Excerpt from Ch1 of The Ship Of Undead
Chapter Title: Apparently Alcohol is not a Problem Solver
Context needed: Katz is on a ship sabotaging some merchants.
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Excerpt under the cut.
TW: this is the description of someone drowning and meeting a scary entity. A bit of body horror for the description of the entity.
Wip taglist: @unclear-contributions @sm-writes-chaos @bluberimufim. Let me know if you want to be +/-
Katz still struggled to recall exactly what happened. To her knowledge, someone had simply let go of the ropes prematurely, and the strong wind, the force of the assault, and the rough sea had made it so that the mainmast of the Nathair Mhara broke in half.
Katz remembered yelling for everyone to step away. But she could not do the same herself. All of the crew run away swiftly, while her own legs felt like steel, her feet glued to the deck. A wave splashed at her right, the chilling wind was freezing her bones on the other side. And the mast was falling right in front of her.
For some kind of miracle, she did not end up completely squashed by the heavy wooden pole. For a split second, she thought that maybe the gods were still present and alive somehow, and they were on her side. But a moment later that certainty left her, as she got swung back with such force that she plummeted to the ground. Then she rolled on the slippery wooden floor of the posterior part of the ship, the one that was constantly being thrashed by waves higher and higher, while the battle was raging in the front. And finally, unable to hold herself up any longer, she was thrown overboard, knocked loudly against what was left of the mast, and then, with more violence, against the side of the ship.
The first thing she felt during her fall was a warm patch of a sticky liquid forming on her hood, clumping her hair together and staining her hands and face. She was bleeding from her forehead, and the viscous substance didn’t even have time to dry before more dripped down her brow, blinding her on one side, running from her nose to her chin. The second thing she was made aware of, was how cold the water could really be in that season. It was the type of cold that soaked her clothes, seeped in her bones, and infiltrated deep to her core. A gelid breath of salt that burnt as a true flame. It was a cold that could not be swallowed, that filled her lungs with arrogance, and hurt her mouth splitting it open, and yet she could not do without. There she was, spluttering, choking, drowning in that cold, among that merciless water that had granted her life so many times in the past. Then Katz did not remember anything else.
She had probably passed out. And, while she was knocked out cold, she had started hallucinating. It _must_ have been hallucinations; at least she thought. Because really, there was no other logic explanation to what she had seen in her haze.
At first, it was just dark. A darkness so deep and profound, such as Katz had never seen. Not on the high sea after the sun had gone down, before the moon could show her face. Not in the shady, hidden alleys where the Alliance carried on its sordid deals. It was a poison that run over the tongue, it filled the eyes and the nose, it expanded in the throat, and threatened to suffocate. Everything appeared too close, and yet unreachable. A black so deep even the night could only hope to match. It was the obscurity from before the island had risen from water, from before the gods were born, even from before the wind and sea had been created. It was a primordial and perpetual night, that seemed to last forever.
At least until it didn't.
Because then, Katz, started to distinguish a dim light in all that unnavigable dark. It was nothing more than a flicker, really. It lasted for a breath, and disappeared. But it was enough, and soon something else started to appear in that never-ending night.
It looked almost like a face. Except, it could not resemble a human being, not even if Katz squinted, and turned her head. For one, the cheeks were too excavated. They looked like someone had took a broken skeleton and tried to patch it back together with used gauze. Where the eyes should have been, there were what Katz would have loved to call empty sockets. Unfortunately, the truth was much more terrifying that that: the sockets were filled, yes, but with the same substance that was enveloping Katz.
It was a dense smoke that collected there and kept moving, as if it was alive and sick with an unknown illness. And the skin, if there was some, was incredibly pale. White would not have been enough to even start describing it. It glowed and pulsed and it emptied completely Katz of what little energy she had left. The creature, whatever it was, had hair too. They were impossibly curled, in coils and locks and twists that crept up on Katz and kept moving, even with no breeze, even if they were too short to be able to reach this far. And the colour. They were not black, because black was too light of a colour for what they really were. They were not simply dark, they were the pure absence of light. If someone had sucked everything away from existence, those hair would have remained the same. A distinct sweet smell of rotten meat accompanied the phantom sight. Katz was not sure if it filled her more with fright or disgust. But before she could reflect upon it, a faint voice blew in her ears almost like a breeze. No it wasn't in her ears, it was on her skin. It seeped in her pores, it spoke directly to her brain.
“Find the Staff,” it whispered and breathed and blew, smooth like honey. "The Staff of Time. And bring it back to me."
