Chapter 3: Behold! The Harbinger of Doom

"Come on, it's only five coins!" Kahli groaned. "Can't I just pay you back later? We might already be too late!" She stared up at the sky, beside herself as she witnessed the dark clouds looming. The downpour had let up for now, but thunder still rumbled in the distance.

"We aren't anything, lady," said the man as he leaned back against his stack of canoes and chewed on a piece of straw. "Either you rent a canoe or you don't rent one, it's really none of my concern. No skin off my backside. But if you are gonna rent a canoe, then you're gonna give me five coins. I'm not running a charity here."

"But you don't understand! A prophetic scroll has been activated! A Harbinger of Doom may have already spawned at the bottom of the Pit of Despair!"

"Great Theseosus." The man shook his head and sighed. "Listen, ma'am, if I had five coins for every time somebody came here and told me that I should let them take a canoe for free because of some hokey 'prophetic scroll' spelling out our 'doom' then, well, I'd be happy. Because that would mean that people were paying what I'm asking for to rent out these canoes. You know, canoe rental doesn't have very wide margins. As a small business owner I'm really struggling here and the government does me no favors. If I just caved and let every random person off the street take a canoe for free with no regard for my own expenses, this canoe shack would've gone out of business long ago. There's absolutely no way I'll ever let you take one of these canoes without being given the money I am due. I don't work out of the goodness of my heart, although I am rather passionate about canoes and of course about the Pit of Despair. Did you happen to know that the last time someone actually reached the bottom of the Pit of Despair was about five centuries ago? Knowing that juicy little tidbit, I can safely say that the chances of anything spawning down there being a problem for anyone but, well, itself is just about the same as me letting you have a canoe without giving me any money."

Kahli was gone.

The man did a double take. He looked around his canoe supply, noticing that his nice stack of canoes was in disarray.

"Oh, fuck, not again."

He looked out to the waters from the dock and saw Kahli in the distance paddling with all the force of a hamster on stimulants.

"Hey! Miss! That's poor paddling form! You'll never progress in canoemanship at this rate!" he shouted. Then, he shook his head. "At least put on a life jacket!"

If Kahli heard him, she was ignoring him. And it was just as well, the man figured. He picked up a tarnished conch sitting on his wooden countertop and dialed a well-memorized number.

"Hello, this is Great Canoe Adventures LLC calling to report a claim of stolen property. Yes, it was the carbon fiber canoe. Yes, with a spoiler. Yes, it was in new condition. Yes, it did have the ability to convert into a submarine, thank you for asking. Yes, it was self-propelled. Yes, it had built-in homing and location systems, but the thief disabled them so I can't recover it. Yes, she told me she'd murder my entire family if I didn't give her the canoe. Okay. Okay. Okay? Okay. Thank you." He hung up the shell and sighed. "Only two to three business days before I get my new canoe. Hopefully, I don't go out of business before then. Now to write all this off on my taxes. Another arduous task for the benevolent businessman."

Kahli paddled with all her might, taking no heed to look back at the man she'd stolen the canoe from. She couldn't imagine he'd really miss it. It looked nearly ancient, its wooden hull was brittle and stained with dark splotches of something, and it had an awful odor that she couldn't quite define. The canoe seemed to be carved poorly, obviously done by an amateur, and it slightly angled off to the left in a lopsided fashion so that it struggled to properly move through the ever-darkening waters of the Purple Sea.

It took longer than she wanted it to, but Kahli saw what she thought was the Pit of Despair in the distance. She came to this conclusion because she'd paddled past five different signs, each warning in more extreme fashion than the next of how deadly and dangerous it was to approach the Pit of Despair, how no one in their right mind should do so, and that whoever was reading the sign should turn around immediately.

But someone was already there! Kahli hoped they hadn't seen her.

On second glance, she beheld two monstrous, bipedal crustaceans pulling a net into their canoe. She could tell immediately that one of them, the dark orange one, had a system. This was thanks to the purple glow that emanated briefly from their skin whenever the light hit it just right. What was this creature using a system for? What if it had found the prophesied monster that Kahli had come to take care of herself?

Kahli shuddered as she slowed her approach. For a second they glanced in her direction. Kahli dropped down to the floor of the canoe, which she noticed was covered in mold and shavings of old oyster shells. She slowly, carefully peered up from her canoe's edge.

The two cretins were searching through the net, talking about something. She did her best to listen, though Kahli was unsure how much she could really gleam. She heard the orange one say to the yellow one that they ought to keep the leg, whatever that was supposed to mean, and toss out the rest. Kahli watched as the goons tossed some sort of bizarre, slithering horror back into the waters.

Could it be? Had they just... tossed the Harbinger of Doom back into the water? Were they playing catch and release with the Pit of Despair?

Kahli racked her brain as she tried to understand this. Then again, maybe she'd just misheard them. Maybe instead of keeping the leg the two fellows had instead been complaining that the octopus had wrapped around their leg. Yes, that had to be it. Kahli waited for the two crustaceans to paddle their canoe away and then, against her own fearful proclivities, paddled her canoe with not minimal struggle up toward the Pit of Despair. And there the two rejects floated in the water, looking as decidedly uncomfortable as Kahli herself was. She looked at the octopus and at the... whatever it was.

The whatever was a little smaller than Kahli herself and with its writhing, wet tentacles looked kind of like an over-sized, oily centipede. Both creatures smelled foul but while the whatever was truly repellent, the octopus was only nauseating.

Kahli did a double take as she noticed a faint glow emanate from the whatever. Did this awful thing have a system? Yes, somehow it did have a system. Suddenly, as putrid and disgusting as it was to behold, Kahli felt jealous of the whatever. She'd always wanted a system and even this awful thing from the bottom of the Pit of Despair had a system? It just wasn't fair!

Kahli realized something. The whatever's appendages looked an awful lot like tendrils. The prophetic scroll's words echoed across her mind. Did the whatever come from an egg? It smelled like a rotten egg, that had to count for something, right? And it definitely looked like it was... Kahli shuddered... oozing as it moved around the water. And it had a system. Didn't the creature in the prophecy have great power? Maybe a powerful system?

Kahli swallowed air in an attempt to relieve herself of the awful scents that were barraging her. Yes, this thing had to be it. This was the Harbinger of Doom, of that she was now undoubtedly certain.

With an uneasy sigh Kahli tried not to cringe as she extended an oar to the disgusting whatever and watched as it slowly wrapped its sickly appendages over the oar. Once it seemed stable, Kahli took a deep breath and pulled the oar - and its passenger - aboard the canoe.

"Dear Theseosus, forgive me my verbal transgressions, but what the fuck have I gotten myself into now?" Kahli muttered as she dropped the oar and stared at the whatever, which somehow managed to look even worse outside of the water.

Kahli wasn't sure what to do at this point. Was she going to kill it?

It was probably the ugliest thing she'd ever seen in her whole life. But... something gave Kahli pause. Part of it was that she didn't like the idea of having to sit in a canoe with the whatever's guts all over the place.

But also... somehow… she felt kind of bad for it. The whatever didn't seem like the personification of evil or like a Harbinger of Doom. It just seemed... kind of gross. But if it indeed had a system and its power allowed it to change, would it always be so disgusting? Plus, who was to say whether the prophecy was right?

Right?

Even then, what if the prophecy was right and this was some evil beast of the apocalypse? If that was the case wouldn't Kahli be doomed regardless? Would she even be able to kill it, anyway? Would she just make it mad?

Maybe the best move, Kahli realized, was to try and befriend the beast. After all, what was the worst that could happen? The end of the world? Was that already not inevitable?

Kahli shuddered. But still, she felt this was her only real course of action. Or at least, the only course of action where she could potentially come out on top. Maybe the whatever would be kind to her as it ended the world if she was kind to it.

And so, with a shudder, Kahli reached out her hand and patted the monstrosity on what looked like its head. Or, possibly its posterior - Kahli couldn't really tell.

[Contact registered]

Kahli jumped. Was she seeing a message from a system?

[Pairing]

[Pairing]? What was going on?

[...]

[Pairing complete]

[You now have access to ____'s system]

Kahli was in disbelief at what was happening. It was something she'd only heard of in legends, in ancient history.

Had she really just [paired] to the Harbinger of Doom's system?