This story was originally published in Dark Worlds Magazine #6. Now it's my free gift to you. Have fun.

THE SEA DEMON OF CALIA

by

Martin Edward Stephenson

The slayer set his broad blade on the table before him as he sat. Scars lined the thick tines of the sword’s hilt and the leather grip of its handle was well worn. His short, unstrung bow and a full quiver of arrows leaned against the wall, beneath his hung cloak at the tavern’s bolted door. One of his hosts, the tavern keeper, set a squat mug of wine near the sword.

“No thanks,” the slayer said, “Perhaps when we’ve finished.” He crossed his arms and set his callused elbows on the table’s edge. “How much?”

The tavern keeper furrowed his brow and glanced crosswise at his partners, the spokesman for the Guild of Fishermen, a grim, thick-muscled man, and a raven-haired woman.

“What is your name, slayer?” Her voice was heavy with an eastern accent.

The slayer hesitated, studying the woman. What had brought so fair a woman to such a place? His eyes caught the glint of thin, bejeweled gold links as they fell across her bosom; half hidden beneath the red silken robe she wore under her overcoat. Of course.

“Urnos. My name is Urnos.”

“A Pictani,” said the fisherman. “I thought you had the look.” He glanced at his partners as he spoke. “A fierce people.”

Urnos’s ice-like eyes and tanned skin made him stand out wherever he went. His foreign features kept most people at a distance. His grim glare could be discomforting.

The tavern keeper stared down at the wood grain of the table’s surface and shuffled his wide frame in his seat. He felt as though he were sitting across the table from a hill lion in the disguise of a man.

“I once met a Pictani soldier turned fishmonger up the coast, in the north,” the fisherman said.

“How much?”

“Don’t you want to know what we want done?” asked the tavern keeper. Giggling, the woman took Urnos’s untouched wine.

“You want someone killed,” Urnos said.

The fisherman leaned forward as if to convey a secret.

“Someone and something,” said the woman, cutting her co-conspirator off. She took a long pull from the mug, finishing its contents, and then set it down with graceful, well-kept hands.

The fisherman shook his head. “No one comes here any more,” he said. “At first, the merchant traders and sailors began avoiding us at night…”

“They stopped coming ashore,” interrupted the tavern keeper, “I’ve had to row skins of wine and casks of ale, out, past that place, and get back before sunset. Now they don’t stop here at all.”

Urnos had seen the small island, a jagged collection of dark rock that sat at the entrance to the sheltered harbor of Calia. The noontime sun had shone atop a small red dome sitting nestled amongst crown of short crags.

Only days before he’d found a withered piece of vellum nailed to a crossroads post, leagues inland. Slayer needed at the Port of Calia, it had read. Payment in Coin. Professionals Only. He’d come on foot, his last horse gone lame weeks before.

“No tavern-goers,” said the woman, “means no work for my girls.”

“The men of our guild won’t take to their boats at night any longer,” said the fisherman. “They can’t catch enough fish in the daylight to sustain our businesses.” His callused hands went to his sunburned temples, then to his weathered cheekbones. “That’s what most people do here in Calia. We fish at night, clean and salt our catch by day, then sell them up and down the coast, even inland.” He rested his head on one hand, covering half his face. “Now, what fish we do manage to cure, no one will buy.” He shook his head, muttering. “They say even our fish are accursed.”

“You still haven’t told me whom,” Urnos glanced at the brothel keeper, “or what, it is, that you want dead.”

She bit the long, painted nail of her thumb. The tavern keeper began staring at the tabletop again. The spokesman for the Guild of Fishermen took up his secretive posture. “It comes at night,” he said. “A demon.” He closed his sea-worn eyes, and then re-opened them.

“Sounds like you need a priest, not me,” Urnos said.

“They’ve tried that,” the brothel keeper said. Her face grew blank.

“Said he was from far off Numina,” the fisherman said, “he read the entrails of a shark we’d caught him. Said we’d offended some unknown god of the sea.” His eyes became distant. “Said we needed to offer a sacrifice.”

“They tied one of my prettiest girls to an old column by the sea.” The woman looked at the fisherman seated beside her; he refused to return her stare. “Sharna is her name.” She looked at Urnos. “We listened to her scream and whimper; her terror echoed up the street all night long.” She closed her painted eyelids. “In the morning she was still there, tied to that pillar. Her hair, once blacker than mine own, had turned as white as snow.” The woman opened her eyes. “She lingers in a small room I gave her. The other girls clean, feed, and bathe her. She will not speak or meet anyone’s eyes.” She looked at the fisherman and the tavern keeper, who offered no defense. “Their priest took another of my girls, a skin of his finest wine,” she said, pointing at the tavern keeper, “stole a horse, and trotted off before they could catch him.”

“It leaves large sodden footsteps along the wharf and up along the cobbles that lead up to town,” the tavern keeper said, changing the subject without looking up, “I peered through a crack in the shutters as it passed one night.” The old man shuddered. “Wet and yellow-white, even without the light of the moon.” He looked up at Urnos. “Upright, like a man it walked. Taller than you, slayer.” He shuddered again. “And wider. Giant hands with long, taloned fingers.” His fat face grew firm in its stare. “And his face…” He spat on the sawdust floor, ridding his mouth of the accursed words. “I dare not say.”

“So this demon, you say, hasn’t killed anyone.”

“Sailors have disappeared,” the fisherman said, “some small dogs, cats, gone without a trace.” His face grew flushed. “What little fish we manage to set to curing, it comes and splinters our sheds, taking it away.”

“So you don’t know that this, thing,” Urnos said, “has killed anyone? I mean, sailors jump ship at every port landing. Cats and dogs missing? Is this a joke?” The slayer’s hand went to his sword. He wanted it back on his belt. He wanted to be clear of these fools; clear of Calia.

“It’s killing our businesses,” said the woman, “it’s killing our small little town by the sea.” She tried to drink more wine, and then remembered the mug was empty. “Kill it for us, Urnos the Pictani.” Her beauty became sarcastic, as did her voice. “Urnos the Slayer.” Her voluptuous form was steady and practiced, but the wine was loosening her tongue, and her frustration.

Urnos stood. “You say it leaves footprints?”

“Yes,” said the tavern keeper.

“Where I come from the people believe demons are ghosts and phantoms,” Urnos said. “Ghosts and phantoms don’t leave tracks. How much?”

“Fifty solid coins,” said the fisherman, “gold coins.”

Urnos kept his brow from rising. He kept a smile from leaping onto his face. He swallowed. “Sounds fair,” he said.

“For the demon’s head, and its master’s head too,” said the woman.

“Its master?” Urnos’s brow won the battle. It rose. His mouth went grim.

“Out on the island,” said the tavern keeper, “the sorceress who lives out on the island.”

***

The flaming disk of the sun fell fast beneath the horizon. Warm light peeked out from behind the bolted doors and shuttered windows of whitewashed huts, villas, and shops that cascaded down to the small wharf. The cobbled path that flowed through Calia was deserted. Even the gulls had left for the night to scavenge elsewhere.

Urnos had the fisherman bring a crate loaded with half-cured fish out to the small plaza that met the land’s edge of the short pier. He had it placed before the ancient black-marble column at the plaza’s center, the same column where the fisherman and his mob had tied the unfortunate harlot, Sharna. The slayer positioned an empty cart at the plaza’s edge, some twenty wide steps from the crate of fish, then climbed in, his sword sheathed at his side, his bow strung, an arrow notched and ready. The cart reeked of dead fish. Scales decorated the rough wood, catching the moonlight like thin pearls. A single desiccated fish lay next to him, its blank black eye staring. “Don’t say a word, little friend,” Urnos warned.
Below the pier, shoved half ashore on the narrow stretch of sand, a fishing boat waited, its small sail rigged and ready. The quiet sea licked the back of its worn hull with a consistent rhythm.

Something sloshed in the water at the end of the pier.

Urnos peeked over the cart’s siding. At first, it looked as though someone had tossed a large albino fish up onto the dock. The thing flopped itself forward a few feet along the pier then stopped. Elongated fins stretched, became elbows unfolding into long thin limbs, and then outstretched a mockery of oversized hands. The creature raised its wide shoulders off the wooden planks. Legs unfolded, and the thing stood.

Beyond the pier and its monstrous guest, an undulating pulse of soft green light seethed from beneath the dome on the island.

The creature made a guttural croak and began to plod forward on its wide, webbed feet. The half-full moon shone on its white bulk; mottled yellow streaks coursing over its translucent hide. Lightless round eyes mimicked the stare of the dead fish at Urnos’s side. Its elongated face was more sea bass than human; its scaled lips struggling for breath like a fish out of water as the gill slits along its bulbous neck wheezed, purging thin streams of water. The sea-demon stopped, its tapered nostrils flaring, tasting the night. Its senses caught the smell of the prize waiting in the plaza. It lumbered forward, croaking and wheezing.

Urnos drew his bow.

The creature reached the open crate. It moved its head from side to side as if searching in caution then drove its face into the fish. It came up, its mouth held high, as half the crate’s contents slid down its gullet. Urnos rose up from the wagon on one knee and let loose an arrow. The shaft made a wet popping sound as it hit the pale creature’s side, piercing where most creatures held their heart and lungs. The arrow fell to the plaza’s flat marble pavement, having passed through its target. The creature spun, gripping the wet, wheezing wounds at its sides. Another arrow pierced its translucent chest, then another. The monster croaked a bloody froth; the dark fluid poured from its wounds. It tried to step away from the crate, heading for the pier, then fell forward onto the pavement with a heavy slap. It rolled onto its back, its webbed feet and elongated fingers clawing at the moon, as it twitched and shuddered in its death throes.

Urnos reached his prey, his sword held high with both fists. The demon’s eyes stared up at him, blank and expressionless. The final gasping croak it made sounded like a plea, a question.

The sword flashed, sheering through the creature’s pale hide until blade bit stone. Viscous gore pumped dead fish out from the throat of the severed neck. A heavy sea-stench filled the plaza’s night air. Urnos stepped away, removing his cloak. He wiped his blade clean on the thick gray wool. He’d buy a new cloak with the gold he’d now half-earned. He flung the garment onto the creature’s head and picked up the horrid prize, then made his way towards the awaiting boat.

“Now let’s go visit your master.”

***

Urnos had little experience boating, but enough to get the short craft back and forth from the island with the steady breeze that filled the sail. Stealth, surprise and a low tide would be his champions; his sword and bow would be his tools.

The eerie lights that lined the sorceress’s domed abode hadn’t faltered after the creature’s demise. The island’s short, jagged peaks cast stark shadows under the moonlight, softened only by the strange green illumination.

When Urnos had asked his employers about the sorceress and her island abode, their responses had been short and lacking.

“She once lived here, in Calia,” said the tavern keeper. Xeethara is her name; we thought her a healer, at first.”

“A robber of graves,” the fisherman had offered, “a necromancer. We didn’t want her kind around here.”

“They drove her down to the pier one night and threw her into the ocean,” said the brothel keeper.

“What about that dome?” Urnos asked.

“Ruins before Xeethara got there,” said the fisherman. “During a heavy fog one night, those strange lights began. She’d somehow rebuilt and polished the place red by the time we awoke the next day. Everyone steers clear of it now.”

“Dark magic,” said the tavern keeper, “dark magic indeed.”

“Even if she’s not the cause behind the demon,” said the brothel keeper, her accent thicker from the wine, “we want her gone.”

“You mean you want her dead,” Urnos had said.

He pulled into the darkness along the south side of the small island, the furthest point away from the domed temple. The boat’s hull nestled into a large bed of exposed mussel. He set a slack of rope in the bow and dropped the heavy bronze anchor between the boat and the jagged shore. Should he be long, the tide would rise and bring the craft up to him.

Urnos stepped from the boat, his bow and quiver on his shoulder, his sword balanced in one hand. His boots sank to the ankles amongst the mollusk-laden outcrop. As he pulled his foot free, stepping up onto a cleft in the rocky shoreline, something pulsed in the tide pool beneath him. The black surface of the water rolled. An anemone as tall and as thick as his own leg cleared the pool in a shower of seawater, the tentacles that lined its head closing around his boot like a throbbing vice. Its translucent flesh sheathed corded, iridescent muscle that fought to pull the slayer into the depths. Urnos stabbed at the fleshy invertebrate again and again, trying to avoid slicing through his own foot. He pulled himself up into the shadowed cleft and heaved, the anemone’s fibrous head tearing free along its wounds, releasing its grip, falling back into the lightless pool. The leather of Urnos’s thick boot was etched and steaming with putrid vapors. He risked thrusting his foot back down into the sea to wash away the thing’s acidic venom. It worked. He pulled himself up through the cleft and into dry shadows.

The oversized anemone’s attack had heightened Urnos’s already keen senses. This Xeethara, if she hadn’t drowned when the townsmen of Calia had thrown her into the sea, if it was she, in fact, who now made this island her home, had used her dark craft to build defenses. Unnatural defenses. Anemones didn’t attack men, at least not in any tales the slayer knew.

Urnos stepped into the moonlight. The grit beneath his boots soon gave way to weather-worn slabs of joined marble pavement, much like the seaside plaza in Calia. A path of the smooth stone led away towards the eerie green glow emanating from the temple. He went forward with swift caution, moving from shadow to shadow. As the path rounded the crown of short crags that lined the temple and its dome, the slayer spotted a tall figure. He fell back behind the stone, composed himself, and then dared a second look.

Atop a short, black pedestal stood a pale fish-headed form, a taller twin of the creature whose head now rested back in the boat. The temple’s sorcerous glow framed the creature’s inhuman form. Urnos went to it, tapping his blade against the sculpted stone. Set in its carved face were two polished obsidian orbs staring out across the harbor towards the faint glow where Calia’s fearful residents huddled behind their doors. A simple black-marble block sat before the idol. Urnos ran his hand across worn gashes in the stone, and then withdrew it in disgust. This was a place of sacrifice.

Urnos moved on; the wide, cyclopean steps that led up to the temple were now in sight.

Unseen by its visitor, the statue turned its head and watched as the slayer glided away.

The slayer sheathed his sword as he mounted the first of the giant steps. He put a shaft to his bow, his quiver straddling his shoulders for a quick reload.

The crimson dome loomed above, a solid piece of unbelievable craftsmanship. It capped a low, round building which also shared the quality of having been hewn out of a solid, immense block of the blood-red stone. A small collection of tall columns held a dark slab over the entrance. He could see no other way into the temple. The drifting shadows left and right of the building curved away into the darkness, merging with the island’s natural stone. The entry held no doors, just the constant pulse of green light, like a torch drowning beneath the sea.

Urnos cleared the last of the colossal steps, weaving with caution through the columns. As he entered the pale emerald glow, the heady scent of beach-rot filled his senses. Passing over the temple’s threshold, he made a silent gasp. It was as though he’d dived underwater. Air came to his anxious lungs, but it was thick and humid. A solid round chamber greeted his salt-stung eyes. Like the upturned talons of the man-fish he’d slain, or the idol he’d just passed by, massive stone buttresses lined the walls, the dark material melding into the domed ceiling at its apex.

Before him, another set of steps cascaded down into the wide, polished chamber. A large cistern sat at the chamber’s center, a solid well of ebon stone. Its mouth held the source of the awful glow; tall, ethereal green flames danced and flowed within, pulsing and writhing though Urnos felt no draft passing over his flesh. The flames seemed more fountains than fire; no heat gathered within the chamber, just the slow rhythm of the cold, emerald pyre.

The watery flames rose, then parted as their dance continued; something was emerging from below the light-dappled rim of the well.

Her flesh was like naked ivory, whiter than the sea foam of a broken wave. Her form was fair and lithe as she rose like a phantom from the swirling green flames and stepped out onto the floor. Her hair moved as if underwater, a jade mass of flowing seaweed; a blue sea snake moved through her unnatural locks, scattering an array a tiny hermit crabs in its wake. She turned and stared at her visitor. Urnos tightened the pull of his bowstring. He’d never seen such terrible beauty. Her eyes were sapphire opals mixed with black coral.

“What do you seek?” Her voice was the ocean upon a reef, the ebb and flow of the tides.

“I seek Xeethara.”

The sea-demoness gazed into the pool she’d risen from; its light shifting across her exotic features. “Yes,” she recalled, “that was my name before Dagoth saved me, before he transformed me.” She looked at her hands as though they were new to her. “Am I not beautiful?” She seemed unaware of the threat her visitor posed.

“I’ve come for you, sorceress,” Urnos said.

“Am I not beautiful?” Her voice poured into the slayer’s mind, threatening to drown him in its flood.

Xeethara’s face rose, her petite nostrils flaring. “You’ve the blood of my firstborn upon you.” She began to drift forwards, towards Urnos, over the well, through the flames, across the chamber. “He was simple, useless. He lacked the aggression his father demands.” Her eyes began to glow as if lit from within by green flames. "But still he was my child!" Her words became a raging torrent, a thousand swells crashing all at once.

Urnos shook his head free of her voice as she reached the base of the steps. The arrow disappeared between her pale breasts, and then slid across the floor beyond her, a dark stream in its wake. As he notched a second shaft, she was upon him. She slapped his bow aside with one swift hand, and gripped his throat with the other. Her strength was overwhelming.

“How dare you harm the Consort of the Lord of the Deep?” Her dark blood sprayed down onto Urnos’s face with each raging word she spoke. Black gore poured from the wound in her bosom. “Even now I hold the seeds of Dagoth’s spawn within me!”

As the oncoming blackness began to flood into Urnos’s brain, Xeethara loosened her hold upon his neck. His hand found his sword’s grip and unsheathed it. The blade drew a dark line across the sorceress’s white belly.

She stammered backwards, balancing at the top of the steps. Her wound opened, flooding the polished stone at her feet with a deluge of gore and fist-sized, iridescent nodules. One of them rolled before the tip of Urnos’s boot. Black eyes blinked up at him from within the small, milky globe. He kicked the fetid thing away as he lunged forward. His sword flashed and Xeethara’s head fell, settling upon the top step, in the mass of her kelp locks, as her ruined body toppled over backwards, down into the chamber.

Urnos sheathed his sword and retrieved his bow, slinging it upon his shoulder. With both hands he lifted his gruesome prize and stared into her face. Her dead mouth made a silent, dripping hiss as the faint glow of life left her strange eyes. He knotted the tubes of her thick hair around his belt and made for the entryway.

Behind him, the temple floor rumbled. The whole island shook and shuddered.

The chamber’s floor buckled and cracked as the well of ethereal flames disappeared down, into the flooding gap of rising seawater. Gigantic red tentacles tore through the shattered stones, reaching up, licking the apex of the domed ceiling.

A huge, bulbous form arose at the chamber’s rent center, its titanic mass unable to push all the way through.

The temple shook again, and Urnos fell back, catching himself as he stumbled over the threshold. Waves of teeth-clenching pain crashed into his mind. He fought the rush of insanity and gazed back into the chamber. A huge round eye of terrible intelligence stared back at him.

Without thought, Urnos loosed an arrow into the temple, piercing the great eye. His massive red limbs tore the temple’s dome, pulling it down upon him as he sank back beneath the island. Mountainous fountains of crimson sea shot skyward then fell inward upon themselves, and then down into the deafening vacuum of the ruined temple.

Urnos ran down the cascade of shifting, crumbling steps.

The faint haystack of red morning light began to rise in the east as Urnos reached the rock cleft above his awaiting boat. Another small craft sat tethered alongside his, bobbing up and down in the thrashing surf, as the island continued to heave and sway. Rocks crashed into the water all around them. A frightened, familiar face stared up at him. It was the fisherman. He held the jagged tip of short spear over his shoulder, ready to cast it. “You’ll not leave this island, Pictani.”

As the jagged shore gave way beneath his boots, Urnos leaped into the fisherman’s boat, unsheathing his sword as he fell.

***

As morning began to bathe the Port of Calia, its cautious inhabitants fed into the plaza to examine the headless remains of the monster that had haunted their small city. One brave youngster poked at the pale corpse with a length of stick. The beast’s rotting stench filled the air.

The accursed island at the harbor’s entrance had sunk halfway into the churning sea. A rumbling earthquake and the violent battering of high surf had shaken their ocean-bound settlement just before the break of day.

“Seems the Guild of Fishermen didn’t want to pay their share of the bounty.”

The crowd parted at the sound of the thick, foreign voice, leaving the tavern keeper and the brothel keeper alone at the center of the plaza. Urnos held his gore soaked cloak over his shoulder, like a sack of fish, with one hand. Rivulets of saltwater and blood ran down his stern face as he tossed Xeethara’s hideous beauty at their feet. “Twenty-five solid gold coins for that one.” He pulled his makeshift sack over his chest and drew out the man-fish’s monstrous head, setting it beside its mother’s. “Twenty-five solid gold coins for this one, too.” He looked into the brothel keeper’s painted, almond eyes, as he again, reached into his cloak.

He pulled out the head of the traitorous fisherman.

The crowd gasped. The woman smiled.

“And this one is for the white-haired harlot, Sharna,” Urnos said with a morbid grin, “for free, on me.”

© Martin Edward Stephenson
Art courtesy of the amazing Justin Sweet with his kind permission.