32

Jason couldn’t exactly explain how it happened but for some strange reason, he knew Barine was about to chuck a razor sharp knife right at him so he sidestepped, making the knife whiz past his head at an alarming speed. He stared at Barine bewilderedly. Why would she try to murder him? Was it because he kept calling Zemar by her name? But instead of Barine’s eyes to hold the coldness of a calculating psychopath, they held curiosity and wonderment.
“You knew, didn’t you?” she asked, “you knew I was going to throw the knife at you.”
Still dumbstruck, Jason just nodded. He was going to have to sit down and reason exactly why and how he knew but right now, he was trying to figure out whether to bolt from Barine or hit her across the head with the dining table (if and when he managed to lift it).
“Amazing,” Barine whispered, then thought for a few seconds before speaking again, “you’re not completely out of touch with your Tiledonian heritage, Jason. Only Tiledonians have ever been able to know something seconds before it happens. My guess is that the ability only came forward because you were in possible danger.”
“And if I hadn’t known? You would have killed me for nothing.” Jason found it important to point out and Barine had the audacity to actually scoff.
“Of course not. It would have missed you by a hair’s breadth but it wouldn’t strike you. You’re probably the last person my queen wants dead so I can’t kill you.”
“How would you know that I’m the last person Zemar wants dead?” Jason asked.
Barine fought the urge to raise an eyebrow at the fact that Jason was more concerned about the fact that the queen cared for him than about the fact that he could have almost died, “Let me give you an example: you do not match any of us in physical strength. The Tiledonians have never been known for their great physical strength anyway. But we have been walking for weeks straight and you have hardly even felt tired at all except for night time when you are about to sleep. Haven’t you wondered how that is?”
Jason hadn’t wondered about it and now his face was pink with embarrassment. Did he really think he would be able to keep up with the trio he was travelling with on his own?
“My queen has been giving reinforcements to your legs so your muscles don’t feel the strain of the trek. It is like a brace of force that wraps around your muscles and joints. She loosens it in the evening and you start walking on your own… which is why your legs are usually tired by night time. So if she manages to do that for you all day, every day, even while trying to gather her strength to its full force, she definitely does not want you dead.”
Jason’s man-pride and ego took a fatal hit. He only walked a few hours every day by himself and found himself wheezing when they stopped to set up camp. So what would have happened if Zemar hadn’t given him her support at all? Would he even be capable of travelling with them at all? The fact that his people had never been known to have physical strength did not soothe his ego one bit. He still felt like a sappy weakling compared to his companions. Barine started to walk out of the dining room and picking up her knife, strode towards the deck with Jason following behind her, sulking all the way.
His pity party however, was interrupted by a loud crash on the side of the ship. There was a loud scream and Jason wasn’t sure whether it came from him or Barine, he wasn’t going to wait around to find out. They both raced to the deck only to find a myriad of tentacles circling the ship and slithering around, trying to crush the ship while Zemar and Jaye used make-shift spears in a desperate attempt to penetrate the thick hide.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” Jason screamed. His brain was having a hard time processing what was going on but he had to gather his wits fast because the tentacles were everywhere and if he didn’t wise up, he was going to get crushed. Each tentacle was about the width of a lorry and the length he could see rivalled the Empire State Building. Were they crazy? In his opinion, it was better to simply abandon the already-wrecked ship and swim to safety than to try fighting this mammoth monster which he still couldn’t identify.
Each mud-coloured tentacle had suckers the size of huge tyres and they stuck to the boat everywhere they landed, taking off chunks of wood when they were peeled off. Nobody answered Jason’s question as Barine joined Zemar and Jaye, grabbing a loose piece of wood to use as her own make-shift spear and trying to pierce the monster. Her efforts were as fruitless as that of Jaye and Zemar.
Jason rolled his eyes and decided that this was it. They were going to die at the hands of whatever monster this was. The rest of Zemar’s court would never even know they had been searched for and Firgewan would never be defeated. He would never know Tiledonia and he would never get to tell Zemar his feelings about her. This was definitely it. In resignation, he found a spot where the wooden structure was still intact and sat down to ait for his imminent death while watching his comrades fight a useless battle.
A few minutes later, his mind had wandered elsewhere and it took him a few seconds to realize that he had been picked up by one of the monster’s tentacles and Zemar was screaming some very colourful and creative curses. He tried to hold on to a railing as he was being lifted up but the wood had been weakened by the monster’s efforts and it gave way in his hand, leaving him with a piece of wood the size of his arm. It seemed like his sixth sense of seeing impending danger that had worked with Barine and her knife had disappeared in the face of a gigantic creature that definitely wanted to eat him. How convenient.
The tentacle held him up about fifty feet in the air when a huge wave started to form in the water and slowly but surely, the head of the monster came out of the water. It was shaped like an octopus… if an octopus could be the size of an entire city. But it had fang-like teeth and the biggest and yellowest eyes Jason had ever seen. They reminded him of a snake’s eyes, with a black slit running down the centre and grey translucent eyelids blinking once every minute. The creature’s eyes seemed to take over it’s all face as they were extremely large. Jason was hoisted at eye-level and he was very sure one eye was at least twice his height.
Jason and the monster stared at each other for a few seconds during which Jaye whispered, “Holy shit. The Kraken.”
Jason was pretty sure Jaye had whispered it. How had heard it from hundreds of feet up in the air, he had no idea but he was sure he heard it, giving him knowledge that he was now face to face with the Kraken that had reptilian eyes that glowed, even with the sun in attendance. Up close, its skin looked scaly and had bits of debris from the sea stuck to it like shells, seaweed and sand. Plus, it smelled. Jason figured its smell wouldn’t be noticeable while it was trying to sink a ship but up close and personal, it smelled so bad that Jason’s eyes started to water. The smell reminded him of the time he had gone fishing with friends and they had gotten stuck in traffic on the way home. They had forgotten to take a cooler and had ended up leaving the dead fish in a bucket inside the trunk. The heat had caused the fish to smell so badly after six hours in traffic that nobody could bear clean and cook them. They had thrown the fish away and it had taken three washes and a week of airing out to get the smell out.
That was exactly what the Kraken reminded him of.
After a minute or so of staring, the Kraken appeared to get bored and started moving again. Dumb as it might sound, that was when Jason started to panic. The Kraken had hoisted him up to roughly three hundred feet in the air so there was nothing Barine, Zemar or Jaye could do but stare and pray. His life was in his own hands and the thought almost made him vomit. No. His life was not in his hands. It was in the hands of this gigantic creature he had only ever read about. Never in all his reading had he imagined he would be face to face with it and be minutes away from it either squeezing him to death or chucking him inside its mouth like a human potato chip.
But no. Even if he could not walk for a day straight without assistance, he would NOT be wuss in the face on the Kraken. Tiledonians may not be physically endowed but that didn’t mean they liked to die either.
Suddenly, he remembered that he was still holding the piece of wood that had come off the railing of the ship. It was long and a bit heavy but he couldn’t test the weight of it now; not when he was being launched towards a ginormous mouth that actually had rows of teeth inside it, now that he looked. Hoping and praying that years of javelin competitions in high school would help him now, he launched his make-shift javelin at one of the Kraken’s yellow eyes with Herculean effort, hoping to have an effect.
Luckily for all except the Kraken, the javelin sunk deep into the its eyes with only about four inches peeking out. It let Jason go with a horrifying screech that terrorized his eardrums and took his consciousness. As the dark enveloped him, Jason’s last conscious feeling was that of falling faster and faster towards the deep blue sea below.