Page 2 of Song of the Abyss

A weight struck his side, shoving him against the stone and pinning him down. For a moment, Daios thought he had been attacked again. He fought back. His writhing tail coiled around whoever dared to touch him, pulling the other closer and squeezing hard enough that he heard the pained wheeze from whoever was foolish enough to think him weak. Even at this moment, he was not weak.

He was a powerful warrior and he would kill all who stood in his way. Because all he could see were bodies floating in the distance.

And it was his fault. He was the nightmare that had come to his people and promised hope. But all he’d given them was death.

“Daios.” The wheeze came from within his grip. “You’re losing it again.”

Losing it? He wasn’t losing anything other than the people who had relied on him to keep them safe. And his arm. By all the gods of the ocean, he could still feel it. It still felt like he could flex his fingers and reach out for something, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t there.

Squeezing tighter, he froze when whoever was within his tail’s grip slapped against his scales. “Daios. We have to get out of the way or the achromos will see us.”

Everything snapped back into focus. Suddenly, he could see where they were again. The ocean cleared of flashing lights and screams that came from his mind only. They were not at Beta, where he had lost so many of his loved ones. They were in front of Alpha and he had put them in another compromising situation.

Looking down his heaving chest, he could see that he’d coiled his tail around Maketes. Red lights flashed up and down his scales, all the way from his massive fluke to his chest. Warning lights for nothing to get close to him. His brother was wrapped completely up in his tail, shockingly, but Daios forgot that his yellow finned brother was so much smaller.

Maketes tapped against his side again, his claws scratching harmlessly against Daios’s much larger scales. “Let me go.”

He did.

Daios didn’t know what to say, though. He’d never been good with words, and an apology stuck on his tongue because it didn’t seem like it was enough. He’d attacked his closest friend, without reason, because he’d lost the knowledge of where they were. What was he supposed to say in a situation like this?

So instead of talking, he just grunted. A deep sound, but one that he hoped portrayed that he wasn’t in his right mind. That he wouldn’t have done it if he had realized where they were.

Maketes darted away from him, his tail flashing a few times in agitation. Even his gills had flared around his ribs, likely to get more air into his body after being squeezed so tightly.

“Ridiculous,” Maketes muttered. “They put me with him to watch over him, but how am I supposed to fight against that?”

“You aren’t,” Daios replied.

“Exactly. You lose your head like you’ve been doing so often, and what am I supposed to do?”

He stared his brother in the eyes, seeing the concern and the fear in those wide orbs, but he knew there wasn’t a good answer. “You stay out of my way.”

“That’s not an option. What if you decide to turn the ocean red with their blood? What if you get yourself killed?” Maketes smoothed his hands down his rib gills, trying to push them flat and failing miserably. “You want to lose your other arm? That’s how you lose your other arm. So keep your head on straight, stop thinking about whatever you were thinking, and let’s stay together, yeah?”

He wasn’t so sure they could do that. Because the moment he turned his attention away from Maketes, the more he was certain this was not going to be easy.

Alpha spread out before them like a giant bubble. Mira had explained to them what they should expect to see, but he had never thought it would be like this. Beta was spires of buildings, jutting and reaching into the ocean. Alpha had a shield of its own.

The golden city. Every spire and building within that shield was gold. It glimmered with interior lights, shimmering like a tiny world held safe with a glass dome set atop it. Even from this distance, he could see the greenery. Trees, Mira said, although she had never seen one herself. There was some kind of fancy light that allowed plants to grow within it. Dots of people moved freely through the streets, all in a massive dome rather than the thin and hidden corridors they had seen in Beta.

And everywhere around the city was flat. Completely and utterly flat. Destroyed by machines a long time ago, razed to the ground, so that there was no way for anything to swim near the glass walls without being seen. He narrowed his gaze, focusing his attention on the small pillars dotted around that flattened landscape. Even as he watched, a school of fish started toward the dome. One of those pillars came to life, a light within it gathering before it lasered toward the swimming creatures.

They evaporated into a plume of blood.

Maketes let out a low whistle. “That will not be easy to get into.”

“It’ll be easy enough.” Daios settled down on the sand, flattening his body and his tail against the very edge before the ground flattened out. Narrowing his eyes, he waited.

And waited.

Long enough that Maketes dramatically rolled onto his back and stared above them. “Easy enough, you say? Sure feels like we’ve been here forever.”

“We’ve been here for only a few moments.”

“We’ve been here for hours on end and all you’re doing is staring. How do you not move for that long?”

Daios took a deep, steadying breath. “Do you remember how you just said traveling with me is hard?”

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