Garrick looked down toward them and gave a small, steady smile.
"Sorry for being late," he said, his voice calm despite the chaos.
"I came as soon as I sensed the disturbance."
He then shifted his gaze toward the churning black sea below.
The remaining elongated necks swayed and twisted amid the disturbed waters, their cracked masks still smiling even after several of their kind had been destroyed by his attack.
Black mist mixed with seawater as more dark forms continued to shift beneath the surface, as if... a large school of fish was currently gathering under the darkness.
Garrick's expression slowly hardened into a frown.
'…What are these things?'
In all his years sailing and fighting across dangerous waters, he had never seen creatures like this.
They weren't ordinary sea beasts.
Their forms were incomplete, distorted, and far too human in the wrong ways.
His grip on the long sword resting against his shoulder tightened slightly.
Then his eyes narrowed.
