And the Darkling Reefs Abide

Interlude: Oeara

He watched the great​-​clawed shrimp as it dug through the glittering dirt, eating grasses from the roots up. A dark, slender form was stalking up from behind, and the shrimp continued to eat, slow, almost unaware of the fanged danger lurking behind.

Then the tiny sand kitten leapt asudden, claws out to utterly gore the shrimp.

It simply dodged.

The shrimp moved quicker then you might expect, leaping right into the face of the kitten, raking it deep with claws, drawing lines of blood. Yowling, the cat died.

The giant shrimp leapt off its failed predator, and returned to grazing upon the grass.

He swooped down, then. A raven cloaked in black feathers, it stood above the gore and eyed with four pupils the medusae, one by one by one, daring them to contest its meal. None did. With a low crooned note, the raven began to feast on the corpse.

“That’s the third raven I’ve seen today. Pests. Where in the sun are they coming from?”

Oeara turned lazy eyestalks to observe the speaker. A wide, striated jelly, colored a translucent purplish hue. She treaded lightly in the air.

She only considered his words once before he spoke. You always consider your words at least once. She said, “It lends at least a little credence to the suspect’s claims. Ravens are the servants of death. It is known.”

“You think he’s telling the truth?”

“I think we’ll find out.”

She — Hua — spun in the air once. Letting a breath audibly escape her, she said, “You have to be expecting something when we find this secret shrine or temple or whatever.”

She considered the boredom of answering straight. Squeezing herself slightly, she answered, “Do I have to expect something?”

“You can’t not. Why don’t you want to answer?”

Another squeeze. “What haven’t I answered?”

“I’m not going to spell it out.”

Oeara felt her bell swelling a bit at that. “I win.”

“So you do.” The sharp, sullen note in that only swelled her bell further.

Oeara turned a few eyestalks up at the indication of the sun behind her sunshield. Others looked out at the expanse of the the wild canyons.

“Let’s go. I want time enough to rest when this nonsense is over.”

Oeara was who had stopped them, and at her unrooting and floating off, the other two medusa began to follow.

The head guard ran just a trickle of her Gift through a tress, and a lance of bright blue stabbed through the shrimp and killed it instantly. The bird fluttered away a space, staring, impressed.

Oeara swore it called her name as they floated away.

“I can’t believe none of you thought to ask for directions.”

“We should be able to find the shrine by following the scent of rot.”

“This is such an obvious delaying tactic. He wanted to get us off his trail. I can’t believe you fell for it.”

Four more eyestalks swiveled to regard Hua. Oeara’s response: “And he could only distract us by revealing knowledge he did not want us to have. You had to have caught that too. Why would he want us to know of the death shrine?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Trust my judgment. And trust our partners to keep Ruwen under restraint.”

She sung something unintelligible.

Oeara could guess the sentiment which didn’t bare mention. Who ever rooted out the death shrine would be rewarded. Would be remembered. Get their own mural in the sun spire. Nothing else, for the one who finally secured the rule of Aveltane under the sun.

Even internally, where only she herself would hear, Oeara could not kid herself and say that it would only prudence which launched her after the shrine so quickly.

Nevertheless, they followed after the scent of rot. The raven had been a premonition of sorts — the farther they went into the wild canyons, the more black forms they spied high in the sky, or milling in the grass, or staring inscrutably, almost medusa​-​ishly off canyontops.

Oeara imagined even Hua was coming to believe there was something here after all.

Aside from all the ravines centuries​-​carved into the countryside, the wild canyons were largely a flat affair. One saw far to the horizon, with hardly a hill or butte to block the view.

At first, it was just another black form to them. As it came closer, the size became apparent, and the shape, and it was decided that round form floating closer could not be any species of raven.

Hua activated her gift, and she was simply a distortion in the air. Oeara and Waia — the unspeaking green medusa — had magic barely restrained at the mouths of their tresses. Both of them had slings in one tentacle and a spear in the other.

Oeara called out wordless and melodic, pitched loud and low in a way that would carry.

The black form called a friendly reply in response, before angling themselves for speed. Diagonally they shot across the country, crossing vast canyons in breaths.

This close, they could see the medusa wielded no sunshield, only a cloak drawn tight across their bell. Sown into that cloak was the emblem of the vast desert reef, and a name: Maahi.

They were a tall, slender medusa, with a loop bulging about their bell, and black tresses and tentacles that came below the cloak.

“State your purpose.”

A swelling beneath the cloak. “Does any medusa have a purpose?”

Oeara lifted a tress, took aim, and fired. A lance of blue bulleted close enough to rip the first layer of their cloak.

“Slow down. You do not want an enemy in me.”

“Then cease antagonizing, and answer the question. What are you doing in the wild canyons? You tend close to the lesser canyon reef and we are the guard.”

“I travel. A medusa comfortable in no place, seeking forevermore a land which she may not find — is that so foreign a concept? What dread has you so swiftly at my throat?”

“You have no need to know.”

“Oh, so it’s entirely fine to play with my questions, is it? How about I decide I do intend to know, and to have you tell me.” They adjusted the loop around their bell.

“We seek a certain shrine rumored to lie in these canyons.”

Maahi chuckled. “You mean the death shrine?”

A pause, then Oeara lifted a tress aimed at Maahi, wordless.

She didn’t fire. “It seems that we have a mutual desire for answers, then. You start.”

There was a raven, up on a coral tree, watching with one eye. Beak bloody, it was familiar.

“Well?”

Oeara considered. Then, “Waia, did Llaree’s vision include a traveler? Anything close?”

“The master of the serpent,” he replied. She never got used to his enunciated, sine wave melodies. “They remember that phrase. Who blazes like the earth and seeks the key. Something like that.”

Oeara lifted another tress, then she poised to shield her heart. In case the traveller had some missile, or projectile gift. In case Oeara had reflexes quick enough to make a difference. She considered it.

“We simply intend to investigate the shrine. We have accounts that suggest that the death god may be planning something against our temple of the sun. We are precautious.” Oeara spun around. “Now you go.”

“I am on a pilgrimage. I visited the death shrine, and will visit your sun spire next.”

Half of the deep blue jelly’s eyestalks pointed toward the green jelly, the other half toward the empty space on the other side of the cloaked medusa.

The words were sharp, quick. More a first move in a battle, than the request they seemed. They were: “Come with us.”

“I will not.” They adjusted the loop around them once more.

Oeara had rope in her bag. A few eyestalks glanced to Waia again. Above, the raven still watched.

“So be it.”

Three things happened at once, but are properly understood in sequence.

The traveler recoiled back, out of line with the coordinator’s tresses, anticipating the missile she’d fire.

Magic flooded through Waia’s tresses, and the traveler reappearance on the other side of Oeara.

Oeara, instead of firing immediately, adjusted her aim, knowing exactly where Waia would teleport the cloaked medusa.

It didn’t hit anything vital. Missed the heart, missed the primary blood tubes, but of course: her aim was true, considered.

It did, however, spear one of the traveller’s magic glands. A precaution.

(Always, it’s the small things that knock you off balance.)

The sudden trauma choked off the flow of magic down their tresses, and the travelers was falling to the ground.

And then the bulging loop around their bell moved.

It went down, under the cloak, and came out jostling the eyestalks and tentacles the dangling below.

A harvai eel. It had deep, brightly saturated eyes, purple like drops of concentrated poison. It’s massive jaws yaned open, emitting a low, hitching noise that provoked something primal. And the smell of processed death emitted from that maw.

It moved like a sinuous dart, and it was instinct the rocked Oeara out of the way for one second. Just one second, because then her magic choked up, and she couldn’t think quick enough to get herself out of this, let alone far enough ahead to deal with the murderous, unholy worm. Then the eel wasn’t there anymore. She saw it surprised and – for now — motionless, far away, a canyon between the jellies and the floating land eel.

Unfortunately, it was a distraction.

There was an black aura forming around the Maahi — their gift — and as they moved (faster than even the eel) it was as if they left afterimages.

A knife was held tight in their grasping tentacles, and sinking into Waia before stopping, barely a tress’s width before reaching the heart.

A hostage.

“I will reiterate. You do no want an enemy of me.”

“Now,” was all Oeara said.

Hua regained visibility with a spear in her tentacle and rushing toward the traveller.

Then she hesitated, eyestalks glancing to Oeara for indication.

Blackness crackled as it flew down the traveler’s tresses, and engulfed Hua, and then a singular sound filled the canyon for a moment.

Waia was fresh to the force. It was this day that he learned the cacophonous, shattering timbre of a medusa in agony.

A breath passed, and the red orbs at the end of the hilts of the traveller’s eyes peered into Waia, then Oaera.

Then blackness traveled once more down the magic tentacles, and you saw suffering limned in the distorted forms of the black bolts.

They struck true to Waia and Oeara, and then they knew no more.

They heard the high, calmly victorious voice of traveller — and growing smaller as it went.

“Send my regards to M.”

There was no traveller when they awoke. They skin of their bells seemed to crack as they lurched into motion, first Oeara, then Hua and then Waia.

Silent, they observed, looked for strength in each other.

The raven rattled deep in its throat, then leapt away.

Oeara took one more moment, to absorb another breath, to consider her words.

“There’s something at work here. Something dangerous.”

Waia, surprising everyone, was the one to respond. “Quite. I — I recognize the symbols woven into that traveler’s cloak. Chaos. Rebellion. Do you know it?”

“No. You’re the one who spend the twilights rooted to a scroll.”

“A desert sect. No gods. They reject any religious calling, and vault medusakind above all the ancients. They are exiles in every reef.”

Hua. “The traveller was a chaoswright?”

“Yes.”

“Or they want us to think they’re one. We can’t take appearances as reality right now. We’ve got to squeeze into highest suspicion.”

“So…” Hua was rhythmless, legato in her melody. “What do we do now?”

“Whatever Maahi intends for the Avelt, we have to meet it before it strobilates. One of us has to fly back to Avelt unseen, and warn the guard.”

Waia was a listener. “You’ve already decided.”

“I have. I think it should be you, Waia. You stand the greatest chance if you meet the traveler again.”

“And I’m the newbie.”

Every eyestalk he could angle towards her now pointed at Oeara. His bell was rapidly deflating. She knew the despair that coiled around him.

If she sent him back — if he let her sent him back, he wouldn’t make it into the mural. He wouldn’t be a hero. He wouldn’t be remembered.

“It has to be one of us.”

“Hua. Send Hua. Her Gift — the traveler would never see her.”

“I can’t activate my Gift and fly at the same time.”

“It’s an escape, if you need one.”

“I –” Hua stopped. “Why not Oeara? She’s the most experienced among us. She’d stand the best chance for sure. She can kill with her gift!”

“You forget,” the deep blue medusa started, “Not every danger is behind us. We don’t know what waits for us at the death shrine. We don’t know our odds. There is no worst case, it’s all unknowns.”

And if I’m facing the unknown — I want Hua there beside me.

She couldn’t say anything to that effect, even hintingly. But — it was her real reason, actually. But she could live with that.

“Run through the canyons.” Oeara was still trying to encourage Waia. “They can’t see you that way. You’ll live, for sure. But with me, in the death shrine?”

Oeara paused. She scanned with idle eyestalks, found the raven (there was always one watching). She didn’t know why, but she lingered looking at it. Just long enough she noticed it in herself, but no one else did.

“I’m going to be honest, I’m not expecting to come out of it. I’m not counting on living.”

“Finally,” Hua was muttering.

Waia spun around, and made a wordless assenting note. “I pray you survive. Both of you.”

“Yeah,” said Hua.

“If you don’t come back…”

Oeara broke all eye contact.

“If you don’t come back, I’m going in there with you. I’ll find you – avenge you if you can.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I’ll be stupid, then.”

Waia floated up abruptly, and starting towards the distant reef without any a floundering goodbye.

They didn’t leave with that same energy. Oeara lingered, staring at the reef on the horizon. Hua lingered there beside her.

“You’re looking hard at the town.”

“It’s crawled over my membranes, this dark feeling. Like I have to worry that before the sun gets to the other horizon, if the reef will even be there.”

“Like the end of everything.”

“You feel it too?”

She hummed as response.

A few ravens came by and landed there and paused in meditation with the jellies.

“If it were all ending…” There was a certain timbre to how Hua said it.

She came so close their sunshields clinked.

Oeara came close in response. Their bells squished against each other, and Oeara felt the cool wetness of Hua’s membrane.

“If it were all ending, I’d want to hold on to you.”

And she did. Just in case.

When they reached the mouth of death’s cave, they knew.

It was as if all the creatures of the land had come into some uneasy alliance. Coyotes were scuttling up to the cave, snails or shrimp or kittens in their mouth, and depositing it before the dark cave entrance like some foul tribute.

There were slithering worms and long rats who squirmed inside the corpses, blurring the lines between inside and out as they luxuriated in the blood and intestines of the sacrifices.

A kind of butterfly Oeara had never seen fluttered in a great swarm all around. Their wings were white, and in place of any beautiful flower, these bugs drunk with their long tongues the blood of their greaters.

Over all these sat the ravens, watching like judges or masters or students. They rapidly — but independently — turned to gaze at the approaching pair of medusa. They cawed and rattled and grunked all as one, and raised an enormous racket.

Whatever waited inside the cave know surely of their coming, now.

It was a long drop from the top of the canyon down to the outcropping at the other side where the cave dug into the wall. Oeara paused here, and Hua did likewise.

“You can back out, if you like.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t have to tie your fate to mine. I can do this alone.”

“No you can’t.”

Hua didn’t wait. She leapt first, her tread losing its balance as the ground went from just under her to so far down below, at the canyon bed.

Oeara had to go after her. If there was danger, she had to be the one to shield her from it.

It spoke to — something, that Oeara controlled her levitation tread enough to reach the ledge before Hua.

She waited with a twisted bell, and Hua spun before landing. Smug.

The coyotes, entirely out of form, scurried away. The blood butterflies drew back, and fluttered at a distance so precise the swarm of them seemed to form a sphere around the pair.

The ravens, as always, watched.

Oeara threw out a tentacle, stopping Hua from recklessly throwing herself into harm’s way again. The deep blue jelly considered the cave mouth.

Was it natural, or carved? The mouth was taller than any medusae entrance need to be. The floor and what she could see of the walls seemed to be flat in a way that unnerved her. There was some moss and crawling vines giving texture here and there, which kept it from all being full uncanny.

Did it matter which one it was?

Oeara wanted to keep looking hard, try to puzzle it out. If only because keeping her brain so occupied meant that she was spared that much from thinking about the smell. Death, death, death. Rot, decay, atrophy. Ruwene’s tip had entirely borne out. This was, with no considerable doubt, the death’s demesne.

“So are you just going to keep gawking, or…”

“This is how careful you need to be, Hua. Things are going to get so much more dangerous. Keep every eye out, take every precaution.”

She twisted left, then let her bell recover shape.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Oeara didn’t say anything, and the purplish jelly took this as indication to start inward.

She got a few treads before a blue tentacle flew out to stop her.

“Evidently not. Look.”

A blue tress took aim, and a magic lance speared into the cave.

It was a wild star, crouching near the shadows of the entrance. Its skin lined with dark green spines, oddly pierced or dented in one spot, and dripped with poison, one drop of which was — would have been — even to put Hua beyond the reach of any doctor.

They entered the cave.

Scones lined the walls, and there were, in some at least, oiled bits of wood that could be lit.

Oeara wished they were lit. The darkness put her at ease. This is a safe place, her instincts seemed to lull. I could root myself here, rest hours.

She did not. But the temptation road up on her more than once to a call for break, root down. Just for a moment.

Hua probably sense this. She looped a grasping tentacle around hers. They ventured into the cave like this.

The horror show seemed to most subside as they went in. There was vague caw that hinted at ravens hiding in the shadows — against all standards of behavior for the species. Bugs scuttled, and corpses piled up like progress markers.

But it only shocked you once.

Then their path widened sharply, opened to a big room.

There was a giant spike spear up in the center, a dead medusa mounted there. They were long dead enough their membrane was cracking and falling apart.

The torches were lit in here. And they saw that this is where the cawing and rattling had been coming from. Every surface along the wall from the floor to the ceiling was covered in ravens glaring out with red eyes.

And in the center, on the other side of the impaling spike, was a dark form. The torches seemed to stop shortly before the center, and the even the ones that were lit seemed wary to shed a single ray for the thing that lingered there.

It lengthed at the their appearance. A motion which might be analogized to a jelly extended their stalk while rooted, save for how uncannily jerky and segmented the motion was, betraying primitive, lower anatomy like joints and bones.

The form wided then, just as suddenly. Like wings being spread — the forms which it extended even seemed to have feathers, and be in the shape of wings.

And had tentacles squirming at the fringes.

The wingspan was wide enough the light could not restraint itself from falling, if halfheartedly, on the thing. One saw oblong blinking orbs embedded in the skin like boils. Their pupils were dilating.

Lastly, the form lengthed once more, and it must’ve been the head. It had a beak — one could deduces from certain unfortunate angles it took – but it was far to round and bloated to be a bird head.

Far, far too late did either of them realize what — and, consequently, who — this was. Too late to avert their eyes.

It was proscribed to look upon a god.

Perhaps that was not a point of morality, but simply practical advice.

“Welcome, welcome,” came the voice, angular and tectonic. “Always a pleasure to meet another instance of your kind. Root yourself if you like. I’ll try not to hold you long.”

Were this simply a medusa, Oeara would have demanded to know what they were planning, what they wanted. Cowed them, intimidated them.

But she considered her words first, always, and she knew this would have been mistaken.

Hua said, “What under the sun is any of this? What are you doing here?”

“Bold. I like that. Your kind needs more of that. Less boring apathy or subservience, more vim and vigor.” They made some motion, jerky and brief. “I digress. You want to know what’s going on. Who doesn’t? But worry not. A good villain loves to explain himself.”

A cracking, shattering sound, like the mountains clearing their throat. Death began, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. God — capital G, the big guy — molds the world to his liking. He crafts creatures in his image, and lets them inherit the world. He crafts servents for him and these creatures, powerful beings. One of them questions him. Beings to wonder about tyranny and freedom, hierarchy and… rebellion. Dreams of, perhaps, taking some throne for himself.

“God doesn’t take kindly to it. He refuses to negotiate, refuses to listen. He refuses all compromise.He forces it to violence. It becomes a war. That questioning angel — loses. Is damned to hell. Where he bides his time. Where he plots freedom for the creatures, for the angels, for God himself. Chaos, rebellion, anarchy. Growth, evolution, progress.”

Oeara considers this.

But Hua says what they’re both thinking. “That’s not how the myth goes. You’re forgetting the scheming. You’re forgetting the murder, the genocide, the lying and plotting and manipulating. You’re forgetting that death is the bad guy. That he was cast out for a reason more than just questioning the sun.” Hua spins. “You call yourself the villain. How could you forget that?”

“And you don’t think the sun god has his own secrets? Things he left out of the myth? At my worst I’ve killed thousands of medusae. I know birds whose fuckups killed millions.”

“What did the sun do that was so bad?” Death seemed to like talking. Questions were safe. They got answers for Oeara, and — perhaps, (one never knew with a god) — led him to think that she was coming to his side.

“He put us in stasis. All of the angels except for his chosen few. Our future was stolen from us. Our potential, our lives, our hopes. Because of the stasis, the world forgot about us.”

Oeara considers this.

“And I’m going to undo that. Revive the angels. Make you medusa fight for your future instead of having it handed to you. The sun god lays complacent atop his spire. And you medusa lay complacent in a world that belongs to only you.”

“I’m going to change everything.”

“You’re going to end everything. Destroy it, unravel it.”

“I will. You’ll thank me.”

Oeara considers this.

“What happens to us now?”

“I want you to return the rest of your kind. Tell them my words. Tell them I’m going to change everything, whether they try to stop me or not.”

“Ruwene?”

“He will knock the first piece over, set it all into motion.”

“He’s going to the sun spire.”

“He’s going to wake up the sun. Make him mad.”

“Unless we stop him.”

“I evened the playing field. But if he’s going to succeed, he’ll have to fight for it. I welcome you to try.”

Oeara considers this.

“I’ve said what I will say. I’ve done what I will do. I am inevitable. Evolution is inevitable.”

The wings, the head, the figure in total seemed to curl in on itself, then the shadows grew deeper, and then the death god was gone and nothing was in his place.

The ravens quick dispersed and left the pair of medusae alone with the echo of his words.

Hua reach out with a grasping tentacle and Oeara took and pulled her close and they felt their bells squish. They grasped each other with more interknotting tentacles, stared eyestalks deep into each other, and exchanged breaths.

“Is this the end of everything?”

Whether it was or not, the two medusa, rooted the the ground, held each other in the dark, and peace existed at in their hearts.

Somewhere distant, a raven cawed.