Solitudes and Silence
Chapter 9
Thrash and Swirl
The kingdom of Helmarthonn sprawled over a complex of caves inhabited by rainids like Gelvid: yellow-white, lanky and slender, with bass voices and shallow eye sockets. Most wore plain white clothes fringed with tassels and strings, and embroidered with geometric designs. Small fish swam through the stone corridors of the kingdom, feeding on clumps of algae attached to the walls and clustered around rocky protuberances, alongside a column of long white eels, schools of albino seahorses and large fish lurking with the fearsome teeth of a predator.
A few of the buildings, the fancier and higher-class ones, it seemed, were adorned with networks of tubes which altered the flow of water. This was apparently akin to architecture down here, Terredor surmised. The varying qualities of water from each tube combined to create a sensation that was, in an indescribable way, aesthetically pleasing to his newfound ability to perceive minute differences in flow and quality.
As they swam, Gelvid introduced them to Helmarthonn and the Deepdark, greeting the rainids who came when they heard of the arrival of outsiders. The locals whispered among themselves, remaining in small groups in sheltered alcoves.
Terredor asked, “Are they looking at us?” but as he said it, he realized that the word he used for “looking” referred not to vision, but to the sensation of shifts in water currents and an energy field surrounding all living creatures.
“Yes,” Gelvid said, “Few upworlders come to the Deepdark. Ye are quite an oddity around here.”
“As I’m sure your people would be above,” Waimbrill said.
“But please, tell me what brings you to Helmarthonn,” Gelvid said.
Waimbrill then told of the monster, Petromyza, whose periodic ravagings had stolen bodies and souls by the score. Gelvid nodded while he talked, and then said, “Yes, we have grown worried of this beast as well. Petromyza hath attacked us many times, swallowing our people whole. We fear it is part of a devious plot to create a legion of uncleaved corpses. It cometh from below, goeth above to your land, and then returneth to attack once more before going to its home, beneath us.”
“What is below us?” Waimbrill asked.
“Fathoms down layeth a great dragon-god named Argon, whose scales themselves emit the mana of our civilization, which nourisheth our crops and our animals. For eons, his monsters have culled the weak and unfaithful from our number, but it is only over the last year that Petromyza hath come more frequently than Argon’s children ever have before,” Gelvid whispered, turning his head as he spoke to avoid being overheard.
“So you think Argon is behind the monster?” Waimbrill asked.
“Hush! Argon is the source of life here. Outsiders can not make such suggestions, not in a crowded market like this.” Gelvid leaned closer and whispered, “However, I have long suspected Argon. There are few gods powerful enough to create a plot such as this. The only other universal god in the Deepdark is Chamballa.”
Terredor said, “She is worshiped as well on the Surface. We consider her the goddess of storms and destruction. On the Surface, we have always called the monster her child.”
Gelvid frowned, the wrinkles around his mouth flattening. “She is a goddess of growth and fertility here. So I do not think she would be so destructive.”
Waimbrill said, “We must seek answers, and a solution, at the source. We must descend. Will you give us a map?”
“Aye, I will do one better,” Gelvid said, “I do not think it is a coincidence that Modroben has sent you to me. I shall come with you, and show you the way. The descent will be dangerous, and having a local will help you immensely. Come, let us buy supplies for the journey.”
Gelvid led the upworlders through the city, stopping to make a few purchases. Mortiss Gelvid received the goods for little or no cost, just as Modrobenians on the surface generally did.
Terredor and Waimbrill each received a small sac of supplies and a trident from Gelvid, and they followed the rainid to his home, a narrow, shallow cave with a few plain furnishings. Gelvid provided a meal of fish meat and leafy white vegetables with a peculiar, almost metallic taste. Afterwards, Gelvid joined Waimbrill in meditation, the rainid emitting a deep hum and swimming in vertical circles in a way that aided his concentration.
While his elders prepared mentally for the journey, Terredor floated outside Gelvid’s home. They planned on meditating for a long time because they might not have time to do so in the near future. That was why Soulclaine were not known as good adventurers: they must meditate or otherwise improve their mental state for several hours a day, and even then, many a Soulclaine has been undone by his own emotions getting the better of him at an inopportune time. Terredor’s people told tales of a great clansman, Hapcort Delver, who became the highest-ranking Modrobenian in the Northern Kingdoms. One ballad told of Hapcort’s reaction when a rival bandit clan banned soulcleavers from entering Delverton, hoping to force the inhabitants to emigrate or risk undeath. Hapcort eschewed raising an army, famously declaring, “It is my homeland. It is my people. It is my battle,” which remains a popular Delver war cry. Hapcort arrived with a fleet of draconic vultures, circling the bandit encampment and demanding that all who properly serve Modroben leave at once. Thieves and cutpurses fled en masse, but the cruel bandit king had a loyal cadre of followers who readied their blades and bows. They were wholly unprepared for an army of vulture-dragons who swept in swiftly and rended bandits with beak and claw. Hapcort cleaved the villains as they died. At the height of the battle, he became wracked with a sudden onslaught of emotions from the newly cleaved souls, and his distraction led to his murder at the hands of the bandit king himself. Hapcort’s vultures won the battle in the end, and the bandits who had not fled were killed, and the camp leveled, but thus was the end of the greatest hero of Delver folklore.
As he watched his compatriots meditate, Terredor wondered if traveling with them had been a mistake. Soulclaine were not heroes. They could be overwhelmed by emotion at any time. They were prone to suicide, to obsession, mania and hysteria, even to episodes of random violence, slaughtering innocents indiscriminately. It was a gruesome thought, and Terredor shivered, casting his fears as pebbles to be tossed aside, as Waimbrill had taught him. His mind refused to cooperate, instead imagining blood-beaked vultures, white fish with sharp teeth, and the crushing weight of millions of tons of stone and water. He fell into a restless sleep, and dozed and dreamed of devastating monsters that lurked in the hidden corners of cavernous caves, of murderous bandits with weapons bladed and blunt, and of giant dragon-gods that breathed waves of uncleaved death.
They departed the next morning, and crossed a bone-colored coral reef, consisting of skeletal mounds of cold calcium, peaks towering above the cave floor in a multitude of twisting whorls. The coral reef teemed with fish, many with sharp teeth and predaceous faces, long undulating slugs and even a giant starfish that laid flat against a wall, its white skin layered with rough warts.
The first creature Gelvid said was worthy of fear was a jellyfish, though not like the delicious creatures that swarmed beneath the stilts of Delverton for one week every spring.
They were swimming single file through a narrow part of a corridor when Gelvid stopped. “Quick!” he snapped, “Behind that boulder. A hookworm jellyfish is coming.”
The travelers floated behind a large rock, waiting in silence. Terredor saw his vicinity using the light from the ring, which still made him nervous though Gelvid had assured them that no creature in the Deepdark could see. Terredor’s pulse raced while he imagined huge man-eating jellyfish and watched a pair of small salamanders swim by.
Terredor had improved at feeling changes in currents and perceiving how and where they were created. He and Waimbrill discovered that, when they closed their eyes, their other senses became more acute to compensate. In hiding, they remained as motionless as possible, and hid behind a boulder as to avoid interrupting the flow of water around them. Terredor felt a few fish upstream, but not
hing especially large, and when he saw them pass through the light, they were far from frightening.
He wondered if Gelvid had been mistaken, or if whatever he had sensed had gone down a side corridor. Terredor and Waimbrill exchanged questioning glances, but neither wanted to disrupt the silence, or move just yet.
Finally, Terredor saw the jellyfish. Its body was less than an inch long. A few tentacles extending a bit more than a fingernail’s length wiggled, pushing it through the water.
“There it is,” Gelvid croaked loudly, then smiled at Terredor and Waimbrill, who jumped in surprise when the quiet was broken, “No worries, it is a stupid beast. It can not hear.”
“It’s so tiny,” Terredor said, “It must be poisonous, right?”
Gelvid’s lipless, toothless frog mouth turned up in a strange smile. “I suspect we are talking past each other, my Surface-dwelling friends. This is one of the largest creatures you will find down here. It is a full-grown great hookworm jellyfish.”
“Look closely, Terredor,” Waimbrill said, gasping.
Terredor squinted, and saw thin tentacles twitching as they glided slowly through the water. Hundreds of them were attached to the main body, dangling behind it like tiny bits of string.
“Don’t touch,” Gelvid said, “I forgot ye can’t sense very thin objects. Your species’ ability to perceive seems lacking, no offense intended.”
“It works better on land,” Waimbrill said apologetically.
“Those tentacles are at least a hundred yards long. Don’t worry, as long as we stay away, it won’t harm us. They have thousands of tiny hooks. If one touches you, the other tentacles will wrap around you too, and if ye let that happen, it will have you digested in minutes.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Terredor not sure if he should be more afraid of a dangerous, if benign-looking, animal, or less afraid given that there was nothing else to do to defend himself from it.
The water was still freezing cold, and had been getting colder the further they descended, but Terredor was growing used to the temperature, only noticing it during the rest periods, such as now, when he had nothing to focus on besides the ever-mounting tension as they waited for the jellyfish to pass.
“I apologize,” Gelvid said, “I can tell ye are both frightened. I wasn’t trying to scare you. Hookworm jellyfish eat almost entirely small fish. There will be one being eaten passing by you in a few moments, so ye should point your eyes toward that, or whatever it is ye do with them. The injured and the infirm are the only people killed by something like this. I’ve seen them strike while I soulcleaved following a battle. The hooks picked up dead bodies and the injured alike, and the sudden movement of the tentacles caught many of us, but no healthy man got more than a bit of flesh ripped out.”
Terredor saw the fish being digested. It was the size of a rambleball, covered in tiny thin filaments that writhed and pulsed, a few bits of flesh and bone escaping into the open water around it.
After the last of the tentacles passed, Gelvid motioned for them to depart, and they resumed their swim, stopping again just a few minutes later, when they saw the head of a pink-skinned, thin-faced creature on the ground.
“I was worried about this,” Gelvid said, shaking his head sadly, “This isn’t the kind of corridor those hookworm jellyfish frequent. That’s why I took you this way. I didn’t say anything before... But this is the head of an olmian, and around here, most olmians are involved in some unsavory activities. This poor man was probably executed by rivals by tying him up and attracting the hookworm jellyfish to come devour him. It’s said to be an extraordinarily painful way to die. They usually coat the head with a substance the jellyfish finds repellent, so luckily the victim remains cleavable.”
Gelvid was a Soulclaine just like Waimbrill was, but rather than worshiping Modroben as Velteris, god of vultures, Gelvid worshiped him as Nelktor, god of crabs. While Gelvid talked, Terredor pictured what his cleaving might look like; rather than his face turning to a vulture beak like a surface Modrobenian, he would instead have a hand turn to a crab pincer, and cleave using that.
The magical ring did not give Terredor the power to understand the language Gelvid used to intone the High Prayer, but it was smooth and sybillant. His hand turned into a white crab claw, smashing through the olmian’s skin and skull to reveal the orange-pink brain matter underneath.
Gelvid took a moment to meditate, performing the same circular swimming motion Terredor saw him use in Helmarthonn. Afterwards, the rainid’s face seemed a little more wrinkled, his blank, expressionless head sagging sadly, heavily. He said nothing as they set out again on their journey.
They continued for the remainder of what apparently passed for a day in the Deepdark. He and Waimbrill had discussed it, but neither had any conception of time anymore. They just knew they were tired, and it conveniently coincided with Gelvid announcing it was time to rest.
When Waimbrill woke him to keep watch, Terredor sat still and silent against the rock wall. While a part of him wanted to conceal the rings to sleep in darkness and thought the light was a beacon for danger, he and Waimbrill agreed that blindness made the water feel like a suffocating frozen blanket, so they kept the light on and endured the feeling of vulnerability it gave them. Every few minutes while Waimbrill slept, Terredor would change his mind for a second and place the ringed hand in his pocket, which made the water feel colder, his gills flap excitedly, and his brain reel at the thought of the sea of water sitting atop his head.
He saw a fish swim by, and the idle thought that it was a harbinger of great doom popped unbidden into his mind. After the encounter with the hookworm jellyfish, he now saw every animal, no matter how seemingly benign and harmless, as a potential threat. He had never really considered that going to a place where he knew nothing meant that he might not even recognize danger until it was too late.
A series of changes in the current from upstream washed across him, minute differentials in pressure on different parts of his body, one right after another. His sleepy mind took a moment to comprehend what he was sensing: a series of individuals changing direction to head towards him. He swam to the sleeping bodies of Waimbrill and Gelvid, shaking them awake.
“It feels like merovens,” Gelvid said, pulling them against the wall with him, “Ready your tridents. If they sense us, they might attack. So stay still.”
Terredor wanted to ask what a meroven was, but he remained quiet, peering down the corridor. He squinted, despite having told himself countless times that doing so was useless, for the light from the ring didn’t extend far, and no amount of squinting would increase its range.
The first meroven swam into the illuminated area. It was a dolphin, an animal Terredor knew because it was sometimes sold for food as far north as Crikland. But this dolphin had unusual teeth, long, sharp and in two rows, the outer one curving over the lower jaw of the elongated snout. It was about two feet long, its head scanning as it swam. It was followed by another, then another, and soon there were a dozen more visible within the light.
They meandered along, clustered in the center of the cave, fins flapping. When the merovens passed the illuminated area around Terredor, his gill flaps quivered in relief, and his blood froze as he wondered if that was enough movement for the merovens to sense.
One of them turned, aiming its snout in their direction and letting out a growl that echoed against the stone walls of the cave.
“They’re on us,” Gelvid said, swimming forward and pointing his trident outward, “Keep your back to each other. Each of us face a different direction. Their snout has thick skin, so stab them in the face.”
The pod of merovens darted towards the trio, snarling, and swam in circles around them. The thrash and swirl of the water blinded Terredor, and all was only flashes of white meroven flesh, hard and blubbery, and sharp teeth gnashing. Deep chilling panic spread from the cold water filtering through his gills into his blood and deep into his belly.
Waimbrill shoute
d, “Use the senses of the ring!”
Terredor closed his eyes, clearing his mind from the torrent of rushing water and snapping snouts that threatened to overwhelm him. He sensed the merovens swimming in three rows around him. One broke from the pack, interrupting its steady circle and sending a wave of weakly flowing water towards him.
Gelvid nimbly swam up and down, left and right, keeping his back to Terredor and Waimbrill, who defensively jabbed his own trident toward the circling merovens. Terredor opened his eyes briefly, but could see only a confusing circling maelstrom of bodies and teeth. With his eyes closed, his underwater senses took over, and he could distinguish each meroven, and feel Gelvid swimming and stabbing his trident towards them.
The meroven that broke off from the pack was coming towards Terredor, who resisted the urge to open his eyes even as the mounting danger grew so great he thought his eyelids would burst from the pressure. Finally, he could resist no longer, and Terredor blinked his eyes, jumping backwards when he saw the meroven well into the radius of light, grimacing and baring its double rows of teeth.
“It’s right in front of you!” Waimbrill screamed, “Now is the time for heroism!”
Terredor scrunched his eyes tight and thrusted forward blindly. He heard a squeal of pain and the trident slammed against something hard, then a sudden rush of warm, iron-rich water flooded his gills.
After that, the battle was over in moments. Water whirled, and Terredor heard himself and Waimbrill shout while Gelvid barked orders. He tasted blood, and saw bits of flesh and chunks of dolphin bodies when he peered through his shut eyes.
Four merovens were floating, dead, tongues dangling limply from their toothed snouts. The rest had swam away.
“They swim in circles to confuse slower creatures,” Gelvid said, gills twisting and contorting in exertion and excitement, “And devour them so quickly they scarcely have a chance to react.”
“The Deepdark is a dangerous place,” Waimbrill said, shaking his head. “We should find a place to rest shortly,” Gelvid said, “For we are only a day’s travel from Al’hirrizad.”
They found a small alcove in the rock wall, and rested there while Gelvid prepared a meal, mixing fish bits with raw juice in a bladder. The mixture was strongly acidic, but filling and fortifying to Terredor’s exhausted muscles. Gelvid told them about their next destination, Al’hirrizad, a thriving metropolis about halfway between the Surface and the bottom of the Deepdark, a requisite stop on the journey downward. All three slept restlessly, barely needing to awaken each other to keep watch.