Page 63 of I Married Amreth

Aku stiffened, his face taking on a frightened expression that chilled me to the bone. He wasn’t the type to openly show fear.

“There should be no red rocks in the river,” he whispered with a look of dread.

“Exactly! I’m not sure why I know that, but—”

“My friend warned us it might happen,” Aku replied dismissively, interrupting me. “What exactly do these rocks do? How dangerous are they?”

That comment threw me. I wanted to ask what else his friend mentioned about it, but there would be time later for this.

“Mollusks like squids usually produce pearls or those concretions as a natural defense against irritants, parasites, or wounds. If a foreign object gets lodged inside their bodies, and they can’t expel it, they will coat it with some sort of nacre to prevent it from damaging them further. In Raitheans, it’s a little different in that they form a coat that is fibrous and not crystallized like nacre.”

“All right,” Aku said hesitantly, waiting to see where I was going with this.

“Pearls made out of nacre are extremely difficult to destroy whereas the fibrous ones crumble fairly easily under pressure or under extended exposure to something that could dilute them, like water,” I explained.

His eyes widened with understanding.

“Normally, the calcareous concretions are not a threat since they usually just contain a wood shard or other similar irritantsthat embedded themselves inside their bodies. But in a very nasty war involving the Raitheans, we discovered that they could use that ability in a lethal fashion to eliminate massive numbers of people. They possess a natural venom that can inflict a terrible disease comparable to what we call malaria on Earth.”

“A lethal disease?” Aku asked.

I hesitated. “It can be if it’s not diagnosed and treated quickly. The Raitheans produce very thin darts the size of a needle that they can shoot from the suction cups on their tentacles. They normally fire those from a distance the same way you do with your blowpipes, which is how they infect their targets.”

“Fine, but what does that have to do with the red rocks?” Aku asked, sounding a little annoyed and impatient.

I gestured for him to bear with me as I tried to summarize the entire concept even more succinctly.

“The problem is that, during that war, the Raitheans deliberately ate toxic plants which allowed them to secrete a virulent acid that they mixed with their venom before coating their darts with the combination. The same way they wrap a shard or irritant with a fibrous membrane in their bodies, they can wrap their lethal darts with it as well. And they become like time bombs,” I said.

“The Raithean is coming out of the water,” Amreth suddenly said, interrupting us.

He had swum a considerable distance from where he initially entered. That further worried me. Had he scattered a bunch of stones all over the riverbed?

“Your drone must scan the water for the presence of those rocks,” I said, my voice tense.

“I need the parameters for it,” Amreth replied. “I can configure this one for now, but I have a second drone incoming. This first one needs to stay with the ship in case they move.”

I nodded and swiftly started punching in some parameters, which I hoped would suffice. Otherwise, we would have to wait until they departed for the second drone to arrive and get close enough to the water for the camera to pick up their potential presence.

As he emerged from the water, the Raithean twisted six of his eight tentacles in sets of three, forming a makeshift pair of legs that allowed him to walk in a strange, wobbly bipedal fashion. It was a common practice for their people as they could taste with the suction cups of their tentacles and didn’t really care to lick the ground. Granted, they could block the taste receptor, but some crumbs always lingered when they glided on any surface.

To our surprise, as soon as he caught up to the human, both males got back onboard their vessel and took flight. Simultaneously, Amreth’s bracer beeped with the drone sending a confirmation that it indeed detected Puricis stones in the water.

“We must go at once and stop them,” Aku said even as he jumped to his feet and started marching towards the exit, Enre shadowing him.

“Wait,” Amreth said in a commanding tone. “We cannot go after them in the shuttle. If things get heated, their ship will obliterate us. And what of the stones? How long before they poison the water?”

“It will take some time for the fibrous shell to dissolve,” I said pensively. “It all depends on how thick he made them. If they knew that the temple would be empty today, but that people would come tomorrow, then he will have made it thick enough to last at least twenty-four hours.”

“Which gives us plenty of time to go after them,” Aku insisted.

“Yes, but only if my assumptions are correct,” I cautioned him. “You can go after them while Mehreen, Ernst, and I go afterthe stones at the temple. We just need a moment to gather some equipment and hazmat suits.”

“If you want to tag along, we need to use the shuttle to fly to the ship,” Amreth intervened when Aku opened his mouth to argue against that additional delay. “It wouldn’t make sense for us to monopolize both vessels while leaving these longer than necessary in your sacred shrine. The drone is currently tracking them. They will not escape. Let’s do this right.”

Teeth clenched, Aku gave us a stiff nod. “While you prepare, I will have Sora send a message to Vala and the other Kalds to warn them to steer clear of any water that shares a stream with the temple.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” I said with a grateful smile.

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