EL Official BK5 Chapter 22 - Ocean Gods and Selkies (Pt.2) (NSFW/NoSleep) (Patreon)

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Gods I hate sea ice. Endless swathes of the floating hull wreckers bobbed past at naught rates an hour, and we crawled along with it. The sky had been grey for days, like we were cursed. Not even the seals lounging on the ice paid us any mind.

On the upper deck my booty call leaned forward against the railing. She rested with her forearms on the cold metal and her back curved downward so that anyone could’ve seen up her skirt, if she weren’t wearing pants. Whoever created her knew what they were doing with those curves.

In similar fashion, the unfortunate package deal stood beside her. With his hands on the railing keeping him from falling, he leaned backward looking up at the gloomy sky, and I hoped it would rain just so that it would get in his eyes. He was hardly a man at all. With his hair down, he was almost as pretty as she was.

“It would be faster to walk at this point,” Karyna commented with a heavy sigh.

“You’re the one who insisted on this,” Kári reminded her. 

She cocked her head to stare at him, “You’re the one who complained about having to walk the tundra.”

“Who would’ve thought you’d listen to me this time?” he shrugged, earning himself an eye roll.

“Can’t you make the sun come out? Wave away the clouds or something?”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” his voice was as dull as the weather.

I hated the way he watched the crew, me. Looming like ocean fog, silent, but always there. Twice I’d caught him snooping around the shipping containers at night. His figure in the darkness was unmistakably tall, but I pretended not to see it. He was a cop for sure. 

„Það er stormur á sjóndeildarhringnum.“ (There's a storm on the horizon.) Karyna spoke, her voice was deeper in her language.

„Og? Hvað viltu að ég geri við það?“ (And? What do you want me to do about it?) Kari responded, uncaring.

„Geturðu ekki beint honum í burtu? Hann mun hægja á för okkar.“ (Can't you direct it away? It's going to slow our progress.)

„Hann er of sterkur, ég get það ekki án þess að Revenanting…“ (It's too strong, I can't without Revenanting...)

I narrowed my eyes as I tried to decipher what they were saying. Part of me had already made up my mind. He was too snoopy, if he found our stash, who knows what he would do. I was going to push that man overboard, and keep his sister. And the distant storm brewing was the perfect opportunity.

***

By mid afternoon the sky had darkened. Thunderhead storm clouds brewed overhead, rumbling across the ocean. I kept Kári outside, and near the edge of the ship. I sent him to fasten all the D loops holding supplies in place, but Karyna, unfortunately went with him. She draped herself off his arm like a lover and I boiled inside. Soon. Soon I could get rid of him.

The weather came in quicker than I expected, and hit harder than I thought. Trying not to arouse suspicion, I kept most of the crew above deck too long. The mistake left us sprawling back and forth across the boat like drunkards. I lost sight of the sibling pair, and was forced to focus. 

“Secure the riggings!” I shouted against the howl of the wind.

The storm thrashed the ship, sending spills of salty sea spray up the side of the hull with a violent hiss. Icy droplets rained down against the barrage of wind driven rain coming in at a sideways slant. We heaved with the waves, 

One more upward surge lurched the vessel forward and two of the top shipping containers slipped. The shearing grate of metal on metal was almost deafening, but there was nothing we could do. Two metal cables snapped, recoiling with a vicious twang, and the containers slipped overboard into the sea.

They floated in the dark waves beside us, hissing and bubbling as they filled with water. Until they sank, they would threaten to rip open our starboard side, and every wash of seawater that brought us closer made my stomach churn. A crack of lightning illuminated their silhouette’s just as a wave brought them closer. 

I could have passed out holding my breath as I waited for them to tear my ship apart like an oversized can opener, but impact never came. By the time the next thundercrack split the air, the shipping containers were gone, swallowed by the waves. 

“Everyone! Below deck! BELOW, DECK!!” I roared against the storm. There wasn’t anything else we could do.

Men scrambled and slipped across the deck, scrambling to safety but movement toward the side caught my eye. Karyna’s long brown hair whipped into a frenzy in the fray. She was with her brother, holding tight to his waist with one arm, and clinging to the metal railing with the other.

“Kári please!” she screamed.

“She's down there!” He shouted back.

“You’ll drown!” 

“I don’t CARE!” The boy looked like he was about to leap head first into the waves. 

The tempest raged around them, water dripped from the ends of their hair and trickled down the sides of their faces as both stared out into the ocean. In a flash of blinding light, I saw what held their focus. A woman drifted among the churning waves. Her hair was bright pink and green, slick with a mucous membrane. 

Her face was small but beautiful and when she bared her teeth in animalistic challenge she revealed long fangs. A lioness of the sea. Water streamed off her bronze skin and glistened off the shimmering scales across her cheeks. The edges of her face bristled with long wispy fins, a warning and an invitation.

A glimpse of scales breached the surface of the water as the rest of her stream line body coiled. She was daring Kári to jump to his death in the frigid churning waters, but Karyna wouldn’t let him go.

“Please Kári! I need you here!” she pleaded with him.

“I can kill her! She’s right there!”

“She’s baiting you!” 

His face twisted with rage, the embodiment of a storm locked inside a flesh vessel begging to be released. He glared long and hard as the rational grated at the edge of his mind. Surely he knew he would die? We might yet all die if the ship capsizes.

Before he could decide, Karyna’s grip on the railing slipped with the push of another wave, and she pulled them both down. They slipped across the deck, crashing into the mast with a sickening crack. I thought it had killed them both, and I turned away.

The beautiful woman was lost, and I had to get to safety. Gripping the walkway railings I staggered toward the hatch. Its metal door swung open wildly when the ship rolled one way, and then slammed closed when it rolled back. I reached the door just in time for it to slam.

I fell into it, grasping at the handle and clinging for dear life, but when I tried the handle it wouldn’t open. The force had bent the frame, and I was locked out. I glanced back across the deck. The only other way in was through the engine room, it would leave me cut off from the rest of the crew, but it was better than nothing.

With the next wave I threw myself at the gangway. It was slippery and cold, I missed. For one terrifying second I was airborne, before crashing into the side of a shipping container. The impact knocked the wind from me, and I gasped inaudibly like a fish out of water.

I could hardly see jack shit in the dark. Only the flashing light of the emergency lights glittering off every slick wet surface, and the intermittent veins of lightning in the sky gave a rough x-ray estimation of where everything was. A body with long brown hair slopped past, Karyna. 

Blood trickled down her face from her hairline, her skull was broken nearly in half and I shuddered back from her corpse. Black mist spilled from her like grains of sand, blocking what little light there was. Her crumpled figure twitched and writhed. 

Broken bones pulled themselves back together with a wet snap and she rose from the dead with an unearthly shiver. Venomous, evil lines bleed upward from under her throat and over her cheeks. They pulsated like fat worms as they filled and her eyes shone bright blue.

I was so surprised it almost didn’t register when I was flung sideways across into the opposite container. I landed with the hollow thump against the metal, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Karyna was the Goddess of Chaos herself, risen from the dead, standing steadfast against the rain. 

She searched the deck and moved with terrifying speed when she spotted her brother. Black mist was leaking from him in a similar manner, although it poured slower until all at once spilling out like a bulbus smoke filled bubble. He rose before she reached him. 

Kári heaved himself up, pushing off the deck with terrifying force to stand like a God among the raging tempest. Like Karyna, black lines marked his skin, but his were darker, more angular. The wind and rain curved around him as if bowing away from his presence and when he took a deep breath in, it seemed to breathe with him.

“You have to push back the storm,” Karyna shouted to him.

His gaze flicked to her, then upward to the sky, “The cell is too powerful. I can’t do it alone.”

The girl looked about to answer when some sort of realization drew her attention. She, like I, had noticed the ship had stopped rocking, and was instead slowly beginning to tilt to one side. We weren’t being punished by endless waves anymore, we were being pulled gradually upward by one, enormous, towering wall of water.

“KÁRI!!” Karyna screeched, her voice breaking with panic.

He turned and his jaw set, that wave would put us under, “Hold me in place!” he ordered.

She moved without hesitation, locking her foot under a metal loop, a hand hold on the deck, she latched onto him. Clinging like a barnacle around his waist as a mass of black swelled from the boy. The wind moved with his breath and the entire storm faltered as if it were a curtain tugged by a string.

Lightning burst from the clouds in a cluster of downward, and sideways veins that held charge in an impossibly long display of crackling light. The wind changed direction, the clouds swirled in titanous unison, and it stopped raining all at once. Eerie creaking silence encompassed the ship like a bubble, but still the wall of water rose.

It crested over us and began to crash downward.

“Kárriiiiiiii,” Karyna screamed, burying her face into his back and preparing for the worst. 

My knuckles turned white as I cling to the nearest railing.

I wanted to close my eyes, to hide from the end, but as I watched the wave crashed against an equally opposing barrier of wind. Kári stood in place, holding his stance as if he himself were pushing against the wave as the water curled inward on itself. 

Time slowed as my life flashed before my eyes. Was I witnessing God? 

Reality waited, suspended between the force of nature and impossible resistance of the storm before sound returned in a depressurised ‘pop’ that rattled my bones. The water split and air burst out the other side in a colossal spray that sent a shockwave rippling through the atmosphere.

Pin drop silence followed. Not rain nor wind nor sea stirred. The water was calm, the boat still. Kári swayed, he fell sideways with a yelp from Karyna, and a sudden downpour of icy rain showered us. It fell unnaturally straight downward through the now cloudless sky and ended as suddenly as it began.

The excess water dumped onto the deck hissed away over the sides. Leaving only puddles in its wake. Without the cloud cover, the moon shone down on us as if there had never been a storm at all and I stared dumbfounded at the two people huddled together. 

Karyna cradled Kári in her arms. He lay motionless while she pushed the hair from his face, half crying through fits of laughter, “Ég hefði virkilega ekki átt að efast um þig, þetta var ótrúlegt!” (I shouldn’t have doubted you! That was amazing!!) 

She cuddled him until movement off the edge of the bow drew her attention. The woman from the sea had scaled the ladder and was pulling herself up onto the deck. Coils of long scaled body slithered around in a repeating ‘s’ shape. 

Up close, I could see the holographic orange brown shine of each scale, matching her skin tone, and the green to pink sheen of her cheekbones. Intelligence lay deep in her circular eyes as she honed in on Karyna and Kári like a focus locked bird of prey.

This creature looked more like it belonged on a sailor’s map. It hissed something in Karyna’s direction, and the girl retaliated with a sharp sound. With a smile she stood, placing Kári down and making a small circle in the air with her hand. From the gesture, black sparks materialized an axe, and the mass of dark energy around her undulating in angry patterns.

“Bad move coming to face us on solid surfaces like this,” she spoke to the aquatic creature like they were previously acquainted and it lunged at her. 

Dodging to the side Karyna circled back. The blade of her axe clanked against the deck with a spray of sparks as the thing’s tail slithered out the way just in time. It turned back, sweeping across to knock Karyna off balance, but the girl jumped. 

She cartwheeled backward and all the thin, bonny bristles on the aquatic vibrated with an irritated hiss. It was clumsy and slow. I imagine in the water it might have been at an advantage, but on the deck of my ship, Karyna was too quick for it. Her axe made contact and slipped off the slimy scales to slice between them. 

Watery blood spilled and the other woman wheeled away. She thrashed like fish after being speared, before spitting a spray of water. It sizzled where it landed, and the poison in it steamed the metal as it dissolved small holes.

“Rude,” Karyna taunted, “Keep your vomit to yourself!” she slashed again at the creature and ducked aside to avoid another spray.

The fight was awkward, like watching a gull dance around a crab until the air began to polarise. Loose strands of Karyna’s hair began to stand on end and she abruptly turned away. Sensing the same danger, the aquatic slipped back over the edge of the boat into the ocean just in time for a weak orb of lighting to follow after her from mid air.

“Ball lightning? That’s what you’re going with?” Karyna mused, turning back to where her brother had begun to sit up. I’d forgotten about him. 

“You were just letting her spit all over everything, if that melts through the metal we’ll sink,” he muttered.

“I wasn’t going to let her make that much.”

Kári didn’t answer.

The pair had spoken so casually, unfazed by the magnitude of the past events while I stared in unadulterated shock. I felt hot, clammy as I struggled to piece together what had happened. Was I hallucinating? My legs buckled and I wafted to the ground, unable to breathe.

When I next gathered myself enough to be present in the world, Karyna was standing before me with her axe pointed toward me. “I just want you to know, your cock is tiny, and you were insufferably inefficient at pleasing me,” all hints of her flirtatious nature were gone.

As I struggled to comprehend and formulate an answer, her arm drew back. The muscles of her arm contracted, and she brought the axe down in one smooth motion.

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