The Ship Lurches, Tosses. It Groans, Like The Death Cry Of A Great Whale, Before Belly-flopping Onto

The ship lurches, tosses. It groans, like the death cry of a great whale, before belly-flopping onto the ocean with and intensity to cause its ribs to crack. Seawater splashes in through the gunports, salty, the taste of a beckoning grave. Unlashed cargo rolls, barrels shattering open on cabin walls, their watered-down rum leaking through the fresh, splintered holes in the hull.

And in the middle of it, you, caught like a stray die in a game of Liar's Dice, tossed around in the dark, just waiting for the time you roll a single lonesome dot.

The ship rolled, caught by the waves again - only for it to be heaved into the air once more. You can bearly hear your fellow sailors above the way the ship yowls and complains. You reach for a hanging hammock, and hold on for dear life. Splinters spray across your back as something causes the far hull to cave in... and then you're briefly weightless, your feet leaving the ground, even a one-tonne bundle of spare sails by your side rising into the air...

This time when you crash into the ground, the deck shatters beneath your feet, and you barely manage to hold on to the hammock as it rips apart. Your feet run helplessly over the void, catching on a shattered rib of hull just before you lose your grip for good-

And something - something big, and cascading with water, and an eerie luminous green - slams through the deck from above, a wave of shattered planks and twisted iron grating carried with it. An unlashed cannon tumbles towards you, and you duck just in time, its barrel pulverising the wood you're holding onto - and then you're in the ocean-

You're in the ocean.

The dark, deep ocean.

And you're struck, suddenly, by its coldness. It's vastness. The unending blue and black in every direction you look, save the disappearing pale turquoise to one side and the yawning void on the other, and the two halves of your ship, your lifeboat, split into two like a child's toy and trailing bubbles and split masts...

It's calm down here. A deathly, incomprehensible calm, in the face of a calamity you've yet to fathom. There was no ship. No call to battle, no report of a storm, and yet...

And yet, a dark shadow slips its way over the depth. You see it, outlined in the flittering rays of a sun so distant it's almost a memory...

You turn, a slow sweeping motion... and stare up...

---

I heard it's Smaugust and @pencilcat made this list of prompts, which reminded me that I have this fish dragon from a recent commission <3 Character is Keyser owned by Volp!

Ash showing off her... hyena neck

Arch of Latias in Sahra

A group of travelers is leaving the desert city on the road towards their next grand adventure, while a group of kids fish for coins in a small stream.

did someone wish for a Nargacuga

I think this fellow has to be one of my favorite monsters

and he's this month's print!

An Okami-style Ninetales piece I drew a long while ago!

By lazaro