Fear.
Shiv glared at the corpulent hulk of the undead manatee as it squelched on the deck, gibbering of insanity and madness as it slithered towards him over the salt and sand-smoothed teak planks. He readied his harpoon, the long steel shaft covered with puissant charms he'd acquired from an old Inuit companion.
"You thought you were endangered before, wee beastie..." he growled. "I don't even need a jet-ski to send your blubbery ass back to hell."
The only response was a soft sigh, the sound of necrotic gases whistling as they escaped through rotten patches of blubber. The creature shifted slightly, setting the boat rocking from side to side.
The cunning warrior-sense of Shiv Chasm espied a opening, and with a hoarse shout, he dashed forward, the arcane inscriptions on his weapon glowing orange with the sense of victory that burned in his heart.
He made a great cut across the flank of the monster, slicing open a great rent from whence foul miasmas issued; he gagged and retched as the rotten husk flailed, the mad eldritch shrieking of the tortured soul imprisoned within turning to the cries of pain that would issue from the throat of almost any living being.
The crag-faced adventurer with the aquiline eyes had no time for pity; plunging the point of his harpoon into the deck, he advanced again upon the once-corpse, sinking his bare hands into the cut he'd made, fingers worming through the slickness of insulating fat and the strands of muscle made gelatinous by decay. Breathing through clenched teeth to avoid the worst of the stench, Shiv Chasm began to excavate, widening the cleft he'd formed one fistful of viscera at a time.
Bucking and shuddering, the bloated dugong made this process far more difficult than it had seemed when Shiv had practiced it on a dead specimen.
UN-dead makes a hell of a lot of difference, he thought grimly.
In mere moments of squealing carnage, the gore-streaked mariner had tunneled to the manatee's rotten core like a worm gnawing a path through a brine-soaked apple, and without another moment of hesitation or second thought, he heedlessly dove into the cavity he'd manufactured.
Shiv Chasm was enough of a man that the stench was not the first thing to impinge upon his awareness, but rather the darkness. Disoriented, he felt about blindly as the bulk about him heaved and jumped, crying out in the terror of a beast driven past mere madness by the events which had transpired.
Holding his breath and getting a grip on himself was no difficulty for the experienced seaman; after countless battles with the witch-bears of the Polar North, he was experienced in the techniques of the ice-fakirs, who could hold their breaths longer than the cone-toothed whales who hunted the tentacled deeps. Discipline was a discipline that Shiv Chasm had already mastered.
He oriented himself in the depths of the animate slaughterhouse he had had hands in creating, and began to dig, scrabbling through the disintegrating corpse-flesh as he crawled, inch by slithering inch, for the dread beast's heart. Destiny guided his hands as his nails tore through the pulsating internals, the ancient sense of all sailors leading him to the dark center that animated the abomination against nature he was encapsulated by.
The heart itself fair glowed with dark energies, even within the midnight depths. Shiv's arms ached with the exertions of digging and forcing decay-swollen organs from his path; he feared he might lose his grip, losing sight of the tenebrous muscle that threatened to draw his soul forth with every shadowy contraction.
"So you want to eat me? Let us see how nourishing you are, foul spirit!" With that, the boatman lunged forward, sinking his teeth into the core of the wretched creature.
He tasted the foulness of crude oil, and the sweetness of treacle as he chewed at the gristly meat, swallowing and biting over and over until he sensed that the dread force manipulating the manatee had perished, helpless against the force of his magnificent white dentition.
"You thought you were endangered before, wee beastie..." he growled. "I don't even need a jet-ski to send your blubbery ass back to hell."
The only response was a soft sigh, the sound of necrotic gases whistling as they escaped through rotten patches of blubber. The creature shifted slightly, setting the boat rocking from side to side.
The cunning warrior-sense of Shiv Chasm espied a opening, and with a hoarse shout, he dashed forward, the arcane inscriptions on his weapon glowing orange with the sense of victory that burned in his heart.
He made a great cut across the flank of the monster, slicing open a great rent from whence foul miasmas issued; he gagged and retched as the rotten husk flailed, the mad eldritch shrieking of the tortured soul imprisoned within turning to the cries of pain that would issue from the throat of almost any living being.
The crag-faced adventurer with the aquiline eyes had no time for pity; plunging the point of his harpoon into the deck, he advanced again upon the once-corpse, sinking his bare hands into the cut he'd made, fingers worming through the slickness of insulating fat and the strands of muscle made gelatinous by decay. Breathing through clenched teeth to avoid the worst of the stench, Shiv Chasm began to excavate, widening the cleft he'd formed one fistful of viscera at a time.
Bucking and shuddering, the bloated dugong made this process far more difficult than it had seemed when Shiv had practiced it on a dead specimen.
UN-dead makes a hell of a lot of difference, he thought grimly.
In mere moments of squealing carnage, the gore-streaked mariner had tunneled to the manatee's rotten core like a worm gnawing a path through a brine-soaked apple, and without another moment of hesitation or second thought, he heedlessly dove into the cavity he'd manufactured.
Shiv Chasm was enough of a man that the stench was not the first thing to impinge upon his awareness, but rather the darkness. Disoriented, he felt about blindly as the bulk about him heaved and jumped, crying out in the terror of a beast driven past mere madness by the events which had transpired.
Holding his breath and getting a grip on himself was no difficulty for the experienced seaman; after countless battles with the witch-bears of the Polar North, he was experienced in the techniques of the ice-fakirs, who could hold their breaths longer than the cone-toothed whales who hunted the tentacled deeps. Discipline was a discipline that Shiv Chasm had already mastered.
He oriented himself in the depths of the animate slaughterhouse he had had hands in creating, and began to dig, scrabbling through the disintegrating corpse-flesh as he crawled, inch by slithering inch, for the dread beast's heart. Destiny guided his hands as his nails tore through the pulsating internals, the ancient sense of all sailors leading him to the dark center that animated the abomination against nature he was encapsulated by.
The heart itself fair glowed with dark energies, even within the midnight depths. Shiv's arms ached with the exertions of digging and forcing decay-swollen organs from his path; he feared he might lose his grip, losing sight of the tenebrous muscle that threatened to draw his soul forth with every shadowy contraction.
"So you want to eat me? Let us see how nourishing you are, foul spirit!" With that, the boatman lunged forward, sinking his teeth into the core of the wretched creature.
He tasted the foulness of crude oil, and the sweetness of treacle as he chewed at the gristly meat, swallowing and biting over and over until he sensed that the dread force manipulating the manatee had perished, helpless against the force of his magnificent white dentition.