The Smoking Sea

A father and son travel into the heart of danger in the name of a religious event. A flaming Crocodile the size of a mountain does battle with a hurricane. This is the world of Achipelion.

    Moths rumble in my stomach and goose pimples crop up my arm. I pull down my brown and rough worn sleeve so Father doesn't see. It's still damp from washing my hands. It is tradition to clean your hands, feet, and mouth before seeing the great battle unfold. Last I saw it, I was only but twelve. I am now sixteen and a man grown. When I was four I wet myself, the battle scared me so. When I was eight, I looked away and was swiftly chastised for the offense. A week gutting the fish with a dull blade. When I was twelve, I spilled my guts and took a beating for it in the puddle of my filth, but I am now sixteen and must not show fear. I am a man.

   Father reaches his hand out and I grab it. The canoe sways left, right and creeks slightly. The wood is light brown, smooth to the touch and more beautiful than the one we use for fishing. The smell of ironwood and salt fills my lungs. The goose pimples retreat as I take another deep whiff of the air. The moths remain in my belly but I feel strong. I grab an ore and sit. We paddle down the brackish waterway and move towards the sea.

   Father and I are not alone. Almost at once the air swells with the sounds of paddles crashing into water and wood cutting through currents. I look to my flank and see a family in a canoe bigger than ours. A scaly fishtail ending in the image of a woman with breasts bared naked lines the length of their boat. In it stands their father, chest puffed out and proud at the helm with his two sons paddling in unison. Their mother sits, bosom spilling out nursing her youngest child. She is singing an old song to her babe. A soothing, soft sound that fills me with nostalgic melancholy. My mother, Heccekt bless her soul, used to sing it to me when I was but a babe myself. I can no longer stand the sound of it. I look behind me and see the Three Grindurt Brothers. They wear stoic faces behind braided beards, jewel crested eyebrows and plump scars like a mask. The moths fly away and my stomach sinks. I'm full of jealousy, as much as the river is full of canoes.

   The entire village paddles out to the brittle rock islets that litter the south end of the crystal cerulean plain, just at the mouth of the smoking sea. Some of the islands are big enough for four or five families and some are little more than limp sea stacks not even fit for one man. We come into the maze of black and sand-colored stone. The Black Sea stacks are to be avoided. They jut out of the water like knives and are even sharper. The absurdity of their form bothers me. A useless, violent gesture of the earth gnashing it's crumbling teeth at water and sky. What's the point of that? If you ask me there is none. No point at all. I look for a gently sloping edge or even a sand-colored sea stack. Those are nice. They don't cut your fingers when climbing them.
"Thems thoughts will burn yer vision boy. We go out further to the last of em. Yellow, black or red I care not. Today we see a God die." Father says with confidence.
Wind pushes against our combined efforts. Fire sparks between bone and sinew. Beads of sweat form only to be erased by salt spray. I grit my teeth and paddle harder.

    It isn't long before we can see the prodigious pillars of smoke billowing forth from the boiling sea. The steam rises high into the sky as if it wants to wage war on the heavens themselves.
"Just one league ahead father. The rusted tower." I say with gravel in my voice.
"Aye, I see it. Git yer heart good and ready boy. I won't have ye look away this time."
"Aye."
The tower rises higher the closer we approach. Father once told me it used to be a great metal obelisk that housed all manner of men. Men who did business with each other and men who made things and men who destroyed things. It must have been a wonder in its time. Now it just sits, jutting out of the sea like the rest of these rocks. A useless symbol of defiance from men long dead and gone.

   We tie our boat to a rusted prong and climb up and through a large window. Wind and sea have long taken the glass it once displayed. Nevertheless, that didn't clear us of danger. Most of the floors have caved in eons ago making the obelisk a metal shell. The oblong form of the metal tower was easy enough to navigate through but not every beam was fair in its integrity. Some groan with the sound of metal scraping on metal and those were death waiting to take you under salt foam and sea. With rope and nimble speed, father and I made our way up to the level with sound floors. Father drew his short spear and tore a hole through the ceiling. I shimmy up the foxhole, foot on a rusted beam, toes splayed out better to grip the surface and pull myself up. Once my arms find a flat plain I am consumed by nightfall.

    Father waves his hand over the murky green jewel carved into his forehead and the hall was filled by daylight tinged with forest fog, green and cloudy.
"Mind yer step boy. Death waits for the man, not about his wits"
"Aye father"
Father inadvertently rips an ancient door off its rusted hinges to get to a stairway. The blackness of the place is thick with ocean fog. We move gingerly up.
"Boy!"
"Aye father"
"Regale me with the story of why we venture forth to this here watery hellscape"
"I believe you know that tale better than I...father," I said this with much more trepidation than I would have liked.
"Aye. 'Tis is a truth. But me ears want to hear it from yer own tongue. So tell me, and I'll not have no for an answer."
"'Tis is a day that comes once only every four cycles. It is a day when the great storm of Heccekt rips forth through ocean and sea to do battle with the fire demon, Pyricodon. Pryricodon is an ungodly demon that makes a mockery of Heccekt's great and awesome power by burning under the waves and boiling away his domain. He is a hate-filled thing with rage for the very sea that gives us life and wishes to burn the world of all water. That is why the sea smokes."
"Aye, ''tis is a truth. And what else?" Father narrows his eyes and looks through me to see if my belly is yellow. I press on with a face of stone.

   "The flaming Lizard has cursed our people. Trapped us on this island. He is a jealous stupid creature that appreciates not his godly powers. Sanquasire and his kin are too dim-witted to care about the troubles he brings and the Empire of Cats are too yellow-bellied to fight the creature so here we stand, Heccets chosen, real men, cheering on his storms in hopes that he sinks Pyricodon for all eternity."
Fathers eyes fold into a crescent moon and his cheeks bulge upward, teeth shown. A rare smile from a man not used to the act. My face goes hot, but I continue to look at him. He grabs me by the shoulder, feet still moving gingerly up the steps and kisses my cheek. He smells of sweat and salt.
"Yeh will be a true man this day forth. I can see Heccekts storm raging within yeh. Yer mother would be proud, son."
We stop for just a moment. I let his words wash over me like a warm bath, but say nothing. I continue upward until the final door presents itself. Slime coated and riddled with rusted holes from endless cycles of whipping rain, I grab ahold of the turn-handle and open.

   Demon mist envelopes my being. The salt spray spits on my face now heated by the fires of the abomination. Heccekt's calling looms over the horizon gaining speed with every lightning strike on the surface of the water. A behemoth of a cyclone roiling with clouds black as soot and cracked with the bolts of his fury. The air is smothered in bottled-up tension and the moths' return. This time singing instead of rumbling or sinking and I no longer feel them in my gut. They travel to my arms and legs, making me feel almost as weightless as the feather of a bird. Sunlight fills my core and I scream. I scream out towards the heavens.
"Elation! Jubilance! My name is Heccekt's Prawn! Cast down this Demon and free us of his influence. B*****d spawn of hellfire and brimstone, smother his flames and cast his wickedness into your Green Tombs of Slime!"

   Father whips his head to look at me, eyes wide. He has always been the one to start the prayer and I, in my youth would follow his lead, even in my frightened state. However, he did not wear a mask of fury, rather one of great passion, tears brimming on the edges of his eyes, threatening to spill forth he roars a triumphant "AHROOOO"! His arms splayed outward to hug the ripping winds.
"Spears down, son!" Father stabs the floor of the roof with all his lean weight behind it, landing on one knee. I follow his lead. The wind picks up. A harsh gust rips through us, it's chill cutting down to our bones. The storm is almost upon the demon and soon he will show himself. I grip my short spear with all the strength I have and wait.

    A deep and guttural voice roars from somewhere beneath the surface in primordial rage. The metal tower sways dangerously left and right as large boiling bubbles pop and burst forth into the surface world, sending sentinel stacks of steam shooting out attacking the cyclonic winds. Steaming rain and maelstrom winds pelt our little bodies as we hold on for dear life. The sea breaks and out the demon comes. Larger and more grotesque than any living being has the right to be, Pyricodon's reptilian eye is larger than a full red moon and filled with a hatred incomprehensible to all men, living or dead. His crocodilian snout defiantly ignores the furry of the storm, leviathan maw agape he spits hellfire at the heart of Heccekt's weapon.

   The sky turned red and everything around me was painted in hues of blood orange, and black. The tower of flames seemingly unstoppable and never-ending, they singed the water off our skin and burnt the thin hairs on our bodies. Never have father and I ventured this close. Had I still been a child, I might have died right here and now. I would have been nothing more than a puddle of piss that not even the sea would want. Had I still been twelve, I might have jumped off this metal plateau to save my eyes from having to bear wittiness to this clash of Gods. However, I am now a man and for the first time, I am filled with such a righteous furry that I believe it to match the Flaming Crocodile's unknowable hatred. Father looks on, unfazed and unmoving the way a statue might stand its ground. Are those tears or rain on his cheeks? I can not tell.

   The invisible hand of Heccekt smites Pyricodon and down the demon goes below the waves. The sea comes up high enough to meet us on the roof and we're washed over by steaming water. The sea boils again and the flaming crocodile shoots out, his back set aflame and snaps at the wind and rain. Fire spewing between tree stump thick teeth, he lets out another round of flames. Lightning cracks through the sky. An outline of a man, more grandiose and larger than Pyricodon himself, is silhouetted behind the storm clouds.
"Almighty Heccekt reveals himself to us, son! He shows his form to those holiest! Yer heart must be filled with his stormy embrace!"
"Aye father! AHROO!"
Sweet Jubilation radiates from within my being.

    Whips of lightning crackdown on Pyricodon, striking his mouth and causing his flames to combust and explode in his face. Again he falls into Heccekt's domain and the water runs red with blood. A god's blood. Am I to be a witness to the death of this monster? Are we going to be witnesses to what our ancestors have long dreamed of? Pyricodon, forever livid and undeterred, crashes up out of the sea and spits his burning venom at the storm. This time it rips a hole in the clouds and the clear blue sky the sits above it is tainted with red and orange light. An incomprehensible force tries and fails to topple over the demon who is now standing tall and erect, casting his vile shadow over the tower. I feel as an ant must feel when men unknowingly crush their mounds of dirt. Less than less. A gain of sand sinking into a void and being devolved into nothing.

    I can not tell you why I decided to stand up, but yet here I was, spear in hand and me bracing the winds with only my conviction and determination. I make my way to the door as swift as a porpoise. Father only noticed once I grabbed ahold of the turn-handle. If he called my name I couldn't hear it over the cacophonous gusts.
Down I go into the blackness of the obelisk, through the foxhole, passed the rusty beams and into the boat. Father came through the foxhole as fast a silverfish, contemptuous and spitting venom my way.
"Yeh gets yer yellow belly sissy made arse back up this here roof or I'll throw yeh into the fire demon's gullet meself. Do yeh hear me, boy? I'll feed you to him mese-"

    A monstrous wave slammed into the tower, beams cracked and metal split asunder. It was Heccekt's will, I am sure of it. Father was unmolested by the event and I was already venturing forth toward Pyricodon and the cyclone. Father's fist violently thrashing the air, I couldn't help but laugh. For a moment he looked almost like the Black Sea spires, sharp and useless. He would understand soon enough. He'd be proud even. I know it.

   I am in an oven of unholy heat. Salt spray and seafoam burn my flesh but I persist onward. I dunk the paddle into the boiling water only to have it come out steaming and cracked. I move ever onward. I know what I must do for Heccekt has called me and I have answered. I ride the waves with the skill of my forefathers in me. The canoe jerks skyward and threatens to capsize but a gust of marshal wind blows against my back and sets me right again. Heccekt's divine blessing.
"Blasted Demon, you have failed to kill me yet!" I scream with the voice of my father.

   Pyricodon still stands tall, fire crackling along his backside releases another round of flames at the raging cyclone. The sky lights up. The heavens are set ablaze. Heccekt's winds embrace the fire and send them down again as a ferocious whirlwind of flames. Blue meets orange and red as lighting bolts cleave the thicket of steamy air, out of soot-black clouds and crashes into the flaming tempest. The shock wave hits me first, stopping the beating of my heart for a moment before the heat rains down upon my small body like a million embers from a pit of fire. I fall flat on my arse and lose my paddle to the molten waves. Pyricodon bloodied and stunned falters, once, then twice, until he buckles under his weight and falls back to the sea.

    I plop my belly on the floor of the boat, spreading arms and legs to hold myself in place. The wave was a volcanic mountain. More fire and blood than water and salt it hits with a force more powerful than all of Heccekts cyclones. The boat thrashed to and fro until planks failed and split away. Ripping sounds come from bellow and I knew I was taking on water. I feel the flaming foam scald my legs. I scream. I scream until my voice is a husk. And yet I was not pulled under. I am very much still alive. I stand, determined to finish the job. Heccekt's will storming within me. My ancestor's hatred burning within me. My father's conviction living within me. I blindly grab my spear, shocked that I still had not lost it and aim.

    The demons eye creeps up through the water. I look at him and he looks at me. His gibbous eyes breach the surface. Folds of green, orange and yellow contract and his pupil turns into a sharp sliver of obsidian black. I can see myself in his eye. Spear in hand and legs red with burns. I look a right mess but feel untouched. I cannot feel the burns, I cannot feel the moths, I cannot feel my limbs. With a great thumping, I know that all I can feel is the pounding of my heart. I speak with the voice of a thousand men.
"B*****d of the sea! My name is Heccekt's prawn and in his stead, I will smite thee and cast ye to a watery grave!"

    The spear flies through the air smoother than any gull. In a righteous arc, the weapon buries itself into Pyricodon's moon-sized eye. The sliver of black obsidian expands rapidly until all color is consumed and replaced by a void. Blood bubbles out of the wound, frothy as seafoam it shoots out over my head and down to my toes in burning gore. I steam like a cooked crab but feel no pain. I laugh at the demon. I laugh at his face.
"Pitiful, pathetic thing, your Magics harm me not!"

    The fiery crocodile blinks instinctively but only ends up burrowing the spear deeper into his eye. The void of his pupil washes over with red until he is crying waterfalls of blood. The maelstrom picks up again and the winds rip through the air. I lift my arms outward, embracing it and continue to laugh. A shadow blacker than night blankets me and scalding droplets of water rain down onto the canoe. Plated scale meets the surface, sending blistering jets of boiling water my way. I fall beneath the waves. The boat now torn to shreds.

   Currents pull me under. I try to swim up with rope-like arms. The skin unfolding and sloughing off into white and pink ribbons. A soft cueing song emanates from within the depths of the endless boiling sea. A song I've heard before. A song I've heard mothers sing to babes at their breast. A song I've heard earlier this very day. A song my mother would sing to me when I but a naked thing, small and defenseless. The frightened, struggling animal inside me dies and I fall even deeper. The song only grows louder and more soothing. The boiling water feeling more akin to a warm blanket. Looking down at that infinite blackness there is a green glow. Small at first, it grows larger as the lullaby swells up in intensity. Arms break through the murk almost begging me to embrace them. So I do.

   Mermaids swim circles around my embracer and I. Joyful and enraptured they sing along. The tighter she envelopes me the more I crumble away like a sandcastle being washed out to sea. Head planted firmly on her bosom I look up with the eyes of my younger self. Mother meets my gaze, love in her eyes, singing her song. I am all but sand as she lulls me to sleep.

Author's Note

This is the first short story that I’ve shared publicly, which probably means it’s a bit janky. However, I am very open to criticism. Hope you enjoy the story.

Reviews

[Christoph]

Brackish is a good word.

Oh, I probably have more to say than that.

The short, fragmented sentences here feel like a stylistic choice. Even if they're not, it works really well. The character comes across strongly in every line, young, not yet the man he's supposed to be. If he never mentioned those feelings they would still be clear.

The action works really well, perhaps as the result. When you're describing scenes of destruction, great leviathans thrashing about and things like that, you can really lose the connection to the character unless he's being acted upon directly. As would be the case here, where it's mostly a description of a show he's watching. But his voice was so strongly established and I'm so firmly inside of his head. Great.

I'd also be interested in seeing more of this world. It seems like you put a lot into the worldbuilding, for a short story, and I'm almost positive you've got more tales set in this place.

Thumbs up, double-plus good.

[Ariel Lee]

Oh man, thank you! Really appreciate you taking the time outta your day to read the story and post a review on top of that. Means a lot.

I’ll def have more short stories taking place in this world in the future. It’s the world is a DnD setting I made but I haven’t had the opportunity to get players to delve into it so I decided to just write short stories about it lol. Again thanks for the positive review!