"Take a Squid. Or an Octopus, works too. Now think of one so large it can gobble you, your fat aunt, and the house you live on as a snack. You have a Kraken, ladies and gentlemen, both and neither." -Yog Aldermann, creature sciences professor on the Levain Institute of Higher Learning.

The little “snack” and the now-empty urn of wine left Cal with a pleasant buzz - even as she subconsciously worked her magic to help her liver survive the ordeal - that was completely worth it.

Even the human spectator from earlier seemed to have recovered as he no longer emptied his stomach over the rails, while he was cared for by his companion - probably his wife?

Cal was just about to get up and walk around to let the meal settle down when she heard a splashing noise off to the side of the ship.

As she stood up, she looked at the starboard side where she heard the noise from, and saw what looked like a large fish with particularly long fins as it jumped out of the sea and fell back in.

Whatever it was, it was headed in the direction of the Kraken’s Bounty.

“Anything to worry about?” She asked Silas, who by now also stood up and looked at the same direction.

“Depends.” He replied. “All passengers! Please vacate the deck unless you wish to partake of some afternoon exercises!”

“We take no responsibility if you get eaten by a sea monster while exercising!” He added with another laugh-gurgle.

“So, not the sort of sea monster we need to worry about then.” Cal responded, her two-meter halberd firmly held in her grip.

“Not unless you’re dead drunk with hands and legs tied up no.” Chimed Silas in reply. “Some Deepmaws if I see it right. Makes for good dinner. Good jerky too with some molasses.”

“Huh. Didn’t those things live like, deep down under? Why would they be at the surface like this?”

“Oh, you’ll see~” By now Silas had his shit-eating grin plastered back on, much like someone in the know of a joke she missed out on.

Any further questions she had were forgotten at the moment because the first of the Deepmaws literally jumped out of the sea and landed with a wet Thud on the starboard deck. It let out a deep-throated roar that had scared the last few non-combatant passengers, as they scurried like rats down into the hold.

Then another four jumped onto the ship. The Junk even slightly listed to the right for a moment due to the added weight of the creatures as the last one jumped aboard.

“By the Ocean!” Said Silas, now with a large harpoon half again as long as he was tall held in his hands. “We’re totally going to have a big feast tonight!”

Cal calmly surveyed the creatures. They definitely looked intimidating at first glance, each measured at least a good ten meters from the snout to the base of the tail, with sleek grey leathery skin and six long fins, on which they dragged their barrel-shaped torsos forward, capped by a horizontal fish-like tail on the end. Their heads measured at least a quarter of their whole body length on its own, with a large maw filled with dagger-like teeth. Clearly not a creature that subsisted on vegetation then.

There was only one problem.

These creatures were definitely lethal to civilians, and extremely dangerous creatures in the waters where they belonged.

They neither faced civilians, nor were they in water.

And they had only marginally better mobility outside water compared to a beached Leviathan.

Naturally, the fact that none of the sailors were stupid enough to have walked into the reach of their maws need not be said.

Most of them just casually walked around the stranded sea monsters and jabbed them in the side using long spears, a couple younger sailors even made a game, where they got close to the creature and jumped back with a laugh when it inevitably tried and lunged at them and failed miserably.

Cal herself simply walked up the fin of the nearest creature, its slippery skin gave her not even the slightest pause in the ascent, and stood firmly on the base of its neck, then she slammed the hammerhead of her halberd down on the creature’s skull hard.

There was barely much of a splatter, as the creature gave a dying squeal when the hammer broke through its skull and into its small brain - one had to wonder how a creature that large could have a brain that small. It twitched a couple times and laid still, the only sign there had been any “fight” were the bits of blood and brain Cal cleaned off her weapon.

Utterly anticlimactic as fights go, but she definitely would have fancied her chances differently were she to face one of these things in the water.

As she looked around, she saw the sailors had already mopped up the other four monsters, and were even already busy as they dragged the corpses nearer the center of the ship so their weight ceased to tilt the ship to its starboard side. Nobody was even injured other than a deckhand that sprained his ankle when he jumped away from one of the creatures.

Everyone laughed at the poor lad.

Peculiarly however, she spotted how Silas stood with one foot on the starboard railing, and several deckhands were busy as they transported some barrels from the ship’s hold and stacked them behind him. He peered out to sea as if he waited for something to come.

“Something the matter?” She asked, partly out of courtesy and partly curiosity.

“Just waiting for the old coot to pop by, milady. Gonna have to ask you to refrain from knotting yer panties soon, I fear.” He replied, still with that shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

Cal was about to ask what he meant when she spotted it. A deep, dark, humongous shadow rose up from beneath the sea, not ten meters off their starboard railing. It had not taken long before it breached the surface, and although she only saw what was clearly a minor portion of the creature, its size was monstrous. Its two pupil-less yellow eyes were easily as large as she was tall, and she could already see how it raised a massive tentacle as thick around as a tree trunk higher than their ship’s masts.

The gigantic monstrosity… Waved at them?

To her shame Cal had to admit that it had taken some effort not to proverbially get her panties in a knot at the sight of the colossal Kraken. For that was definitely what the creature was, an ancient one at that, one more than large enough to have devoured an entire fleet of ships the size of the one she’s on with utter ease.

And next to her she saw as Silas waved back at it with that shit-eating grin still plastered on his face. She heard him as he shouted several sentences in the gargle-like tongue of the merfolk, and she could have sworn she saw that the kraken gestured in answer with its tentacle.

Then he said a few more sentences and Cal nearly rolled her eyes when she saw how the kraken coiled its tentacle into four stacked circles, with its tip showed up behind.

A God-Damned Ancient Kraken had a chat with Silas like it was his buddy and gave him a fucking thumbs-up!

“So, Silas.” She finally interceded. “Am I going batshit insane here or are you god-damned Vitalis-Fucking buddies with a fucking Kraken!?”

Silas just gave another of his gargle-laughs in reply, as he clearly and obviously found the situation funny.

“Ah- Beg your pardon- haha. Old Ragiula there has been an esteemed trading partner of the Kraken’s Bounty since my great-great-grandma’s time as captain. Don’t tell me the ship’s name wasn’t a giveaway?”

“I thought Krakens were mindless monstrosities that just obliterate every ship they run into? That does explain those deepmaws I guess.”

“No, you see, they are actually quite intelligent, as Old Ragiula and her brood have shown my lineage many times. It’s just that most of them never found anything of worth from us small folk, until ma’ offered a tribute to her when they ran across each other back then.” Silas explained, and his shit-eating grin went right back on. “Who knew that this one happens to have a taste for fine dwarven ale? And smart enough to realize that it could get a steady supply of it by trading too!”

“So you trade dwarven ale to the kraken in exchange for safe passage and some dinner then?”

“Hah! No, no, no, safe passage is something she guarantees, and the dinner was just a gift. Watch and behold!”

So she had.

And what Cal saw was several other smaller krakens as they surfaced as well, items in their tentacles tenderly brought to be deposited on the ship’s deck, while they gently coiled around a barrel each on their way back. She saw vibrant, colorful deep-sea corals of many kinds, all she knew to be highly prized material to have decorations and furniture crafted out of, especially popular among nobles with more money than they knew what to do with.

And that was barely the surface of the bounties of the deep sea they offered. She also spotted many herbs that only grew deep under the ocean, that her herbalist mother only learned from books that were written based on examples that got uprooted and washed ashore by chance, in quantities that would have driven any herbalist crazy. Those alone definitely more than made up for the costs of the at least hundred barrels of fine dwarven ale they traded them for.

But then Silas spoke at length again with the Kraken, or Old Ragiula if one wanted to be correct, and elicited a clear reaction from the creature. Cal saw some parts of it turned into a vibrant green hue for some reason. She didn't know why, but the vibrant color seemed to tell her that the creature was… excited?

She had not noticed that one of the smaller Krakens dove back into the sea, but she noticed some deckhands as they very carefully handled five particularly ornate barrels made of ashwood with lining done in platinum. She would have to be an idiot not to have noticed something about those barrels, so she glanced at Silas with an obvious questioning look.

“Oh, just some priceless stuff it said it wanted to taste like a century ago.” He shrugged nonchalantly. Sometimes it could be easy to forget how long-living some folks can be, Silas already well over twice her age at three hundred ten. “Just a few barrels of hand-crafted dark spiced mead, courtesy of Braumeister Orloff Himmelsbrau.”

That got Cal to raise an eyebrow. Even someone who never left the archipelago all her life like her had heard of that name. The greatest Rot-affinity mage in the world, the dwarf who turned his talent for a magical affinity typically associated with diseases and sickness into methods on how to make the finest gods-damned liquor the world had ever seen.

The dwarf formerly known as Orloff Steinlager, whose brew was so good the dwarven king granted him a new name and ennobled him, a feat of highest honor amongst the dwarves that had never before been done for that sort of achievement.

She knew each of those barrels were easily worth their weight in gold.

Thus it did not really surprise her when she saw one of the smaller krakens come back with what she assumed was the payment for the mead. It gingerly deposited what looked like a giant oyster on the deck, one easily as large as one of those deepmaws that now lay dead in the middle of the deck.

She was not even surprised when the younger kraken expertly pried open the oyster’s shell with two of its tentacles.

On the other hand, when she saw the luminescent, pale pink pearl the size of her head it revealed she only barely refrained a gasp in amazement.

“The Kraken definitely did not know what market price was, did it?” She asked Silas bluntly.

“More like it doesn’t care.” He replied. “The things it gave us are plentiful where it lives, and worthless to it other than maybe that oyster for eating, while finding a willing supplier of rare booze is definitely more than worth its time.”

When Cal considered how the ancient kraken itself very tenderly picked up the barrels of mead with ultimate care as if it cradled a priceless treasure, and the color of excitement she saw spread over its humongous figure, Cal just sighed in defeat.

“Oh, please keep our esteemed trading partner here a secret? Most people just assume we traded with one of my folk’s deeper colonies for these.” Silas said still with his grin, obviously confident she would keep the secret even before he asked.

“Like who in the eighteen hells would even believe the truth were I to speak of it!?”