The Benthic held a strange place in the tales of the old salts. They appeared in countless stories but their appearance, goals and natures varied wildly from one account to the next. In one tale a solitary Benthic the size of a whale capsized a ship. In another a tribe of human sized Benthic would swarm a shipwreck, killing survivors and stealing plunder. There were really only two things the tales about the Benthic agreed upon. They did not care for human beings and they were not born with Gifts. Everything else changed with the story. Even so, the Benthic proved to be nothing like what Cassian had expected.

  They encountered the Benthic at night, almost a full day after Adalai nearly got eaten by a giant crab. The morning crossing was fairly uneventful. Other than the usual splashing and slipping across the lowest parts of the path nothing particularly noteworthy had taken place. However the evening crossing immediately felt different. Cassian checked the quicksilver and confirmed that the weather was changing. Before breaking camp he made sure everyone had their oilskins at the ready.

  Well, everyone but Verina, who assured him the Linnorm would keep her dry. Given how little he knew about the Slavs and their spirits he had little choice but to take her word for it. So they set out prepared for the damp.

  Unfortunately rain along the Gulf was not a peaceful affair and their progress was badly hampered by wind and rain slicked rock. It felt as if Lum himself had seen them and set out to drown them with the rest of old Nerona. They pushed as far as they could but when the path dwindled to little more than a low sandy strip of ground with waves constantly driven over it by the winds Cassian was forced to call for a halt. They had just crossed a large island ringed by dunes and covered by grassy scrub. Not the best place to wait out a squall but it was all they had at hand. They were slogging up towards the dunes and the interior of the island when Adalai put his hand on Cassian's shoulder and pointed towards a hunched figure climbing up a dune further along the beach.

  At first glance Cassian mistook it for a castaway of some sort. In the poor light and driving rain it looked a lot like the creature was draped in rags and wearing some kind of tattered hat on it's head. Only the odd gleam to it's head and arms gave Cassian pause.

  They hunkered down by the nearest dune and did their best to watch the thing unobserved.

  "Do you think it's some kind of shipwreck survivor?" Marta asked.

  "Not likely," Cassian replied. "Ships don't sail near the Drownway, it's too risky. If someone jumped off a sinking ship they'd have to go far out of their way to wind up here rather than somewhere closer to civilization. It's not impossible but it is very hard to imagine."

  "More of our friends from a couple of days ago?" Adalai suggested.

  "Seems the most likely to me," Cassian said.

  "What is he wearing?" Verina rubbed absently at the side of her face. "It looks like chainmail in this light but it also looks like he covered his face with it. I've never seen a helmet like that before."

  "They exist." Adalai tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I can't remember where it was from but I saw a helmet that covered the face with chainmail once. Looks more like he's got a tricorn than a helmet, though."

  Cassian spared the strange foriegn man a curious look. Carpathea seemed to know an awful lot of trivial details about fashion yet showed little understanding of how to apply the science to himself. "Whatever it is we should have a closer look at him. It's likely that we're going to be spending the night on the same island as him so I'd like to know who he is. Adalai, go up the dunes and flank him. I'll come along the shoreline and we'll trap him between us."

  There were some stories of the Benthic that described them as scaled like a fish so, when he finally got a good look at the figure, Cassian felt like kicking himself. The dull reflections Verina had taken for mail turned out to be the creature's skin. Adalai had guessed that the Benthic were involved in his brother's disappearance yet somehow the possibility they would encounter one of the deep dwellers that night hadn't occured to him. But when a flash of distant lightning illuminated the creature it was instantly clear what it was.

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  Blue-orange frills stuck out of its scaled head, creating the hat-like silhouette, and dark green scales covered it's entire body. Or at least what was visible under the layers of seaweed that covered its body. A strange, grayish pustule stood out in the middle of the creature's forehead slightly above its two enormous violet eyes. The sudden flash of light faded and any other details Cassian might have gathered were lost.

  The creature stopped climbing the dune and started towards him. Cassian froze and held up his hands, empty. "Greetings, dweller of the darkest oceans," he called, nearly yelling to be heard over the pounding rain. "What brings you to the airy lands of Nerona?"

  The creature gave no answer, just continued towards him, it's enormous eyes seeming to glow in the dark. Cassian slowly backed away from it. Given the creature's eyes he suspected it could see him much better than the reverse. Add to that how few stories of the Benthic didn't involve violence and he wasn't liking his odds.

  The Benthic burbled something at him and raised its arms, one bizarrely human finger pointing at Cassian, and the rain stopped. The Ironhand cursed and drew his weapons with a wave of his hand. The Benthic didn't recieve Gifts like humans but they all had the ability to control water to some extent. From the way the rain gathered in front of the creature's fingerrather than falling to the ground Cassian was willing to bet this one was very good at water manipulation.

  Before Cassian could shout a warning to the others the ball of liquid blasted at him in a torrent the size of a man's arm. He leaped out of the way, using his Gift to pull on his armor and move himself a bit further than he could normally jump. It worked but had the unfortunate side effect of yanking his armor up and out of place. He threw his daggers at the Benthic with the wave of a hand then used the distraction to pull his armor back down into it's proper place. The straps on his breastplate weren't meant to deal with that kind of torque.

  Adalai was coming over the dune at a full run but the sand was clearly slowing him down. The Benthic waved a hand and a huge wave surged out of the ocean and surged up the beach towards Cassian. He braced himself for the incoming wave but it proved unnecessary.

  For the first time since they set foot on the Drownway the Great Linnorm showed itself in full, slamming it's long, serpentine body into the wave and blasting it away into a curtain of steam. The Benthic's eyes widened even further and then it raised both hands to grab for the rain once more. A huge globe of water began to take shape over the creature's head and the Linnorm's heads responded by unleashing an earsplitting roar. Then Adalai's sword burst through the Benthic's chest and the creature spasmed and grabbed at the three inches of steel that had appeared there. The gathering rain burst out of the globe the Benthic had kept it in, drenching Adalai and washing the creature's corpse halfway down the beach.

  "Zalt," Cassian muttered. "I was hoping we could take it alive."

  "You think we could keep something like that prisoner?" Marta asked, coming up beside him. "Not even remotely possible, not with all this water around. Hessex has a coastline too, you know. Even we know better than to keep a Tide Turner prisoner on a boat or along the shoreline."

  Cassian growled in frustration. "They may have known something about the caravan."

  "Well even if they did how were we going to figure it out?" Adalai asked, trudging down to the Benthic corpse. He placed one foot in the creature's back and pulled on his sword until it came free. "I don't speak Benthic. Do you?"

  "No," Cassian admitted, feeling a bit deflated. He looked over at the ocean where the Linnorm remained, also looking out to sea. Steam rose off its body in sheets. "Better put that thing away, Verina. It might attract more of them."

  "I think it's too late for that," the yaga replied with a worried tone. "He says there's something out there, in the waves."

  "What? What exactly is it talking about? More Benthic?"

  Marta tapped him on the shoulder and pointed back the way they came. More of the creatures were pulling themselves out of the ocean onto the sandy pathway they'd turned away from just a few moments ago. In the dark and the rain it was impossible to get a count. But that wasn't the really worrying part.

  Verina pointed out at the ocean where the water had begun to churn and boil. The Linnorm watched that stretch of ocean with great interest. That interest was quickly rewarded when an enormous, eel shaped head rose out of the water, a huge, misshapen pearl in its forehead pulsing with ugly, grayish light.

  "Lovely," Cassian whispered. "A sea dragon."