Page 43 of Fallen from the Stars

The monster’s pointed appendages — its mouth-fingers — lashed out as it sped through the water in front of Vasil. Two of the fingers clamped down on his forearm, piercing his flesh. He growled at the burst of pain as his torso collided with the creature’s armored body. The other mouth-fingers clawed at his arm. He clenched his fist as tight as he could to flex the muscles of his forearm; another point sank into his skin, but it barely penetrated the bunched muscle.

Instinct seized control of Vasil’s mind. He wrapped his tentacles around the creature’s shell and raised his free hand to grasp one of the mouth appendages near its base. The creature’s tentacles thrashed; kraken and monster tumbled and spun through the water, and the gloom made it difficult to tell the surface from the sea floor.

Vasil did not ease his hold. He wrenched the appendage to the side; it broke off with asnapstrong enough to resonate in Vasil’s bones. Dark blood misted from the wound. The remaining appendages flailed wildly, and Vasil caught another, repeating the process. His suction cups latched onto the creature’s shell, and he tightened his tentacles around the creature, squeezing. The shell bucked under the pressure.

The monster’s tentacles whipped through the water in all directions, slapping Vasil’s back and arms with startling force. Its mouth-fingers released their hold on his arm, adding his blood to the hazy cloud.

He thrust away from the creature, withdrawing his tentacles. The monster darted away immediately, trailing wisps of blood, and disappeared into the murk.

Hearts pounding, Vasil swept his gaze over his surroundings. The range of his vision was greatly limited, and he wondered briefly if this was how humans saw the world beneath the waves — one small, fuzzy-edged portion at a time.

He shook his head sharply, willing himself to focus. Though his arm throbbed, the pain was distant; he knew the reprieve would only last until the excitement of the attack had faded. He clamped his right hand over the wounds, staunching the blood flow. It would affect his ability to swim, but not as much as if he’d used a tentacle to stop the bleeding. Better to swim a bit slower than leave a trail of blood in the water for other predators to follow.

I am still racing the storm. No more time to waste.

The mysterious creature had been wounded; it wasn’t likely to come back. He had to go.

Tucking both arms against his midsection, he slowly spun in place, seeking anything familiar by which to orient himself. The loose sediments and algae clouding the water made every object Vasil saw indistinct and indistinguishable from one another; his world was reduced to shapeless shadows looming in the murk.

He couldn’t begin to guess how far he was from the pod. He could ride the swells on the surface, hoping to catch sight of land, but he doubted they were yet high enough for him to see their beach — he’d traveled a long way that morning. If only he’d been—

There!

A rock formation stood on the sea floor to his right, perhaps five body lengths away — three large stones in a row, the middle one taller than the other two, each ending in a jagged point. Maintaining his hold on his wounds, Vasil swam to the formation. He held himself aloft immediately over it and sought the next marker. He found it a moment later — a crevice in the sea floor marked now only by a depression in the cloud of sand blanketing the bottom.

He was going in the right direction.

As Vasil pressed onward, the water steadily cleared, and his awareness of his wounds increased. The throbbing in his forearm became a deep, piercing ache, and it was echoed, if only faintly, across his back. He had no doubt that his pain would’ve been several times worse had he been using his arms to swim.

Fortunately, he encountered no other predators, and eventually emerged in the shallows of the beach he shared with Theo. Both the sky and sea were darker than before, but he wasn’t sure if it was due to the approaching storm, an unseen sunset, or a combination of both.

A chilled wind swept over his sea-dampened skin, blowing from behind him. It amplified the foamy white crests crashing onto the beach around him. The vegetation beyond the sand shimmered as that wind blasted through the leaves, making them twist and sway.

Theo entered his view as he approached the pod; she was on her knees beside it, packing piles of sand under its rounded bottom.

Vasil called her name, but the roar of wind and sea swallowed his voice. He hurried across the beach to stop beside her.

“Theo,” he repeated.

She started, whipping her head toward him. The wind blew her hair into her face. She yanked it back, spitting strands out of her mouth. “Fuck, you scared the crap out of me! I didn’t—” Her eyes widened. “Is thatblood?”

He glanced down at his right hand, which still covered his wounds. Watery blood trickled from beneath his fingers. “Yes.”

“Get in the pod,” she commanded as she pushed herself to her feet.

“What are you doing with the sand?” he asked.

“Stabilizing the pod. Now get in. I’ll be right back.” She ran past him toward the sea.

Vasil twisted to watch her. She stopped when the surf was around her ankles and crouched, dipping her arms into the water to scrub the sand from her skin.

After a quick glance toward the black storm clouds roiling over the ocean, Vasil rounded to the front of the pod. He grasped the rim with both hands. Fresh blood oozed from his wounds, and sharp pain radiated along his arm, but it was not the pain that gave him pause as he hauled himself up — it was the sight of the relatively dark, confined space.

His hearts, which had finally slowed to a normal rate not long before, sped up again. The pod trembled in the wind, its movement startlingly reminiscent of a ship rocking on the sea.

“Do you intend to bleed to death?” Theo said from behind him. “Get your ass in there, kraken!”

“I will not bleed to death,” he replied, remaining in place. His skin was suddenly cold, and it had nothing to do with the weather. How had he brought himself to enter the pod before?

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