A completely non-canonical, garbage fanfiction written to amuse Chris, by Patrick
The Beauty
After the Swambies are defeated
“…but it’s just a little thing!” Garth said, equally concerned and confused by the fear reflected in the faces of his crewmates as they stood cloistered around the stairwell just below the main deck.
“Aye!” York agreed. “About the size of a potato…” But from the fear in his gaze, it was obvious this task would be no potato hunt.
As if to underscore this, Tarin continued, “Aye, they’re small… but they get inside yer! Gnaw their way through your fleshy bits and latch onto the brain. I seen one crawl out from the sick Swan up on deck! I cleaved the man almost in two… bastard didn’t even look like he felt a thing. Just… went down with that same sickly, empty expression on his face. Then the slug crawled itself out through his eye… still hungry. Didn’t stop squirmin’ til Pelham crushed it under his boot!”
Pelham spit and nodded in agreement.
Easter, still bleeding from the earlier battle, choked down an instinctive protest; the floors were already a mess – phlegm was the least of his concerns.
“Cleaved one in two,” York chimed in again, “with me… cleaver.” He continued, awkwardly miming a slight chopping motion with his weapon. “Still twitched a little after, so I mashed it into the deck for good measure. Popped like a tomato… smelled like a rotted onion. Nasty little things…” His face was twisted into a revulsed frown, just as it had upon tasting Ethan’s first attempt at crème brulee.
“So,” Garth asked, “how are we supposed to find one sneaky little sl-“
“Two…” Tarin corrected.
“…alright. Alright, two sneaky little slug beasts in this whole gods damn ship?!”
Easter, visibly struggling against his injuries, cleared his throat. “The clever girl – the young one – she handed me this,” he said, holding up a bizarre and elaborate device, about the size and weight of two bricks. A handle was built beneath a flat glass panel that stood in front of strangely shaped metal box beset with glass tubes threaded with copper wires.
“That? What is it…?”one of the crewmen asked.
Easter turned a knob on the side of the device and the copper wires began to glow; the flat screen pulsed with a steady, rhythmic wave of light that crawled across the screen from the bottom to the top, like the top half of a ripple caused by a pebble dropped into a still body of water. Each wave was accompanied by a steady tapping sound, like the gentle wrapping of metal against wood.
The glow elicited soft gasps from the other crewmen.
“She called it… a motion tracker.” Easter said.
The men divided up into two groups. Pelham would stay with Easter and the unconscious man; Easter was in no shape to fight and no one wanted to see what would happen if a worm got inside the comatose magical man who appeared out of nowhere and fought against the entire crew of witches on The Beauty.
Garth, Tarin and York took the motion tracker from Easter and made their way deeper into the ship. Garth and Tarin took the lead, York carried the tracker just behind them.
Moving slowly room to room, level by level, the men heard the muted commotion of fighting from somewhere outside the ship. From time to time, the ship was also rocked by unexpected waves, but their experienced feet barely noticed. The ship would need to capsize before the three of them would lose their footing.
The first signs of movement came as the men set foot on the second level. A white dot appeared on the top of the screen, accompanied by a soft chiming sound. The men stopped in their tracks. Garth and Tarin silently looked back at York and the device; York looked from the device back to the two men. All their eyes were wide, brows dotted with sweat. He nodded and pointed at a room towards the back with a shaky hand. Garth and Tarin looked to each other for a brief moment and tightened their grips on their weapons before they continued towards the back of the ship.
As they approached, the pitch of the chimes from the motion tracker began to heighten, almost becoming a whistle.
There were only two barrels nestled against the back wall of the second floor. Standing before them, the tracker was almost screaming. Garth and Tarin took up positions on either side; York allowed the tracker to dangle freely from a lanyard around his neck, drew his cleaver with one hand and turned one of the barrels over with the other.
The terrified men were about to pounce when they recognized Felix sitting comfortably on the floor behind the barrel. His ears turned back and eyes went wide at the unexpected ambush, but otherwise he seemed fine… aside from the lifeless slug he held in his mouth.
“Gods damn cat!” Garth exclaimed. He reached to remove the worm from Felix’s grasp but Felix was having none of it. He scampered off between Tarin’s legs and ran back the way the men had come.
“Stop him!” York exclaimed, far too late.
“Bah!” Tarin said. “Let’em be. He wants to help hunt the little bastards down, let’em!”
“But what if he eats it?!”
“Not our problem. Come on. We still got one more to find…”
Felix, of course, had no plans on eating the slug. The creature tasted terrible. He barely tolerated keeping the thing in his mouth, much less eating it. But it was his kill, after all, and he wasn’t going to let some deck crony take it away from him. Felix would decide who he presented his kills to and he had every intention of presenting this one to his new friend, that majestic horse. Felix enjoyed sleeping on his back and if anyone was going to get the labors of his work besides himself it was going to be him…
The fat tabby shuffled off towards Vengeance with pride.
The time spent searching the ship’s hold was some of the most intensely unnerving of the sailors’ lives. The device once again began to chime and yet as they approach the place in the hold where the creature supposedly was… there was nothing. It moved and they moved with it, yet the saw no signs of the creature anywhere.
The men looked around confused.
“Maybe it’s broken?” Tarin offered, nodding towards the device.
“No…” Garth said, the color draining from his face. “It’s here. Just… below us. It’s in the smugglin’ decks.”
The men looked at the floor beneath them. The smuggling decks were the deepest part of the hull. A tiny labyrinth of interconnected compartments, each no bigger than a crawlspace.
“It’s down there…” Garth continued, whispering.
The men looked at each other and then focused on York. He knew why. He didn’t like it, but he agreed. The dwarf was the only one who could fit inside the space, and the only one who could see without a torch.
“Shit…” he said.
“Alright,” Garth said as he helped lower York down into the smuggling deck at the bow of the ship. “Just like we planned…”
“Aye,” York said, nestling into the tight quarters, clutching his cleaver. “I’ll move one room at time, securing each chamber as I go.”
“Right,” Garth said, holding the tracker. “I’ll be right above you, tracking the thing. I’ll shout through the floors as you’re getting close.”
“With any luck, you’ll flush it out on my end and I’ll cut it to ribbons!” Tarin said, brandishing his fancy (now bloodied) blade. He moved toward the stern of the ship and opened the secret compartment leading into the smuggling decks. He knelt down on one knee, blade in front of him. When the worm crawled out, he was going to pin that little bastard to the floor before he splayed it open.
Garth handed a flask down to York who took two hearty swallows before tossing it back.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s get this little shit…”
He slid the panel out of the way and climbed into the first chamber of the smuggling decks.
End, probably. Chris knows how this story goes…
Episode navigation
Back to: