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Both the fattest catch and the first catch must be sacrificed. It's a bit of a shame, since generally the largest fish is the healthiest and thus the one Sylvester would be most inclined to keep in the specimen tank. But, that's the deal. He can at least take measurements.
Today's final sacrifice is a sturgeon, which Sylvester couldn't have kept anyways but which would have caught an excellent price at port. Oh well. It's hoisted up by the winch on his ship. The flesh is translucent. It glitters in the setting sun. Another of the strange fish that live in this area, den of aberrations and scientific anomaly that brought Sylvester here.
It wriggles, the last vestiges of life. Every bone is visible, joints shown like a living anatomical model. Sylvester swears he can hear the skeleton click, but he also swears he can hear quite a lot of things that no one else agrees exist. A handful of crows flap over to land on the top of the winch, waiting and hopeful they'll be able to steal scraps.
Sylvester ignores them as he climbs up on a stepladder, ceremonial dagger in his hand. It's an old thing, made of bone he can't identify and stone that somehow remains always preternaturally sharp. The handle is decorated with a navy blue pattern of swirls and dots; the same pattern that sometimes Sylvester swears has spread onto his arms and lazily moves upward in undulating loops.
It's not a knife he started out with. It was given to him along with the sacrificial instructions by the monster in the ocean. He digs the knife into the base of the tail, perfectly over the midline, and drags down. The skin splits easily. Blood splatters over Sylvester's arms. It covers the knife, covers the blue markings that may or may not be on his flesh. He's very tired. The birds start cawing as Sylvester reaches the abdomen and organs start falling free, loops of intestine he has to shrug off of him.
He hops off the ladder and finishes the pull with the weight of the jump. The knife splits bone as easily as it does flesh. Innards fall free, making a mess of both himself and his deck. Sylvester remembers a time when this bothered him, the overpowering stench of blood made him sick and the unnecessary death was something to mourn. It feels very far away to him now, though it can't have been that long since this became an obligation.
Crows swarm his deck, pecking at the leavings. Sylvester takes a deep breath and plunges his hands into the sturgeon's chest. He's long been used to dissections, at least, so he finds the heart with ease and cuts it loose, drawing back with the organ clutched heavy in his fingers.
He sticks the knife in his belt to get a free hand walking back to the control for the winch. Birds have to get gently booted out of the way, too greedy to be fearful. He swings the sturgeon out over the water, which has already started to ripple around him. Blood drains into the waves.
Sylvester hums to himself, reciting under his breath the invocation he was taught. It sounds better as a tune, he thinks, and the volume doesn't really seem to matter. He's honestly unsure if the recitation at all matters or if it's just another whim, but finding out isn't really a priority.
The crows swoop to grab bits off the sturgeon. Some of them have eyes on their stomachs, glowing red and watching Sylvester. He rubs his own eyes, forgetting for a moment the blood covering his hands.
The water bubbles and a dark tentacle springs forth. It curls around the offering and neatly pries it from the ship winch. An unlucky crow is caught in the movement, letting a sharp squawk of fear before it too is crushed and taken beneath the surface alongside the fish. Bioluminescence flares blue and pink beneath his boat, deep circular flashes visible through pools of blood. Sylvester feels like he can hear bones again, though this time crunching through the waves. That one he knows cannot possibly be real.
He stares down at the lights. They’re quite pretty, he thinks. He’s always liked bioluminescence in its multitude of forms. The pink especially is unique. Stripes of it come towards him and it’s perhaps a testament to what Sylvester has become used to that he doesn’t react with fear at all when tentacles that had taken down the sturgeon appear and loop around the bow and stern of his ship.
(In his defense, the first time it happened, he was afraid. He was convinced his ship was about to be snapped in two and he’d disappear into the water, swallowed and gone. Now he knows it’s instead to keep the ship still and unbothered.) Sylvester holds the still dripping sturgeon’s heart out over the side of the ship. The water roils. A dark shape looms beneath him, lined with glowing dots.
Goliath emerges headfirst. He bobs in the water, his head alone near the size of Sylvester’s fishing boat. There’s still bits of bone in his teeth when he opens his mouth for Sylvester to toss the heart down his gullet. “Heh heh.” His laugh is deep and reverberates in Sylvester’s gut.
It makes him think about things he’d rather not analyze. Goliath swallows the last of the offering and grins at him. Still mostly human in the top part of his body, if not for the size and fins, he’s at least easy to read that he’s not technically a threat. To Sylvester. Openly. His eyes glow bright pink, standing out against the darkening air. “I can’t imagine that’s much more than a snack for you,” Sylvester says.
“I’m well fed on the prayers. Gods eat sacrifices to feed on faith, not the meat.”
“Mm.” Sylvester supposes so. “It does make a mess of my ship, though. How much more do you need?”
“Until I’m satisfied.” Goliath is still smiling. Sylvester has a sneaking suspicion, knowing the myths he’s read, that he won’t be satisfied. “And until I have enough of my strength back to tear my way through the Moskstraumen. You’ll know when that is.”
He doesn’t know what the Moskstraumen is, and has the sneaking suspicion that Goliath is vague on purpose about the rest of it. Sylvester sighs. Whatever, he already got himself into this. Disregarding Sylvester’s slight exasperation at the way his god-based obligations make messes, Goliath leans forward. The ship stays still, safe from resultant waves, thanks to Goliath’s tentacles holding it still. One giant hand rises from the waves, finding Sylvester’s head, and a finger lifts his chin with surprising gentleness. Goliath licks his face.
It feels like a gigantic dog, smelling of fish. It’s ungainly. Sylvester scrunches his face in a grimace but there’s not much else he can do, as Goliath could easily just swallow him whole if he wanted. Now Sylvester has got less blood on his face, but gained an entirely different kind of mess. Goliath sinks back into the sea and releases him. “Your nose was bleeding.”
“Was it?” He hadn’t noticed. There was a bit more to focus on, though he wondered when that started.
Something about Goliath’s gaze seems more predatory than usual. “Not often I get to taste human blood.” His tongue pokes out over his lips in a way that Sylvester reads as ominous.
“Please keep it that way.”
Goliath intentionally makes no promises in the positive. Sylvester chooses not to press the issue, instead now that he’s been released he folds his arms on the railing and leans over to speak casually. “You know, that thing I told you about– the big dark thing with the red glow, that kept trying to hit my boat whenever I left the shallows, so I couldn’t fish the depths?”
Goliath’s expression just gets a squinty cast, his head tilting to the side in a way that reads as distinctly smug. Sylvester continues. “It disappeared and hasn’t come back yet. Did you do that?”
“For those who invoke Dagon, and especially those who serve and follow me, I deign to provide security and harvest.” He’s definitely smug. Sylvester isn’t sure who or what Dagon is, nor how he’s been invoking it. Perhaps that’s what the things he’s been told to chant are.
Sylvester frowns. “Can I at least see what it was? I was curious. I’m trying to document species, you know, I can at least write down what it looks like.”
“Just imagine a jellyfish. It’s long gone now.” Goliath’s teeth seem to give a hint about the thing’s fate, what it got for trying to keep Sylvester out of its territory.
Sylvester can’t blame it for being defensive and thinks it’s unfortunate that the punishment is being eaten, but he’s also more than a little glad he won’t have to deal with a giant blob he can barely see coming trying to break his boat apart. “Well, thanks for that.”
“Hmm.” Goliath looks up at the sky, the first few stars coming to glitter in the night. “When was the last time you slept, little follower?”
“I…” Sylvester trails off. “I don’t… remember. It gets hard to tell. It must have been within the past two days, or else…” He furrows his brows, staring down into the ocean. Humans need sleep, so he must have slept. Sometimes his time on the ocean seems to stretch forever, through days and nights unbroken, and sometimes he wakes up on the sea, or dreams of it. It becomes hard to tell when he’s awake versus when he’s asleep.
Now, though, he must be awake. Goliath flicks seawater into Sylvester’s face. “Dock, then, and sleep in your boat. Not on land.” His tentacles retract from the boat, signaling the end of his visitation.
“Sure, sure. See you tomorrow.” Or whenever he thinks tomorrow is, given his apparent inability to figure out days. Whenever he next fishes and has to feed blood to the ocean. Sylvester waves. Goliath sinks back to the deep, leaving only Sylvester’s bloodied deck behind as proof. That, too, will be gone soon before Sylvester docks, lest he gets even more strange looks from the other people at the dock. A few buckets of ocean water and a mop will wipe away all evidence.
When Sylvester ties his boat to a dock and sleeps in the cabin, he dreams of tentacles coiling around his limbs. Goliath holds him still and digs his fingers into Sylvester’s organs, splitting apart a slit down his midline to pull him apart like the sturgeon. His bones twist into something else, shapes fit for the water. A god’s mouth is back on him to drag teeth over his sides and open gills beneath them.
It doesn’t hurt. He wakes with his sheets a mess and an ache deep in his gut, like fingers still pet him from within, but his body remains human. Another coil of blue marking curls over his chest, circling around him possessively. When he blinks, it disappears back into the fog of dream.