It felt like a bit of an excuse an alcoholic would make, but I really had no choice but to drink. It was like what your parents always told you high school and college were going to be like. A bunch of people pressuring you to drink. Only here it wasn’t ‘cool’, it was apparently the best way to propel our little ship and motley crew across an ocean of tongues that would devour us all alive if we hadn’t coated the bottom of our ship with a foul tar.

I found myself wondering if that could also be turned into an analogy for highschool.

Maybe I shouldn’t have started with whiskey.

Also like in my old high school, someone, Melody, had been put in charge of coordinating ‘activities’.

The activities were inane. Super Punch Sisters 7 was a video game that seemed nothing but explosions and flashing colors. I lost my little character the second we started playing and then, though I didn’t see it because I couldn’t make hide nor hair of the game, Elma punched me off the side of the map five times and I was out.

Next, like we were at some sort of hellish middle school birthday party, was twister. But I’d drunk enough at this point, waiting for Melody and Thatch to finish dueling each other in Super Punch Sisters, that watching Elma and Melody, both of whom were comedically competitive, strain their bodies to outdo each other at a child's game was actually enjoyable. When we started playing poker using marshmallows, I was actually having fun. Hawthorn had a perfect poker face, and cheated very well. Thatch, Melody, Elma and Quiver were constantly checking themselves for fireflies, but despite never finding any, Hawthorn always seemed to know what everyone else had and eventually we had to kick him out of the game.

“We know you’re cheating, we just don’t know how!” Elma had growled at him, and Hawthorn had just smiled his annoying little smile.

We were gearing up to start a Beer Pong Tournament when there was a low droning sound and I felt like a vacuum had been pressed to my head and started draining my mood away. The Befuddled lurched and I could feel us moving again, but it didn’t matter much. The world didn’t go grey. Not exactly. But I suddenly was utterly uninterested in Beer Pong. I couldn’t really think of anything that I was interested in, honestly.

This feeling was even less pleasant than when I’d experienced it that day on the ocean with the hydra. Because now I felt my emotions being drained away, and I was drunk. The pleasure was gone leaving only a lightly throbbing headache and the awareness that I couldn’t quite see straight. Knowing what was happening didn’t help. It felt like there should have been a way for me to stop this. For me to focus and suddenly stop feeling this way, but nothing I did worked.

“Hey.” Elma said, prodding me with her finger. She’d trimmed them since her claws got tangled in my shirt. “You have to keep playing.”

“Why? It’s not fun anymore.”

“Yes it is.” She said, “You just can’t feel it. We’re still having fun, we just aren’t registering it anymore.”

“That makes no sense.” I said, as she dragged me over to the ping pong table. It was the strangest experience I’d ever had. It was utterly surreal, as if I’d stepped into a Salvador Dali painting. I was a grim faced human amongst monsters playing an eerily silent game of beer pong. All of our motions were mechanical, as if we were being pulled by strings, and Melody had a rictus smile on her face as if to say ‘We are having fun. You can tell because I’m smiling.’ At one point Thatch attempted to cheer when I, through sheer luck, sank a ball in one of the cups. Everyone in the room stared at him until his cheers died.

But it worked. I could feel the boat moving. I had no idea how it worked, but it did.

The rest of the night we played in that eerie trance. Like when something happens to you in a dream and you know you should feel an associated emotion but you don’t.

Eventually the speakers blared.

“Alright you zombies. Time for bed. We’re going to stop here for tonight.” First Mate said over the intercom.

“Jokes?” I said, registering the attempt at humor. “How can she make jokes?”

“The Bridge is protected from the Emotion Engine.” Quiver said. It’s eyes were almost closed, and it’s tendrils were lying all around it in a heap. Usually they moved and twitched and explored Quiver’s surroundings seemingly independent of it, but now they lay utterly still.

When I reached my room they shut off the engine. My emotions came flooding back into my like some sort of freight train. I staggered as the languid, jovial feeling of just the right amount of alcohol slammed back into me. It was a skill I’d picked up prying secrets out of drunk Caligon officials at bars.

A faint bit of warmth, a stirring of the heart made me think that perhaps I really had been having fun. Strange. Very strange.

I stayed awake for a little while, listening to the rocking of the boat amongst the… the… tongues, I assumed, and when I finally fell asleep I dreamed of Elma licking her lips and taking bites out of Lucas.

I woke up and my head hurt. I got up and switched the lights on, and they blinded me. It was too early to be up. I hadn’t slept for more than three hours. We’d been up far too late.

But none of that bothered me. The pain was just… pain. I’d make it stop if I could, but I couldn’t, so I had to just go about my day.

On deck I saw that we were well and truly on The Sea of Tongues. The water had grown murkier, an ugly greenish color, but sticking out of it like repulsive lily pads were the tops of the tongues of and on in every direction. It seemed more tongue, or whatever these things truly were, than water. One of them, passing by to the right of the ship was huge, the size of half a basketball court, black and lying placidly in the water. I felt like I should have been afraid, but we were moving, the tongues in the water slipping below the surface as we passed, so I couldn’t be. The engine was on.

“Hey, Sam.” Hawthorn said. He had been restored to his seat on the deck of the ship. “You can see that, right?” He said, pointing a finger towards something on the other side of the ship. I walked over and let my eyes follow his gaze.

Leaping from tongue to tongue, following the ship, was a creature that was, if I had to say, one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen.

It’s body was vaguely humanoid, thick, squat and fat. It’s skin was green, and it seemed to be oozing some sort of clear substance that covered it’s entire body like slime. It’s face looked like someone had taken a fox’s pointed, hairless muzzle and smashed it flat. It had long, inhuman four fingered hands with jointless stubby fingers, and feet that were as flat and wide as sauce pans. All in all it looked like a four year old drew a monster and that monster had sprang to life.

I wasn’t shocked by its appearance. I couldn’t be.

“I thought you said that you couldn’t touch the tongues.” I said, staring at the ugly thing. It stared back at me with beady black eyes.

“They can’t. Usually.” Hawthorn said. “But there are exceptions to every rule, I guess. Especially out on the Ocean.”

“So you don’t know what it is?”

“Not a clue.”

The creature made a ‘MYOP’ sound, grabbed a tongue near the one it was standing on and then leapt onto the side of our ship, pulling the tongue behind it. It hit the side of the ship and clung to it. I looked down, and it appeared to be pressing the tongue to the side of the ship. But the ship wasn’t to its taste, and the tongue recoiled, wriggling out of the things grasp. The thing made another surprised sounding ‘MYOP’ as the tongue flopped back into the ocean, on top of a number of other tongues before slowly retracting, reeling itself back to the place it had been floating originally like a fishing line. I wondered how long these tongues really were. If they just kept growing they’d likely have a lot of extra tongue down there, below the water.

“That thing just tried to touch a tongue to our ship.” I said,

“It did? Hawthorn said, trying to sound interested. “That’s bad. Actually, that’s really bad. We need to tell First Mate. I’d be a little scared if Lucas’ stupid engine wasn’t on.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Walkey-Talkey.

“Hey, First Mate. There’s a thing, not sure what it is, that’s trying to press tongues to our boats hull. Uh, Sam. Is it still there?”

I looked down at it.

“Yes.”

“It’s still here. If you wanted to send someone over to help us knock it back into the water that’d be great.”

A moment later Quiver came up onto the deck. They seemed to shrink, bunch up as they came outside.

“What’s wrong?” They said, their voice just as drained of emotion as ours.

I pointed at the thing still on the boat. It must not have been terribly intelligent, because it was still grabbing tongues out of the water and sticking them to the boat. It never worked, but I was worried it might wear out the coating.

Quiver moved to the edge of the boat, and reached down to grab the thing with their tendrils. The things eyes snapped upwards, and it snarled; A wet, soggy sound. But instead of attacking Quiver it snatched one of the tongues and slapped it onto one of their tentacles as they wrapped around it, the toxins immediately paralyzing the creature.

The change was immediate. Instead of a languid, inert lump of floating flesh… or whatever it was… it had latched onto Quiver like a rope or chain.

Quiver’s eyes widened and the tendrils on the boat suddenly rooted them in place. I felt my heart leap in my chest, but I couldn’t feel the surprise.

“I need help.” They said in a perfectly calm, if urgent voice.

They were slowly sliding along the deck, towards the water. I ran over unsure of what to do. The tongue was taut, and Quiver was beginning to shake with the exertion of holding themself on deck. Several of their tendrils were pushing against the railings on the ship, and the metal there was slowly buckling. The boat itself was slowing down.

“What do I do?” I asked Hawthorn.

“I don’t know. As far as I know everyone who is grabbed by the tendrils dies. That was careless of Quiver.”

I knew that was bad. I didn’t want Quiver to die, even if I wasn’t having an explicit emotional reaction to it. Quite aside from that, there would likely be very negative repercussions for the crew if one of their members perished.

“I don’t know if this is going to work, but get ready, Quiver.” I said, reaching out the hand that hid the built in Taser. I flexed, shifting artificial bone out of the way to allow the taser to touch my conductive skin, and then slapped my hand down on the tendril that was being held. It went numb immediately, but that didn’t matter. I felt the electricity find another pathway, and Quiver cried out in surprise, while the tongue, already taught, seemed to tighten a fraction more before I tackled Quiver out of the way, their actual body much lighter than even what I had thought.

We both fell back in a heap, breathing heavily. It seemed my body was reacting to the stimulus my braid wasn’t.

“Thank you.” Quiver said, not sounding particularly thankful. But that was only to be expected.

We quickly regained our feet. Or, I did. Quiver regained their tendrils I supposed. I looked at my now paralyzed arm and frowned. That would make work more difficult today.

“Now lets get rid of this thing.” Hawthorn said, “I’ll be glad you two are ok when this stupid engine is shut off. And probably care what the hell you just did, Sam.”

“He shocked me.” Quiver said, lifting the whatever it was into the air with their tendrils, before pulling back and launching it into the distance. It was as if the thing had been fired by a catapult. It flew through the sky, landing somewhere off in the distance where I couldn’t even see water splash.

“Good throw.” I said.