BESTIARY

Everything that has come up the rocks, and what it wanted.

Act I — The Harbor Storm

The water is still shallow here, and most of what comes up the rocks was ordinary a season ago. That is the part that should worry you.

Gull Swarm

They were birds on Tuesday.

Common

For nine years they nested on the seaward ledge and screamed at the lamp for the crime of being bright. The keeper before me shot at them twice and missed on purpose both times.

The storm came through on a Wednesday. By Thursday they had stopped landing. They circle now in a shape that is not a flock — too even, too patient, turning together like one animal that happens to have four hundred eyes.

They still scream at the lamp. It is the only part of them I recognise.

AT THE TABLE
Fast and shallow. Comes in twos and threes, chips at you, and guards itself the moment you swing back.

Salt Imp

Small, wet, and delighted about it.

Common

They come out of the tide pools at knee height, crusted white to the elbow, and they laugh. That is the detail nobody believes until they hear it — the laugh, high and pleased, like a child who has found your keys and will not say where.

Alone one is a nuisance you can kick back into the water. They are never alone.

I have stopped leaving anything unattended on the lower stair. They do not steal to keep. They steal to watch you look for it.

AT THE TABLE
Arrives in pairs and hides behind a little armour. Individually harmless; collectively a clock you cannot stop.

Fog Shade

The fog remembers a shape it liked.

Common

Fog on this coast has always come in off the water in sheets. This comes up the stair.

It has no face and keeps trying to. Somewhere in the grey there is the suggestion of a jaw, a shoulder, a coat — held for a moment, lost, attempted again. I think it is working from memory. I think the memory is of someone who used to walk up that stair every evening at six.

It dims the lamp when it passes. Not by covering it. By making the light matter less.

AT THE TABLE
Opens by dousing your fire, so your best turn is your weakest one. Kill it early or fight it half-lit.

Wreck Wraith

It is angry, and it has a point.

Common

The Marabel went down on the reef in a night with no fog and a lamp burning clean. Eleven aboard. The inquiry found no fault with the light, which is a sentence I have read more times than I have read anything else.

What climbs the rocks now wears the Marabel's rigging like a ribcage. It comes for the lamp first and me second, and every time it gets a little stronger before it swings, as though it needs a moment to work itself up to the memory.

I do not fight it with any conviction. I just cannot let it reach the light.

AT THE TABLE
Spends its first turn getting stronger, then hits harder than anything else in the harbour. Punish the wind-up.

Tidebreaker

The harbour wall got up.

Elite

Sixty years of granite and barnacle, laid by men who wanted the sea to stop at a particular line. The sea has been arguing with that line ever since, and this season the wall began arguing back on the sea's behalf.

It moves the way stone moves — never quickly, never twice in the same second, and never in a direction you can talk it out of. It sets itself, absorbs whatever you have, and then breaks something.

You do not out-hit a wall. You wait for the swing, and you are somewhere else when it lands.

AT THE TABLE
Armours up, grows stronger, then unloads. Time your damage for the turns its guard is down.

The Squall

The first one that knows your name.

Boss

Weather does not hunt. That is the first thing they teach you, and it is true right up until the night a cell of wind and black water comes around the headland, finds the lighthouse, and stops.

It sat over the harbour for six hours. It did not move on. It leaned — and every window on the seaward side went at once, and through the noise there was something underneath the noise, patient and pleased, working out how the light was fastened to the rock.

It is not the storm. I understand that now. It is the storm's first honest question, and everything past the harbour wall is the answer.

AT THE TABLE
Douses you, blocks, then telegraphs a genuinely frightening hit. Save your armour for the turn it winds up.

Act II — The Drowned Reach

Past the harbour wall the coast stops pretending. Everything in the Reach drowned once already and did not agree to stay down.

Drowned Sailor

Still on watch.

Common

He is buttoned to the collar. Whatever else the water took, it did not take his sense of how a man ought to present himself on deck.

He walks the tideline in a straight line, turns, walks it back. A patrol. Somewhere under all that salt is an instruction he was given and has not been released from, and he will keep at it long after the ship and the officer and the war are gone.

I say good evening to him. It costs me nothing, and once — once — he almost stopped.

AT THE TABLE
Steady and unglamorous. Hits hard, guards, hits twice. No tricks, no mercy, no wasted motion.

Lantern Leech

It is very interested in your lamp.

Common

It has a light of its own, hung out front on a stalk, and the light is lovely. That is the whole design. Everything else about the animal is an apology for the mouth.

In the Reach the lights come at you in the dark and you learn fast which ones to swim towards. The answer is none of them. The answer has always been none of them.

It cannot make its own flame. So it comes up the rocks for mine, and it dims what it cannot carry away.

AT THE TABLE
Leads with Douse, then chews while you are weakened. Cleanse or kill it before the real fight starts.

Mist Choir

Beautiful. Do not stop to listen.

Common

Seven voices, or one voice seven times — the Reach does not clarify. They come in on the fog singing something in no language, and it is the most beautiful sound on this coast, and the men who row towards it are never recovered.

It is not a trap in the way a snare is a trap. There is no cruelty in it. They sing because singing is what they are, the way a bell rings because you struck it.

I have taken to humming while I work. Badly, and loudly. It helps more than you would think.

AT THE TABLE
Buffs itself, then comes at you in a flurry of small hits that slip past thin armour. Big Ward or fast kills.

Reefback Crab

Wearing the reef it grew up on.

Common

Forty years in the same channel, gathering the coast onto its shell one shard at a time — coral, hull plate, a ship's bell, the anchor off something that had no business being that far in.

It does not hunt so much as accumulate. If you stand near it long enough you will be part of it, and it will not have noticed doing that to you.

Everything I own that is worth anything, I have hauled off its back at low tide. It has never once minded. I have never once relaxed.

AT THE TABLE
Turtles behind heavy armour and waits you out. Bring burst damage or you will still be here at dawn.

The Undertow

The pull that took the others.

Elite

Every coast has one and every coast lies about it. Ours runs south of the point, and it has been taking two or three a year since before the light was built — strong swimmers, careful people, the ones who knew better.

It is not a current any more. Somewhere in the last few seasons the pull acquired a preference. It waits at the seam between two waters and it takes what steps across, and it has begun coming up the shallows to shorten the walk.

You cannot fight water. You can only refuse, continuously, to be where it is.

AT THE TABLE
Douses, then hammers, then armours up and grows. A long fight that punishes any turn you spend idle.

The Drowned Bell

It tolls for the wrong reasons now.

Boss

The bell hung on the channel buoy for a century and told the fleet where the rocks were. When the buoy finally went down it kept ringing, which the harbour office explained as current, and movement, and nothing to be concerned about.

It rings on still nights. It rings when there is no swell at all. And the fleet still answers it — that is the unbearable part — because a century of men were trained to steer towards that sound, and something down there has learned what the sound is for.

It calls them onto the rocks now with the same voice it used to call them off.

AT THE TABLE
Six-step pattern with everything in it: armour, a huge swing, heavy Douse, and a strength ramp. Learn the order.

Act III — The Mother of Storms

There is no coast left to speak of. There is weather with intent, and the thing at the centre of it that has been watching your light since the night it was lit.

Black Gull

The swarm, grown up.

Common

What circled the harbour was a crowd. This is a soldier. Same animal at the root, but the storm has had three acts to work on it, and it has stopped bothering with numbers.

It flies into the weather rather than around it. It is not carried by the wind out here; it is sent.

The first one I saw took the lamp housing in one pass and looked back to check I had seen it do that.

AT THE TABLE
Three quick strikes, then guards, then a heavy one. Never quite lets you settle into a rhythm.

Storm Herald

It arrives before she does.

Common

It comes ahead of the weather by about an hour, and the barometer goes with it. You feel it in the teeth before you see anything at all.

It is not here to fight, exactly. It is here to announce, and to test the announcement — to find out whether the light will still be standing when the thing it precedes arrives.

I have started to think of it as courtesy. That is probably the altitude and the lack of sleep.

AT THE TABLE
Winds up hard and swings harder. The damage ramps every cycle — end it early or not at all.

Hollow Keeper

The one who stayed.

Common

There was a keeper on the north light. He held it eleven years alone, which is four more than anyone thought survivable, and when the relief boat finally reached him the lamp was burning and the log was current and he was not there.

He is there now. Coat, keys, the lot — hollowed out and filled back in with weather, still doing the rounds, still trimming a wick that went out a decade ago.

He does not attack me at first. He waits, and he watches how I keep my light, and I have never been so frightened of being judged.

AT THE TABLE
Douses heavily, then trades blows behind its own armour. Attrition, patience, and a nasty spike.

Siren of the Rocks

She is not singing to you.

Common

The Choir sang because it was made of singing. This one sings on purpose, which is an entirely different animal.

She works the rocks below the light and she is very good — she knows the sound of every hull on this coast, and she can hold a note under the wind until a helmsman two miles out decides, for reasons he will never be able to explain, to come a point to starboard.

She has never once aimed a note at me. I am not the ships. I am only the thing standing between her and them, and we both understand the arrangement.

AT THE TABLE
Buffs, douses, then hits in pairs and finishes with a heavy strike. Punishing if you let her set up.

Leviathan Spawn

And this one is the small one.

Elite

It beached itself below the light in the second week and did not appear to know what to do about legs. It is a deep-water shape — all that mass built for pressure and dark, hauling itself up a granite slope for reasons no fish has.

It is a juvenile. Everything about the proportions says so: the head too big, the movement not yet economical, the appetite absolutely enormous.

Which means something spawned it. Which means it is not the thing I should be watching the water for.

AT THE TABLE
Opens with the biggest hit in the game, then armours to 20 and keeps growing. Bring everything.

The Mother of Storms

She has been watching the light since the night it was lit.

Boss

Every squall on this coast for a hundred years has been her looking in through a keyhole. The Squall at the harbour, the Bell in the channel, the thing that dragged itself up my rocks — messengers, all of it, and I answered every one, and each answer told her a little more about how the light is fastened to the rock.

She is not weather with a face on it. She is the reason weather has been behaving like this, and she has come the whole way in because the keeper kept the lamp burning long enough to be worth the trip.

There is one lit coast left. She is standing off it. And the only thing I have ever been able to do about any of this is trim the wick, and hold the stair, and refuse — for one more night — to let it go dark.

AT THE TABLE
220 health and a six-step cycle that never repeats a weakness. The whole run has been a rehearsal for this.