Serpentine Squiggles

1: Oh, the Worldly Glory Goes

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” said the one beneath the black cloak. The fabric was nightworm silk, fine, glossy, and blacker than the darkling night outside. From the slits in the stone walls you heard the wind mutter, and it was louder than the murmurs inside the room.

Stabs of moonlight came in from those slits, cutting soft patches out from the shadows. Even still, the black cloak was in utter shadow, but not the six others to whom he spoke.

“So slows the pulse of the earth.” The reply came from a yellow cloak beside him, of course it did. Only that bird had the wit and tongue to match, always.

The one across from him, a white cloak, spoke now, rattling in his throat and saying, “Slows? It stops. We’ve ripped out the hearts of the earth. It is a corpse now, or will be.”

Beneath the black cloak, he shifted and its extent seemed to be expanding, playfully, mirthfully‍ ‍—‍ even as the edges blended indiscernibly with the darkness and any motion could have been a trick of the light, a dance of the shadows. His face would have told you; but he was masked as well as cloaked, they all were.

In reply black cloak said, “What is every corpse but the food for new life? With the hearts we can fledge a new world. Our new world.”

“Always with the moribund metaphors,” White muttered.

Beneath the yellow cloak a wing twisted, some gesture of interruption. “If we’re building a new world, first of all we should free the slaves and grant them a say in the order of things.”

Black cloak seemed to bring two wings together over his breast; but a smile couldn’t be seen.

All the while, the bird who was under a violet cloak had been fidgeting, as if the garment itched, as if she wished to tear it off and tear off everyone else’s and be rid of these theatrics.

“Really?” she said. It was the first word she spoke this meeting. You could tell by the short silence after, by how she bounced demandingly forward, that she wished it could be the only word. Just a verb slap, slapping some sense into these playacting fools.

But she followed it up, she had to. She said, “We’re fucking scholars. Fledgling fucking scholars. We’ve barely a dozen scrolls writ between all of us. And only two of us‍ ‍—‍ if that many‍ ‍—‍ have the gilded robes at all. We could hardly make a book, let alone a world.”

Under a blue cloak, at least, there was a twist she suspected was a head spun in agreement. White merely cawed sharply, affirmation or just acknowledgment.

Black, though, was shaking in anger, that much she could tell from a look to his dark corner. Or it had just been a particularly intense cloud which passed before the moon.

White spoke. “She is right. We’re like hatchlings dressed as ghosts.” The eyeholes of his mask‍ ‍—‍ through which you saw a gleam of silver, his eyes‍ ‍—‍ passed over Yellow and Black. “Which of you had this stupid idea?” It had to be one of you. He didn’t say it, but all had heard it.

“I had thought,”‍ ‍—‍ Yellow speaking‍ ‍—‍ “that it would serve to get you, get us, in the right sort of attitude. Sworn rebels about to upend society. Dark conspirators plotting the fate of kings and proles. Secretive wizards meeting for a ritual to seal it all.”

“Rebels, conspiracies, wizards,” Violet croaked. “Really demonstrating seriousness and maturity fit for building a world.”

“Ambition, imagination, a little humor,” Black was jumping to the defense before she’d even finished, cutting her off. “Are these things you’d want absent from the rulers‍ ‍—‍ from your world?”

“Interesting slip, there.” White had the tone and the words that seemed to cleave.

“Shut it, shut it, the both you.” Someone who hadn’t spoken, who’d patiently, silently, waited‍ ‍—‍ a green cloak, bigger than all the rest but not taller. Deep voice, but she spoke quickly. Eyes like stars. “Look at it, we’re already here in the cloaks‍ ‍—‍ and it makes Eythe smile, clearly it does. All of us are friends here.”

She waited. No one said anything.

“So act like it,” her quick voice slowed just a tad for this. She looked between the black cloak and the violet one, expectant. Apologies, or at least gestures at apologies, were in order. There was at least enough respect and dignity remaining between them that she didn’t yet coax them out like a stern parent.

Black spoke first. “She’s afraid, is all. Of the power we’ve unearthed and now wield, and the great, terrible things we could do with it.”

Stillness, utter stillness after the brazen words of the cloaked speaker. There was, faintly, the smell of bloody lunch from the breath of someone with mouth agape.

He followed it up with, “In all fairness, I am afraid too, I should hope we all are‍ ‍—‍ it’s what caution starts with. But, I for one have enough trust in my, uh, friends.”

More stillness, more silence.

“So,” she in the blue cloak started, “we’re just going to move on as if that didn’t even happen, and hopefully this festering mess of a meeting stops being a waste of time.” She had taken up speaking, briskness in her voice, and some heft. She looked to each of the cloaked figures, Black, White, Violet, Yellow, Green, and Grey, meeting all their eyes, and willed them seriousness. Not dramatic whimsy, and not the false seriousness of a sniped complaint. Real seriousness. “Let’s ignore the theatrics, and get to the hea—”

“No,” White said quickly, voice almost strangled.

“Yes,” Yellow was chiming in. “Let’s ease our excited pulses, and get to the—”

“I said no,” there was some unevenness to his voice; laughter implied like light beaming forth through cracks.

“I don’t see the issue,” said Black. “Perhaps we’re all still hot from the digging, but we should cool our blood. After all, we’ve struck a rich vein today, and we should discuss it before it circulates, as it will in a beat. Really, I’d love for us to get to—”

“What part of seriousness don’t you understand? Isn’t this exactly the problem?”

“Fine, fine. No fun at all.”

Yellow cloak was still clicking in his throat, and the rest had some twitch of reaction, but Green was looking around quite bewildered. “Get to the what? Now I want to know.”

She looked to Black, who would not say. Nor would Yellow. Blue too, remained silent. Green’s bright eyes stared at the white cloak a long moment, compelling, before he finally decided he would have to complete the thrice interrupted sentence:

“We should… get to the heart of the matter.”

“Hearts, rather.” Yellow was smiling; he had to be.

“Absolutely insufferable, both of you.” And White’s mask was fluttering where he puffed out air.

Blue was looking between white and yellow, but decided it was just a friendly snipe. Her gaze swept the room. The cloaks which everyone wore billowed or draped widely, cut just short enough a single standing leg could be seen emerging from each’s shadows.

Between the single leg (almost a stalk) and the colored cloth that hung over them (almost a bell), you could see in their visage something of the slaves who strive in Antenora, hefting from the sea vast blocks of the frozen blood of the earth or acting as tireless servents in every city from mountainpeak to oceandepth.

It was almost intentional.

Around them, the room was bare, as demanded by he under the black cloak. The stone of the floor still was scuffed where tables were dragged out, the color of the wall brighter where paintings or shelves had once been. Yet still there were cobwebs, and in the corners and crevices, barnacles and urchins and anemones and other sessile things; for the slits had no glass, and plankton floated in and could not float out.

After everything else, the one thing that could not be removed was the blinking and beeping machine, a great spellweaver, whose softly glowing screen became the ambience of the room.

Centermost of all, there was a table, empty now but not for long.

“What’s taking the servants all this time?”

“It’s probably the weak, useless medusae.” White cawed, disdaining. “If we could afford more amoebae they’d have carried the load here before we’d even landed.”

“If we could afford more amoebae we wouldn’t have to meet in a dank room with cobwebs and barnacles.”

Yellow prodded black. “Did you, well, tell them that they could come in?”

He in the black cloak paused.

Then came a sigh, and an invisible swallowing of pride, and then he called out, high, sharp, three notes, and it was then that the latch was tried. It turned smoothly then stopped with a clack and wouldn’t open.

Quickly Green was saying, “I think I must’ve locked it behind mysel…”

But she trailed off seeing that from the gap below the door, a black psuedopod covered in eyes, was emerging and climbing palpably the door, before latching onto the inside handle with a squish and letting itself in.

The door slid open first of all on a ghost snail shell, an ashen white spiral with faint soft lines of yellow blue dancing as decoration. Below, at the shell’s mouth, there exuded the retracting pseudopod which had opened the door, and a sextet of stiff black pseudopodia which upheld the shell and its denizen, each ending on soft, suckered pads. And there was a final appendage everted behind it, thicker than all the others.

Nothing else of the amoeba could be seen; the rest of the black weltering mass sat tucked snug and modest inside the cracked and bulging shell.

Beside and behind the amoeba were a half dozen slave medusae like a squad of floating jellyfish, each of which had a grasping tentacle outstretched.

Between the grasping tentacles and the amoeba’s thickest psuedopod, they lifted the object which he in black had requested.

It was chest no bigger than any of their heads. Were it laying on the ground you’d expect to kick and watch it roll; but your bones would break before it ever would move. Amoebae had the strength of mountains.

“On the table, right there.”

The high piping voice of the amoeba echoed him, “On the table, sir.”

They sat it there and the stone of the table cracked and the legs crumbled under it. Black had to stoop to reach the powerfully sealed chest, and tap on its glowing touchpad the sequence which would open it.

White looked at the medusa that had rooted themselves all around and sat resting their tentacles in wet piles, and the amoeba who had retracted all its mass into its repurposed snail shell.

“What are you waiting for? Go on, shoo. All of you.”

“Go on, shoo, sir.” (The voice would be a twisted shriek if but for the low volume.)

White stared at the amoeba.

You heard the clanging of coins, and then saw, launched from beneath the yellow cloak, a wide titanium fivepiece arc and then smack down before the amoeba.

A podia shot out swift as frog tongue and the coin was gone.

More clanging, and then six more coins were tossed for each medusae.

“You… tip the slaves?”

“It’s an appreciation a mere ‘thank you’ doesn’t convey.”

“They exist to serve us. We created them to serve us.”

“An unfortunate and temporary matter, I hope, if our vision is to be realized.”

Black cut in, heedless of the greater conversation, to say, “I assured you it will. It is a certainty.”

White addressed he in yellow. “You’re projecting minds onto them. They’re biological automata no different than a drone or automatic worker. Nothing needs to change. They don’t want anything to change. They don’t want anything.”

Yellow muttered, “And I’m the one projecting, ha.” Louder, he replied, “You would think that, I suppose. But could it not be an oppression so complete they flinch to even dream of freedom?”

White dismissively tossed an appendage, but yellow wasn’t done.

He continued, “But it isn’t complete. Of course you know of the tens of medusa yet who’ve committed some kind of rebellion. Of course you know the amoeba we cannot find or name.”

“Damaged, deranged individuals, what do you expect me to say?”

“Exactly that. Of course any deviation from your ideal, imagined complacency would be mere derangement. If you truly believe that, then tell me what would you expect to see if you were in fact wrong?”

(The amoeba chose then to echo in that high, piping voice that spanned too wide a range. “Mere derangement!“)

While this argument was happening, medusa touched Black’s leg with a cool tentacle, lined with venomous spines except where it tapped him.

It spoke now in that language the medusae can manage, composed only of pitched vowels and the most liquid of consonants.

Black looked to yellow for translation.

“He asks whether they should leave, whether you require anything further from them.”

Black made a rattling of thought.

Violet said, “Why not keep them here? A first test of yellow’s mad idea to ‘let them have a say.’ ”

“Or let them choose for themselves,” said Yellow, and then he asked the medusa in their language. It was not impossible to mimic the sounds, if one bothered to learn.

He got his answer and he curled tightly under his cloak. The others asked for it and at length he admitted, “They’d like to stay and watch us argue.”

“Tell them no grubs, because you two are cutting that nonsense out now.”

Black took one more look at the medusa, before shaking his head and finally lifting open the chest they’d all been waiting for.

“Behold.”

The lid came off easily because it was not what weighted it so. With the lid drawn back, the bright red orbs within began to shift and move as if they were magnets, as if they felt another gravity.

The orbs arose and floated and gyred and arranged themselves in a lattice or crystalshape only mathematicians could name

“The hearts of the world.” They were only vaguely orbs; rough and in places jagged, as uncut gems might be. All of the eyes behind masks watched the slowly drifting hearts like the sun itself had descended and before them danced.

The medusae meanwhile idly everted eyes from their membranous bells and glanced at the hearts of the world with as much interest as the shadows they cast, or the cobwebs and sessile things around the room‍ ‍—‍ no, the sessile things merited more interest, because soon a meduse lifted a thin fluted tentacle and the fluted end recoiled as if it had emitted an invisible force and then the stone star at which it had been pointed started and crawled crazily and quickly around the room and another medusa caught it and they ate it all together.

The white‍-​cloaked one stared at them doing this and rattled harshly in his throat.

But he in black he ignored it and began speaking anyway, his new cadence that of speech, a practiced speech.

“Every wonder we have as a civilization, as a species, from the nightless cities to the countries below the waves, the balloon fleets which cross continents momently to the boats which sail the moon, all were worked with but the single heart of the earth that we found in the deepest mines two hundred years ago.”

A pause, then,

“Here we have seven.” He reached out with a wing and brushed a floating heart, upsetting the rotation. Then all around moonlight shadows jostled by the smallest amount, like the world stuttered in its orbit. Or it was just the orb light, and an illusion.

“Seven hearts of the earth. With all these you could stop the world in its tread, bring down the stars from heaven, even alter time.”

“And you propose a few bickering scholars in a barnacled room dressed like ghosts should be the ones to do all that.” Violet made a dry sound.

In reply, he asked, “Who else? It’s not an accident that we found the hearts and now.”

“How about any of the ministers or kings? The ones whose business it is to run the world?”

“So you think the tyrants who sit on thrones of bone, or the presidents who preened and licked cloacas till they were thrown a title, you think that they have more a right to this power than the scholars like us who’ve spent years bettering ourselves, competing and winning against a flock of those with our same ambitions?”

“I’ve seen your room. You can’t even keep a ten foot cube in order. You want the world?”

“You don’t get it.” Black had a certain hidden excitement all along, and it was clear to see now. He was continuing, tone high and airy, “The seven of us, we are the best minds this world has to offer. Not the luckiest or the most flattering or the most ruthless. We cracked the riddle of Vanduan. We designed the spell to pierce the shell of earth. We routed and then endured the journey to the lost and sunken paradise in the underworld. There are none who deserve more to be writing this next chapter of history than us.”

(In the middle of all of this, the medusae were humming softly amongst themselves, low enough not to bother their masters. They caught bugs that crawled and made a game of how to distribute them.)

“You said it wasn’t an accident.” Green was speaking. “What did you mean by that?”

“It’s hard to put in a word. Destiny. Providence. Singularity. It’s as if, every coincidence, every chance dealing of the world, was tuned and turned to point us toward this moment. As if there’s something great and vast waiting at the end of it all, waiting for us. Do you ever feel that? As if there’s this mass of serendipity behind you that put you on the path you’re on, made you who you are, and it almost seems designed. You know the feeling, right?”

“Yes,” Violet replied, “and its name is confirmation bias. What you aren’t remembering right now is the uncountable, outnumbering multitude of completely normal events and dead ends. All the things that didn’t go your way, all the things that could have been one more item on your list of coincidence, but aren’t.”

(“Confirmation bias!“ By now the amoeba, who could speak the song of the medusae, had coaxed them into passing it an anemone which it visibly chewed.)

“Forget it.” Black flicked a limb. “Point is, we have the hearts of the earth. We can do anything. The world is now ours.”

Green, in her sympathetic voice, was asking, “But first shouldn’t we stop and think, and not do anything drastic without measuring and considering the consequences first?”

“We don’t have time to stop and consider!” Black exclaimed, throwing out a wing in a gesture that almost lost him his cloak. “The first fleet of starwings unfurl in twenty days. The teeth of the earth are in place and begin digging in a month. Just as soon as they are as lucky as us, they will find another heart of the earth. And even now, even with just one heart we are plunging the limits of possibility. Can you not feel what’s on the horizon?

“We’re doing the things we’ve spoken of in legends and dreams. Soon we’ll fly among the stars. Do you want every planet we find to to be the toy of some fat despot on our world? Do you want our great grandchildren, even in the stars, still struggling and starving because those who have, still keep and hoard more?”

It was all a wave of words, a tide summon to knock down his opposition. Or it was a bricked shelter, and every word another block of perfect defense. Or it was a hole he only dug deeper.

Violet then replied: “Tell me what you propose to do about the kings and ministers, since you clearly have so little respect at all for any of them.”

“Make me king.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Like I said, I’m‍ ‍—‍ we’re the best minds in all the world. We could build a better society than this kludge and accident we grew up with. And in our wisdom we can build better minds, who can then build minds even better still, until we have made a perfect world.”

“I’m not even listening at this point, I don’t have to. You just gave up the game. This is all a joke, a con. You just want to be king of everything. That’s all this is.”

She in violet reached for the hearts of the earth, and was stopped by a black slimy pseudopod, the amoeba. Even for all brazen and annoying ways, the thing still knew it answered to he in the black cloak, and knew it should protect what had been entrusted to it.

“What are you trying to do?” White asked, as straight and cleaving as ever.

“It was stupid to delve for the treasure. You see it all the time in stories; power corrupts, et cetera. Maybe no one should have this.”

“Look.” It was the yellow cloaked bird who spoke. Violet knew he was about to spin his defense of black, and she was right. “You think we should stop and think about consequences before we use the hearts. It makes sense. The thing that perspective misses is that the world isn’t going to stop and wait with us. The world is changing right now. It’s not that what we’re doing is any more dangerous than the progress that’s happening, it’s just that‍ ‍—‍ forgive me for being so blunt‍ ‍—‍ it’s just that you get a say in what we’re doing right now. Maybe you’d veto the skywings and the earthteeth too just as fast, but you can’t.”

(“Stop and think about consequences,“ said the amoeba, eyes on Violet, pseudopod prickling.)

Violet paused there, a limb still reaching where the amoeba blocked her. The room waited with her. Yellow preening proud for his defense, black basking in said defense, and the medusae eating with squishes and plats.

“Hm. Hmm. I think… I think there is a way we can all get what we want.”

Green had the answer, and all turned to her.

“If the world won’t stop to think, we can stop it. If Eythe wants to free the slaves, we can free them. And if M—— wants to rule, he can rule the freed slaves. If it all doesn’t work out, no birds have be harmed.”

Black was nodding first of all. And so immediately Violet disliked the idea.

Yellow gazed upward, up to stars if not for the ceiling. “Yes. You could all be rulers, if you wanted to. Pause the world and pause all the people in it, and wait for time to make us wise. Give the slaves peace and freedom. We could be‍ ‍—‍ we would be like gods to them.”

“And you think we can just… unpause if it doesn’t work out, and everything will be as if it never happened?”

“If we need it to be, it will. We have have seven hearts of the earth, darling. We could arrange our names in the stars ten times over, and have power left over to do it a hundred times more. Erasing a little mistake will be nothing.”

Black looked around, to Yellow, to Violet, to White, to Green, and to Blue, and to Gray. “Is it settled then? Shall we crown ourselves kings and gods?”

His phrasing gave them pause, of course, but they knew what he meant, and it was settled. Altogether they gave an affirmative caw, and even the one who had been silent, their voice could be heard if not isolated in the chorus.

It is said that history turns like a wheel, and the ages separated like the spokes thereon. If it is so then a spoke was coming up now, and in that room the spirit of history hung heavy, a match for the spirit of earth incarnated in those floating, glowing hearts. And altogether there were three vast spirits crouched in that room, watching.

Watching the pulse of the world slow.

And so, he in the black cloak stepped once more toward the hearts of the earth, and reached for them. Like the playful caw of the raven, M—— laughed as the planet turned one round closer to his destiny.

The words that were said as their fate was sealed were: “Sic transit gloria mundi.”

2: And Thy Secret Fate Unfurls

At the eleventh eclipse, on last day of eternal summer, I decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt.

For this act, there were reasons and justifications‍ ‍—‍ of that I was assured. But, I was told, I stood not to the task of understanding. Nothing unusual for me‍ ‍—‍ it was to be expected, if anything.

A sharp, final sound cut through my thoughts, flinching me, and what followed were fading noises which could, blasphemously, be called scurrying. The communion was over, that was what it meant. The god of death had departed.

On an inflating stalk, I rose. Cartilage popped back into place, happy that my polyp‍-​like kneeling was over. My feeler tentacles brushed the cave dirt from my bell and I absorbed a breath. I was averting the eyes circling my bell and when the wiggly rhopalia were free, I saw once more.

…Should have seen, rather. In the engulfing darkness of the cave – broken only by a single shaft of sun from its mouth‍ ‍—‍ all visuality was reduced to mere suggestions. The clear jelly‍-​bodies of macrohydra floated idly about as and darting wasps made feast. Barnacles spread fervently around and wild coral claimed the linings of walls. Everywhere, worms crawled.

All this I knew, or guessed‍ ‍—‍ little of it was seen. What I knew of the cave and what was unknown, both were equally reduced to mere silhouette and impression.

Long ago, I had strobilated in a dark warm cave‍ ‍—‍ not this one, but the qualia was the same. And, as if in remembrance, the stalk holding me up slacked. I can rest here; that was the feeling in words.

With all the reluctance of one interrupting a dream, I focused sharply on the impressions which didn’t neatly fit into that comfortable image: I heard grunking and rattling; I felt the constant thrum of a godheart; I smelt corpses in every single stage of decay. Focusing on those, I was jarred from my reverie.

I straightened my stalk, killed the slack, and stood upright. I had decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt, and I would.

A grasper tentacle groped out for my sunshield and another had found my travel bag and slung it around my bell and, having everything, I fell onto my graspers.

It took three of your four grasper tentacles to walk‍ ‍—‍ two if you had practice, if you absolutely couldn’t spare more. I was a master of both. It wasn’t a point of pride. With weight on my tentacles, my stalk curled inward, inverting into my bell. Like that I crawled away, crawled toward that shaft of light.

And then, I felt it as a tug, but only in my mind‍ ‍—‍ inward, opposite the mouth, it was an urge to look, to glimpse.

There exist flowers, whose death‍-​petals are visibly lined with swift spikes, and whose nectar is sweet and fain to attract little hydra jellies to their end‍ ‍—‍ a temptation which even their weak will can oft withstand.

If that which tugged my gaze were such a flower, then I am less than even the hydras. But the greatest wills do still falter, and I dare those who in my position would resist, I dare them be the first and only to criticize my action.

I unveiled my eyes, and looked.

It was a throne or shrine or portal, a sacred thing, and it rose up high and darkly exalted and crowned with wet spikes and it was the center and heart of the cave. It had earlier known the presence of the god of death‍ ‍—‍ of that I was assured.

Brazenly, I leaned closer, breath tight in my bell.

Those easily impressed would note first of all the corpse impaled on the spikes, its mesoglea spilling out in rivulets, its gray membrane turning to leather, its long slender tresses ripped delicately out and all their cnidae dotting the ground, hollowed of their god‍-​given spark.

But what else would one expect in the demesne of death? Hardly a surprise, that.

No, peering closer at the crowned thing, I saw perhaps shed quills or feathers. Perhaps the diggings of claws. Perhaps a shadow, cast by a thing of such power that it lingered even after its caster had gone.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked. Mortal eyes weren’t to seek the form of gods. It was proscribed. It would be‍ ‍—‍ it was‍ ‍—‍ the highest disrespect. It would be maddening. Of that we were assured.

I drew my gaze away, and prayed a moment to that kind, general god of everyone, the god of knowing and certainty; I asked forgiveness for this trespass.

Was it a little thing, what I did? Perhaps. But for one such as myself, even little trespasses ought to be measured and corrected.

I’d fallen short in every area (of that, I was assured). Piety I could cling to. Piety I could control.

I absorbed a vast breath.

But I was a damned medusa already.

Of that, I assured myself.

The red sun aimed and struck true with such judgmental rays. I saw a dumb macrohydra like floating blindly out of the cave, protectionless, and watched it start to dry and slightly wither not a cilia’s width outside the embrace of shadows.

Minutes later it was dead, and drifting to the ground, and still drying. It had been half my size, at least. I might last a few moments more. Cnidarians had it hardest in the eternal summer.

I looked. Farther outside the mouth of the cave, on the ledge which southwardly wound into the distance and northwardly curved out of view, there was a shelled star crawling along its way. On the aboral top, multicolored ossicles like scales caught and parried blinding rays of sun. Where its shell wasn’t rendered unintelligibly bright, you saw the design of the ossicles made a big plus sign shaped like a target.

An eager croak came north from around the curve and a frog with fangs was bounding over here. But its prey, the star, was swiftly snapping its rays snug into its shell. The bright‍-​skinned frog slapped down right beside it, and was disappointed.

Before the thing left, though, its departing jump flipped over the star in its shell, like a petty little revenge.

With the frog gone, rays popped back out and waved and struggled, but writhe as they might, they couldn’t flip right the shelled star.

A grasper tentacle‍ ‍—‍ my grasper tentacle‍ ‍—‍ was reaching out and gingerly lifting and flipping the shelled star right side up. It went all still and timid then, but moments later, with my tentacle drawing back, the star was falling bottom first and flexing below it many tube‍-​like podia like row upon wiggling row of walking grass.

Another tentacle was reaching for some tool in my bag and another still was taking that tool by the handle and then throwing it.

In the middle of the star now, just aside one arm of the big plus sign, there was lodged the blade of a knife.

…I had missed the target, that little plus sign shell marking, and I cringed. My aim needed more practice. Always needed more practice.

The star was screaming now, and my fourth and final tentacle now snatched the knife and stabbed again and quieted the screams, putting out the misery.

The sun crept further across the blue sky, shaving slivers off the shadows.

I fell back on my stalk, and tilted my bell and with three eyes stared up. Opposite the cave mouth was the other canyon wall, the top only just visible from this angle.

And beyond that was Avelt, and the sunspire, and at its top, the high priestess whom I would kill.

But for now, this canyon wall stood as my obstacle.

I stowed the knife away.

Moments later I realized I was resting on my stalk again, immersed in my thoughts again. You aren’t doing anything. I straightened my stalk.

Right now, I was rooted close enough to the exit of the death‍-​odored cave that, with the heat of eternal summer reaching for me, I cooked slightly. Or imagined I did. Regardless, I was close enough to see that the sun had gyred around the sky and was poised to peek into this cave before long.

I could recite to you whole lists of reasons to rest here and contemplate like this‍ ‍—‍ there was my plan to consider, now that I’d decided I’d kill the high priestess of Avelt; there was the heat (even on an eclipse day like today, the heat slightly melted you); then there was the endeavor of climbing out of the canyon at all.

The last of those excuses rang truest of all. Getting down here to the cave mouth had been trouble, and that was getting down. I prayed for elevation.

I could have waited day‍-​spans by this cave mouth. But it wasn’t as though anyone had ever outwaited the sun, not in centuries.

When you got stuck in a mental loop like this, it was never something inside you that broke you out, not really.

A cloud passed in front of the sun. Simple, yes. But that shade cast over the canyon‍ ‍—‍ what could I say? It enticed. I appreciated shade. Who didn’t?

It was like a leap or inversion, taking to the air. Gripping my sunshield in a grasper tentacle, I crouched and pushed off with my stalk even as it inverted back into me.

Quickly, magic snapped through my cnida‍-​tipped tresses and then flowed. Even as the magic exuded from the cnidae, I felt it reflect off the ground and return as a gentle push upwards. Slacken the flow, just a bit, and the push slackens.

Like that, levitation.

Equilibrium in this came naturally to others (….or else I was that much inferior), but for me I would correct and overcorrect, anxious feeler tentacles waiting for that telling rise or fall of air that meant the flow was just so slightly imbalanced.

Awful, dreadful, exhausting.

This sort of treading levitation was a true headache of a technique – but directed levitation, that was a little better. I angled my cnidae, and the magic flowing from my tresses pushed me along. Slowly at first‍ ‍—‍ it gave me time to lift my near‍-​forgotten sunshield and, holding it between me and the light, I was spared a withering affliction when I breached into the sunlight.

For the moment, I floated above the ledge jutting out from the canyon wall. It had been big enough to land on when I’d leapt down from on high, but small enough that now I only trusted my wobbling levitation moments before it would send me slipping down an edge.

Moments presently slipping away.

I had a chance‍ ‍—‍ one chance‍ ‍—‍ and I was poised to wait and waste it. I flexed some internal muscles, lowered some magical blockages, and the outward flow crackling down my tresses became a proper blast. I flew out from the cave mouth, careening promisingly toward the height of the opposite canyon wall.

You could see the whole expanse from up here. The cave itself crouched like a diminutive thing, and this high, past this angle, it was only seen for how the climbing vines and clinging corals strongly avoided it.

A detail without which I may never have found it, and may never have found my purpose within it.

The colorful leaves of the vines and the fertile polyps of the corals swayed and brandished their forms and figures. The vista was only injured by how every odd plant or coral was curled inward and everted to escape the sunlight, or seemed soon poised to.

Where the flora grew not, the ground knew a diversity of rock and dirt. It glittered in the sunlight, the dirt, and at an angle like this, the earth looked half colored white. With instinct, I slid a veil‍-​membrane over my eye and the world was dim and blur.

What happened next, it was a conscious irony on part of the universe‍ ‍—‍ it had to be. My surveying was at its end and thought of the wall I hoped to land atop had only just returned to me.

Too late. The very same instant, I swore, was when the world grew painful and breathless. I smacked against the other canyon wall with a squish, and, in the span of the single thought it took to arrest the flow of magic, I had already crushed myself a little, magic still pushing me forward.

I was sliding down the jagged canyon face, snags and crooked bits tearing at my sensitive bell. I bodily pushed against the wall. Attached to nothing now, I fell.

I absorbed a breath again, and recovered enough to think to force my magic out once more. It was a panicked blast from my cnidae, aimed at the glittering ground, and‍ ‍—‍ after a terrible moment of nothing‍ ‍—‍ it returned to buoy me.

And was pushing me randomly leftward. The angle, it must’ve been so subtly off.

I fixed the angle of my still‍-​blasting tresses, and it went on like that, half my mind always on keeping the right angle. Down I floated like that and aground I everted my stalk and rested on it.

(All the while a grasping tentacle had stayed rigid like bone, and the sunshield remained perfectly above me always.)

I took in a vast breath and I did my best to stare long‍-​suffering into the vast blue sky.

The cave mouth was perhaps halfway up the canyon wall. I was at the bottom now. My own fault (who else could manage something so stupid?), yet I cursed whomever I could curse. My parents, my teachers‍ ‍—‍ specifics didn’t matter, I was just everting frustration.

Like earlier, I could rest there on my stalk, stare up in the sky where lonely clouds drifted, and I could contemplate.

But where the warm darkness of the cave invited thought, the blistering heat of the sun and its reflective co‍-​conspirator the dirt, they eradicated thought. I couldn’t think for the urge to rip off fronds of plants and fan myself.

Motion. By the opposite wall, in the dead of the sunlight, another hydra was dry and cooking on the ground. But the motion I’d seen, that had been two ravens cloaked in the shiniest black feathers, dancing around the dread hydra just barely larger than they. The bouncing birds made sounds that could be mistaken for laughter, their grunking and rattling, and when that mirth of discovery had burned away they lowered their beaks and feasted upon the warm corpse.

If I dropped my sunshield, how soon would they make a meal of me?

Before I succumbed to that dark impulse, I absorbed a breath, everted my stalk, and forced levitation out of my cnidae.

Treading upward again now, with all the headache of wresting control that implies. It grew wild‍ ‍—‍ I was starting to drift about, and bob more and more‍ ‍—‍ but before I hurt myself, I blasted off.

The ledge was still there, and if I could make it to that then I could breathe there, and then fly up to the height of the canyon itself. A good enough plan, and I was already flying up. It was a small correction to now be angling at the cave mouth.

I undershot, ever so slightly, and got just high enough my eyestalks saw the ledgetop before gravity grabbed me once more. Yet I had four grasper tentacles. Even with the one occupied uplifting my sunshield, three burst out from under my bell and held fast to the ledge.

Gravity pulled, and I pulled too. Two graspers was enough to get myself aground, three just made it easy. Absorb a breath, let it drift out of you. Absorb a breath, drift out. Absorb a breath –

I made it. My insides strobilated satisfaction just a bit at that. Accomplishment.

Then, of course, my mind caught to what I felt, and reared its ugly head. All that effort I expended, the thing I accomplished? Getting back, exactly, to where I started.

Gods I was dumb.

I looked up to the canyon’s height. Maybe I misjudged. Maybe the cave opening was as far down as a third its height. I undershot last time (I always undershoot, lazy medusa that I am), so I’d just have to double blast this time.

Absorb a breath, steady myself.

I failed last time, but I wouldn’t fail again. I wasn’t that useless.

I am that useless.

The only thought I could manage, staring up again into that vast blue sky, empty of even clouds now.

I said the outside was hostile to thought, didn’t I? The sun and ground conspired to outright eradicated it. Still, I only felt like thinking at this point.

Maybe I deserve to be eradicated.

I indulged the thought only for a second. I was the champion of the night, the death god’s chosen pawn. I had decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt. If I endeavoured, if I saw the task to its final end, I would succeed‍ ‍—‍ of that, I was assured.

I just had to get up, try again.

But a useless medusa like me‍ ‍—‍ no matter how much I try , I will fail.

(Of that, I assured myself.)

I said it once. When you get stuck in a loop like this, it’s not something inside you that gets you out, not really.

A high, terrible caw resounded. I looked up, wondering if perhaps my end wouldn’t come tortured at the hand of the sun, but a quick, gory death. If at my end, I too would be feasted upon.

A winged shadow raced across the ground and grew larger in descent.

3: And a Wingèd Doom Alights

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.

4: And Thy Wardens Lead Astray

I think that, had I been nicer, the god‍ ‍—‍ bird‍ ‍—‍ vessel‍ ‍—‍ thing would have given me a skyward lift. But… he was long gone now. (But not forever, if he was to be believed.)

So instead I simply climbed the canyon wall. Not a very medusa way of getting up. Tentacles were for many things‍ ‍—‍ but for climbing, it’d be easier to dig holes with a sword. Regardless, I managed. Living with levitation as lousy as mine‍ ‍—‍ I had the muscles for it.

Three grasper tentacles it took to climb, because the other held my sunshield aloft.

And I climbed.

…If my graspers made to fall off once I took a break, breathing heavy at the top of this far, far too tall canyon, I really wouldn’t blame them.

And if tentacles in general decided I was a limb‍-​abuser, and boycotted me from ever growing more, no, I still wouldn’t blame them.

But, it seemed, my tentacles had some loyalty or determination. Or, like me, they knew not when to quit it. Either way, they stuck with me through the climb, and rested beside me at the top of it all, my sunshield dropped to cover me like a heavy blanket.

There was grass up here, growing out of the glittering dark dirt. I appreciated it; the planty stuff was softer under my bell than angry hot rocks and muddy, dull dirt.

Not like having a pretty bell was going to help me, granted. Or matter, when this book finally closed.

I had decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt. Assassination was dirty work. Perhaps I should be dirty.

(Perhaps I was never worth cleaning in the first place.)

I couldn’t rest forever. I had the mission breathing down my neck, of course. That, and you never wanted to be in the wild canyons when the sun neared the horizon. Twilight monsters arose. Some of them gibbering and piping.

The Arid Canyon was smaller, hardier than the great bog reef. It grew in the shadow of several massive slabs of stone. Most days, my time was picked killing the rodents‍ ‍—‍ annelid rats, teethy urchins, wild stars‍ ‍—‍ that strove to crawl inward. It was a tiring job. And it got you no respect.

But, for better and for worse, it was something that kept people away from me. No one much messes with the colorless rat killer living out on the fringes.

I wasn’t going to get tied down again, tied to other people. If‍ ‍—‍ when‍ ‍—‍ I had to leave the Arid Canyon, I would leave.

(Would have left, I reminded myself. After all, I had decided. It didn’t much matter what happened next‍ ‍—‍ my sole purpose now was the act itself.)

I pulled myself to my stalk, and then crackling power pushed off in my usual clumsy levitation. I lurched toward town. It was always visible‍ ‍—‍ the tallest coral spires were hundreds of bell‍-​lengths high, held up steady by magical polyps.

I everted six eyes and took a good look at the Arid Canyon.

A cobbled road winded into Avelt, the reef like a vast pile of coral. I saw the shelves of diners and stores that encrusted like a barnacle ringing the town centerward, digging in past the exumbrella‍-​outskirts cannaled with houses, like so many internal organs floating in the mesoglea of Avelt.

(My stalk wriggled inside me, the lips of the mouth at its very end parting as if expecting food. I had fasted before visiting the shrine of death, and now I felt it.)

Aside from them, I saw one building that stood out because of all the empty space around it‍ ‍—‍ the Hornshell Pits, a prison carved within the hulking remains of a hornshell crab, vaster than even the ghost snail. And it was guarded by rank upon rank of godstinging guards‍ ‍—‍ among them the prisonmaster, the only known doppelstinger, who alone could match a legion in numbers and fight to attrition.

(I did wonder if, after the act was completed, this was where my story would end, my purpose elapsed. A curious prickling crawled over all my exumbrella, like the biting of gnats. I rubbed me with feeler tentacles and let my mind be rid of the notion.)

Past all that, I saw my ultimate destination, the central spire of the sun. It rose higher than every tower around it; the spire of the sun ascended past even clouds. You couldn’t see the top. No one could.

I lingered there a moment, fantasizing what I would find as I climbed that eldritch height. There was something‍ ‍—‍ odd about the spire that I had never looked long enough to notice. For all the barnacles and urchins and corals growing on it, the architecture overall was not medusan. It was‍ ‍—‍ cyclopean.

I’d said it myself‍ ‍—‍ reefs seemed drawn unconsciously to those vast metallic sites of the ancients. Could the spire of the sun be what lured us to Avelt?

(There was a deep dread that coolly saturated my Mesoglea; I knew it when recalling the field of horrors and I knew it when standing before the avian vessel and now I knew it gazing upon the spire of the sun. I didn’t blame me for drawing a connection between all of them, and something startled within when I realize that the vessel I met had been of the exact same proportions as those ebon stone statues.)

Stare at my goal as intensely I might, soon my eyes were drawn horizonward, inexplicably to me, and in the distance the trees and wild corals league by league grew dense and became a wet forest and yielded to the vast bog beyond. There my old home lay and even at this great distance you could still faintly see the ruins rising in that field of black stone statues.

Still letting my gaze be pulled by whim, the sight I looked at last was the boundary of all the world, the distant mountains bordering on the twilight sea. There were strange settlements there, the only medusan habitations that knew night. It warped them.

And I knew‍ ‍—‍ but did not see, could never see‍ ‍—‍ that past them all was the black ocean, the frozen life‍-​haunted wastes where myth says the lands are tended by evil, alien medusae, and the last god waits in eternal slumber, and the darkling reefs abide.

The spell was broken, the the world knew motion once more. Clouds of plankton drifting above, the arms of rooted anemones being tussled by the wind, hopper worms searching for burrows, all these I saw as my awareness returned from the distance.

Over in Avelt, smokestacks rose where the flamestingers tended to their blazes, cooking meats or lighting firestones. Bright glowing beams twisted around where the lightstingers fired off messages. I watched the pale blue forms of waterstingers tend the waterfall gateway that cleansed all who wished to enter the spire of the sun. I pondered how I might subvert them.

Even aside from all those annointed with godstingers, all throughout the vast pile of coral that was the reef you saw the bounding, balloon‍-​like forms of other medusae drifting in and out of enclosed spaces. Levitating up toward the clouds, or propelled bullet‍-​like out on some unknown mission, they had the determined energy I should have.

I tried to summon that. Put some heft in the magic I expelled, squeezing my bell and waving my tentacles. I had decided to kill the high priestess, and every action I took should be angled towards reifying that.

My mind was a sticky, problem‍-​solving sort, the kind that got snagged on thoughts like these. When I got there. It seemed instinct that caused me to pause there and rake it with my claws and tear open the thought.

Did I think I could just drift into the temple and levitate up to the highest levels and slide free a knife and—

No, of course it couldn’t be that easy. I had to evert the eyeless anxiety. It was slowing me down, clogging my mind like muck.

The death god… M——… had given me a final resort for just this reason, something that would halt defeat in its tracks. A heartstinger. Nothing like what you hear of in legends, he had assured me. No, I wouldn’t be wielding the power of gods. But for storming the temple of the sun? It would be enough, of that I was assured.

It will take time for this sliver of the heart to integrate itself. When the stinger is ready, you will know.

I waved a tress, this ribbon‍-​tendril momentarily free in this casual cycle of levitation‍-​gait. It, like all the others, was still tinglingly tired from magical exertion but there was a certain shiver within it, like a coldness without temperature and this feeling slithered up and down and it waxed in intensity.

There were diseases of the cnidae that felt like this‍ ‍—‍ Friiya had told me all about that‍ ‍—‍ but I trusted the one who trusted me. And I had never had those diseases myself. This feeling was new and if it were unrelated it was quite the coincidence. What else could it be?

A whipcrack resonated in my bell, and my eyes jerked to full stalk‍-​eversion. Like that, my mind once more settled in my body, in awareness.

It was a very late for attention, of course. I should have been aware all along. I had a mission. But for now—

“Ru, is that you?”

I angled a few eyestalks at the medusae who’d just sung. He was bouncing a bit more than the others, his bell all swelled up.

I puffed my bell once for him, and then gave quick regard to the other medusae standing around here. Six. They had me surrounded‍ ‍—‍ that was the magnitude of my unawareness. Some of them were drifting from corals and bushes, and one of them had a suspicious translucency about her.

They all had something suspicious about them. Not one of these jellies were clear of exumbrella‍ ‍—‍ stingerless‍ ‍—‍ like me. The one who vibrated earlier‍ ‍—‍ a bright, burning red. The translucent lady beside him had a hint of purple to her. There were two green‍-​bells drifting all close to them. A deep, deep blue medusa with a golden ring levitated above her head (how?), and finally one whose color shifted a few times as I watched: blue, yellow, silver, cyan, gray‍ ‍—‍ I gave up tracking it.

They all had metal guards lining their tentacles and tresses, and along their sunshields blazed the fiery symbol‍-​script declaring loyalty the Arid Canyon.

Guards.

Deaths beyond, I hated dealing with guards.

Especially that damn red one.

“Why the silentness, Ru? Thought we were friends?” A tone of hurt harmonized with his melody. “We don’t need to worry, do we?”

It was the translucent one who spiked in before any response. “Of course we need to worry. You heard the intel we got. You know who we got the tip from.”

The medusa of shifting colors. “Should we me leaking this information?”

Voice sung was low, as if to whisper, but I was in between them and half the other guards.

I focused on the guards who hadn’t spoken. The one with the halo, whom I saw other guards glanced to as if in differrance, bells angled submissively‍ ‍—‍ she must be the one leading them. She floated there without bobbing, and watched me. Her rhopalia were wriggling, scenting the air.

The two green guards had as many eyestalks pointed at each other as toward me. I didn’t look long at them‍ ‍—‍ irrelevant, they must be.

What should I do?

“Say something, Ru. I’m trying to be on your side here.”

There was a lot I could say about this red medusae, so much of it with a negative valence. But he tried to be friendly. He thought we had something. He didn’t realize.

“I just went‍ ‍—‍ out. For a float. To explore. Is there a problem with that?”

“We just got a strange tip‍ ‍—‍ involving, seemingly, everyone’s favorite ratslayer. I thought I’d run it by you, see what you think of it. It’s very concerning, you see.”

“If you have a warrant—”

“We don’t have a warrant. By all indications, you haven’t done anything—”

“That we know of.” It was the translucent lady. Her tone had gotten sharp, like strings.

“You haven’t done anything.” The red guard repeated it. “However, we got a‍ ‍—‍ premonition. An omen. Very concerning, you understand.”

My F had told me about it. “Omen, true communion with the gods‍ ‍—‍ it’s once in a lifeline stuff, right? This is has never happened for most of you.”

The color‍-​shifting one. “No, it’s a bit different here in the canyons. We have a high priestess of the sun god. Here it’s… routine.”

Red smacked out a tentacle, and it swiped the air between him and the shifter. “With the sun god, bless his name, it’s routine. But you know that’s not who you heard.”

“Why we we discussing this in front of the ratslayer?” she replied.

“It concerns him.” Red wiped many tresses over his rhopalia, exasperated. “Look, tell him what you heard, and we can see what he thinks of it.”

“I will not share my prophecies with a ratslayer.”

I piped up, something small yet harsh in my tone. “Do you have a problem with me?”

“I prefer not to commune with filth, is all.”

“Enough.” It was the blue, strangely‍-​haloed guard.

I angled some eyestalks toward them. They had lifted themselves up, drifted closer.

The red guard had noticeably deflated. The shifter drew back. The translucent jelly inclined their bell.

“What were you actually doing in the wild canyons? Speak the truth now.”

“I smelt the rot and decay. You all smell it, don’t you? Ever wondered what? Where? Why? I did. I was simply curious.” It felt like a incantation. To all the nonsense I did with Friiya, so many summers ago. It felt like‍ ‍—‍ like I was me again, just for a word.

“The investigators determined it was simply a burial ground for gibbering coyotes,” one guard rejoined.

“It’s nothing suspicious,” another added, and the chorus continued.

“Nothing worth sticking your dirty bell in.”

“You say that like his bell doesn’t belong among the rotting shit.”

“Enough.” Halo guard again. The syllables were chopped, the emphasis sliced up and doled out.

“Where are you intending to go?” the color‍-​shifter asked.

“I wanted to visit the spire of the sun.” It was an instant like ultimate luck, where something in me sparked, and inspired me to append just a neat lie: “I wanted to clean my spirit a little, after spending so much time around corpses.”

The jelly of shifting colors inflated her bell. The red guard might have paused in his bobbing levitation. The deep blue medusa watched me, same as ever.

“We will accompany you,” she declared.

“I‍ ‍—‍ am unsure that’s necessary.”

A wave went through the Blue’s eyestalks, and they pointed toward the color‍-​shifter. She flushed a oversaturated yellow, and she said, “It is. Entirely necessary.”

“So shall it be.”

“Wait.”

I started like that‍ ‍—‍ it stopped them. Good. After all, I knew whatever the winning strategy was, it must open with that move. But the next play, admitttedly, eluded me.

What could I say to get the guards off me?

Well, why were they on in the first place?

The answer seemed to float toward me just as soon as I saw use for the knowledge. My earlier encounter? The god of knowledge betrayed me. He told the guards I would do… something. He couldn’t know my decision, not yet. Could he?

(Was it even a betrayal? Did we have any kind of trust? Regardless, I can take offense at someone putting me against the guards, no matter what relationship we might have. It was highly rude.)

But how did that help me? To them, a god had told them I was bad news. And if I wanted to lead them astray, fray their line of action, I’d have to work with matters on the same level as a god’s warning.

“The god of death visited me in that cave,” said I.

I should not have said it. If anything was trespass, high disrespect, this was it. Secret, private, intimate‍ ‍—‍ what existed between a god and their acolyte was not a matter of public revelation. I would regret this, of that I could be assured.

But it was necessary, that I might have even a chance remaining, to attend my goal. I had decided to kill the high priestess of Avelt, and needs must.

Light purple spoke first. “Is that true? Can we trust your word at all?”

“The shrine is there for you to find.”

A clicking sound from beneath her bell. “The shrine and what else? The land is lousy with shrines.”

“The shrine and the shed feathers of a god.”

Everyone paused in their bobbing at that. Once‍-​wiggling everted stalks held utterly still. A moment of consideration passsed‍ ‍—‍ the detritus of a god is a thing of its own class.

“I will see this for myself.” That voice was the low melody of the deep blue jelly. One of their tentacles rose, and pointed at the light purple jelly and one of the greens. “You and you, come with me.”

Then, regarding the ones she had not selected, she said, “Mind him closely.” It had the inviolable surety of an iron law.

I kept my elation from swelling my bell. A tactic so simple had halved my opposition. Craning my bell, eyestalks extending, I looked to the spire of the sun, where I knew this story would end. It was one trial closer now, I knew it.

A glance at the three guards who were‍ ‍—‍ not‍ ‍—‍ floating towards sublime divinity. I looked at my three remaining obstacles.

I felt the coldness without temperature that tickled my tresses, running in currents up and down them, growing like little fruits or heart inside my cnidae.

I had been given me the tools to halt defeat in its tracks, of that I was assured. I’d find out what this heartstinger was, soon‍ ‍—‍ I’d have to to.

I looked at the green jelly who drifted toward the back as the four of us floated into motion toward the Arid Canyon and the spire of the cloud‍-​piering temple spire.

Cold energy pooled in my tresses. I looked hard at the medusas‍ ‍—‍ no, at the obstacles.

And I decided.

5: And a Motley Crew Escorts

First order of business was distracting the red guard. I looked at him, at the mirthful swell seemingly always in his bell, and I decided I didn’t want him to harmed, not truly.

We marched onward to the Arid Canyon Reef. This country was a land scratched east to west with canyons. You could look to the horizons and see clear to where mesas rose up in the north, or the forests grew thick in the south. The ocean was to the west, but I forgot what was between us and that.

Corals rose up gnarled and reaching. They appeared in bursts across the land, breaking the flatness. Hardy plants clung to life in even more sparse arrangements. Where the water might pool, moss flourished, but altogether any break from the palette of grays and browns was reserved for medusae themselves.

I had three obstacles. The green‍-​bell floated behind me, sunshield held up in one tentacle and a spear gripped in the other. Several eyestalks were reserved for staring right at me, and it seemed many sensors were awrithe, sifting the air for any hint to be suspicious of.

The medusa of shifting colors floated far beyond me, as if keeping distance from the filthy ratslayer. She had gone full pink right now, and I wasn’t sure at all what these colors meant. She had a small knife near her sunshield, held as if concealed but not very effectively.

And the red guard floated just in front of me, bell inflating, and a few waving eyestalks looking at me. He was significantly more useful than any of the other obstacles. This fool thought we were friends. He would stand by me‍ ‍—‍ at least once. That would be enough.

This sort foolishness‍ ‍—‍ no, I didn’t want to punish it too harshly. I decided I would see him steered blissfully away from harm.

Still, not taking a entirely violent stance towards the lot of them makes this job so much more interminable.

(As if I stood a chance, outnumbered and outskilled, if I did want to kill them. My line of thought is funny sometimes.)

We floated onward, toward Avelt. The sun above us embarked upon its return journey, and from the other side, clouds were travelling in to warn of rain. They were dark.

I looked at the red guard, the shifting guard, the green guard. I felt the coldness stinging my tentacles. It would endlessly even the playing field‍ ‍—‍ of that I was assured. But was it ready? It was said I would know when it was. Did I know, now? Had He factored in my ubiquitous uncertainty?

(No, of course He did. He was a god.)

I had to assess the danger of the three guards. Colored jellies had godstingers carried on down their lines from when the gods had first anointed them. They all had some strange kind of magic I didn’t, beyond the telekinesis which endowed all medusa. Red was a ubiquitous strobilation‍ ‍—‍ firestinging. He could spray bright flame from his tresses, just a few feet. He’d shown me once, so I’d know even if my F hadn’t told me all about them.

That left green and she of mercurial rutiliance. I couldn’t pin them to any gift F had explained to me, and guessing would be useless. Green couldn’t be utterly rare‍ ‍—‍ there’d been one more guard like it. The ever‍-​shifting jelly could commune with the gods, somehow. Was that part of their stinger? It seemed to be their capacity alone.

“You’ve gone all silent, Ru.”

Nothing saying.

“You know, a little friendly chatter and you would been less menacing. Less suspicious. You want that.”

“Hi,” said I.

“There you go. That’s a start.”

“How are you?”

“Oh, I’m doin’ fine. Been tiring myself out working long shifts this week. Was just hoping to relax after this one‍ ‍—‍ didn’t expect nothing to actually happen. But you know what they say of expects.”

“Okay,” said I.

The red guard drifted closer to me, his melody dropping to subtle vibrations of his bell. He said, “You know, ol’ Yera over there is really spooked by you. You can’t tell by her act‍ ‍—‍ or maybe you can, deathly clever bastar’ you are‍ ‍—‍ but in her book you are all sorts of bad news.”

“Okay,” said I.

“These ’okay’s ain’t much better than silence, y’know.”

I waved my eyestalks silently. I glanced back to the green jelly behind us. The pair had been all silent as well. Made me wonder. Quite hard to get a real sense of jellies without them speaking.

I was used to pulling together images from as little as I could get‍ ‍—‍ but just the word choice, just the way they conducted themselves in chatter‍ ‍—‍ it all counted for so much, building a good image.

I needed to know if they would go down easily, or not.

“Why do you expect this ratslayer to even be capable of pleasantry?” It was the shifter who finally spoke, but you could predict that.

“’Cause I know them personally. He’s got a certain dignity in how he carries himself.”

“A certain dignity,” came the response. “Of a jelly who’s covered in mud like they slept in a pit.”

I rose to say, “Better than cowering as many meters away as you can manage?”

The shifter’s bell scrunched up.

The red guard was speaking up almost as soon as I finished, replying properly, “Extenuating circumstances,” he said. “You’d be in a mess too, I imagine, after a run‍-​in with the god of death.”

The shifter looked suddenly at me. Bell squeezed tight and angular. Her tone was raw. “What is the name of the death god?” she asked me

I stopped in my floating. Fell down to my stalk. The voice‍ ‍—‍ it hadn’t been a jelly voice, and theirs was not a jelly name. If it could even be reproduced by my membrane‍ ‍—‍ I didn’t have to heart to do so.

I said, “A terrible name that starts with M.”

She paused too, at that. “Forget everything he’s told you.” That un‍-​medusan voice had taken on a certain tightness, a surety of purpose. “You don’t have to follow this path. There’s no prize at the end waiting for you. It only ends in annihilation. You lose.”

I picked up on something‍ ‍—‍ higher, in her voice. I latched on, and said, “Thought you wouldn’t share prophecies with the ugly ratslayer.”

“No prophecy. Consider it a symbol or pretense. Merely divine commentary.”

The word choice confirmed it, even if the voice wasn’t familiary. His name started with E.

I twisted my bell at that, made a low wordless, vibrating sound.

It was her voice, speaking now, scoffing and saying, “Truth is, Aveltane knew you would not swayed. Knew you were hopeless.”

“Determined, is the word I’d prefer,” I said. “I’ve decided what I would do.”

To the red guard, she then spoke. “Why then, are we humoring this? Why escort him, hearing everything he’s said?”

“I don’t see the issue?”

“Kill him! Right now, right where he floats!”

I forced crackling power into my tresses, and bounced high, high above them.

Then I found myself right back at the ground, as if I’d never rose, as if all my momentum was gobbled up in a second.

I threw myself upward once more, to escape—

And found myself right back on the ground, again, as if I’d never rose at all.

The guards were still talking. They weren’t trying to kill me. It’d only been a suggestion. One that the red guard had vehemently rejected.

“No. Why would we ever do that? What has he done?”

“He has all but admitted to being a servant of the death god. Keeping him here is a mistake.”

“It’s common sense.”

Multicolored lips squeezing skeptical over eyes. “It’s allowing whatever he’s decided to take place.”

“If this is the work of some god… who’s to say us trying to kill him is part of whatever plan there is?”

“Stupid, stupid objection,” she said, as if that were an argument. I suppressed a laugh.

“I’m not going to kill a jelly for no reason.”

“Even if it could save many more? Even if it was the right, ordained thing to do?”

“Even then.”

I looked around till I say the green‍-​belled medusa. It had to be their godstinger that kept me from escaping. Teleportation? A green tress pointed right at me.

Still, not all bad. I’d gained another piece to slot into my puzzle‍-​reckoning. Two more pieces, actually‍ ‍—‍ the green jelly could prevent me from escaping, easily, and the color‍-​shifting jelly does indeed have a power for easily talking to the gods.

Not all bad, and yet, distinctly and frustratingly bad. This was so, so, much harder than it could have been. I miss dealing with colorless jellies.

“He tried to escape, and I don’t like the way his eyes are searching about. Just tell us: what are you really planning?”

I was thrown off, just a bit, from how she went from talking about me to talking to me , but I responded, “I just want to run. You are talking about killing me.”

“We won’t kill you,” the red guard said. He drifted over and threw a tentacle affectionately around me. I flinched away, so hard and quick that the green jelly had to teleported me backc again.

“Can we get moving again?” My bell was expanded and deflating, as each breaths was absorbed. What a dreadful exchange that was.

Nothing in the ever‍-​shifting medusa’s gaze lightened or relaxed. But she said, “Yes, let’s.”

“I haven’t had lunch,” I said as we entered town.

The Arid Canyon Reef was a forest of coral, rising up, spreading out, growing intertwined and interleaving. Jellyfish floated about, and octopuses and snails danced around as well, some on leashes, some carried, some wandering about on their own with the snapping energy of ferals. They all pressed themselves on through the maze of coral, finding their own way through the abundance of paths and spaces that were the definition of a reef.

Some paths lead to dark holes dug in the ground or carved into sandstone buttes. Many jellies perched inside of these structures, like fruit poised on the boughs of a tree.

“Do you expect us to escort you to dinner? Have you forgotten your lie already? You wanted to get cleansed at the sun spire. I’d expect more urgency.”

I absorbed a breath, and measured by my words. “I think I might be waiting there a while. After all, I‍ ‍—‍ I intend to see the high priestess.”

They did pause at that, but it seemed like they were growing used to these revelations‍ ‍—‍ the notion wouldn’t surprised them for an instant.

Then it was the shifter who spoke up, and said, “No.”

“I stated a fact.”

“Here’s another: You will not, regardless of your intentions.

“You underestimate me.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I think,” the red guard interrupted, “Letting you two talk to each other is entirely a mistake.”

He looked to me, and curled his tresses friendly. “Ru, we can drop by an eatery on the way to the spire.”

“Of course you side with him.” Before he could respond, she continued, “Are you in league with the god of death and chaos too, I wonder. Might as well be.” She spat‍-​scoffed.

The red guard audibly expelled breath, but the color‍-​shifter continued speaking.

“Stupid to do his bidding and not get rewarded, you know.”

“Here’s a last fact,” I said, “you should shut up.”

“Spare yourself, Ru. I’m used this. I’m a full‍-​grown medusa. I can take it.”

I waved my eyestalks, and started impetuously toward my favorite‍ ‍—‍ it was the cheapest‍ ‍—‍ dinner.

Then I was prompt teleported back by the green jelly.

My rhopalia snapped straight to glared at him, my bell all squeezed and angular.

I thought I saw a hint of swelling to that green exumbrella them, as once more we started moving, all together this time.

…Rgiht now, I really should be thinking about my immediate next step in my plan. But my thoughts keep getting repeatedly stuck on the sharp corals of distractions.

It felt safe, knowing that I had a right proper ally in the red guard. It took dangerous edge off this situation, made my thinking soft and squishy.

But when it came down to it, he was an obstacle like any other. I needed to see the high priestess alone, and I knew he would stand in way of that, when the time came.

The green‍-​belled medusa. My eyestalks kept pointing back toward them, following their every motion. At least two eyestalks were always on each of their eight tresses. They were the bars of my prison, truly.

I imagined taking my knife, and hacking them off one by one.

6: And Thy Defeat Halts in Stride

A beginner’s tool is always chipped and scratched before they truly learn how to use it, how to be properly careful. If they utterly lack latent, the tool will break first. But chances are, they simply come very close.

I came close to breaking as a ephyra. After meeting Friiya, after growing bored with the field of horrors, when we took it upon ourselves to explore every last twist and loop of the Great Bog Reef.

It took us surprisingly long to find the entertainment district. We’d been into trash heaps, to sultry red‍-​colored alleys which offered nothing to us, and burglared too many homes to count before it occurred to us to investigate the area where so many crowds gathered, so many cries of enjoyment issued.

Though perhaps the crowds were why it took us so long.

It was our second day exploring it, when we found a little grown‍-​coral stage framed by curtains. The stage itself was barely twice taller than my tiny ephyra body, but past the top curtain the structure itself continued several more body lengths, without narrowing.

A little crowd had sprung up all anticipatory around the empty stage, breathes bated, and with great confusion I nudged Friy and we waited there with them.

It was with a loud bang of a some triumphant chord that the story began. As important as this experience had been for me, details elude me. I recalled the center of the story was a jelly quite a lot like me, triumphantly proud and determined clad like a shell around a core of utter anxiety and dread. That detail stood out to me then‍ ‍—‍ but it was almost prophetic how much I’d curled into being just like that fictional medusa.

It was a tragedy, that much I knew, that much had been clear from the beginning. In the story, the gods had spoken, charged him to act, and our hero would have to carry his just‍-​strobilated brother to the altar on the highest peak, and sacrifice him for inscrutable divine reasons.

As much as he might resist the proclamation, it had been decided, and he would do it.

In the opening acts, it was a masterfully woven tale, that much stuck with me even now. I would love to go see another performance of it, if it hadn’t affected me as it did.

It’s always something small that upends you; you never miss something big.

And I was a ephyra back then. The sort of things that slipped past a little half‍ ‍—‍ no, less than half‍ ‍—‍ developed brain…

Well, suffice it to say that it was utterly small and quite stupid.

But you’ll see that for yourself.

The hero, he was a swordmaker. He fought in wars before he lost a tentacle and reconsidered. Then he simply switched to continuing the fight at a distance: through proxies he armed.

He found himself a wife to stalk down with, another veteran from the war. The wife was one obstacle between him and sacrificing his brother at the mountain altar. She saw it as senseless and destructive, and strove to stop him.

At the foot of the mountain, where her attempts to convince him otherwise seemed now as useless as they ultimately were, the effort turned to a fight.

And the wife was able to rescue the brother.

But the reason.

Ugh. I sigh just remembering it.

Our hero had forgotten his sword.

A swordmaker! A war veteran! Forgot his sword!

You might have guessed from how small the stage was, but there weren’t proper actors playing these characters. Far too small.

Being the dumb ephyra we all were, I looked upon the stone‍-​eyed cloth bags prancing on the stage, and deduced that these were simply little medusa living out little lives and little struggles. It was the mostly likely explanation, my young self thought.

The world was a queer place‍ ‍—‍ you’d be surprised how reasonable silliness can sound in the beginning.

But when the swordmaker veteran forgot his sword, it’s was like a deep stabbing or severance. My belief that these were real people and the story being a reality‍ ‍—‍ was at once torn asunder.

There was an instinct we all share. When we hear the call, or see the shadow pass us over, or just an indistinct dread rides up upon us, we anticipate that razor‍-​taloned, bell‍-​spearing death swooping down upon us.

And we jerk our bells up, to see the doom as it comes.

I jerked up, and saw my doom.

There are things about the performance that‍ ‍—‍ if you’re a ephyra without much experience or potential to properly, abstractly, reason‍ ‍—‍ you can miss or ignore.

The thumping and swishing of the cloth bags seemed utterly unrelated to what they were saying.

While their bells could swell or deflate, there was none of the subtlety of experience you so easily discern.

And the tentacles, the eyestalks, the rhopalia, they never seemed to move, just swaying limply beneath the cloth bags.

It was all subtly uncanny, I’d admit, but I didn’t focus on taht. After all, there had been a story happening.

And then the veteran swordmaker forgot his sword, and I looked up, and I saw my doom.

It had been an old medusa there, a bell colorless with little white stripes like a laughing tiger. He was perched up their, stalk leaning over the stage, every one of his tentacles and tresses occupied.

At the ends of all of them were strings.

Puppet strings.

It may sound silly to you, I’m sure. But this… this broke me for just a little while.

I fluttered away from the stage, and never learned how to story ended.

(Friiya didn’t either, having darted after me.)

I ended up somewhere high and far away‍ ‍—‍ a mound in the field of horrors, probably‍ ‍—‍ and I stared up blankly, vision swallowed up in the dead blue sky.

I didn’t want to be anywhere where there were medusa.

It was something very, very hard to unsee, once you really looked. The bobbing of a medusa in levitation‍ ‍—‍ did it really look all that different from the jiggling of puppet strings? When we spoke, were they really our words, or lines recited for us some place distant (it was always like that, as a ephyra learning speech, blind understandingless repetition. When did it stop? Did it stop, or did we merely forget?)

When we lived our lives, are they, in any sense, our lives, and not the stories written for us‍ ‍—‍ not even for us, for some crowd unknown, as entertainments, by gods or strange fate?

Were we all just puppets?

I had nightmares about that, when I slept. For such a long time.

Even waking life had seemed a persistent nightmare‍ ‍—‍ whenever I thought about it, myself or others, I could imagine the reasons and causes like the ontology’s puppetstrings, causality and physics controlling all our lives, determining everything from the cry to the last gasp.

I was nothing but a puppet.

I stood rooted to the reflective metal scales, the floor of the diner. To me, the diner was a blessed marriage of best and cheapest.

A breath absorbed into my bell, difusing into my mesoglea, and then let a stale exhale dissipate out of me. The guards were still here, in a loose circle around me.

The table with ground cabbage on a plate sat to one side of me, and the green‍-​belled teleporting medusa sat at the other, between me and the nearest exit. Red was stalk‍-​rooted at the table with me, and the color‍-​shifting guard flashed between red and black, some distance away from our table.

I saw she had produced a sling, from somewhere.

The guards were knots in the flow of the diner’s crowd. Ordinarily, medusae floated around at will, curving gentle around supports and the rare coral wall. All directions, but mostly parallel to the ground; buildings were defined by having shadeful awnings like gigantic sunshields wielded by genius loci.

But aside from that one divider, building and spaces blended into each other, with many entrances and exits and side passages and hidden ways. There was a comfortable multiplicity to it, redundant and flexible.

(Ancient ruins had nothing like this, only the distressing regularly of lines and squares, the single open doubling as entrance and exit.)

A grasper wrapped around a pouch of fruity liquid, and brought it beneath my bell to suck from the straw.

The guards were knots in this natural flow. It parted abruptly around them, limned by jellies who jerked out of their way. Some of them bumped into the guards, not realizing they weren’td floating (in the air, such collisions are routine.)

Flow. It was easy‍ ‍—‍ to me‍ ‍—‍ to divorce jellies from their individuality, analyze the collective behavior. Look for the strings which tugged at them all.

Seeing the strings was the first step to grasping them for yourself, and guiding them as if on a leash.

A caw broke all the assembly.

I saw many bells turned suddenly askance‍ ‍—‍ jellies rooted aground snapped suddenly free, and levitating medusae jerked instantly away.

Instinct was another puppet string.

It hadn’t been the first time the ravens here had made some noise. Few of the jellies present got used to it, not really. To their credit, not everyone here had been here for the first call. But they should have had their eyestalks keen. They should have seen what could have been a danger lurking the in shadows.

One sat underneath the thickest pillar‍ ‍—‍ what might’ve been the building’s grasping tentacle uplifting the ceiling. I hda tossed the bird a few dead worms from my plate, when I still had worms left. The bird looked at me with one eye for a long time, and ate his share, and went back to sitting there on the ground.

I had an immediate problem to solve‍ ‍—‍ overcoming the obstacle of the guards, get them to stop following me. But the raven again and again pulled at my attention, the unexplained presence poking my curiosity.

Why was there a bird in the reef? Why had no one shooed it away?

Why did it seem to blend in so subtly with the shadows?

There are diners where guards attend regularly‍ ‍—‍ the diners from which I knew the red guard‍ ‍—‍ and this was not one of them. It was one more way that the guards disturbed the atmosphere here. They didn’t belong. Other medusa trained long, hard stares on them. The nearest circle of tables was entirely empty save two brave souls.

Two godstinging souls. It said a lot.

It was one more piece in the puzzle. Or at least, a tool I could use to piece together the puzzle. I was colorless, seeming bereft of the gods’ endowment. All three guards were colored. Empowered.

I knew there were parts of the reef that were falling apart, where the roofs didn’t block all the sunlight. Where a pursuing throng of guards would have a unfamiliar time chasing me.

Assuming I was even able to escape in the first case. A few of my eyestalks roamed back over to the green‍-​belled guard.

I had already decided he would be first.

But I was getting caught in a loop again, weren’t I? Anxious indecision.

I should act.

A ever‍-​persistent failing of mine. A problem would rear its head, roaring with hot breath and spittle for me to face up or fail.

And I thought. And thought. And thought. Pursued backalleys of contemplation and side tangents. Then I got all tangled up in how I was thinking instead of acting, writing whole self‍-​denouncing screeds about it.

After all, when you were trapped in a loop, it was always something from outside that frees you.

The raven cawed once more.

And I decided. More than decided, I acted.

“Hey.” I gestured at the green guard beside me.

He stared at me with six eyestalks.

“That raven is rubbing me the wrong way. Want to go over there with me and see what’s up with it?”

I unrooted myself, pushed magic through my tresses, and floated toward the great pillar.

The green jelly was behind me.

I rooted down in the depths of the shadow. It was day, not twilight or overcast, so the torches around the pillar weren’t lit, and yet the shadows were black. I couldn’t tell apart the bird’s feet.

It strutted towards us, cawing. This close, it was more than a sound. You could imagine a resemblance to vibrating. The kind of resemblance the piercing calls of gods had.

You could imagine the raven was saying Ruwene. Ruwene.

It says‍ ‍—‍ something, that I feared the teleportation more than the sling.

I didn’t give myself time to think harder about it, to weigh the decision. I was a puppet. I reached for my own strings, and pulled.

A cnidae‍-​tipped tress rose up, pointed at the green jelly.

The raven cawed. Ruwene.

I felt the coldness wriggle down the length. Turning to pure black dust at the fluted opening of my tress.

A different flavor of power forced its way down the length. That coldness without tempereature I’d begun to feel after the god of death had stung me, assuring me it would halt defeat in its tracks.

I let a breath dissipate, and, while this all felt very slow, it truly was over in an instant.

The green medusa was lifting confused eyestalks, was squeezing their surprised bell, was lifting anticipating graspers.

Was.

Had been.

Where the green jelly had once rooted themselves next to me, stood now a another statue seeming carved of that curious, pure black stone, another piece by wrought by design of that the sculptor who authored the field of horrors.

Then the raven who freed me cawed some terrible word that started with M, and it flew far away, gone in a flutter of preened feathers.

The momentary stasis that had gripped the rest of the diner seemed leave. The world lurched into motion once more. My path wasn’t clear yet.

But I looked hopefully, dreadfully to the spire of the sun and knew my path clear of one obstacle, defeat halted in its tracks.

7: 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 should always consider 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 magic down her tress to her godstinger, 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.