A monsoon had thrust the S.S. Javelin, a Fort Knoxan gunship, out of the Gaia sea and into this island’s maw, deep down its dark caverns. Now, Captain Bluestar knew what it was like to be the grapes in her ale.
Holed up in her quarters, she read notes from her crew. She tallied the days in white chalk on her desk, waiting for the right tide to flush them out. A fortnight of lines marked the desk. Escape was wishful thinking.
Anne Tidewalker, their Consultant of Esoterica, left notes for the Captain.
The library is still secure. I saved as many records from the flood as I could.
Anne read poetry to Bluestar during their restless evenings. “Moon Demons” by Nageku the Maid was their last read, dreadful accounts of moonspawn that landed at sea. But Anne’s voice was a siren’s song to Bluestar. She’d listen to her read anything. Temptation tugged the Captain’s hard-boiled heart to have her visit and read again if these would be their last nights alive.
The walls are close enough for a seaman to reach out and touch the damp rock. We keep sweeping crimson crabs off the deck into the shallow river. They keep coming back.
Perhaps they’d eat the crabs if they got desperate. But their crimson shells didn’t sit right with Bluestar.
Her mechanic had left notes as well.
Her hull is torn from the forceful entry. Bilgewater is still flooding the place. And there’s too many crabs.
Soft lantern light, burning leviathan blubber, glowed green on Bluestar’s face like an icy cliffside under an aurora. The cast on her leg kept her immobilized. She hated sitting here, doing nothing.
Her weaponsmith had only one thing to say.
What’s with all of these bloody crabs?
A knock rattled her door, followed by a sweet voice breaking the stale silence. “Captain, it’s Tidewalker.”
“Anne?” Bluestar panicked. Her desk was disorganized. Her hair was matted and greasy. She whipped her brunette locks, tying a messy bun. Then she madly shoved her papers into a stack. “Come in.”
The door creaked as Anne entered. She held her clipboard and notebooks close to her chest. Her adorable academic sailor uniform, elegantly white and sea green, repelled all dirt. The Fort Knoxan Navy badge, a green turtle shell inside a cog, glinted on her bosom.
“I have news from the cave search team.”
“Did they find a way out?”
Anne shook her head. “Our scouts returned from the cave’s deeper throat.” Her glasses shone like binary emerald moons from the green flame on the Captain’s desk. She pushed them up her nose. “They reported they went in a circle back to our wreckage, even though they had gone in a straight line, or so they say.”
Bluestar sighed, covering her face.
“They’re trying their best,” said Anne.
“No… It’s my fault. I led us through that storm.”
“You’re trying your best, too, Captain.”
“Can’t do much of nothing like this.” Bluestar slouched in her chair and chuckled. “Maybe this is punishment for being a coward and swerving into that storm instead of attacking the Fort Gensokyoan ship.”
They had orders to fire, to sink the enemy, or ram it. Even if it meant all of their lives. But the Gensokyoan ship was a destroyer beast. It would’ve tanked their little gunship Javelin. Bluestar only had two years as a Captain. Were they really as expendable as sardines to Fort Knox, the country she served?
“The crew greatly appreciates that, actually,” said Anne. “‘Being stuck in a dank cave beats wartime.’” She mimicked a soldier’s gravelly voice.
Anne’s glasses slipped, lanternlight brushing her hazelnut eyes. “And honestly, the leisure time with you hasn’t been so bad. Of course, I miss my family back at Fort Knox, but… we’re all family here, right?”
Bluestar fought to contain a peachy blush from breaking her stone-like composure. The young woman had a way of melting Bluestar’s iceberg facade. The Captain looked down at her papers. “Thank you, Scholar Tidewalker. You may go.”
There was a beat of silence, and dead wind drifted through the wooden cracks. Anne nodded and turned on a heel toward the door.
“Come read again,” Bluestar let slip, pausing Anne in her tracks. “When you find the time.” She said it as an invitation. Not an order.
Anne smiled. “I’ll make time.”
The scholar made her leave, and the Captain’s quarters hushed quiet once more. Bluestar breathed a sigh. She was refreshed.
Until there were thuds in the dark.
Scuttling scurried in the shadows. Thousands of prickly taps on wood sent shudders up Bluestar’s spine. She twisted the knob on her lantern, burning more fuel. The green fire raged bright, illuminating an anchor-shaped chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Her knife display case stood on the North wall, fifty paces from her desk.
Crabs swarmed the floor, crimson shells glowing under lanternlight. They poured in from the vents, tiny bodies piled up, and their individuality blurred to coagulate into a goliath. There stood an eldritch presence of humanoid stature, though distinctly crustacean. Massive claws. Long, black stalks for eyes. And a blossoming, folding mouth.
Though every fiber of her being vibrated with fear, Bluestar kept her composure. Bluestar was still a Captain, so she’d act like one.
This thing. She’d read about them in survival manuals and heard stories, but never thought she’d see one. Brinesprites, as scholars labeled them. Thought to have evolved from fallen moonspawn.
Its chitinous body shifted like waves. A chaotic form that changed every time she blinked. “You are in my domain,” it said, clicking its mandibles, “the Drain.” Ghastly wails of suffering souls cursed its breath.
“Sorry to intrude, your-” Bluestar addressed the creature politely, poking for a name.
“I am aware of everything in my lair.” It pointed its meaty claw at Bluestar. “You seek to escape,” then it tapped its chest, “I offer a contract in good taste.”
It didn’t give up its name, not even a hint. Worth a shot. Speaking of, Bluestar leaned back into her seat, resting her arms. She reached under her desk, covertly, for her revolver. “Spill it.”
“Hand over the souls of your crew to me. To you, they entrusted their destinies. That’s your price to leave.”
“Trust?” she chuckled. “I don’t have these drafted people’s trust.” Bluestar flipped open the cylinder, loading iron bullets. Anne said iron to brinesprites was like salt to a sea slug.
She scanned the brinesprite as it stated terms, trying to determine where its voidheart was— the source of its power. Though incorporeal, iron could purify it.
“Matters not, you see.” The brinesprite raised its gnarled claw and snapped it to emphasize its point. “They are your crew, and you are their Captain. That is the law of the sea.”
She glanced at the book pile Anne had read to her. All their nights together. A life without her seemed like a shitty bargain.
“I see the way you look at her.” Damned voices clung to its words. “Give me Anne’s destiny. I’ll ensure you’ll be together.”
A sinful impulse pulled her nerves. But Bluestar didn’t want what she had with Anne to be tainted with a brinesprite’s promise. Nothing real or worth a damn came from them.
That’s it.
“Let me think about it for a fortnight.”
“What?”
“It’s a big decision, sacrificing my crew. I need time to mourn.”
Erratic ripples on the brinesprite’s body distorted its form. “You have no time to waste. You must decide with haste.”
Bluestar grinned. “Why? Before your glamour wears off?”
The brinesprite boiled where it stood, shell burning bright. Bluestar had her answer. This “Drain” was a temporary illusion, the brinesprite’s trap door for its prey, scamming captains out of their crew.
Captain Bluestar wore a triumphant smirk. “All I need to do is wait it out.” She cackled.
“If I’m not fed, you’ll still be dead.”
Bluestar stopped laughing.
The brinesprite stomped forward, floorboards groaning under its weight. Its claw snatched the desk, throwing it across the room like paper. The lantern burst, and emerald fire spread, casting the side of the brinesprite in a dreadful shadow writhing like tentacles.
Bluestar aimed her gun at its stomach. Its claw snared her wrist. She tried to fire, but her nerves didn’t respond. The claw twisted hard. It squeezed a banshee scream from her. Its second claw clasped her neck, pinching her throat tight.
“As you can feel.”
It lifted her with ease, then threw her to the floor.
“My strength is real.”
It kicked Bluestar, punting her across the room. She crashed into the knife case. Glass shattered and rained on her. She hissed as blood stained her teeth. Internal organs ruptured.
The brinesprite lumbered to her, parting the fire like a curtain. “Perhaps reconsider my deal?”
Bluestar rolled and threw a knife at it. The brinesprite dodged, and the knife cut the ropes holding the anchor chandelier. It unraveled, hung by a thread, and then the decoration crashed. The brinesprite hopped out of the way, avoiding the iron hazard before it punched a crater in the wooden floors.
“Pathetic,” it scolded.
The floor groaned and relieved itself, buckling under the anchor’s weight. The crab-thing fell with the anchor onto the deck below. It landed on the anchor’s arms and iron flukes pierced its hide, sizzling at the entry wounds. The damned creature laid motionless, bleeding purple blood.
Bluestar peeked down the floor cavity. Her quarters had a giant hole now, but it was worth it to kill brinesprite scum. “Try pulling out of that one!”
It twitched and stretched its arms, trying to pull itself off.
“Fuck me,” Bluestar cursed. She wasn’t as lucky as she thought.
A harpoon pierced its leg, staking the crab-fiend’s body to the floor. White-meat and blue-blood spilled out of its shell. It bellowed a nerve-rippling shriek.
“What is that?” shouted someone.
“Bloody hell, it’s a moonspawn!” another hollered.
Bluestar pointed straight down at the creature. “Stake’em with iron! Find its voidheart!”
A mob flooded into the room. Infantrymen, chefs, and scholars, wielding harpoons, skillets, and rifles. Anything iron. They plunged their makeshift charms into the creature’s squirming body, cracking its shell and searing through flesh. The brinesprite thrashed as it burned alive.
“The stomach!” blared the Captain.
The brinesprite howled in a strange tongue, rippling waves in space like tsunamis, commanding reality to repulse the crewmates. A seaman thrust his harpoon, iron piercing through the fiend’s curse, deep into its twisted flesh. He pushed, and his crewmates threw their might into it with him, plunging far enough to strike its voidheart. The iron purified the miasmic presence from the brinesprite’s vessel. The carcass went limp.
The brinesprite’s voidheart evaporated into fumes steaming out of the gaping wounds. All the sailors’ souls it ate over the centuries swam out of its maw like a cloud of krill, finally free.
It took days for the glamour to wear off. The Javelin rested on a black beach. Still shipwrecked, but better than being spawn-food. Though they were in abundance, no one dared to eat the crabs.
Crewmates stripped parts from the Javelin and made shack-like camps. Chefs resorted to fishing. Without magic blocking their signals, technicians worked to get radios working to contact Fort Knox. Scholars wrote messages on doves and sent them on their way, hoping they would cross the sea and find rescue.
Bluestar would work, but she was snug in more bandages than before the shipwreck. She rested on Anne’s lap under a tent. Anne read macabre verses from “Field Fiends,” by Kakachii the Maid, tales of moonspawn on land. Bluestar doubted they were more fearsome than the ones at sea. She paused, and Bluestar opened her eyes from imagining Anne’s siren-like voice to look up from Anne’s lap.
“What you did for us, I’ll never forget it,” said Anne.
Bluestar was enchanted. “Anything for family. Everything for you.”
Anne leaned down to meet her with a deep kiss.
About the Author
Joshua D. Martin, callsign Redplicant, is an author and lyricist who loves action-horror and retrofuturism. He earned a Creative Writing BFA from Full Sail University and is a contributing writer at Fansided’s Winter is Coming. He’s been called morbid and always assumed to be in a state of melancholy. Though true, he finds comfort in conjuring adventures through his storycraft to invoke rare emotions we long for. Joshua’s weird fiction has also been published in Black Sheep. When not ruining his characters’ lives, he’s playing RPGs, watching anime, or lifting weights so he can slay eldritch hordes.
Twitter Website Substack YouTube
