“Sun’s balls…” Mantis muttered, and the children gasped at the blasphemy in her words, not seeing what her God-enhanced vision allowed her to perceive first.

  A face, dark but undeniable in its human likeness and with eyes fixed upon them, was approaching rapidly. The Sea God continued to grow clearer and larger, until Mantis swore he could not possibly become any more immense, and then he rose higher still.

  He would have been practically invisible to the eye until he was almost at the surface, if not for her atypical eyesight. At a distance, the top half of his body could have been compared to a human man’s, his coloring the only visible difference. The same shade as the deep water in his monstrous entirety, dark indigo all throughout, he blended into his surroundings to make him look like just another patch of fluid, cold nothingness. His eyes showed no iris or white to them, only a solid, eerie darkness. His face was human-like in its shape, but held a remarkable resemblance to that of a deadly Sea animal, with flat planes and smooth, streamlined skin. His tail spanned much longer than the bottom half of his body should, outstretching far below where Mantis would have thought it to end, and she caught sight of its nearly imperceptible serpentine movement propelling him upward as effortlessly as the beating of a heart. The natural curve of his animalistic mouth created the illusion of a small smile that sent a shiver up Mantis’s spine. He was right beside them in less than a full breath.

  A loud gasp at her shoulder informed Mantis that Teela had finally seen him, then came a shriek from Leroh, and a thump that she assumed was his bottom hitting the planks of the deck. Hopefully, this time, he would not piss himself.

  The Sea poked his head and then his never-ending torso up into the open air and looked directly at Mantis. His unnerving stare pierced through her like a spear. He was impossibly motionless, and she noticed the strange way in which water did not cling to his skin at all, like he was made of dark blue velvet, his outer layer rejecting any lingering droplets. His head alone was bigger than a two-story building, his eyes spanning wider than the body of a grown horse. The rest of his frame presented no variation in color whatsoever, seeming to repel the light that tried in vain to illuminate and reveal the finer details of his features.

  Mantis struggled to take it all in at once. He was muscled, and smooth, beautiful in the way a majestic beast could be described as beautiful.

  She spoke. “I have come to return two souls, accidentally taken.” He continued to observe her in complete stillness. “I apologize for my mistake.” After several breaths of silence and when she received no indication that her words had been heard at all, she decided to offer further explanation in the hopes that that might satisfy him. “I was claiming a soul for my own God, and two previously unsworn men tried to stop me. I killed them in self defense, thinking to bring them to my Goddess, but they’d given themselves to the Sea, just before, to gain the strength to defeat me. I wasn’t aware that the transition could be so swift. I would not have taken them, if I’d understood. But I brought them here now, to return them to their rightful owner.”

  The God said nothing for a long time, and Mantis stood at the railing of the swaying vessel with a straight face. She was out of words. She could add nothing else that would benefit her cause.

  He spoke. His voice was a high pitched, grumbling sound that resembled human speech in no way, and put all Mantis’s hairs on end with a full-body shudder. As his mouth opened, it revealed endless rows of pointed white teeth and a sleek back tongue. Somehow, the meaning behind the thundering, nearly deafening animalistic sound was clear.

  “The flesh.”

  She blinked, took a deep breath, then blinked again. “I do not have the bodies. Their loved ones burned them.”

  The unstable ground beneath her feet shook and ripples in the water’s surface spread as far as the eye could see all around them. He was angry. Mantis thought to pile the shit high while the shovel was filthy. “I’ve got a dead fisherman, too. I killed him on the way here, in the name of my Goddess.”

  “Return the three!” he ordered in his distorted, piercing voice.

  Mantis swiftly obeyed, walking first to pick up the dead sailor a few paces away. She lifted him in her arms, his weight heavy but manageable, and dropped him overboard before his God. Ennet’s body started to sink immediately, the splash of his hitting the water the last sound he would ever make.

  Mantis pushed her index link out through her pointed finger and aimed it at the Sea’s colossal chest. She would deposit her cargo directly into his heart, she decided, as it was really the only way she could think of to accomplish the transfer.

  The sailors watching the scene unfold exclaimed with horror when her long limb penetrated his flesh, and, to Mantis’s surprise, the Sea himself widened his inky eyes and bent his head to observe their point of contact above his heart.

  Mantis felt nothing. She blinked and shook her head with confusion at first, surprised by the emptiness that met her black appendage. There was nothing inside him. She could not feel the God at all, like she’d gone through air alone, but her eyes showed her a vivid image of her own link, undeniably inserted into the dark mountain that was his chest.

  While she’d been standing there, addled, with her hand pointed at him, he’d plunged a gigantic hand down and collected his sailor from the cold waters below. He raised him up to his mouth and deposited Ennet inside that dim cave fenced with sharp white daggers. Then the fisherman slid down the Sea’s throat in one short swallow of his enormous throat like a sip of wine.

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  Mantis felt a tickle of brightness in her heart, a sensation most unusual. Her link was touching something, a thick sludge of life, and she tried to retreat from it out of instinct, but the Sea God lifted a hand and grabbed the long black strand with a fist to stop her. In his grip, her link looked thinner than a single hair. He grabbed hard and locked eyes with her, commanding her to fulfill his order.

  Her extremity was stuck somewhere solid at its point, similar to what she’d expected from their initial contact, but also different in a most unfamiliar way.

  When she harbored a foreign soul within herself, she was able to feel its vigorous thrashing inside her chest, so Mantis was familiar with dead men’s souls, and their abhorrent memories. They were separate things, and felt like it, the soul and the mind. She could see through a dead man’s eyes to his past when she consumed his mind for Ombira, and feel the writhing light of his soul’s flame once she’d stolen it. What she encountered at that moment within the Sea God’s heart resembled nothing she’d ever experienced, however.

  It was life, thinking, breathing, flowing life. Souls, thoughts and the bright, powerful radiance of hundreds of lives congregated in the now tangible tissue of the Sea God’s heart.

  Mantis willed the two Sea souls that had inhabited hers for too long to move through her link and out the opening at the end. They slid eagerly, and soon exited her body in a sweeping rush.

  She closed her eyes and gave a great sigh then, not even noticing when the protruding link, of its own accord, retreated and was sucked back into her hand. The sensation of ridding herself of her stowaways was akin to dropping a boulder she’d been carrying, or finally releasing a breath she’d been holding. Her mind felt instantly unclouded and she regained the ability to think clearly and loosen her tensed muscles.

  The Sea God was looking at her.

  “Repay your debt,” he commanded in his thunderous grumble. “A full life shall compensate for the flesh that is owed.”

  Mantis had expected as much. “That can be arranged. I will bring you another. All I need is a few days—”

  “Choose from among your own. Repayment shall be claimed now.”

  Mantis glared at him for a moment, then turned to assess the children’s reactions. Leroh stood with his shoulders hunched, cowering beside his sister, if a step or two behind her. The girl looked scared, sick and pale, but her back was straight and her gaze bravely locked on the Sea God towering above them. Before Mantis could do or say anything, Teela spoke. “Take me.”

  “No,” Mantis said.

  “No.”

  She turned to look at the Sea God, both confused and relieved that he’d said it. He cocked his head to the side, and studied the girl with an ugly expression of distaste and offense.

  “That one is dirty.”

  “Dirty?” Teela had the nerve to repeat in a trembling little voice.

  “DISGUSTING!” he screeched, the sound threatening to blow out all human ears in his vicinity. “You bring a marred soul to me.” He directed a blood-curdling look of revulsion at Mantis and lifted his long fingered, smooth hand out from below the waves. Bucketfuls of salty water poured down onto the deck of the small fishing vessel as the Sea God reached over to pluck Leroh by the torso between his thumb and index finger and lifted him up to his chest to inspect. “This one is adequate.”

  “No! Leroh!” Teela was screaming and pulling at the dark locks of hair at her temples. She’d fallen to her knees on the ground. “Please, please! Take me, take me, please! Don’t kill him! Leroh, no, please!”

  Mantis reached out with a lightning-fast strike of a link and wrapped the sturdy strip of flesh securely around the boy’s waist. The Sea snapped his head up from his improvised meal and fixed her with a stare that conveyed, of all emotions, trepidation. She thought perhaps she’d misread his odd expression, for he quickly turned it into a predator’s snarl, baring his hundreds of blade-like teeth and frowning deeply at her defiance.

  “I will get you a full life. Two, if you want. But return that boy to me. My God traits allow me to move extremely fast, to absorb any soul into myself within an instant. I will stop you from eating that child if it’s the last thing I do, so let me find us both a better outcome.”

  She was entirely prepared to sacrifice Leroh’s life to stop the Sea from consuming him. Killing to avoid a worse fate for others was her burden in life, and she’d gotten comfortable bearing it. The Sea would not claim that free soul.

  If she took the boy into herself, the God before her would have no way to claim him, ever. Even if he killed and ate Mantis, no good would come to him from the whole ordeal, as no God beside her own could reach her sworn soul. It would all have been a waste of his time, and an infuriating affront with no chance of retribution. Mantis hoped he could see how much more mutually beneficial her alternative solution was, and allow them all to leave with their lives.

  She was aware that she was putting Teela’s life at risk with her bargain, but Mantis hazarded a guess that the brave and near suicidal girl would have likely agreed to it. She’d wanted her brother alive over herself, anyway.

  The Sea God looked down at Leroh one more time, clutched loosely in front of himself with his minuscule legs dangling in the air. The boy was crying, sobbing and gasping for breath, while he hugged himself with his arms wrapped around his shoulders.

  The God’s depthless eyes followed the trajectory of her link wrapped around Leroh’s body all the way over to her pointed finger. His brow knit deeply and he produced a booming growl that caused the waters to vibrate with his ire again. The wooden floor trembled under Mantis’s feet.

  Then the Sea flung Leroh across the air and onto the small deck of the ship.

  “Leroh!” Teela shouted as she ran to crouch beside him. He’d landed poorly, with a hard knock, and she ran her hands over his arms, torso, and head to feel for blood or signs of injury. She continued to cry as she consoled him, and herself, with her useless words.

  “Two days. Two full lives.” The Sea God’s petrifying gaze was on Mantis as he spoke those final keening words.

  Then he simply turned and disappeared into the cold waters of his realm, the gargantuan cartilaginous flap of flesh of his tail fin giving a slap against the surface of the water on his retreat and throwing a violent wave crashing against the anchored boat.