Grumbles became muted cries as the Akaneed twisted, smashing its body against the rock, hide grinding against the pillars and sending clouds of earth and foam erupting as it tried to scrape its parasite off.
Gariath shifted only as much as he needed to avoid being crushed between flesh and stone, suffering dust in his eyes and shards of rock caroming off his skull. Every movement was energy wasted and every ounce was needed.
The ancient warship came into view with astonishing swiftness, its crushed and scorched hull half-sunken into the seabed, its great stone figurehead holding its arm up as if to warn Gariath of the foolishness of what he was about to try.
But what kind of lunatic would listen to a statue?
The beast swam toward it, arching its body to scrape Gariath off on the wood like it would any other piece of tenacious, sticky filth. The dragonman seized the opportunity as surely as he seized the Akaneed’s fin. He spared enough energy to growl, planted his feet, and, with the entirety of his weight and strength, pulled on the creature’s fin.
Hard.
It was about the moment the beast let out a keening wail of alarm that Gariath wondered if the statue might have had a point. It was about the moment when the beast lurched headlong into the statue’s outstretched arm that he was fairly sure he should have paid more attention to it.
Past that, his only thought was for hanging on.
The Akaneed smashed through the statue, its body crumbling with a resigned, stony sigh, as though it knew this had been coming. The warship itself lodged a louder complaint. Ancient timbers came cracking apart in shrieks, splintering in snarls as the beast, disoriented and furious, pulled itself through the wreck in an explosion of wood and sand.
Shards of wood came flying out of the cloud of earth that rose in the creature’s wake, whizzing past Gariath, striking against his temple, bouncing off his shoulders. Each one he took stoically; to cry out, to even snarl would be breath from burning lungs that he couldn’t afford to lose. Even the giant
I owe you blood, he thought.
That was easy to give, coming out in a stream of cloudy red as he pulled the spike out.
Blood is better than screaming, anyway.
It trailed behind him, filling the ocean, flying like a proud banner, boldly proclaiming his progress as he hauled himself bodily across the creature’s hide.
It will let everyone know that I gave something back.
It clouded his eyes, made it hard to see. His lungs seared, threatening to burst. The serpent picked up speed, threatening to send him flying off as he clawed his way up to the creature’s head.
But you gave me more. You gave me a reason to live.
And through his own blood, through the rush of salt, through it all, he looked down and saw the Akaneed. And with its sole remaining eye, it looked up and saw him.
Thank you.
He raised the spike of wood above his head.
I’m sorry.
He brought it down.
The cloud of red became a storm, the beast’s thunderous agony splitting through the billowing blood. It became a bolt of lightning unto itself, arching and twisting and writhing and shrieking into contortions of blind pain as it sailed violently through the bloodstained sea.
They found the surface, bursting from the sea with a roaring wail too loud to be smothered by the mist. Gariath breathed short, quick breaths, unable to spare the effort to take more. Where he had been a parasite before, he now clung to the beast with tumorlike tenacity as the Akaneed tore wildly through the forest of pillars in a blind, bloody fury.
He was nearly thrown off with each spastic flail of the beast’s tail, each time it caromed off of a pillar, each time it threw back its head and howled through its agony. Honor kept his grip strong, pride kept his claws sunken; he had taken everything from the Akaneed.
He would not waste the sacrifice by being thrown off now.
The pillars thinned out, giving way to open ocean. The Akaneed picked up speed, unable to do anything else in its agony. For a moment, Gariath wondered if he might simply ride the beast out into the middle of nowhere until it died and then, as starvation and fatigue set in, he would die with it.
But as the mist began to thin and, in the distance, a great gray wall of looming, unblemished stone arose, that particular fear was dashed. Along with his brains, he was sure, if he didn’t think of something.
Options being limited as they were atop the back of a violently thrashing sea serpent swimming at full speed toward a sheer wall of stone, thinking didn’t count so much as action. And his actions didn’t count nearly as much as the Akaneed’s.
Thus, when its back twisted and snapped like a whip, he had little choice but go flying ahead of it to land in the water with an eruption of froth. And when it came surging up behind him, jaws gaping in an agonized roar, he had little choice but to try and keep from sliding down its gullet a second time as he was washed into its open mouth.
And when he saw the wall looming ever closer to them, growing ever huger with each fervent breath, he had but one choice.
And he chose not to soil himself.
Of the many, many negatives that came with being surrounded by two dozen tattooed, scaly, bipedal lizards with clubs, arrows, machetes, and yellow, wicked stares fixated upon him, Lenk had never once thought that the worst of them would be that they didn’t attack.
But then again, Lenk never once thought that he would be in this position.
Not alone, anyway.
He glanced back up to the fallen monolith behind him and the empty space that Kataria had just occupied. He didn’t know why she left. He didn’t know why she hadn’t come back. He didn’t know why the Shen were apparently taking their sweet time in getting down to the dirty business of smashing his head into his stomach.
But his life had always been full of surprises. And he could do something about only one of them at that moment.
His sword was in his hand, raised as a feeble counter against the threat of the many weapons raised against him. Sturdy and red with Shen blood as it might have been, crude and jagged their weapons might have been, there as little argument his single blade could muster against their two dozen jagged, cruel-edged reasons as to why he should die.
If they were savoring that fact, they had taken an awfully long time to do so.
If they were waiting to see what he would do, they had to know by now.
And so, he had to ask.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” he snarled.
Beyond a collective flash of their yellow eyes, they didn’t reply. He had no idea if they even understood him. All the same, as a throaty, hissing murmur swept through them, as the crowd of tattooed scales rippled and parted, the Shen answered him.
One of them, anyway.
Their weapons lowered, just as their eyes went up to look at the newly-arrived lizardman. Towering over its brethren by a head wrapped in a headdress made of the skull of some fierce-looking beast and shoulders thick with muscle, the tremendous reptile stalked forward, unhurried.
A tail as long and thick as a constrictor snake dragged behind it. A club, big enough that it would take three hands of a human to lift and studded with jagged teeth of an animal long dead, hung easily from a clawed hand that led to a loglike arm that attached to a broad, powerful body thick with banded tattoos.
All red as blood.
One pace away from Lenk, the lizardman came to a halt. Its eyes melted like amber around two knife-thin and coal-black pupils, peering out from two black pits of its animal-skull headdress. It glanced at the tip of his sword, barely grazing its massive green-and-red barrel of a chest, only barely concerned with being a twitch away from impalement.