Page 9 of Whispers of the Deep

Even the whales couldn’t harm this building. They weren’t strong enough to tumble the metal structure, but soon they would find its weakness. They always did.

He picked a current and let it guide his body home. Though he flicked his tail every now and then to keep up his pace, he mostly allowed the ocean to draw him where it wished for him to go.

Arges had always loved this feeling. The few times he’d been to the surface, he had seen strange creatures in the sky. It was the same sensation, he supposed. When the ground dropped out from underneath him and water surrounded him. Nothing that he could see for miles on end. Just water, darkness beneath him, and the quiet movement of the sea, carrying him farther and farther from that city that always tainted his gills.

Flipping over onto his back, he popped his shoulder back in black and tried to relax as the salt water buoyed him closer to what he knew was success.

Though he hadn’t heard his pod’s excitement, he knew they had succeeded. He’d broken one of the metal tubes, and he was the least of the men he guided. Surely they had done more damage. There was only celebration to be had tonight.

Something struck him out of the current. His tail coiled as he spun restlessly through the water. Flaring out his webbed hands and slapping at his attacker with the powerful whip of his fluke, he managed to stop himself and the other from wildly spinning out of control.

Righting his body, he puffed out his chest, so he looked bigger and faced whatever was foolish enough to attack one of the People of Water. No shark sought out its death so foolishly. Neither would the speckled whales that hunted in pods like his own people. None would be so foolish, so blind, so...

Enraged.

His brother floated before him. Daios heaved breath in through his gills, everything flared wide and angry. Ropes of glimmering red pulsed from the top of his head all the way down his back, to his tail, even into the fine filaments of his fingers. He was beyond enraged. So close to berserker that Arges feared his brother didn’t even recognize him.

Holding up his own hands, pulsing a faint, calming blue, Arges asked, “What has happened?”

“What do you mean, what has happened?” his brother hissed. “You weren’t there. You were supposed to lead the pod, and you weren’t there!”

“For what?” He had been so certain everything was exactly the way it was meant to be. Nothing could have happened to the pod. He watched the achromos for months before this attack. He knew where everything was, and he’d told them everything to do as it needed to be done.

Daios pointed behind them, his claws jabbing through the cold water. “the achromos knew we were coming.”

“They couldn’t have known.”

“Ekhetes is dead,” Daios said. His words fell flat in the water, but the current brought them back to Arges’s ears over and over again.

Ekhetes is dead.

Dead.

“How?” he rasped. “Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.”

“Where. Were. You?” Daios asked again, but then he swam a little closer and his eyes widened in horror. Those dark orbs narrowed on him and Arges knew what his brother had scented.

Her. Of course her scent clung to him. the achromos all had a specific taste in the water. Even now, if he focused, he could taste her on his gills. She was sweeter than most achromos, not quite so terrible to breathe in.

She tasted like the deep candies that his people liked. Tiny pods of bright flavor that burst on the tongue and made the back of his mouth salivate. Not quite sour, but a flavor that both hurt and intrigued.

She was all over him, he realized, and that was his fault. He should have swum through a kelp forest, brushed all the scent off his scales before going anywhere near any of his people. And yet... His scales seemed to clasp her scent underneath them. As though he wished to taste her later, when it was just him and the sea.

His brother’s gills flared again, and this time Daios did lunge. With a flick of his thick tail, he was upon Arges again.

Arges put up a fight. Blood bloomed around them, clouds of their black blood thickening around them until he could barely see. And then a clawed hand clasped around his throat. Though he fought against his brother’s grip, they were already plummeting to the depths.

He twisted, trying hard to get the upper hand, but his brother was massive. Large enough to rival some whales. Arges was dragged to the deep, only exhausting himself further as he tried to get away.

Eventually, he fell limp. He let his tail streamline them because he already knew where Daios was taking him.

Home.

Where else would they go?

In the distance, he saw the light of their homeland. Okeanos. His heart filled with love as it did every time he saw it, although he winced as pain flared in deep cuts dug through the flat planes of his chest. The blue, glowing lights of his body soon dimmed in the bright white of the glowing plants that lived deep inside their home.

Coral mostly, larger than he was long. So tall they sometimes looked like the buildings the achromos had made. Long tendrils of glowing pale coral that bathed their world in an icy glow. His people made their homes in the base of the coral, underneath the rock and stone. Long tunnels, dug with claws and kept clean with quick sweeps of their tails.

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