Suiteonem Prime, Malali, Dumakule, 213919

  The water level in the deep city’s central control chamber continued to drop.

  Gossamare tapped the code to open the doors.

  The normal ones groaned first. Then the blast doors.

  Both moved ponderously like a great beast awoken from a long slumber yawning its first breath in ages.

  The extra exit allowed the water to drain faster.

  “Ragay, if you will, please.”

  She willed a bubble around her, preserving the water she needed to survive without a landsuit.

  Unlike the rest of the potentials, she, as a native of a deep trench couldn’t survive long outside of Sinaya’s embrace.

  Just like the infested Malalians on the other side of the doors.

  “Get back!” Sings Too Loud willed a hard water wall just in time to block them from rushing into the chamber.

  Ragay wrapped Gossamare’s bubble inside his own as he watched the unfortunate Malalians attack Sings Too Loud’s wall with a ferocity not reflected in their glassy eyed stares and slack expressions.

  The finger-length, parasitic, eel-like things sticking out of their translucent red bodies were a direct contrast for those wriggled vigorously like a fish on a hooked line.

  “Above and behind!” Abygale sent a hard water dome expanding out to punch the dozens of wriggling eel things swimming freely at them.

  Ragay hadn’t noticed.

  While he eagerly waited for the doors to fully open and the water in the tunnel to drain completely, he watched Abygale turn the surface of her dome into sudden spikes to take out a few of the parasites.

  Most were too quick and small, slipping past the spikes to begin burrowing into the hard water.

  “Ummmm… hurry?” Abygale said.

  The doors refused her request.

  “Push them back together, Sings!” Justavi growled.

  They doubled the wall and shoved through the widening gap, knocking the infested Malalians back into the rapidly draining tunnel.

  “Should I go now?” Sings Too Loud said.

  “Yes!” Abygale snapped.

  The huge Sings turned his wall into a plow as he charged into the tunnel and its waist-high water.

  The infested collapsed like balloons without air, yet instead of falling they continued to attack the hard water.

  “Impossible,” Gossamare whispered.

  “Parasites,” Ragay grunted.

  It was the only possible explanation.

  Regardless of their sudden robustness out of water, Sings piled them up against his hard water plow.

  “Beware your feet those without suits,” Gossamare said.

  Wonderful.

  Ragay glanced down at his bare feet.

  A plight shared by the water breathers in the group. Except for Gossamare, who was safe in her water bubble, at least until she ran out of oxygen in the sealed environment.

  She lacked the expertise to pull oxygen from the air like Miss Karagatan could.

  A shortcoming all the potentials shared.

  “I’ll try to sweep the gaps,” Justavi said.

  They ran as the water level dropped to knee-high and finally to nothing.

  Ragay desperately watched his slapping feet while maintaining his concentration on his bubble as he pulled Gossamare along like a child’s balloon.

  Keisho was just ahead doing the same to the Malalian boy in a similar water bubble.

  The poor child was likely the only survivor.

  That gave him a good chance at a potentially powerful class, but Ragay wouldn’t have wanted that for himself, let alone for the child.

  The price paid wasn’t worth it.

  “Watch out!”

  Tagge stomped an armored foot on a wriggling parasite before Keisho could step on it.

  “Did any of it get on me?” Keisho screamed. “I can’t tell. Everything’s wet!”

  “Scanning… your good. Keep running— watch out!” she stomped on another, then another, then it seemed like they were popping out everywhere underfoot. “Justavi, you’re doing a terrible job of sweeping!” she snapped as she leapt from parasite to parasite, splattering them beneath her suit’s boots. The coral-like material and ocean wood was superior to the steel drylanders used for their armor.

  A sudden rumbling vibrated the wet floor, emanating from where they had just fled.

  “Um… they’re filling it up again, Gossamare! Do something!” Abygale brought up the rearguard, but she almost ran up on Ragay’s heels before she cursed, undoubtedly remembering her role. As much as she might’ve wanted to sprint ahead, she stuck to it. “I can’t wall up that much water!”

  “There, just ahead! Take me to those controls, Ragay!”

  He pushed his bubble against the controls, engulfing it just as Gossamare did so she could use it.

  “Done!”

  A great beast groaned and a circular door slid shut like the aperture of Talima’s old drylander camera.

  The rushing river crashed against it, splashing them through the closing opening.

  Ragay flinched, concentration wavering as a stinging pain struck his arm.

  “Oh— I got it!” Abygale shrieked.

  “What?” he stared at the circular scratch on his cobalt blue scales. Then at the three pieces of the parasite eel thing on the wet floor. “Did it infest me!” His voice rose several octaves.

  Tagge hopped over, stomping the pieces into smears while he leapt away.

  “I’ll scan you later, let’s keep running.”

  “But—”

  Abygale patted his shoulder.

  “It doesn’t look like it got past your scales. You’re lucky it didn’t land on your skin! You owe me one! Maybe…”

  “What do you mean ‘maybe’?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well… if you did get infested, then you don’t owe me one.”

  Oh how he wished that one of them had a spell or Skill to find out if he was infested and then to fix it.

  Sadly, none of them had advanced their classes since they took up Sinaya’s Heart.

  Miss Karagatan had given no explanation other than to say that was how it worked.

  “Ragay, the instant you begin to feel strange, please let us know,” Gossamare said.

  “Sure…”

  He eyed the circular scratches on his arm all the way to the end of the tunnel.

  Sings Too Loud stared in wide-eyed horror at the red smear against the doors and his plow-turned-wall.

  “I— I— I—”

  “Good call, Sings.” Justavi clapped the much bigger potential on the back of his suit. “Only way to be sure. We can’t take the risk that they can’t be saved.”

  Sings Too Loud’s normally buoyant voice fell.

  “Yes, but… shouldn’t we have tried harder?”

  Justavi grunted.

  “We’ve been over this. There’s no saving anyone if we don’t get out of here to warn Miss Karagatan. We’d just join the rest of the poor fu—” He caught sight of the boy in Keisho’s bubble floating like a baby in his egg. “What next, Gossamare? Big sphere on the other side. Then more tunnel. Then bigger sphere. There’s still thousands of locals. I counted about thirty, plus however many were in the other tunnels. Couldn’t have been too many on account of the sizes.”

  Ragay tried to focus on the map in his head to keep his mind off what Tagge might find as she conducted her scan of his body with her suit’s instruments.

  “I shall attempt to drain the water out of our path in sections,” Gossamare said.

  “How’s your oxygen in there?” Keisho said.

  “It’s sufficient.”

  “Okay. You should make it quick anyways,” Justavi said.

  Ragay moved Gossamare’s bubble over to the controls.

  The deep trench oceanborn went to work while he turned his attention back to Tagge and his own internal thoughts.

  I don’t feel different. Nothing inside me is moving that shouldn’t be moving, I’m fairly certain.

  “I don’t wish to infest you.”

  “Thanks, Ragay. That’s appreciated,” Tagge said.

  …

  “And, scan complete.” Tagge gave him a sharp-toothed grin from behind her suit’s transparent faceplate.

  “And?”

  “No foreign bodies detected. Your heart rate and blood pressure are all elevated, though. You should do the breathing exercises. A calm mind is a focused mind. And you have to carry Gossamare around like a balloon.”

  The balloon let out a flash of bioluminescent blues that rippled from somewhere beneath her armor-covered chest to radiate down her arms and legs and up to her face and head fin.

  “Oh no! That’s not good,” Tagge whispered.

  Indeed, they had been together long enough for Ragay to recognize frustration and concern in the intensity.

  “They are countering me and I can’t stop them. I initiate a drain and they reverse it within thirty seconds.” Gossamare flashed again.

  “Maybe you can try to call Miss Karagatan?” Sings Too Loud said.

  “Why would that work now?” Justavi growled.

  “It could be that they’re too busy reversing the drains?” Sings Too Loud shrugged.

  “I can’t communicate outside of Malali from this terminal.” Gossamare killed that idea like Sings Too Loud had smashed the infested against the coral-like surface.

  “Unfortunate that.” Keisho raised his voice. “If Miss Karagatan knew that we were in troubled oceans she would undoubtedly rush to our aid with reckless abandon as she is wont to do.”

  “Keisho!” Abygale snapped.

  The dark-skinned drylander with a bladed cap over his elbow stump shushed her with a gesture and repeated his words.

  “What’s he doing?” Tagge whispered.

  Ragay got it right away.

  If the monster behind the parasitic eel-things thought that it had a chance to ambush Miss Karagatan then it might allow them to communicate with the outside ocean.

  And no matter how horrible it might be, she would easily destroy it.

  Granted, they still had to get to a different control terminal that could broadcast outside the deep city’s shell.

  “She’ll have to check on us eventually, right?” Sings Too Loud said.

  “We can’t wait here,” Gossamare said. “It would only allow them to mass on both sides and they’ve shown the ability to take control of the city’s functions. Perhaps that is what they are waiting for to open the doors?”

  A thin stream of cold, briny water shot through the suddenly opening eye that was the door.

  Sings Too Loud shrieked as cracks spider-webbed out from the impact site.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Ragay didn’t know how exactly the numbers worked, but the force of so much water in the huge chamber concentrated into such a small surface area had to be beyond massive.

  Justavi willed a second wall behind Sings Too Loud’s.

  “Release your will!” he snarled.

  The massive, gray-skinned oceanborn sagged and nodded thanks as he relinquished his hold on his hard water wall.

  The eye opened wider, easing the pressure enough that Justavi could hold the water back on his own.

  Darkness greeted them.

  “Can you turn on the lights?”

  “I am trying, Ragay,” Gossamare said.

  Peering into the chamber reminded him of staring down into the umbral depths.

  And yet he had never felt as much dread at what might lurk in the blackness in this enclosed space than in the vast ocean.

  “We need to move fast!” Justavi grit conical teeth against the rushing water. “Swim through whatever ambush or trap they have planned!”

  “I concur,” Gossamare said. “Do you all know the way to our exit point?”

  ‘Yes’ all around.

  “And the alternative routes?”

  “I know a few other ones,” Tagge said.

  “And the codes to open the doors? I suspect they will be necessary now with our unknown enemy’s control of the city’s system.”

  “Won’t they just lock them down?” Tagge said.

  “The codes are meant to work even in an emergency lockdown. We who live in the deep have weighed the risks and have determined through painful experience that there should always be a way out.”

  Abygale grit her teeth.

  “Can we just go? The waiting’s killing me.”

  “Is everyone ready?” Gossamare said.

  ‘Yes’ all around again.

  “I know our levels are low, but do we all have a fast swimming Skill or spell?”

  “Yes, but mine is negligible compared to using Sinaya’s Heart.” Ragay could activate a short burst to his kick. It wouldn’t get him more than ten meters into the next chamber, which had a diameter nearing a thousand.

  “None of us has leveled since we began this honor, Gossamare,” Keisho said.

  “Every little bit could prove crucial in our survival,” she replied. “Nonetheless, it is time. Ragay, release me when we are immersed.”

  “Are you sure? You’re vulnerable to those eel things. Your flesh is soft and, well, I think they seem to be adapted to infest your kind rather than someone like me.” He indicated the circular scratch on the scales of his arm. “At least parts of me are naturally armored against them. I do regret not wearing full-coverage armor.”

  All he had selected from Sonombera’s extensive armory was a thin, lightweight vest of scales and a helmet which left only his eyes exposed.

  “Then they will be drawn to me, allowing the rest of you safer passage.”

  “Don’t let her out of that bubble, Ragay,” Justavi growled. “If she’s talking like that…” He shook his head. “Me, Sings and Tagge are armored up. We’ll be taking the brunt of the parasite attacks cause they can’t get through. And Sings and my skin are definitely thicker and tougher than your flimsy patches of scale.”

  “Very well. I will consent to remaining in my bubble for the time being,” Gossamare said. “Let us use the deep singer formation. Sings, you have the lead. Justavi, you have the depths. Tagge, you are surface. Abygale, left. Ragay, right. Keisho, please continue to safeguard the child. The rear must be left open, but we shall be faster than them. We must. Our people must know what has been done to the Malalians. They must be avenged.”

  Justavi shrank his hard water wall, allowing the cold to fill the tunnel around the edges.

  The eye-like door opened fully and remained dark and silent.

  Swimming while pushing a large wall of hard water in front of one wasn’t conducive to reaching top speed. So, instead of a wall, Justavi willed a hard water copy of a fishing net with spikes on the other side from him.

  The water gushed through completely submerging them in less than a second.

  “I’m moving out!”

  Justavi’s voice came over clearly through the gem in Ragay’s ear.

  The green-scaled landborn’s suit was equipped with small propellers, but the bulk of his propulsion came from the powerful undulations of his armor-sheathed tail.

  Sings Too Loud let out a series of clicks downward that would’ve rattled the insides of anything inside their expanding cone of soundwaves as he swam into his position.

  Tagge went high with a whoop.

  Ragay stayed close to Gossamare in her bubble, keeping her to his left while warding his right with Sinaya’s Heart dangling from his hooked staff.

  They kicked with everything they had, creating sudden bursts of speed by using the swirling orbs on their hooked staffs to pull them forward like there was a powerful fisherman on the other end of the line.

  The first time they had passed through the massive spherical chamber there had been plentiful light from the crystals inside and outside many of the shops and playreefs for children floating suspended throughout the space tethered in place by kelp ropes as thick around as his body.

  One such playreef loomed overhead near their projected path.

  “Beware the playreef, Justavi!” Gossamare said.

  “I see it!”

  Ragay saw their problem approaching quickly.

  There was a lack of open water ahead of them.

  Above the playreef were water tunnels and a series of filters and their pipes.

  He could see the water swirl over where they entered and exited the system.

  Tagge cursed.

  She was above, which meant she’d swim closest to those things.

  “I know there are those things in the pipes! Just waiting to drop on me!”

  “Stop complaining!” Abygale snapped. “You’re in a suit. You’ll be fine.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “I hear movement!” Sings Too Loud’s high-pitched whistle-like voice cut-off any other complaints. “From—” He pinged the darkness with a series of clicks aimed in multiple directions. Despite being huge and bulky, the oceanborn swam with grace even in his bigger and bulkier suit as he twisted to catch the returning soundwaves in the order he had sent them out. “From everywhere!”

  “Faster!” Gossamare said. “I shall cover the playreef.”

  So said, she dropped her bubble to will an enormous fine-meshed net toward the craggy playreef.

  Ragay’s eyes widened.

  He had fixed them on the dark holes and crevasses on the playreef’s surface.

  As soon as Gossamare had dropped her bubble the black interiors came alive with red flashes.

  Indeed, all around them, in the shops and establishments, on the inner surfaces of the sphere, above, below, to their left, right, ahead and behind the darkness vanished like the sudden dawn.

  “Faster! I got it!” Justavi roared. “Don’t fall behind!” He put on a burst with his powerful tail.

  The water frothed in his wake, but Ragay and the others were strong enough to swim through the turbulence and stay close thanks to the added boost from their Sinaya’s Hearts.

  “Scyfos Domain: One Billion Cnidocytes of Novophoros.”

  The voice croaked with a painful rasp, as if it had been weeks since it had been last used. Nonetheless, it traveled through the water and into their ears.

  “Everyone without a suit, bubble up now!”

  Gossamare didn’t heed her own warning. She maintained the net around the playreef where infested Malalians began to pour out of the hidden crevices and holes, straining her hard water construct.

  Their world turned red at the same time that Ragay willed a bubble around him.

  He didn’t know what the words of the spell or Skill meant, but he knew they had to be bad.

  “What is this thing, Gossamare?” Keisho had expanded his bubble over the little Malalian boy to include himself.

  “I can’t say for certain, but the words refer to the soft chalice floaters and their long tendrils that inject venom into any hapless prey that swim unawares into them.”

  Ragay knew what those were. Now that he knew what to watch for he found them quickly.

  Thin strands in the red-tinted water that glinted dimly like a fishing line waved in the turbulence, yet maintained a mostly vertical orientation.

  “Beware!” He willed Sinaya’s Heart to carry him above and ahead of Gossamare to take the strands on his hard water construct.

  “Faster!” Justavi said. “They can’t get through our suits!”

  The green-scaled oceanborn cursed a warning.

  Ragay could barely see out ahead through the dark red and thickening curtain of stinging white tendrils writhing against his bubble.

  Infested swam like ripper fish into Justavi’s hard water net.

  Red filled red as he cast the net and the infested aside.

  “Behind us!”

  That was Abygale.

  “Come closer to me! We have to keep these things off Gossamare!”

  Ragay couldn’t tell if she listened.

  All he could do was keep going forward, focusing on Justavi’s armor-covered tail whipping every few seconds through the frothy wake.

  Faster and faster they went.

  “They’re ignoring the stingers!”

  Tagge this time.

  “Get off me!”

  He listened to her grunts and snarls unable to do anything but keep an eye on Gossamare.

  Her translucent blue flesh swelled in parts with dark red blooming down into her visible musculature.

  They passed under the playreef with its infested horde clawing at her net, tearing holes in the hard water.

  “Drop it, Gossamare!” he urged. “We’re clear! You need to bubble yourself!”

  “It is fine. My people are resistant to the stings.”

  He cursed, extending his bubble to engulf her, which cut the thin strand connecting her Sinaya’s Heart to the net.

  The playreef exploded like a hive of buzzstingers hit with a stick.

  Infested swam out and gave chase.

  The curtain of stinging tendrils grew thick enough that he could see nothing but white.

  He pushed forward.

  An impact cracked his hard water bubble.

  Multiple infested, half crushed, clawed and struck to get at him and Gossamare.

  The sight of the wriggling parasites dotting their flesh and spreading thin tendrils through their translucent red bodies had the bile rise up his throat.

  A dark shape rose from below.

  Massive and fast.

  It swam in front of Ragay.

  In its passing it wiped the infested off.

  Sharp clicks punched ahead.

  He swam in Sings Too Loud’s wake.

  Like the deep singers the huge oceanborn superficially resembled, Sings escorted smaller, weaker swimmers when dangerous predators were around.

  The water turned blue in an instant.

  Sings Too Loud turned away and plunged back into the red domain.

  Up ahead, Justavi fought a swimming battle with dozens of infested, spearing them with hard water and battering them with his tail while they tried and failed to penetrate his suit.

  Above, below and from all directions infested swam toward them like they were the bleeding deep singer he had helped free from the vile Merquani drylanders.

  Behind them and rapidly growing smaller was the huge sphere of red water.

  A massive ball of infested burst free.

  Within it were glimpses of deep, dark blue and something huge and gray.

  Abygale, Keisho and the boy shot free as if out of a drylander cannon.

  Their bubbles were cracked, but not broken.

  Tagge came out next, tumbling through the water like an iron ball from said cannon.

  The bait ball plunged toward the bottom of the massive chamber.

  It was so large that Ragay could barely make out what lay in the darkness without the light crystals.

  “That’s Sings in there,” he muttered. “What’s the tactical plan, leader?”

  Gossamare blinked at him with heavily-lidded eyes.

  It was always strange to him that he could still partially see her eyes through her lids.

  “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head.

  “This venom is more potent that what I have been acclimated against.”

  “About—” He cursed at the sudden group of infested in their path and closing rapidly.

  “Harden your bubble and swim through as fast as you can,” Gossamare whispered.

  It was a plan.

  So he obeyed and splattered infested against his hard water, punching through and closing on Justavi’s swimming battle as they neared their exit tunnel.

  Behind them the others fought through infested like a deep singer pod beset by a shiver of great blue deaths or a family of death singers.

  Below them clicks reverberated through the water, touching their insides uncomfortably.

  One could only imagine the damage Sings Too Loud did to his actual targets.

  The depths were dark hundreds of meters away and Ragay couldn’t see the outcome of the huge oceanborn’s solitary battle.

  “Ragay, you must get me to the doors controls. I must drain the tunnel for there will be more waiting for us.” Gossamare’s words came out soft and stilted.

  He could see the shadow of her heart beating faster than even in the middle of a strenuous training exercise.

  “Do you have anything to counter the venom?”

  She shook her head once, weakly.

  “We’ll get you to Miss Karagatan.”

  He put on a burst of speed, passing Justavi and the infested.

  “Keep them off our backs!”

  Justavi merely snarled in response as he sliced through a handful of infested with a hard water blade and turned to face the pursuers.

  Ragay dropped his bubble, but Gossamare struggled to swim to the door’s controls, forcing him to help her.

  Despite the cold water all around them her translucent skin felt warm in his hand.

  “A healing pill?”

  “This venom is organic and powerful. I believe it is made to react badly with traditional healing. I would only risk an anti-venom. Now, please let me focus.”

  He held her in place against the eddies with one hand while he scanned for approaching threats with his hooked staff and Sinaya’s Heart in the other.

  The others, minus Sings Too Loud reached them, bringing more infested in their wake.

  How many thousands had Malali held?

  It seemed to Ragay that they had all been infested and were bearing down on the potentials to add their paltry seven to the total.

  He willed hard water spears into existence and shot them downward at the infested creeping below like hunter crabs.

  Eyes widening he snapped a solid wall in place just in time to block the coruscating waves of sound focused into a tight beam with a diameter equal to his wrist.

  The cold brine frothed against his wall.

  Friction bred heat, which boiled the water.

  If it wasn’t clear before with the domain, the infested still had access to their Skills and spells.

  Gossamare wheezed.

  “The tunnels of our exit plan are draining. There will be an ambush in the waterlock chamber beyond this first door.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I couldn’t drain it.”

  “That’s okay. It’s not that big. There can’t be that many. We shall simply deal with them before entering.”

  Abygale and Keisho with the boy in tow joined them.

  The former fired off her own hard water spears while Justavi and Tagge swam in frenzied arcs drawing most of the infested while relying on their suits to keep the wriggling parasites out.

  The latter displayed the drawback of an open-faced helmet, sporting an ugly welt diagonally across his face.

  In a stroke of great luck, his eyes were untouched.

  “It’s fine. My looks aren’t the only thing I took from my father. I also received his constitution. Venom is nothing. Although, this one is rather potent…” he trailed off as he noticed Gossamare. “Oh no…”

  “I yet live,” she replied. “Worry not.”

  “We have to get her outside to Miss Karagatan.”

  “Yes, Ragay. Immediately, if I can feel the venom’s sting, then you must… no, focus. Try to slow your heart rate, Gossamare. It may slow the spread through your blood.”

  “I. Have. Been. Trying.”

  “Keisho, there is an ambush on the other side of this door. Can you deal with it?”

  “Yes, Ragay. But I must drop my protection around the boy.”

  The Malalian was as he had been the entire time. Curled up tightly into a ball with his eyes shut and hands over his earholes.

  “I will take him,” Gossamare said. She didn’t give them a chance to protest as she willed a bubble around the boy to replace Keisho’s. “Ready?”

  “Yes.” Keisho placed a hard water wall over the door’s rough, pitted surface.

  She tapped the console.

  The eye opened slowly.

  The infested ambush moved considerably faster.

  They were unprepared.