“This is a terrible idea,” Kerra said. “I thought we were finally making some real progress.” Her lips pressed into a tight line, arms folded across her chest, as she watched me scoop up another handful of liquified whale fat. “Clearly, I was mistaken…”

My breath formed a small cloud in front of me as I slathered the rancid sludge onto my chest and arms. It smelled like a combination of rotten fish guts and old motor oil. It took everything I had not to projectile vomit all over the ground from the rank stench. Kerra was right, this was a terrible idea. It was also the best idea I could come up with.

We’d survived every Bounty she’d thrown at us and now, all that stood between us and heading back to Wildespell was one last mission. Our final assessment. And holy shit was it a doozy. A three-star bounty with more red flags attached to it than Cal’s ex-girlfriend.

After taking out the Glutenous Devourer in Plainscross, we’d angled north and ended up in the tiny fishing village of Sarugia. Something nasty had moved into pristine lake that stretched out in front of me like a blue diamond, glittering in the afternoon sun. According to the residents, the fish had dried up over the course of just a handful of weeks. When Kerra had first given me the bounty brief, I’d assumed it was probably a simple case of overfishing. As someone who loves to cast a line into the waters and sit back with a beer in hand, I knew it only took one or two greedy fucks to ruin the entire eco-system for a year or two.

A little poking around, and a few Honeyed Words from Colin, quickly disproved my “greedy fucks” theory.

Sarugia was a small village with a population of less than five hundred and, according to locals, they’d been sustainably fishing these same water for the past hundred years or more without anything like this ever happening. Mostly, they were subsistence fishermen, and their main export was actually wheat, which grew in verdant fields to the west. No one new had moved into the region and the local aldermen were diligent about monitoring how many fish were removed from the lake.

The whole system was surprisingly efficient in the way only small-town bureaucracies can be.

Then there was the missing boat.

Henri Lindholm was a local elder who’d spent more time out on the waters than most of the other residents of Sarugia had been drawing breath. Henri was a fishing legend in these parts and no one knew the lake better than him. He’d gone out on his boat on a crystal-clear day without a single cloud in the sky, just the same as he’d done ten-thousand times before. He’d said goodbye to his grandchildren in the morning with a smile on his wrinkled face and had never come back. They hadn’t been able to find his boat, his body, or any sign of what had happened.

It’s like the lake had swallowed him whole.

Lakes could be finicky I knew and although this particular lake didn’t freeze—it was too big for that—the waters were colder than a witch’s tit, especially in the winter months. Even an experienced fisherman could accidentally go over the side and wind up in the drink. And for an old-timer getting up in years, the sheer shock from the temperature was often as good as a death sentence. Your limbs would seize up, your lungs would refuse to draw breath, and in seconds you’d be gone. Swallowed by the indifference of mother nature who didn’t give two fucks about how squishy and fragile humans were.

In my mind, that was the most likely scenario. Except it didn’t account for the missing fish or the missing boat. Occam’s Razor suggested the simplest explanation for all three things was that there was a monster hiding in the waters.

Which meant we needed to search the lake. But, funny story, hunting monsters at the bottom of a goddamned lake in the winter is tougher than it looks. Not only was the water just one notch above freezing, but none of us had gills, and freediving in goddamned plate mail is problematic even with supernatural strength. Thankfully, I had a ghostly sidekick that didn’t have to worry about things like air or how water temperature. Cal descended into the depths and found the culprit after a few hours of trolling the bottom.

Sarugia had itself a bonafide lake kraken.

According to Cal, the son of a bitch was a huge squid-like creature with rubbery, suction-covered tentacles, one enormous eye, and a tearing beak big enough to take off a leg or an arm like a guillotine blade.

It was also two hundred feet down, nice and safe in an underwater cavern in the deepest part of the lake which posed some significant logistical problems.

Hence the terrible plan.

“Don’t supposed you’d be willing to slather this on my back?” I asked Kerra, raising a hand. Some of the sludge dripped through my fingers and splashed across the ground.

“Non-combatant observer,” she said, taking an extra step back so the stuff wouldn’t get on her boots. “And even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t help. This is a terrible idea and I endorse no part of this plan. Whatever awful fate befalls you is on your own head.”

“Don’t worry, Vigil Boyd,” Berk said, lumbering over. “I got your back.” He dunked both hands into the slop pail and slapped the stuff against my shoulders. “Get it? I got your back?”

I shudder from both the atrocious pun and the nauseating sensation as he rubbed the whale blubber along my shoulders and pushed it down onto my lower back. I’d stripped all the way down to a pair of skivvies and the rest of my body was already fully covered in the atrocious goop. I’d even had to squish it into my hair, which I knew was would take me weeks of washing to get rid of.

“I think we’re as ready as we’re going to get.” I surveyed my body to make sure I hadn’t missed any obvious areas, then picked up the end of the thick roped on the ground beside me and looped it several times around my arm. On the end was a meat hook, bigger than my hand. Berk moved rejoined the others who were standing by with the other end of the rope already in hand. “Renholm, you ready to do this?” I asked the pixie.

Like me, he’d stripped down as well, though he hadn’t bothered with a pair of underwear. He was proudly letting his bait and tackle hang free for all the world to see. Like Cal, Renholm didn’t need to worry about the water temperature and although he couldn’t go without air indefinitely, he could hold his breath for twenty minutes or so. More than long enough to doggy paddle down to the kraken’s lair and launch some colorful and annoying illusions to lure the tentacled son of bitch out and into open waters.

But there was no way that was going to be enough to get the kraken to surface and walk his tentacled ass onto the shore where we could kill him. So, instead we were going fishing.

I gave the rope a tug, then tentatively headed out into the water.

“Make sure you don’t let go of the line,” I said over one shoulder. The end of the roped was anchored around an enormous boulder that weighed a couple of tons. The other Vigil’s would use their supernaturally enhanced strength to reel me in once I got the kraken on the hook. “I don’t want to have to do this more than once.”

“You won’t survive doing this more than once,” Kerra muttered, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.

“Don’t worry,” Colin said, ignoring the Negative Nancy, “well be ready the second you give the word.”

I was extremely worried but decided to keep my opinion to myself. Kerra was already doing a phenomenal job of undermining our confidence and I really needed everyone to be fully on board or this plan was going to fall apart like a wobbly Jinga tower, and if it did, I was liable to end up as fish food.

Renholm wheeled about in the air and shot toward the surface of the lake, disappearing beneath the placid surface in a blink. The water lapped around my ankles and already it was biting cold. I braced myself, knowing this was going to suck colossal monkey nuts, then dove in headfirst. Just like ripping off a Band-Aid. Shock raced through my body, white stars exploded across my vision, and for a long second I couldn’t inhale. My lungs refused to work and the rest of my body had likewise decided to join the general strike.

With a gasp, I pushed off the bottom and brought my head and shoulders out of the water.

The sting of the air was even worse than the water. But slowly, the shock receded and my chest begrudgingly inflated, sucking in a sweet mouthful of oxygen.

“You okay?” Marina called for the shoreline. She was wearing her robes and a thick, fur-lined cloak that helped block out the cold. I hated her a little bit. “How’s that whale blubber holding up?” She asked when I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t answer because my teeth were chattering too fiercely. Instead, I gave her a thumbs up, then gritted my teeth and pushed myself out deeper. As much as I hated to admit it, the rancid whale blubber was the only thing keeping me alive. True, it smelled like the dumpster behind a raw sushi bar, but the thick oil had special alchemic properties that helped block out cold and trap in latent body heat. I walked out until the sandy shelf beneath my feet disappeared then began to swim, heading out deeper and deeper until I felt the rope tug at my arm.

I was fifty feet or so from shore. As I waited, treading water with the meat hook in my hand, and a black, monster-filled expanse directly below me, I was seriously starting to second-guess some of the life choices I’d made up to this point.

But there really hadn’t been any other way. Lake kraken were tremendously territorial and voraciously hungry. But they only hunted live prey and they preferred human over anything else. My pasty flashing legs would be more than enough to goad the son of a bitch into taking a nibble, especially since we’d mixed in bloody fish chum into the whale oil I’d rubbed all over my body. We’d toyed around with the idea of tying a rope to a cow, slathering it up and trying to force it out into the middle of the lake, but animals had a surprisingly good sense of self preservation.

Besides, like most Mortka, Lake Kraken were smart. Chances were we’d lose the cow without ever getting the slimy son of a bitch hooked on the line. Regardless of what Kerra said, this was the best way, even if it was dangerous.

I pushed the thought away as I felt the water swirl. Something huge passed below me. A second later, a naked pixie shot out of the water like an arrow, surrounded by a nimbus of white light.

“It’s coming fast,” Renholm called, “and it is extremely disgruntled. Hope you don’t die!” He wheeled around mid-air and blasted off toward the shoreline and safety.

The waters rippled again. Thanks to Combat Sense, I felt more than saw the colossal creature charge toward me from below. A rubbery appendage grazed my calf and I triggered Armor Evocation, summoning my Stone Spider Plate mail. It appeared in a swirl in a silver mist just in the nick of time. One huge tentacle wrapped around my waist like a striking boa constrictor while the creature’s sharp, tearing beak clamped tight around my left leg. Crushing pressure like a vice grip enveloped my thigh and I was certain the plate armor was the only thing that kept my limb attached to my body.

The creature immediately yanked me down in a fit of rage. I managed to take a long deep breath before my head vanished below the surface. The water was frigid but marvelously clear, so when I blinked my eyes open, I had no problem seeing exactly what we were dealing with for the first time and holy shit was it so much worse than Cal had made it sound. The fucker was bigger than an elephant and although it only had eight main legs jutting off from its bulbous body, a hundred more smaller tentacles writhed in the water. Its skin was pebbly purple, its flesh-rending beak a shiny obsidian.

It regarded me with a giant black eye that oddly reminded me of the Eldritch Wither Vine we’d battled during our first outing.

The pressure around my leg eased for a second, then the kraken crunched down again, trying to break through my armor like the shell of a nut. The metal let out a distressing groan and crumpled, digging into the meat of my leg. Holy fuck this thing was strong. Meanwhile the fat tentacle wrapped snuggly around my waist was squeezing tighter and tighter. The Stone Spider Plate Mail was tough stuff, but it hadn’t been designed for this. It was purpose built to deflect an incoming blade or arrow, not withstand the steady and consistent pressure of an industrial strength car compactor.

My lungs burned and I knew I needed to do something quick or this thing was going to kill me. I summoned my shotgun, praying that it would work under water, pressed it against the creature’s tentacle, and pulled the trigger.

It didn’t. Because why would it.