Eysin: The Giggling Curtain | Ch. 18 - Capricorn
New weird biopunk checks in on an anomaly-whaling mission going sideways: The Kraken Capricorn welcomes Daegan, saves a head, and receives a possessed brother as their first guest of honour.
Daegan stands before the mirror that isn’t a mirror.
The black glass wall has healed itself—smooth, glossy, swallowing light like it’s embarrassed to be seen vulnerable again.
He remembers breaking out two years ago—fists green-red, shattering this very wall, feeling Capricorn’s heart crack with the glass. It had to be done. Thirty souls saved from the predatory branch of the Guild, looking to make more navigators for Gisnepo.
The ship had mourned for weeks.
He hesitates.
The wall ripples—inviting, possessive.
He steps through. The mirror drinks him—no splash, just a soft, wet kiss.
Green chaos floods his senses.
Then calm.
Capricorn wakes—two hundred and fifty metres of black muscle and scarred hull breaching the Mirror Sea like a jealous goddess rising from sleep. Tentacles uncoil slow and deliberate, tasting the water, tasting him.
She greets him like a wife who kept the divorce papers signed but never filed—tentacles curling possessive, heart racing like war drums wrapped in velvet, barnacles whispering gossip about every navigator who tried to leave.
He feels everything: footsteps like kisses and bruises, the girls hiding in breathing tubes, hearts hammering like baby birds who just learned the sky has teeth, harpoons kissing the water above—polite, but ready.
Daegan’s hands shake. “How do I turn this thing on?”
Alexander’s voice, gentle, fond, cuts through the haze:
“MHD thrusters, second year. Long channels, not coral. You’re just wearing a bigger suit, sugar.”
Daegan laughs—shaky, wet, real. “Okay, but the body’s a sponge…”
Alexander repeats, patient but firm:
“No—keep it in long channels configuration. Do not touch that. Don’t want folks getting lost if we need to bolt fast.”
Daegan nods to himself, pulse steadying.
He keys the walls—voice echoing through every vein:
“Everyone—get into the inner cells. Strap in. I don’t know if I can keep her steady.”
Cells bloom open along the corridors—membranes wrapping gentle but firm, holding passengers as the ship flexes.
Capricorn pulses—warm, jealous, alive—and curls around his spine like a lover who’s waited years to exhale.
The navigator chamber blooms around him—starting intimate, womb-small behind the black glass—then expanding as she feels his pulse quicken. Walls recede, ceiling vaults upward into a cathedral of flesh thirty metres high, throne rising on a pedestal of squid-nerve cables. Yellow Vialence vials stack around it like ammunition for beast-mode, glowing, tempting.
She whispers through the barnacles, voice velvet rust:
“You came back.
I kept your shoes.
I kept the holes where your heart leaked.
I kept the songs you sang when you thought no one listened.
Now let me keep you.”
Daegan, half-crying, half-laughing:
“Hey, jealous wife… missed you too.”
Capricorn surges forward, salt water spinning magnets, stealth propulsion humming like a lover who finally got what she wanted.
Inside the cells, the kids lose it.
Eysin curls fetal in living metal—warm as womb, cool as grave—feeling Capricorn’s heartbeat accelerate with Daegan’s panic.
Plasma bolts race past like shooting stars made of blood and bad intentions—vanadium white, purple, green, yellow—Daegan’s fear painted across the hide.
The uneasiness infects the passengers.
“Big mistake, I made a big-big-mistake,” Cassius shivers. Everyone hears.
“No one forced you to eat that woo,” Alexander grumbles, somewhere topside, sounding like he’s about to cry or laugh or both and hasn’t decided which will hurt less.
Someone’s voice trembles through the strings:
“Who said enemy?”
“Hey—hey—hey!”
Daegan pinches a nerve.
Calming agent floods the walls—cool, soothing, like mother’s milk for warriors.
Silence falls—thick, sudden.
One minute.
Then the first Shriek tears the night.
Once.
Twice.
Alexander counts them, pale as milk.
Seven.
Each one closer.
Each one louder.
Each one peeling paint off the soul.
Cut to other bridges—Isolde at the helm of Scorpio, crew strapped in, pushing engines to intercept Capricorn before the enemy fleet closes.
Isolde: “Contact! Pisces vector—coming in hot!”
Bartel (over comms, voice strained but triumphant): “Dial’s turned. Hold on.”
The beast curls into a gigantic tadpole—bulbous head, stubby limbs sprouting, tail thrashing.
Raynar/Capricorn: “What the hell… it’s a tadpole?”
Atlas/Gemini: “Keep eyes on target—”
Second leap: limbs lengthen, tail shortens, skin warting over.
Mid-jump—deep, wet, earth-shaking SHRIIIIIEK that rattles Scorpio’s hull.
It lands as a teenage frog — gangly, destroyer-sized, already terrifying.
Someone/Capricorn whispers: “It’s evolving…”
Pisces: Apex of the third leap: full transformation.
Body swells to battleship scale, warts like boulders, violet eyes glowing.
A crown of ancient barnacle-thorns materializes — regal, ridiculous.
Full crowned giant toad.
It slams onto the Sampo’s lower flank — webbed feet sticking.
Massive remnant tail whips around and SLAPS the gigantic structure.
THUD — distant, indifferent, like swatting a mosquito.
Bridge silence.
Bartel (over comms, breathing hard): “That’s our frog. Let’s ride it in. We’re super compromised, by the way—”
The corrupted Pisces fleet falters—their own weapon turned mythic bottom-dweller, crowned and croaking.
Isolde/Scorpio: “He turned it into the bloody Põhjakonn.”
Raynar, half-laugh: “Bartel just… toad that Kraken.”
Atlas (quiet, fond): “Our brave prince and his toad. Let’s ride it in.”
The air itself screams—Bartel’s warning carved into the sky with a knife made of sound.
Clarity crackles—Isolde’s voice, calm as stone:
“Capricorn, increase speed. Do not slow. Head straight for Constellation line. Seven… six…”
The countdown kills all questions.
Capricorn surges forward, faster, MHD thrusters screaming.
Behind them—fifty meters back, closing fast—Pisces breaks the surface.
Purple light bleeds from every seam.
On its deck: shadows moving in eerie sync. Violet eyes. Too still.
Isolde’s Scorpio rises between them like a wall of black muscle and barnacles.
The collision is biblical.
Metal screams. Water explodes upward. The sound is a freight train kissing a cathedral at terminal velocity.
Inside Capricorn’s cells, everyone tightens their grip in mortal terror.
Lily screams.
Valen curses in French, Finnish, and Russian.
Cassius goes upside-down, “Papa Frog is coming!”.
Daegan feels Scorpio’s impact through Capricorn’s skin—Isolde buying them time, wrestling Põhjakonn-Pisces like a furious mother bear protecting her cubs.
“Go go go go—” he mutters, pushing Capricorn faster.
They rocket toward the Constellation line—steel ghosts materializing out of fog, chains linking ships into one floating fortress.
Safety.
Almost.
Capricorn slows at the edge of Vinu’s fleet, hull trembling, exhausted.
The final Shriek echoes across the water—close enough to rattle teeth.
“Off! Off! All of you lot!” Imogen yells, boots already on deck, scanning the fog behind them. “Go to daddy!”
Eysin stumbles out of the tubes, legs shaky, Cassius half-carrying Lily.
Alexander drags Valen off Capricorn, throws her over his shoulder like a sack of tragic violins.
She kicks, screams, “That’s my ship!”
He spins with her on the soulder, squeals! “And I’m your fucking problem now. Deal with that!”
“Put me down, you dramatic bastard!”
Just a pinch. Butt cheeck and all.
The Capricorn deck scatters like startled birds, hopping across the water to Vinu’s ships—magnetic boots firing, zerks pulling them in short desperate bursts.
Raynar and Jarre. Eysin and Sylrissa. Valen’s entire entourage.
Gone in thirty seconds.
Only Imogen remains, standing at the rail, eyes locked on the fog.
Waiting.
“Gen?”
She hears Daegan’s voice through the soles of her feet.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I’m sorry.”
“All is forgiven,” calm as winter.
“Gen?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh… Nothing.”
“You wanted to say you love me, right?”
Imogen can feel the awkwardness through the soles of her feet.
“Thank you, Daegan.”
Scorpio and Pisces are still locked together a hundred meters out, thrashing like gods who forgot they were supposed to die quietly.
*
Movement.
Figures slip off Pisces’ deck into the water. One. Two. Five. Seven. Eight.
Swimming fast, zerks glowing faint violet beneath the surface—like possessed harpooners leaping from the very beast they once crewed.
Heading straight for the Constellation fleet.
Clarity crackles:
Isolde (breathless, furious): “Vinu—eight boarders in the water. They jumped ship. Coming for us.”
Vinu Laos stands at the rail of Rubaiyat, the old astrolabe turning slow in his fingers, eyes tracing trajectories across the dark sea.
His voice comes calm, clipped—Persian cadence under the words, precise as a theorem:
“Copy. All ships: defensive circle. Grapples and nets—non-lethals if possible. Those are our people, just gone mad with the beast’s poison.”
A pause.
He murmurs, almost to himself, the line turning like a lodestar:
“The hunter and the hunted drink from the same cup…”
Then, louder, to the crew:
“Bring them in anyway.
Alive if you can.
We’ll cut the poison out—
or give them the mercy the stars sometimes write in silence.”
*
One figure doesn’t swim toward Constellation.
He swims toward Capricorn.
The Baltikon jumps out of the water and lands ten paces from Imogen.
Water streaming off black rags, eyes half-violet, half-ice.
Arkion in a more violent zerk configuration.
“New look?” Imogen’s voice carries across the deck, calm as winter.
Arkion tilts his head.
“Blind…” The voice that comes out is layered, ancient, very tired.
Imogen feels something’s off. Daegan feels it too—so he sends a surge of amber through Imogen’s suit.
Her suit flares—Mobile Titan activating.
She transforms: fast, spiked, thrice her normal size. A brilliant low-res spider thing—white sphere of fuck-you with four articulated legs that move like they’re offended by physics.
Arkion cracks his neck one way and another, eyes closed. “...play.”
They circle each other on Capricorn’s rolling deck like two gods who read the same dating profile and both showed up disappointed.
She lunges.
Almost pins him.
Almost.
Arkion rips off one of her legs like it’s a chicken wing at a barbecue he wasn’t invited to.
Snaps it in half.
Impales the sphere—crushing it and thrusting the leg through Capricorn’s skin.
Imogen rolls out naked and human a heartbeat before the spike kissed her spine.
He raises a foot to crush her skull into modern art.
Capricorn moves her and gets her shoulder crushed instead.
Arkion is about to pull her up to throw her into the water.
The deck tilts. Skin opens. Capricorn swallows them whole.
A naked scrap of lace, now inside the proverbial whale’s mouth and absolutely soaked, squeals in delight:
Well that’s one way to get eaten out.
Send lube or an exorcist. Preferably both.
Imogen rolls up and leaps into the wall cells to hide, laughing or crying—hard to tell.
Arkion, disoriented, lies in a small cell that starts closing in on him.
Imogen finds a cell far away from where they got pulled in. She sits and caresses the wall. “Can you handle him?” She is still catching her breath. “Can you start a channel, can you get me a suit? I need to contact the others.”
“Sending some white your way, and pink… Sorry about your shoulder.”
A few white marbles pop into her cell from the walls. She slaps her Kaestus on them before they roll away, and they melt into her, becoming fresh second skin.
“I owe you my head.”
“You owe me a wha—”
She grabs a pink marble from the wall before it falls and slams it on her shoulder.
Still catching her breath, Kaestus fingers twitching, she tries to get back on the Clarity channel.
“Daegan, can you keep him trapped?”
Daegan sinks deeper into the throne, eyes silvering over as the neural cables bite sweet into his palms.
He envisions himself the darkest of kings—cape made of midnight, crown of barnacles—and a low, theatrical chuckle rumbles out of him.
“Muhaha… can I keep him trapped? What say you, Capriwife?”
The Kraken answers with a full-body shudder—
a jealous, delighted ripple that makes the water outside hum like a blowhorn turned inside out.
The entire fleet hears it—
a bass note that rattles teeth and makes lookouts glance nervously at the dark shape below.
“Let’s see—”
Daegan carves two yellow vials from the throne’s living armrest like picking fruit from a very cooperative tree.
“—how you like my house, brother.”
He cracks one against his temple—
liquid storm flooding his veins.
The second against his heart—
thud answering thud,
Kraken heartbeat syncing to his like an overeager drumline.
Excited for a rematch long overdue—
all these new tricks,
all this rare, ridiculous power—
Daegan reaches into the interface, fingers dancing across barnacle-nodes like a pianist who just discovered jazz and caffeine.
The corridors twist.
Doors seal with wet, satisfied sighs.
Floors tilt like a funhouse designed by a very petty architect.
Gravity flips just to mess with footing.
The entire Kraken folds around Arkion like a living maze—
not cruel,
just playful.
A jealous wife showing off:
Look what I can do now.
Daegan leans back on the throne, grinning wide enough to show teeth that glint a little too sharp.
“Come on, old champion…
let’s see if you still curse the same way after all these years.”
He flicks a single node—
casual,
like flipping a light switch in someone else’s house.
The entire Kraken inverts.
Gravity flips 180 degrees.
Corridors that were floors become ceilings.
Walls become floors.
The wet, pulsing guts suddenly drop Arkion like a sack of potatoes—
straight “down” (now up) into what used to be the ceiling.
Arkion slams into it—
hard—
face-first into a membrane that squelches like a wet sponge.
He sticks there for a second,
spread-eagled,
dripping.
A beat of stunned silence.
Then—
muffled through the membrane,
but perfectly audible across the neural link:
“Daegan, you absolute motherfucking bastard—”
Daegan throws his head back and cackles—
full-throated, triumphant,
the Kraken shuddering along with him like a wife laughing at her husband’s terrible joke.
“Still got it!” he crows to the empty chamber.
“Classic Arkion.
Music to my ears.”
He flicks another node—
gravity snaps back to normal.
Arkion drops like a stone,
lands in a heap on the (now) floor
with a wet, undignified thud.
Daegan leans forward, voice dripping mock-sympathy:
“Careful, brother.
The house is a little… moody tonight.”
The Kraken gives a low, rumbling purr—
as if agreeing.
Arkion stumbles through shifting passages, purple light flickering in his eye, one hand pressed to the wall for balance.
The sickness is worse in here. The Kraken’s insides are too close, too alive—breathing, pulsing, digesting. Every step makes his stomach lurch.
Martin’s voice—quiet, familiar, exhausted:
“You’re useless…”
Arkion growls through clenched teeth. “I just need to find that fucker and we get out.”
He gets slammed to a wall that flips into the ceiling—
then falls hard, face-first into the wet floor.
Martin again, closer now, almost gentle:
“Here’s an idea…
if you can’t get out,
why don’t you bring her what she needs instead?”
Arkion pushes up on trembling arms, forces his breathing steady.
“What do you mean?”
Martin’s voice softens—like the old Martin, the one who died believing in him:
“Close your eyes.
Feel it.
The weapon.
Blindside.
She’s asking for it.
Quietly.
Through me.”
A memory surfaces—sharp, painful:
Martin’s last moments in Siberia, purple sand in his lungs, hand reaching out.
The voice that should be gone forever,
but isn’t.
Arkion’s chest tightens.
The grief he’s carried like a live grenade finally goes off—
not with a bang,
but with a whisper:
“Give it to her.
Protect the others. Deep, moist belch.
Or they face the deep.
You know what that feels like.
You let me face it alone. Hiccup.”
The purple in his eye flares—
not invasion,
but surrender.
His own guilt opening the door.
He pulls his Kaestus up, dials into the NSS connection—
the one tied to Eysin.
The call is automatic now.
The hallucination guides his fingers.
“Eysin…
I need you…
Can’t… wet croak
Daegan’s hurt…
Something happened…
Just… burp …just you…
Bring Blindside.”
He sends desperation, fear, something broken—
all real.
All his.
The call cuts.
He keeps moving—
following the faint pull toward the navigator chamber,
toward the weapon,
toward the only way he thinks he can still protect them.
*
The Constellation ships are in full-blown chaos, EESO crews facing off against the corrupted Baltikons five-to-one.
No deck is safe anymore—
grapples snap empty air as violet-eyed boarders bolt through hulls like living torpedoes,
planks splintering, masts cracking, men tumbling into the drink with shouts cut short.
One corvette lists hard, taking on water fast—
a Baltikon’s plasma dash carving a molten scar straight through the waterline.
Another ship’s nets burn violet, useless,
as two boarders crash the bridge in a blur of red flare and shattered glass.
Eysin’s current deck rocks violently—
heavy damage from Morris carving through like a shark through a whale’s flank.
The ship groans, timbers screaming, already settling lower in the water.
She’s about to jump to the next—boots firing, magnetic pull ready—
when NSS flares hot in her skull.
Arkion.
Desperate.
Afraid.
Her heart kicks.
“Where are you?”
“Capricorn.”
The call dies—cut clean, like a line snapped in deep water.
She’s already moving—
back toward the rail,
boots firing,
zerk yanking her in desperate bursts across the gap
toward the dark silhouette of Capricorn riding low not far off,
its bass horn still moaning that low, mournful warning into the night.
He blinks, confused by the taste in his mouth — like fermented regret.
Then pushes on, following the pull.
