Clams Before Storms

A Mythical Bastards Tale

The crabs were chanting again.

That was Hanh’s first warning sign.

He was knee-deep in black surf, boots sloshing through a tide that smelled like copper and regret. Behind him, Lyra—his tiger, his familiar, his ghost—padded low to the ground, her spectral fur flickering like static in the half-light. Her hackles were up.

That never meant anything good.

Then came the second warning.

“BY THE SALT-FANGS OF MY FATHER’S FATHER’S CLAW!”

Craglor burst into view from behind a mound of upturned boats and broken surfboards, barreling across the wet sand like a siege weapon with legs. He was shirtless, shell-armored, and still somehow glistening. One claw held a ceremonial butter knife raised like a royal banner. The other was clenched and ready to smash.

Behind him?

A stampede of crabs. Thousands. Possibly millions. Tiny, chittering zealots, all clacking in synchronized rhythm as they swarmed toward the shore.

Hanh didn’t flinch.

He sighed, wiped the salt from his eyes, and said, “Why is it always cults with you?”

Craglor skidded to a stop, panting.

“They’re not cults—they’re crusaders! They’ve organized. There’s a council now. Elections. By-laws. One of them started a library.”

He held up a waterlogged scroll. It was upside down.

“They’re speaking in unison,” Hanh said flatly.

“Yeah, that part’s new,” Craglor admitted. “I think they worship the Deep Hunger now.”

Lyra growled, low and sharp. The wall of crabs halted in a perfect semicircle. Some held driftwood totems. Others wore hand-woven kelp cloaks. All of them chanted.

“KLA-KLAK. KLA-KLAK.”

Hanh’s staff thrummed in his grip. The wood was old—carved from a felled god’s rib and cursed twice for good measure. Now it pulsed with the energy of whatever had infected this coastline. Faint purple threads curled upward like steam from a hot corpse.

“They’re summoning something,” Hanh muttered.

“I know,” Craglor said, scratching under his shell pauldron. “That’s what I was trying to stop when they made me king again.”

“You were already king.”

“Yeah, well, I lost the title for a week. Long story. Involved a shrimp duel and a misinterpreted prophecy.”

Hanh raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”

“No.”

They followed the crab procession inland.

The tidepool crater was vast and deep, half-filled with seawater and half-filled with a creeping black foam that looked like it didn’t care for physics. At the center stood an altar—massive, veined with something that glowed faintly under the moonlight, and entirely too symmetrical to have been built by anything sane.

“This is where they brought it,” Craglor whispered, awe and concern tangled in his voice.

“The altar?” Hanh asked, crouching beside it.

“No. The egg. It hatched yesterday.”

“What kind of egg?”

Craglor didn’t answer.

The surface of the altar began to ripple.

The chant quickened.

“KLA-KLAK. KLA-KLAK.”

The tide inside the crater surged.

And from its heart rose a thing that should have stayed buried.

It was tall—taller than Craglor—and made of barnacle-wrapped bone. Its joints oozed salt and something that writhed like jellyfish with opinions. A coral crown was fused to its skull, and in one hand it held a scepter formed from compressed oyster shells, glowing with an inner rot.

It looked at Hanh.

No eyes, just hunger. Ancient. Aware.

Craglor drew himself up. “That’s not the egg I saw hatch.”

“Then it’s not the main event,” Hanh said, voice cold and tight.

The creature began to chant, mirroring the crabs, its voice like grinding stones and drowned hymns. The altar answered, pulsing in rhythm. Runes ignited. A spiral of green fire twisted into the sky.

That’s when Lyra pounced.

She vanished into smoke mid-stride and reappeared mid-leap, crashing into the creature’s side with a burst of spectral energy. It shrieked—a sound like glass cracking underwater—and swung its scepter in a wide arc.

Craglor was already moving.

With a howl, he launched himself from the ridge of the crater and brought his butter-knife blade crashing down onto the scepter. It shattered. So did Craglor’s shoulder plate. But the spell broke.

The fire spiral collapsed.

The creature sagged and collapsed into water and barnacles and dust.

The chanting stopped.

A few crabs passed out. One sobbed quietly into his shell.

Craglor coughed, clutching his ribs.

“I really thought that knife would be more effective.”

“It was,” Hanh said. “It distracted it just long enough to get eaten.”

“I’m not dead.”

“Yet.”

They stood in the remains of the tidepool crater as the sun rose over Bastard Beach. The altar was cracked. The ground beneath it pulsed with slow, irregular beats, like a heart that had forgotten how to stop.

“They dragged this thing up from the trench,” Hanh said, crouching over the runes.

“I know,” Craglor said. “They thought it was a throne.”

“It’s not.”

“I know.”

Lyra paced the edge of the crater, sniffing the sand. Her fur flickered, occasionally revealing glimpses of skeleton beneath.

“They weren’t summoning it,” Hanh said. “They were responding.”

“To what?”

“To a call.”

Craglor looked out toward the sea. The waves were flat and silent, like something was holding its breath just beneath the surface.

“I thought I was building something here,” Craglor said, quietly. “A kingdom. A legacy. Something stupid but mine.”

Hanh didn’t answer right away. He watched the horizon.

“You did build something,” he said. “You just built it on a fault line.”

Craglor chuckled. “Bastards always do.”

Hanh nodded. “We’ll need more of them. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t the first. Or the last.”

Craglor offered a claw. Hanh shook it, glove to carapace.

“Bastards ‘til breakfast,” Craglor said.

Hanh smirked. “Then we better eat fast.”

Far beneath the broken trench, beyond the coral tombs and pressure-bent bones of forgotten things, something stirred.

It had eyes made of hunger and teeth shaped like prayers.

It had a name once, long before waves and whispers.

And now it had heard someone call it.

Soon, it would answer.