Verse XVI

  Ardenne had to help the princess through more than one tunnel in the kelpen walls before they arrived at waters broad enough for them to float freely. Rhiela took it as well as could be expected, only muttering her complaints as she adjusted her top. "Why are we even following her..." she said again.

  "Because unlike us," the hunter replied, "she seems to know where she's going."

  The little pink delphin made steady, regular clicks as she nosed through the kelp, occasionally stopping as if to listen. To what, Ardenne could not say, but it worked. Twice more did the delphin lead them through tunnels they could not have found on their own, occasionally pulling up short and flipping fins at them until they stopped as well. Those times, Ardenne knew that she saw movement in the kelp far ahead. She felt no urge to investigate too closely, and especially not after a roar sounded deeper in the Flowing Gardens.

  And then, after one last tunnel, there was open waters above, kelp below, and a solid barrier of green behind them which rose past the firmament. Ripples of waves broke overhead, shattering the light of day into countless green spangles. The dark presence of the stone spire was there in the backwaters, but Ardennne was focused more on the fore.

  Rook and Jumilla were tending to an injured Sera, whose swearing grew stronger as they worked. "Oy! Ardy, Rhia!" the orange mer shouted. "Get over here and help! Red's in a bad way!"

  "What happened?" said Ardenne as they sped over, leaving the pink delphin by the barrier.

  "These huge tentacles happened. Din't'cher see?" Rook was applying a weed wrap to Sera's arm, where long tracks of crab-pinches had slashed a path around. "Been comin' from the kelp on out!"

  "Missed them somehow." Luck, and a delphin, the hunter knew. A squeak from their little pink friend warned her that the reprieve was short.

  "What?" Jumilla began to ask, but Ardenne waved her silent. The delphin continued to flip and thrust, pointing the way with her beak. The object of her attention was the spire itself, the dark stone rising from the green until it stopped mere fathoms from the firmament. Upon it, a crown of sargo twisted counter to the currents, and beneath the whisps of green was a darkness that was not stone.

  A dozen tentacle raised themselves from the foliage below, each armored in thick rings up and down their length. They were dull at the tips, but along their undersides countless bladed pincers could be seen. Following with her eyes, Ardenne confirmed that at their base they all hung from the sargo crown of the spire.

  It was similar to a breed of starfy the hunter would sometimes see at the edges of the Grandest Reef, if much greater in scale. Those starfies had been at most an arm's length across, but their arms dangled into the currents to catch their prey, mostly shrimp or small fishes.

  At this size, a starfy could catch whatever it damned well pleased, and this one's arms were long indeed. "Everyone, roll to the right!" she shouted. The first tentacle fell through the waters to miss them by mere finger-lengths. It slammed into the kelp and sargo below, to sink in deep and burrow through the green. Several other arms dipped down to join it, twisting and digging deep.

  "What do we know about this thing?" Ardenne called out as she swam.

  "It hates heat!" Rook shouted back.

  "You can choke its circulation in the tentacles," Jumilla offered. "But it's got venom, so watch out!"

  "It sees motion in the water," Jumella provided. The twins swam close together for a five-beat, only to split away as a tentacle went for them. It paused as their wakes hit it from different directions, and they sculled away easily.

  Sera's groan carried far. "Stabbing it doesn't do a depths-taken thing." The red mer still couldn't swim on her own, and so Rhiela was helping her away from the action. Neither mer looked very pleased with that.

  It was not much to work with, but the hunter's mind was swift. Flexing the muscles surrounding her air bladders, she let out a single, large sound, a belch to shake the waters. The three nearest tentacles all paused for a beat as the sound passed over them, and they they swung around to grasp for the source.

  Her mind was perhaps too swift; it had outraced itself on what to do next. With all the speed her flukes could manage, Ardenne slipped between two tentacles as they converged. Her hands gripped the ringed armor and held on tight with the tentacle flexing and bucking beneath her. She rode it all the way to the kelpen floor, letting momentum shoot her forward as the tentacle crashed and buried itself back into the green.

  Two more now rose from the foliage, ready to greet her with a sharp embrace.

  *

  Why she was stuck with helping Sulky min Lobster-head to safety, Rhiella was not sure. As she watched Ardenne fend off two tentacles at once with naught but her spear, the princess was relieved to not be in the thick of things—then ashamed at herself for even thinking such a thing. What was she here for, if not to help others, after all? To figure out what she could do?

  Next to her, the rogue's groan reminded her of the reality, that she could not even get a healing cantrip right every time. With the runes of healing fixed in her mind and their corresponding prayer on her lips, Rhiela sought to improve her record with casting the spell. A full verse later, and the red-haired mer's heartbeat was slowed and the marks on her skin less red than before, though the swelling was still worrisome. Some measure of success at least, this time.

  "Wh-what's goin' on?" Sera muttered. "How're they doin' out there?"

  The princess turned an eye to the fight. "Ardenne's making noise and dodging," she reported. "The twins are taking turns baiting and smashing the things. Rook and the delphin are on the far side and I'm not sure... Ah!" she shrieked as the kelp before them erupted and another of the armored tentacles swung towards them.

  Her hands were up, her mind shining with the images of runes she'd committed to memory over the past few weeks. There were not many spells she could say to have mastered, and none she would think she could do promptly. It was nice to be wrong.

  Over each outstretched finger, a rune blazed in her mind. Mostly runes of ebb, one of flow, three which were supposed to connect to the telluric force, but upon some whim of instinct she replaced them with frigoric runes without a beat spared for thought. The altered grammar of the spell came out in a rush, and the shield which sprang from her open palms caught the tentacle in the middle of its plunge. The stillness of ebb slowed its force; the motion of flow deflected it away. The chill of the frigoric—

  Spines of ice that shot through the chinks in the ringed armor, lodging between the plates and slicing whatever lay below. Cold might burn as strongly as heat, and the abomination must have thought so, for its appendage retreated as a roar of pain shook the firmament.

  "Thanks, Rhia. Made it mad."

  "And kept it from smashing us!" she snapped back.

  "Yeah. Good job, that. Keep it up."

  Which was easy for the rogue to say, thought the princess as more of the monstrous fingers rose up to find them. For a while after that, it was the last thought she could spare.

  *

  From a quiet fathom, not far from the gleam of the firmament, Rook was weighing her options. In her bag were several more pebbles for her to empower, though it wasn't clear where she could use them. Downright muddy down there, in fact. The long ugly things seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and the central body couldn't even be seen from beneath the sargo crown.

  Not far off, the little pink delphin was kissing the firmament, or something like that. Rook was no expert on delphins, orcs, and others of that ilk, and she had to wonder if any mer knew enough about the beasties to ken what it was doing. In any case, a beat later the delphin was right beside her, clicking and squeaking.

  "Sorry," she said back. "Dunno what'cher sayin'."

  With a short squeal of what sounded like annoyance, the delphin swam high, did a flip-over, and then dove straight into the action. There was a familiar gleam around its form, a silver stream of bubbles that flowed behind it in a long wake. Pinky was going a sight faster than any mer could, and Rook doubted the speed was all natural for a delphin, either. In wide circles around the open waters the delphin went, faster and faster, until it was dragging all of the currents behind.

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  The tentacles all paused in the same still quality of confusion.

  Of course! Hadn't Jumella said the thing felt motion? Well then, Rook thought to herself as she dug through her pack, it was time to muddy the waters in new and interesting ways.

  In her hands, the little box from the Wayward Drift sat with its grammar repaired and completed with the help of her loverly new friends among the mer equmara. She would need to show her thanks and appreciation to Blaer and Elspeth properly once they got back to Mezzeret. The thought brought a warmth to her heart and life to her lips as she began the chant of activation.

  *

  The things, the obscene fingers of a hidden abomination could not see, Jumella knew, but that was not the same as being blind. It was a distinction she wished would stay philosophical, but those were not the waters they swam right at that moment. In this arena of green beneath the bright firmament, she and her twin were hard at work to test the limits of the monster's blindness.

  The tentacles were linked by more than the central body. They reacted to the same sensations, regardless of the distance, so what one felt then three would converge upon. How Ardenne was surviving their attention, Jumella wasn't about to guess, because she and Jumilla had enough trouble at their flukes.

  "Yah!" shouted her twin, rolling out of the way of a tentacle and smacking it with her hammer. A good hit where the rings flexed could cripple the entire line of the appendage, but it often took a few hits to get right. This one took the hit and arched itself to strike back at Jumilla.

  Her own hammer cracked into its underside, where the pinching claws bent and broke. Another strike from Jumilla's side put a visible crimp in the armor, and a dark, oily substance leaked into the surrounding waters. The tentacle slipped back beneath the kelp, but its sisters rose up to replace it.

  "How many of these things do you reckon there are?" Jumilla said, flushing her gills from exertion.

  "Enough to be a problem."

  "Awfully vague there, sis."

  "As Granny Liesa always said, if you put a number into a story, it is a problem only for the storyteller."

  "Spare me, sis. Gran never told stories about sea monsters." Jumilla ducked back and under a searching tentacle. "I sort of wished she had."

  "You can tell yourself one, next time we're home." Jumella's hammer slammed once more into the ringed armor of the nearest appendage.

  "I just might... huh?" Both Jumilla's strikes and her complaints came to a halt for a beat as a pink shape streaked past. The delphin was going faster than a galda in full dive, with streams of bubbles to follow. The abominable fingers lifted at its, at her passage, leaving them open for more slams and bashes from the sisters. "I wonder how she's doing that."

  "You'll have to ask her," Jumella said again. "Give your brain a workout trying to understand the answer."

  "Spare me, sis."

  From above came a shout of "Oy!" Rook descended at breakneck speed, a small and boxy object sputtering between her hands. "This thing's about to go right bubbly, but I need yer help gettin' it to the right spot 'fore it does!" The speckled mer pointed to the crown of kelp and sargo atop the central spire. "If'n we can get it under there..."

  "On it." It didn't matter which twin said it first; with a nod the words left their throats together, and so together they acted. It was not so different from the ball games played between the daughters of Valden. The 'ball' was shaking and sending up bubbles, yes, and the tentacles would certainly tackle harder than any young galda, but...

  But they were best as a team, swimming over and under tentacles still confused by the delphin's wake, passing the 'ball' back and forth as it grew hot and scalded fingers. There was a hollow at the base of the crown, half again the size of a goal basket, and when Jumella passed the 'ball' to her sister for the last time, Jumilla expertly sent it along into the target space.

  Then they got to see what Rook had meant by 'go off.'

  A tool to heat and circulate water in an enclosed space, Rook had described it. Useful in cooler seas or deeper fathoms. The orange mer must have urged it to its fullest force, because with a flash of heat and a rush of flowing current, the boxy artifact forced the entire canopy of foliage to rise. Anchoring growth stretched and snapped, and loose sand poured out in waves to reveal the true heart of the gardens.

  There was a small shrine built upon the spire, a simple structure of stone walls and coral roof with a table of some sort within it. Jumella's eyes could not make out more than that, because a large and lumpen shape moved to block the view. The central dome of the abomination sat there, an enormous starfy surrounded by arms both short and long. There were no eyes atop its body, but Jumella couldn't doubt that it was glaring at them.

  *

  Mers do right, enemy found! Guide-for-Mers squeaked her satisfaction. Monster-should-not-be was a black spot in her sight-of-clicks, a darkness which her forehead refused to note. She was close enough to see with her true-eyes, but wished she were not. She saw it, and it saw her.

  "Evil! Wicked!" The notes of ancient song rose from the shell of monster-should-not-be. Tones were sour, sickening, a perversion of sacred song as once was taught to friends-of-whales in age-long-lost.

  "Evil-you! Wicked-you!" she sang back. "Twisted! Monstrous! Should-not-be!" Around the sacred song she wove tones of disgust, of pity, of disdain. "You choose this!"

  Many were the words of perverted verse to follow. She ignored all. Focus on the proper job. Guide-for-mers still had mers-to-guide, and next was green-hair-mer, Child-of-Waves. Swimming tight circles around the mer, she clicked for attention, pointing her beak to the top of the spire.

  "Yes, I see it." Tones of doubt rippled through green-hair-mer's voice.

  Tones of annoyance filtered through her own song. She would have told green-hair-mer straight, if that one could understand the friend-song—and if monster-should-not-be could not.

  Guide-by-leading. Mother-song-of-wisdom. Swift to swim, straight to swim. Others follow. Calling the sacred song to herself once more, Guide-for-Mers raised the force of flowing current around her and launched swiftly through the waters, between outstretched tentacles, and over the body of monster-should-not-be. Beyond the enemy, the old place-of-mers remained with its treasure. Guide-for-Mers felt the strength in it, knew it to be the reason for monster-should-not-be to rest there. Grabbing with her beak, she pulled the treasure away and swam with fullest speed.

  Tentacles many, reaching, grabbing. Tearing at skin and flipper. Cries of pain, song of fear. Heat-of-cold ran through her flesh.

  "Hey, stop that!" One-of-two had the heavy stone, hitting the monstrous appendages. Two-of-two smashed from the other side. Together, the two-of-mers beat back the little-claws that nipped, and Guide-for-Mers could scull away, to deliver her prize to green-hair-mer.

  She hoped to have guided enough. Soon she would be Needful-of-Care.

  *

  There was a spear in Ardenne's hands, a blade of knapped stone and shell bound in kelpen cord to the end of a long bone. It was hers, and it was an awful mess now. The blade was chipped and cracked, while the bone showed signs of chewing so heavily that it was a wonder the thing hadn't yet broken in two. The fight so far had not been kind.

  And now, from the delphin's beak, she received... a new spear. This one was formed of a single piece, without any binding at all. Its blade was long and pointed, with a cutting edge down one side like the tooth of some deep-water cachalot whale. From tip to butt, it was formed from the same dark, glassy material as her mother's ring.

  There was a feeling of heat at her chest, as if the ring agreed and recognized a sister in the spear. On some passing thought, barely understood, Ardenne took the ring out once more and held it to her eye as she looked to the abomination upon the spire.

  The light of the world again turned inside out, the firmament shining black and the shadows turned bright. The thing on the spire was an emptiness, a void defined by the crackling energies around it. But at its crown, there was a light, greater and brighter than anything else Ardennne now could see.

  She lowered the ring, and the colors returned to normal. The thing was again a lumpy dome of shell and weed, vaguely resembling the fishing starfies she knew from the Grandest Reef. Like those spiny-skinned things, it could flex and bend its arms to catch prey out of the currents, trusting its feel of the waters as much as Ardenne trusted her own eyes.

  The rush of heat and flow beneath the canopy must have been terrible for it. Only ill luck had permitted it to grab the pink delphin, and she eyed with worry the scores of tiny, prickly bits on the beast.

  First things first, however. With a firm grip upon her new spear, Ardenne turned her eyes back to the monstrous starfy. Its arms waved wildly in the raw currents, and she was not sure how she was going to avoid getting caught. The part of her that saw the world now in shadows of red did not care. Launching herself into the middle of the heat vortex, Ardenne ducked and rolled around flailing tentacles, and if one got in her way, well, that was why her new spear had a cutting edge. The blade sliced between rings of armor, leaving an inky stain of blood in her wake. Up she raced, past the garden's central spire, around it, into the shelter beneath its floating canopy. The small shrine, a copy of the one in the Mere Sangolia, was noted and then ignored in favor of the abomination lying squat before it.

  Arm after arm spread from that dome, stretching far and deep into the kelp before arising elsewhere. Up close, only a few shorter arms could reach where the hunter now swam. Ardenne sliced the tip off the first one to come too close, and then dove at the center of the domed body before the others could move in.

  There had been a light at the crown. Her spear struck where that had been, finding a joint in the armor where thick and knobbed plates met. The staff of her spear was strong, unbending, and it pierced straight through to crack the starfy's outer hide and skeleton. With a twist, she broke it open, and the light could be seen. All that was left was to pull it out.

  Her hand thrust in, gripping the glimmering thing. Beneath her, the abomination released heavy flows of water in a scream that rattled the firmament itself. In the red haze of her mind, Ardenne could not care. Not about the noise, not about the black blood leaving the wound in thick clouds, not about the cuts and scrapes to her own arms. With one last pull, she removed the shining, curved triangle of shell, its pearly light independent of the firmament's.

  Beneath her, the monstrous starfy collapsed. All arms went limp as the softer tissues dissolved to inky black between the joints, and within mere beats the rings of armor fell apart with nothing left inside of them but an oily feel and bitter taste on the water.

  In her hand, the prize. Ardenne held it up to her face, the better to see its curves and wonder. What was this thing? What was it doing inside of an abomination?

  What was she, to know that it was there?