I comforted myself with thoughts of a roaring fire and the dry bed that awaited me back at the guard barracks as bitter sea wind whipped over me. My head was soaked and cold water trickled down the back of my neck. Heinrich, my partner, could not stop retching though he’d long emptied his stomach.

I smiled, forcing a dark chuckle as I leaned on my spear for support. The stench of the bodies and the briney slime swirling around the overflow drain pipe below overpowered Heinrich’s vomit. At least I didn’t have to endure the reek of foul death and sour milk.

My legs shook and my gaze drifted skyward as I cleared my throat. “They must’ve come back up with the flood. All that rain.”

Heinrich gagged.

Six decomposing bodies floated in the foul seawater by a massive overflow drain pipe that had been cut directly into a cliff face, wide black crossbars giving the dark chasm a sinister appearance. Four were definitely human and one was definitely dwarven. The last was too far gone to say.

The only identifiable feature of the poor sod being tossed about by the waves was a mop of tawny brown hair.

I swallowed hard. It had to be an adult dwarf, albeit a short one. Definitely not a child.

Heinrich shuffled on the stoney bank behind me, spitting and praying dwarven prayers under his breath.

I couldn’t say how high the water was for sure, but if any of them down there had still been alive, I could’ve dived in and made a daring rescue. One floated face down, limbs bloated and grey.

Its leg moved. Just a twitch.

I tore my eyes away from the ghastly trick of light, heart racing. The hair stood on the back of my neck and I shivered. My mother had always told me her elven blood blessed me with a good sense for dark forces. It didn’t matter that my father was human.

But I didn’t need heightened senses to know that something wicked lurked in the sewers of fair Zorrian, a free city by the sea. Of the bodies that floated supine, all four looked as though their hearts had been torn from their chests.

There was talk around the barracks about a deranged lunatic on the loose. Heartless bodies of all species, races, and genders had been turning up around sewer drains and overflow pipes for years. Finding some kind of new clue or lead would’ve made me look really good. Maybe even earned me a promotion. Then I could’ve gotten off the afternoon shift.

I held my breath as fluffy white clouds drifted by, skies clear and blue. The sea churned below the stone bank, likely still stirred by the savage storm that had blown through Zorrian three days before.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it,” said Heinrich.

As Zorrian city guards, the “King’s Spears”, the two of us had been working overtime; the district we patrolled in a state of chaos since the flood waters receded.

I exhaled, blinking against the sunshine bursting through the clouds, its warmth on my skin like a kiss from the gods. Even though I was exhausted and scared, I was still confident joining the guards had been the right decision. The few women I had encountered in the city guard were hard. They had to be. If I was going to stick around long enough to be promoted up the ranks to a safer job, I had to be, too.

I tugged on my yellow tunic in a sad attempt to shake off excess moisture, silently praying the material I used to bind my breasts wouldn’t get wet and chafe my skin. “You mean death?”

The bulky dwarf stumbled forward, bright red-hair a blur as he skidded down the bank. The rock gave way beneath my feet and I fell back with a yelp, landing on top of Heinrich as he slid into me.

He let go of his spear, throwing thick arms around my chest and pinning me to him. “Don’t you hear her, Pip? Maren demands more souls. She didn’t get enough in the flood.”

I flailed against him, desperately jabbing the butte of my spear against the bank. If the gods had been listening to my prayers, the shaft would’ve lodged into a rock crevice, stopping our rough tumble to the waters below.

“She’s angry,” bellowed Heinrich, his hold on me impossibly tight. “I hear Caelum. I can hear the sky god’s taunts.”

I threw my body weight against Heinrich’s hold and we rolled onto my side, the spear butte scraping against the stone.

“The Sea Queen demands souls,” roared Heinrich.

The scraping ceased and my arm jerked, pain popping in my shoulder joint as Heinrich tugged me downward. The end of my spear caught on something solid, but my hold on the shaft weakened as I struggled against Heinrich.

“Let go!” I twisted and turned, kicking out with my legs as hard as I could.

The dwarf slipped down my waist, my heels striking his shins. With a shout, I reached out with my free hand, latching onto my spear.

“She’ll keep coming.” Heinrich clawed at my yellow guard’s tabard as he rolled down the bank, body thudding against the rocks.

I slid the soles of my boots over the stone, checking for slickness before I tested my weight. Wind lashed across my face, a blast of sea spray soaking my head. Heinrich screamed from below. I pressed my body against the bank, ignoring the bobbing corpses as I scanned the water for my partner. If there really were gods, then they had a sick sense of humor.

I’d joined the guards because I wanted regular meals and a safe place to sleep. My initial hope was to be assigned dull, easy work. Safe work. But the storm hit during my first shift as a guard and three days later I watched with horror as my partner flopped onto a large flat stone, eyes closed.

“Heinrich!” I gripped the haft of my spear and yanked it free, a shower of rocks and gravel tumbling down into the water below.

The dwarf didn’t budge.

A powerful gust of wind sent me sprawling down the bank and I was suddenly very grateful for my barracks-issued thigh-high leather boots as jagged stones sliced the material protecting my knees.

Strange gurgling and a low moan rumbled from the overflow pipe and I froze, terror creeping down my spine. Blood pounded in my ears as the water began to churn even harder, corpses breaking as they slammed against each other. A wave crested over the tawny hair, submerging it below.

I used my spear like an old man’s cane to hold myself steady as water dripped from my chin. “Wake up, Heinrich! She’s coming!”

Caelum kept the Sea Princess locked away on high and the Sea Queen was furious. She wanted her daughter back.

I squeezed my eyes shut as the water raged. Maren promised me eternal paradise if I fought for her cause. She would raise me up. Call me her own. All I had to do was dive in.

But she didn’t say anything about three hot meals a day.

The ground shook and I fell, skidding farther down the bank. With a burst of sound, long, black tentacles shot out of the water and twisted through the air like snakes toward Heinrich and I.

Animal panic set in, my body so tense I feared I would snap. I cried out as I jabbed with my spear, the point slicing through flesh like a knife through butter. Black ooze hissed from the tentacle and it retreated, yanking free of my weapon with a tearing of flesh. A pale ring of smooth tissue landed at my feet, the liquid pooling on the ground as dark as night.

My skin crawled and I whimpered. It was just a bad dream. All I had to do was wake up.

Heinrich’s wailing brought me back to reality and I looked up with a scream of my own. Two tentacles coiled their way around the dwarf’s kicking legs and lifted him into the air. Heinrich’s pale eyes bulged as he screamed, the sheer terror in his voice enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Another tentacle slammed into his chest and the dwarf’s face contorted with unadulterated fear, the shrill squealing coming from him the worst sound I’d ever heard. A sickening crunch echoed through the din and Heinrich’s body jerked, his eyes blinking rapidly.

Tremors pulsed through the rock and the bank began to crumble, two more tentacles shooting out of the water and racing toward me. The others released poor Heinrich, my eyes immediately drawn to the bloody hole in the dwarf’s chest.

I screamed, legs shaking as a crack of breaking rock reverberated deep inside my bones.

It had sucked out his heart.

Heinrich plunged into the water below and I clutched my spear, the tentacles opening tiny mouths. Rings of razor-like teeth flashed in the sunlight. The thickest stalk opened a gleaming red eye ball, slit pupil shrinking in the sunlight. A crash like thunder boomed overhead and a boulder fell onto a tentacle, the others releasing mind-breaking shrieks.

Pain exploded in my skull and I cried out, falling to my knees.

My stepfather would laugh when word reached him. The runaway half-breed bitch was dead. Good riddance.

The tremor intensified and I fell, the sea still a beautiful blue green as it swallowed me up. Cold darkness pressed in around me and I fought the water’s violent pull. The primal desire to live wouldn’t let me give up.

That, and my first pay was due at the end of the following week. I planned to buy myself a tankard of rich, dark ale at the tavern by the guard barracks. If I survived, I’d buy a whole round.

I tore and kicked at the water, but only sank deeper as a strong current sucked me deeper into the darkness. It was a shame I’d never learned to read. Scribes got to sit inside all day.

Water filled my ears and nostrils as my lungs burned for oxygen. Sudden pressure around my body made me realize I was inside something narrow and I panicked, lashing out with my arms and legs as hard as I could.

Pain burst in my knuckles as they scraped against a rough surface and I kicked against something solid.

The overdrain.

I opened my mouth to scream, death closing in as my body suffocated. Strange lights flashed above me as water poured into my mouth, choking me. Darkness closed in. Death waited with open arms.

Cool air rushed over my face and the realization that I was falling dawned on me. I tried to draw breath, but the water trapped in my lungs made it impossible. My arms and legs spread out as I plunged into the darkness below.

I hit the water’s surface with a splash, but something caught my arm, keeping me from sinking. A strong force pulled me from the water and slammed me on my back. Pressure squeezed the water from my lungs, warm liquid bursting from my mouth.

I sucked at the air, voices murmuring overhead as I was rolled onto my side. I coughed and sputtered, mind reeling as I struggled for breath. Light flickered behind me.

“Take heart my friend,” said a woman’s voice. “You may survive yet.”

Water splashed and other voices cried out, one gruff and booming while the other was strange; alien with an echoing resonance.

The woman shifted away from me and I immediately missed her warmth. “Keep moving. If you can’t fight, find a place to hide.”

A shrieking tentacle and a flash of blue light sent a bolt of panic directly to my heart. I drew a deep breath, flopping onto my gut. When I lifted my head, a dead man leered at me with a hideous skeletal grin, lips and nose chewed away by hungry creatures. What remained of his arm was curled around a dead dog.

Dead dogs hurt me just as much as dead kids.

My mouth dropped open, but no sound came. I couldn’t die in stinking darkness. I had to get back to the guard barracks and tell them about the monsters lurking below.

Water dripped from my tabard as I forced myself to my feet, my skin already chafing beneath my wet leather jerkin and boots. I was otherwise unharmed. Somehow. I fumbled at the barracks-issued dirk at my waist, fingers shaking too hard to get a proper grip.

“Look out!”

I whipped around, fists raised in a stupid effort at self-defense. A tentacle sped toward me, vile mouth dripping slime as it screamed. I collapsed with a wail of my own. It parted the air with a hiss as it raced over my head.

Slime dripped onto my cheek and I flinched, skin burning. I tried to wipe the mucous from my cheek with the back of my hand, but that only made the burning worse.

A dark chuckle slipped free. Facial scars could make a girl look hard as nails. Especially if she didn’t care about being pretty.

“The eye,” called the woman. “The eye!”

I drew my dirk and sat up as a tentacle slithered up my leg. With a hard yank, it dragged me along the rough ground. My jerkin may have been wet, but it did its job protecting me. The blue light kept flashing and I twisted my neck toward it, gasping.

A beam of crackling spell-energy pulsed through the air with a bizarre thrum, slicing a thick tentacle in half. I was jerked into the air as the stump hissed and oozed dark liquid, air rushing in my ears. Darkness swirled as my arms fell over my head.

I screamed.

It was too terrifying to be real. Never in all my nightmares had I ever imagined anything so horrific.

I clung to my dirk and flailed, my body alive with a fear so terrible I thought I’d gone mad. The tentacle lifted me higher, the screeching chaos below like the sounds of eternal torment. Maybe I actually had drowned and then been cast into some terrible Hell.

“Lox!”

Blue light flashed and filled the room, the sight below a true horror. A red-eye flinched as tentacles lashed out at three figures, its oozing stumps still flailing as the monster shrieked.

Flashing light caught the corner of my eye and I turned, the insidious mouth of a tentacle opening wide.

Instinct took over and I swallowed hard, my life the only thing that had ever really been mine. I wasn’t ready to die.

I lashed out at the tentacle around my leg. Black ooze splattered onto my face and the tentacle released me, my triumph short lived. The eye swiveled, unblinking as it watched me fall. An intense calm spread over me and time slowed.

“Come to me, Pippa. A soul as foul as yours will nourish me.”

Defensive anger made me chuckle. I was no saint, but I wasn’t as wicked as a monster who told nasty lies in the dark.

The calm broke, sound reverberating through my body in a roar of sensation. With a cry of my own, I slashed at the eye as I fell, the tip of my blade piercing the pupil. Black ooze and a white-gelatinous material gushed from the beast as I dragged my dirk through it.

A high-pitched cry of agony shook the darkness and my body went limp with a sudden bolt of piercing pain. The blade slipped from my grasp and I fell, plunging into the foul water below. The cold shocked the life back into my limbs and I struggled, searching for the surface and sweet air.

Hard tentacles beat me back and forth, the water surging. Pain burst through my body and I closed my eyes, praying for peaceful oblivion. Blue light surged above the water and the tentacles went limp. My eyes flew open as my lungs began to burn. I couldn’t give up.