Grizzly spat a stream of brown liquid over the ship's rail, watching it vanish into the murky green soup below. The humid air hung thick, pressing against her olive-green skin. "This swamp smells worse than Tink's bunk after a bean feast," she grumbled, scratching her steel forearm against her leather vest. Captain Sera chuckled, adjusting the spyglass strapped to her belt. "Complaints already, Half-Breed? We haven't even hit the Sinking Mires yet." Black curls escaped Grizzly's messy bun, sticking to her neck. "Just statin' facts, Cap'n. Fact: it stinks. Fact: I need a drink." She thumped her war axe against the deck plank – a hollow, comforting sound.
Below deck, rhythmic hammering echoed. Tink's shrill voice pierced the din. "Stop breathin' down my neck, fish-breath! This detonator's fiddlier than a virgin's corset!" Elara's soft reply drifted up, muffled but calm. "Your volatility destabilizes the flux crystal alignment." Grizzly leaned back, stretching her powerful legs. The swamp's oppressive heat seeped into her bones, a stark contrast to the cold metal of her prosthetic arm. She watched a skeletal bird dive, emerging with something silver and wriggling in its beak. *Almost*, she thought, *almost as ugly as Uncle Borag after harvest festival*.
Lady Marquez emerged from the cabin, humming a low note that made the rigging hum in sympathy. She trailed a slender finger along the railing near Grizzly. "Restless, darling? Or merely savoring the... anticipation?" Her scent – saltwater and night-blooming jasmine – briefly cut through the swamp rot. Grizzly snorted. "Anticipatin' gettin' this over with. Squid ain't gonna skewer itself." Marquez's lips curved. "Patience tempers the blade, warrior. Even *your* blade." Her gaze flickered over Grizzly's steel hand, then back to her eyes. The air crackled, thick with something sharper than salt. Grizzly shifted her weight, the deck creaking beneath her boots. "My blade's tempered fine," she muttered, turning her gaze back to the endless, sucking green. A bubble burst on the surface, releasing a puff of sulphurous gas. Somewhere deep below, something immense stirred.
Sera's hand clamped suddenly on Grizzly's shoulder. "Starboard! Thirty degrees!" Grizzly's head whipped around. The water wasn't bubbling – it was *boiling*. A colossal tentacle, thick as an ancient tree trunk and glistening with violet-black slime, erupted skyward. It hovered for a heartbeat, water cascading off its ropy muscle, before slamming down onto the deck with a wet, splintering *CRACK*. Wood screamed. Grizzly was already moving, war axe singing from its harness. Steel met rubbery hide – a jarring impact that sent shockwaves up her arm. "TINK!" she bellowed, dodging the next whip-crack descent of the tentacle. The smell hit her then – brine, decay, and something fiercely, primordially alien. It coated her tongue, thick and bitter.
Tink scrambled up the ladder, goggles askew, clutching a sputtering sphere of brass and crystal. "Hold it still, ye hairy mountain!" she screeched. Elara surged from below, water swirling around her legs in defensive coils. "Distract the limb! Tink requires proximity!" Grizzly grinned, a feral flash of tusks. "Distractin' it?" She leaped onto the slick, muscular surface of the tentacle, boots scrabbling for purchase. Her axe swung again, biting deep, spraying ichor that burned her skin like acid. She rode the bucking limb, thighs clamped tight, roaring pure challenge into the humid air. Her green-lime eyes blazed. *Come on, bastard! Show me what yer made of!*
Below, the water churned violently. Not one, but *three* more tentacles breached the surface, each tipped with barbed suckers that puckered hungrily. Sera barked orders, her cutlass already drawing blood from a probing feeler. Marquez began to sing, a low, thrumming melody that vibrated in Grizzly's bones. The tentacles nearest the siren hesitated, pulsing erratically. Grizzly felt the creature beneath her shudder – a deep, resonant tremor that shook the entire ship. It wasn't pain. It was... recognition? An image flashed in her mind: a vast, dark eye, ancient and impossibly intelligent, reflecting her own startled face back at her. Her breath hitched. "Cap'n?" she yelled, voice tight with sudden, chilling doubt. "This ain't... right!" The Super Squid wasn't attacking. It was *studying* her. And in its gaze, Grizzly saw the ghost of her own mother's fierce, sad eyes.
Marquez's song swelled, a desperate plea woven into melody, then twisted into something older than tides—a guttural chant that scraped against Grizzly's spine. The siren's eyes blazed with cobalt light as the air itself thickened, pressing down like drowned stone. On Grizzly's forearm, where the squid's acidic slime clung, a searing heat bloomed. Not pain, but shock. The slime wasn't just burning; it was *pulsing*. Ethereal symbols, intricate as coral skeletons, flared to life within the viscous goo—glowing a sickly, hypnotic green against her olive skin. They crawled. Grizzly recoiled instinctively, wrenching her axe free. "What dark magic is this, Marquez?" she snarled, but the chant drowned her words.
The tentacle beneath her bucked violently, not in rage, but in agony—or ecstasy? The runes glowed brighter, sinking deeper, etching themselves onto her very flesh beneath the slime. Each pulse throbbed in sync with Marquez's voice, binding her to the colossal limb she rode. Grizzly felt it then—a terrifying influx. Not just the squid's raw power vibrating through her muscles, but fragments: the crushing pressure of the abyss, the ancient cold of forgotten trenches, and a profound, echoing loneliness that mirrored her own deepest isolation. Her prosthetic arm sparked violently, screeching against the sudden surge of alien energy coursing into her. Her vision blurred, doubling. Through the haze, the immense eye resurged in her mind—but now, superimposed over it, was the stern, weathered face of her orc grandmother, whispering a forgotten lullaby in the ancient tongue.
Sera's cutlass flashed, hacking at another probing tentacle. "Grizzly! Break free!" But Grizzly was trapped, not physically, but by the connection. Her axe felt leaden, her famed strength faltering against the psychic tide. Elara surged forward, hands outstretched, conjuring a shimmering shield of water that deflected a barbed sucker aiming for Tink. The goblin engineer, her brass sphere now humming dangerously, scrambled closer to Grizzly's perch. "The runes!" Tink shrieked, goggles magnifying her frantic eyes. "They're a bleedin' *circuit*! It's feeding from ye! Or… feeding ye?" Her tiny hands darted towards the glowing symbols.
Lady Marquez's chant hit a shattering crescendo. The violet-black hide beneath Grizzly erupted in identical, blazing green runes—a mirror image scorching the squid's flesh. The creature let loose a sound that wasn't a roar, but a soul-deep *keen*—a sound of horrific recognition that tore through the swamp. The tentacle Grizzly clung to went rigid. The immense eye in her mind dissolved into frantic, overlapping visions: a human woman, fierce eyes holding Grizzly's own green-lime gaze, plunging a ceremonial dagger into a vortex of swirling ink… and the echoing despair that followed. Symbiotic runes. Binding chant. Her mother's face. The Super Squid wasn't just recognizing her lineage; it was *bound* to it. This wasn't a hunt. It was a reckoning Grizzly never knew she was owed.