And the Darkling Reefs Abide

A forest creature, something with a fluffy covering and hard mouthparts and stalkless, recessed eyes and two thin and stiff stalks support it below. What was the word… Avian?

But birds were small things, kin of the laughing ravens. Nuisances that clawed through trashbags and left droppings as they flew. Not mighty presences that loomed taller than me, mouthparts curving to a point sharper than spears. A thing which stood and scratched on clawed feet like many knives.

They were wild creatures, too, and not things that wore armor. The plates gleamed metal, and the wide metal covering the breast was big enough I glimpsed a reflection it.

I stared, desparately curious how I looked to this bird. Was I an enticing meal? Had I gained new menace from my sojourn with the death god? Or was I still a feeble thing? I squeezed my eyes.

Foremost I saw a slender bell, a membraneous exumbrella dotted with breathing trachea. Around them, circling my exumbrella in a wave‍-​like pattern peeked forth twenty‍-​four rhopalia, lips blinking over simple eyes.

Dangling beneath them, four grasper tentacles upheld the weight and rested on fan‍-​like pads. Eight flat tresses coiled around them, bristling with magical cnidocysts, like a rough ribbon rife with venom, and the fluted outlet tingled with dormant power. Wriggling in between them, sixteen short feeler‍-​tentacles blew along the breeze. Centermost between them all, a single stalk came down in overlapping or segmented bulbs of membrane taut over cartilage.

The eyestalks were level with the bird’s armored breast, and they turned upward to stare into the face of the beaked menace, head pivoted so that a single fiery eye stared into the jelly‍-​bodied thing before it.

No helmet on the head, and this left you free to notice the fluffy golden down, colored like the metals on the finest altars.

In that fiery eye I felt‍ ‍—‍ recognized, measured, and known. The largest birds, the ones known only as morbid silhouettes in the distant sky, you knew to be wary of them. Only some preferred live meals, but the ones do had not yet learned to be wary of a medusa. (And you would wonder if they should, given what often result from such encounters.)

And this bird would dwarf any vulture or hawk.

It was an amusing thought, when it had first come. Will this be an end? Was it to be a gory feast of a death for me? Now, it seemed more a sober summation.

The feeling that thrilled through me‍ ‍—‍ electric and subterranean, the forceful will to live‍ ‍—‍ was none familiar to me. But still it struck true like lightning, with an utter verity that limned it as if it were a facet of pure reality surging through me. It was undeniable.

An assured me: I must live, I would live. I must escape, I would escape. And I would kill the high priestess of Avelt.

It was not words that filled me, not truly. But if it were, those would be the words.

Magic welled up mightily in my glands. The exhaustion, the dearth, had left me, and in its absence were rendered the tools of escape.

I absorbed a breath—

And it takes but a moment for all reality to be rent asunder.

“Do not be afraid.”

It was‍ ‍—‍ it was the bird that spoke.

“Please speak to me, little medusa.”

“What –” I choked. Something from the holy studies must have returned to me, on some other level than consciousness. I inquired, as one who inquires to a divine thing, and I asked, “Who sent you, O thou sublime? What purpose shall avail thee?”

“How formal. Relax. You may know me as Eythe, He of knowledge, the one who agnizes many things. I’ve come to speak to you, little medusa. Relax yourself.”

“Are‍ ‍—‍ are you a god?”

“For your peace of mind, I shall say no. You may think of me as a mere symbol or pretense. It’s all I ever was. But do not worry about me. I worry about you.”

“Me? I’m useless. Below the consideration of‍ ‍—‍ anyone, whoever you are.” The soft flesh of my exumbrella undulated in waves.

“But you have decided something, haven’t you? I know many things, I know that you intend something quite monumental. Involving some high priestess, perhaps?”

I paused, waves freezing on face. “I could never accomplish something like that.”

Why didn’t that feel like a lie?

The words may as well have never been said, for all that the bird cared. He continues, “So, allow me to return the inquiry. Who sent you? For what purpose?” The head leaned lower, level with my eyes. He said, “Forgive me for insinuating that you wouldn’t do this of your own volition but… you simply wouldn’t.”

I simply wouldn’t. Somehow, I couldn’t contradict the bird. What could I decide, on my own?

Who sent you? The inquiry had struck a match in my mind, and from its flame I could feel the earlier communion as if it were still happening. Perhaps it was still happening, and always would. There was something‍ ‍—‍ sublime to it.

The terminus. The god of death, he who traces the glory of the world. Doubt could persist, but it had to be him‍ ‍—‍ who else would tend to a demesne that smelt so overwhelmingly of rot, decay?

He’d dared to tell me his name, even. The name. A terrible call that began with M.

How utterly I wished he hadn’t‍ ‍—‍ I could well do without knowing. But telling me that name, it was a sign of trust. Even the hidden histories did not record the name of the god of death.

And he had given me his godsting. It was trust, so much trust.

It was not a sum that this god‍ ‍—‍ or pretense of a god‍ ‍—‍ would deign to match.

So be it. I was used to floating beneath notice, beneath caring by those important. I didn’t sting, it didn’t bother me.

No, it was the demand that pricked me. Who were they to know my master? My task?

“You are endlessly expressive, for a medusa.” The bird cocked his head, letting the other eye rest sidely upon me. It blinked once, and when the beak opened again, a mournful caw emerged. “Perhaps I should apologize? It was not my intention to offend you. I mean no disrespect.”

A wave snapped across my face. “So you don’t mean what you say?”

A pause, and a back and forth motion of the head. Confusion was written deep in the posture, like a dune‍-​dweller staring uncomprehending at rows of sunshields. A cognizance of a cultural divide.

(But it was misplaced caution; it was not a fault of translation, but a trap in words.)

“Of course I mean what I say. I disgorge only truth.”

“Then you meant disrespect,” I stated simply.

“I don’t mean to wrestle in words, little medusa. I’m not here to play whatever status games it is you jellies get up to. I am concerned only with the growing, churning might of Him. He’s planning something…

“And I can look into your soul, little medusa, and I can see the bleakness that awaits you. I can see your path ends only in tragedy – grand tragedy. Does it speak lowly of me to seek to avert that? No…

“Be still and at peace with me. I am a god to your kind, and I can help but if you simply allow me.”

I rose higher on my stalk. “Then grant me passage into the hollow reef of the sun.”

A feathered head shaking. “That is not my domain. Aveltane knows those grounds, and I cannot overrule that.”

“Well. As that is all I would like, it seems you cannot help me.” One rhopalium angled up, an eye lifting to see the canyon wall I must climb.

It was a lie, a damn lie. Curse my pride.

The bird was striding toward me, born on those overly thin stalks, those legs coming down like swords, jointed tendrils stabbing into the glittering dirt. The head leaned toward me. When the beak opened, I could smell a meal on their breath. I knew what every cnidarian smelt like. The priests assured me the gods held no malignity at all for medusae‍ ‍—‍ but should I trust that it was only hydra meat I smelt?

The bird spoke, and the reek of its gullet imparted an dark undertone which was not there before. “Do not seek to use me, little medusa. I am not a resource to be exploited. Were I to assist you entering Aveltane’s demesne‍ ‍—‍ what ailment of yours would that truly allay?”

I had decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt. I knew better than to say it aloud, though. Not now. Indirection had its use, when speaking plainly obscures the truth. “It would fulfill my purpose.”

A sharp, deadly shriek left the deep throat of the golden bird. And now they spoke in such a tone of prophecy, I could believe my doubt misplaced; I could believe this truly was the vessel of something alterior:

“Medusae do not have purposes. They are. They chose. They live. That is the right we carved out of the stone of the world for you. That is what we fought for.”

“And I chose to serve. I chose to fulfill this task. Would you deny me that?”

“I can only imagine what soft words He fed you to provoke such determination. I can only imagine what darkness he plans you to undertake in Avelt’s demenses.”

“I could tell you, if you’d finally agree to help.”

“No, I cannot assist Him again. We’ve‍ ‍—‍ He’s done enough.”

“I remain unconvinced.”

“For now. I will break you from this geass, I will drag you from this path if I must. I assure you: my patience flies long.”

My stalk flexed, and I rose from my fearful crouch, cartilage popping back in place. The words I’d spoken, which felt like echoes of M’s truth, they bolstered. As if giving voice and word to that determination I knew only intellectually, as if that lent it some visceral life.

I twisted my bell, all wry, and said, “Is this conversation over, then?”

“For now. But allow me one parting gift, little medusa.”

The bird stuck its head into the bag, woven of taut fabric gleaming like silk. It arose holding in the beak a tight, leathery band. Dried, treated ghost snail skin.

It wasn’t new‍ ‍—‍ as if a god’s vessel would ever buy a present for me.

Above, an eye closed as if winking. “I agnize many things, and I knew to expect you.”

It was an old, torn and nicked thing. It was worn down by years of use. It had glyphs carved into its side.

But I didn’t even have to read them. Perhaps it was that objects had some unseen aura that one could simply feel‍ ‍—‍ or perhaps not. Whatever the source, I knew this band intimately, and at a glance an ephyrahood of memory gushed forth like blood from some enormous hurt.

It was a friendship band, one I’d long cast aside. I had last seen it the day I left the for the grand reefs of the badlands. Cast aside from a cliff overlooking a lake, as one would do in a poem. Full of drama and angst that come so easily to those lingering at the threshold of adulthood.

The initials sealed something‍ ‍—‍ I knew not what‍ ‍—‍ when I saw them.

F & R.

Forever.

…But it didn’t happen like that, it never does.

When the old snail‍-​leather tressband passed to my tentacles, I stood transfixed, four eyes gawking at this long lost treasure. It was so close to that memory‍-​image which sometimes haunted me at the depth of night.

It had spent long summers at the bottom of a lake, yet it seemed even the fishes knew there was something more to it and let it be.

I absorbed a great breath, and in the shuddering release, remembered the F to my R.

I remembered Friiya.

Reefs didn’t crop up randomly, not medusan reefs. Like a mindless somnabulent, we seemed drawn to those sites of vast cyclopean stones or spires wrought of irreplicable metal. Ruins of dimensions alien and austere, cities and polis that could not be the work of medusan tentacles, and yet‍ ‍—‍ what other creature of the land or sky could truly construct?

The reef I strobilated within, the Great Bog Reef, had one of the horrors of that lost world. For in the depths where even our coral refuse to grow, there lay a vast, leagues‍-​long field of black stone statues, perfect likenesses of avians larger than any seen by mortal eyestalk. They could not have been carved, not so many.

You didn’t live long in the Great Bog Reef without becoming aware of the field. The very shape of the reef seemed to imply its existence, so even without seeking it, the implications would find you.

It took me a long time to grasp language, wrap my mental tentacles around the vibrations of my throat skins and the rhythmic exhalation of air. Harder without anyone caring to show you, for sure. But everyone has a story like that, most everyone. You were always on your own in the beginning.

But once I could speak, and once I could speak well enough people bothered to listen, the field of statues was the first thing I ever asked about, ever remembered asking about. I’d already wandered it, explored it like a playground. (Curious ephyra didn’t last long. Somehow, I did.)

I asked. Even when medusae would listen, they wouldn’t answer. On a good day, I got something indirect, some deflection. No one quite liked speaking of the avian statues.

I think one healer, ever‍-​weary from long hours of daily work, she was the the only one who ever warned me away from the statues. Everyone else was fine letting me eat whatever great danger lurked in that field, alone.

And I did. Never did I encounter whatever shadow hung over their warnings, whose name they dare not speak, but I did meet what, for me, was perhaps the greater hazard in the end.

The shadows are strange when the sun tends close to the horizon, pausing there as if considering setting. Like a daily ritual‍ ‍—‍ I knew, we knew, that he would chose the same thing every time. To turn his course, to return, and to pour his wrath down upon the world without the interruption of night.

Did it all seem so assured to him?

I know I, from time to time, drifted to the edges of the deepest caverns more than once, more than a few times‍ ‍—‍ once a week, I’ll admit it. And rooted there at the edge, peering down to where the shadows escape the light, I would wonder about falling.

I had never jumped‍ ‍—‍ as you might guess. But if you had asked…

Perhaps the twisted, sidelong shapes‍ ‍—‍ if they could be called shapes – the sun casted at twilight hour are some reflection of a torment that grips him. It must be hard, never again knowing the peace of night.

But the shadows grew whole again, with a brief turning of time, and the light grew brighter.

Some of the avian statues, they have open beaks, wide as if screaming out the horror of whatever final revelation had gripped them. I could climb in their mouths. It was cozy and dark in there. I don’t fit, these days.

I first saw them sitting in a bird mouth like that. They floated very steadily. When they paused to look at this stricken face or that contorted limb, this might’ve been a painting and them a subject. Suspended midair by brushstrokes like nails.

Then she moved, fast like a like a darting plankton when a shadow falls over them. She passed by the mouth I rest in, didn’t look up to see my bulging rhopalium, eyes staring.

I hadn’t made a sound. I hadn’t breathed. I watched with four eyes everted, and as she disappeared in the distance, I stared a long time.

I might have slept inside one of those statues, one or twice.

A day passed, wherever it was I slept. I was in the field again. There were very big tentacle snails and worm rats lurking here, and I was big enough to swallow them.

And when my bell was round with the liquifying flesh of prey, I danced and floated and laughed across the field as I always did.

I wasn’t in the bird’s mouth when she came that day.

This time, I was the one unawares, unknowingly watched. But she had a curiosity or courage I lacked.

I had never moved as fast as I did when I felt that tentacle poke my bell.

I was blasting up into the sky. My bell was squeezing tight. All my eyes were out, spinning around to find the source. My fright had frighted her, and it was a terrifying moment of seeing only a seemingly empty field‍ ‍—‍ knowing somewhere there was an Other, with an interest in you‍ ‍—‍ before she timidly drifted, eyestalks and tentacles first, from out behind a stone avian standing tall, wings outspread like a hero.

We stared at each other.

She didn’t know how to speak, back then. She was younger than I, luckier. But that same bright curiosity that lead her to the field of horrors with me, that had her seek me out, meant that she learned quickly.

It was happiness, having someone else to play with as an ephyra. Few are so lucky.

One day, we had been exploring the wilderness that ringed the reef. The locals, when they listened and when they answered (by then we were well‍-​known as those who spent days in the field), they would warn us of the northern wilds too. Told us of hairy things and feathery things. Things that slithered. Sweet‍-​smelling plants that drove you happily mad. Mushrooms that spoke. Coral that frowned.

We didn’t listen. Well, when they told us of the strangeness and the wonders (all the world was wonders, back then), we heard them loud and clear. But danger was a empty, cowardly word. Maybe they lied, wanting to hoard the secrets to themselves. We would do that sometimes, when the other ephyra asked us where we found our food.

(The scarcity of important things, that’s something you learn early.)

So we floated over into those northern reaches, where the bog got quite muddy and thick. The field was about drained dry of wonder, by then, and we thrown ourselves into the new source of novelty.

It took days before we really learnt the meaning of danger. We petted the slithery things. We ran laughing from the furry, roaring things. We gazed at the frowning coral as one would at a painting. We listened long to the mushrooms.

We ate the sweet‍-​smelling plants. I one leaf, she two.

In the end, it is always the arrow one doesn’t see which strikes true.

The great bog was where tentacles snails got big. They were pests who, inside the reef, knew only poisoned food and traps. You got but a taste of them in the near‍-​wilderness of the field of horrors. But in the northern wilds, none could challenge.

We had been tired that day. Attempted to chase some furry thing with horns, but they were quick. It was fun, still, anyways. We caught some wormrats. Were cooking them. Maybe that’s what attracted it.

Ghost snails‍ ‍—‍ snails in general‍ ‍—‍ have funny mouths. A long slit opening to rows and rows of teeth. Maybe it’s instinct, or priorities, that had me see that first. It’s not as dramatic as a dawning realization, or slow saccade around the head, though.

Zooming out, though, it had a shell big enough one could live it it. The four tentacles ringing its face writhing like the slithery things. Its eyes were sharp. Very well defined pupils, very good motion tracking. A predator’s gaze.

I think it would have settled for our still‍-​cooking lunch, or just us.

And we didn’t particularly want to give it either.

So we fought.

I think it’s fit for a story on it’s own, how the encounter went down. The trickery and skills we employed. That dazzling bit of magic‍ ‍—‍ she was always, always my better at magic‍ ‍—‍ which punctuated the fight.

But this isn’t a tale of heroism, or bravery (or winning‍ ‍—‍ of that, I was assured). It would taint the mood, I think, to tell of something truly epic.

Because, even now, I don’t think of myself as a hero.

So suffice it to say, under fire from the brilliance of the girl I grew up with, that massive, monstrous tentacle snail met its end. Suffice it to say, with bickering and wrestling and more effort than our lives, we managed to get that corpse somewhere near the Great Bog Reef.

We talked to a butcher about it. He had this bright look on his face, his bell all puffed and swelled. He wanted to cut a deal. His tanner from friend could make us something nice from the leather skin of it. We’d get some money, even. But the butter wanted the meat, the juices, and the brain.

We were dumb kids back then, and I think we took a lot of bad deals out of simple ignorance and perspective‍-​lack. But even now I think this was a pretty balanced trade.

It’s easy to see where this is going, I imagine. This is where that band came from. It was custom made, fitting right in the medial bands of my grasping tentacles, snug like a plug.

I had to make up a name at at point, and she too, and we became Ruwene and Friiya.

Ironic, I think, that we got our friendship bands out of that monster slaying. We stayed together for a few months after that, sure. But we had different ideas about what we should do with all the money.

She was always, always better than me at magic. She wanted to become a acolyte of something, wield the power of the gods and godhearts. Only a central acolyte could access the hidden tomes about the secrets of magic and the world.

I didn’t really care about books, myself. Even after I learned to read, it seemed stupid. You can write whatever you want. It’s just ink blots on a page. If you spilled a inkwell over a sheet, would those random splotches become interesting?

You didn’t learn about the world by reading about it. You learned by doing, experiencing. Seeing for yourself.

I don’t know what happened to her. Whether she achieved her dream or not. We left the great bog reef together. Her to find a library or temple. Me to…

I don’t know. Never had a plan.

At this point, it all seemed pointless.

Had seemed pointless.

Because after all,

I decided I would kill the high priest of Avelt.

Hope springs eternal. And yet I did taste a bit of dread mixed in.