I received confirmation that a
pod of kraken has been sighted off the shore of Texas in Clan Valley.
Every official I spoke with
said, no comment, so I decided to take a little trip.
After about a ten-hour drive, I
arrived at Galveston. I headed straight for the Marina, but there was not a
single boat available to rent.
I stuck around the dock area,
and sure enough, I started hearing rumors about the kraken.
The pod was less than fifty
miles off shore. Estimates ranged from two to six adults and four babies. One
kraken is more than enough, but ten! Supposedly, a group of siren (that's a
warrior caste fairy) were on their way to take care of the kraken infestation.
I just happened to be sitting
behind a pile of boxes, under a tarp, on the fishing vessel, Hard-up Joy, when a group of hard-eyed
fairies walked onboard. (I paid the local pixie runner a cool hundred to find
out which boat the fairies had hired.)
We had been underway for about
ten minutes when the tarp flew up. One of the fairies glared at me.
"Hi, I'm Jodie Cooper,
Sídhí news reporter," I greeted him with a cheery smile.
"I know who you are,"
he commented, with a sour-look on his face. "You're constantly sticking
your nose into things that are none of your business. Today might be your
last."
"Hey, the public has a
right to know if they are in danger. You don't have any right to threaten
me."
"Not a threat, a
promise." A second fairy walked up behind the first. "If there is more
than one kraken, we'll probably be swimming home. We'll make it just fine. You,
little mundane reporter, won't make it a mile, much less fifty."
After that, they ignored me, and
my questions. Talk about rude!
I made my way to the front of
the boat (later, I found-out it's called the bow) in the small cabin that
covered the wheel. The guy steering the boat ignored me.
Nearly an hour later, he pointed
out the window. "Not so sweet looking are they."
They, he spoke of, were kraken.
The closer we got to the
monsters, the more I wondered if I hadn't made a really big mistake. There were
two of the huge monsters and a smaller baby. The baby was just old enough to
survive in salt water. I'd heard kraken were three stories tall. If momma and
daddy had not been swimming, they would have been that tall.
Each, of the black-skinned
creatures, had three long necks. The head was a diamond-shaped like a rattler.
Its scream threatened to burst my eardrums.
The largest of the three surged
forward, snapping at us with all three heads. Really, really large fangs
glistened in the sunshine.
We swung near them, just outside
of chomping range. Four of the sirens started singing, aiming their voices
toward the rubber-skinned monsters. Sirens had many vocal skills, from
tear-inducing love songs to bone-shattering shrieks.
The kraken heads began to bob,
like a baby fighting sleep.
That's when I realized, the
fairies weren't trying to kill the kraken. The weird fairies of Atlantis Valley
were trying to put the mega-monsters to sleep.
Hello? What good would that do?
A few minutes later, all three
kraken floated in the water, belly-up and fast asleep.
A different fairy stood next to
the railing, staring at the water.
I slipped out of the cabin and
looked down into the sea.
Around the body of the baby
kraken, the surface of the sea began churning. Huge vines of sea coreweed
(that's a Sídhí plant) curled up and around the body of the beast.
Thunk!
Coreweed slithered across the
deck. It was the largest specimen of coreweed I had ever seen. Four inches
thick, it had bright green skin with blue scaly spots. I knew dried coreweed
was sort of the equivalent of hemp from Earth, except it was extremely strong.
This was still wiggling and wet.
The fairy at the rail (who had
to be an enchanter) glanced at the flopping end of coreweed. It slithered over
the rail, under the boat, and popped-up on the opposite side. It wrapped around
the boat several times.
The boat slowly moved south,
towing the smallest of the kraken. Hours later, we slowed to a stop. It was in the
middle of nowhere. The fairies threatened me with my life if I reported the
exact location.
The enchanter fairy severed the
coreweed, leaving three lengths on the deck.
Three of the fairies each
grabbed a length of coreweed and slipped over the side. Taking a deep breath,
they disappeared, pulling the baby kraken behind them.
I later learned there was a
permanent portal several hundred feet down, and that was how the kraken
appeared in Clan Valley to begin with.
The fairies pulled the baby kraken
through the underwater portal, returning him to Atlantis Valley. Afterward the
three fairies returned to the boat, and the captain steered the boat away from
the portal.
We waited for nearly an hour
before the kraken parents showed-up, rushing through the water at an
unbelievable speed and shrieking their heads off.
Thankfully, they were more
concerned with finding their baby. They dove under the water and didn't
reappear.
Until next time,
Jodie
