Shadow Slave

Out there in the vast, cold abyss beyond the fleeting radiance of the Night Garden, a grotesque form drifted slowly on the powerful underwater currents. Its eerie shape was so vast and inconceivable that Sunny failed to fathom what he was looking at for the longest time.

”...Move forward slowly.”

The Night Garden was not pushed by the wind or by oars, relying on unknown magic to sail instead. So, it did not matter whether it was gliding across the waves or moving beneath them — Jet could control its speed and direction all the same.

She did as Sunny told, changing the angle of their descent. Before, the Night Garden had been simply plummeting down through the dark abyss, but now, it pushed forward through the crushing mass of water.

Jet drew a deep breath as her gaze grew distant.

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

”What?”

She remained silent for a moment, then shook her head.

”No, nothing. It just feels different when we move underwater - the Night Garden has to push through its mass, after all. So, there is a different relation between the effort I need to exert and the speed it can reach. There’s a learning curve.”

Jet sighed.

”It feels nice and liberating to glide across the sea. But here... here, it’s a bit of a chore. Like running with weights tied to your ankles.”

Sunny gave her a odd look.

”Did you often run with weights tied to your ankles?”

Jet stared back.

”You didn’t?”

Sunny scratched the back of his head.

”When I ran, it was usually from something trying to eat me. Why would I go around weighing myself down?”

A corner of her mouth curved upward.

”You make a good point.”

They fell silent as the Night Garden slowly drew closer to Old Tom’s remains. Sunny had to admit that he had misjudged the distance between them and the grotesque corpse. There was no curvature to the depths of the Stormsea, so there was no horizon, and there were no landscape features to serve as reference points either... only the boundless darkness.

Old Tom turned out to be much, much larger than Sunny had thought after beholding it for the first time. ”What does that thing look like?”

By then, Jet could see one of the tentacles trailing behind the sinking corpse, but the main body of the horror of the depths was still hidden in the darkness. Sunny did not hurry with the answer, though, trying to understand what Old Tom was... had been, rather... himself.

It took him until the pain of his Flaw became almost unbearable to finally make sense of the horrid visage. ”It’s... an oyster, I guess.”

Sunny said that, but he was not sure that he was correct. There was indeed a hard shell akin to that of a bivalve mollusk somewhere in the terrible mess of formless flesh and tentacles that spilled from its open frame. The shell itself was the size of an island, covered by a forest of eerie black growths - beneath them, however, it glistened with dull gold, as if cast entirely from precious metal.

The gargantuan shell was dwarfed by the lifeless mass of flesh and colossal tentacles spilling out of its mouth, though. It was impossible to imagine that all that revolting flesh could have fit inside the vast confines of the golden shell... and there were other things drifting in the water beside it, as well — things that must have escaped from within Old Tom after its violent death.

There were titanic bones that must have belonged to abominable leviathans, empty shells of indestructible chitin that had once sheltered horrid monsters, rotten carcasses of countless ancient ships, mangled masses of rusted metal, vast shards of something that looked like diamond glass...

Old Tom must have gorged itself on all kinds of things over the eons.

All of it trailed behind the slowly sinking corpse like the tail of an horrid comet, dwarfing it in size.

It was obvious that all these remains had been expelled from within the hideous shell, and yet Sunny could not quite understand how. Their volume was far greater than the gargantuan shell.

Eventually, he narrowed his eyes.

”I think... that good Old Tom wielded dimensional powers. There must have been a pocket dimension hidden inside its shell — a dark and harrowing hell that nothing could escape after being swallowed by it. Only it was destroyed when Old Tom died, so now its body, as well as everything it had failed to digest over thousands of years, is spilling out.”

If Old Tom had been able to fold space, Sunny could better understand how its tentacles were so impossibly long, as well.

’The Night Garden was close enough to the colossal shell and the vile mass of formless flesh protruding from within it for Jet to catch a glimpse of the trail of debris left in its wake, too.

She moved the ship to the side, deftly avoiding a gargantuan tentacle, and then asked in a somber tone: ”What killed it, though?”

Sunny studied the unimaginable mess of Old Tom’s flesh for a while, and then said quietly:

”Both halves of its shell are shattered, with jagged holes at the center. Judging by the positioning and the size of the holes, as well as the pattem of cracks spreading from them...”

He fell silent for a moment, and then added with a hint of unease in his voice: ”Old Tom was killed in a single strike. Something unimaginably powerful pierced its shell through and destroyed its... whatever it was that had kept it alive.”

Jet shivered.

”What the hell could have killed that thing in one blow?”

Sunny did not answer immediately. Eventually, however, he was forced to:

”I don’t know. I don’t think I could have, though.”

They both remained quiet after that as the Night Garden slowly sailed past the corpse of the eerie horror

of the depths and moved deeper into the abyssal darkness of the Stormsea.

Just as they were passing the terrible mass of flesh, Jet suddenly asked:

”Do you know what I’m thinking about?”

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

”No.”

She hesitated for a moment, then smiled faintly.

”I was thinking... if Old Tom is a sort of oyster. Do you think there’s a pearl somewhere inside its shell? What would that pearl be?”

Sunny stared at her for a while, then shook his head

ergetically and looked away.

”I don’t know. And I am sure as hell not climbing inside to find out!” Laughing quietly, Jet led the Night Garden deeper into the abyss.

Her laughter, however, did not mask a somber wariness that she felt.

Sunny was wary, as well.