Leviathan

"Are you certain about this?” I asked as my eyes ran over the runes he was sketching with trepidation.

“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” he grumbled in response, not bothering to look up from the tome he was consulting. “But, we need that necklace. Everything comes back to that damned piece of jewellery.”

I rubbed my arms nervously. Even now, the low level of magic here was making me uneasy. “And somehow, it’s ended up in the Locker.”

"Somehow..." he muttered, shaking his head. “As I said, I have no idea how planar magics work. I’m a taskmage, not a planeswalker. If this was all in Greek, it'd still be easier for me to read!” His frustration was rising, and I could tell he was on the verge of snapping and flinging the old tome across the room. But he managed to reign that in, and, with a deep breath, returned to consulting his notes. This was taking longer than any spell I'd ever seen him cast, and he was being more cautious than I’d ever known him to be.

It was also why he was dragging me along.

After several more awkward minutes that stretched into eternity, he got up and snapped the book shut. “Okay, that should be that," he said, carefully leaving the circle.

“So, how do we know if this is gonna work?” I asked, warily looking over the seal he had painted on the ground. Some of the symbols he used were familiar to me, runes I'd seen used in other spells he'd wrought. But many were new, and they sent a chill down my spine. Even someone as magically ignorant as I was could tell this was dealing with some dark forces.

“Why I’m using a gate instead of a teleport, love. Bit more difficult, but...” he shrugged and smiled wanly, “Well, if I fuck up, I’ll just flood the place instead of killing us both.”

I sighed. Cheery thought. “Well, let's get it over with then.”

He nodded and held his hands out. Slowly, with exceeding precession, he began to chant an invocation. Crackling violet runes manifested out the aether, forming circles that began to spin around his wrists and feet. I took a breath and steadied myself as slowly a rift formed in the air before us.

The first thing I noticed was the salty tang of the sea wafting through the air. Then came the sound of waves crashing upon the shore. The lights in the room seemed to fade, and the shadows became larger, reaching towards the forming rift. A damp chill began to fill the room as the invocation ended, and I looked over at him. “Well done,” I said with a slight smile.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said grimly. “We still don’t know where exactly this’ll put us.”

With a grim nod, I turned back to the gate. Well, I’ve come this far, haven’t I? Setting my shoulders, I stepped through, and felt the world twist around me.

One moment, I was in Los Angeles. The next, I was on the shores of the Shadowed Sea.

I stood there, trying to maintain my balance on a rain-slicked spire as the biting winds lashed around me. A storm roiled overhead, obscuring the eternally twilit sky of the Netherworld. The waters were choppy, angry even, as they crashed against the small cluster of spires that breached the sea here.

A few seconds later, my companion stepped through, and I heard him take in a sharp breath. This whole place was probably was a bit chilly for a human. “It looks like you were close,” I smiled over at him as he fumbled with his jacket. “I don’t see the Sargasso, but it shouldn’t be too hard to divine, right?”

He nodded, rubbing his hands together in a frantic attempt to keep warm. “Yeah. While I do that, you think you can do something about the weather?”

I looked about at the storm. It was definitely unnatural, but then again, so was this entire plane, so it would be tricky. I reached inside, to the primordial air that rushed through me, and began to exhale.

And that’s when the whole island shook. I looked over at my companion, confused, but he was just as shocked as I was. The spire shifted again, and I grabbed onto its rough, pitted surface, only to notice a bit too late that it wasn’t a rock we were on.

It was a spine.

The sea seemed to split open as slowly, an island rose from the waters. Only, the island’s great mountains were horns, and its beaches were fins vast enough to blot out the sun. Forests of kelp and seaweed sloughed away, revealing scales the size of tractors.

I turned around, and I met its gaze.

A massive, ageless eye stared up at us as if we were nothing more than ticks on this ancient, primordial body.

If only we were mere ticks to the one who split the dark waters before us. No, that massive, too-human orb shone with vast intelligence. It knew we were here. Indeed, it probably brought us here.

“What—” my companion said, mouth agape in awe, but I quickly grabbed him and brought him to his knees.

After all, we were now in the presence of the bogeyman of the seas.