Advent Stories: The Finale of Fleets
3 weeks ago
Alex Polimeni
Admiral Ranevok Grimbreaker surveyed his armada from the tallest tower of his black ark Suncrusher, appreciating the sleek wolfships and waverunners that made up the majority of his forces while casting a side eye at the disgusting, smoke-belching duardin cog-haulers and ungainly human grand galleons. He’d be happy for their firepower and resilience in the coming days, when his crusade force reached their target: the Ossiarch fortress city of Myrnax.
They were ahead of schedule, the waters glittering azure from the cloudless skies and favourable winds the mercurial gods gifted them their entire trip . Not that the duardin vessels cared for that, nor even Ranevok’s black ark. He chuckled and sneered as he felt it vibrating, knowing that the great mantis shrimp that bore Suncrusher aloft growled with anger - and hunger. Aqshy’s hot seas provided little in the way of nutrients for the monster and he liked it that way. It was easier to control a broken monster when you controlled when and how much it got fed.
It’s why Ranevok chose the beast to build his fiefdom upon, Suncrusher growing into a veritable city like all other respectable black arks.
He also chose it for what it could do to any walls that thought to bar Ranevok from the gold and glory he desired.
Suncrusher rocked violently, Ranevok’s sea legs saving him from a tumble into the spiked oblivion of his own city. He cursed as he looked ahead and saw the seas turning choppy despite the calm weather. A sudden wave crested and overtook one of the small wolfships scouting ahead, the ship vanishing with the wave like some parlour trick. He looked around and saw more and more tides rocking the ships of his armada, heard the crack of gunfire and the screams of the dying reach him, ever so faintly, at the top of Suncrusher.
In one swift motion he had a spyglass up to his eye, looking down at a cog-hauler whose duardin crew was blasting and chopping away at some oversized crabs that the tumultuous sea had deposited on their deck. Several duardin shoveled coal in a desperate attempt to restart their engines, but the cog-hauler belched its last as something cut the iron-hided ship nearly in two.
Ranevok spat curses to all the gods of sea, ocean and spite as ever-growing waves bore down upon his ships. More and more of them, coming from all directions. A grand galleon broadsided one wave to no avail, everything - crew, masts, rigging - disappearing from its deck as the wave crashed over it. Even Suncrusher wavered as the seas betrayed them.
Thunder boomed within the seas as Suncrusher’s beast opened fire, a massive nova of superheated water exploding everywhere in every direction from the blast. Ranevok grinned as the seas calmed momentarily, his own beast clearly besting whatever nightmare tried to turn him into prey.
Then Ranevok was thrown off his feet as Suncrusher quaked. Seconds passed without abatement, the ancient Admiral carefully picking himself up and bracing against his balcony’s railing. Ranevok’s next curses drew the attention of darker powers than most would care beckon, eyes locking onto the now red sea and one of his beast’s mighty claws as it bobbed in the frothing water once, twice before sinking.
“Make to land!” Ranevok bellowed, gesturing towards the closest island.
Signals were sent by flag, smoke, and magick, and every vessel in his fleet changed course sharply to race toward that island and salvation. Ranevok raced down the stairs as Suncrusher continued to shake itself apart, the black ark’s city not built to withstand this level of torment. Every time he fell, he skittered back to his feet with desperation instead of anything resembling aelven grace. He fell only during the worst quakes and he knew those could only be caused by something killing his beast.
His fiefdom.
“Keep it alive!” Ranevok screamed as he rushed past his personal cabal of Ghyranite sorcerers, some of them already lying dead in their attempts to keep Suncrusher and its beast from beyond Shyish’s gate.
By the time he emerged on Suncrusher’s main thoroughfare or main deck, the sea behind them was dark with the lifeblood of his fiefdom and his armada. He rushed to the bow of Suncrusher, seeing too few of his ships beached on the island just ahead of them as his beast started to claw its way onto the island. One of its alien eye-stalks sensed his presence, turning up to look at Ranevok.
“Don’t you dare die!” Ranevok screamed at the monstrosity he had broken for his own benefit. His voice broke as his words turned to pleading. “You can’t! It can’t end like this!”
The creature collapsed then, finally free of its servitude in death, and in doing so spilled Ranevok overboard. He landed on its head as it lay in final sleep, tumbling off its hither-to impenetrable carapace and landing roughly in the blood-soaked sand below.
Rough hands helped him up, but Ranevok shoved them away and screamed at the survivors assembled around them. “Which one of you forgot your tithe?!”
He grabbed a nearby duardin by the beard, dragging him close. “Was it you?! Did you think Urak-Nal a myth?!”
As the duardin shook his head, Ranevok whirled on one of the in-land, desert barbarians recently assimilated into the Cities of Sigmar in Aqshy. “How about you! Have you even heard of It Who Drags Below? Or are you so illiterate I should call it Krabnos?!”
Something nipped at his heel and he kicked it before looking, seeing a crab go flying through the air to plop back into the rising water. Another crab emerged, then another. Crabs of different colours, shapes, and sizes began to crawl from the red roiling surf, the only things connecting them being strange, runic script covering their shells and the mad hunger seen in their clacking claws and writhing mandibles. What remained of his crusade force retreated a step, uttering prayers to Sigmar and their people’s other gods.
“It’s too late for that,” Ranevok sighed, drawing his cutlasses. He injected what power he could into his voice as he pointed forward. “They are the enemy! Form up and prepare to repel the assault! Save your guns for when the bigger ones show up!”
“T-that one’s man-sized!” a human shouted.
“They get bigger,” Ranevok said, spitting to the side. “A lot bigger.”
Even though he paid his dues, Ranevok knew Krabnos’ family would show him no mercy.
His fleet was already lost, a crusade’s worth of men, weapons, and relics sent to wage an entire war against the Bonereapers. But his fiefdom still stood… if a bit lopsided. Even if it couldn’t prowl the seas ever again, it was still there and it was still his.
“You can’t have it!” Ranevok Grimbreaker screamed, dodging a massive claw and skewering the crazed crab’s head. “This one is mine Krabnos! THIS ONE IS ALL MINE!”
But Ranevok and his forces fell back, step by bloody step, as the crabs continued to come and the waters continued to rise. Cutlasses and bullets skipped off thick shells, while monstrous claws snipped and crushed, leaving only a red ruin of bodies in their wake. As the front lines moved up the blood-churned sands of the beach, smaller crabs swarmed the remains, pincers plucking rings, jewels, and all that glittered before returning it to the red seas.
Ranevok’s troops held as the ogor-sized crabs emerged and smashed through platemail to pulp the man within. His troops balked as carnosaur-sized crabs required their ship-board cannons to take down. By the time a crab arrived that could out-crush a mawkrusha, his troops had pushed off and set sail once more despite the crabs swarming their ships.
Ranevok cursed their cowardice and watched their ships scuttle and sink in their vain attempts to escape the fate of all who deny Krabnos his tithe. All the while, he fought off crabs as he danced his way back up his dead beast and finally hauled himself onto Suncrusher’s deck. Water splashed as he planted his feet, looking around to see privateers and civilians alike fighting off crabs that skittered over his flooding fiefdom’s streets and buildings.
Ranevok looked upon his ruin with despair, and screamed.