On a small rock of a massive lake underground there is a small, stripped octopus eating on what he can only assume is his last meal. He was terribly injured and lost most of his tentacles and a heart. He was flung of one of the many piers on the stalactites above all the way down to the rock below. There was nothing here on this small empty rock. No lifesaving graces. No godsent miracle just moss. Only painful death awaits this small octopus so, for a final time the small octopus eats what little moss is there, he slowly crawls to the patch of moss on this rock and uses his beak to scrape it off and eat the moss, it tasted like dirt and moldy fish but he continued on as he had nothing else to do then die. He finished eating all the moss and just laid there full and annoyed, he had not done any of the things he wanted to do, what was the point of him living just to die here? And as his skin dried and his blood flow slowed, when he felt it was all coming to an end, it didn't, instead he started feeling excruciating pain.
This pain was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Every individual piece of flesh he has starts violently thrashing and spasming like they are trying to escape from the rest of his body, as what he can only assume is poison moss starts flowing throughout his body it feels like every part of him is melting and tearing and yet he is not dying. It's like he is being rebuilt and destroyed over and over. His head, which was much smaller now, has sizably increased and his skin is in a constant state of changing colors and shapes, some of which he couldn't even see, at least he couldn't see them before. His eyes grew much larger and his field of vision increased too. His lost tentacles started to regrow far faster than usual. Then everything went black. And just before he falls unconscious, he is only thinking one thing
'What the fu- '
BRRRRRROOOOOAH
A small vessel with a hull made from a strange rock like material and the sheets of the sails a grayish blue matching the colors of the water below. The ship has no flags or insignias, but it has plenty of markings and scrapes across the bow and stern of the ship. A young man perches on the forecastle deck and spots a strange glow from a rock coming into view on the starboard side of the ship. He calls for the senior spotter to report it.
"Muk, I see a strange glow to the northeast, what is it?"
Muk looks to the northeast from the quarter deck and sees it.
"Have you ever seen that before?"
"I haven't seen anything like that, not in my 20 years of bottoming. I don't think it's a crystal its to bright for that, and we are too far out for it to be manmade. Welp since you saw it you can grab it."
Beau throws a look at Muk and reluctantly grabs a fishing pole and casts the hook out and snags the strange octopus off the rock and reels it in. He inspects the strange creature and sees that it isn't moving or responding. He briefly wonders if it is dead, but his instincts tell him it is still alive. He hands the octopus to Muk to look over.
"It's a squid thing most likely an octopus of some kind. Should I put this on the pile with the rest"
Muk thinks about it for a second while inspecting the 'squid thing'. He hands it back to Beau and heads back to the quarter deck.
"Nah put it in the fancy tank, Meira likes taking care of these kind of things. Who knows maybe you discovered a new species of squid."
Beau focuses on the 'squid's' body and inspects the iridescent creature.
"Muk, it's an octopus not a squid."
"What's the difference?"
"Well squids have a more streamlined and narrow body while octopuses have a more robust and round body, and the number of appendages on an octopus is- "
Muk throws a pale at Beau's head, and hands him a mop.
"Go mop the deck before I explain to you what a rhetorical question is in detail! Also call me captain Roslin"
Beau makes his quick escape after placing the now classified octopus in the catch tank for rarer fish. and Muk stares at the strange octopus and wonders,
'Does it taste good?'
He shakes his head and recollects on how Meira would yell at him how rare monster species are keys to understanding the ecosystem of the lake but to him fish are just fish. Besides, he hasn't seen Meira in a while so it would make a pretty good gift for his sweet little girl.
...
I wake up groggy and confused, as my vision starts to clear I can see I'm in some kind of glass tank and for the first time ever I had my second coherent thought.
'Where am I?'
I look out the top of the tank and see I'm on a boat of some kind with a large pile of assorted fish on the front of the ship from small bass sized fish, to monstrously large fish with holes in the forehead and side. Between me and the pile of dead fish is a large hook in the center of the boat, I see a boy mopping the deck and another boy sorting the large pile of fish into boxes and transporting them below deck. I then watch as an old hunched over man with a dinky little fishing rod pull in a massive 20-foot shark-looking monster with rock like skin and rows of teeth shiny like steel. The shark looking monsters tries leaping towards the small old man, and the old man in a swift clean motion stabs the shark through the roof of its mouth and into the brain of shark, instantly killing it.
'Oh, now I'm fucked.'
My mind started to scream at me to run, to get out, but u just couldn't move out of sheer terror.
'What are these guys? Why am I here? How am I here?
'Did they catch me when I passed out? Why am I still alive in the first place?'
My hearts were racing; my mind was blanking.
'Am I going to die here? me?!'
As I began to panic, I started to slow down and reason what was happening to me.
'Think I'm on a boat with very powerful humans and other dead fish, wait what's a boat? Wait, what are humans? How do I know that? What THE HELL WAS IN THAT MOSS?'
And as he is asking these questions to himself, two of the crew men approach his tank. One of them has very large glasses and short black hair. The other has brown hair and a stubble and is holding a mop. The one with glasses says.
"Wow you're so lucky to have caught this Beau, I have never seen anything like this do you think the captain is going to reward you for this?"
"That old man is a cheap scape, but he says his going to give it to his daughter the next time he sees her."
"Do you mean Meira the witch"
"Don't let the captain catch you saying that Oscar, he might have you keelhauled."
Oscar gave beau a look and whispered.
"But didn't she experiment on those sailors who came back with weird spots on their body until they died"
"I don't know the details but all I know is she likes collecting various strange fish, but no one knows what she does with them-"
I immediately leak a tiny bit of ink in fear.
As beau was finishing what he was saying, the old man from earlier approaches beau. Breathing down his neck beau turns to the old man.
"Oh, Muk we were only talking about the- "
"I don't care what you were talking about get back to work and prepare for the anchor drop!"
"Also, its Captain Roslin, go cut up the Stonetooth and place its part in the lower deck."
Both crewman with a face of what can only be described as a "oh shit" expression both in unison respond with.
"Yes Captain!"
As they both make their escape back to their various duties on board.
Left alone in the tank I start to wonder what I should do next. Clearly fighting is not an option with that super strong captain here, so the next best option is my favorite option, really the best option in any situation. Escape as fast as you possibly can. This tank is pretty small but these sailors left the lid open so I can squeeze myself off. I can figure out why I 'am so smart now or why I feel so different later, right now my number one priority is getting back into the water.
Just then the captain walks towards my tank and grabs the lid from the side of tank and places it over my tank sealing me in
"can't have the star of the show flying off now, can I?"
He says rhetorically and walks back up to the stairs to the quarter.
'Damn these sailors. Can he read my mind? Did he eat the moss too? It doesn't matter, I just have to wait until I get the right opportunity to escape this tank, there aren't many guys here, it should be easy while there sailing around or when they leave the ship I will just sneak out and- '
"Drop anchor!" the captain yells from the helm of the ship to the crew and into a small device on his right
Just then I hear the faint clacking of chains moving getting louder and louder incredibly quickly. I look for where the sound is coming from.
'OH, WHAT IS IT NOW! Ah it doesn't matter I just have to hope off this ship before anything weird happens-'
And then I see it, a massive chain much larger than that shark from earlier falls from the ceiling above and stops just inches from crashing into the ship. Then the two young sailors gawking at me earlier grab the large chain and attach it to the hook in the middle of the ship then immediately lock it in in a smooth motion. The man Oscar yells to Beau.
"Locked in, send us up."
He immediately hit the chain with a strange vibrating rod that creates a strange resonance between the chains going all the way up beyond where I can see from my small tank. Then the ship begins to slowly rise out of the water below as the chains slowly lift us up. For the second time in this miserable day, I repeat.
'What the fu.'