The Fisher Queen Read online

  Beyond the Borderlands

  The Fisher Queen

  Jay Aury

  [email protected]

  This book and its contents are copyright 2019 by Jay Aury. All rights are reserved and no portion may be reproduced aside from brief quotations for review purposes. Photo credit to Sergey Velikanov.

  All characters appearing in this story are over the age of 18. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people or situations is coincidental.

  The Misty Inn

  “They took them in the night, milady. We hadn’t a prayer to keep them back. The fishers came up out of the waters and crept into the village with nary a sound a warning. The girls. They screamed when the slimy things grabbed them and dragged them off. But the things came in the mist and slipped out in it too. A few men tried to follow, but we found them gutted in the morning.”

  Dinah Faran listened attentively to the fisherman’s tale. Other residents of the small coastal village filled the common room of the old inn with expectant silence. Some lamps burned here and there, giving life to the shadows and shuttered windows. In the distance, beyond the mists that wrapped about the village like pale tendrils rising from the sea, the boom of the surf striking the shore could be heard.

  Dinah tapped a leather-clad hand on the table. Her long hunter’s cloak shifted to blend against the chair and clinkered wooden walls. Her bow hung over her shoulder and her sheathed sword clinked softly as she moved. She felt the uncertain eyes of the fisherfolk on her. She didn’t look the huntress, she knew. Her breasts were full and perky, her brown hair long and soft, and her hips shapely in her leggings. But her stomach was flat and taut with muscles, and her arms were strong enough to wield the blade jammed in her belt. And in these distant reaches of the Borderlands, such folk as these would take any help they could find.

  “Tell me of these fish creatures,” she said.

  The fisherman nodded shakily. He leaned in as if afraid to be heard, his wiry beard bunching under his chin as his voice fell to a wary whisper. “It’s said they’re the cursed offspring of the Princess Therain of Stony Keep, who bedded with the black god of the seas. A monster the reavers pray to. She laid with him and begat the fishers from eggs she bore. Her sister slew her, but not before her spawn filled the under halls of the castle where it beats on the shore, and that her spawn bore their mother’s form to her husband beneath the waves to live on.

  “But her spawn still hunger for the warm flesh of women. They steal the wives and daughters of folks. Snatching any girl who wanders too near the beaches and deep parts of the sea. When a girl vanishes swimming, it’s said a fisher takes her for his bride.”

  Dinah frowned. “Have they come often into town?”

  He shook his head quickly. “No, lady. Not since my grandfather’s time have any dared. They keep to the rocky shores and only steal from the ships that break on the rocks, and the odd fool who braves the cape’s edges.” He shivered.

  Dinah nodded slowly. She had heard of such things. Though she doubted all his tale of the fallen princess was true, the cursed gerlings matched every word of his story. Toad-like fish monsters who preyed on women to implant their warm wombs with eggs, they were a common creature along the beaches and bays of the southern and eastern Borderlands. Scavengers, thieves and cowards, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. The story the man told sounded like rot and common rural myths. But all tales begin somewhere. She looked at him thoughtfully. “You mentioned something. A stony keep. Where is that?”

  The man hesitated. “On the Dagger’s Point. The cliff that overlooks the bay. There the ruins lie, where the princess laid with the monster.”

  Dinah nodded. “I’ll need a guide.”

  The fisherman shook his head, stark terror in his eyes. “We… we do not go that way, milady. It’s an accursed place.”

  “All the same,” Dinah said, this time more firmly. “I will need a man to show me the way.”

  Silence met her demand. The men and women crowding the room shifted and shuffled. Even for your daughters you won’t go, Dinah thought with a frown.

  “If it doesn’t need to be a man, I’ll take you.”

  The crowd looked back as a woman pushed through. Dinah took her in with interest. She was a strong looking specimen even among the hardy stock around her. A jacket and sweater covered her top and modest breasts, baring a stomach toned and hard with muscle. Her face and bare arms were striped with scars from fishing hooks and teeth. But it was the woman’s eyes that held Dinah’s. They were hard and grim. The eyes of a woman who had seen much and accorded little to anything but strength. She held a fishing harpoon like a spear, her body cocked back a little with a swaggering confidence only a seaman can manage.

  “I’ll take you. The rest of these gutless worms haven’t the stones of a codfish to brave those rocks, but I’ll take you to the Stony Keep.”

  “Why?”

  The woman’s lips twisted. “I have business with those things. Last night, one of those taken was my sister. I’d be heading out on my own soon enough, but I’ll take you. And gut a few of the things for good measure.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Veria. Veria Cavendish.”

  Dinah looked over the scarred woman once more, than gave a slow nod. “Very well. We’ll leave at first light.”

  The Keep

  The sky was a sleet grey, the wind cold along Dagger’s Point. Ahead, Dinah could see the rocky edifice of the Stony Keep. A keep it once was, but ruins lay there now. Even from the distance Dinah could see the ragged walls fallen in and broken tumbled stones. Crumbled towers peeked out of the cliffs, the lonely keep more a part of the raw cliffs than any true castle now.

  Dinah scrutinized the place from a wary distance. She glanced at Veria by her side.

  “You’ve been in there, then?”

  Veria nodded, her short hair fluttering in the breeze. “Aye. There’s passages down to the lower levels. Every child has crept up to the keep at one time or another. I went furthest, past the gates and into the lower levels, where the waters rise.”

  “Can you find your way again?”

  “Aye. You coming?”

  “Of course.”

  Veria nodded and started off down the old path. It had wound down to the shore near the old village, marked with ancient standing stones like silent sentinels. Tufts of grass were the only splashes of colour in the hard, barren earth. The scream of seagulls rang out from the distance, their winged shapes cutting across the grey sky as they wheeled and dove. Dinah followed Veria closely, fingering her sheathed sword. The dark shore and the ruins sent goosebumps tingling down her back and arms. A firm believer in instinct, she knew they were on the right track. She tried to recall all she knew of the reptilian creatures known to lurk in such old places. It was little to go on. Gerlings were rarely seen save on the wild islands which clove close to the Borderlands southern shores. It was known slavers made frequent journeys, trading fertile young women for precious stones, beads, and treasures worth a fortune to the right hands. But the gerlings were a wary species, and loathed humans. Given the chance they would slaughter any man who came near, and the women… Well, there were stories too of what were done to women. And in Dinah’s opinion, death was a far preferable fate.

  They scaled over a crumbled, rough stone wall and into an aged courtyard. Weeds sprang up between the flagstones and the few statues within had fallen down long ago, broken faces turned up towards the cold sky in silent witness to ages past. The keep rose before them, ceiling half fallen in and doorway gaping stupidly out on the world.

  Veria moved closer. Dinah followed, slowly drawing her sword. The steel gleamed in the weak daylight as the pair entered the great hall. From the rafters a seab
ird screamed, the sound going like a spike down Dinah’s spine.

  Past the great hall a set of steps more or less intact sank into the keep. Veria fetched out a torch, lighting it. One hand carrying her harpoon, the other the torch, she led the way down into the dark. The smell of the sea began to fade, replaced by something more brackish. Something thicker and cloying that stuffed itself up Dinah’s nose foully.

  “What are these?” she asked her silent companion.

  “Called the water deeps. Sea water flowed into the old dungeon and the deep cells. Never enough to quite drown the prisoners, but enough to drive them near mad before ebbing when the tide went out.”

  Dinah shook her head. “Monstrous.”

  Veria shrugged. “What goes on down here now may be more monstrous by half, huntress. This is Stony Keep.”

  They reached the bottom steps soon after. The torchlight glittered off a scum of water washing over the floor. Cells stared out through rusting bars. It was warm down there. Strangely so. Dinah scanned the dark interiors of the cells, grimacing when she spotted the pale flash of bone. Skulls, pelvis, and other pieces too large to slip through the bars when the waters receded, but which knocked against the steel with the gentle waves, their rattling echoing weirdly in the dungeon.

  Veria led them deeper, their every step splashing softly. Their boots were good ones, keeping out the water, but soon enough the floor sloped, and the two women were up to their knees in the brackish waters and the thin layer of scum lying over it.

  “Ugh. How much further?” Dinah asked.

  “Not far, huntress. There are tunnels that the dungeons caved into over the years just ahead.”

  “They go beneath the cliffs?”

  “Likely as not. If there’s truth to the old stories, they do.”

  The torch formed a strange, shimmering glow over the waters as they reached the rear of what had once been the dungeon. Veria paused, raising her torch and revealed a sudden gap broken through the wall like a ragged mouth. From here the rank odour spilled in, the uncut shape of raw stone spreading beyond.

  Dinah eyed the dark passage. “Have you ventured down this?” she asked quietly.

  Veria shook her head. “No. I reached this far as a girl, but never went in. I wasn’t such a fool.”

  For a moment the pair stood there, looking at the broken hole leading deeper into the world. Then, forcefully, Dinah forged ahead, Veria following closer now, ducking through the entrance and into the deeps. The feel of the place grew more oppressive. More claustrophobic. At least the dungeon was formed. Shaped by the hands of men. This place, beneath the pounding sea cliffs and creeping tendrils of waterways, was something more. Something primeval. Something dangerous in a way men’s mere tortures paled before.

  They were passing through a juncture when Dinah suddenly gasped, jumping.

  Veria whirled, the torch fluttering. “What? What is it?”

  “Something touched my leg!”

  Veria scanned the waters warily. The fires of her torch licked at the ceiling as she hefted her harpoon, turning it about until it rested in her hand, angled down, ready to cast. Dinah raised her sword, peering about the dark waters in the brooding silence.

  Moments passed. Very slowly, Dinah lowered her sword.

  “A fish, perhaps.”

  Veria glanced back at her. “You think so?”

  Dinah sighed, shrugged. “I don’t know. The darkness here. It plays with your-“

  She vanished, yanked beneath the waters before she could even gasp. A moment’s shock was all it took Veria to leap forward. “Huntress!” she cried.

  Dinah surfaced a yard away, gasping. “It’s got me!” she screamed, splashing as she tried to swim against the pull, even as she was towed back through the waters like a fish on the reel. Back. Back, and towards a branching passage.

  Veria surged after the huntress’s furious struggles. Dinah surfaced again, clinging to a corner of the tunnel. Her eyes were wide, her hair a wet tangle around her face. She hugged the uneven stone for a terrible moment. Then, with a scream, was ripped away, dragged beneath the waters once again.

  Veria reached the cavern. She raised the torch, shoving it into the dark and the fading ripples. “Huntress!” she screamed at the dark, her cry echoing down the fathomless depths of the tangled tunnels. “Dinah!”

  Taken

  Her lungs burned. Fit to burst. Dinah’s head pounded with the desperate need to breathe. Water rushed past her ears and up her nose. Her eyes were closed tight. Bubbles fluttered in her wake as she swung her arms about desperately for something to grab, her fingers scraping off wet stone before she could find a grip.

  Suddenly, the grip on her leg vanished. She tumbled for a moment, then found her way up. She surfaced with a gasp, at last. Sucking in great, heaving breaths of air as she bobbed in place. She lifted her head, staring about her. She was in a cavern; far larger than the narrow tunnels she had been swimming through. Stalactites grew low like daggers, the waters rippling around her. There was a weak glow from some kind of moss growing in patches across the ceiling and the walls. By this, in the distance, she could make out the thin band of a shore.

  The water behind her churned. Recalling in a flash just how she had been brought to this place she frantically began to swim towards the distant cut of land. He splashing seemed to attract the creature. Eddies rippled, rushing towards her. She swam faster.

  The waters behind her bulged, rolling off a shape. She glanced back, and horror choked her. What rose out of the lake was a towering hide of reddish flesh. Two huge eyes bulged from the sides of the head, rolling and fixing on her. A kraken. The tentacles of the monstrous octopus crested the waters about it, writhing in the air.

  She screamed as she was suddenly wrenched out of the waters by the monstrous creature. Dangled in the air by her leg, more of the rubbery limbs rose, binding her tighter. She cursed, trying to grab for the dagger in her belt when another tentacle wrapped tight around her wrist and wrenched it aside.

  She hung in the air before the monstrous beast, shaking with helpless anger, its yellow eyes looking up at her unfathomably. Then, one of its smaller tentacles slipped along her legging.

  She shuddered at the oily sensation against her naked flesh. Another tentacle reached for her face. She turned away, but the limb merely went lower, hooking in the collar of her shirt and tore it free.

  “Ah!” she gasped, her firm breasts bouncing into view. A low sound went up from the monster, and a different fear chilled the young huntress. She arched as that first tentacle slithered higher up her pants, teased against her mound. She shuddered as the tip of its tentacle stroked her pussy.

  “O-oh. Oh! What are… what are you nnnn!”

  The limb against her mound, growing impatient, pushed, ripping open the leg and crotch of her pants. Dinah squealed in surprise as the warm air of the cave washed against her naked cunt. She shuddered, arms held tightly in the limbs of the kraken as its tentacle again stroked her naked pussy.

  “You… you can’t. Stop! Monster! Damn you! I- nnnn!”

  She gasped as two of the tentacles suddenly latched on to her breasts, thick suckers adhering to her budding nipples. She moaned involuntarily as the hungry rings began to suck, squeezing her rapidly hardening teats while the rest of the rubbery limb coaxed and stroked her warming flesh.

  And she was getting warmer. The slime of the kraken’s limbs spread a consuming arousal through her, pushing away the cold of her terror for the heat of pure, animal rut.

  She tried to resist the insidious sensations shooting up her veins, spreading through her core and body in waves of tantalizing desire. But it was so hard. So hard with her firm breasts being sucked and fondled by those inhuman limbs. So hard while her twitching pussy was stroked and teased by the rubbery tentacle, her arms and legs held securely, her body a plaything to the monster of the deeps.

  “Oh… oh f-fuck! D-damn you!” she screamed, her breasts heaving, her eyes fogging. “D-damn you! I’ll
kill you. By the gods above I’ll mph!’

  The kraken, perhaps growing bored of her talking, slipped a tentacle into her mouth. Dinah gagged around the rubbery limb. But then… but then her tongue stroked the slimy tentacle. Her taste buds tingled with the low, heavy heat of the kraken’s poison. She shuddered, and before she knew it, the young huntress was sucking, her soft lips moving up and down the invading limb, which continued to twist and writhe in her mouth, filling it with its strange toxins.

  Her thoughts grew sluggish. Malleable to the raw, animal lust which spread through her. Her body yearned for more, her mind slipping, falling to the instincts older than time. She shuddered as the tip of the tentacle at her pussy eased forward. She let out a trebling moan as it pushed up, and inside of her.

  “Mmmmmm!” she moaned as the tentacle filled her aching cunt. Her thighs quivered, helpless. Her inner walls tightened around the intruder, but that only sent her pleasure pulsing through her faster. Stronger. Her whole body blazed with that intoxicating heat. She ached for more. For it to go deeper. For it to take her and use her and pleasure her with all its monstrous skill.

  She writhed, rocked, her hips beating at the air as the tentacle within her pussy wriggled and twisted inside her like nothing ever had before. Her breasts throbbed under the squeezing touch of the suckers. Her orgasm crept up on her, her body pulled towards that height with an inevitability she couldn’t find the strength to fight. To resist.

  “Mmm. Mnnn! Nnn! Nnnnnn!”

  Dinah shuddered in the binding grasp of the krakan, her orgasm thumping through her, her juices squirting out the limb filling her cunt. The kraken make another low sound, and Dinah realized it was of excitement. Its tentacles renewed their assault on her body, the suckers and rubbery limbs pulling at her sensitive tits more eagerly. The tentacle in her pussy twisting and writhing, the one in her mouth swirling.