Published at 8th of March 2024 7:44 am

Chapter Twenty

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Ida and I were planning how to get to the passenger lodgings areas of the ship—or rather, how to get me to those areas, when the ships PA kicked in.

“Ahem,” a male baritone voice began by clearing his throat. “Testing, testing. Do you fellas hear me out there? Ah, good. Thank you captain, you may return to the dining room. Make sure he gets there safe, boys.”

There was a short pause as the PA cut out and Ida and I traded worried glances.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Quiet Squall—lovely name, by the way—my name is Terrance Love. I’m happy to inform you that our time on this vessel is coming to an end. There’s just one last thing we need to do before we arrive and it is my great hope that we can get it done with a minimum of fuss.

“So, Mr. Colm Avery, if you would be so good as to emerge from your hiding space and submit yourself to our care, it would really save me and my men a lot of trouble. To help persuade you, I have a young man here who wishes to talk to you.”

There were some background noises as I grew more alarmed. What? What the hell is going on?

“M-mr. Avery,” A very young voice replaced the baritone, one that was vaguely familiar.

“Tell him what I told you to say,” the baritone said in the background.

“Mr. Avery—h-he says if you d-don’t give yourself up, h-he—“ the young voice sobbed into the mic, which abruptly cut off.

When the mic came on again, sobbing could be heard in the background. “It seems poor Jason was overcome with emotion, so I’ll fill in for him. Basically, Mr. Avery, you have ten minutes to turn yourself in or I’m going disembowel the young lad in front of his mother, harvest his organs and turn him into a flesh golem. It’s a hobby of mine and I need the practice. I hope you aren’t the kind of man who would go through the trouble of saving someones life and then let all your hard work go to waste.” The sobbing had rose in pitch.

The kid!

“Fuck,” I hissed.

“What?” Ida asked.

“He’s got the kid I saved from drowning,” I said. “Fuck, they must have been asking the passengers about me and of course everyone recognized me as the crazy fuck who jumped off the ship.”

“If that doesn’t motivate you to come out, then I doubt this next part will. But I believe in being thorough,” the baritone—Terrance, continued. “After I am finished with the boy I will bring his mother up here and leave her to the devices of Mr. Ordon, whom you set on fire the other night. I will leave the mic on as he does his thing, which will take a long while and will be so very disgusting. I will not bore with the parti—“

I turned to Ida. “You share watch with Jasper, right? Is that now?”

She nodded. “Our watches got doubled after you injured those men.”

“Take me to him,” I said.

Ida paused briefly, giving me a once over before shrugging and moving toward the hatch. She checked her weapons as she moved, her hands sure and steady. Terrance continued his little monologue about the evil things that will be done to Jason’s mom but I cut him out. I was focusing on myself. I probably should be in bed for the next week, eating soup and reading a good book. My body has been through the wringer. The food poisoning, the sea sickness, and finally starvation capped off with infections and fever. The only reason I was on my feet was because I had spent a few years adjusting my body with eldritch powers to be tougher and meaner than it should be. Next chunk of free time I get I’m focusing on my stomach, however. I’m going to make it so I can eat iron and shit nails.

“—and the time starts now. I’ll be waiting, Mr. Avery.” The PA clicked off.

Ida set a fast pace, a jogging lope to the other side of the ship...port? The left side. She slowed down as she reached a corner and answered a challenge in French. She replied in kind as she passed out of my sight, and a tense conversation began. I waited a beat before moving forward, glancing down the “southern” portion of the ship to make sure there weren’t any other pirates in sight. There weren’t. The claws on my toes dug into the wooden deck and I launched myself around the corner towards the conversation.

Jasper was a man in his mid to late thirties with a pot belly. He was balding, greasy looking and if I were a casting agent for Law and Order, I’d cast him as the one of the criminals the cops questioned before finding the real one. He had a submachine gun hanging from his shoulder like Ida, but unlike hers it didn’t look as well cared for. He leaned forward in a patio chair he had dragged over from a nearby resting area, making “playful” grabbing motions at Ida.

I came around the corner in a burst and was on him before he could register me as a threat. My fist lashed out and caught him below the ear, snapping his head back. I felt the crunch of his jaw shattering through the Limbs of the Other Side.

“Merde!” Ida exclaimed, pulling her submachine gun forward and covering down towards the nearest entrance to the deck. “If that was what you had in mind, I could have done that myself.”

“Yeah but this doesn’t damage your cover much,” I said as I delivered another punch to Jasper’s temple, making sure he was out. I checked his pulse with one hand while grabbing his gun with the other, slinging it over my shoulder. I felt his blood pump once and decided that was good enough for me. I took a few moments to drag the vest off Jasper. It was similar to the one Ida had, like a tactical vest one would buy from an army surplus store. I checked the chest flaps and saw they actually had extra magazines in them.

I slung on the vest and winced as it pressed against the bandages on my chest. I stripped Jasper of his belt, which had his sidearm holster and walkie-talkie. My shorts didn’t have belt loops so I just cinched the belt over them. I just wanted something to hang the pistol from anyway.

“What are you going to do?” Ida asked with a low voice.

Good question. I’m mostly operating off instinct at this point. I pretended to mull over her question as I ejected the mag from the submachine gun—wait was this an MP5? This design is over fifty years old. Anyway, I checked that the mag was full and there was a bullet in the chamber.

“I’m not letting that kid die,” I said after I replaced the mag into the gun. About four minutes had passed. I took out the pistol—oh hey an old 1911, neat—and did the same inspection.

“You know your way around guns,” Ida said. There was a question in it.

“My father…” I paused. I don’t like talking about the man. “He only knew violence, and he did all he could to teach it to me.”

It was the most charitable thing I could think to say about the bastard.

I stood, garbed in a stolen second-hand tactical vest, sporting guns, a sunburn and malnourishment. I took a deep breath and let it out through my nose. “Ida—“

Ida lifted her gun and thumbed off the safety, checking to make sure it was loaded just like I did. She leveled a look at me as if to say “You think I’ll let them kill a kid?”

I smiled, though it probably came across as a wince. “So, I have an ability that will help level the playing field,” I said.

Ida frowned at me. “But there’s a reason you haven’t used it before now,” she said.

I tapped the side of my nose and pointed at her. “Bingo,” I said. “It… Okay imagine you’re using a public restroom. You know there are people—okay this metaphor is already too stupid. When I use this ability it feels like I am shearing my mind in half, and half of it wants to bring other, stronger, alien minds here.”

She blinked at me. “And this is bad?”

“I’ve never used it long enough to find out,” I replied. “You’ll understand more in a bit.”

I grabbed Jasper’s walkie-talkie and checked that it had battery. This whole plan would be really fucking dumb if it turned out Jason was killed because I didn’t have a pair of AA batteries. Luckily the radio had power. I had about three minutes left to the deadline.

There’s a place in my mind I don’t go. And I’m not talking about a bad memory or an embarrassing thing I did or a piece of knowledge I wish I didn’t know (like what the sex organ of an echidna looks like). There was literally a piece of mental real-estate I had fenced off with Pentagon levels of security.

Well today I showed up in a nice suit, showed my credentials, was escorted inside and I turned the key that unlocked it. Metaphorically, anyway. In actuality I just… looked over at it. And when it looked back I didn’t shy away.

On the day I had received the Limbs of the Other Side I had also gotten another boon. It had a similar name.

The Mind of the Other Side.

Ida gasped and took a step back. I knew from experience what she was seeing. My eyes had suddenly clouded over black, similar to when Hollywood uses those big ass black contacts. The similarity with mine ended after a moment as the blackness became an emptiness, my eye sockets becoming hollow caves of leaking darkness. If one got close and looked inside my eye sockets, you’d probably be surprised that you couldn’t see the back of them. After a second you’d probably realize that the distance you can see into my skull shouldn’t be possible. There should be an ocular wall there, a brain, maybe? Nope. Just a black void, the only light within being let it from the two holes where my eyes used to be.

And as if I had farted during a quiet part at church… I felt their attention.

Lovecraft used to describe beings of other dimensions as things that can’t be truly described. I don’t know if that is true, but if it is then it would certainly explain why Trix shows up as a different person every time I summon her. When I’m like this, I can feel… attention. Interest. Of minds so vast and powerful that if they were to squint in concentration it’d flatten my mind like so much roadkill on the highway. Thousands of them. Millions. Dozens. The numbers didn’t add up and they don’t make sense. All I know is there is a vast amount of mind out there and I could feel them and they could feel me.

Moments later the second part of the transformation occurred. Black tentacles of oily shadow-stuff sprouted from the backs of my shoulders, each as thick as my calf and tapering to a delicate looking point. The new limbs didn’t seem to interfere with my new vest but I could feel everything they interacted with in a way that was far more intimate that simple skin contact. Everything they touched seemed to communicate not only tactile, but taste, smell and even age.

“Oh my God there’s been so much vomit on this deck,” I said as I pulled my new limbs off the floor to hover a good foot above it. I took a deep breath to prevent myself from gagging. I noticed the odd quality my voice had taken, as if another voice was issuing from my throat along with my own. A much deeper, older voice.

God I hope this works.

I started heading down toward the outdoor eating area the pirates had used to paint their big ass ward. As I did I brought the walkie-talkie up to my lips and hit the button.

“Terrance,” I said.

“Yo, who the fuck is this?” An Australian voice came back.

“Who the fuck do you think it is?” I asked in return. “Put Love on the line.”

There was a pause.

“Mr. Avery, I presume?” Said a familiar baritone.

“You kill the kid or any other passengers, I will create a Banal summoning circle but leave the third meridian incomplete, dialed into the Praecipua Iustitia,” I said by way of greeting. “Then I’ll either come for you guns blazing or jump off the ship.”

There was a pause on the other line. “I do not think a man who would jump into the ocean to save a child would unleash the Praecipua Iustitia on so many innocents.”

“I don’t give a a fuck what you think,” I said. “I know who sent you, I know what he wants, and I’d rather fucking die then let him have it. But if you think I’m going to quietly eat a bullet instead of feeding you a shit sandwich then you got another thing coming.

“I’ve been living in fear of this day for eight long years, Terry boy,” I continued. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve been shitting my pants since that first day you guys boarded. But, there comes a point where you just run out of fear and all you have left is anger.”

I had timed my walk to arrive at the first guard station at the back of the boat. Mr. Phone Porn Guard had been too engrossed with the conversation coming out of his radio to notice the large, tentacled man approaching and by then it was too late. I held down the transmit button on the radio as my tentacles shot forward and pierced the guard in the shoulder and abdomen, lifting him off the ground. His shrill scream cut off as I slammed him once, twice into the nearest wall before letting him drop. As my tentacles left his body (his last shower was 4 days ago), instead of wounds they left behind black oily patches that smoked slightly.

I pulled the pistol from my holster and trained it to my right as I turned the corner to the outdoor dining area, knowing the screams would attract the attention of the other guard station. Sure enough, two guards appeared and trained their guns on me.

Before they could open fire my tentacle lashed out, slashing across their arms. Their screams erupted from their throats as if they had been lit on fire, their guns tumbling to the deck, forgotten. I grabbed each one by the ankles and dragged them the 40 feet across the deck to me, before silencing their cries with a pistol whip each.

“If you think about it, from a certain perspective, I’ve got you over a barrel, Terry,” I said, resuming the conversation. “I know what you want, but you don’t know what I’m capable of. Your negotiating position is a bit tenuous. So again, if you kill the kid, I release the paladins, shoot the place up before taking myself off the board. You’re left either dead or with a looooot less crew, plus an incredibly pissed off patron.”

Finally, I drove my tentacles at the ward. As I half-expected, an invisible wall impeded them before they could touch the symbols. I snarled and stepped forward, throwing my claws at the wall. At first nothing happened. I set my toe-claws and duck them into the deck, put my whole body into the invisible force. There was a tearing sound similar to TV static and the shield shattered with a flicker of light.

I sent my tentacles forward, marring the intracate spell work and destroying the most complicated ward I’d ever seen. The nerd part of me regretted not being able to study it more. As I destroyed the ward beyond repair, I felt their/its eyes on me. Some part of me knew that all it would take was a small invitation from me. A part of me that hadn’t come with the original Colm egged me on to do just that.

I ignored the voice and continued my work. The voice was fine with that. It was in no particular rush. But it still compelled, still teased. Unceasing. Working with the calm patience of someone who knew what they wanted was a sure thing.

As the energies of the ward faded away, a sense of dread and hopelessness I hadn’t noticed until it was gone fled with it. Parts of the ward became clear in light of this new phenomenon and I admired the ingenuity of the ward with new respect. No wonder they had such an easy time controlling the ship and their own crew! They put a psychic boot on everyones metaphorical neck, making them too depressed to fight back. Without the protection of the spell I had slapped on my neck, it had started to worm its way into my mind.

I was still holding the transmit button on the radio down. They could hear everything I was doing. I wasn’t familiar with this brand of portable radio, but the pirate warlocks seemed to kind of assholes who didn’t spring for the best equipment for their men. Either this radio didn’t allow incoming signals when it transmitted or it was one of those that kept whole channel occupied while transmitting. If it was the latter, I would be very surprised, as I thought that design had disappeared in the nineties.

“It’s your move, Terry,” I said. I think the time limit was up by this point. “Call my bluff and reap the consequences, or think of some other way to flush me out.” I released the transmit button.

“WE DID!” A voice called from behind just as my danger sense warned me of an incoming knife.

I spun into a crouch, the knife flying over where my shoulder had been. I prepared my tentacle to retaliate when a fist connected with my temple and sent me to the deck.

The blow hit me completely by surprise and only my improved physiology and nervous system allowed me to keep enough of my wits to throw myself out of the way of the boot that came down on my head, the edge of it clipping my brow. My danger sense suddenly registered a smallish man, dressed in a similar way to the knife throwing lunatic: all dark tactical gear. This man, however, was... forgettable. It was like he was designed to fade into the background. He had short brown hair, not styled but not messy. Brown eyes, average face, his expression set like a man resolving to do an unpleasant job.

How the fuck had this asshole snuck up on me?

Another two knives came after me. I knocked one away with a tentacle and the other with the back of my hand while I sent the other tentacle to swipe at Mr. Forgetable. He easily dodge under it, doing a Neo impression and bending back almost to the deck before springing back like his feet were nailed to the floor. I used the distraction to get some distance from him and regain my feet, bringing up my hands in position one.

“Muay Thai?” Mr. Forgettable asked, sounding bored. “Perhaps something else mixed in?”

And without covering the distance between us, suddenly he was in my face. Daggers were flying at me at a near constant rate, always positioned to cover Mr. Forgettable. Or perhaps, Forgettable positioned himself to take advantage of the incoming knives. Whatever the method, it forced me to devote my tentacles to intercept the knives and take on Forgettable with my other limbs.

Now, I’m a good foot taller and I outweighed this guy by at least sixty pounds. I had way more reach and I was instructed in martial arts from the first days I could walk (whether I wanted it or not). I even had supernatural protection on my arms and legs. All in all, in a straight up fight I had every advantage.

This guy was kicking my ass.

The most alarming thing was that my danger sense couldn’t get a read on him. Sometimes it predicted him accurately and then all of a sudden he’d be coming at me from an angle I didn’t expect and my danger sense hadn’t warned me about. He landed blows on my ribs, under my arm pits, the inside of my thigh. I managed to get the odd glancing blow in, but it quickly became apparent that if this guy wanted to end the fight he probably could. I was being played with.

“So many styles,” Forgettable said, some admiration leaking into his voice. “But you're out of practice. When was the last time you sparred?”

Forgettable went on the defensive, waiting for my reply. Since it gave me time to recover, I decided to humor him.

“Against a human? Almost a decade ago,” I said, breathing hard and blinking sweat out of my eyes.

“A pity,” Forgettable said, disappointing me and not inquiring about what I meant about fighting humans. He was such a bland presence that I couldn’t even place his accent. “If you had kept practicing, you would be remarkable.” He punctuated his remark by landing a quick combo on my stomach, chest and head, the last I barely mitigated with a quick retreat.

“How I would have enjoyed fighting you in your prime,” he continued to land blows on my torso, slapping my defenses aside with little apparent effort. It was getting harder to keep my hands up, and every breath felt like inhaling glass. I think one or more of my ribs are cracked.

I figured now was the time to stop playing fair.

I dove into that part of my mind that wasn’t entirely my own, the part that kept whispering at me. I took a firmer grip on it and brought more of it into me as I had done only once before. Suddenly the darkness in what used to be my eyes started spreading, falling like whispy ink down my cheeks. My two tentacles split into four, the two new limbs stabbing down at Forgettable. A lukewarm version of surprise briefly shattered his bland expression and suddenly he was ten feet away. Can the little shit teleport? Why didn’t I negotiate for that power?

A gunshot split the air. I glanced up to where the knives had been coming from and saw the crazy Aussie falling as if in slow motion, a fountain of blood erupting from a hole in his temple. Ida stood a few feet away, seemingly having snuck up on him. The look of cold fury on her face was, for me, very hot. I don’t know how much of my attraction to her in that moment was from me or the other me taking up residence in my mind.

What I had taken for slow motion turned out to be actual slow motion as the world seemed to ground to a halt. I could barely move. Mr. Forgettable, however, didn’t seem to have a problem with the new situation. He casually walked over to his falling comrade with a look on his face that seemed to say “Now look what you did.” He placed a hand on the Australian and closed his eyes in concentration.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the burned knife wielder started to lift. Time flowed backwards, but only for the Australian. Blood flowed back into his head, his expression rewinding. Soon, a bullet slowly exited the wound, undoing the fatal injury.

Time resumed with a sudden jerk and vertigo assaulted me, making me fall to the floor along with everyone save for Mr. Forgettable. My chin landed painfully on the deck, but I fought through the pain to watch with horrified fascination as the short man wiped at the blood that was pouring from his eyes and nose.

The Australian seemed just as affected as I was, only able to stay on his feet thanks to the support provided by his bland friend. “What happened?” He asked with a shaking voice.

“You died again,” Mr. Forgettable said. “We should retreat.”

I ran a hand over my face in an attempt to shake off the vertigo and instantly regretted it. I accidentally had put a finger into my eye socket and felt the utter, chilling emptiness within. I shoved aside my revulsion and began the labor of getting off the floor.

The Australian seemed to be attempting something similar, trying to shake off the effects of dying and being revived. “No!” He snarled. “We need him!”

Mr. Forgettable could be talking about the weather for all the emotion that was in his voice. “My power is out for the rest of the day,” he said. “And I was barely good enough with it to take him on with your support. If I am forced to fight him like this, I may kill him.”

I was on my hands and knees, fighting the urge to vomit. My tentacles twitched on the ground by my sides, leaving behind inky black residue on the surfaces they touched. Of Ida I couldn’t see anything. She must have fallen back or crawled away when the timestop ended.

The knife wielder made a frustrated sound. “Fine, but we’re killing the bitch that shot me.”

Mr. Forgettable glanced back at me. “No,” he said, guiding his friend away. “He’s already on his knees.”

“I’ll take it from here, boys,” said a new voice, a thick basso.

A man I had only seen from afar once stepped out of the pathway into the dining area. He wore crisp black slacks, expensive looking leather shoes, a white silk shirt covered with a black vest. He was currently untying his tie and wrapping it around his right fist. The expression on his face would be arrogant on anyone else, but the man conveyed such an air of competence it just came across as charisma. He was bald with a neatly trimmed full beard. He was also as big as a bear and nearly seven feet tall.

“Hello,” he said with a slight Russian accent, stepping towards me. “I am called Mr. Rasp.”

I sighed.

I climbed the rest of the way to my feet, stretched my back a bit before falling back into position one.

“Hi,” I said tiredly.

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