By Joseph Sullivan

In the days before she learned the forces of the arcane and devoted herself to wizardry, Reltanna Lirane was as wayward a youth as she would later be as an adult but nonetheless still fascinated by all things magical and mysterious. One moment she grew to remember well came in her teenage years, on a cold and misty day when she was fishing with her grandfather, himself a retired mercenary and wanderer, on the waters of the Fathomless Lake.

“This is terrible,” she complained. “We’ve been out here for over an hour, and I have not caught a single fish.”

“You’re far too impatient,” Grandfather chided her.

“Well, that’s easy for you to say! You’ve caught five!”

“Because I know what I’m doing.”

Reltanna said nothing back, merely grumbling a string of curse words she had picked up off even stranger youths than herself.

“Did I ever tell you about the story of when I saw the Monster of the Fathomless Lake?” Grandfather said suddenly.

“What? No…” Reltanna frowned. Usually, he goes out of his way to tell me stories from his past, even when I was probably too young to hear them, she thought.

“People talked about it more in the old days,” Grandfather’s voice was grim, but almost wistful as well. “The Monster that lurked in the darkest depths of the waters. It was bred in ancient days by a forgotten sect of cultists that thought they could use it to destroy the world, but they were all slain, and their creation was born, but never left the depths…”

Reltanna scoffed. “You’re making this up, Grandfather.”

“Oh?”

“You have to be! I mean…” This is ridiculous, there has to be a hole in this story somewhere… “A cult created a monster they couldn’t actually summon, a cult that you conveniently say was forgotten, with a plan to destroy the world. That’s as vague as you can get!”

“Well, as much as it annoys you to not have all the facts,” Grandfather grinned. “It’s real, and strong enough that even in my lifetime, a fair few people started following what little teachings they could get from these cultists. Madmen, people with axes to grind, the desperate, cobbling together all this lost lore to summon this monster. The cult was reborn.”

“…huh?”

“That’s right. And back in my day, they were some of the people I…helped take care of,” he had the same harsh grimace on his face that he wore when recounting his fighting in wars, a blend of pride and knowledge that recounting tales of death and destruction were not typically viewed with pride. “They fought with the strength of fanatics and bizarre powers I had never seen before. Not that they were particularly strong, though. Well-trained mercenaries like me cut them down like any other enemies.”

“Okay…”

“But they weren’t the hard part, no. The hard part was what they brought forth from the waters.”

Grandfather glared at Reltanna, expecting a reaction, but got nothing save awe, fear, and a dwindling disbelief.

“I couldn’t even get a good look at it. Some of its arms and legs, at least I think they were arms and legs, rose up after we had killed the, uh, high priest, or whatever title he took. Those of us that had gone scouting were snatched up and taken below. Our archers fell back, loosing arrow after arrow into what they could see. Me and the rest of the swordsmen, though, we were on the beach trying to hold this thing back, whatever it was.

“I’m not even sure it was one thing. When we cut it, it did not seem to feel pain, and it…bled this icky black goo everywhere. I’m not sure if it was blood, but it was strong enough to melt through our armour if there was enough of it. We weren’t even sure what we were up against, but we kept fighting, on and on…

“And then it left! Just as strangely as it came! Maybe it was a known sea monster we couldn’t recognise, maybe it was something the new cult had created in the image of the old stories, or maybe…just maybe…”

“Maybe what?” Reltanna was enraptured with the tale now.

“Maybe it’s still out there. Maybe neither group could control it. Maybe it’s just waiting…waiting for people like us to come out here and — AAAARGH!”

Grandfather cried out in horror, and the fishing boat started shaking. Reltanna was terrified, water was splashing everywhere, and the mist allowed no sight of anywhere to escape to. She scrambled to her feet, her eyes darting around to try and see what was attacking them…

And then she heard the old man laugh.

She turned around and saw that he had gripped both sides of the boat and had been shaking it.

“You should’ve seen the look on your face…”

“Alright…” Reltanna fumed, humiliated. “Now, see here —!”

She took a step towards Grandfather, contemplating either yelling at him or throwing him overboard, when she thought she saw a shadow move beneath the water. It could have been a fish close to the surface that only looked bigger from nearby, a large fish far away, or something else entirely, but it was moving, and then the next second, it was gone.

“Reltanna?”

“Hm?” She turned back. “Oh. Yes. Ha! You got me. Damn…”

She sat back down, her heart still racing, trying to stop the trembling that had taken hold.

That was only one day of her youth, but it was one of many that pushed her down the path of magic in later years, as she was determined to learn the truth of things that nobody else knew about and could scarcely even begin to understand. But through the passing of years, she still found little else on the Monster of the Fathomless Lake, save for old records about her grandfather’s exploits, which were well-documented, and similar records of other groups coming to the lake, to gather new followers, preach strange rituals, all directed towards trying to bring something forth from the depths…

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