Friday 15 July 2016

Fighting The Kraken

The Merman's Children.

The kraken ascends in pursuit of the fleeing Tauno. The merman hears the rumble of a knocked-over portico and sees a swelling vast shadow with baleful eyes, clapping beak and uncoiling arm. He stabs the arm which emits vinegar-like blood and strikes him away. Amidst more enclosing arms, he swims down to attack with a harpoon. Then the merfolks' weapon, dropped from higher up, strikes the kraken: a boulder with a large piece of iron hammered into it, the out-thrust half ground into a spearhead, a vast net secured to the boulder by rings and bearing twelve ship anchors. The kraken screams and sinks, grievously wounded by the spear, weighed down by a ton of rock and surrounded by the net which the merfolk attach by its anchors to the ruins.

The threshing, flailing, clutching kraken bleeds, casts up ooze, vomits ink, breaks walls, deafens his assailants and strikes them with barnacled skin but they secure the net, then thrust harpoons through his eyes and into his brain. He dies.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It would have been fascinating to catch and preserve alive for study such a kraken.

Sean