The Lurker of the Lake

Artek was not fond of adventure. Or travel. Or meeting new people. His greatest goal amounted to a dream of spending his days puttering in his shop putting together the contraptions that filled his mind to the brim. He snorted in irritation, his black goatee flapping. Melot, his ne’er-do-well stallion--named for his favorite food--gave a similar snort from his ruffling through the foliage behind him. Here he was, a man that hated travel, over a week’s ride from his home, all because the Gods had spoken to the village Elder using the Winds for the first time in literal decades. She had been just as puzzled as he, her wizened face smooth in trepidation and fear as she told him his task.

“I'm to retrieve a sword...and the Winds commanded you?” he had asked.

Her eyes had rounded in fear, big black discs of terror, “It does not speak. It screams…” she had looked away, chins shaking in fear, and begun to sing the Calming Song to herself. He had kissed her browned hand and managed to keep from muttering under his breath as he turned away, knowing there was no way this side of hell that he’d be able to talk his way out of it.

“And now what?” he squinted at the black lake that the locals had spoken of with fearful glances toward the shadows.

“Will the lady let him live, mam?” a young girl had asked her mother as he passed.

“…perhaps, child,” had come the uncertain answer.

“I hope so. He seems nice.”

The water was just as opaque as the local poems described it. Once it had stood at the center of his Tribes lands, but now…he had traversed through many an enemy’s land on this errand of idiocy.

Lo-and-behold, by some magic his eyes perceived what they shouldn’t: the glint of a sword held aloft in an alabaster palm, whiter than any skin he’d ever beheld. The hand was encrusted with baubles and jewels, adding to the glint and shine. “I’m not going in that water,” he declared to Melot, and the horse nickered his agreement. Even over three hundred meters from the shore, he could see the death that littered the sides of the lake. Bones, decaying birds, fish, and mink…all of them in poses that stank of fear.

If he’d taken the Eldest seriously, he had to acknowledge he’d have brought a boat. This was the lesson that would be his penance in the face of her fear. “Damn it,” he muttered to himself and set about the lonely and disturbing task of using the only thing available to him: dead animal carcasses and his wits. He stopped to retch only once. Using the waxed string he used to secure his provisions, he created his sinister boat in a mere half-day. Not once did he glance at the hand that stood motionless against gentle black waves.

It was early afternoon when he decided to coat the boat in tar, relieved that it would mean taking a short trip to an oil trap he had passed earlier that day. Then he would need to let it cure, which would buy him even more time, he supposed.

Try as he might, the time finally came, a day later, when he had no more excuses. His haunted boat launched cleanly into the waters. He sat at the dead center of the craft, using the makeshift oar of his deconstructed lute—which he’d brought in case he needed to sing for his supper. He had found himself ironically strumming out the Calming Song before forcing himself to destring it. “Do not come near the water, Melot!” he yelled out behind him, even though he knew the animal would never be dumb enough to come after him. He loved that about Melot.

The hand loomed in front of him. He barely touched the water with his lute…it was as if the water itself dragged the carcass-craft to a distinctly feminine hand, grasping a sword far too large for it. He looked down into the black waters as the boat approached and felt shock echo through him when he beheld a lovely face, smiling at him in welcome beneath the otherwise opaque waves. Brown eyes in a wholesome face seemed pleased to meet him as her hand proffered him the sword.

Every nerve in his body stood on end. This wasn’t right. She wasn’t real. But the Gods demanded the sword. He took a deep breath, held it, and reached. The moment his hand was fully wrapped around the hilt overlapping hers, his eyes touched hers once more. The grin was a befanged smirk, the brown eyes were red, the golden hair was black. One jerk, and she had him. It almost felt as if the water didn’t splash around him. He was suddenly beneath the waters and what was black from above, was hideously clear from below.

The water was ice cold. He braced for a killing blow with a sustained flinch...but none came. In the quiet peace of being underwater, he looked around, his breath held and his lungs burning. The scream that was ripped from his throat would change nothing. The lady had been a snare. All around him, people struggled to breach the surface. In frozen horror, the Calming Song entered his mind. He found himself doing what he had always done best and quietly observed.

Struggling would do nothing but add to the pain and fear. He saw it in the wide-eyed and silent screams around him. Perhaps time did not flow the same here, he thought, seeing clothes from ages long past. What were they being trapped for? They were all in some kind of half-drowning half-living limbo that broke a part of Artek’s mind. He would do anything—anything to break this magic. However, he was not a man of impulse.

Soon, he was entreated with a visage of his fate. The sword-bearing lady had not returned to her position at the surface to await more victims. Instead, he saw as she was…retracted…to the floor of the now seemingly clear lake. His mind screamed in fearful realization. His tribe’s limited power was completely dependent on their ability to fish in the deepest parts of the ocean. He had seen globular monsters hauled to shore that had antennae that looked like fish…all aimed at seducing would-be predators into spiked jaws. The lady was just the same—a lure.

He realized that those around him were now as still as he. All of them were staring at the woman that seemed to sleep in silent repose, and though there was a black trunk that extended into the unknown below, where her legs ought to be, Artek could almost believe she was a nymph, happily dreaming on the floor of a picturesque lake. He waited, lungs burning. He somehow knew what was coming next. He still jumped and screamed against the water when her eyes abruptly opened, and like a flash, she shot up and grabbed the man next to him, whose blades were crushed from his arms by her grip. Their eyes met briefly, and Artek was surprised to see a familiar salute as the man was dragged down to the embrace of long, sharp teeth that glinted silver in the filtered sunlight. He looked away, wondering how long his mind could handle being half-drowned before it broke completely.

When she returned to the surface, the gentle smile back on her face, and the blade once more in hand, Artek could see the whole of the horror he was up against. The men around him edged away…there was that ability, he discovered—he could move his way around a tight area, though it seemed impossible to make it to any of his fellow convicts. Why had the Winds screamed for this? Why him? His mind railed, cracking slightly—he forced himself to focus. While the others looked away, and fought to escape, Artek examined his foe. He still had his short dagger, along with a few tools, but none that would help like the armor and weaponry he saw on his fellow inmates.

Ages passed, or perhaps no time at all. Men and the occasional woman were added to the mix, and some—those that could not find stillness—were eaten. The Lurker, as he’d come to think of it, didn’t need to eat often. Artek merely lived half-dead and waited to understand—to find an opening for action that would end this nightmare. He determined the safest place for him would be directly below the lady-lure, where she couldn’t reach, and the monster wouldn’t be able to eat him without injuring itself. Beyond that, the best time to attach himself would be when she was about to breach the surface. To truly escape, he would need a weapon. He eyed the sword in her hand…it wasn’t a part of the monster. Perhaps it had stolen it from one of its prey as it had the baubles and jewelry it used as part of its ruse. Artek’s own bracelet now graced the lure’s delicate wrist with a flash of brass that taunted him.

His lungs became numb. The Calming Song was a tuneless chant his mind had adopted as a talisman against insanity, though that line thinned with each passing moment. He could tell the difference between the new victims and the old. They didn’t seem to age, but there was a glint in the eye, a resignation to the struggle, and many of those that had been there longest simply did not move, much like him. As yet another person was dragged into waiting jaws, a part of him wondered if he weren’t now the oldest. Was he? He looked up to the light of the Sun, pushing through the water. Did that mean Melot was truly gone? Was his village lost to the depths of time?

Abruptly, from the depths of his tattered mind, he realized it didn’t matter if he won or lost. It didn’t matter if he lived—it never had. The smile that lit his face caught the attention of the others. Even the new ones paused to stare. Was this the first time he’d moved since he’d first been dragged down? He watched dispassionately as a woman was crushed and eaten, and for the first time in ages, he moved. Swimming easily into the path the lady-lure would take back to the surface, he waited. Artek grabbed onto her skirts as she passed and felt the slick softness of the tentacle that held her as it brushed against him. He didn’t shudder…he didn’t have any winces left after all he’d seen. When she broke the surface, it was with him wrapped around her ‘waist’, the air tantalizingly close to lungs that hadn’t had a breath in…only the Gods knew how long.

The thought of being this close to the air and not breathing almost broke what was left of his mind, but the Calming Song was everything.

Find the center, breathe it in

Find a better path ahead

Alive is living and dead is dead

Calm the body, then the mind

Whisper to the Winds and listen to find

Alive is living and dead is dead

He waited with her. Just a step below the air, locked in the magic of the monster holding him between life and death. He felt her body tense in anticipation, and kept his eyes locked on the surface. There, a man suddenly appeared above, looking down at them both with startled eyes. Artek could almost believe it was himself, on a mission set by a crazy woman who heard the voices of the Gods. Was this lad's campaign the same? To bring the Tribe back to life and die in the process?

He didn’t bother to warn the man away—his moment was upon him. Just as the boy above him reached out and took a grip on the sword, Artek reached up and did the same. When she jerked the young man into the water, Artek used their momentum to his advantage and pried the sword from warring grips.

If he’d had any air left in him it would have been a savage yell that issued forth. He hoisted the sword, turned away from the promise of the surface, and plunged the blade into the tentacle that held the lady-lure to the man-eating angler fish. It was a unique horror as black blood floated up around him, and his muscles worked to a painful crescendo of effort with an old blade against soft flesh—but he was not alone. The others, emboldened by his success, rallied around him. Knives, swords, arrows, lances, and even a boy with a stick, all attacked the stalk of the lure and within moments, the Lady of the Lake had been severed from her master. She floated, finally dead, back into the depths, her regal offers no longer a bane to the men of the surface. And the monster let out a scream that surely could be heard for leagues around them, even from the bottom of the black lake.

It surged upward tearing through bodies, and for a moment, Artek was frozen. Those he had seen eaten…their faces seemed to have been melded into the skin of the creature, frozen in devastation, and he knew they yet lived and suffered. And finally, it happened. His mind snapped. A snarl of rage lit his face, and he no longer cared about anything other than vengeance. Justice for the evil wrought by the very nature of this beast.

The sword in his hands barely seemed to move, and yet abruptly stood between the wide-set eyes of a monster that, for the first time, seemed to know fear. The others followed, blades and blunt objects swinging and stabbing. All at once, the spell was broken.

His lungs burned for air again and the water dragged at him once more. As the monster fell away below him, he turned to the surface, wondering if he’d get one last taste of the sweet air that he’d taken for granted eons before.

When he broke the surface, when he took that first sweet breath of air, it was fire and a cooling balm all at once. He coughed and kicked and the world around him thrashed as warriors, birthed from the waters of Hell, coalesced at the surface around him and all made for the shores. When he dragged himself from the waters and turned back, it was to see that the lake was no longer black. Practically clear to the bottom, he could see the glint of the dead lure in the setting sun—his bracelet still upon her wrist. For an insane moment he considered going back for it but quickly cast the idea aside. Artek’s only wish for now was to breathe. One could never count on evil to stay dead.

Another age of breath passed before they began to speak to one another in haggard voices, waterlogged and unused. Many of them spoke languages he didn’t recognize, and wore clothes he didn't understand the utility of. Examining the shores he found it similar to his memory, though Melot was long gone, and the evening stars looked...different.

“You,” he heard his own language and turned to face the voice. A face he had studied and thought familiar loomed before him. “You have the sword.” Artek looked to his own hand, where the damnable thing was still gripped by his fingers. It was the sword—simple, with a bit of damage near the hilt, but obviously well-made. With two edges, he assumed it was for double-handed use, but it was small enough that a single edge would have made more sense. He dragged himself to his feet and the warriors around him did the same, all turning to face him.

“Who wishes to have this?” Artek asked, stabbing it into the dirt beside him and taking a step back. “I wish nothing from it.”

“’Tis yours,” the original man said. “I am Gawn. There is perhaps no time that has passed, but I feel it has all passed us by. I would pledge myself to you.”

“To me? A stranger?”

Gawn’s eyes were glassy with fatigue, “Who else might know me as you do? Who else saved me from a death worse than dying? I am yours, and I beg you to have me.”

Artek said nothing as the men prostrated themselves to him in thanks, offering promises, half of which he did not understand. A glance at his reflection showed him that he had not aged—he looked younger than he remembered.

“We cannot live in the world, anymore,” one man, Utur, claimed.

“Speak for yourself,” said another, his garbled words oddly clear to Artek. It was the lad Artek had used to break the spell, “I’ve only come today, and that sword is mine.” He took a few steps toward Artek, and Artek could not have stopped the others had he time to speak. In an instant, their newest would-be member was dead, multiple blades peppered through his body. Artek merely looked away and toward the edge of the lake, where he had imagined Melot frolicking, back when he’d had a claim to sanity. It was as good a place as any to put their new home. They would keep the lake free of evil and cleanse the rest of the land of it. If there was a monster here, at the heart of the world, then there were bound to be more. Artek had once dreamed a simple man’s dreams, driven by hope and love of the quiet. His mind would never be quiet, again.

His smile, as his mind quested into the future, was reflected fifty-fold in the people that were now his.