The Branokann breached the surface and let out a bone-melting roar of rage. Beneath my feet, one nail came loose, and the plank gave way. My eyeballs jiggled in their sockets.
Without thinking, I slipped through the hole I'd burnt in the dock (the old part of me wondering how they were supposed to cover it up for the ordinary citizens), and the water greeted me yet again.
I didn't think it was possibly for the Branokann to look even more ugly. But where on land, his black fur had been tangled and wild with frizz, underwater it was flattened to reveal a stick-thin figure with strange lumps of—(forgive me for this next bit) there was no other way to describe it—fleshy flesh bulging at random parts of his body. His curled horns stuck through the water. The scars on them were stark in the watery light. His eyes glowed like furious lamps (if home appliances could ever be described as angry). His talons, ripping at empty air (empty water?) gleamed.
My cheeks were burning. Before I could gather enough consciousness to remember what I was doing, my blistering throat reminded me that I, like any other human, couldn't breathe underwater. I came up, gasping, and swallowed about half a dam's worth of water. Gulping in the other half of the dam's water, (and maybe a bit of air), I dived back into the freezing water. A few metres away, I saw my sword sinking slowly through the surf, unperturbed by the raging waters. Flailing desperately, I made one last push towards the blade. Just as I felt the seabed quaver, my fingers closed around the leather-bound hilt.
The Branokann had launched himself out of the sea. I could hear the dock shaking as he thumped around on the wood, probably wondering where his prey had gone.
Each jarring vibration sent a gallon of salt water down my throat. I swallowed the briny water with revulsion. Each gulp seemed to leech its worth in moisture out of my tongue. Half a minute passed. My eyes stung. My tongue felt like a pad of sandpaper. I couldn't hold my breath any longer, the pain excruciating, my lungs screaming. In the water, I was reduced to the speed of a slug. I couldn't go up, because I could see a massive black shape hovering above the water. The monster's paw—each finger tipped with a monstrous claw.
As the Branokann swept his hand through the water, I dived the other way. The motion knocked all my remaining breath from my body, and my strength slipped away. The sword was just another load, another encumbrance, another dead weight. Just like my title, the one that was at the end of all this just another set of words. Just like my mother and grandmother, as good as dead. Just like me. My demons clambered over me, pushing me through the foamy surf.
Through the spiralling clouds of sand. My toes didn't meet loose sand, though. Instead, they connected with solid rock.
This was my only chance. A kernel of hope in the palm of an angel.
I pushed off the rocky anchor.
Through the human-shaped hole in the jetty above. Into the sweet, lifesaving air. And just as I'd guessed and hoped, into the unguarded space behind the beast. I think, in that moment, the angel stayed with me a second longer. He gave me the strength to raise the dagger, light glinting gold. The strength to plunge the knife deep into the Branokann's spine. Somehow, I landed on the deck without breaking all the bones in my body and clambered out of the water.
The beast yowled in anguish, arching back. I yanked my knife out of its flesh. The blade gleamed with thick, black blood. As I watched, the blood turned silvery and transparent, a ghost liquid steaming in the air.
I thought I'd be disgusted by the sight, but I couldn't find it in me. Not as the Branokann lumbered slowly around to face me, his fur slick with onyx blood. A trickle of gleaming clear liquid snaked down his back like a stream wending its way down a wild mountainside. His back paws stopped before me, easily a third my height. Shining talons each the thickness of my wrist gouged into the groaning wood.
Before I knew what was happening, the Branokann's reptilian tail swept between his enormous, padded feet. He caught my foot and slammed me into the nearest pole. What happened next went by in a blur. At that speed, with that force, my ribs should've been crushed. I should've been winded so badly every breath I took for the rest of my life was a knife twisting in my lungs. I still doubt it really happened. But the captain saw all of it. He noted every detail with a soldier's eye from the shore far away. I know felt as if I were seeing it through someone far more powerful's eyes. Someone who was not me, would never be.
I felt splinters forcing their way into the tough skin of my palms, but no spine-smashing collision. I remember swinging around, kicking off the hull of the boat moored next to me. My new boat—halfway under. I know it had rocked on the water, still churning with the wrath of the Branokann. And I hauled myself up, until I was crouching on top of the pole, breath short in my chest, knees bent slightly. Swift as the speed of sound, I thrust my hand out and made a grabbing motion at the Branokann's knees. Later, the captain—I never got to know his name—told me that in one smooth motion, his feet were swept out beneath him and he landed with a deafening BOOM on the pier. On his injured back. Underneath us, a support beam crumbled into dust. I leaped off the post, as graceful as feline paws. Already, a dark puddle streaked with silver had begun to bloom, a flower of death underneath his still body.
"This is for my grandmother," I grunted as I sliced my blade across the muscles in his legs, a whisper of gold across flesh. He howled in pain. But I wasn't finished. Faster than I thought a human should be able to move, I leaped to his head. "This is for my family," I spat. His left horn snapped off completely as I brought my knife hacking down on it, leaving only an uneven stump. He roared again, twitching and pummelling the wood with his fists. But all of a sudden, he seemed much smaller. "This is for him," I snarled, closing my hands around the base of his other horn. Blood for blood. Only then would the debt be truly repaid. They had all insisted it wasn't my fault. But I knew what had really happened. And now, after all these years, I could finally begin to pay back.
Overcome with an insatiable desire to kill, I let the horns tumble to the side. Let them be offerings to Aquanaya. I had a feeling such an offering could help me later on. With the red mist clouding my vision, I had no use for trophies. "This is for my mother," I hissed in his ear, poising my dagger over his chest.
I drove the blade through the Branokann's heart.
A half-hearted jet of inky blood spurted from the gaping slit in his flesh, curls of smoke rising from the steaming wound. Then his body crumbled into smatterings of dust on the jetty and disappeared. The only signs that the Branokann had ever existed were the hole in the jetty, the gaps between the planks: a hole in the fabric of my life. A portion of the dock that had tumbled into the sea after its support beam had collapsed. And the echo of horror that now stained my memories.
That was when the strength left my body. Exhaustion washed over me like a seething tsunami. Suddenly a pounding headache throbbed in my skull. The skin across my back and stomach stung like I'd just run through a brick wall. I was dripping wet, and my feet ached like I'd just run a marathon. My knees gave out underneath me. And I crumpled to the blood-soaked pier.