The ship shook with brutal violence, throwing William from side to side as he tried to reach the deck. Every step was a struggle against the chaotic swaying; his legs could barely support him.
When he finally made it out, the salty wind whipped his face, but what he saw left him completely petrified. The scene was straight out of a sailor's worst nightmare. Tentacles. Enormous, dark and gleaming, as thick as ancient tree trunks, they had coiled around the entire hull of the ship. They squeezed it, enveloped it, like a gigantic boa constrictor suffocating its prey. The sound was the most terrifying thing: creaks of wood, planks that looked like steel bending and splintering like mere twigs under the monstrous pressure. The ship groaned, complained, a dying creature in the clutches of something incomprehensible.
