I do not own Lorien Legacies or any of the characters.

Cursed

Lexa hovers over the water. This is the exact spot where Setrákus Ra dropped the egg, or at least, that's what we're assuming. We figure if the thing is really supposed to find me, it'll know I'm here. After a few minutes of nothing happening, I get bored. It's almost dark and I'd like to be done with whatever's going on while I can still see.

"See anything?" I ask Marina as we peer out through the door.

"No," She says, shaking her head. "Maybe we're in the wrong spot? Or Setrákus could just be yanking your chain."

"I don't know," I think. Maybe we should jump in."

"That seems like an exceptionally bad idea," Lexa says.

"We'll have to get in the water to fight it anyway," I point out.

"True," Marina nods. "Alright. Let's do it. You should probably leave the rifle though."

I nod and unsling it, walking over to the opposite side, setting it against the wall.

"I have a feeling this is going to be a pain in the neck," I say turning around.

"Probably," Marina nods as I walk back over.

Just as I look down again, a pair of glowing red eyes open in the water. I stagger back a step just as a massive tentacle shoots out of the water, wrapping around Marina and yanking her off the ship.

"Marina!" I shout.

"James wait!" Lexa shouts, making me pause. "I've got my sensors on her. I can't read the creature, whatever it is, but I can see her. She's too far down. A hundred meters. You can't get to her James. You can't breathe under water. You have to trust her to deal with it."

"Go screw yourself," I snap, dropping my sword and diving off the ship.

I swim downward as fast as I can, pushing myself along with Telekinesis. The water darkens fast. Soon, I can't see my hand in front of my face. Then, a flickering light appears in front of me. Not close. It's way, way down. As I descend, my lungs begin to scream for air, and pressure begins to squeeze me. I grit my teeth, pushing myself harder. My entire body hurts. The pressure is worst in my head, making my head feel like it's going to pop, which it actually might. Then, suddenly, an icicle shoots past me. I begin to panic, pushing myself faster. I block out the feeling of being crushed. I push out my need to breathe. I create a force field under my feet like a platform and then send it rocketing down through the water, pushing me. Fast. too fast to feel the pressure, apparently. I rocket through the water, getting steadily closer to the lights. I squint. I can almost make out tentacles thrashing around in the water.

I get closer. A tentacle suddenly shoots up out of the murky water at me. I dive off of my force field and the tentacle smashes through it. Before I can react, the tentacle swings around, flicking me in the stomach and sending me shooting backward. I cough on impact, can't help it. The thing hits my diaphragm. Then, just as much on instinct, gasp, trying to recover my breath. Suddenly, a strange sort of calm floods through me. A cold sensation spreads through my skin. I'm not drowning. I inhale. Then, I grin. I can breathe. Looks like Eight is looking out for me after all. I begin to swim down again, suddenly aware that I can see my hands. More than that, I can see the creature. It's a lot uglier than I expected. It's got a eel's tail attached to something of a half-way humanoid, if deformed, torso, then a massive neck almost as thick as its torso attached to its pointed head. Its mouth is filled with gigantic pointed teeth, its two main arms turn into tentacles after the elbow, a second set of arms below those are slightly smaller and turn into scythe-shaped blades at the wrists. Out of its sides and back are numerous tentacles with smaller ones branching off of them partway along, forming what may be deformed arms. The thing is, technically, supposed to be an infant, but it looks pretty grown, considering the entire thing is probably about the size of the Patience Creek Bed & Breakfast, the log cabin on top of our new secret base. Along its body at seemingly random intervals, there are spots, circles glowing with the same light as Ella's eyes. Loric Energy.

I can see Marina in one of the tentacles. She's shooting icicles at the thing but it's waving her around too much for her to hit it. Most of her icicles are going downward or sideways now, but for whatever reason, she's not freezing the thing. Maybe she can't.

I swim down as fast as I can, and look past the creature, toward where it's heading. A reef on the floor of the ocean. All around the reef are sunken ships and planes. And there are more than a few strange types of fish swimming around, though they are probably as native to the Earth as I am. God only knows what exists on the ocean floor this deep. I create a paper-thin force field disk and send it shooting through the water, steering it with my telekinesis. It streaks through the water in a blur, then slices through the tentacle holding Marina, freeing her. She instantly begins swimming up toward me as the monster roars, spinning around.

Marina reaches me and I hold out my hands, generating a force field bullet on each of my finger guns. Then, I begin to fire and recreate the force fields as fast as I can. The force fields tear through the creature rapidly, drilling completely through it again and again as it roars in rage, the water vibrating around me. Then, out of nowhere, a tentacle shoots at me from the side, smashing me downward, into the reef. I grunt in pain, pushing myself up as the creature shoots toward Marina again as Marina swims down toward me. She begins to fire icicles at the thing as fast as she can, but the monster barely seems to feel them as they stab into it. I use a force field to break off a piece of reef then send it at the creature as fast as I can, not overly impressive underwater, but it's still enough to distract the creature. Marina lands on the reef beside me and I hold out my hands, making finger guns again. I glance over at her then back up at the creature. Then, I begin to fire. For a moment, the creature uses its arms to try and shield itself. Then, it shoots sideways, then down at us. I growl in annoyance, holding my hand out to my side and a force field in the shape of a very large spear forms over it. Then, I send the spear rocketing through the water at the creature. It drills through the creature's left shoulder, completely removing its lower left arm and then the Eel tail. The creature shrieks in rage, the sound actually carrying through the water. Then, its tentacles all flash out, grabbing me and Marina. I can't move my arms enough to fire any force field bullets at it and I haven't gotten the hang of using my Legacies without my hands yet. Marina manages to form an icicle and send it into the creature's face but it simply roars.

I struggle, leaning side to side, trying to work one of my hands out of the tentacle's grip. Marina's getting dangerously close to its face now, and I'll be damned if I let some freaky fish eat her. Marina thrashes violently against her own tentacle, also knowing what's about to happen. She looks back at me, terror clear in her eyes. Then, just as the creature opens its mouth, my hand is free. Instantly, I begin to fire force field bullets down the creature's throat. Thick black blood sprays out of its mouth and the back of its head. It shrieks in pain, releasing both of us and I pull Marina to me with my Telekinesis. The creature shoots away from us, up higher into the water. I use Telekinesis to lower us to the reef again and we both slip through a hole in it, taking cover inside.

I wish I could speak, but when I try my words are distorted to bad for even me to understand. I sit back against the wall, watching out through the hole as the creature swims in a circle, moving lower and lower as it does. It'll be back soon, and I'm getting the feeling it heals every time Marina or I wound it. Suddenly, Marina is sitting in front of me. She holds her hands out and letters begin to form out of ice.

"I C-A-N N-O-T F-R-E-E-Z-E I-T," Marina spells out.

I nod.

"H-O-W B-I-G- A F-O-R-C-E F-I-E-L-D C-A-N Y-O-U M-A-K-E," Marina spells.

I shrug, then hold my hands apart to sign "pretty big", which I hope is true.

"M-A-B-E- Y-O-U C-O-U-L-D S-H-R-E-D I-T," Marina signs.

That had actually occurred to me already, but before I could try it, the thing had grabbed us. I nod then point at her and then down. She nods and I swim out through the hole, looking around. The creature's gone. Crap. Without warning, tentacles shoot out of the sand off to one side, wrapping around me as the creature rises out of the sand. I manage to twist my hand so the palm is outward and a force field spike erupts from the tentacle, growing off my palm. The tentacle retracts instantly, and I hold out my hand. A dozen or so massive force field disks form in the water around me and I thrust my hand forward, the disks shooting toward the creature. It tries to block them with its tentacles and they're removed instantly. The disks tear through the creature one after another, but once they do, the wounds begin to seal up. I finally growl in annoyance, growing tired of the creature and aim my next disk for its neck. The creature's head separates from its body, a cloud of black blood surrounding the creature. Then, tentacles, completely restored, shoot out of the blood at me. I hold out my hands, force field lances shooting out of my palms and shredding the tentacles as they approach, but it's not easy on my.

Already my head's beginning to hurt. Finally I stop, swimming downward only for a tentacle to grab my leg, swinging me around and around. Even being able to breath underwater, I can't breath moving so fast. I fire a force field bullet at the creature out of desperation and it shrieks in pain, recoiling and releasing me. When I look at it again, I see why. The Loric energy on its body is chunks of Loralite. My most recent shot hit one. An icicle crashes into another and the chunk shatters along with the icicle, the creature shrieking in pain again. I grin. So that's it then. Just have to break the Loralite. Only six spots left. I hold my hands out, shooting four as Marina smashes the remaining two with icicles. The creature roars in pain, tentacles whipping round and round. Then, it lunges at Marina. Before it can reach her, I take its head off again with a force field disk. This time, its head sinks down from the bottom of the blood cloud, followed by its body. Marina swims over to me, hugging me, then turns back toward it as the blood cloud begins to thin.

I sigh in relief, admiring the gigantic corpse on the bottom of the sea. However, just as I look back up at the loud of blood, a massive shark, easily fifty feet long bursts out of it, jaws open wide, headed straight for me. Before it reaches me, Marina crashes into me, using her Telekinesis to tackle me out of the way. The jaws snap closed so hard I can hear it, then the shark is past, swinging around for another go. Unfortunately for it, I don't have the patience for another protracted underwater fight. I hold my hand above my head, forming a disk and growing it until it's more than wide enough to bisect the shark. This one isn't mutated by the Mogadorians. It's just your average, never-before-seen Megalodon shark. Which I'm about to make extinct. Just as its jaws open, I send the disk at it, splitting it in half from tip to tail, the two halves passing above and below me and Marina. I sigh, turning to her, and I go cold. She's pale, blood leaking out of her right arm about halfway down the bicep, where the rest has been bitten off. Marina reaches over, healing the stump, but instead of regrowing her arm, it simply closes the stump. I form a force field below us, sending us rocketing upward. Marina's barely conscious, leaning against me and I hear snapping jaws below us. I look down. Two gigantic frill sharks and a massive great white are following us. I don't know why we're suddenly so popular, but I'm already sick of it. I stomp my foot and several lances shoot out of the bottom of my force field, impaling the sharks and killing them. Then, we reach the surface, exploding out of the water and hovering there, looking around. Lexa's a little ways away.

"Marina, your...your arm," I begin as my force field floats toward the ship.

"Better that than my head," Marina says tiredly.

"Could you reattach it if I got the rest?" I ask.

She shakes her head.

"Even when it was an open wound, I can't reattach limbs," she says. "Besides, everything between here and the elbow would have been shredded too bad to work with anyway."

"I shouldn't have let you come," I whisper. "Setrákus was right. I am still cursed."

"No!" Marina snaps. "Don't you dare start with that! You're not allowed. If you want to blame something, blame Setrákus Ra for making us come out here to deal with that thing in the first place."

"But..." I trail off as she glares at me.

Then, I sigh and nod. She leans her head against me, sighing.

"I don't care about my arm," Marina says. "As long as I still have you."

I feel my eyes start to water and wrap my arms around her, my force field depositing us on the floor of the ship as the door closes and Lexa starts home. I sit down in a chair, Marina in my lap with her head on my shoulder. Lexa looks back and her mouth falls open.

"Jesus!" Lexa gasps. "What happened?"

"Shark," I say. "We killed Setrákus Ra's creation without a scratch. But a normal shark..."

Lexa turns back around, deciding to not make me talk about it. I clearly don't want to, and Marina is asleep on my shoulder.

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