These texts were originally published as part of Hunt's Tide of Shadows, the live Event that ran from June 28th to August 23rd of 2023. The excerpts featured here are a continuation of those from Tide of Shadows: Part One. Are they fact, fiction, fable, or fallacy? We may never know for sure, but there's truth to every lie, and a lie to every truth. Read on, and decide for yourself.

Summary: In 1893, the doomed boat Delphine drifts into the waters of the Land of the Dead, stirring up madness within the minds of its passengers while a terrifying threat known as Rotjaw makes herself known. In 1895, Cardinal Rain interrogates Mr. Chary into revealing the location of the Corrupted gator. Gar realizes that she cannot save Rotjaw and becomes the first to ever Banish her. And the Wayward Helmsman commits the ultimate greedy betrayal and murders a legendary Hunter.

Chapter Eight: Wayward Helmsman

PRESENT DAY

1895, Summer
Helmsman's Land Log

They say time heals all wounds, but it runs like water and drowns the unwary.

"When you untie me, I'm going to stab you," The Rat told me. She was wet and shivering.

I shoved a rag into her mouth. Smeared grease across her eyes out of courtesy. Testing the powers of a ship curse is brutal work.

Captain left to talk to that man, Finch. Orders were to see if the Delphine had "blessed us." I went beside Glib and the Gunrunner by the altar we found.

I didn't feel this would work.

The Rat was in the middle of the river. She couldn't move a finger lashed to that tree.

I shot first. Hit her in the shoulder. She didn't make a sound.

Glib and the Gunrunner shot her next, both in the legs. She made a sound then. It was muffled through the rag.

I watched her through my scope. Damn me if I don't speak true, the water boiled at her waist. Her skin spit out each bullet. The holes closed. All healed by the water.

I shot the knot, let her loose.

Glib spat tobacco on the altar. "This don't mean anything."

"The Delphine is running from us," the Gunrunner told me. "From the captain."

We hadn't seen or heard The Rat swimming. She was just there. Tucked a bayonet into Glib's ribs.

Before I could cock a hammer back, she shanked the Gunrunner in the neck and stuck me in the armpit.

I've seen men shredded by anchor chains. Slit at the throat by crane wire. Somehow, we bled more than all of that.

"Go on boys," The Rat said. "Time for your bath."

We stumbled into the stream and the water boiled at our waists. Glib murmured something about mermaids drowning. Our cuts healed. Water turned to blood.

The Rat pointed north with her bayonet. To where steam rose above the trees, and a boat's ghostly engine struggled.

+++

Chapter Nine: The Navigator

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Forever)
Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.M.
It seems we've been underway for ten thousand years. It feels like I'm made of leyline and fog.

Mr. Carmichael can't leave the saloon without licking five barnacles in ritual sequence: north, south, south, west, east, south.

Mrs. Carmichael lives inside what remains of the paddle wheel now. She hugs the axle and spins with each turn. Sometimes I hear her singing.

Frederick has been building a contraption. He says he can use it to transport us home. When he leaves the cargo hold, I go and break parts of its cage.

00:00 A.M.
Mr. Owl caught a beetle the size of a sea turtle and tried to bring it aboard. He was going to try eating one again. But that alligator lurched out of the water and snapped his arms off.

Mr. Owl won't be flying anytime soon.

Again, that young girl was on the banks, watching, moving her hands all strange. Maybe she can control that thing.

Maybe she can control all of us.

00:00 A.M.
Mr. Owl has rotted from the inside out. Last word he spoke was "Rotjaw."

00:00 A.M.
After the fifth attack by the Rotjaw, we were boarded by a man on a rowboat, some stranger we'd never seen before. It shocked me.

It ruined my view of this place as pure and chartless.

The man said our cargo was special. He said the "insectile head" buried under the guns was special.

"Julius Caesar sacrificed a goat on that very relic," the man said. "Napoleon Bonaparte tried to feed it to his horse, too."

He said the object once showed a man how to make the very first fire. He said if we shoved it inside that alligator, we'd all go home.

He tapped the deck with his cane when he said home.

+++

Chapter Ten: Cardinal Rain

PRESENT DAY

1895, Summer
Tale of Submission, Verse Two

The breath of a flower could break this man in half.

"If you patch me up right, I can tell you about the alligator," the bloated man says. He has been wet for a long time. His skin is sick from the rain. The sores seem like a mold he should not have touched. His many broken bones were splintered by a heavy hammer.

The man was brought to me by The Wolf Pack. Their leader kicks him in the ribs. I smell blood on them. There was a fight. They want me to heal them.

If they betray this kindness–I can squeeze their life back out.

They hand me a Trait totem. I grip its skull and channel the restoration within as I have heard done before. The thing is dark and hot, and its energy is strong. I feel blood multiply inside the Wolf Hunters, and the mold withers away from the lowly man's flesh. The totem vanishes.

"You are Mr. Chary?" I ask. "A weak name. A name for a worm."

"Even a worm has seen things you have not." He stands. I hand him a stick instead of his cane.

"How has this Rotjaw come here?" I place my hand over his on the stick. I squeeze hard enough to make him bleed again.

"There is a man who has traveled to another place. The Land of the Dead. He brought something back and used this monster to do it. He's selfish."

"Where is he? Does he too have the name of worm?"

"No. He has the name of a bird: Finch. And I know where he'll be when the sun rises."

"Will the Rotjaw be there?" I draw a grub on the man's face with his own blood.

"Yes. She strikes at the sun like men break their teeth on gold."

+++

Chapter Eleven: Cardinal Rain

PRESENT DAY

1895, Summer
Tale of Submission, Final Verse

I'm riding her snout through the wind, and her mouth is creaking open. The murmuring deafens me.

Arcs of lightning bloom across the swamp, boiling the silver veins inside my eyes.

I'm riding her snout through the wind, and the rain festers on my lips.

Her smell is thyme and lavender, if herbs could weep pus.

I'm riding her snout across the sky, and the rain putrefies. My ropes sling tight under her jaw and hold firm.

I plant my fear inside my spit, and I spit into the holes of her jaw. This is my respect.

Her spit is the color of fireflies squashed between a child's finger and thumb.

I'm riding her snout across the bottom of the river, and the rocks cut me.

I'm riding her snout through the boards of a shack, and her entrails snag on wood and glass.

Her rot blossoms in the creek, and many fish burn and blacken, and I breathe in their life to give my arms the strength they've lost.

I'm riding her snout over the creek, and her tooth shears the lashing rope.

She death rolls. I let go. The bow of a ship steams in her lightning filth, arching over her.

I'm standing before her open mouth and I bow, my arms out. If I drip on her tongue, she'll bite. If I breathe into her, she'll bite.

I stand still. I swallow vomit and the rain. Inside the Rotjaw, I see an object not of this land.

It's head-like, maybe a paper fossil, maybe a pupa birthed from the first insect to tread on land. Its decay whispers in languages not heard since people first made fire.

I dodge the Rotjaw's bite. She sinks with the boat.

I know now what has fouled this rain.

+++

Chapter Twelve: Gar

PRESENT DAY

1895, Summer
Proseuchomai of the Primal
Volume One, Chapter Three

That wrestler weakened the Rotjaw and stopped the rain somehow. The clouds are like the fur of a sleeping animal: dead calm.

She gurgles in the water. She calls me to Her. But others have heard too:

Four Smugglers in a watchtower.

The Reptilian and his kin, skulking under walkways.

A shield of Hunters caring for the Grounded behind the trees.

The Skinned one rushes from the roots of an upturned tree. Muzzle fire flares from both his hands. Bark explodes behind my head.

A firebomb flutters and breaks on the watchtower, as a moth might were it full of moonshine and lust.

Those Grounded Hunters bring a grunt horde led by a host of Hives. They weave through them, undetected, as the Helmsman and his captain get flanked.

The Reptilian's avtomat fire blows apart a Water Devil herd.

The Hornback sets off my trap. She screams, suspended on barbed wire.

I hear pistol ammo run dry. I roll into the water. I was born to be as quiet as the thoughts of a wave.

My lance pierces the Skinned from behind. I push its tip all the way through the birdcage of his lungs.

Bullets slip through my skin. They're the wishes of butterflies scorched by summer.

A knife blesses my shoulder. An arrow finds my leg. The pain rings a cicada in my ear.

But I am relentless.

I've made it to the Rotjaw. I touch Her for the first time. The heaving, pulsing, wildness of Her.

I bleed all the blood I have left into Her mouth and banish Her soul as mine is leaving too. I find the ghost of her hand and hold it.

If I can cheat this death, so can She.

I whisper:

I can't save you.

I can't make of you a throne.

I can only crown you queen of my heart, and hope its beating brings you back to me.

+++

Chapter Thirteen: The Navigator

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Eternity)
Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.M.
Frederick retrofitted his electric device to slide around the alligator. He said the relic told him how to do it.

When he thinks he's alone, he cradles the thing like a baby, letting the isopods that follow it suck his fingers.

00:00 A.M.
I have made a plan to stop Frederick's cage and whatever the man in the rowboat wants. If I could feed them to the Delphine, I would.

If my plan works, I'll die.

00:00 A.M.
I stepped off the Delphine for the first time.

I wanted to know what it was like. But she is more a part of me than my own blood. We are married. I could never leave her like the captain did.

I will stay here with her. We will have a kind of children together, I think.

00:00 A.M.
Mrs. Carmichael sings when the Rotjaw comes near. She has sung for a whole geological age, but the thing has not appeared. Something else is about to happen.

00:00 A.M.
The storm is back. Mr. Douglas has been shooting into the wind to try and stop it. Mr. Carmichael is licking his barnacles in reverse order. His wife won't stop singing from the paddle wheel.

00:00 A.M.
Damn them all. They put a meat hook through Scrawlback Jim and drug him on a cable as bait. It happened too fast: The Rotjaw bit down, and they used the paddle wheel as a winch to reel it onto the main deck.

It's set that young girl on the banks to screaming.

It's set Mr. Douglas on blue fire.

It's set me to work to save the ship.

+++

Chapter Fourteen: Wayward Helmsman

PRESENT DAY

1895, Summer
Helmsman's Land Log

The Delphine rained down from the sky. She broke apart as cursed as any shipwreck could hope to be.

It happened when the fish woman crawled on the Rotjaw and banished her. The boat must have been ghosting through the clouds.

The paddle wheel crushed someone hiding in a bush. Hull planks speared into the mud. A chain almost halved me.

It was unnatural enough to scare off the other Hunters.

The crates and boxes and cases of her cargo rained down too. Guns and precious ammo tumbled from them. I picked up a double-barreled rifle with a shotgun bored beneath. I could tell it was more art than weapon. It was worth the lives of a hundred men.

Captain ignored the goods. He sifted through the black entrails of the gator. A rowboat fell and about killed him.

I heaved the captain out of that ichor and noticed a gathering approach. They shambled in the manner of priests. Gathered all the Delphine's debris. The largest of their following stared me down while the rest constructed an altar. Some familiar hook slung over his back and steamed.

They marched their new creation downstream in silence.

The Rat didn't like whatever they were doing. I suppose she was done with damning her soul for money.

She held dynamite and the means to throw it.

I shot her in the back before she could. The bundle went off in the water and tossed her.

The Rat hung on to life, and those gathering driftwood drug her to their shrine. They stacked and mounted whatever guts of the Delphine they could find.

They readied their ritual.

I watched The Rat's soul get turned inside out and absorbed. It looked like a cloud. It smelled like the rain. Maybe that's what this rain is made of.

But who's left to care when there is treasure to sell and guns to fire?

I saw something gold in the water.

I waited and stared and waited longer to see if it would float.

+++

Chapter Fifteen: The Navigator

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Time has an End)
Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.M
Frederick has doomed himself and the crew. But not me. Not the Delphine.

His cage fit around the alligator, and he took that relic and activated it and I saw Mrs. Carmichael flash to steam. The beast is loose and destroying the saloon.

I pocketed a poker chip for luck and crawled into the boiler. Sealed it from inside.

I will give all my blood to the Delphine if it will keep her afloat.

00:00 A.M.
This is a miracle. The ship has chosen me. It will not let me die.

The fires in this engine have not burned me yet. They have not consumed the ship's log for fuel so that I may keep writing.

The Delphine knows I'm inside her. She knows I'm home at last.

00:00 A.M.
All is quiet. I knew the gator had won when the fire around me turned to pale green lightning. I see more stars in these sparks than the sky could ever hold.

00:00 A.M.
I am drifting away. My arm is gone. Turned to ash and steam to give the Delphine breath in whatever waters she sails now.

I will continue to ash away. I will become one with this ship. I will whisper forever that she needs no captain.

00:00 A.M.
My legs go next. My spine blooms with a special kind of decay. In the dark, in the flash of lightning strikes, it looks like I'm becoming a flower. A daffodil for the Delphine.

00:00 A.M
I am almost complete.

Just ribs. A shoulder. My writing arm. My skull has departed ahead of time.

I cannot see. But my thoughts are everywhere.

I will become a hundred altars to her.

I will turn souls into deckhands, mates, and chambermaids for her.

She will always remember me.

I will always be her shadow on the tide.

+++

Want more? Experience the world of Hunt: Showdown 1896 on Steam, Xbox, or PlayStation.