Thalassophobia: The Leviathan’s Epitaph

"Blessed be they who sail o'er the waves, and may they remain forever ignorant of that which dwells beneath"

-Beseechment of the Submariner, verse 3, line 5

The cargo that day was cinder oak; chalky, hard as stone, black as silt. Great bundles of the stuff, lashed together with thick chords and stacked like children's blocks in weathered shipping containers, long faded paintjobs made gaudy by comparison with the ebony timber. Aboard the reinforced deck of the Spirit was nigh on a year's harvest, all totaled it would fetch somewhere in the avenue of $30 million on the open market. It was one of five such ships in the fleet, though undoubtedly the largest, if only by a small margin. Recent reports of piratical activity in the western Caltavian sea had set the Blackpeak Trading Company directors on edge, and so they had made the decision to forego their usual contractors in favor of five reliable if middling and generally inauspicious shipping companies. Each freighter travelled a separate route, known only to the captains of their respective ships, which would ultimately lead them to five separate ports on five separate days. Even the five harbormasters were to be kept in the dark, with route and cargo to be registered post hoc no less than a week after arrival of the final ship. The only contact the vessels were to have with one another was to be their mutual starting point at Kerry Harbor on Isle Corvosa, where the cinder oak fields now lay bare but for a million tiny black mounds studding the land like obsidian gravestones.

A guidance submarine was assigned to each of the ships from individual companies, though each bore the sigil of the Cult of the Pelagic Choir. The seas had taken on a choleric humor in the previous weeks, causing rampant shipping delays and four wrecks, to say nothing of those vessels scuppered or stolen by increasingly bold pirates. The sailors watched with varying degrees of impatience as the submarines were tethered to the starboard hulls of each ship, balancing the primarily western tradewinds.

Captain Henry Macinterly, “Captain Mac” or just “Mac” to his longstanding crewmembers, was assigned to the Spirit, his seniority among his colleagues making him the obvious choice for the largest ship. He watched from the corner of his eye as the crane gently lowered the Lady of the Tide into the water while he recited the Rites of Embarkation to his crew. There she was, his true love, the old reliable gal that had never failed him, the sun catching her anointed hull as she swung delicately in the air. She was freshly buffed and as radiant as her maiden voyage, the apotropaic runes dotting her skin freshly repainted for the occasion. As she slowly descended into the water, he caught a glance of a second submarine making its descent along the portside of the Spirit. This submarine carried none of the elegance of its elder counterpart, it was a stark gunmetal gray, boxy and slow looking like the subs they had trainees practice with. It was a strong, ugly, utilitarian vehicle that had no place in a professional setting, and the presence of which could mean only one thing, yet even still Captain Henry prayed in vain that it did not.

He turned a sad, steely gaze to First Lieutenant Jackson, who had joined the men in their prayers though he was not accompanying them in this voyage. For a few lingering moments he refused to meet the captain’s eyes, before finally returning his stare with a short, curt nod of solemn acknowledgement. It broke his heart to see the captain suddenly take on a sunken demeanor, but soon their eyes broke contact and each man was left with a sullen feeling of grim purpose in his chest.

Men in numbered orange coveralls and black knit caps were escorted by an armed guard into the secondary submarine. “Work release” the lieutenant told him as the crew prepared to board the primary submarine. “Most of these animals wouldn’t see the outside of a cell again without the Second Chance program.” Henry’s silence proved unbearable so Jackson continued.

“They’re death row, mostly, though some of them are just lifers.” He glanced over at the captain for a moment before angling his head downwards until the brim of his cap masked his tired eyes. “Scum of the Earth we haven’t gotten around to executing.”

“Are you saying this for my peace of mind or for yours?”

Lieutenant Jackson’s head snapped up faster than he meant it to, shaken from his languid absentmindedness by his subordinate’s accusatory tone, trying and failing to keep the indignation from his own.

“Don’t you dare put this on me. Everything I do is-”, but the grizzled submariner was already marching solemnly towards the gangplank, his demeanor carrying an air of power, pride, and officiousness he did not feel.

“Give them the dignity of a prayer, Greg.” He wavered a moment, his head turned to the right but never truly looking back. There was a pause, the words stopping in his throat like driftwood caught on rocks, seeming to growl inaudibly in his diaphragm before reaching his lips.

“And one for me, if you can spare it.”

<Maimed, bleeding, impaled, yet still it fled. It swam faster than a creature that size had any right to, colossal body arcing in frantic thunniform motion. Its back bristled with rattling harpoons which bit deeply into the flesh, holding on even as it pulled hard enough to snap the ropes which bound them to the ship. The punctures wove spiraling scarlet trails as it swam, dissipating into clouds of mist which summoned carrion feeders from miles around. And so it swam deeper, downward towards the blackness where even a creature of its size could hide, far from the searchlights, from the boats, from tooth and claw and spear. Far from where it could draw breath.>

The walls of a submarine are often oppressively tight, narrow corridors that branch off into rooms that never feel big enough as the mind desperately searches for open spaces, for sunlight, for any sign that there is more than steel and hissing pipes. And yet Leroy Branston felt as fine as he ever had. He’d spent the better part of the last decade staring at the same four walls day and night, shuffling between corridors and dim chambers, free not even in the open air, his whole world closed off by towering gray ramparts. Underwater, underground, metal, concrete, it was all just another box. He leaned back in his creaking cot, stretching his gangly limbs and angling his back until he was treated to a short of series of pops and cracks. He yawned and took another sip of gin, grimacing contentedly as the rush of bitter citrus hit his tongue. Like most of the men on board, it had been the first thing he noticed in his ration pack, beneath the stale bread, potted meat, goggles, canned fruit cocktail, and handkerchief. The government issue gin ration had been at the very bottom, nestled in the handkerchief as though it stood any chance of not being found immediately. It wasn’t half bad as far as government issue swill went, but he’d not had liquor brewed outside of a commode in nearly ten years so he was surely biased. He only wished the bottle had been bigger. He felt a trickle of sweat roll down the side of his cheek by his ear in spite of the cool, recycled air of the crew-quarters. He brushed it off with the back of his hand, but found the sweat to be of a peculiar consistency. Holding it up before his face, Leroy saw the bright red streak passing over the underside of his palm. Curious, he poked a questioning index finger to the rim of his ear. Hearing a squishing noise he immediately pulled it back, his finger now wet with blood.

<It needed not swim any longer, the tides would carry it the rest of the way. This was good, because it found it could no longer move under its own power. Slowly, body gently spinning with the current, it fell ever lower. Past where any of its kin had ever dwelt, past the realms of creatures who dwelt in the light, down unto those unplumbed depths where dwelt only those horrors unfit for the sight of both man and beast. >

Edward Lambert had felt some trepidation about manning such a complex vehicle with such little training, only to have those fears quickly alleviated when he discovered that the submarine really didn’t require all that much work. Most of the systems were preset, with the especially complicated ones automated entirely. All that had ended up being required of him and the other men was to occasionally close and open small valves, flip switches here and there, and await instructions over the radio. The whole affair had actually been quite peaceful, with the threat of mechanical failure enough to discourage squabbling among even the most incorrigible convicts. He was enjoying the change of scenery, and deep down felt elated to have an actual task to pursue. Still though, the constant static wail of the radio was beginning to grate on him, and it only got louder the further they went. “Is there any way we can lower the volume on that damned radio? I’m getting a migraine here!”

One of the men chuckled in confusion, “calm yourself, Lambert,” he pronounced Lambert with a “bert” instead of a “bear” despite Edward’s constant corrections, “we haven’t even turned the thing on yet!”

<They were bizarre things which dwelt in the trenches, warped rejects of evolution twisted by pressure and darkness. Dwelling in the lightless gloom were creeping abominations and blind monstrosities which shambled and squirmed, sniffing the water for the scent of prey to devour with protruding jaws of dagger teeth. Beings which glowed with dim inner light in a desperate attempt at vision within the void. Formless masses of sludge with membranous skin twitched to and fro, propelled by scarcely identifiable tentacles, their doughy bodies protected only by throbbing electric organs which cast thrumming shockwaves in their vicinity. Some creatures were descended from beings who had looked upon the sun when the Earth was still young. Their children would gaze upwards, spending their lives instinctively seeking that long forgotten light. Soon their children would hatch with flat bodies which rested in the sand, and unblinking eyes which pointed ever upwards, desperately hunting for stars they could never hope to see. It was here, among those both unseen and unseeing, that the leviathan came to rest.>

By god that headache would surely kill him before any mechanical failure would. James “Jimmy” Denton tried to focus his attention solely on the valves he was tightening, but this throbbing pain in his head just wouldn’t let up. He pressed his head to the cold metal, willing the chill to seep in through his temple and calm his aching cranium. The sounds of the submarine vibrated through his skull as the cool steel soothed him, a steady hum like an old refrigerator or a boiler turning on. By the time the valve flew off and pierced his skull he had begun to hear what sounded like words.

<For all intents and purposes, the whale had already died. And yet it continued to cry out. It cried and screamed and cursed in the antediluvian tongue known to those who came before, to its ancestors who had roamed the seas in peace, before man had claimed it by virtue of greed and might. It cried out in long droning tones, speaking words it did not understand, words which bled from its wounds and curdled from its maw, endless arcane blasphemies which broke open the skin of the world, prying their way into the spaces between.>

The warning klaxons were loud enough to wake the crew in its entirety, no amount of gin could have provoked a sleep deep enough that the sirens could not pierce it. And yet, it would have been better had the alarm never sounded at all. No sane man wanted to be conscious through what was to come. Jeremy Klaus was the first to spot the creature. The wrongness of it was what first occurred to him, its body a scarcely tangible thing, seeming to be formed of a great, man shaped steam cloud some ten feet tall if the limits of its body could be correctly measured. The sounds of cracking bones and tearing meat emanated from it, as it appeared to consume the corpse over which its wispy body hunched. The skin and muscle sloughed off in great puddles of soupy red and white muck, leaving behind bleached bones which themselves began to crumble to powder. The creature was hot, preternaturally so, cloaked in heat shimmer that rendered the scene as though viewed from behind a fogged lens. Jeremy wanted to scream, but found he could only weep as the thing turned towards him, its head a mass of countless eyes staring at and through him. Jaws with rows of gnashing teeth layered one behind the other into a fathomless tunnel of knives, chomping and scraping individually, as though each were an individual mouth. It lurched towards him, legs cycling in a parody of locomotion, its body more shifting than moving, trailing countless lingering after images behind it. And then it fell upon him.

The light had been blinking for the past two minutes. Leaving them like this wasn’t a kindness, he knew that, but it never made this any easier. Letting this linger was a cruelty far greater than what he was about to do. Motioning to his communications officer, a hail was sent out to the Spirit and his microphone was patched directly to the munitions officer.

“This is Captain Henry Macinterly of Lady of the Tide for munitions officer Caroline Wilson of Spirit”

“Reading you loud and clear captain.” A pause here, “I suppose it’s time then?”

He nodded grimly to no one in particular. “Depth charges on latitude 854, longitude 623”

“Confirmed, gods have mercy on us all.”

He glowered slightly at this, “no they don’t.”

The first depth charge hit the submarine along the starboard side, cracking a gaping hole into the side of the hull that greedily sucked in hundreds of gallons of water. The second hit the nose of the vessel, detaching the tip and sending it careening away from the body of the submarine. The last one hit it square on the porthole, finally breaking the damned vehicle apart, its pieces detaching from the tether and sinking into the nothingness in a cloud of machine oil, rubble, and blood.

The Captain was a pale man, his grey, weathered skin a mark of honor among the depth dwelling oceanic cults, and yet on confirmation of the accompanying submarine’s demise, his skin seemed to go just that much whiter. If he was troubled, however, you’d not have known it otherwise, and with the same solemn, authoritative voice he always put on for his crew, he called out again to the communications officer.

“Radio, Captain Jameson, let her know it’ll be smooth sailing to port, then put out a call to all non-essential personnel to meet in the chapel in 15 minutes for the Lamentations of the Sated Beast.” The officer turned to give him a thumbs up, but the captain was already halfway to the door.

<Man carries death with him wheresoever he treads, and so we made our home where he could not. When the land dissatisfied him he sought to lay claim to those environs anathema to his physiology. If the unseeable forces of the great mother cannot hold him back, then that task falls to us.>

“That which is taken and never meant to be had must have an equivalent price paid for its loss. The submariner must play both courier and butcher in the payment of this grim tithe. Through this sacrifice may we above find peace with those below. And may we be granted the forgiveness of the blooded lamb.

-Lamentations of the Sated Beast, verse 6, line 10