The Children of Darkness
All was falling into place.
The Darkness had gathered itself into readiness as its Anointed worked its will.
Soon.
All that remained was to unleash its Children upon those fools still striving to thwart the Darkness and its inevitable victory, now closer than ever before.
Soon.
*
It all went off like clockwork. In fact, it almost went too well; everyone kept looking out for traps that weren’t there, and tricks that weren’t being played. The only thing that was wrong with the whole thing was quite simple: after scouring the ship from top to bottom, they had to admit that the Man in the Black Hat had gone.
The Man in the Black Hat was nowhere to be found aboard the Túnfiskurinn. This was disturbing enough that Ása held off on her plans for turning on Sigrun & co.
Lalli had retired to his crow’s-nest while the two captains worried over what should be done next, so he was the one to give the alarm when the three vessels were confronted with the most unutterably horrible apparition any of them had ever seen.
A great rotting hulk with sails hanging ragged and limp rose up out of the water, borne by a whale on either side. Only the whales had grown into the hulk’s timbers, and on its deck, gross and misshapen forms scurried about. In the rigging were pulsating tentacular growths knitting the whole obscene assembly together. At the prow, though, was a thoroughly human figure, bearing a bullhorn: the Man in the Black Hat.
“Ahoy the fleet,” his mocking voice hailed. “You’ve done well against my pawns, but now you face--THE KRAKEN!”
Before Emil could finish loading the “Everything-He’d-Ever-Seen-Work-on-a-Ship-Ever-and-then-Some” Specials the sight of the foe had inspired in him, it had slithered out of range, so they retired to the Captain’s cabin for war planning.
“There’s only one way to stop it,” the Western Reynir told them. “Sigrun has to dump the Cure on its very Heart and Core.”
Disbelief would be laughable at this point; their only option was to grab onto this basic scheme with both hands. “Where is the Heart to be found?” Sigrun asked.
“You’ll need to board that thing,” Mister Mikkel pointed out, as was his job, “and the whales might make it problematic.”
The Captain smiled a smile that almost had Emil pitying the Man in the Black Hat. “That won’t be a problem.”
*
The Mariposa Reina under full sail made for the gap between the twin whale mouths protecting the hulk they’d absorbed, Tuuri at the helm. At the last possible moment before the fore-spars would have hit, Tuuri nudged the Mariposa Reina a hair to port, slicing her keel along the length of the hulk so that the whale on that side was scraped away like a great and horrible barnacle.
Grapnels flew out to lash the two ships together, and the boarders sprung aboard the Kraken, Sigrun Eide, Captain of the Sea-Lynx, at their fore, bearing as much of the Cure as she could.
Obscene appendages and free-roaming trolls whipped out to halt her, but before any could reach, four whirling dervishes swept them all aside. Two Lallis and two Emils raced around Sigrun as she hastened across the deck to the fo’c’s’le hatch, where the Kraken’s Heart was waiting.
Sigrun was not an inconsiderable fighter herself, but she couldn’t risk what she held of the Cure being wrested away from her in some otherwise minor skirmish.
Unfortunately, only she could go through the hatch, and the things that awaited her, while swiftly despatched, succeeded in stripping her of her weapons and the Cure, leaving her to face the Heart unarmed.
The Heart filled the fo’c’s’le to bursting, its repulsive grayish bulk pulsating like its tentacles aboveboard. It seemed to mock Sigrun as she stood before it.
In desperation, Sigrun stabbed out with the only remaining thing she held: one of the stirring rods. It plunged into that vast writhing mass with all the force she could give it, and there it lodged.
For a moment, nothing happened, but then, the Rod began to glow, dimly at first, but soon so bright as to hurt Sigrun’s eyes, and as it did, a wave of blue energy spilled out from it into the fetid monstrosity it pierced, slowly burning away the Rash-filth until only ashes remained.
“Well,” Sigrun said to herself, “that went better than expected.”
At that moment, the deck gave way beneath her as the Kraken began its death throes.
*
Well, Túnfiskurinn was gone, off to try to pick off some of the Hanseatic trade as it came out of the Skagerrak, and good riddance. Ása had given Sigrun a nice bottle of wine as a parting gift, only lightly seasoned with arsenic.
Mariposa Reina had gone down with the Kraken, which would feature in many a bar-room tale after this.
The Man in the Black Hat had gone ashore after his Western foes, who were fixing to make their next stop his last...
