Chapter 4

Nimbus and Grum, Lucent Deep

Sunk

            “Thalarae’s journal notes: Day 15 at sea, finally stopped raining, winds are calm. Course proceeding as planned. Have seen many new species of fish swimming next to the Scuttleback. Some glow at night. Passed large floating islands of kelp; sea birds live there, big and small. Apart from regularly dispensed tokens, we have used half of our awarded tokens from helping retrieve the egg. The bucket smells extra bad today.

            Day 16: Nimbus and Grum have now played 300 rounds of tic‑tac‑toe on the chalkboard. No land to map; stars and moons clearly visible at night. Plotting course steadily, no strong currents, fair wind. We now have a well‑organized system for using the chalkboard, message tube, and chamber pot.

            Day 17: Low wind, slow progress. Temperature mild. There were some odd bubbles trailing off the port side this morning—maybe a whale following us? The food ration options have all been tried now; Grum ate the last of his Charcoal Snapper yesterday, and two fairy treats remain. If the wind doesn’t pick up soon it will be thirty‑six more days until we get to Rhinestone Reach (twenty‑eight if it does).

            Day 18: On the ocean, talked to one of the sailors using a piece of paper; he doesn’t know what the egg is for, but he says the winds usually pick up a bit farther out. He has made this journey fourteen times. Saw another seaweed island. No birds this time. Only…”

            The last line trailed away on the paper. The air went cold. The cabin window framed the ocean—flat, dark, ordinary. Then Grum’s face changed. He mouthed a sound. Nothing left the room. The Echo Shroud held silence like a lid.

            Grum ran from the porthole. Fingers slammed into the chalkboard. He sketched with frantic lines—long, jagged marks that tried to hold the thing he saw. Thalarae’s hand was a blur. A note—short, urgent—was shoved into the tube. Combo set: 00. Red.

            Nimbus reached for the stone communicator where they’d hidden it. He fumbled in the cramped locker. Grum finished the drawing—an impossible mouth, teeth like the ribs of a canyon—and Thalarae sent the Tube.

            They heard nothing at first — only the thud of their own heartbeats — then the ship shuddered as if struck by a falling mountain. The outer wall exploded open. Timber sheared; the hull ripped like paper. Beams split, and the staccato crack of bone hammered through the cabin as seawater burst through the new gash — white, cold, immediate — rushing where minutes ago there had been calm.

            The room came apart around them. The bed flipped; splinters flew. A ragged gap opened in the ship’s side and sky fell into the cabin. Thalarae vaulted through that opening, clawing at the air; Nimbus wrapped himself around Grum and shoved them both through the wound and into the churning dark as the Scuttleback began to list.

            The Echo Shroud failed; the sound that followed was brutal and total — metal screaming, human cries, the low, wet rasp of something enormous moving with hunger. A distant fire answered somewhere else on board.

            A violent shock knocked them free of the dying ship. They tumbled end over end and hit the sea hard. Salt seized their faces; cold water closed over limbs. Nimbus fought to hold Grum tight; the little warm weight of him went slack in Nimbus’s grip.

            Beneath the thrashing, something vast rolled up from the depths — a dark continent of flesh and armored hide coiling close. Then a mouth opened, a circle of teeth wider than a river.

A final, splintering clamp snapped together around Nimbus and Grum. A spray of water and plank flashed across the air, and then the swallowing dark took them.