Chapter 2

Sinking. Sinking to the ground. But there ain't no ground here.

Being dead was a strange experience to be had. Numbness and cold pierce everything, flesh, skin, bones, mind and soul. It was an icy-cold vice, clutching you and leaving you in darkness. Yet, down here, in the cold waters, prowling forhis victims, he had never felt so alive.
It was almost ironic in a way. When he was alive, he had sought that intense thrill of hunting and killing monsters.
Now, in undeath, it was barely any different, he just hunted a different type of monster.

It wasn't always like this. In the beginning it was about money. Scraping together a few meager bronze coins while the crews of the large vessels were paid in gold krakens had become tiring, and so he fought his way into the well-paid harpooning business. It then that he discovered just how thrilling the hunt for monsters could be. Risking your life by throwing yourself at the leviathans of the deep was an experience like no other.

His new bosses knew this of course. They couldn't offer him money for his service, but they had something far better.
Every kill, every wicked person crossed off the list gave him that strange rush of power and that feeling of satisfaction he had been seeking in life.
It seemed deep-folk had quite the way with persuasion, after all.

Someday perhaps he'd finally grow weary of this, and heed the call of the Masks. He was well aware that he was dead, and nothing but that. Sometimes he felt it, that tug of oblivion at whatever kept his soul inside his body. Maybe he'd give in one day. But not any time soon.
His list was still unfinished after all, and a good man never leaves his work incomplete.

Of course, at the back of his mind, he knew by now it was not his list he was working on anymore. Something else now held the reigns in his life, put names and faces for him to cross out, but honestly, he didn't mind. Those he sank beneath the waves now were scum just like the crew of the Terror, sometimes far worse. They were all corrupt and evil, and anyone who worked with his former crew in any way deserved their end in the cold dark.
The city was filled to the brim with filth, and the voices keep screaming for more blood.

Did that make him a monster too, slaughtering like this? Perhaps. He was no good man, had his fair share of misdeeds in life. But, he vowed,
then he would be their very own monster, the one that would make the city finally pay its debts.

The killing had become routine to him anyway. Emerge from the waters. Bring Death from Below. Sacrifice the body to the deep. Return to the waters. And each time, the list would only grow longer with the demands of his masters, voices screaming for justice upon the scum of Bilgewater.
Who was he to deny their callings?

"They murdered my brothers!"

"They mauled my body!"

"They killed my young!"

So many screams of hatred and bloodlust echoed in his head, all directed at those monsters above the waves, and he'd gladly join the chorus. Bilgewater was fattening itself upon the beasts of the deep, the same way as it was fattening itself on the backs of people like him, and they'd make the city pay.

His masters were, unfortunately, unable to fully enact their own revenge. Those blasted Horns on the shores drove them away time and time again, and so they had to be satisfied with attacking the hunting ships that came for them every day. He was different though. He could leave the waters and step on solid ground. He swore he would kill the monsters in their nest and teach then to never again turn their back on the sea.

That kept the voices happy.