The order was the spark.
Two slavers, sheltered behind a splintered capstan, touched flames to pitch-soaked arrows and loosed them through the storm.
Piu!
Piu!
The result was immediate.
The arrows struck the pooled lantern oil and scattered black powder at the Titan’s base.
BOOM!
The deck erupted. A furnace-blast of heat and light and sound swallowed everything, shredding the night and hurling men like ragdoll.
At the point of impact, the Titan bore the full impact.
Fire raced across the oil-slick brine, climbing its form with a sound like a thousand sheets tearing. Its translucent flesh bubbled and blackened.
Brine boiled away in great, hissing clouds of steam that reeked of salt and scorching.
For the first time, the Titan screamed, it voice sounding like the sound of something fundamental coming undone.
Seris stared, her face blistering from the heat, raw disbelief warring with vindication. Her thoughts were clear.
A beast like that… scared of fire.
A savage grin split Grish’s face. “It doesn’t like that one bit.”
Meanwhile the captain’s eyes, shadowed and weary just moments before, ignited with a fierce, predatory light.
“More!” he barked, his voice finding a new edge of command.
The order became a cascade. Oil splashed from casks. Torches flew through the rain.
Fire, once their enemy, now blossomed across the deck in ragged, glorious patches of defiance.
One volley after another slammed into the thrashing colossus.
The monster recoiled, its tide-flesh seething where flame met brine.
Each hit was met with a violent hiss, a geyser of superheated steam, and another unearthly shriek of fury and pain.
A crazed glint ignited in Grish’s eyes. What would the reward be for taking the head of a Titan?
How much would its body be worth in the new world?
The thought momentarily consumed him.
It was in pain.
It was weak.
Nothing stood between him and a legend. One that would buy him a fleet of his own, earning him the title of captain himself.
He unfastened the retaining strap on his gun. In his other hand, he hefted a broadsword, its edge reflecting the torch on the other hand.
He moved, like a predator circling wounded prey.
Seris watched from the corner of her eye. She threw a subtle, questioning glance at the captain. The man was stone-faced, seemingly unconcerned.
Her gaze flicked to Veynar, who methodically dispatched Hollows straying too close to the fire-teams, his attention apparently elsewhere.
Her brows furrowed. Was he really going to allow this?
In the next heartbeat, Grish closed the distance. The Titan was weakened, its colossal stature diminished to something manageable, yet it still towered over him, a smoldering cliff of ruined salt ridge and steaming brine,
It looked more like a shattered monument than a living thing.
In an instant, he moved with speed, the blade drawing close to the titans head.
He licked his lips. This was it.
In the split-second that followed, reality broke.
The very brine in the air coalesced, crystallizing with a rapid, sickening crunch into a dense, opaque barrier. A wall of solid salt.
Grish’s mind rejected it.
A wall. A moving wall.
His grin melted into a mask of disbelief and dawning terror as the impossible mass, already at full momentum, filled his vision.
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He was wrong.
So so wrong. Unfortunately it was too late to do anything.
SPLURRTT!
—
Dion carved through another Hollow, the blade in his hand already notching on the third strike.
He had lost count of how many kills nor swords he'd scavenged along the way.
After two, sometimes three uses, the edges would turn to useless, pitted scrap against the corrosive brine.
It didn't help that half the blades he grabbed along the way were already ruined.
Still, he persevered.
His Lavosian dual-sword mastery, a skill drilled for courtly duels and battlefield elegance devolved into a raw, efficient butchery.
It was the only thing keeping him alive and intact.
His slave garb hung in sodden, acidic tatters, the brine eating through the rough cloth as easily as it did the steel.
Yet his eyes remained fixed on the central struggle.
No less than 30 paces from him, he watched from his own pocket of chaos, the clash between the commanders and the Titan while keeping a safe distance.
Calling it a ‘distance’ was generous, they were all on the same shattered deck, fighting in the same storm.
But the space between him and the titanic clash felt vast, a chasm of purpose and power he was not yet part of.
Still, he watched.
He watched the Titan’s violent thrashing.
He watched it brought to its knees.
He watched them circle it, a pack of wolves around a wounded god.
He watched it feign weakness, a deception written in brine and shadow.
He watched it explode with a resurgence of power that shocked the air itself.
He watched Commander Grish, ambition bright in his eyes, move for the killing blow.
He watched the salt-wall form. Saw the collision.
He watched the now former commander become red mist and memory against it.
He watched the Titan recover, the flames on its body guttering like dying stars as it drew the sea’s cold back into its veins.
He watched it rise, not with a roar, but with a terrible, gathering silence, to its full, awful height.
And then, with a chill that had nothing to do with the storm, he watched as its milky, depthless gaze settled on him.
---
The Titan rose to its full height. The deck fell silent for half a breath, as if the storm itself was stunned into stillness.
Even the commanders halted, their relentless assault freezing mid-motion.
Seris in particular stood rigid, the pieces clicking into place with a cold, sickening clarity. She finally understood the others' inaction.
They had known. Or at least, they had suspected the weakness was a feint. They had let Grish, in his ambition, become the test.
A sacrificial probe to confirm the trap.
They had been so close to victory.
No, they had been allowed to feel that way. It was simply what the Titan wanted them to believe.
A wave of pure silence.
And in that silence, Dion felt it look at him.
Its eyes were not eyes. They were two pearl orbs, wet and depthless, without focus. When they found him, it was not like being seen.
It was like being named.
Something deep within him unspooled under that stare, as though he’d been waiting all along to be found.
The chain at his wrist rattled once, a sharp, metallic shiver.
His grip on the sword tightened. His hands trembled as if he were standing in freezing snow, not a storm.
Men screamed around him. The chaos resumed with a vengeance.
More Hollows clambered aboard. One scaled the mast, a thing of coral and jutting ribs.
Another skittered across the planks on backward hands, its jaws unhinging at an unnatural, impossible angle.
Seris cut it down in a blur of motion, her mouth shaping a shout lost to the thunder. Veynar was yelling too, his voice a raw scrape of command, but the words shattered in the wind.
Dion heard none of it.
There was only the Titan.
It stepped forward. Brine water poured from the gaps in its coral hide, hissing and steaming as it touched lingering flame, snuffing the fire out.
Each movement was a tide, slow but crushing, carrying the ancient, suffocating smell of salt and rot.
Sink.
Belong.
Dissolve.
Dion’s breath came in ragged, tearing gasps. He couldn’t tell if it was fear or the wind trying to steal the air from his lungs.
The very air around the Titan trembled, humming like a giant struck bell.
Still, he raised his sword. It was a reflex, a final, hard-wired twitch of survival, not courage.
The Titan’s arm rose, a slow-moving cliff of coral and brine. Then it fell.
“Shit.”
Dion threw himself aside. The blow landed where he’d stood a heartbeat before. The deck didn’t just splinter, it erupted.
A geyser of boiling saltwater and shattered timber exploded upward.
CRUNCH
THUMP
The noise was a physical force, a deafening sound that drove the air from his chest and sent a jarring shock deep into his bones.
Dion stumbled to his feet, coughing, eyes stinging with salt and smoke.
He could feel the blistering heat of burning oil on one side of his face and the numbing cold of the sea swirling around his ankles.
The world was burning and drowning, and he was caught between them.
He swung. Not with hope, but with the sheer, blind need to act.
The blade connected, sinking deep into the Titan’s massive heel. Foul brine burst from the wound, steaming. But the Titan didn’t flinch. It didn’t even seem to notice.
It turned its head, slow and deliberate, facing him again.
There was no pain, no rage, no malice.
For a moment, Dion thought he saw something shift in the hollows of its eyes, something like recognition.
Then came the voice. This time its words were different.
Signum Perfecti
The word crushed everything else out.
He dropped to a knee, gasping. The swords slipped from his hand.
In that fraction of a heartbeat, a profound stillness seized him. Not fear, but an absolute, arresting presence, as if the air itself had turned to stone.
Dion’s struggle to lift his head was immense, a defiance against a will greater than his own.
He wanted to let go.
He wanted to sink.
The thought was not his, but it fit too easily in his head.
He forced his body to move, every muscle screaming in ragged protest.
Then he saw it.
The Titan’s milky-white eyes held him. They were not the eyes of a beast, but orbs of ancient, drowned stone.
In their blank, depthless reflection, Dion felt seen in a way that had nothing to do with light. It was an acknowledgment, cold and absolute.
For a suspended heartbeat, the storm itself seemed to pause, holding its breath.
Then the Titan reached down.
There was no rush, only the terrible, geological certainty of an avalanche. It did not seek to crush him. Instead, it closed around him.
The grasp was cold and sodden, its massive limbs like stone pillars encased in slick seaweed, locking him in a grip as final as the ocean floor.
Then it snapped.
He heard the Captain's roar. Veynar’s voice followed, shouting something about the ship burning, but the Titan
was already pulling him away.
The world tilted. The deck fell out from beneath him.
Then the sea opened its mouth.
And they were gone.
How should Dion’s next chapter be written?
