Death Hides Deep
Benjein paddled his laputua, his one man reed and timber canoe, up into the estuary. The sun was setting, and some part of him knew he should probably make camp. But he had his revolver, and he hadn't seen hide or scale of any Salt-Spines all day, not even any remnants of a kill. Besides Ithwi, the next village on his journey, was only three miles up the river that fed into this estuary, which was only perhaps a quarter mile from him. He likely still had an hour of daylight left. He had been paddling most of the day, but the young Tantur man felt good, having eaten a hearty meal of bread, goat cheese and salted fish but an hour before. "I can make it." he told himself. "I am of the blood of the River, and my titan blood will see me through." So easy it was for the young to convince themselves of their ability and invulnerability.
An hour passed, young Benjein forced to admit he had not figured into his self confidence the added difficulty of paddling against the current, which was slowing him down considerably, and wearing him out swiftly. After that hour, night engulfing all around him, he knew he was still at least a mile and half from his destination. The young man was strong and had stamina befitting his people's claim of the blood of titans, but he had been canoing for nearly fourteen hours now. His arms were like lead, his senses struggling, his body ached. The night began playing tricks on him. Twice he felt something akin to resistance, like he'd brushed his paddle against something solid. Both times he had lifted the lantern he had hanging alongside the high wall of the canoe to see if he was running to close to shore, but both times he'd still been well out from any danger of running aground.
The water was dark, cloudy, even under the light here you couldn't see the bottom. The mud and silt from the streams and creeks that fed the Lotzi always had it so. Benjein was nervous, on edge. He felt like something was watching him, heard splashes beside his paddles...or were they mere echoes. A third time, his paddle brushed something, having him recoil, then scramble to grab the lantern hanging over the edge of his canoe to get a better spread of light. Only this time he didn't make it to the lantern.
As he put his hand and arm out over the laputua's boundary, reaching down to grab the lantern and free it from the hook fastened to the vessel, he flinched, seeing the danger for just a split second below the water, the silt and mud moving, agitated, as if disturbed by something fast and powerful moving through it at speed, and a whitish grey spot told him of his error. But he could not move fast enough, the jaws of the Salt-Spine Crocodile erupting from the water, clamping down with tremendous and bone shattering force on his left hand and forearm, his arm up to the elbow locked in the vicegrip of the creatures jaws!
Benjein screamed briefly, but had the sense and fortitude to get his reaction under control, knowing that focusing on struggling now was a lost cause. He felt the powerful animal pulling him free of the canoe, and he strained with his right hand to get a grip on his revolver! As he was pulled overboard, he managed to just get a grip on it, pulling the trigger. He did not know if he struck the beast, but the sound was deafening in the still night. Well still above the water. Benjein was pulled below, and though he managed to suck in a deep breath into his powerful lungs, he knew that merely gave him a few minutes at best. Which was nothing for such a beast. He could feel it using its massive bulk and muscles, twisting, going into a death roll. As nightmarish as the thought was, the young man's father had educated him well in this. He'd managed to keep his right hand gripping the paddle, and could feel his boat. The boat wasn't safety but it was a fairer fight, and a chance. He also knew he had one chance. He felt keenly the direction of the crocodile's roll, trying to disorient him, dismember him, drown him. But his only chance at survival was to give the predator at least one of those three. He started twisting his body the opposite direction, it taking everything he had to not scream and therefore drown, or bite clean through his tongue. He felt the pressure, like one might imagine a cork that's stuck but is slowly coming loose feels like, before suddenly....release. His arm tore free, bones breaking, tendons tearing just below the elbow.
The pain was indescribable, however Benjein somehow pushed it aside, knowing he had but mere seconds until the beast swallowed his arm and grabbed on for more. With all his strength he kicked, following the guidance of the paddle, and got to the boat. The paddle he tossed aboard and he grabbed on, trying desperately to pull himself up. With one arm it was insanely difficult, given his bulk, and he nearly capsized the laputoa but finally managed. However water got into the lantern, dousing it. As he dragged himself aboard, cursing, tears in his eyes, he felt something bump against the bottom of his canoe. Once softly, then again more aggressively. He was without light, losing blood, and without a gun, the revolver useless from its trip into the river, though he had someone managed to get its weapon loop over his wrist before grabbing the paddle when he was pulled down, so he hadn't lost it. He sat up awkwardly, using his leg to pin his spare blanket and with his right hand, his cooking knife slashed a long rough strip free. Tying the tourniquet over the stump where his left arm used to be was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, having to use his teeth and right hand, awkwardly knotting it as best he could to try and slow the bleeding.
Benjein was terrified, lying absolutely still in the dark, trying to figure out what to do. Every so often something, the crocodile he knew, would bump against his laputua. The creature had no intention of letting a meal escape. Benjein hadn't even gotten a good enough look at it to begin to estimate its size, but given his near sixteen foot laputua had not been flipped or capsized yet, the Tantur would guess it was longer than his own height of near nine feet, but shorter than his vessel, though likely not by much. If he had to guess, likely a fourteen footer or so, not the biggest, but big enough, probbaly weighing double or even triple Benjein's own four hundred and fifty pounds. Well less than that now, given the missing arm. That was the risk of these bumps and prodding. At some point if the animal was determined enough it was going to figure out the timber and reed canoe was not a threat and was not that heavy, and likely attempt to flip it or capsize it. "You need light Benjein." he muttered to himself, trying to find his courage. He pushed himself upright, a groan of agony escaping from him as the mangled stump shifted, the cracked off section of his arm bone becoming visible through the tattered sleeve. Benjein retched, and then vomited, but despite how disgusting it was, he resisted every urge to lean overboard to vomit, knowing the beast was waiting somewhere for just that sort of foolishness. As disgusting as it was, he vomitted over his own legs and lap, shuddering.
Then once he'd managed to get control back, he moved grabbing the paddle. He only had one shot at getting his lantern and he wasn't fool enough to try and grab it without first confirming where the predator was. He took the paddle, slapping the water on the other side of the boat from the lamp, once, twice, three times and then tossed the paddle. He heard the splashing and thrashing, and seizing the moment he hooked it with his right hand, pulling it swiftly over the edge back onto the boat with him. It took him a lot of effort to get it lit with one hand, but he eventually got it lit. He shifted into a kneeling position, not daring to stand, unsure if he could maintain his balance. His head was spinning now, his vision swimming a bit from the shock and blood-loss. He took survey of what he could see in every direction. To his left was naught but dark open water, so death. Same with in front of and behind him. To his right however, tantalizing, perhaps a mere thirty or forty feet, he could see the water's edge, licking off stone, pebbles and soil glistening in the slight moonlight. The silouhette shape of trees. There was safety, but how to reach it.
Benjein considered his options. Even on his best day with both arms, he wasn't going to outswim a Salt-Spine, and certainly not now. That was not going to happen. The laputua rocked again, more noticeably this time, a splashing telling Benjein that the creature was getting more bold, more confident in confronting the boat. He turned with the lantern to scan the water, but not holding out a lot of hope. His paddle was floating near the boat, just out of reach, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, the object was broken into four or five pieces, utterly shattered by the aggressive predator. Seeing no other option, he focused, trying to find courage, to find a will to live. He scooped up his supply pack with his right hand, and risked rising to his feet, struggling to balance, and pitched it as far as he could to the left, hearing it splash some few dozen feet away. The sudden splash was greeted by motion, sounds of water moving, and a last bump, this one the first to go right to left, of something beneath his laputua.
Benjein counted to three, to try and give enough time for the beast to be a decent distance away, but knowing that it would turn right back once it realized the pack was not edible, and then leapt off into the water on the right side of his boat. The cool water may as well have been arctic ice with the blood loss and shock Benjein was suffering and it almost sent him under in shock, but he powered on and started kicking and swimming as best he could with one arm, driven by desperation. Five feet, ten feet, fifteen feet...was that movement, was that a splash he'd heard. Was something swimming towards him? Panic gripped him and that panic drove a deeper visceral response, as he kicked and paddled with all his might. twenty feet, his feet could touch bottom now, and he started trying to run, the water still up to his shoulders. Twenty five feet, it was at his waist thighs and then knees, and then ankles, until finally...Benjein collapsed, sobbing and struggling to keep consciousness, as he felt solid dry soil and pebbles beneath his feet. He'd made it. He'd made it. He rolled over onto his back, crying, laughing, struggling to keep conscious. "Oh thank the Ascended, thank you Deat-Kra" he praised, invoking the favored diety of his own kin. "Thank you Captain Jeremiah!" he praised, invoking the god of the sea and of sailors. He was weak, trying to catch his breath, but he was safe.
Benjein felt something down near his feet, a dampness, no a wetness, and a subtle shifting of soil, and craned up, stretching to see what it was, only to realize to late his mistake. The jaws of the crocodile snapped closed on his right foot, ankle and calf at an angle. The mighty beast rolled and rolled again violently, half tearing the leg off at the knee, whilst getting them back into the water. As his lungs flooded, and the shallow water covered him, the last thoughts Benjein had besides fear and panic were regret. So close but he simply hadn't the strength to get away. As the tantur youth drowned, the crocodile ripped free the leg, thrashing in the shallows and swallowing it. Then, getting a better grip on the upper thigh and hip, the mighty beast dragged his victim into deeper water.
Within mere minutes, the only evidence of the nightmare that remained on the surface was the unmanned laputua bobbing along, until it ran high on a sandbar, sitting like a memory, and the slight disturbed groves and patterns in the soil and pebbles at the river's edge being slowly shifted and washed away by the tide and the light rain that started to fall. The river's waters returned to normal, calm, flowing, muddy, cloudy. The peace settled quickly, almost disturbingly so upon the scene. As below on the river bed, the predator lord of this stretch of river dismembered and consumed its latest victim.
An hour passed, young Benjein forced to admit he had not figured into his self confidence the added difficulty of paddling against the current, which was slowing him down considerably, and wearing him out swiftly. After that hour, night engulfing all around him, he knew he was still at least a mile and half from his destination. The young man was strong and had stamina befitting his people's claim of the blood of titans, but he had been canoing for nearly fourteen hours now. His arms were like lead, his senses struggling, his body ached. The night began playing tricks on him. Twice he felt something akin to resistance, like he'd brushed his paddle against something solid. Both times he had lifted the lantern he had hanging alongside the high wall of the canoe to see if he was running to close to shore, but both times he'd still been well out from any danger of running aground.
The water was dark, cloudy, even under the light here you couldn't see the bottom. The mud and silt from the streams and creeks that fed the Lotzi always had it so. Benjein was nervous, on edge. He felt like something was watching him, heard splashes beside his paddles...or were they mere echoes. A third time, his paddle brushed something, having him recoil, then scramble to grab the lantern hanging over the edge of his canoe to get a better spread of light. Only this time he didn't make it to the lantern.
As he put his hand and arm out over the laputua's boundary, reaching down to grab the lantern and free it from the hook fastened to the vessel, he flinched, seeing the danger for just a split second below the water, the silt and mud moving, agitated, as if disturbed by something fast and powerful moving through it at speed, and a whitish grey spot told him of his error. But he could not move fast enough, the jaws of the Salt-Spine Crocodile erupting from the water, clamping down with tremendous and bone shattering force on his left hand and forearm, his arm up to the elbow locked in the vicegrip of the creatures jaws!
Benjein screamed briefly, but had the sense and fortitude to get his reaction under control, knowing that focusing on struggling now was a lost cause. He felt the powerful animal pulling him free of the canoe, and he strained with his right hand to get a grip on his revolver! As he was pulled overboard, he managed to just get a grip on it, pulling the trigger. He did not know if he struck the beast, but the sound was deafening in the still night. Well still above the water. Benjein was pulled below, and though he managed to suck in a deep breath into his powerful lungs, he knew that merely gave him a few minutes at best. Which was nothing for such a beast. He could feel it using its massive bulk and muscles, twisting, going into a death roll. As nightmarish as the thought was, the young man's father had educated him well in this. He'd managed to keep his right hand gripping the paddle, and could feel his boat. The boat wasn't safety but it was a fairer fight, and a chance. He also knew he had one chance. He felt keenly the direction of the crocodile's roll, trying to disorient him, dismember him, drown him. But his only chance at survival was to give the predator at least one of those three. He started twisting his body the opposite direction, it taking everything he had to not scream and therefore drown, or bite clean through his tongue. He felt the pressure, like one might imagine a cork that's stuck but is slowly coming loose feels like, before suddenly....release. His arm tore free, bones breaking, tendons tearing just below the elbow.
The pain was indescribable, however Benjein somehow pushed it aside, knowing he had but mere seconds until the beast swallowed his arm and grabbed on for more. With all his strength he kicked, following the guidance of the paddle, and got to the boat. The paddle he tossed aboard and he grabbed on, trying desperately to pull himself up. With one arm it was insanely difficult, given his bulk, and he nearly capsized the laputoa but finally managed. However water got into the lantern, dousing it. As he dragged himself aboard, cursing, tears in his eyes, he felt something bump against the bottom of his canoe. Once softly, then again more aggressively. He was without light, losing blood, and without a gun, the revolver useless from its trip into the river, though he had someone managed to get its weapon loop over his wrist before grabbing the paddle when he was pulled down, so he hadn't lost it. He sat up awkwardly, using his leg to pin his spare blanket and with his right hand, his cooking knife slashed a long rough strip free. Tying the tourniquet over the stump where his left arm used to be was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, having to use his teeth and right hand, awkwardly knotting it as best he could to try and slow the bleeding.
Benjein was terrified, lying absolutely still in the dark, trying to figure out what to do. Every so often something, the crocodile he knew, would bump against his laputua. The creature had no intention of letting a meal escape. Benjein hadn't even gotten a good enough look at it to begin to estimate its size, but given his near sixteen foot laputua had not been flipped or capsized yet, the Tantur would guess it was longer than his own height of near nine feet, but shorter than his vessel, though likely not by much. If he had to guess, likely a fourteen footer or so, not the biggest, but big enough, probbaly weighing double or even triple Benjein's own four hundred and fifty pounds. Well less than that now, given the missing arm. That was the risk of these bumps and prodding. At some point if the animal was determined enough it was going to figure out the timber and reed canoe was not a threat and was not that heavy, and likely attempt to flip it or capsize it. "You need light Benjein." he muttered to himself, trying to find his courage. He pushed himself upright, a groan of agony escaping from him as the mangled stump shifted, the cracked off section of his arm bone becoming visible through the tattered sleeve. Benjein retched, and then vomited, but despite how disgusting it was, he resisted every urge to lean overboard to vomit, knowing the beast was waiting somewhere for just that sort of foolishness. As disgusting as it was, he vomitted over his own legs and lap, shuddering.
Then once he'd managed to get control back, he moved grabbing the paddle. He only had one shot at getting his lantern and he wasn't fool enough to try and grab it without first confirming where the predator was. He took the paddle, slapping the water on the other side of the boat from the lamp, once, twice, three times and then tossed the paddle. He heard the splashing and thrashing, and seizing the moment he hooked it with his right hand, pulling it swiftly over the edge back onto the boat with him. It took him a lot of effort to get it lit with one hand, but he eventually got it lit. He shifted into a kneeling position, not daring to stand, unsure if he could maintain his balance. His head was spinning now, his vision swimming a bit from the shock and blood-loss. He took survey of what he could see in every direction. To his left was naught but dark open water, so death. Same with in front of and behind him. To his right however, tantalizing, perhaps a mere thirty or forty feet, he could see the water's edge, licking off stone, pebbles and soil glistening in the slight moonlight. The silouhette shape of trees. There was safety, but how to reach it.
Benjein considered his options. Even on his best day with both arms, he wasn't going to outswim a Salt-Spine, and certainly not now. That was not going to happen. The laputua rocked again, more noticeably this time, a splashing telling Benjein that the creature was getting more bold, more confident in confronting the boat. He turned with the lantern to scan the water, but not holding out a lot of hope. His paddle was floating near the boat, just out of reach, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, the object was broken into four or five pieces, utterly shattered by the aggressive predator. Seeing no other option, he focused, trying to find courage, to find a will to live. He scooped up his supply pack with his right hand, and risked rising to his feet, struggling to balance, and pitched it as far as he could to the left, hearing it splash some few dozen feet away. The sudden splash was greeted by motion, sounds of water moving, and a last bump, this one the first to go right to left, of something beneath his laputua.
Benjein counted to three, to try and give enough time for the beast to be a decent distance away, but knowing that it would turn right back once it realized the pack was not edible, and then leapt off into the water on the right side of his boat. The cool water may as well have been arctic ice with the blood loss and shock Benjein was suffering and it almost sent him under in shock, but he powered on and started kicking and swimming as best he could with one arm, driven by desperation. Five feet, ten feet, fifteen feet...was that movement, was that a splash he'd heard. Was something swimming towards him? Panic gripped him and that panic drove a deeper visceral response, as he kicked and paddled with all his might. twenty feet, his feet could touch bottom now, and he started trying to run, the water still up to his shoulders. Twenty five feet, it was at his waist thighs and then knees, and then ankles, until finally...Benjein collapsed, sobbing and struggling to keep consciousness, as he felt solid dry soil and pebbles beneath his feet. He'd made it. He'd made it. He rolled over onto his back, crying, laughing, struggling to keep conscious. "Oh thank the Ascended, thank you Deat-Kra" he praised, invoking the favored diety of his own kin. "Thank you Captain Jeremiah!" he praised, invoking the god of the sea and of sailors. He was weak, trying to catch his breath, but he was safe.
Benjein felt something down near his feet, a dampness, no a wetness, and a subtle shifting of soil, and craned up, stretching to see what it was, only to realize to late his mistake. The jaws of the crocodile snapped closed on his right foot, ankle and calf at an angle. The mighty beast rolled and rolled again violently, half tearing the leg off at the knee, whilst getting them back into the water. As his lungs flooded, and the shallow water covered him, the last thoughts Benjein had besides fear and panic were regret. So close but he simply hadn't the strength to get away. As the tantur youth drowned, the crocodile ripped free the leg, thrashing in the shallows and swallowing it. Then, getting a better grip on the upper thigh and hip, the mighty beast dragged his victim into deeper water.
Within mere minutes, the only evidence of the nightmare that remained on the surface was the unmanned laputua bobbing along, until it ran high on a sandbar, sitting like a memory, and the slight disturbed groves and patterns in the soil and pebbles at the river's edge being slowly shifted and washed away by the tide and the light rain that started to fall. The river's waters returned to normal, calm, flowing, muddy, cloudy. The peace settled quickly, almost disturbingly so upon the scene. As below on the river bed, the predator lord of this stretch of river dismembered and consumed its latest victim.
The above short story is a little taste that it doesn't need to be magick beasts and strange mutants or undead spirits or the like in Valerick that get you. The truth is some of the truly scariest threats are merely animals doing what animals do best. As was the lesson for this poor cocky young fisherman of a Tantur. The foolishness of youth, as tragic as it is, sometimes comes with dire consequences.
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