Page 79 of Call of the Fathoms

Alexia stared over his shoulder, where she swore there were lights flickering in the distance. Bright little flecks of white light that immediately called her gaze, trying to convince her to follow them. Only then she realized they weren’t actually far at all. Those lights were the tiny ones that decorated the chests of countless depthstriders who were so close to them. All she could see were the rolling masses of their lights flickering as they reacted to her future.

Their tails were all tangled together. A ball of them knotted around her and Fortis as they moved through the sea. They were all massive, so big she wondered if Fortis was even the largest of them. Their bodies were decorated with powerful muscles, dark colors that were nearly ink black, and bright specks of light created to lure in the weakest of prey.

Then their voices rose. All of them at once in a deep whooping call of the depthstriders, all echoing throughout the sea and making the surrounding water vibrate with their anger. They must have realized she was a human. And they didn’t like the snippets of her future that they had seen so far.

What had she gotten herself into? This place was cursed, and if she wasn’t careful, it was where she would die.

“Easy,” Fortis reminded her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

But could he really promise that?

Thirty-Two

Fortis

Fortis had known this would be difficult, but he hadn’t realized just how bad it would be. His people were ruthless in their pursuit of knowing everything about her. They grabbed onto her shoulders, arms, back, legs, anything they could get their hands on as they tried, desperately, to see into her future.

And in some way, he’d been tempted as well. He’d fallen into her future with them, even though he promised himself he wouldn’t do that without asking. Her future was just too intriguing, even to him. But the future they all saw together was muddy. There were too many currents she could take. Too many opportunities for her future to split.

He hated looking into futures like this, because it was always harder to guess what people like her might do. Fortis knew her better than the rest of the depthstriders, and even he couldn’t follow the currents that would allow him to guess where and when she was going to be. He didn’t know if she was given the opportunity to betray him, whether or not she would.

Eventually, light bloomed in the distance. Mitera had never been one for darkness, and soon enough, he could find the homeland of all the depthstriders.

He tried to see it through Alexia’s eyes. She was used to metal cities that burst through the sea, forcing everything around them to bend to their will. But this city was built out of the sea itself. Silty towers of mud that had been hardened by deep-sea vents, where multiple depthstriders leaned out of carved homes. Their tails were still deep within the tunnels, leaving them to appear almost human-like as they watched them pass.

Lights illuminated from the many bioluminescent plants. Usually these species wouldn’t survive in the sea the way they were, but they were protected by the depthstriders themselves. Lights were useful this deep, and it was exhausting for his people to constantly light themselves.

And then there were the patterns. Swirling stones in rippling circles that spiraled in on themselves, marking where certain families lived. Each of those swirls had a meaning. Some patterns were directions, some were family markers, others were areas of the village they were in. His people had done all they could to make this a home, even in the deepest of the sea.

They had created an inspiration of architecture out of the stone and mud, spires that twirled around themselves, homes that were deep winding paths and kept the families within safe.

“Is that... a farm?” she asked, her voice catching as another depthstrider grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged gently.

He looked, but he already knew what she was referring to. They had been cultivating fish for a very long time. The woven nets were made of sea fronds that had been dried in caves before returning them under the sea and weaving them into a braid that was then used to create nets. All of these contained massive amounts of fish, living intentionally and without too much concern for their wellbeing. It helped this deep in the ocean.There were very few hunting grounds here, and most of them, if not all, were taken up by the wild animals that lived deep in these waters.

“It is a farm. But don’t look around too much, Alexia. The depthstriders won’t like it that a human knows so much,” he murmured.

The knot of depthstriders around them dispersed, although he could hear them murmuring. She wasn’t natural. She shouldn’t be here. What was he thinking bringing her into the heart of their home?

He had been thinking this was his last chance, and none of them seemed to understand how meaningful that was. Soon enough, they would know how little of a chance they had left.

He had seen it. And he was certain the rest of them had seen it as well. They knew their ocean was threatened. They knew that the humans were so close to destroying everything they all held dear.

They were running out of time. Or perhaps his real fear was that he was running out of time. His death barreled toward him and Fortis’s use would soon come to an end. At least this he could still do this.

Mitera drifted out of her home, floating before them with that billowing jellyfish like hair that always looked so beautiful. All her iridescent coloring, floating around her head and undulating with her movements, used to captivate him. Just looking into her pale white eyes was to see every color that had ever existed. She was the most powerful of them, seeing into the future further than any other.

He hoped he wouldn’t even need to argue after bringing Alexia here. Mitera would see the future clearly, as she always did. She would know, without a doubt, that he wanted them to fight for the right reasons.

But from the expression on her face, he knew he’d been wrong.

Fortis murmured under his breath, “That is Mitera. She is the oldest seer, the mother of us all.”

“She’s your mom?”

“Not biologically. She is... somewhat of a wise woman, you could say. She is the oldest and most practiced of us all. We trust her implicitly. This is the woman we need to win over.”

“Understood.” She swallowed hard, and he knew that his words hadn’t helped to settle her fears. If anything, he’d only made it worse.

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