And the Darkling Reefs Abide

Chapter 8

I had to be outside the prison quickly. There were still guards about, and they’d noticed my lack of [uniform]. They’d noticed my bandages, and wonder. They’d notice — other things about me. Something off, that the doctor was reacting to.

Had to get out quick. But there was something more important than that. Something I couldn’t keep going without. Not without sacrificing something invaluable.

The guards had shown me the room where they put all the prisoner’s belongings. It was the room farthest back in the building. A small circular closest with a little slit that let in the sunlight. IN my mind I could still see it, still see what I needed out of it.

So I darted away from the two stilled guards, left to eternity in a guise of pure surprised, and floated that line towards the closest. I paused a moment, then screamed out for help. Any other guards would here it, start over here.

They’d see the stilled guards, and then what would they do? I couldn’t say. Couldn’t predict every bounce of the puppet.

I left at speed, the calcinated floor of the shell blurring beneath my tentacles. My body must’ve forgotten in clumsiness in my hurry; I hardly wobbled.

Bell stretched taut with exertion, i heard just in time the sound of the guard’s armor rubbing together. A burst of magic took me up to the ceiling, and I wrapping my last two feelers around a support.

Below me, I watched a guard hurry past, unbreathing. They were just past a bend in this chamber of the room when they bell tilted just slightly.

They caught a glimpse of me hanging there on the ceiling, were stilled, and knew no more.

I felt stilled myself for a few moments. Would the lesser canyon reef be nothing but statues when i stood victorious atop the sunspire?

Well, there would be one jelly who not be stilled, at least.

At the threshold to the closet, i stood, and saw my things. I didn’t have much; my sunshield, my tiny travel pack, and a the friendship ring.

The travel back hand nothing but some plankton balls. The sunshield was nothing I couldn’t grab off the next medusa i encountered.

But the friendship band?

We — meaning me and Friy — had had our friendship bands stolen from us once before. Slept in a dirty alley we shouldn’t have, woke up missing anything nice we’d kept on ourselves. Friy was green with grief.

It was an adventure that day, and because of that I don’t even think Friy remembers it as a negative experience. It took negotiation and cunning. We needed sniffer snails, tracker stars, and so many swell​-​belled medusas to pull it all off. We couldn’t count all the dead ends on both our feelers.

But, when the sun was tended toward the horizon, we followed a tentative trail to a copse of trees with all the intensity our little ephyra bodies could muster bursting from our membranes.

We walked away that day with the sun to our back, the copse of trees all aflame, the bodies of our first casualties turning to ash, and all the ill​-​gotten riches of thieves.

But most importantly, we’d gotten the friendship bands back.

They meant something to us. And even now, at the end of everything, with purpose looming over me, I couldn’t turn away from that last vestige of friendship.

I snatched at it, and felt it settled into the depressed ring of flesh were it would sit forevermore.

Even if it had taken four graspers to climb out of the pit, I couldn’t have ripped this arm off. The band belonged here.

It perhaps doesnt speak highly of me that I paused there for some time, wrapped up in that sentimental tide of nostalgia.

At the very least, it means that what happened next was entirely my fault.

I heard that all​-​too​-​assured voice speak up from the threshold of the room.

“I have to stop you. You know that.”

My focus left the pair of eyestalks focused on that band, and four other pairs were talking int he constant shifting, roiling mass of colors in the shape of a medusa.

The seer.

“You could stand aside. We both know how this ends.”

“We’ve seen it play out once before. You could stand aside. You aren’t innocent anymore, I can’t promise you still have a place in this reef. But if you step off this doomed path — I promise I will let you have your life.”

“And if i step off my only path — what life will I have?”

“I can’t imagine it was easy, living in isolation, doing suh menial work. But there are other outlets for it. You don’t have to destroy. You don’t have to kill.”

You don’t have to kill. It was such a reflection of the speaker — she stood at the doorway, she had me at her mercy. And she decided to talk me down. All of her problems would be gone with one motion.

I lifted a tressed aimed at the seer.

And already she was making one motion. I flick upward from a grasper resting on a belt around her bell. A knife. It was coming right at me.

Magic flooded through my other tresses, and I bounced up.

But the knife at already reached me, was already tearing into the fluted flesh, flaying it.

Still I floated up, and that’s what saved me from the knife piercing my membranes and punctuating my story right there. The knife lost momentum, fell, and clattered on the ground.

“The [god of knowledge] gave me sight. I can see you truly, and every move you consider and every move you make.” She regarded me silently for a moment, bobbing in levitation. You are a twisted wretch of medusa. But still there is hope for you. Still you could decide otherwise. Make the right choice, please.”

I took another good look at the seer. Squeezed my bell in thought. I affected a tone like begrudging consideration (but i imagined the game was up at the first word.) “You say that you have to stop me. But you don’t. Your god needs you to stop me. You can decide otherwise. You can step off their path.”

“Do you think me any more likely to betray my god than you to betray the god of death?”

“We’re mirrors then. In another world, in other lives, maybe we would have met on opposite sides.”

“No. No. I fight for order, peace. To save people. You stand to destabilize everything we worked to build.” The seer spun around. “You would think you’d know to expect that from the god of death, but someone that missed you. Or do you want to see the world burn?”

“You’ve got to see that the world as it stands isn’t — it’s not stable, not truly. You can’t understand what it cost to give us this. That’s what death side. The the foundation of this world stands on the corpses of thousands. Are you okay with that?”

“I dont care whatever myth death spun up for you. I care about real people, right now. The very same people you are a threat to.”

“And if I promise not to use my Gift on any other medusa?”

“Why would I trust your word?”

“Can’t you see that?”

“I only see trickery and deception in you. Even know you’re trying to deceive me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you asked without promising.”

“Then I’ll drop the charade. I’ll ask straight: what would it take to sway you to my side.”

“It won’t happen. It’ll never happen. So long as you stand opposed to the gods, you stand opposed to all I am.”

“I would hope there’s more to you.”

“Don’t insult me; there is. But I have faith. I will not forsake the gods for you, or anyone.”

“Faith.” I word I spoke with the venom I could nurse. Finally, she’s offered up a chink in her defenses. “Faith is just an additive to make the poison of ignorance slide easier down your throat. If I dance in front of a snapper snail with faith he won’t eat me, he yet will. If I throw myself in front of the sun with faith he won’t smite he, he yet will.”

“I don’t have faith in such trivial matters. They are obviously false. Do you mean to tell me you have no faith in anything?”

“Faith is not knowledge. Faith doesn’t come from outside yourself, it’s just a loop of believe, the mind curl in on itself in comfort.” [Earlier, the seer had rushed up upon me in a lunge.]. “Faith is the gentle touch against your bell to distract from the knife about to plunge.” As I said this, I brushed the seer with one of my remaining graspers.

She immediately flinched, and I saw eyestalks evert and glance at my other grasper. But I was lifting it to gesticulate. “Tell, how to do know that the gods are to be trusted? That I am the demon who will destroy everything, and you are the savior to stop me? How do you know?”

She just twisted her bell tight, half in skepticism, half in disgust. It was too obvious a rhetorical trick, of course it was.

“How are you so confident that it’s so? Confident enough to act with the world in the balance?”

“I was born with this Gift, this Sight. The god’s confidence is my confidence. You’d question the gods themselves?”

“You were born with it. You were born chained to their will. You never go to choose, to decide. I’ll give you the choice now. Deactivate your gift. Silence the voice of the [god of knowledge] in your head. And decide if you really should continue on this path.”

The seer hung there for a moment, thought flexing in the contractions of her membrance. Her bell was still twisted, but it had relaxed a single notch.

“I — You are my elder. All else being equal, you do have more experience, a more mature mind. I — I am willing to submit to your unclouded judgment. But it has to be your judgment. Not the gods. Deactivate your gift.”

I believed it. I meant it. The same dearth of guidance that had seen me out to death’s demesne in the wild canyons was yawning here. I could submit myself to the purpose ordained by death — I had — but by that same mental flexure, I could submit myself to the path ordained by the seer.

I suppressed any wild buckling of my primitive self, the part of me that felt the engagement limned by the seer blocking my path out of this tiny closest. I couldn’t be chaotic, I couldn’t give in to my impulses.

“I can See you reigning yourself in, struggling for calmness. A part of me wants to believe that you’re speaking some truth.”

I lack another absence yawn open.

Half my arms were gone.

I had pushed those feelings down, strangled them and left them rotting in the corners of my mind. I didn’t need the distracting phantoms on my mind.

But — the absences of the most familiar things, the things that define ordinary, that absence is most profound.

“I’m tired. You — You can’t understand how hard it was. What it took to get here.” Something like a laugh vibrated across my bell. “I must have payed the toll on this doomed path, right? Ha.”

“The gods could make the pain go away. Help you deal with whatever it was that pushed you to this. Healing. You can heal. I want to see you heal.”

“I — yes. I’d like that. I feel like there’s something missing in me. Like whatever there is at the end of the road — it won’t be enough to heal that emptiness.”

“Yes Now you’re getting it.”

I cut her off. “But that doesn’t change what brought me here. It wasn’t just spiritual problems. Death — death has a point in all of this. How the gods are controlling us. How we’re like — like slaves to them. Do you think that’s all right? Please, you answer.”

“I –” she got my meaning about then, I think. I saw the colors leach out of her membrane, until she was just a dull pink. I felt no glow of magic from her. Whatever Gift she had, she’d had some aspect of it active for most of her life. Were the gods feeding her the energy to maintain it? They could do that?

“I think –”

I saw her eyestalks upturning to get a good look at my bell, which was growing contorted under the labor of my thought. It was growing pale.

I absorbed a breath, and reached out with a tentacle, brushed softly it across her bell. A relaxing touch.

In my other tentacle I grabbed the knife from the floor, and plunged in deep in her center, piercing the brain, killing her quickly.

I let out a breath. And felt the tension bleeding me body as I gave control back to my primitive self.

How did she find me? She must have come when I hollered to attract the guards. Seen the stilled jellies, and known it was me. Saw the other guard, and that put her on my trail.

I was stupid, and I deserved it.

But my path was ordained by the god of death himself.

I decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt.

I assured myself I would.

Outside, there buzzed a battle like a wild star attacking a beehive. A flying, chaotic mass of defendants all gathered to fight backa single foe.

But here, the wild star was a single medusa, no bigger than those who he faced off against.

It was a black figure high up in the air, almost orbited by a whole contingent of armored, colored medusae.

I thought myself blessed. I thought this the perfect distraction for my final journey up the sun spire.

But as I started to move, I saw th vaguest hint of that black​-​clad jelly’s eyestalks move and focus on me.

And he came down after my like a bullet, the whole contingent of guards flying after him.

That primitive terror welled up, and once again I wondered about a death from above.