Here's chapter 9. I'm going to start posting a new chapter every Thursday and Sunday. I want to finish this story this month. This chapter is called "The Fishing Hamlet", and has beaten chapter 6's record as my longest chapter, with 1896 words. I hope you like it, and sorry if it is too long for you.
The Fishing Hamlet[]
Mark, Derrick, Jason, and I arrived at the small fishing hamlet that we were called to after a 4 hour horseback ride. The place looked extremely run down, messy, and gloomy. The buildings seemed to be in very poor condition, and there weren’t many people out. We only saw a small family, consisting of a mother and two daughters, standing on the outskirts of the town. I knew that they were the ones that had sent out for us.
We dismounted our horses, and tied them to a small, wooden fence that appeared to be completely pointless, since it didn’t fence off anything. We were approached by the family.
“Which of you is Djura?” the mother asked.
“Djura didn’t come”, Mark answered. “I’m his son. My name is Mark. This is Derrick, that’s Jason, and our masked friend is Sakharine.”
“Djura send you here to help us?” she asked.
“He did”, Mark said. “What do you need us to do?” he asked.
“Please”, she said. “Come with me.”
She and her two daughters began leading us. Suddenly, one of the daughters, who appeared to be about 6 years old, started walking alongside me. “Are you a monster?” she asked in a very high pitched voice. I stopped, and then she stopped. I then crouched down.
“Don’t be scared”, I said before lifting my mask up, revealing my face to her. I could see in her eyes that she was frightened, and she took a step backwards. I smiled at her, which seemed to calm her down, since she smiled back at me. I took a gold coin out of my pocket, and gave it to her. She then ran back to her mother. I stood up, put my mask back on, and caught up with everyone else.
“What was that about?” Jason asked.
“I was showing that little girl that I wasn’t a monster”, I answered. “I let her see my face.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jason asked. “You don’t let me, your best friend, see your face, but you let some little girl that you don’t even know see your face?”
“Yes”, I answered.
“Do you ever plan on letting anyone else see your face, or do you plan on wearing that mask for your entire life?” Mark asked.
“I hate wearing masks, so I don’t understand how you can do it at all times”, Derrick said.
“You know what guys?” I said. “In a few years, if we’re all alive, I’ll let you see my face. I doubt I’ll be insecure about it for my entire life.”
“What are some circumstances that would cause you to leave your home unmasked?” Derrick asked.
“Well”, I said. “Maybe if I had a bounty on my head, I would go around unmasked, since the wanted posters would have the mask on them, and not my face.”
“That makes sense”, Jason said.
Suddenly, the mother we were going to help stopped in front of a large, smelly cave.
“This where you were leading us?” Mark asked.
“Yes”, she said. “A terrible creature comes out of this cave and terrorizes our village. I called you here to help us get rid of it.”
“Have you seen the creature yourself?” Mark asked.
“No”, she answered. “But one of the men in this village said that he saw a giant, fish-like beast wielding an anchor come out of the cave. He shot it in the leg with a harpoon, which scared it off, and caused it to bleed.”
“It bled?” I asked. “That’s good.”
“How’s that?” she asked.
“If it bleeds, we can kill it”, I answered.
“Is there anything else we need to know?” Mark asked her.
“We’ve also heard what sounds like a woman’s singing coming from the cave”, she answered. “It usually starts when the sun starts setting.”
“Thanks for the information”, Mark said. “We’ll take care of this. What’s your name?”
“Carmilla”, she said. She introduced her 10 year old daughter as Christina, and her 6 year old daughter as Amelia.
“We’ll go kill that thing”, Mark said. “We’ll be back.”
“Good luck”, Carmilla said. We started heading into the cave, but Carmilla grabbed my shoulder. “Thank you for being nice to my daughter.”
“No problem, Carmilla”, I said. “I love kids.”
“Farewell”, she said.
The four of us went into the cave. It smelled absolutely terrible, and was very dark. “Is anyone else having trouble seeing?” I asked.
“No”, Jason said. “You’re the only one with a mask that has built-in sunglasses.”
“Oh, right”, I said before clicking the button on my mask that retracts the glass covering my right eye. Suddenly, I could see pretty much perfectly. “That’s better.”
“Why don’t you retract both of them?” Derrick asked. “Why just do one?”
“I only need one”, I said.
We continued moving for a little bit, before Mark told us to stop. He had stopped to examine a spider on the wall. “Hey, Sakharine”, he said. “I’ll give you a thousand if you eat this spider.”
“A thousand what?” I asked.
“Money”, he answered.
“Okay”, I said. I went over to where it was, picked it up with my left hand, lifted my mask up, and ate the spider whole before fixing my mask on my face. The spider didn’t actually taste that bad. Everyone else, however, was disgusted.
“Good lord, Sakharine!” Mark exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting you to actually do it!”
“I’d do anything if it’ll get me money”, I said. “Do you have the money with you?”
“I don’t have that kind of money, but I can get it for you”, he said.
“You better”, I said. “Shall we keep moving?”
“Of course”, Mark said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
After that little diversion, we heard the singing that Carmilla had mentioned. It sounded like it was close by. We moved a bit forward, and found 4 different paths, and we couldn’t tell which one the noise was coming from.
“Lets each go down a different one of these paths”, Mark stated. “Derrick, I want you to take the one on the left.”
“You got it, Mark”, Derrick said obediently.
“Jason”, Mark began saying. “I want you to take the second tunnel on the left.”
“I’ll go”, Jason acknowledged.
“I’ll go down the third tunnel, and Sakharine, I want you to go down the one on the right”, he said before we all went where we were ordered to go. As I walked down the tunnel I was assigned, I drew Alfred’s sword and one of my pistols so that if I was ambushed, I would be ready to counter attack. As I continued, I could hear the singing get louder, which likely meant that I was on the correct path.
Suddenly, after a few minutes of walking, I saw something lying on the ground. It appeared to be a woman. I moved closer to it, and I realized that it was indeed a woman, but wasn’t entirely human, since its skin appeared to be either a really light blue or pure white. It heard me coming, stopped singing, and turned to look at me. “She’s beautiful”, I whispered to myself.
I then got the idea to try to seduce it to lower its guard. I began slowly walking up to it, while saying flirtatious things to it. When I got about 5 feet away from it, I found out that I was not successful when she jumped at me, biting me in the inner thigh, barely missing my crotch. I fell on my back, and started kicking wildly, trying to get her to let go of my leg. After that proved unsuccessful, I gave up and slashed at her with my sword. It backed up slightly in pain. I then shot it in the head, killing her instantly. I got up, and could barely stand. When I started to move again, I limped.
I got to a point where all four of the paths met, and saw that the other three were already there waiting for me.
“We heard a shot”, Derrick said. “Are you alright?”
“No”, I said. “I found what was singing. It was a weird snail woman, and it bit my thigh good. I’m limping pretty bad.”
“Do you want to go back?” Mark asked. “It’s fine if you do.”
“I’ll be fine”, I said while breathing heavily.
Almost immediately afterwards, we began hearing loud footsteps coming from the opposite direction of where we had all entered the room, which was from one giant tunnel. Mark gestured for us all to hide, and we all hid inside a little crevice that was big enough for us all to hide in, but small enough that we had to crouch down. About a minute after we got into that position, a huge, fish monster wielding a giant anchor. It looked like some kind of human/shark hybrid, was covered in scales and what appeared to be corral, and was about 10 feet tall. It also had a harpoon going through its right leg, meaning Carmilla’s friend was telling the truth. We all remained silent, and the giant moved past us, and went down the tunnel that I had come from. When it was a good distance away, we left our hiding spot.
“I guess that’s what we came here to kill”, Mark announced.
“What was that?” Jason asked. “Some kind of…. shit whale or something?”
“A ‘shit whale’? Really, Jason?” I said.
“Got something to say?” he asked defensively.
“Let’s go after that thing”, Mark announced.
We started following the giant, moving stealthily, which wasn’t very easy for me due to my injured leg. We eventually caught up to the creature, and Mark moved in to try and climb onto its back. Unfortunately, I tripped over a rock and landed on my face, making a noise loud enough to alert the giant fishman.
It turned around, and saw us. It swung its weapon at Mark, who ducked out of the way, drew his boom hammer, flipped a switch that caused its blade to light on fire, and struck the giant in the chest, severely injuring it. Jason, Derrick, and I all drew our guns, and began shooting it in the head, stunning it, and causing it to drop to one knee. Mark then finished it off with a blow to the head. He then put his hammer back onto his belt, walked over to the giant’s leg, and pulled the harpoon out of it.
We exited the cave, where Carmilla was waiting for us by herself. Mark stabbed the harpoon into the ground.
“Did you kill it?” she asked.
“Yes”, Mark answered. “It’s dead.”
“Thank you”, she said happily. “All four of you have done this village a great service. I don’t have much to offer as a reward. The best I can do is cook dinner for all of you. How does that sound?”
Everyone else accepted her offer, but I politely declined. “I would love to, but I would rather go back to Yharnam and get my leg healed”, I said. That was the main reason, but I also declined because eating with her would require me to be maskless around 6 other people, which I didn’t want to do.
“I understand that”, Carmilla said. “Farewell.”
I went back to my horse, mounted it, and began heading back to Yharnam.
End[]
Thank you for reading this chapter. I hope you liked it. Tell me what you think in the comments. Have a good day.