The Al-Orizin’s silk mainsail was torn and tattered, despite Ystya’s best efforts to protect the ship from winds, waves, and lightning. As the young woman struggled to unleash and control her magic, the storms returned. A jagged bolt shattered the foremast, hurling splinters in all directions. The deck rocked and heaved from the huge swells that Iyomelka threw at them.
Saan shouted orders to steer clear of the hazardous reefs. Rogue waves hammered the ship, spinning the Al-Orizin until Saan couldn’t even tell which direction they were heading. At least three of his crew were swept overboard.
Iyomelka’s ship continued to close on them. “She wants to drive us onto the rocks by the lighthouse,” Saan called.
Her skin aglow from within, Ystya continued to exert her powers, calling up winds, so that the hull of the Al-Orizin screamed with the strain of being pulled in different directions at once. She wavered on her feet. “I’ve never fought like this before.”
Saan saw no way they could outrun Iyomelka in the storm, but even as he refused to give up, flashes of lightning illuminated another ship halfway to the horizon—a large sailing vessel of Tierran design.
Before he could comprehend what he was seeing, many more vessels crowded the waters—a shadowy fleet that appeared from nowhere, as if summoned from the depths.
The mysterious lighthouse beacon cut through the storm, calling them. Saan didn’t understand how a lighthouse could be so far out here, nor did he know what these other ships were. Most of all, he could not comprehend the horrific monster that suddenly careened through the water toward them. Maddened with pain, thrashing as it fled from the spectral ships, this beast made even the Kraken seem a mere annoyance by comparison.
The ghost ships hounded the monster, and haunted men crowded their decks, hurling countless spears and harpoons. Unable to see where it was going, the wounded monster plunged directly toward the Al-Orizin.
Ystya cried out with genuine fear, “It is the Leviathan!”
“Pull your sails! Turn the rudder—hard to port!” Though he saw a line of foaming water that warned of nearby reefs, Saan had to evade the chaos coming toward them. The deck tilted as the helmsman pulled the ship hard over.
The Leviathan’s eye was a horror of mangled jelly and film. Somehow, it was drawn not to the Al-Orizin, but toward Iyomelka’s ship. Though the island witch screamed from the deck of her vessel, Saan saw that they would all collide in moments.
“I think the Leviathan knows my mother.” Ystya drew a quick breath. “She is the wife of Ondun—who denied the Leviathan its mate. It wants revenge.”
“As long as it keeps her away from us,” Saan said. “But I don’t know how much longer this ship will hold together.”
Aboard her resurrected ship, Iyomelka splayed her fingers into claws as she drew upon her power to call down the lightning. Jagged bolts scored long black marks on the Leviathan’s body, but instead of being driven away the creature merely roared and spasmed in pain. Seeing the danger, the island witch turned her ship to point the sharp antler-coral spar toward the sea creature in hopes that the blinded beast might impale itself.
But the ghost ships surrounded the monster now, and another dark vessel rammed it. Fighting for its life, the Leviathan crashed forward into Iyomelka’s ship. The coral spar tore a long wet wound in its side before the spike snapped. One sharp prong dug into the monster’s gill slits and forced them open.
Saan tried to sail the Al-Orizin away from the battle, but his ship was swamped, barely afloat and taking on water. They were trapped and forced to watch as the storm drove them farther away. Saan held Ystya, who was transfixed with terror by what was happening to her mother. Despite the dangers they had faced and the harm Iyomelka had wrought, the woman was still her mother—and the Leviathan was intent on killing her.
The creature hurled itself at Iyomelka’s ship. She called down more lightning, wringing it out of the clouds, but the sea monster seemed not to feel the pain. The Leviathan rammed her ship, shattering the coral and barnacles that held the rotted hull boards together.
Even Iyomelka’s wrath could not match the monster’s. Though the beast’s central eye was blinded, its numerous tentacle heads could see or sense their surroundings. A writhing knot of fang-tipped tentacles lashed out at Iyomelka where she stood on the deck. She flailed her hands and called spells to drive them away, but tentacles grabbed her with fluid movements, sinking sharp fangs into her arms, her legs. They wrapped around the witch’s waist and lifted her into the air. The storm continued to rage while Iyomelka fought for her life, but this was the Leviathan’s storm, not hers.
The tentacles drew back and whipped forward to skewer Iyomelka on one of the sharp-ended spars of her mainmast. The long wooden spear protruded from her chest, and she dangled grotesquely, impaled and twitching, before she went still.
With a mighty heave, the Leviathan surged onto the deck of her dark ship, tearing down the masts, shattering the hull, and pulling the pieces into the water. The sea-serpent skull mounted to the prow broke loose and drifted away. Iyomelka’s rotted ship sank quickly, leaving a field of debris and foam on the stormy waters.
Though it had killed Iyomelka, the monster was also grievously wounded, its single eye destroyed, its gills mangled by the sharp prongs of antler coral, its body abristle with harpoons and spears from the ghost ships.
The Leviathan let out a subsonic cry of pain and despair, reminding Saan of a dying shark caught in a fisherman’s net. Ystya clung to him, sobbing.
Studded with spears, the monster’s great bulk rolled. Its huge open maw filled with water. The gill slits stopped flapping and hung lax. The Leviathan floated belly up amid the wreckage of Iyomelka’s ship, leaking blood and slime in a wide, foul-smelling stain.
On the deck of the Al-Orizin, Ystya shook, while Saan just stared. His sailors were cheering or weeping. Sikara Fyiri staggered forward, and Saan expected the priestess to hurl curses at the Leviathan. Instead, she doubled over and vomited onto the deck.
The greatest monster of the sea was dead.