Page 75 of Song of the Abyss

Or at least, he thought it was Alpha. The room was still filled with wealth and gleaming walls as he had seen before. The opulence was almost blinding. But this room was not like the one he had seen, or any of the others he had seen while searching out Anya.

He floated in the water like the room was filled with it, but surely that wasn’t possible. Groggy, he could feel both of his shoulders lifting and falling with each breath. Flexing his fingers, he felt them twitch, but he couldn’t lift them. No, he had lost an arm. This wasn’t him, it was someone else.

Blinking his eyes open, he stared down the length of his pale, purple body only to look up and see two achromos standing right in front of him. His vision was blurry, but he could see they were standing, not swimming. Two of them. Both men, one with hair barely covering his shiny skull and the other, younger man looking up at him with a dark grin on his face.

They wore white clothing and held something rectangular in their hands. He could see they were talking, but in this memory, he did not have the chip attached to his head. He didn’t know what they were saying, only that they were saying something.

He took a deep breath, steadying himself to reach for them, to fight. But something was in the water. Something bitter that tasted like bile after his body rebelled over something he ate. It filled his gills and suddenly he wanted to sleep again. He wanted to let his head loll to the side and not even think of what was or could be.

Belatedly, he knew he should reach out to someone. But Daios didn’t know how to do that. His people did not have the abilities of the depthstriders to reach out through the distances. He knew that there was nothing and no one who could hear him.

The achromos spoke for a while longer, then reached out and hit their hands against twin red orbs on either side of his container. One moment he was surrounded by water, and the next, he was spilling out onto the floor. He couldn’t stop himself. His body was strangely limp, as though there wasn’t a fiber of his being that could fight any longer.

Gills flaring wide, he tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. There was no water around him, just air. His body just reacted. Water expelled through his gills, soaking his body as he shivered. Lungs he hadn’t used in years filled with air as he breathed through his mouth, an unnatural feeling that seemed to thrill the achromos now standing above him.

Others reached for him. But he couldn’t do anything with this body. All he could do was lie there, limp and trying to fight. It was in his blood to fight. He could hardly even bare his teeth to let them know that he intended to rip their guts out and make them wear them like a necklace.

They weren’t afraid of him. It took six of them to lift his body, and not even smaller achromos. The ones who surrounded him were the larger of their species, and they still were not afraid.

He was placed on a cold, hard object. Higher up. He could feel his tail hanging off of it, limp as the fluke slapped heavily against the floor. The achromos converged on him, touching his body as though they had a right to.

And then he felt it. The first flick of pain that radiated through his body. It was enough to send his neck curving, just to look down at the achromo who had ripped off one of his scales.

The creature held up the purple specimen. He could see the light glinting off it, and there were gestures made as though the achromo was surprised at how thick it was. They’d torn a piece off of him. Like sharks in the water.

But then he saw next to them a table of implements that had been wheeled over. Blades and knives and glinting metal that were all meant to rip and maim. What was he supposed to do?

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t tell them to stop. He couldn’t even beg for mercy once they had done all they intended to do.

Daios endured. Every inch of that memory was forced to be replayed as though he lived it himself. He felt their blades as they sliced through his skin while he was wide awake. They watched him for any sense that he might be able to move, but he wasn’t ever able to defend himself. One moment he had been swimming through the sea and the next he was here.

Sharp blades cut into his belly. And his earlier threat became his reality. He watched his entrails pulled from his body, then measured and weighed on some gleaming scale that quickly grew mottled with his black blood. Throughout all of it, they watched him as though they were waiting for him to die. But his people were a hardy race. It took a lot to kill him, and so he endured.

Long hours of torment. What felt like forever while he suffered and silently begged them to stop.

When the first and last tear slid down his temple, he felt the spasm of death take him. His powerful tail curled up toward his body, the muscles bunching despite the drugs they had filled him with. Then and only then did he feel the sea reach to take him back.

Slamming back into his body, he gasped and reeled away from the creature who had held him. Fortis let him go. He knew Daios needed a few minutes to piece his soul and body back together. He needed to shake the feeling of death’s claws from his shoulder and gather the taste of the sea on his tongue.

“Who?” he wheezed, his gills flaring wide and the oxygen in the water not feeding his lungs nearly enough.

“A friend,” Fortis replied. Even this stoic creature seemed moved by the memory. Yellow tendrils shook at his sides, sending a strange strobe-like effect through the sea as they blinked on and off in his anger. “I found his body at the bottom of the sea. Half rotten with crabs crawling through his ribcage.”

The image sent Daios’s mind into a tailspin. He saw Hamartia’s rotting face. He heard her screams and saw the water turning black around them. His breath caught in his lungs as he felt the cold claws of the dead scraping down the back of his neck.

And he knew if he turned, he would see her again. Or perhaps it would be someone else. Yet another person who had trusted him because he had listened to the depthstriders the first time they’d given him memories.

“I did your bidding,” he whispered. “I did what you asked, and I failed. What makes you think I can do better this time?”

“Because this time you have more information. This time, I am not telling you what to do with the information I am giving you. I am showing you what has happened and now it is up to you to fix it.”

“Why can’t you?” he snarled, all of his fins flaring wide as though he were preparing to fight. “You are the one who told me all of this. You discovered the truth of the future that would happen if we do not stop them. What are you doing, Fortis? Other than sewing the seeds of malcontent for a future you know will come to pass no matter what we do?”

For the first time, the expression on Fortis’s face changed. It wasn’t much, just a twitch of his cheek, but Daios had a feeling that said far more than he could guess. “I have my own battle to fight.”

“What battle, Fortis?” he shouted. “I see all of us risking our lives for this future you have seen. I see all of us above having to deal with the achromos far more than your kind, and still you all do nothing but sit in your muck and prophesy futures that have yet to come!”

A blur of pale color and surging rage rushed forward. Fortis stopped right in front of his face, so close that Daios could see the lines down his cheeks pulsed with a darker light. “Do you really believe there are only three cities? There are more, my brother. Do not make me kill you and find another messenger. The depthstriders are doing what we can down here so that those up above do not have to be attacked in the same way.”

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