“Dead. One of those things, they made it through” Dion answered, his voice unnervingly moderate even to his own ears.

  These were his captors. The people who had put him in chains.

  The urge to gloat, barely stirred. Not when his life and everyone else on the ship hung in the balance.

  Meanwhile Grish had a different thought.

  “Shit!”

  If those slaves die, we gain nothing.

  “The other holds” His gaze settled back on Dion the next moment, even the latter seemed to understand.

  Dion shook his head, he had no idea. Although he was aware his hold was just one of many.

  “Lead the way boy” Grish commanded the familiar nozzle of the metal pipe faced him.

  Going back down was simply suicide.

  He has barely escaped the chaos thanks to Varro, something he still couldn't understand.

  Why did a merchant give up his life for him? Unfortunately he had no time to dwell on it.

  CLICK.

  The hammer cocked.

  Dion stared long and hard at Grish, committing the man’s face to memory, his palm twitching almost on instinct.

  Grish noticed the slight tremor. “Think you’re faster than a bullet, kid?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

  The next second, he turned and descended back into the hatch, forcing Dion ahead of him.

  The duo moved downstairs, their steps measured against the groaning ship.

  Below, the smell hit Dion first, a sickly-sweet stench of scorched meat and molten wax. Then the sight came into view.

  Not burnt bodies. Melted ones. And that was just the beginning.

  The living prisoners stared blankly at the ceiling. Their skin had begun to shift, taking on a subtle, sickly shade of greenish-blue.

  Almost like the thing.

  The thought detonated in Dion’s mind. It could change them. Hollow out their thoughts and personality.

  How many were down here? His own hold had held thirty. He shook his head, the sheer scale of it dawning on him.

  Besides him, Grish surveyed the chamber, his countenance hardening by the second. He knew what this was.

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  Hollowfication.

  An irreversible process that turned a human into one of them. It was rarely feared, for there were potions, expensive elixirs that could shield a mind from the Brine's corrupting whispers.

  He had been among those who argued fiercely against wasting such concoctions on the prisoners.

  The only thing better than a slave was a blank slate, and the sea provided that service for free.

  Now, that same calculated cruelty was unraveling his profits before his eyes.

  A waste, he thought, the bitterness acrid in his throat. An entire fortune, melting away into monsters.

  BANG!

  BANG!

  BANG!

  Grish fired into the huddled mass. His shots were precise, each one finding the head of a prisoner whose skin had already begun to blotch with that telltale greenish-blue.

  They slumped silently, mid-transformation.

  “Take this.” Grish’s voice cut through his horror. The man hauled a short sword from a dead guard’s belt and flung it toward him.

  CLAMP!

  Dion raised his hand, catching the weapon, his fingers closed on the grip. The blade was pitifully light, the leather hilt sticky with blood.

  “Now move” Grish commanded, all he could think about now was finding the hollow quickly before it corrupted more prisoners.

  Dion obliged, not that he had a choice, at least now he wasn't unarmed. Still he was still chained but that was okay.

  A thought emerged in his heart.

  Varro, he found no sign of him, or maybe he was among the melted bodies, those were harder to identify.

  They advanced deeper into the slave hold.

  The passage was a tight canyon of iron and wood, lined with the carcasses of dozens of small, cramped cells. Their doors stood ajar like broken teeth.

  The stench here was a solid thing, a mix of human filth, blood, and the cloying, chemical reek of melted things.

  Dion’s eyes tracked the carnage. Bodies slumped in corners. Others were melted into the floor.

  Worst were the prisoners still standing in their cells, swaying, their skin blooming with sickly greenish blue color.

  Grish didn’t pause. He put a bullet in each shifting head.

  From a dark cell to their right, a Hollow uncurled and shot toward Dion, moving with a wet, skittering rush.

  Dion spotted it.

  He trembled, but instinct took over. He swung.

  CLANG!

  The sword struck something unnaturally hard, the force nearly wrenching it from his grip. The Hollow hissed, skittering back a step before coiling to lunge again.

  “Move boy,” Grish shouted.

  Dion ducked

  BANG

  The Hollow’s head snapped back as Grish’s shot found its mark, and the creature slumped.

  Dion’s gaze locked on the smoking weapon in Grish’s hand, a contraption that could only evoke the worst of memories.

  “Don’t stare too much,” Grish called, a tight smile on his face. “You can’t get one of these…” he taunted, his job here was finished.

  Back on the deck, the fight was all gunpowder and screams. Pistols barked, their thunder drowning out all else.

  A Hollow shrieked as a volley tore through it, falling where brine sizzled on the deck like spit on a hot griddle.

  “Reload faster!” The captain’s roar was a fierce, white slash in the gunsmoke. “The Brine eats the slow!” the order as much for himself as his crew.

  His pistol barked, another Hollow fell. He felt no victory, only a spike of pure, managerial fury.

  This was an unscheduled event. A catastrophic drain on resources. The men, the gun powder, the time, all wasted on a problem that shouldn't exist.

  As a captain, his duty was simple.

  Procure the cargo and deliver it intact. The navigation, the discipline, the accounting, that was his domain.

  How would he account for this ruin to the various powers awaiting the shipment in the New world?

  The Carrion Host's ledger masters would pick apart every decision. A lost ship was a tragedy, a lost profit was an unforgivable failure.

  His mind raced. Hollows were a mindless plague on sea, but they hardly troubled ships.

  Not unless something had drawn them.

  He looked around, taking stock of his people. Seris fought with her back to the mast. Veynar held the forecastle. And Grish… where was Grish?

  The hold.

  As if summoned, Grish emerged from the hatch. For a second, hope flared.

  The ship jolted as if struck by a cliff. A colossal impact, causing the beans of the ship to explode.

  Then it rose from the depths.

  A being of rendered sea, flesh like clouded glass, lit from within by flowing veins of brine, its body armored in sharp, symmetrical salt, coupled with a face frozen in a silent coral scream.

  Its limbs were liquid, constantly re-forming.

  Its roar hit the air like a thunderclap of pure force.

  The captain’s blood drained from his face.

  Before him, the Carrion Host’s formation dissolved into a maelstrom of terror.

  Seris’s humor vanished, replaced by grim command. “All guns! Now! Aim for the mass!”

  The order unleashed hell. Every firearm on the Sea-Hawk erupted at once, the concussive blasts merging into one continuous, ear-splitting roar.

  The battle for the deck was now a desperate, close-range artillery duel against a living tidal wave.

  —

  Dion emerged from the hatch again. The guns, he hated their noise, but he couldn't deny their power.

  The sword was a toy against these creatures, the guns erased them. Maybe they had a chance.

  The thought died as he saw what awaited him on deck. The sight rooted him to the spot, chilling him to the bone.

  A Titan.

  It was the only word that fit. A leviathan of brine and crystal, hauling its monumental bulk onto the shattered deck.

  He watched, mesmerized by horror, as its whip-like limbs coalesced into massive, clawed hands that gripped the ship’s railing like a man steadying himself on a balcony.

  It was stepping aboard.

  The single motion of its weight settling onto the wood was like a localized earthquake.

  The deck pitched violently. Men screamed as they were flung from their feet, tumbling over the

  side into the churning sea.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  “Help me!”

  Listening to their cries, his fingers tightened on the hilt.

  He could feel it, the scent of death

  He took it back, they wouldn't survive.