[ TT ] Everyone knows about the kraken , but there 's actually an even more dangerous sea monster , only no one has lived to tell the tale . You and your fellow pirates discover treasure in this sea monster 's lair .

The most frightening monsters are the ones you ca n't fight or flee. A charybdian can be avoided. A sea serpent can be distracted with a suitable offering. Even a kraken will probably leave one or two pathetic stragglers on planks, somewhere in the ocean. But none of us had even imagined what the saklas would do. 
 
 `` Saklas.'' Alhazred picked the name. A false god, he called it. Alhazred was my best friend and my first mate. An old Persian, he'd taken up piracy when he was knee-high to a salamander and was still squalling sixty years later. He knew things. Things like, `` captains do n't live long. Always be first mate.'' And how to know where you were by the way fish were swimming – far more complicated than it sounds. And how to repair a ship when stranded on a deserted coast devoid of vegetation, too scared of the law to head inland. And the names of false gods. He got me through so much. He could n't get me through everything. 
 
 Poor old bastard. 
 
 The other monsters have the courtesy to at least kill their victims when they consume them. The saklas did no such thing. It devoured us whole, while never touching us against our will. We fell into its arms. 
 
 It is n't alive, the saklas. It's a stone. A beautiful, abhorrent red gem the size of a human being, carved into a rough facsimile of what I thought, when I first saw it, was an angel. But it's very much aware. It knows everything that happens around it, and far more. But it feeds on our ilk. The second we entered its cavern, our greed damned us; the second we touched the damned thing, our folly did. We saw the bones, we knew there was a trap. But I sent Michael to test it – bold, foolish Michael. We saw the vermilion flash in his eyes before he told us it was safe. We gathered to pick it up – and touched it ourselves. 
 
 I was one of the first. Do you know what it's like, wanting to scream a message when your mouth calmly speaks the reverse? Warning them that they'll be strangers to their own bodies, locked behind their eyes? It was eight long years ago, I was trapped inside myself. The others are all dead now, working in servitude to that… thing. I labor on. *They* labor on, too, but I assume their souls – if there be such a thing – have left their bodies. It keeps me `` alive'' as a trophy. 
 
 Run, I shout to the new crew that has arrived, concealed behind a pile of gold. Run, you fools, or become like me. But my traitor lips do not move.
