Sailing Ether Tides Ch: 3

 

Ch: 3 Shellshocked

 

It was a truly fine storm, slow rolling and windy, rather than tempestuous… Falco was having a splendid afternoon with Pippa, Phillipa, Reena and Gladys, the four dolphin girls he’d been chasing all day… or they’d been chasing him. Hard to say when the waves were rolling and the girls kept swimming so close. One after another they would swim up shyly, and slowly slip next to him, so that her body would brush him in a gentle caress… then dash away and giggle together with her girls.

 

Now, as afternoon fell and the storm closed in, with his humans neatly stowed on Shitshow Island… It was Falco time. Especially since Flippa was sliding through the water, swaying close to him, from below, swimming upside down… 

‘Gods and spirits that’s sexy…’ He whistled with a wink and some unnecessary muscle flexing. He swept his fluke in a slow, lazy thrust, dipping a little closer until their bellies nearly brushed. The warmth of her, through that thin membrane of water was intoxicating, as were the appreciative whistles of her pod. 

 

‘The view from here is just as fine, you wicked boy.’ She clicked and hummed, just for him. ‘We are still deciding which one of us gets you… first.’ She sighed, as her fluke brushed his, slowly and intimately. ‘Do you have any thoughts on that? I’d really like to hear them…’

 

‘You know, there’s a sheltered cove under Shitshow Island… we could all… have a splash in the moonlight together and figure that out.’ He whistled just loud enough for the whole pod to hear. ‘My human retainers have made it habitable, at least for a while. They try so hard, the poor things.’ He sighed winsomely at the slick, aquatic damsels.

 

‘Ohh, someone’s edgy… you live dangerously!’ Pippa clicked in amusement, while taking a barrel roll that showed off her color gradient, from pale white to a rich blue-gray… and the dorsal on her! 

 

‘Poetry…!’ Falco sighed, as she finished her slow, sensual corkscrew through the water. ‘What was that about danger? I have an allergy to peril… that’s why I employ my mighty and fearsome dirtpounders.’

 

‘Unless they’ve figured out a way past that aura and have dealt with Stormcrab… It’s been squatting under that dump for years.’ She chirped and rattled sensually.

 

Philippa chattered with annoyance. “That other one… the giant ghost crab that haunts the reefs at night.” She squealed in distress at the thought. “I only glimpsed it, but to live inside that aura… it must be a monster of some kind!’

 

‘Sorry ladies, duty calls… I’ll give you a whistle…’ He chirped, as he dashed back into the near impenetrable miasma of loathsome woe and despair around the island.

 

‘He really went in there?’ Pippa whistled as they watched his fluke vanish, with powerful, sweeping surges. ‘We’ll have to come up with a rotation that’s fair… I saw him first, so…’

 

‘I think his idea has merit; if they’ve really cleansed that cove we could…’ Gladys stopped her thoughtful musing and clicked at Reena. ‘Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.’

She sassed the youngest ‘phin girl. ‘I had a fling with a beluga girly who would echolocate my…’

 

Falco regretted swimming out of range of that story, but his poor helpless dirtdivers needed him!

#

 

Bounty was moored to what was left of the pier, floating securely in the cove at least. Several tons of hangry, shelled horror had smashed through the wooden decking, before it could reach the ship and whatever tasty morsels might be hiding inside.

 

“Giant fucking coconut crab… with a magical aura of some kind.” Wilf muttered sourly, as it tried to pull the stout pocket door of bronze strapped red oak out of its stone embrasure.

“It can’t get in, cause my house is made of stone…” He muttered with satisfaction. 

“We have a classic ‘Three Little Pigs’ situation, as was foretold in the ancient manuscript.” Wilf held up a colorful pasteboard children’s book; the kind that had proliferated from Wheatford’s orphanage over the last few years.

 

“Wilf! Seriously! Again?” Amy sighed. “My house isn’t real anyway…” She looked out the loft window on the wreckage of her lovely little gingerbread cottage, all smashed and shattered. The beast had crushed her front wall and pushed into her kitchen and doubtless consumed all of her foodstuffs. 

Amy did her best to conceal her rage… The rest of the house was all just comfy moonlight and shows manifested by her Will… but it was Her comfy moonlight and shadows!

 

Rio was doing poorly indeed, it had cracked his adobe bungalow in its massive claws and rooted through his supplies too… The resonant twanging crunch of instruments being shattered under a few tons of crapaced horror was almost more than he could bear.

 

“So, your house of sticks, crunched. His house of mud, munched. While my home of sturdy stone…” A thunderous report shook the night as the raging monster attacked his front door with renewed vigor, ending Wilf’s smug declaration. Small cracks began to appear in the mortar around the door, under the continued assault.

 

“Ok, we gotta get involved.” Amy grumbled. “He’s got more than huffs and puffs in him.”

 

“Rooftop?” Rio asked in annoyance. 

 

Esperanza grumbled a very brief negative response. Something about armor and weapons on the roof during a thunderstorm, while fighting a lightning crab… she made a lot of sense in a very few words. 

 

“The arbalests on Bounty are our answer.” Dante muttered. 

 

Esperanza nodded in agreement with her taciturn first officer and brother. “We go out the back door and draw it off. Then… I guess you kids throw whatever you have at it from the windows, so we can swim for the ship and get the weapons limbered.” She grumbled after a moment of thought.

 

“At least there can be only one monster of this size on this island…” Dante murmured, as he shoved himself back into his gear. 

 

Once more clad in sleek, fitted armor of wooden plates, enchanted and enspelled for comfort, durability and survivability, the crewmen of Bounty nodded to their captain solemnly and stopped in shock.

“Captain? You’re coming?” Nicolai asked in dismay. “This is dangerous…”

 

“Just because you’ve never seen this one in action, does not mean she is some tyro, still wet behind the ears from her first salt spray!” She huffed in irritation.

 

“Captain… shouldn’t you gear up?” He asked hesitantly, while the creature continued knocking at the doors and shutters in mindless hunger.

 

Esperanza took a slow twirl, letting her younger cousin admire her finery. From her brightly embroidered, lacey and ruffled, barely closed bodice, to her golden and bronze buttoned gauntlets and swirling split skirts she was the picture of a sea captain at her sexy and casual ease. Only a truly enormous and elaborate hat, resplendent with flowers of silk could top her ensemble… 

The heavy, slightly curved and very dangerous looking sword in her hand was an outlier in her otherwise festive and sexy attire…

“This one is ready for battle, even on land, my sweet. Esperanza has never quailed, not before pirates, customs men, nor leviathans! She’ll not be bested by a shellfish!”

She preened her colorful skirts, made certain her high boots were cuffed just so and grinned. 

“This humble captain’s tailor is out of this world, dear Nicolai. Amy and poor Esperanza are as well guarded as you.”

 

Amy’s long coat and tricorn of cobalt blue trapdoor spider silk and slender silver cutlass also cut a fine figure, but she had sturdy, closely fitted wooden laminate armor, under that enchanted coat. “The armor that protects the best, is the one you are wearing when you need it.” Amy agreed, while buttoning her coat.

 

Rio and Wilf buckled each other in and gave the traditional comradely swats to their shoulder armor when they were ready. Three armed and armored kids went up to the loft windows to watch and await their cue, stewing in a potent blend of anger, fear, excitement and antici… pation.

 

Four men in wooden naval armor, and Esperanza, shining in her embroidered silks dashed into the chaotic storm. They moved swiftly to the water side, avoiding the notice of the terrible thing clattering in the rubble of two broken houses. Poor eyesight and tiny brains… Esperanza and her crew waded into the surging cove, heading for their vessel, when Falco came into range of Esperanza’s familiar bond.

 

The crew was still in the shallows, when a thunderous bubbling squeal sounded and the rumbling of their huge foe’s movements on the beach shook the sandy bottom. 

#

 

Its clattering chitin rattled and rasped as it scuttled after the fleeing meat, so ravenous and desperate; it abandoned what was still inside that ‘shell’ and scurried for the wandering samples. Tiny things flew from the shell washed up on the beach, they clattered from his armor, little more impressive than the big, wet raindrops that fell on its broad shell.

Those meaty morsels splashed and swam for the big floating shell, the one that he couldn’t get his claws on, out in the water… 

Something jolted it from behind, as one of the hurled objects lodged in one of his rear joints near his apron... Searing, hammering pain roared into his simple nervous system, shattering his will. With a thunderous, bubbling shriek, it turned once more to whatever was in that shell on his beach…

#

 

Amy’s pistol crossbows were useless against the behemoth of armored shell, her tiny darts shattered or skittered away off its carapace. Rio’s light crossbow was equally useless… since papa had them on ‘Double Secret 

Probation’... whatever that meant. She’d had no chance to filch any of their dangerous toys, strictly for emergencies, of course.

 

The experimental ammunition Ivy, Shai, Becky and Tallum helped Papa create down in the workshop at home was all secured in the vault; where it wouldn’t be any danger, or any fun…

They watched almost impotently, as the beast turned to pursue auntie Ranza and her gallant crew, splashing desperately for ‘Bounty’, still tossing about, moored to a few pilings on the broken pier. Slowly the beast gained ground and surged into the surf, claws reaching for the human swimmers.

 

Amy looked down, as the door slammed open, and then shut below them. 

Wilf’s massive armored form churned across the beach, charging the beast from behind with a long, heavy war lance he’d found somewhere, tucked under his arm. He hurled his full body weight into a mad thrust at the spot where its rearmost lower body plates met the shell, eight feet up on the massive creature.

The two teens watched in horror and helpless fascination as stolid, quiet and obedient Wilf, hurled his whole being at the monster pursuing his aunt and uncles. 

“Wilf! Noooo!” Amy wailed, her voice cutting through the storm noise, shattering the night.

 

In a frozen moment that lasted unbearably long, the massive young warrior in training drove his lance of blackthorn and bronze into the beast’s body, scraping to a halt with nearly four feet of metal and wood lodged in its body.

Wilf found out immediately why it was known locally as the ‘Stormcrab’, as sparks of eldritch blue and actinic white energies flashed down his lance and into the young warrior, illuminating him from the inside…

The wild energies of the storm and whatever the monster possessing the crab brought to the party set the lad’s body on fire from the inside, spasming his muscles uncontrollably, while sending him for a sudden nap. Sadly for mister crab, that launched an unconscious, tensed and in motion young man at the thing with renewed vigor, even as his body flailed and twitched. 

 

The beast scuttled madly in a circle, struggling to reach the offending weapon jammed into its bits-n-pieces from behind. The young man’s body remained clenched around his weapon in a mindless grip despite the creature’s struggles for a few moments, before flying off into the verdure at the jungle’s edge. 

 

As it pivoted in place, pursuing its own wounded arse in stupid fury, Amy took a sweet two pistol potshot at one of its googly eyestalks… her darts splatted moistly into her target, while Rio got a bolt from his crossbow right in its obscene, almost human mouth. “Keep it interested, see if you can blind it, I’m going after Wilf.” Rio mumbled, as he reloaded his crossbow and handed it over. 

He pulled a cord tied bundle of hefty wrought iron chain from his storage ring and admired the huge, heavy, wickedly barbed treble hooks on the two ends. “Cover me.”

#

 

Ranza and her crew clambered up the pilings, onto the shattered pier and got Bounty freed by simply hacking her lines free. With her captain at the helm, something moaned softly, deep in the bowels of the ship, as she swung about in the swells. Bringing the naval ballistae mounted fore and aft to bear on the beast ravaging the shore camp.

 

“Standard load Nicolai! Wait till the kids are clear!” She spoke over the ‘comms’ system each crewman wore on his ear and collar, lest the storm carry her orders away. “Dante, fire for effect, Nicolai, cover us… Falco reports we may have another monster nearby…” She shot a dirty look at her first mate. “Only one monster on an island this size… bloody asking for it!”

 

If the stolid and quiet first officer made a reply, it was drowned out by the crack of his enormous weapon firing. Six feet of heavy yew pole, with a five pound, pyramidal armor piercing head of solid iron flew on leather fletchings across the water in a blur… and hit with explosive force, directly in the creature’s right side cluster of leg joints. 

That impact staggered the beast, collapsing it to one side with the violence of the blow and then sending it to the ground, as one leg dangled useless and shattered. 

#

 

Rio dashed up, swinging a long iron hook on a chain and hurled it over the shell, letting the hook dangle among the messy business going on among its right legs. He released his grip on the chain at the instant he hurled it, as sparks and jagged lightning shot along the iron links, down into the anchor, buried in the wet sand.

Rio sprinted across the sand behind the raging seafood, as the energies sparking and buzzing around the entity grounded out and dispersed. Rio was there in an instant, dashing to his brother, pushing his gift for swiftness in motion to the limit, with a short, wordless prayer to Eponna.

He grabbed his fallen brother by one armored boot and started hauling him back to the house, as another almighty crack resounded. 

#

 

Dante and Yusef were hurling one bolt after another at the beast and making some headway. Their second shot glanced off the massive shell, leaving a crack, but not much more. The third struck true and hammered into one of the beast’s claws, leaving a shattered, pulpy mess behind and a pincer the size of a merchant’s wagon snipping at the sand, all alone with no one to pinch.

 

The mutant thing still had plenty to offer though. There were enough pinchers, pokers and creepy eyestalks to go around, as it continued to rampage in mindless fury. “Does that thing have a mouth, with teeth? That makes it so much worse, for some reason.” Marc grumbled, while spotting for Nicolai, still holding fire on the second ballista.

 

“Incoming lads…” Esperanza called out to her crew. “Let’s see where this is going. Falco says this one is not hostile. He’s a terrible flirt.”

 

“Contact, contact coming in from the sea…” Nicolai barked into the comms system. “Pretty big, moving at pace near the surface…”

 

Esperanza spotted it when a break in the clouds lit up a bright blue, color shifting mass moving under the surface. Falco swam nearby, not too near though, the thing was an absolutely enormous crab… a bright iridescent… colorful crab. “We have another guest at this boiling pot, it would seem.”

“I used to know which end of the world was up, Esperanza…” Dante muttered with a smile at his mad adopted sister. “Let’s get this big bastard in the kettle, before we start melting any butter.” 

 

He launched another massive armor piercing bolt at the thing and grumbled, as it shattered against that stone hard shell. 

 

From the surf another huge crustacean surged, not nearly so big and far more colorful in the rapidly shifting sunlight and lightning. “Pretty…” Dante muttered. 

 

The newcomer began scuttling and scurrying around the much larger creature, harrying it in circles and flashing beams of light into the monster’s one good eye stalk from its shell of iridescent crystal.

 

Yusef swatted him on the armored shoulder, signaling he was ready to fire. “It’s a hot one, brother!” He shouted over the storm and screams of the wounded behemoth.

 

“What is it?” The massive bolt looked a little different than the usual; the point was bronze, just a basic, conical bodkin bolt, with a weird corkscrew arrangement  and some spring loaded barbs that would really not help with penetration… The shaft itself had a spiral groove cut down its length all the way to the fletchings. The  younger man shrugged and waved his hands helplessly in the face of his brother’s query. 

“No hints? Just, it’s a ‘hot one’?”

 

“The tag said ‘for hardened targets’, that’s all.” Yusef shrugged again. “Fire when ready, I can’t wait to see!”

 

“Mad wizards…” He grumbled as he depressed the firing lever. The ship lurched and groaned as her internal witchery responded to whatever blasphemy Ranza’s mad brother had wrought. The bolt hurtled away, seeming to fly rather slowly on its course… 

#

 

Rio dragged his absurdly heavy brother by his armored boot, thankful for the hard packed, rain wet sand. He still plowed a deep, wide furrow with Wilf’s unconscious and still shuddering body. The stupid, ravenous creature couldn’t seem to decide which way to scuttle, not having a brain to speak of. 

The hook and chain wedged firmly in the wreckage of its right legs, with its buried anchor, gave just enough resistance that the damned idiot started scrambling in a circle.

Rio hauled his slowly waking brother to the house, where Amy waited to help roll the burly, armored mess inside and slam the door. The lean warrior lad took up his crossbow and returned to the loft to continue harrying the creature; while Amy cracked Wilf out of his charred armor and checked him over.

“He’s waking up…” She called up to the loft, between the monster’s bellows, whistling and bubbling wails. “Wilf, you ok?” She patted his cheeks and called his name as his eyes fluttered open. 

 

“Lightning crab…” He gasped.

 

“We figured that out… hang loose, Ranza and the boys have it in hand… and we have help.” She shrugged. “Fae crystal crab entity… I think. Maybe it’s a monster as well and just hates that big jerk too.”

 

The storm kept rolling, but the clouds seemed to be breaking up a bit. Patches of deep blue began appearing in the sky, letting shafts of golden, late afternoon sun strike the remarkable crystalline being. It always seemed to be in position to reflect those rays into the monster crab’s good eye, as it scurried around the huge beast, being obnoxious.

 

“It’s really pretty anyway.” She sighed, while rolling Wilf into a blanket.

#

 

That crystal crab’s harassment and whatever the kids had done to the thing, left it wide open for Dante’s ‘Hot One’. That simple bronze bodkin smacked into the thing’s shell and stuck, piercing just a foot into the rocky massif. The barnacle it went through was having a bad time though. Spring loaded barbs jammed into the fractured shell and wedged in tight with a crunch that they heard over the surf and wind.

“Huh… I expected more…” Yusef muttered in mild disappointment. 

 

After a heartbeat, a horrid grinding whirr began, as the flanged head of the bolt began turning inside its barbed collar, slowly screwing its way inside as the shaft of the bolt shortened behind it.

#

 

Stormcrab wasn’t a great thinker… wasn’t equipped for it. He operated along the lines of: ‘Can I eat that? Yes? No? Will that eat me? Yes? No? Fight or Flee? Hungry!’

Now he was struggling to understand how none of these tasty morsels were inside it, but things kept jabbing it on the inside anyway! He’d learned that lesson when he swallowed a stonepoint pufferfish whole… Back when he was just a wee five hundred pound crablet. Now he made sure to snip everything up neatly before jamming it into himself.

This time the trouble didn’t seem to come from the eating side of Stormcrab… He snipped at the scuttling shiny morsel that wouldn’t leave… scoring a lucky hit and seizing his smaller cousin in first one claw, then another. He tried to bring his big, crushing claw around but it was over there on the beach, a few dozen yards away, slacking off. 

 

He struggled with his smaller but surprisingly strong and tough opponent for a moment and got really mad. Without Crushie on the job, his pinchers and cutters weren’t doing it… and that sensation of buzzing pain wouldn’t stop…

#

 

The boat crew watched in mild horror, as the monster got ahold of the smaller creature, seizing it by one shiny claw and its faceted jewel shell. It held on with two claws, pinning the creature, and scrabbled at its gem hard shell helplessly, while bubbling in frustration. During that titanic struggle, the six foot long crossbow bolt lodged in its shell slowly screwed itself into the creature, inexorably grinding on until only the fletchings remained visible sticking from that flanged and barbed collar. 

 

“Gross!” Nicolai gasped from the fore battery; he punctuated that by launching a bolt from his own weapon. Without pausing to see their result, he and Marcus began rewinding the massive crossbow’s windlass, determined to throw more steel and wood at the problem on shore.

 

Dante watched the creature, while the fore battery hit it twice more, knocking a leg off the left side and crippling another claw. That shot staggered the beast, lining it up for Dante’s shot, right into its weird, impossible primate  mouth. The gibbering monkey lips and teeth vanished in a shower of monster… whatever, as twenty pounds of well wrought weapon obliterated its tender insides. 

The behemoth staggered from side to side and collapsed just above the tideline, leaking green and gray ooze from its gaping shell.

#

 

The jeweled crab skittered and pranced over the sand for a few long moments, seeming to dance with joy around its defeated foe.. and began feasting on the stuff running out of it with glee.

Amy watched with Rio, from the loft, while the creature went to town on crab guts.

“I’m gonna withhold judgment.” She muttered.

 

Ranza and her crew held station in deep water, while Rio and Amy performed the ritual needed to repair their home and pier. Sunset and the first hints of moonlight made the whole job easier, as they spun the magic of shadow and moonlight into false, temporary reality. Each swaying step she took in their ritual circle, as she played her guitar was a piece of the magical construct. In the same way, each beat and rattle of Rio’s drum and the sound of his voice from outside the circle formed the illusion. 

Amy’s clear, ringing soprano forged moonlight and illusion into being as she sang and danced to her brother’s tune.

 

“Always hits my feels when you sing ‘Guantanamera’, Amy…” Rio sighed as they collapsed in Wilf’s front room. “Thanks for that.” 

#

 

They didn’t have long to wait, before the adults showed up, wet, exhausted and boiling with excitement.

“Falco assures this unworthy that the ‘ghost crab’ is not hostile…” Esperanza muttered, once she was in a robe. “And please stay indoors tonight… and some of the morning, Falco has ‘Guests’ in the bath.”

High feminine chittering and giggles from the bathing pool said all that was needed.

 

“Way to go Falco…” Rio mumbled with a grin, which got him an elbow in the ribs from Amy. 

 

“You’re disgusting!” She giggled.

 

“I’m disgusting, but the dolphin soup swirling in the hotspring is just fine?” He mumbled right back at her. “Double standards!”

 

“Yup, cause Falco is cute… have you seen the fluke on that boy?” She and Ranza went off to bed, chattering girlishly about ‘Darling Falco’s sweet fluke.

 

The boys bunked down in the common room with the snoring bundle of Wilf beside the fire, since the girls had commandeered his room. There were bunks in the loft, but the sailors just melted into whatever sofa or chair they landed in. 

 

“Nicolai, you have the watch…” Dante muttered as he slowly drifted away.

 

“Drat!” The young sailor muttered as he got up to brew the coffee.

#