CHAPTER 345: WEEPING WELL COVE

• 10 DAYS LATER, LAT. 6°N OF THE COLD SEA.

"WHERE THE SHIT is my shitting shirt?!"

This loud cussing broke through a high redwood Cabin on the middle deck of a mighty sailing ship. Despite the winds being on their best today, the atmosphere was still cold as a siren’s fucking kiss and sleeping mists rolled over the blue sea, whispering on and about the large vessel like frozen ghosts of drowned pirates. Skeleton faces in the fog.

"Fuuuuuuuuck!!!"

CRACK—

Another bassy yowling slithered on the cold winds—from the redwood cabin again. The few crew on the frigate’s vast deck peered down the steps at the gingered boarding room and at each other. "That wild Sergeant, is it?" One man said, shawled in fat sweaters and a necktie. He stood by the strong roping of the immaculate masts. "Why can’t that man be like the rest of the passengers, eh? Cozy and unbothered indoors, sleeping off the cold. We still got a’ways to go. I tell ya, he is damn crazy. The pretty ones always are."

"I like crazy." A mature woman, rolled in what seemed like ten blankets rebutted the crewman.

He scoffed back. "You like pretty."

Snorts broke out in the haze of the great ship. "Crazy...and pretty?" the woman laughed, "hell yeah!" The whole crew broke out fast in high laughter, cuddled close together for warmth, puffing curls of white vapor into the chill with every breath. The freezing winds also carried their rumbling down to the middle tier and the redwood cabin, where the crazy naval Sergeant dwelt.

"What are those sons-of-bitches up there chuckling about?" Eotigan—passenger of the redwood cabin—paced the board-style room. "—we are supposed to have struck FUCKIN’ land."

Inaia was silent as she came up behind him and gently took his fist. She could feel the tension stringing his form as she wiped down his fingers with a wet towel. The cloth came off scarlet. The cabin now had a hole in its standard ivory mirror from where Eotigan had punched through in his fit; the reason for the loud crack earlier. As his wounds healed, Inaia passed her hand over the splintered plate, and all the shards came together, floating back to make a whole, sewing like ants till the mirror was once again good as new. Better than new.

Inaia rinsed off the cloth and went to sit on the bigger bunker bed, beside Kambili.

The beautiful colored girl was quiet too. Both women knew not to speak. . .yet.

Eotigan had left the larger of the bunk beds to them, colonizing easily the narrow cot. And it was not for lack of sleep—or sex—that he woke up enraged this morning. Or night, was it?

Kambili couldn’t tell. The weather was just one thing these days: cold.

"Is he...how do you say?..sprung?"

Inaia looked to her, dropping her voice because Eotigan was still right there growling and puffing like a tiger. "Horny, you mean?"

"Yes, horny. Yes." Kambili nodded; she was only just learning the popular language from her fit rastafarian white tutor. Inaia was growing on her, just as the Eldorian tongue. Neither one of her two new companions had told the Ironside warrior of their true intentions to bring her into a fresh harem, but they had let her come on this failure of a cruise. Big whoop there! Eotigan mused glumly. What had made him choose a cold fucking voyage over lopping off pirates dicks?

Oh, yeah! He wanted to impress his new waifu to be.

"No, he isn’t horny." Inaia whispered back. "I mean I don’t think so."

"But he is hard." Kambili nodded to the sizeable stretch in Eotigan’s flannel pants. The girls were grateful for his naked chest—something to ogle while the time passed. Kambili hushed again. "We can offer to relieve him, no? That always helps."

"I’m afraid not today, darling." Inaia’s lovely eyes rose up to capture her [Host] in his brooding stance. "Today, he has remembered her."

"Whom?" Kambili naively asked.

"His ex." Inaia dropped. "The Empress of the fucking world!"

Kambili’s jewelled eyes almost left their sockets. The bunker bed jounced from her sudden bounce. "Lord Eotigan’s last girlfriend is the EMPYREAN?!"

Inaia was just about to pop a lazy, "yep—" when Eotigan’s baritone thundered in.

"I’m right here, you know. And Ravenna is not my EX!"

"Okay. Okay." Kambili drew in on herself. She was quickly learning that Eotigan being angry was not good for anybody. Of course now she knew he was a demon. A devil. A freaking Hellion. A horned god, as a matter of fact. But that he’d previously dated—and bed—the ruling regent of the Nine Realms was unspoken Ritz. Now his aura was really off the charts. Kambili had heard the exploits of the Queen of House de Vries, and her flame-haired paramour.

Wait, flame-haired?

Kambili looked Eotigan up and down. Her sexy Serge fit the description, right down to his dick.

But then the Empress’s darling was named Israfel, a mysterious High Lord who had helped keep the integrity of the Eldorian nations from mad conquerors more than once. Not Eotigan! Her fine brows pushed together. "You are Israfel. . .my god!" She gasped. Eotigan loved the way his new consort sounded the name out her full lips, but he wasn’t there yet, not with her. So he berated her in a stoic, low tone. "I am Sergeant Lars Eotigan. Yes?"

"Yes sir." Kambili’s shoulders sagged, the excitement leaving her eyes.

Eotigan, feeling he had to give her something—her being a lush Cyrené helped—said, "we had to separate, I and the [Empyrean]. In the last war that crushed Titans Landing: Stormanos, the rage of the umber dragon. . ." He paused, Aya Naamah’s face and Corazón’s blessed funeral flashing. "We both lost too much."

He felt warmth behind him and Inaia’s arms slide around his waist. Her palm glided up his ripped torso and her fingers spread on his golden abs.

"You need not speak further, Lord [host]. Tell us how we can make you feel better."

He moved out of her hands and clicked his fingers. A huge red flame blazed to life in the hollow of his palm, quickly burning out. A charcoal pencil and a papyrus scroll was left in it.

He pointed to the bigger spring bed. "Take off your clothes and lie back, both of you. [Gladorium], play me something good."

[🎶 May It Be – Enya.]

As the enchanted song began in ghostly whispers, filling the room, Sgt. Eotigan—shirtless and divine—construed the most perfect pencil portrait of two nude damsels. The might vessel hit high tides and winds, but neither the naked women nor their ruthlessly handsome artist were perturbed. It was just him, sketching fair Kambili and porcelain Inaia, trying to forget the ones he’d lost. And when Eotigan finally turned the scroll their way, both girls were in such awe of his masterful hand they immediately fell on top of him.

All them amazing curves and juicy heaps...heaped on top of him.

Excitedly, they rolled together with Eotigan on the thick blankets, screaming, and giving the bored crew a storey above a reason to snort and shake off the white cold.

Inaia’s seeking hand by this time had traced to the thickness in her Host’s crotch, and she rubbed him, and not subtly. But before she could pull her big man out, a gravelly man roared in a summoning horn:

"LAND!!!"

And the very loud bugle sounded as the frigate roamed to shore.

"Aarrrghh! Shit! Fucking horns!" Inaia was unsmiling as she softly pulled away from Eotigan’s ready manhood to get them clothes, at least fit for the chill—the chill only one of them could feel. Kambili was granted the thickest pullover.

Outside, passengers for the cruise and other realm travels already filtered out their respective cabins and mucked on the vast deck. One of the vessel’s three captains pointed in his bearskin hoodie to the very tiny island, that was mostly ice.

"That, is what we get for a week in a FUCKING BLIZZARD!" A man tried to calm his young wife. Obviously he was the one whom had stupidly picked this for their honeymoon. "I liked you better in courtship." She threw her face away. The poor man’s own countenance sank.

"Poor bastard." Kambili chuckled, her fingers warm in knitted gloves.

"Well, land’s land." Someone said, and the scores of blanketed passengers funneled down to the little island that was more iceberg than actual sand. "—more like ICELAND!" A fat man in colors of House Ormond joked. Eotigan didn’t look at that man.

The main attraction of this ’iceland’ was the large hole in its snowy center—which dumbasses called a well.

The Well.

As the men and women cuddled around its giant lip, rubbing hoodies and sharing one another’s cigar breaths, sure enough the weeping came. This weeping the well, and this tiny smidge of ice was famous for.

Some had said it was wind over deep stalactites. Some had said it was a cursed mermaid chained down there.

Eotigan just thought the well looked like an anaconda’s asshole.

—just saying.

But the weeping noisies were so eerie and echoing it sounded fucking real.

The passengers heard it all from the well’s super-wide mouth: crying that shocked. . .like bone-shock, sobbing, and fucking sniffles.

"That can’t be wind over a bunch of stones, come on!" Some dude in huge spectacles snorted. He was obviously the doofus explorer.

The second Captain of the mighty ship went over to the well’s dark edge, right on the precipice of the abyssal depth, and he raised his hands like a friar in worship, beaming so wide his teeth twinkled. He lauded,

"Weeping Well Cove, everybody!"

This captain was too happy in finally finding something to give to the passengers for all their hard chink that he did not notice the giant black thing that had creeped up from the darkness, artfully blending into the shadows.

He did not turn. He could not hear the horrible chittering and clattering over the weeping of the well.

The passengers were clapping, murmuring excitedly on the Arctic reef to one another, when the smiling Captain’s head was suddenly snatched off his shoulders.

—SNAP!

His head came free, cut cleanly off by terrible, giant mandibles.

The cruisers didn’t notice immediately. The decapitation was so swift it took some moments for the blood gush to hit.

And when it did, by the Martyr, it poured out this poor sod’s severed neck in founts.

The bespectacled explorer received the first splurge in his face. Warm crimson of life. The bickering couple received the next. They each stumbled, shocked quiet. Then they traced the scarlet rain up to the headless captain, uniting the bloody spray with the still shaking, standing body. And then came the scream.

Horrendous.

Fierce.

Afraid.

"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"

The crowd broke helter-skelter. The other captains abandoned their comrade—whom just had his head stolen by a fucking insect—and sprinted like fuck for the ship.

Shit had just hit the fan.

Amidst the yelling and the blood raining down all over, only Eotigan and the girls stood in the chaos; they were all more humored than shocked. It was grimly hilarious. Like the sod had been standing there all smiles one moment. . .and then snap! Motherfucker had lost his head.

Eotigan saw two pairs of oval, crimson eyes in the darkness of the well’s mouth.

The Captain’s headless body crashed into the snow, painting the glacier harsh copper.

The weeping had increased in tempo, so it was like some actual sick music to this shocking kill.

Eotigan, Inaia, and Kambili witnessed the murderer emerge out the hole. . .and it was a spider.

A giant fucking Arachnid!

Its scarlet compound eyes zoomed on them. This thing was grotesque. Hideous. A creature of absolute carnage. Hairs on its twisted legs were long as fingers. And Kambili did not know how it was fucking standing. "It’s just one mutated spider." Inaia put confidence to her voice. While she was still speaking, more huge, red eyes appeared, glowing in the abyss below. The noises out the well were more screeching than weeping now. "No—" Eotigan told. "It’s a fucking den."

"Shit." Inaia surrendered.

Between both of them, Kambili looked upon the [critch] and she blew through her lips.

"Fuck my ass!"