Chapter Eleven: Sea Food

Eleven

Xeroc ducked under a tentacle, the pink limb whistling above him. It hit the warrior next to him, wrapping around the woman in a blink. She barely had time to yell before it yanked her up in the air before dragging her into the ocean. Monstrous sea-spiders were rushing out of the aquamarine water, spindly legs stretching to propel themselves toward the seawall they’d built.

It was a good idea. Couldn’t have known there would have been a damn kraken

Xeroc thought to himself.

The spiders were chitinous with peach and orange colors that blended together in swirling mixes. Dozens of black eyes were clustered around the center of their oval bodies, with wide mouths on the bottom of their torsos. Dozens of them were already laying dead and broken at the base of the seawall, but more and more were coming out of the foamy waves.

“The leveling is good!” Dalin boomed from down the wall. The huge man was fully armored and was wielding his sword with casual grace as he split apart the monsters with easy strikes. Xeroc smiled at the man’s enthusiasm as he killed the beasts with gusto.

Brina was leading her troops up the peninsula to block off the natives from attacking. Their plan of pushing up the peninsula had been thrown away when the sea spiders had come boiling out of the ocean in such numbers.

Xeroc did agree with Dalin, the leveling was good. He was already level four and he was gaining skill levels even faster. The kraken was going to be a problem. They didn’t have any skills or abilities to reach out to the sea and kill the kraken. It couldn’t reach them if they abandoned the seawall, but that’d leave the spiders a path straight into their camp.

“Meeris, how soon till the hooks and chains are ready?” Xeroc asked his aide-de-camp. The woman was firing a bow, ineffectively, at the monsters. She was a good archer, it was just that the thick chitin was nearly arrow proof unless she hit an eye.

“They’re being wheeled up now. Few minutes for set up and then they’ll be ready.”

“Excellent. Dalin! We need to be ready! Hooks and chains are prepped!” Xeroc called over to his second in command. The other man nodded and used his shield to break apart a spider’s leg that had reached the top of the wall. Xeroc looked back to his own fight and stabbed with his long spear and pierced through the creature’s eye cluster and into its soft brain. The spider’s legs went limp and it fell like a comet back to the ground.

For the next few minutes Xeroc was stuck in a stalemate as he fought the spiders and ducked under the searching kraken tentacles. He dodged under the parapet and looked in time to see the dozen chain wheels being hammered down into the earth. Each wheel held hundreds of feet of strong chain with long handles on either side of the wheel that two men could use at the same time.

Runners were racing toward the seawall with cruel barbed hooks in their hand, the best plan Xeroc had figured out for dealing with the kraken. The men scaled to the seawall and perched under, waiting for the moment to strike. For Xeroc’s orders.

Fifteen tentacles were waving around the air, slamming and scooping up people and spiders in equal measures. There was no rhyme or reason for the tentacles, but Xeroc waited until he had more of them close to the wall before he gave the orders.

“Hooks!” Xeroc yelled as loud as he could. The men and women around him took up his call and Dalin’s roar was twice as loud as the rest. Metal hooks stabbed into writhing limbs, most sliding off the slime slick flesh, but a few found purchase. Men shook the chains that had grabbed firm and the burly men below began to twist the wheels.

Chains snapped taut and the world froze as four chains started to pull the great sea beast free of the waters. Those who had missed their first attempt tried again as the free limbs went into a frenzy, smashing and destroying everything they could. Xeroc cursed under his breath as the closest man exploded into a red mist as a free tentacle hammered him.

“Meeris, retreat back to the center of camp. Sound the horns, general retreat off the wall!” Xeroc ordered out, running toward the fallen hook that had miraculously avoided any damage. Bits of the soldier were still coating it with the man’s severed hand still holding the handle to throw the hook.

A horn blew behind him in three short bursts and the majority of the soldiers manning the long wall started to retreat in orderly fashion. They had a second level of defence they could retreat to so they could continue their fight with the spiders. He hated giving up the seawall, but he’d lose his army trying to man it against the kraken.

The handle was cold and heavy iron and it didn’t fit for a damn in his hand. It was awkward, heavy, and ill-balanced. Xeroc took a half skip and threw the hook, watching as the sharp edge dug through muscular flesh and into the tentacle itself. It wasn’t deep, but the beast tried to to pull away as the the men below pulled the chain tight and it only dug the hook in deeper.

“My prince, it’s time to leave!” Dalin yelled as he grabbed Xeroc around the shoulder and led him off the wall. The kraken emerged from the water now; as eight tentacles firmly hooked and were used to drag it forth. The wooden seawall was mostly splinters on the golden sands, black rocks they had used for the base the only thing surviving.

“Spears, archers, slings, anything with distance. To the front. When the kraken emerges, we need to hit with everything!” Xeroc yelled as he arrived at the hastily assembled second line. It was just mounds of excavated sandy soil that they had dug thin trench lines across and tried to compact as much as possible. For a defensive position it was terrible. It was a good elevated position to attack a beached sea monster though.

A six foot thick tentacle slammed down on one of the chain wheels, blowing it apart in a thunderous crash and killing the four men operating it. Another chain snapped and whipped about, hitting spiders and bursting them like overripe grapes. Even losing two of the chains, the beast kept emerging from the depths, dragged over the glistening, bloody sands, and toward them.

A smell like a thousand rotting fish hit them and people gagged and threw up. The beast’s core was a gray-pink color and a viscous slime coated it. A powerful beak formed its mouth and when it opened, to squawk in rage, Xeroc could see a legion of teeth behind it.

“It’s in range,” Meeris whispered as she pulled her bow out. She nocked an arrow but didn’t draw it back, waiting for her prince’s orders.

“Archers, lose when ready,” Xeroc ordered. Dozens of bows fired instantly and the kraken screamed as it began to be peppered by blows.

“This will not be enough damage Xeroc,” Meeris said even as she drew back another arrow to fire. Xeroc couldn’t deny her claims, it was like using a children’s bucket to put out a wildfire.

“Trebuchets ready to be used?” Xeroc asked. Meeris shook her head as she fired a third arrow.

“Think it’ll suffocate on land?” Dalin asked as he bounded over to them. He was liberally coated in the spider’s blue blood.

“That’s a great question. I don’t think our chains will hold out much longer. We just lost two more,” Xeroc said as tentacles shattered the wheels.

“It’s getting better at hitting them now that it’s on land. We need some way to hit something vital, thing’s too big for us to kill with these,” Dalin said, shaking his sword.

“Once we have classes we’ll be able to kill it. For now, keep damaging it and order a retreat of all non-ranged combatants. We’ll bleed it and hurt it, dry it out a bit. It’ll run back to the sea and away from here. We’ll have to have a rematch at a later time,” Xeroc decided. He wanted to kill that leviathan, to earn the levels and prestige of killing what was likely a powerful monster if not an Apex Predator .

“It’s too small anyways! Throw it back and fish it later when it’s fully grown,” Dalin said, barking a laugh. The soldiers around him chuckled nervously but the order to retreat drew most back and Xeroc was forced to watch as hundreds of arrows, stones, and spears stabbed the beast but did little damage. It crushed and broke apart the chain wheels and then started using its arms to drag itself back toward the sea.

“One good thing about this. Kraken killed all the spiders,” Dalin said with a chuckle. Xeroc sighed and looked and his broken apart seawall and shook his head. The first day of the incursion was not going to plan.