Page 13 of Call of the Fathoms

This felt too easy. He wasn’t just going to give the woman over to her, no matter how easy that would be for the two of them. He could hand the body over, and Alexia would honor their deal. She would bring the reborn back to the city far faster than she would fight with him again. But she could tell that wasn’t how this was going to go.

And then suddenly, the entire sea lit up. His body had lights, she realized. Individual, yellow flickering lights that glowed from deep within his skin. Hundreds of them, all leading to the larger globes that were attached to the tips of his fins.

It was... strangely beautiful. Haunting in the darkness to see all that bright yellow light lingering on the edges of the limp, nude woman in his grasp and the nightmarish form that surrounded her. He was a creature that most would only ever see in their nightmares. A deep sea monster with sharp teeth and long claws that had already damaged the reborn. Fine ribbons of blood covered her sides where he had held onto her body.

“If you want her,” the undine said with his sharp teeth bared in a grin, “Catch her.”

And then he dropped the reborn.

The heavy weight of the breathing apparatus dragged the reborn down into the abyss. It was swift and fast and almost impossible to stop. She had to make a split second decision. Fight the undine before her, or plunge into the darkness.

It wasn’t a choice.

Cursing, she hit the buttons on her suit and sent herself careening down into the abyss after the one thing that might allow her to live when she returned to Tau.

Six

Fortis

The hunt burned within him. It had been a long time since anyone had chased him. He knew how the other People of Water’s mating rituals went. The males hunted their much larger prizes, and then they would kidnap them. Trapping a massive female they enjoyed was hard enough, but then providing her with enough food and gifts for her to decide that they were worthy of a mate? That was no easy feat.

But the depthstriders were a little different. His people knew the future, and their mating rituals were easier because of it. He had long known his wife would come to their pod and that he would mate with her. And from the first moment he had seen her, love had bloomed deep in his chest.

She had been beautiful in a way that so few were. So pale white that she glowed in the darkness. It might have been a weakness to some—it was hard for her to hide, after all—but his stunning bride had never once been afraid of what might find her in the shadows. She’d fought tooth and claw againstanything that attacked her. Until all the sea itself knew not to test her.

She’d chased him through the waves for weeks on end. Every time she had given up, he would chase her. Rushing through the waves to taunt her, tease her, get her to turn around in anger and chase him until the very end of the sea itself.

He missed those days. Terribly.

Perhaps that was why the achromo’s attack had caused him to remember these things. She wasn’t anything like his Astrum had been, but the way she chased him was oddly familiar.

Insane thoughts. And yet, he found himself unable to leave. He needed guidance, because he had been so certain that the sea had sent him to grab one of those reborns. If nothing else, he could have brought the body back to Anya to see what information could be found out about the strange, limp creature.

But then he could feel the whispers in his mind to taunt the big woman. She had worn a skeleton that clearly was made for battle, and his entire mind had told him to bring her deeper into the depths.

Almost as though the sea itself wanted to get a look at her.

It was strange. The sea wanted to know more about this woman, and he wanted nothing more than to kill her. As was right. It didn’t matter that her scent coated his gills. She’d smelled just as good in the water, if not better, than she did out of it. It made him want to bite all of her skin off, peel it away so that he wouldn’t have that scent in his lungs anymore.

And yet...

After she disappeared into the darkness, all he could do was stare into that abyss. The sea tried to speak to him again. He was certain of that. It wanted Fortis to come into the abyss because it had more for him to hear. More that it wanted him to know.

His lights flickered out, one by one, as he sank into the darkness. The voices grew louder as he got closer to the heart ofthe sea, although they were in a language he did not understand. The ancients spoke more in emotions and visions than they did in an actual language that could be understood. He had been communicating with them for years, though, and sometimes he caught snippets of what he believed them to be saying.

“Come to us,” they whispered. “Come to us and we will show you the future.”

He had never been one to deny the future. Not when he knew how helpful it was to know the next step of his journey.

Some part of him feared that he had annoyed them, or perhaps disappointed them. Their orders were never all that clear. They had wanted him to go to Tau. He knew that much. They had wanted him to be caught by the ship and to get inside the city. That was his job. Surely the creature they had laid out on the table, the one who had been tested on just as he was about to be tested on, was the answer.

But no, now he was seeing it wasn’t her. He was always meant to grab her, though, that much he was certain. But this entire situation wasn’t about that woman called the “reborn”.

“Come,” the voices said again, this time all merging together into one voice.

But the voice they merged into wasn’t the feminine call he was used to. This was a masculine rumble, a deeper sound like the very depths of the sea spoke to him. This one was harder, as though whoever spoke had seen far too much. And it called him into the depths farther than he had ever been before.

Not the goddess of the sea, then. She had not bid him to go to Tau. But who else could it be?

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