Lorne's brows twitched almost imperceptibly as he feigned sleep. His breathing remained steady, but his right hand quietly reached for the Ripper hidden at his waist.
Splash- The life raft jolted.
Something was moving. Lorne realized it at once.
Bang!
The muzzle flash briefly lit up the sea. A twisted figure fell at the shot, twitched a few times on the deck, then went still.
Lorne stepped forward. By the moonlight and the faint glow of the fire, he made out the creature's appearance.
"A fishman, huh..."
Dark green scales covered its body, with bluish mucus everywhere. Rather than a human, it looked more like an enormous fish that had sprouted powerful limbs, with distinct webbing between its fingers and toes.
I thought it would be something like a Deep One. Looking at it now, it's just a beast...
Drag marks... Lorne studied the patch of water on the deck and the crystal coffin that had been shifted.
It wasn't after me, but the crystal coffin... No wonder one shot took it down. Its attention wasn't on me at all.
He nudged the fishman's hideous head with his foot. "Don't tell me there's a fishman princess in that crystal?"
He said it jokingly.
After all, no matter how he looked at them, the girl in the crystal coffin and the fishman clearly weren't the same species.
"Now the question is what to do with this fishman's corpse..." Lorne muttered. He didn't know much about this sort of marine creature.
"Keep it as emergency rations?"
The sight of its hideous corpse irritated Lorne. There was something inexplicably familiar about this almost-human creature.
Disgusting!
"Should I just throw it back into the sea?"
"No, that would be such a waste..."
A slightly weak female voice came from behind him.
Click!
Sensing danger,