Trade Secret [on hold]

A Wreck of Kraken

Cold.

Salt.

Wet.

That was all Connie knew for those interminable three seconds. She counted them slowly in her mind, turning each beat into a pounding monotonous rhythm in her mind.

Then her head broke the surface of the waves, and she heard the screaming. "Harvey!" she shouted, flailing around in the water for something - anything - to hold onto. Her hand smacked something hard, and there was a grunt.

A head of matted blond hair bobbed up under her smarting wrist. "Damn it," it muttered, as if the owner was more concerened with minor head pains than with the overall problem of their being in the middle of the ocean with the wreck of kraken nearby.

Connie remembered, a bit too late. Oh. That's right. "Move it, Albin! Move - yer - sorry - ARSE-" she grunted, articulating each word with a powerful kick towards the decimated shell of the Salamander.

Albin spat up a fountain of salt water and complied, striking out in the same direction. "What - what was that?" he panted, clamping his arms around a large piece of wood broken off of the hull.

"Kraken. A whole wreck of kraken!" Connie exclaimed, and shouted again in surprise as the water rolled around them. 

She felt something huge move beneath the two of them, and the water bucked up, out, and she was falling again. She could just see the corner of an enormous eye peering at her from the trough between two waves. The wind bit holes through her soaking wet coat that immediately closed when she hit the water with a smack that jarred her bones. Connie saw bubbles rush by her head, and struck out for the surface again.

Mistake. But then again, nothing was very helpful for very long at this stage.

The kraken's tentacles lashed over the water, ripping up waves like a child would dandelions. Connie felt herself rolling with the power behind the coiled muscle.

WHAM.

The limb smacked into her with an impact that sent her reeling. Her arms flung themselves around the thick tentacle, her fingers digging into the leathery skin. It lashed back and forth, alternating air and water until Connie couldn't tell the up from the down. Salt water forced itself between her eyelids, stinging her eyes.

Connie felt something start to slip off her head, and she smacked at it wildly. The goggles! She loosened her grip on the gyrating tentacle just long enough to pull them over her face.

Even bigger mistake. The kraken whipped its tentacles around one last time, more violently than before if there was such a thing. Connie felt herself go flying. Free-flying. 

She had just long enough to vaguely register that something was very, very wrong before her head crunched into something large and solid. The world went dark.