothy frigid water and soaring upwards, its sides revealed to be a colossal myriad of sallow, cold scales. It bent and whirled slowly around, until they all realized that it was not a simple iceberg at all, two glowing vicious orbs appearing. The horrid, deep and guttural roar burst forth from the fanged, gargantuan mouth of a Frost Kraken, a beast long lost to Albion until now. Veros would have preferred it extinct, given their circumstances.
“By Skorm’s teeth! What do we do now?” said Rufus, who had all but abandoned his post at the ship’s wheel.
“Finrar, Rufus and I will take it on and I’ll lead,” Tom said, his gaze set on the beast the entire time as it only eyed them maliciously, “the rest will stay here and navigate the ship.”
Veros spoke up, “What? I’m coming with you Tom. I can still fight even with this bandage!”
“No. I said stay here! Veros, I am serious about this as I ever have been. Just trust me now and your time will come to fight once more. I know you will find a way to help us. From afar that is,” With that, he departed with an odd wink that left Veros bamboozled before he spoke once more, “You two who I have said, follow my lead! Rolf take the wheel and drop anchor for the time being!” The rest of them watched with awe as Tom bolted into a sprint, leaping off the side of the Sea Wolf to land with impressive poise on a wide berth carved into the side of the nearest iceberg. Beckoning to Finrar and Rufus, he proceeded to help each of them onto the ledge. Then, without warning, the Frost Kraken unleashed its wrath, realizing that Tom had no good intentions.
Seeming to touch the sky with its towering pale head, it reared up and descended with a hiss, its deadly fanged mouth opened wide to decimate its assailants. Tom crouched, and the others did the same, as the wrathful beast slashed through the iceberg’s icy top, missing them and temporarily stunning itself. “This way!” yelled Tom, hopping nimbly from icy outcropping to icy outcropping with the ease of an experienced acrobatic. Rufus and Finrar were hesitant, though the fear of the Kraken dawned upon them quicker than their doubt, and they followed in his footsteps, until they reached the towering balcony of ice that Tom stood at, boldly facing the direction of the recovering Kraken. As always, a confident grin was on his face.
All the while, Veros was baffled by Tom’s words, though it slowly came to him. He rushed down the steps of the ship, almost tripping over himself to reach his room. He flung open his door paying no mind to Durig, who was still sleeping outside despite the current chaos. Apparently, he was a heavy sleeper. The commotion of Veros rifling through his items woke Durig from his sleep, and he sat up with alarm. “Veros! You’re okay? I mean, I knew you would be okay but I just…” then, seeing his urgent expression, he said, “Wait… what’s going on?”
“This is no time to explain Durig. Whatever you do, stay below deck and watch yourself until we say so. Understood?” He nodded halfheartedly, as if longing to help out, though Veros would not put him at risk. Then, he returned to his task, drawing from his sack what he had not thought of, though it was of utmost importance to him at this very moment. He drew forth from the heavy oak crossbow that he had packed those many long days ago, its shining handle gleaming in the dim light of the lower deck hall. He took his pack full of bolts and tied it to his belt, rushing back down the hall, the last sight he glanced at the somber face of Durig, still rooted in place by his room door. Veros thought of it for a brief moment as he stopped on the first steps of the deck.
Tom had not wished for him to aid in their current peril, though he knew that it was Veros alone who had to stand against impossible odds. He was like a father, a leader that wished only to help his men in their time of need, for Veros to be a hero amongst them. He turned around and leaned around the corner, shouting to Durig, “Never mind that Durig… I’d be happy to have you fighting beside me. Grab a bow and a quiver of arrows now!” Durig’s dour expression instantly lit up with an unmistakable fire that almost reminded Veros of his former self, when he was the lad’s age. As Durig sprang to snatch his bow off of the rack at the end of the hall, Veros had already climbed to the top of the stairway and was fitting his crossbow with a thick fine shafted bolt, his nerves steeled just as the very metal at the tip of the bolt for whatever may come.
Meanwhile, Tom, Finrar and Rufus were in the shadow of the frozen Kraken, readied for battle. With fangs glistening in the waning light of the noon, the beast eyed them with its lustrous orbs of eyes, gazing at them intently before its mouth widened just slightly, just enough to where Tom caught it. “Strafe to the side! Quick!” With that, the beast whooshed through the frigid air in another devastating attack, this time barely nicking Finrar’s cloak as it buried its teeth deep in the frozen berg. It howled a long, coarse call before retracting from its full length to circle back around intently. It became taller, rising up out of the water bit by bit, until its many enormous tentacles surfaced and began the attack once more. With a broad stroke from one of the massive cupped fists of the beast, Finrar and Rufus were sent flying sideways, Rufus slipping off the edge of the ice’s surface. Tom hurried to his rescue, grasping his hand from where he teetered barely over the long fall to the water below, pulling him up from the brink.
Finrar gathered himself after his fall, saying, “Tom! We can’t defeat this thing. It’s far too large for us to even make a dent in its defenses! Can’t we board the ship once more and try for the best?”
“No, my friend. We are not the fighters in this mission, but we only serve as the eye’s distraction until the true champions of this battle arrive.” Finrar was utterly confused by Tom’s words, though he surmised that he was to keep up this charade to confuse the Kraken if he would ever make it out of here alive…
Durig came atop the deck, two bows and quivers in hand, tossing one set to Melinda, who caught it with limited enthusiasm. “What am I to do with this? I’ve only shot a bow once in my life, and it was no straight bulls eye, though I must admit it was fairly close…” she spoke, though now was hardly the time to talk.
“There’s no time to discuss it Melinda. Just aim for its exposed belly where the scales are lesser. Durig, you do the same. I’ll confuse it by shooting at its face. Now go to it!” Veros shouted, sounding almost like a military general giving out commands. Durig fitted his bow with an arrow first, drawing back behind his eye, a sign that he had indeed used a bow before. Melinda followed his example as best as she could, the two armed and ready until the twang of their bows sounded simultaneously and two iron-tipped broad arrows sliced through the air to find their mark in the chest of the ferocious monster. The shots had certainly found the Kraken’s weak point, it writhing in pain to try to brush the arrows from its wounds, now bleeding slightly where the scales were fewer. Veros motioned for them to continue the attack, he himself taking up his bolts and crossbow and recalling how exactly to fire the mechanisms of the device. Like a skill he could not forget, it came to him and he smiled with the brief reassurance that he could find his mark. He steadied the crossbow and readied it to fire, his eye on his mark before he let loose the bolt, only for the ship to rock sideways with a blow from one of the Kraken’s huge tentacles. He stumbled to the side, helping Melinda and Durig to their feet before he refitted another bolt and fired with impressive accuracy for one who had not taken up the bow in so long. The bolt grazed the edge of a twisting tentacle before it slashed its broad tip into the soft, vulnerable underbelly of the fiend, pouring out streams of red from the gash which had lacerated the scales all around the area of the injury.
The Frost Kraken writhed in a maelstrom of icy-colored scales, flinging its neck from side to side, bashing itself against the surrounding ice mountains to break the bolt from its side with little success. A roar thick with fury filled the air and then its attention turned to its attackers. Large, reddened eyes gazed down on them filled with the bloodlust of an intent beast, before it lashed out with a single tentacle across the surface of the oak deck, knocking barrels and crates askew, though the attack was out of the way of the three archers and Scorl, who ducked out of harm’s way at the last moment. Suddenly, Veros noticed something as he gazed into the crimson eyes of the monster, and realized something vital: the Kraken was blind. “Melinda! Durig! The Kraken can’t see! Lure it behind itself with the sound of your arrows!” Without a second’s hesitation, they fired off, purposely letting their arrows slip beyond the reach of the behemoth to land in the cratered ice wall behind. The monster whipped around and with a hiss, slashed away at the wall, from which a resounding twang noise came. They had their opening, the Frost Kraken turning its back to them to find its invisible foe. “Fire at its head while it’s turned around!”
Though the sound of Veros’s voice reached the Kraken’s ears, it was far too late for it to relax. The three projectiles pierced the Kraken’s flesh, doing more damage than expected. Tom, Rufus and Finrar up above saw their opportunity and took it, the beast in a daze as it writhed in its own darkness to find its assailants. “Down below! Finrar, show that brute some of your will and Rufus and I will face it up close!” Tom told the others.
“We will?” Rufus inquired with an almost pained expression on his face. Tom gave him no second reassurance, already pulling him with him to the edge of the berg. He dove feet-first from the cliff, plummeting to land beside Rufus in a small snow bank at the foot of the glacial mountain. Tom pulled Rufus up to stand next to him, only a bowshot’s length from the crazed beast. The Kraken let out an ear-shattering cry, bashing its full weight against the two adjacent ice bergs before Tom made his move. The flank of the sea beast neared within his range, and he slashed out with a blow from his sword, in an arc that went from behind his shoulder to its full length and tore a ragged wound even through the thick scales of the Kraken. Rufus would not hesitate this time, for he now felt confident that they could take down the giant. Out from the brink of the berg above came a bright violet rain of lightning, lashing out like a whip from Finrar, who lashed it back and forth, the force of the shock circulating through the gigantic foe’s body to arc from its very sides.
Screeching with a shrill, almost unearthly noise, the monster strafed, crashing once more into an ice wall, before it approached its now revealed attackers. Its fangs sank into the edge of the ice shelf above, a mass of frost breaking off to crash in a cloud of snow beside Tom. As the beast retracted its body, Rufus made quick and held his sword high above his head, swinging it down hard, with a motion of a powerful woodcutter, hewing through the exposed jawbone of the Kraken. Bellows of anguish sounded out through the Shardos Straits, the final sound of the dying Kraken as it flopped on its side, blood spewing from its deadly wound. Icy water frothed in a white spume around the fallen monster, flying up even to the tallest reaches of the bergs to drench the walls of ice with the water mingled with darkened blood. And so the Frost Kraken, one of the only remaining of its kind was defeated in the legendary Shardos Straits, by the heroes of the northward bound journey.
Veros was stunned- mostly because they had done it without the loss of any limbs! Krakens, the beasts that ravaged the coastal towns for centuries, tearing apart solid structures with single swoops of army-crushing force, had been defeated by them, a small party of adventurers. It was a joyous moment; all of the journeyers rejoicing and throwing up their arms after the deadliest trial they had faced yet, and more importantly over their power to persevere even through the worst fate had to offer them. Beyond lie the exit to the Shardos Straits and the entryway into the Northern Wastes, but now they could only think of what they had done, not what they had yet to do. In the midst of their celebration, the sound of Badris ascending the stairs could be heard. The burly barman poked his bearded face above the deck, roused from his sleep finally by the death roar of the Kraken. He gazed first at the rejoicing crew and then at the limp form of the enormous Kraken half submerged in the water before finally saying, “So… what’d I miss?” More than he’d ever want to know, Veros thought.
. I hope you enjoy!