Wylinoris followed behind Deri to the main hull. "Hoi! Deri, you're gonna want to see this!" A burly and worn-out sailor covered in water grabbed Deri by the hand and dragged him to the upper decks. He popped open the brass hatch and the salty water pushed him down the ladder. "Dear God! What the hell happened?!" He crawled out to the end of the hull while being bathed in the violent current. “We had a bit of a navigation error…” Wil said while skimming over some maps being held by a scrawny and thin boater. “We appear to be around the Bexcroft straits… They’re never this wild.” The harsh sun beat down on Wylinoris’s skin. Wil looked over to her. “Twinkie! Why’d you let the girl out?!” Wylinoris jumped down from the hole and closed the hatch behind her. The sloshing of water on the steel and softwood made her feel nauseous, so she walked slowly to the quarters.

She knocked on the Giethi’s door gently. “Hey, Giethi. I’m coming in-” She fidgeted with the doorknob and opened the door with a small struggle. “Hey! What’re you doing here?!” Wylinoris covered her eyes and walked blindly through the room.

“Sorry, I just need your glove-”

“Why the hell would you need my staff?!”

She paused.

“Uh… no reason. Where is it?”

Giethi stammered for a moment.

“It’s on the counter here. Just take it already.”

Her hand moved from her eyes slightly and avoided looking directly at the shower. “What’s going on? It’s awfully quiet around here.”

“Deri and Wil’s outside, something about ‘Bekcraft’ straits or some shit.”

“You mean Bexcroft? God, I am going to beat the everliving shit out of them.” Wylinoris picked up the glove. “Hey- Take care of it.” She stepped out of the room and locked the door behind her. Her eyes gravitated towards the engravings on the back of the hand. “Reynse Fellebrig,” “Horasil The Great,” with ‘The Great’ scratched at; and a final statement which she didn’t quite understand. “Nagazeth hilkith e’clo nagaz ahjcolk manaward.” Two letters in front of the second word were marked overusing a sharpie, but with time it had become faded and withered with each fold.

The gauntlet clicked and it unfolded quickly without pressing the button on the side. “Convenient.” She thought and pranced to the hull gracefully with it.

The loud banging of metal startled her. “Giethi! Wylinoris?! Open this fucking hatch!” She froze in her tracks. “C’mon guys…” The banging ceased and whoever was behind the door started crying. Wylinoris carefully unlocked the hatch from a distance with the staff. Deri slid through the small opening with gallons of water following behind him. "Holy shit- Deri!" She pulled him in and brought him down to the wooden floor. "Stop the fucking bleeding!" Wylinoris got up and stared at Deri's bloody leg. "Go get one of the rags in the kitchen!"

Wylinoris ran to the quarters and tapped on Giethi's door again. "Hey, like as soon as you get out of there it's pretty urgent-" She panted and continued running. The kitchen was empty and pots knocked over ran rampant with the rocking boat. She picked up a damp towel and wrung out most of the saltwater. Her hands trembled the longer she had to run through the complex boat layout.

“Goddamn.” She tightened the towel with her mouth around Deri’s bloody leg. “What the hell happened to you?” He bit his lip to hide the pain. “This like, I dunno how you would describe it… Tentacle?” He paused and sat upright with a struggle. “I’m gonna go with a tentacle. Black and large, it swept most of the crew off in one fell swoop. Threw me away and I cut my leg on the railing.”

“Can you walk?”

He helped himself get up with the ladder. “Yeah- Wait, give me that.” Deri pointed at Giethi’s staff. “Uh, that’s Giethi’s.” Her hands paused while holding it. “Uhm… Why do you need it?”

“She won’t mind if I use it, we’ve been best friends since high school.” He grabbed onto the carving of the dragon claw. Deri propped it up and used it as a cane. The staff collapsed a bit from holding onto his weight. “I’ll… Be fine.” Wylinoris looked at the hand Deri used to pick up the staff. Deri wiped the water off his face and looked down. “God…” He looked at her slowly. “They’re all fucking dead, Wylinoris.” His hand began bleeding out due to the sharp end on the staff. “Wil was just tossed into the water… Damn.” He kneeled next to the commanders’ panel. “I’m getting us out of here as soon as I can.”

“Deri, what the hell are you doing?!” Giethi stomped out into the deck and swiped the staff from his hand. “Giethi-”

“Don’t even start, Wylin! I told you specifically for you to use my staff, not Deri!” Deri quivered his lip. “He’s just using it to walk!” Giethi wiped the shower water off her hair and shook it off her arm. “Where the hell is Wil?” She looked around to the eerily quiet hull, only disturbed by the gentle waves. “That’s why I’m using the fucking staff!” He lifted himself using the control panel as leverage and snatched it from her hands. “Wil and the rest of the crew were cast overboard! They’re fucking dead!” The blood from Deri’s hand wiped onto her arm. The boat filled with silence only disturbed by the waves of the ocean. “I’ve got to reset the pike or the ship locks up. That thing out there… Wil had this antique musket or some shit in a safe under his desk. The code’s like five-eight-nine-three.” He limped hastily to the steam-filled hall. “Go! I’m going to reset the stabilizer!”

Wylinoris hesitated and rushed through the dimly lit hall with Giethi. “Damn, she’s new to all of this.” The slit on his palm slid through the dull dragon-head-shaped claw, coloring it rose. As Deri scuffled through the corridor, water began piling up around his legs and tugged at the cheap sticker used to give the wood a nice guise. The edged wand’s bottom dragged along the damp and softwood leaving a trail of sawdust behind him. He followed chrome header pipes on the ceiling through the confusing layout of the eerily cold maze.

“Once I reach the… Maybe… Yeah. The- What’s the name of it again?” He wandered mindlessly through the halls. The ground kept piling up with water and flakes of paper, so Deri kept looking at it to see where the leak was coming from. The flow of water parted into four rushed streams onto his high laced boots and he bumped into something. “Ope- Sorry…” He looked up to the tile-covered machine looking down on him. It had no lights on, dimming the three cameras embedded into the left side of the head. “Who put you here? I don’t even remember Wil putting you inside…” He glanced slightly at the ripped net still attached to his left arm.

“You are not allowed in this premise.” The mechanism’s words chilled him to his core. “Hey… This is my boat! I can be wherever the hell I want to be!” Deri stepped back a bit. “You are not in the- the- database.” He swallowed his spit. “Please make your leave immediately.” Four hoses dropped from its arms and the long stretched light-bars illuminating its body lit up in his face.

Despite Giethi cutting off the edges of the hose so they couldn’t attach themselves to anything, the freezing liquid along with its vent was very dangerous even if it came close to Deri. He tossed the staff through the torso hole in a panic and began sprinting away from the robot even with the bleeding leg. The automaton was distracted by the pole and continued moving slightly slower than the walking pace at him.

“Hey, Gieth’?! Wylinoris?! A lil’ help could be useful about now!” Deri dashed through the web of rooms while dragging his bad leg with him. He caught his breath after putting some distance from the machine and hid behind a wall, suffering through the worsened bleeding from his wounds.

“God damnit…” Blue lights illuminated the doorway next to him.

And he held his breath and wished for the best.

Giethi rustled through the papers all over Wil’s desk. Unpaid taxes, letters to widows, something about paying off the lease about the boat. She thought nothing of it, as Wylinoris looked around in the trashed room, avoiding the sticky puddles of dried-out booze on the floor. The candles illuminating the room burned down to their wick. “Haven’t I given him money to replace those bulbs?” Giethi tapped the tubes of dust attached to the ceiling by rotting wires with the copper exposed to the bare air. “Why the hell does he want us to get a Revolutionary War-era gun?!”

“You don’t have to yell all the time, plus it’s for the weird Kraken thing outside. I- actually haven’t heard from him in a while.”

She put out the candle and wiped the papers off the desks. “Forget about it, we’re never going to find this goddamn safe…”

“Are we looking in the right place?” Giethi rubbed her sore eyes, stinging from the soap still in them. "It’s not in here, Giethi.” Wylinoris closed the door behind her. “No, wait. Isn’t that it?” Giethi peeked through the crack of light in the door. “Clever, it looks like a desk.” She opened the door again. “Still, a small knife would be better than a gun that I need to pump a stick in to reload it.” She undid the lock and pulled out a long single barrel rifle, decorated with wood and golden trim. Wylinoris grabbed a long rod and a couple of silver pellets. “That’s it, right?”

“I have some gunpowder in my coat, we’ll be fine. Let’s go fetch Deri.” She rubbed the long metal rod going under the barrel and put it behind her back. ‘“I want my staff back anyways.”

Giethi blew out the rest of the candles and slammed the door behind her.

“Hoi! Deri!” Wylinoris’s voice echoed through the corridor to no avail. “I don’t think he can hear us-” “Well no shit Sherlock!” Giethi shut up and twiddled her thumbs. “Here. Let’s test fire it.”

She unstrapped the gun from her back and pointed it at the doorway. “I feel like I’m going to revolt against the British about tea with this.”

“Shut up and put the pellets in.” Giethi, quite puzzled tried dumping the vial of black powder into the barrel. “Do the pellets go in first?”

“Well duh,” Wylinoris muttered. “There’s a spark in there to ignite it all. I think.” She took a hairpin from her hair and poked the foil on top of the gunpowder vial. “We’re just going to use three pellets for now.” Giethi loaded the gun with the steel balls. “Shot heard around the world, here we go.”

The robot’s appendages began pulling at the weak wood of the doorway. Deri held his breath and closed his eyes, seeing the deep blue lights increase in intensity. The small disturbances in the water kept increasing in volume, knocking on his boots.

Bang.

Deri let out all of his breath in one go, as the robot turned its head quickly to the smokey trail and the stir of water. “Hooh… Thank you, Muruer.” He thought to himself and ran out into the murky water. “Damn!” Deri turned back to see the machine attempt to conceal itself using wet planks and a large dent in the iron wall.

“Deri, you still there?” The wading of Giethi trekking through the water relieved some of his stress. “Sorry for giving you a heart attack with the George-Washington Freedom Machine.” Wylinoris drowned out the wisp of smoke with the water. “The- The goddamn-” He pointed at the loose patch of debris. “What? Spit it out.” His lips trembled in fear. “There’s nothing behind here- Hey! Where the hell is my staff?” Giethi plodded out through the halls leaving them behind. “There’s something behind there…” Deri whispered to Wylinoris and backed up from the slabs of lumber. “Whaddya mean? It’s just a little bit of wood that got washed up.” She began to peel back the boards. “Don’t do that!” He cried, but very quietly. He caught a glimpse of the pitch-black obsidian tiles, and four digits holding the plank up. “Needs a bit of giving.” The hand began to lose grip. Three fingers left, then two…

Then one.

Giethi came running back, panting with the salt-caked gauntlet. “Deri! You bastard!” She let go of the board and it sprung back into place. “It’s fucking ruined… damnit!” Giethi pressed the button on the side of the gauntlet and the motors and cogs struggled to unfold itself. She began digging out the salty sludge from inside the glove. Wylinoris thought for a moment and peeled the board off the wall revealing nothing. “Here. Use this to walk.” Deri stared at the cavity in confusion, running his fingers through the dry grain of the wood. “You going to do what you were gonna do?” “Right, yeah. The counter-rotation system.” He began limping through the hall. “Can’t steer the boat without it.”

They followed behind him mindlessly, jumping at the slightest sound or shake. The gentle sound of rumbling slowly intensified as he opened metal doors in front of him. “Alright, cover your ears.” Deri turned three keys in the last metal door and pushed it open with the plank. The rumbling suddenly increased in volume and burst their ears. “Aaah!” Wylinoris covered her ears quickly and began humming. Inside was a large steel cylinder with a glass top, connected to the ends of the boat. Water rushed in from the top of it, and cooler, purified water rushed out from the bottom. The potassium-rich salt was burned and used as fuel and propulsion, being fed by massive brass gears. “This whole room is like one big peg, it rotates the other way and keeps the whole cabin smooth during rough waves.” He dragged himself up to a control panel and slapped some buttons.

“Should be good-” The left side of the hull suddenly broke open and tons of water rushed into the vast room. “Shit!” Deri turned around and got swiped into the rush. “Deri!” Wylinoris ran into the wave and pulled him out. Giethi ripped off more of the caked-on salt and unfolded the staff with a struggle. She tossed her staff into the surge of water. Along with the staff, three large scales returned. Two black and one silver. The tip of the staff was covered in familiar wine-colored blood, with small muscles still attached to the scales twitching due to the salt all over the blade. Giethi pulled Deri out of the rush and wiped off his face. “Deri?! Are you good?!” He began coughing up small amounts of water. Wylinoris stopped helping Deri and stood up, and Giethi froze in place when she realized too.

He and the scales had a strange scent to them. Something… reassuring. Something familiar.

He smelled of flowers.