Stellos Sea Serpent
He hated the rain.
It wasn't the cold that soaked him through to his bones. It wasn't the thunderous sound of it pounding into the weary oaken deck beneath his feet. No, it was simply that when it rained in the black of the night, he couldn't see shit.
He stared up into the tumultuous skies again, to no avail. No stars were visible behind the inky clouds, and even the Sister Moons were gone tonight. His ship was, for all intents and purposes, quite lost. Though his navigator had estimated that evening they were hardly half a day's journey from port, the horizon was as blank as ever, not a single light to hint at a coastline nearby.
He cursed under his breath, loosing a torrent of droplets from his beard as he did so. The remainder of this journey would not be as easy as he had hoped.
"Captain!" his lookout called suddenly, shouting over the din of the storm. "Lights, sir! Heading one zero six!"
The captain started, regained himself and looked east. His lookout was not lying. A string of lights had appeared on the horizon, a murky blue-green in the un-light of the stormy night. There was something about them that set a queasy unease deep in him, but he pushed the feeling aside as he called for course adjustments, eager to finally make port. Curious about which port, exactly, they were turning towards, he brought his scope to his eye, wiping rain from its lenses.
He frowned. Even with a clean eyepiece, the lights were still hazy, indistinct things that seemed to be wavering, moving closer and farther apart. And they were getting brighter, not in the way of a ship approaching land, but, inexplicably, as if the land was approaching the ship as well.
His veins turned to ice as he realized there was only one explanation for such a huge mass to be approaching.
"Turn back!" he roared to his navigator. "Damn you, turn her around or we're doomed!"
But it was too late.
Three great red eyes blazed to life just under the waves, a mere kilometer from the confused ship. Each was nearly as tall as the ship itself. The blue-green lights behind the eyes resolved their clarity as they crested above the ocean upon a great serpentine length that seemed to extend into eternity. With a terrible, scraping screech that sent the ship's crew to the deck, rolling in pain, the red eyes broke the surface as well, rising higher and higher, towering nearly to the black clouds above. Where they had been, a yawning abyss sat, wide enough to swallow a city whole.
As the jaws crashed down and enveloped him in darkness, he prayed to the gods for the first time in twenty years.
They did not respond.
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