It’s only been a few weeks since Fortnite season 9 started and big things are already afoot. After a few mysterious and cataclysmic events, a giant sea creature has appeared off the coast of the island.

The sea monster’s journey to Fortnite began, it appears, all the way back in season 6 when Polar Peak first appeared, but more notably in season 7 when the region was added to the map. Polar Peak is a massive castle that sits on top of a giant mountain of ice. But it appears that a darker secret was always hiding inside that ice.

During the end-of-season event for season 8, a molten rock flew into the Polar Peak mountain and caused a chunk of the ice to melt and crumble. Apparently, it also woke something up. A few days after the piece of Polar was destroyed, players suddenly found that, within the crack that was left, a giant eye appeared and was watching them as they walked around at the base of the mountain.

Players immediately began to speculate that some long-frozen monster had been awakened and it turns out they were right. Just last week the castle at the top of Polar Peak disappeared and a giant hole in the ice was left where it used to be. While this initially left players baffled, it slowly became clear what happened to the castle and where it went. The castle that was once Polar Peak was now floating around the island.

Sightings of the castle were rare at first, but as they became more common, players began to realize that the castle wasn’t exactly floating; it was swimming. Or more accurately, something was swimming with it. And that’s where our sea monster comes into the story.

It turns out that this giant creature was indeed awoken when the molten rock collided with Polar Peak. Once he woke up it took him a few weeks to really stir, but once he did he broke free of his frozen prison and took the castle on top with him. He can even be spotted swimming around the island with the top of Polar Peak sticking out of the water every so often.

While Epic likely has more in-store for Fortnite’s giant sea creature, we’ll have to wait a little while for his ultimate purpose to be revealed. For now, he’s just swimming around the map, appearing just often enough to remind us that he’s there.

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