The Kraken's Vengeance

Damn the landwalkers.

I let them pass in peace all through these millennia even as the younger offspring of mine would drag them down into the seas in a frenzy of territorial madness. I let them take my fish - fish that I spawned from my own body to serve as my eyes and ears in the vast depths - and let them feast upon their dead bodies. I let them poke and prod in their slow, ponderous deep-sea vessels to satisfy their curiosity about a place that is not and will never be their own.

I used to admire them in an odd and peculiar way. I observed them through the eyes of my minions, and I used to be fascinated how their own shoals grew from humble beginnings into unimaginably complex nests. I watched from the shores as they felled the great titans of the earth and sky, something both incredibly horrible and awe-inspiring at the same time.

But she was not afraid of them. She saw some of the landwalkers try and protect my minions and had this idea to try and befriend them. I bade her stay away and leave them be, but she would not listen.

Now she is joined with the rest of the great titans. I am left utterly alone in my domain, lacking a soul to pass the time with me and caress me with tendrils full of love and care.

Damn the landwalkers. Damn them all.

This day is the first that I wage the greatest of Struggles against the landwalkers. The spirits of the deceased titans of the earth and sky tell me of the unbelievable power of these landwalkers, of how foolish my desire may be, but I care little about that. The depths are mine, and none of the other titans had the power I wield in it. They do know of my fury during the Struggles of Old, but the landwalkers do not. They are young and careless and curious and foolish.

And I will make sure these humans taste of that fury from this day to the day I join the other titans - and her - in the void.

I creep along the bottom of these familiar depths and spot the shadows of my quarry on the surface above. Three landwalker vessels have been gorging themselves in a mass of fish I had deliberately sent to lure them into my trap. After a long year of depriving them of their precious harvests, of my minions slowly gnawing away at anything and everything they send into my waters, of holding back my boiling rage, of watching the landwalkers skittle about in a panic as my gifts of the seas are withheld from their voracious hunger, the landwalkers have finally come to feast and frenzy in this banquet I have laid out for them.

Their vessels are bloated with catch; slow and heavy with bellies full of my minions. The landwalkers on board cheer as they haul up the last prison containing the prize they had been seeking for the past year. Yes, keep cheering you ungrateful, traitorous scum. Today marks the first day of my Great Struggle – perhaps my last, I care not about it – with the landwalkers.

I shoot all twenty-seven of my arms through the surface of the water and up into the air. I send them crashing down into all three landwalker vessels, beating down their hard but hollow shells with all the force I could muster. Groans and creaks resonate through both air and water as the first impacts crush the softer appendages of the vessels. I whip up my arms once again and crash into the three vessels, which groan and creak even more intensely under the shock of my sinewy arms.

The landwalkers on the surface of the vessels fall into the waters, and I quickly send my minions to feast on them just as they had feasted on my minions. The ever-fierce sharks and voracious eels are quick to feed on these tasty morsels, but I pay no heed to the protests of the other minions less inclined to feed on meat. I roar at them to tear the flesh and spit it out, and they obey without question. They know my rage, and they submit to it without a thought.

No, my minions, I am no longer the benevolent and tolerant titan you knew. These landwalkers – these disgusting humans – have taken away the one thing I hold close to my heart in the most base and horrifying of treacheries.

I will pay them in kind.

And so I lead the way, wrapping another of the vessels in my arms and slowly asphyxiating it with brute force. The shell of the vessel creaks, then cracks before completely giving way. I spot a few landwalkers still trapped inside a section of the vessel that escaped the grip of my arms and turn to face them. I peer into their little bubble with both of my eyes and see their ugly little faces. I pull the vessel closer and wrap my thick hide around it right before exposing the bill I have been sharpening for over a year.

I snap my bill shut and extinguish their pathetic little lives in an instant.

I turn on another vessel and latch on with my arms. No, I’ll take my time with this one. I wrap my arms around it and begin snapping away at the shell bit by bit. I want it to bleed, to scream as she did when they dragged her out of the depths and into the open air. I want to slowly cut it up like they did to her; gutting her as if she were one of the fish I let them take from my domain. All I hear is a frustrating cracking and snapping of the shell – there was no pain in it.

One of the landwalkers comes up and points this little stick at me. A loud crack pierces the open air, then another and another. It was a weapon that one of the land titan spirits told me was used to kill it. But this weapon did not even pierce my thick hide. No, that particular land titan did not have a hide capable of resisting the crush of the deep trenches.

I swat the human away with one arm, knocking it off the vessel and into the water. I grab it with another arm and gently – so ever slowly – squeeze the life out of it.

Ah. Yes. There is the pain I have been looking for. There are the screams she screamed as she was being cut apart.

The vessel I was nibbling on finally began to sink under its own weight, and I let it fall down into the depths. My minions follow it down, with the predators consuming the flesh pouring out from its ruptured shell.

I turn and face the last vessel, mangled and badly misshapen by my attacks. A few landwalkers had the courage – or the foolishness – to walk on its surface and begin attacking with those noisy, harmless little sticks.

I had wanted so badly to let this vessel and its landwalkers share its fate with its two other brethren, but I had other uses for it. I turn to face the vessel, lift all my arms into the air and expose my fleshy core right before spraying it with dark, obfuscating ink that I keep within my body. The landwalkers caught in the spray begin retching and shaking before falling over as the paralytic toxin overpowers them.

They will live, and that is exactly what I need for my purposes.

I raise myself once again and let loose the a great roar, a primordial roar I have used only in the last Great Struggle. I will all my minions to roar with me, to leap from the waters in a chaotic swirl around the wounded vessel. Yes, humans, I declare a Great Struggle upon your kind. Know me, fear me, loathe me, for today is the day that I let loose my full rage. Know now that the depths are MY domain, landwalkers, and that you are never going to tread on it ever again!

My love, my gentle spirit, my passionate mate – did you hear the bones of these humans crack underneath my bill? Did you savor the taste of landwalker flesh floating through the swirling waters? Did you feel the pressure of their vessels sink further and further into the depths you once called home? Did you see the fear on the faces of the landwalkers – the humans – that you once blessed with favor and rewarded you with treachery?

This is my gift to you, love, and I will share to you many more gifts before joining you in the void where our spirits will meet again.