“What the fuck?” I look up as another object gets me right on the forehead with a quiet splintering sound before falling to the deck. I peer down to see a couple small bones attached to a skull about the size of my pinky finger. I take my sword and touch it with the tip of the blade just as I’m pelted again.
I look over at Rasmus to see him hold out his hand. A tiny skeleton falls from the sky and lands in it, then jumps off his hand and onto the deck, as if alive.
“Oh my god,” I cry out softly. “Is that a…frog?”
More of the tiny frog skeletons begin to fall from the sky, some of them pinging off my sword, others hitting the deck. Most of the bones shatter on impact but some manage to hop away and off the boat, into the water.
It’s another magical yet macabre thing but Rasmus doesn’t look in awe as he did with the snow. His mouth is set in a grim line. “She’s here,” he says dourly.
From his tone I know that whoever she is isn’t good. “Loviatar?” I ask, almost hopefully. I actually liked the deer skull daughter of Death. You know, before she wanted to kill us.
He gives his head a firm shake. “I won’t speak her name yet.”
So…Voldermorta? I think, just as the water off the left and right sides of the boat splash simultaneously, droplets flying on the deck. A chill runs down my spine and I grip the sword tighter.
“What’s in the water, Rasmus?”
He doesn’t say anything. Now a bigger splash comes from behind us, and I whirl around to see something dark, long and shiny pass over the surface and disappear below.
Oh god.
Oh god.
Giant sea snake serpent thingy.
Right under our boat.
“Rasmus,” I repeat, my voice going several octaves higher. “Tell me what’s in the water.”
Suddenly the boat shudders and rocks and the both of us stumble, knocked off-balance.
“If anything comes on the ship, hack away!” Rasmus yells at me as he reaches into his coat and pulls out a necklace with a blue stone at the end, wrapping his fist around it.
Anything? I think and something from underneath rams the bottom, causing me to go flying into the railing. I grip it hard, staring over the edge at the black water, terrified to see what’s below.
Thump, thump.
I whirl around to see two giant black tentacles come over the side of the boat and slam into the deck, shaking us violently.
Okay. So this is what’s in the water. Jesus, they’re bigger than my torso. How fucking huge is the Cthulhu beneath us? Enough to swallow this boat whole?
“Hanna!” Rasmus warns from behind me.
I blink and spring into action. I run down the deck, sliding on the snow but managing to keep my balance, sword raised in the air. There’s a part of me that’s watching all of this from far away that’s laughing at the sight of me turned into some kind of Finnish warrior princess about to tackle some Lovecraftian monster, and there’s another part, the larger part, that has to shove all bewilderment and disbelief aside in order to survive.
With two quick swipes, I slice the blade of the sword against tentacle one and tentacle two, severing them until they’re flopping on the deck. As easy as cutting into sashimi, albeit at a sushi restaurant for giants.
At that, the boat vibrates so hard that I feel it in my fillings, and giant bubbles burst in the water around us, followed by an ear-piercing shriek that sounds from the depths. In all directions at least twenty tentacles come rising out of the water, and if that isn’t bad enough, half of them have snake heads at the end. Their mouths open, fangs bared, tongues forked.
“Holy shit,” I swear under my breath. “Now what?”
I expect Rasmus to say something—do something—but he’s chanting something over and over again in Finnish, almost like he’s singing from his throat, his hand clasped over the stone, his eyes pinched shut. The snowflakes are no longer multicolored but they’re falling fast, covering him in a thin layer.
“Rasmus!” I yell at him. “I can’t do this alone! What the hell is this thing?”
The water in front of the bow of the ship begins to break up, waves sloshing, and I see a giant head begin to emerge from below the surface. At first I think it’s another snake head, but then I see white hair matted against a narrow skull and then the monster rises up and up and…
My screams echo off the iron hull.
This creature is about twenty-feet tall, maybe thirty, and at first glance I’m sure it’s like a giant woman, but I can’t be sure. She has the low-hanging breasts and torso of a woman, but her thighs taper off into something reptilian, splitting into tentacles and snakes. Her face is flat and gray, with snake eyes set off to the far sides, no nose, and in the middle is a wide circular mouth lined with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth that remind me of a giant lamprey. Black leeches cover her waxy skin and there’s a long flickering forked tongue sticking right out of her throat.