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Chapter Text

Long ago, in an ancient time lost to the memories of man, a creature came out of the deep. Its skin was bone and its eyes were yellow fire. It lived in the darkest coldest currents of the ocean, and though it knew little of its existence, it knew hunger. 

The creature came into a young world, an explosion of life as newly formed as itself. The creature quickly learned the laws of this lush kingdom, how to hunt, how to feed, how to give back, in turn, to the bottom feeders who flushed forgotten detritus into verdant nutrients. The creature became complex, powerful, a force to behold in the vulnerable ecosystem it preyed upon. As eons passed, it grew fins, by which to slice its hunter’s path through the currents. Its flesh calcified into armor. It grew hair like black tangled weeds, and sharpened its appendages into vicious claws, predatory tools for ravaging. 

All feared the creature and the creature lived with satisfaction in its deep dark kingdom at the bottom of the sea. 

Yet time continued on in its inevitable course, and the creature began to notice changes in its dominion. It smelled land-flesh in the currents, and through its thriving network, it heard whispers of warm blooded beings who walked boldly in the presence of the distant sun. The more the creature heard of this foreign hunting ground, ripe with progress and mammalian flesh, it hungered ever more. 

The creature had been birthed of the deep, and knew little of the gentle surface waters that kissed the heavens. As its craving grew to monstrous proportions, it grew bolder in its ventures. It sent spies up to the surface: venomous jellies that glowed opalescent in moonlight, fanged eels with unyielding jaws, clever crustaceans that buried their shells in the sand and listened to all that walked upon the surface. Those under the creature’s thrall reported back all they heard and even brought offerings down into the depths. The creature lived in the decomposing carcass of an abyssal beast and it lavished its skeletal palace with lost relics of the surface kingdoms. One day, one of its spies returned with a locket, within which bore the likeness of a human man. The creature gazed into the portrait and saw that the human was both beautiful and rich with life. It recognized a regality in the man’s features, not knowing that this was indeed the visage of a prince whose kingdom occupied a nearby coast. The creature’s longing and hunger magnified ever stronger, and it resolved to journey to the surface itself to taste mortal flesh. 

One night, the creature ascended from its domain for the first time in its long life. It felt its body reacting to the painful shifts in pressure, yet it pressed forward. That same night, a terrible storm roiled across the water’s surface. A passing ship from the nearby kingdom, tossed from swell to swell, cracked asunder under the ocean’s violence and spilt its lamentable crew into the waves. 

The creature howled delightedly at this sight. As it prepared to feast upon the doomed and drowning men, it happened to spot one whom it recognized. It had memorized every feature by heart, and knew instantly that this man was the very same one from its treasured locket. Hardly able to believe its fortune, the creature grasped the prince and prepared to devour him as it had longed to do since it had first laid eyes on his likeness. However, as it stared into the innocent face and felt the fading warmth of the body under its claws, an unfamiliar feeling welled up from within its chest and it found it could not bear to kill him. Instead, it took the prince into its arms and dragged him to the surface. Upon breaching, the creature registered the scent of a thousand unfamiliar wonders and felt the foreign touch of cold wind upon its fins, but it concentrated on cradling the prince above the waters as it swam for shore. It laid him upon the sand and caressed him under the starlight. The man was, indeed, more beautiful in person than his portrait, and the creature shuddered. It had only ever known desire as a thing of appetite, of death and teeth and stomach. It did not understand the shape of its want, but it knew it was desire that kept it from leaving the man’s side until its gills gasped for breath and its body could not bear the strain. It held its fearsome talons against the prince’s soft fingers and despaired before returning to the depths of the sea.

For many days and many months, the creature pined in its cadaverous den. It lost all will to hunt and grew weak with yearning. One of its minions, possessing an unparalleled intelligence within its exoskeleton, observed its master’s woe and offered a solution. It suggested that the creature seek out another entity that, like itself, had been birthed from the darkness, yet was said to exist from a time that predated the very world’s inception. This entity had divorced itself from the petty cycles of life and death, and occupied a fissure so black and soulless that no being dared seek its counsel except under the direst circumstances. 

‘It is enormously powerful,’ said the loyal servant. ‘But be warned, for its motives are mysterious and in its deceit, may take more from you than you can give.’

The creature, desperate to end its suffering any way it could, followed its minion’s directions and located the fissure. From within, it detected a primordial magic that struck fear through its core, but the creature steeled its resolve and pushed onward down, down, down, into the gloom for what felt like an eternity. Just when it thought it could not bear the endless shadow any longer, it heard a sinister voice echo, ‘I smell a broken heart.’

Its burning yellow eyes sought the speaker, but it could not make out anything from its dreary surroundings until a harsh white light illuminated the lair. It came face to face with a smiling creature, a horrifying sight to behold with a grin near-splitting its skull and a hypnotizing lantern bobbing from its head. The entity introduced itself as a sorcerer who could bend reality to its whims. 

‘But at a price,’ it specified. 

‘I seek an end to my torment,’ the creature pleaded. ‘Please lend me your power and restore me to what I once was.’

‘I know what you truly desire,’ the sorcerer cackled. ‘You wish to leave this rotting world under the waves entirely and live like a human alongside the man you spared. I can do this for you. But for my magic to work, you must eat of the one you adore. Retrieve his eyes for me, and I will make you a potion. Only upon consuming it will you trade your fins for limbs and walk free under the sun.’

The eager creature deliberated long and hard. To its own surprise, it found it did not wish to inflict pain upon the man that occupied its desire, but the temptation to walk alongside him overpowered its hesitation and it agreed. 

The creature sent its servants to retrieve the eyes of the man. Small and unobtrusive, they swarmed through the stones of the palace, into the bedchambers of the prince where he lay asleep, and plucked out his eyes with their claws. The man’s screams shook the foundations of the kingdom but the pests had already scuttled between the crevices of the castle walls and into the safety of the tide where they descended and presented their prize before their master.

The creature took the prince’s eyes and brought it before the sorcerer who concocted a foul substance which he bade the creature to consume. 

‘Heed my words,’ it said with a sly grin. ‘My magic shall bind your souls, but only conditionally. By the next moon, if the prince does not love you as you are, he will remain blind and you will return to the darkness from whence you came, cursed to live in a torturous limbo for all eternity. However, if he were to return your feelings, he will regain the sight you took from him and you will remain human to the end of your days. This is the bargain.’

‘How can the prince love me as I am,’ the creature asked, ‘if he cannot see me nor know my true form?’

But the wicked sorcerer merely smiled. ‘This is the bargain,’ it repeated.

Again, the creature ruminated on this treacherous deal, but it thought of the man’s noble face and pliant flesh in the starlight and it agreed. The moment it tasted the bitter potion, the creature convulsed and felt a fiery pain engulf its body. The sorcerer’s lair echoed with cruel laughter as the creature struggled out of the crevasse and swam with all its remaining might to the surface. It roared with the agony of its transformation as its bones ripped through its body and its insides melted and reconfigured into organs bursting with human blood. Its tail split into legs just as it breached the waters. Strength depleted, it let the tides carry it to shore with the driftwood where it fell upon the sand and sank into an exhausted sleep. 

Chapter Text

The creature came awake to the sound of the tide and the sensation of delicate fingers probing its face. Disoriented, it opened its eyes and reached out to a figure silhouetted by morning sun. 

It was a child, a little girl who laughed as she held its hands. She called out to her maid, who rushed to her side with a cry of alarm. The kindly woman draped her apron over the creature and helped it to its feet, asking it many questions to which it had no answer. She mused aloud that it must have been the subject of a shipwreck, or perhaps waylaid by bandits and left for dead on the beach. With her support, it took its first unsteady steps on its fine human legs, and seeing its changed form in the sunlight, gaped in awe at the evidence of the sorcerer’s great powers. 

The woman explained that she was the nursemaid of the young princess, who had found the creature while out on her morning walk. The creature beheld the child and saw that she had the same bright eyes it had stolen from the man it loved. It had not contemplated before that the prince, or that any of the beings who walked upon land, partook in the same rituals of life and birth as those in the sea, and it was filled with wonder. 

The princess and her maid led the creature into the walls of the palace, where it was offered a bath, a warm meal, and fresh clothes. It kept silent throughout these strange customs, its usual ferocity quelled by the gentleness of human hospitality. When it overheard the servants discussing the prince’s sudden blindness, the creature found itself inflamed with guilt, an unfamiliar emotion that burned quite more potently than the sorcerer’s foul potion. The servants suggested that the creature be brought before the prince, who had grown morose and would surely appreciate being regaled by the tale of this intriguing visitor. 

The creature entered the prince’s chambers and saw that he was just as lovely as the night they had met, despite the bandages covering his eyes and his air of dejection. The creature introduced itself with a borrowed name. The prince noted that its voice sounded familiar, to which the creature remembered the night of the storm when it had crooned into the prince’s ear as it had dragged him to shore. It denied any familiarity, and claiming to be a visitor from a distant land, offered its loyalty.

“I will stay by your side,” it said. “For after all, I am a stranger in your kingdom and have nowhere else to go. I swear my unending devotion to you.”

The prince, at first suspicious, found these earnest vows amusing and was further endeared by his daughter’s friendly regard for this mysterious stranger. The creature therefore took up residence in the prince’s household and every day, sat by his side telling him marvelous stories of the first oceans and all the ancient wisdoms of the deep. The prince greatly enjoyed these tales, believing them fanciful, and quickly became fond of the creature’s company. 

Though it had never known the care of a mother or father, the creature observed the prince’s deep love for his daughter, who he cherished above all else, and it too learned to nurture a paternal tenderness for the young princess. It became her constant playmate, and spent long hours allowing her to pamper its long black hair or ride atop its broad shoulders. 

Throughout its long conversations with the prince, it learned that the little princess had never known her mother. The unfortunate queen had passed in childbirth and left her husband as prince consort of a kingdom at constant war with oceanic terrors. Violent waters had claimed the young prince’s parents, as well as the late king, his father in law. The creature recalled how a storm had nearly claimed the prince’s life as well. As a horror born of the abyss, it understood appetite well and realized how deeply the sea craved the prince’s sorrowful life. It vowed ever more to keep him safe upon dry land, for him to shed his tragedies, to walk in the sunshine, and live out the remainder of his life surrounded by sweet delights.

The ailing prince, burdened both by his blindness and the tragic loss of his crewmates, was soothed by the creature’s friendship and soon recovered his strength. The creature had retained the might of his original form and proved a suitable bodyguard and guide. With his support, the prince learned to navigate his surroundings, to heighten his instincts and use his keen intellect to overcome his lost sight. 

In all its ancient years, the creature had never before experienced a happiness so profound or pure as the time it spent by the prince’s side, carefully guiding him through the palace and castle town. The prince soon grew adept at navigating independently and the two companions spent fond days walking side by side, lost in conversation. 

The creature found the human world fascinating, and so unregulated by its foreign customs, relied on the prince to teach him the ways of mankind. The prince, in turn, developed an affectionate curiosity for the creature’s unusual philosophies concerning cycles of death, rebirth, and life. They found that they frequently disagreed about many things, but always found pleasant compromises and thus strengthened their bond with every exchanged word, every touch, every smile. The creature found itself intoxicated by the prince, more than it ever had, and it soon forgot the way of life it had once known. 

But the relentless days passed and human as it now was, the cold currents of the deep called to its blood. It remembered that the sorcerer, powerful as it was, could easily reclaim these moments of bliss and cast its soul into eternal torment. The creature knew that the prince valued their relationship, that they had developed an intimate bond that only deepened day by day, but it knew not the extent of the prince’s affections nor if it would be enough to save it from the promised darkness. 

As it happened, at the peak of the creature’s distress and heartsickness, the prince welcomed another guest into the palace: a childhood friend who spoke gracefully of faith. Never before had the creature felt so inadequate as it did watching this sophisticated specimen dazzle the prince with a friendship built from years of camaraderie and high regard. The creature’s jealousy grew with every passing second it watched its beloved’s attention divided, until it could stand it no longer. 

On a moonless night, the prince asked his two closest friends to accompany him on a stroll on the beach. As they walked, the creature smelt the salt in the frigid night air and felt the rhythm of the tide in its bones. An ancient hunger stirred within it, and though it attempted to quell these monstrous urges, it could not suppress its instincts. Its human flesh warped and deformed, the sorcerer’s spell disrupted by the heat of its emotion.

With a great roar it lunged upon the prince’s friend and unhinged its fanged jaws around him with the intention of severing flesh from flesh. It clawed his face and tore one of his arms, to which the pitiful man fainted from shock. The prince, frightened and unseeing, dove before his friend in protection, and the creature inadvertently bit his hand. The sweetness of the blood, the same blood he had craved from the moment he had laid eyes on the prince’s portrait so long ago, shocked the creature to his senses and he keened a remorseful howl knowing that he had yet again inflicted pain upon his beloved. 

The prince screamed in pain, his left hand now numb and lifeless, while he cradled the unconscious body of his childhood companion. He cursed the monster with bitter hatred and called out for his bodyguard, not knowing that the very monster before him was one and the same. The creature, horrified at what it had done, knew then that the prince could never love it as it was, could never accept its vicious tendencies, could never forgive its malevolent nature.

While the prince sobbed for help, the creature heard a disturbance in the water and turned to find the carapace of one of its loyal servants rise from the foam. It whispered that it had sold its intelligence to the sorcerer in exchange for a new deal, having suspected that the creature had been doomed to an impossible task. It said that the creature could now return to the sea with the prince’s memory altered, erasing all evidence of the time they had spent together. 

The creature did not hesitate to take this deal, heartbroken as it was, and it approached the prince one final time. Caressing his blood stained face, the creature confessed everything about his true form, his bargain, and the pain he had inflicted, as well as his undying love. Tearfully, he pressed his jaws to the prince’s soft lips, before forcing himself away and disappearing under the waves. 

Epilogue

Many moons passed, during which the creature pined in its lonely depths. It could no longer consult its loyal servant, who after the sealing of the sorcerer’s bargain, had rendered into a mute dumb beast. The creature grew more forlorn than it ever had before and vowed to waste away in the rotting carcass of its leviathan home. 

However, it had once dominated the waters it reigned, and those of its domain came to it with urgent missives of a beast killer who had taken to ravaging the oceanic kingdoms. The creature ignored these frantic warnings for as long as it could, but eventually could no longer contain its indignation nor its predatory lust for blood. Its grief transformed to wrath, it furiously sought the beast killer, who had already slain many of its monstrous kin and discarded their bodies as fodder for benthic decomposers. The creature was a terror by nature, but one that still understood appetite and the value of a body. Enraged by this wanton display of senseless carnage, it hunted the beast killer ever more fervently.

At last, having caught its quarry’s trail, it breached the ocean’s surface as it had long ago and found a human ship masted for war, captained by his very own beloved. His gentle prince had transformed into a fearsome sight, wild and scarred, bearing destructive weapons with which it used to slay the creature’s brethren.

The creature, careful not to reveal itself, stalked the ship’s passage for days and eavesdropped on its crew, during which it learned that the prince’s daughter had been swept away during a high tide and drowned. The prince, lost in his grief, had declared war upon the ocean itself and devoted himself to slaying the creatures that called it home. 

One faithful night, while the prince looked morosely out upon the water, the grieving creature mourned the princess’s loss alongside him and longed to soothe the ache in his heart as it once had before. Unable to lurk in the shadows any longer, it called out to him. The prince started upon hearing its voice and swung his lantern low, illuminating the creature’s burning yellow eyes. They stared into each other’s faces. The prince’s face contorted into recognition and rage as the sorcerer’s wicked magic dispelled. 

Flying into a fit of passionate fury, he leaped into the water and embedded his knife deep into its heart. Seeing that the prince now remembered its sins, the creature prepared to dissolve into abyssal darkness as the sorcerer had promised. However it remained solidly intertwined around the prince as they descended deeper and deeper in a black trail of blood. Only then did it realize that there had been no need for a second bargain: that it was love as much as hatred that guided the prince’s blade as it gouged ever deeper. The creature shed human tears from its monstrous eyes as it buried its fangs into the prince’s neck. Together they sank, lost in each other’s embrace, lovesick offerings to the darkest coldest currents of the deep.