The Quan lunged forward. Water bubbled over Rik where its strange shimmering cloak touched him. A mass of tentacles stroked his cheeks, his forehead, his lips. Alien eyes bored into his own. Pain blistered his face. There was grinding sensation as lamprey mouths bit into flesh and bone, a horrible agonising feeling as something burrowed into his flesh. He remembered the white polyps. They had reminded him of corpse worms. Now they seemed to be slowly eating their way into his brain.
As quickly as it came the agony began to fade, as if there was something in the bite that had an anaesthetic quality. A wave of coolness radiated out from where the tentacles stroked his flesh. They bulged and contracted obscenely, as if they were pumping blood from his face. He tried to breath, but his mouth filled up with salt water from the thing’s cloak. It came to him then, that death was real and the end of his life was very close.
The pain returned, redoubled. Not just blood but his very life force was being drained out of him. He sensed the presence of the creature that was killing him in his mind, its alien thought processes mingling with his own. A flood of memories long buried surged up, tentacles of thought riffled through them, like a burglar searching a chest of drawers for some precious object. Not finding what it wanted, the Quan tapped more memories.
Triumph. The thing had found what it wanted and needed. Images of Serpent Men and a huge green tower flashed into his mind. They were not quite as Rik remembered possibly because the vision of this creature was somewhat different from his own.
The sensation of being drained increased. He realised that the Quan was not only going to devour his life and his blood, it was going to take his thoughts and memories too, even though it could not fully understand them. There was something in him it wanted, and to get that thing, it was going to reduce him to a mindless, drooling husk.
No.
He refused to die this way, like his mother. His will stirred within him, rebelling against the horror and the fear of death. He reached down into himself and drew upon his rage and pain. He focused it incoherently, half-instinctually, drawing on the training he had received from Asea, and forged it into a blade. He lashed out at the Sea Devil. Much to his own surprise, and more to the Quan’s he hit home. The draining sensation receded as the Quan’s mind recoiled. It was not used to its prey fighting back like this.
Having assessed the situation and gauged the strength of its foe, it returned to the fray, striking at Rik as he had struck at it. Rik tried to block but it was like wrestling with a squid. The Quan attacked on too many fronts for him to deal with. They were fighting spirit to spirit, and it seemed like once more he was on the verge of drifting free from his body.
He recalled the initiation ritual Asea has put him through. He retreated into himself, till it seemed that he floated bodiless in the strange place between worlds, where he had made contact with the Deep. Confident, the Sea Devil followed him. Now, though, they were in Rik’s world. He was no longer a drowning, pain-wracked morsel of flesh trapped aboard a water-logged hulk. Here he was a power. This was his dream world, the place where his spirit touched the Deep.
He imagined a burning blade in his hand and armour around his body. Both appeared. He struck at the Quan. Its psychic scream echoed around the other space. It did not give up. It became larger, a titanic monster big enough to pull down a ship. Rik responded in kind, becoming a giant on the same scale. He made his blade hot as the sun. It slashed through the Quan’s covering of water, evaporating some of it, leaving a great seared wound in place. Berserk now, the Quan came back at him, a mass of leech-mouthed tentacles smashed into his armour. Where each of them hit he felt life drain from him. The bites were cold as steel left in winter ice.
He made his own blade hotter, tried to imagine it was like those gaping mouths, able to draw strength from its victim. The blade bit home again and a warm hot surge of strength flowed back into him, and along with it came a mass of strange memories. Images flickered through his mind.
He saw a city of glowing coral deep below the sea, where hundreds of the Quan rippled through the water. Monstrous creatures, a hundred times larger than they, circled spewing seed-like spawn into the water, only one in a thousand of which would survive to adulthood. He saw the vast shining monsters of the ocean depths and the secrets of sunken cities.
His blade bit home again, and more strength flowed into him, warming him. The bites of the tentacles seemed small feeble things now. More and more memories surged into him. He could not process them all, or comprehend even a tiny fraction of them. He tasted raw flesh, raw fish, the orgasmic bliss of draining a mind dry, the flood of thoughts and sensations and memories. He realised that in some small way, a part of all those the Quan had devoured was still within it, and some tiny shred of each victim’s memories had become its own. These he understood, and the tidal wave of horror nearly broke his mind. He endured the deaths of hundreds. He was distracted for a moment, and felt the Quan begin to break free.
Instinct told him that he could not allow that. If the connection between them was severed now, it could kill him in the flesh. Through the pain and the blizzard of stolen memories, he forced himself to act, forging a net of spun thought to catch the beast and draw it back to him. He struck it again and again with his sword of flame, draining more power and more memory from it, until he could strike no more. He knew he was fading and put everything he had into one last blow.
A tidal wave of energy and memory surged over him, smashing him down into darkness.
He woke to find himself sprawled over the slimy wet corpse of the Quan. He felt strange, different, changed. He felt tainted, as if something else had slipped into him, as if by killing the Quan he had somehow become like it. Hundreds of voices whispered to him. He tried to block his ears but the whispering continued for they were in his mind. He wondered if he was sane, if he could ever be sane again after what he had just experienced.
One thing he realised. He was filled with an awesome power. He invoked the healing spells Asea had taught him, and his flesh almost burned with their energy. His lungs cleared. He felt stronger and better than he had done in years. He smiled. That at least was positive.
A hundred voices clamoured desperately in his mind. Thousands of thoughts and memories bubbled up. He wrestled with them, forced them down. With his newly acquired strength it was easy. He felt like a god. He knew he had enough energy to work any sorcery. He had taken it from the Quan. He supposed in his way he had become a Thanatomancer.
He could see how people became addicted to it and the sense of power and well-being it gave. He considered the other spells he knew. His thoughts seemed to have a new clarity. He invoked the spells that would lend him strength and speed. His muscles flexed and bulged. Power flowed through his veins like a drug.
He reached down and picked up the Sea Devil. It was astonishingly light. Whatever sorcery allowed it to move on the surface undoubtedly reduced its weight. He pushed it aside and picked up his knife. He checked the shackles holding him. They were old, and their locks were far from complex and he was a thief from Sorrow. Using the tip of his knife he sprang the mechanism and was free.
He forged a spell-chain in his mind and sent the energy rippling out through his body. The power of his senses became magnified. He could hear whispers in the furthest corners of the hulk, knew that there were guards waiting in the corridor. They were waiting to let the Quan out. He lifted the floating corpse, placed it in front of him and banged on the door. It opened. He pushed the corpse forward so that it impacted on the guards, then stepped forward and killed them both with his knife.