6 days. That's how long Marcus had been afloat in the sea, slowly moving towards the landmass he had seen from Delos. He had plenty of food and water, but he had run out of things to do. He couldn't even go back to the system forge, because when he returned, he would be placed in the place where he was last, in the middle of the ocean.
Because of this, he had been sat there with nothing to do but random exercises like push-ups. Then, Marcus had the great idea to practise Vis control by fishing with his tentacles, using them to catch some fish before releasing them back into the ocean. He had toyed with the idea of eating fish, but he had no way of cooking it and he already had plenty of food. Raw fish would be a waste of inventory.
He wasn't quite sure where in the world he was, but he had seen a landform, so he could probably figure out where he was from there. He wasn't quite sure what language they would speak but judging by the fact he could understand what the island beasts had been saying, he figured it shouldn't be much of a problem. Either way, however, he'd have to get himself onto land quickly, before he died of boredom!
He jumped up onto his feet from his laying down position, stretching his sore arms and legs before forming four tentacles, two on each side. He sent them off of the edge of the shipside, propelling them in a circular motion as fast as he could so that they acted as motors to speed up the boat's travel.
The boat sped up its journey towards the land ahead of him, causing sprays of water to launch up into the air, scaring off any fish in the sea. Marcus had had enough of being in the middle of the ocean and put his mind towards getting there as fast as he could.
Spending two years on an island had definitely dulled his situational awareness, and he failed to notice the effects his tentacles were having. Each stroke sent out a small wave of Vis, too small to have any physical effect, but strong enough for any trained warrior or powerful beast to notice.
Suddenly, tentacles of a beast other than Marcus popped out of the water, latching over the sides of the ship in an attempt to drag the ship under. Marcus reacted quite quickly, using his own tentacles to loosen the creature's grip, forcing it to release its hold on the ship. Marcus fought for his ground, prising its tentacles away from the ship and slowly taking background.
After a small struggle, Marcus managed to overcome the tentacles, wrestling them back and winning the struggle, only for two more tentacles to appear.
There was a very large downfall to Marcus's tentacles. The more there were, the weaker each one would become. Faced with no other option, Marcus split each tentacle into two, halving their power but allowing them to step up to the numerical gap. He wrestled with these four tentacles, struggling to take them down in a grapple that scared away every nearby creature.
Upon finally overcoming the tentacles, two more appeared each identical to the previous ones.
Marcus reformed his tentacles into six instead of four, but the strength was now but a third of they had been back when he had made them into propellors. He tried to grapple the tentacles yet again but came out lacking in strength, failing to overcome the tentacles as he had done previously.
He swore to himself, angry at his lack of logic behind his actions. He tried to hold off the tentacles as long as he could, before getting struck in the side by a seventh tentacle. He used his scythe to begin parrying the tentacles approaches in a desperate dance for survival, moving fluidly and quickly, managing to meet every approach with a suitable response. He knew he was going to run out of time, however, as he looked at the tentacles slowly coming closer as they overcame the defences he had put up.
"Artemis? Any help here?"
[ "Well I can't exactly make you stronger. I can, however, warn you. You might want to duck."]
"What?"
As he said this, an eighth tentacle came out of nowhere, smashing into the back of his head and sending him flying into the sea, completely unconscious.
The last thing he saw before he was out cold was a singular reflective eye, large enough that it took up Marcus's entire field of vision, and practically stared into his soul.
If Marcus had been conscious when he had seen the eye, he probably would have been paralysed with fear, for no man had looked into the eyes of the Kraken, Apophis' Sea King and lived to tell the tale.
The saying went "when you look into the eyes of Apophis' children, it stares back into you".