Suiteonem Prime, Malali, Dumakule, 213919

  “Guys!” Abygale hissed. “Gossamare just passed out!”

  Ragay flinched from his constant head swiveling.

  The dark waters of the tunnel behind him was… well… if he never saw dark waters in the inside of a tunnel again after they escaped, he’d count it as one of his life’s greatest treasures.

  Keisho grunted.

  “She’s a tough one. Much tougher than she looks and I thought.”

  The dark-skinned half-drylander inclined his head toward the unconscious Gossamare in what was a sign of great respect from his nation.

  Ragay was more concerned about her condition.

  “Check her vitals please, Abygale.”

  The Heart of Sinaya at the end of her hooked staff glowed brighter.

  “She’s… unconscious.” Abygale rolled her eyes at his narrowed ones. “I’m only good at the fighting stuff! You do it!”

  He did so.

  Gossamare, despite losing most of her arms and legs, was not in immediate danger.

  It was simply a matter of her body finally overpowering her will and shutting itself down for her own good.

  He told the others.

  “Wonderful for her, but it leaves us in the dark,” Keisho said.

  “So? Me and Ragay can see fine,” Abygale said. “Here, you take these two and I’ll take the lead.” She pulled Gossamare and the Malalian boy on their hard water tethers toward him.

  “I meant that Gossamare was the one with our path out of this cursed place.” Keisho sighed.

  “It’s a tunnel with one way to go,” Abygale scoffed.

  “Yes, but what do we do once we reach an end or an intersection? This detour has placed us in a place that I’m unfamiliar with even with my prior study of Malali’s map. Do either of you know more?”

  Ragay eyed Keisho, then Abygale.

  He had studied the map, but was currently well and truly lost.

  “I don’t know this tunnel or where it leads or how it connects to others. If we can find signs, then I might be able to reorient myself.” He shrugged.

  “As can I,” Keisho agreed.

  “You guys studied the map? Nerds…” Abygale rolled her eyes.

  “If you had done so as well then maybe we wouldn’t be lost,” Keisho said flatly.

  “Nah, I’m no good with studying.” Abygale pointed at Gossamare. “Let’s just keep following this tunnel and maybe she’ll wake up by the time we have to make a choice.”

  As ideas went, it was terrible, but Ragay didn’t have a better one.

  And it seemed neither did Keisho.

  The dark-skinned half-drylander gestured into the dark waters ahead with his blade-arm.

  “Then we continue forward.”

  Ragay swam in their wakes, keeping an eye on Gossamare and the boy, one blue floating limply in Abygale’s tether, the other red curled up into a ball face buried in his knees.

  Behind him, as always, lay still darkness.

  He didn’t know how long they swam in that silent oppression before they came to what he had been dreading.

  Another door.

  The circle was covered in writing.

  Malalian language.

  He only knew enough words to navigate the deep city thanks to those crammed studies in the less than a day Ms. Karagatan had given the potentials to prepare for the Quest.

  “Now what?” Abygale looked to him and Keisho. “She’s still not awake. We should wake her.” She dug into her pack for stimulants before Keisho laid a hand on hers.

  “Wait. Those are dangerous.”

  “Well, we can’t wait here with our fingers in our holes. Those infested are chasing us.”

  “And they might be on the other side of this door waiting for us to swim into them in our haste.”

  “Okay, well, that means we really need Gossamare to wake up and find out.”

  Ragay headed off the argument, pointing at the rather old and basic-looking control panel next to the door.

  “I don’t think that thing has camera access like the other ones.”

  Abygale gnashed her sharp teeth.

  “Then just open it and if we have to fight we fight. Going back isn’t an option. Unless it is and if that’s the case then you two aren’t as smart as I thought you were.” She glared at them as if they were to blame for their situation.

  He exchanged a glance with Keisho.

  The half-drylander shrugged.

  “We could wait. I don’t believe that they are—”

  Abygale groaned.

  “Don’t even!”

  As if the infested had been listening to their sub-vocal gem communications a red glow began to pulse at the far end of the cramped tunnel.

  The sharp bend was about fifty meters distant, which wasn’t that far all things considered.

  “Your. Fault.” Abygale stabbed a sharp-nailed finger toward Keisho’s forlorn face.

  Ragay didn’t waste anymore time.

  “Get ready for whatever’s on the other side!”

  He punched in the door code.

  It groaned open ponderously, revealing… nothing.

  He swam out into the much larger tunnel.

  Dark water in both directions.

  Nearly pitch black if not for the very dim emergency crystals interspersed in large intervals all around the circular tunnel.

  He was thankful that Malali had emergency lights.

  Even his eyes needed a little light to work with.

  True darkness would’ve left him as blind as a drylander.

  He scanned desperately for some tunnel signs and found them.

  “I think I know the way to where Gossamare was taking us.”

  He conferred with Keisho as Abygale helpfully yelled at them to hurry up as the red glow at their backs grew brighter.

  Yes, the door refused to shut despite her punching at the panel.

  The tunnel was one of the many smaller ones that ran somewhat parallel to each other until they intersected with the handful of much larger main tunnels that one could swim to reach every section of the deep city with as little wasted time as possible.

  Small was relative compared to the maintenance access tunnels they had been traveling in to escape the infested when this one was large enough for a great blue death to make leisurely turns in.

  “I think we can take an emergency tunnel to cut across and hit 2-13. That’ll take us closer to the exit,” Keisho said.

  Ragay didn’t look forward to swimming through one of the main tunnels.

  “It’ll mean a shorter swim to the exit,” he agreed.

  “Less time exposed.”

  “Guys! Swim that way!” Abygale pointed to their right.

  “Why?” Keisho scowled.

  “Oh…” Ragay saw what was to their left. “That’s why.”

  Red glowing around the gentle curve, pulsing brighter with growing urgency by the second.

  “I wish Miss Karagatan allowed us to bring weapons. Mines would be great right now,” Abygale sighed. “They would’ve been great this whole time.”

  “Ragay, you take the lead. I’ll take rearguard,” Keisho said.

  “No way!” Abygale whined. “Let’s switch. You carry these two. I’m the better fighter anyways.”

  “No time!”

  Keisho darted toward the red glow, swinging his blade arm.

  Ragay hadn’t caught it, but now he saw a shimmer in the dark water as if a shape swam toward them, pushing the water ahead of it like a blue death.

  An invisible blue death?

  Such a thing didn’t exist… as far as he knew.

  Keisho’s blade instantly sent a bloom of crimson billowing through the dark.

  A hidden Malalian appeared bisected at the waist.

  Even still, the infested man continued to reach out to grapple Keisho.

  “Stay away!” The half-drylander thrust his hooked staff forward, creating a fine-meshed net out of hard water to keep the infested Malalian and the wriggling parasites from reaching him. “Swim now, guys!”

  Ragay kicked, leg fins unfurled reflexively adding speed to the pull from the Heart of Sinaya dangling from the end of his hooked staff.

  He didn’t look back, trusting that the others were just behind.

  It seemed that the dark waters grew brighter with every meter he swam.

  Red glowed out of the corners of both his eyes. From the vents and intakes as they opened and closed, pulling in or expelling water as the system continued to circulate and clean for a city of the dead.

  He cursed.

  If the parasites were in the vents and were that close then he wasn’t going to have the time to open one of the access tunnels he passed periodically.

  And if they were that close then the odds were good that said tunnels were already filled with waiting infested and parasites.

  “We’re going to have to hit the main tunnel.”

  “It appears so,” Keisho said.

  Ragay breathed a sigh of relief.

  He didn’t dare slow down to look back. Didn’t dare take his eyes off the darkness ahead.

  Access tunnels to his left, right, above and below began to open, shining red out like searching lights. Searching for him and the others.

  “Arrgh! I can’t do anything else while I’m dragging these two!” Abygale groaned.

  “Do not let them go!” he snapped as he fired hard water spears into the tunnels, missing more than he hit.

  “What do you think I am!” she snarled. “I’ll die before I abandon Gossamare… and the boy, I guess…”

  The pause didn’t fill Ragay with trust, but there was no time to argue or even entertain a switch.

  At their speeds it was difficult and dangerous. Too easy to fumble. Plus, they couldn’t slow down as he caught sight on the periphery of infested swimming out of the access tunnels.

  “Keisho, you still okay back there?”

  “Yes, but you mustn’t slow down for anything.”

  “Not planning to.”

  The end of the side tunnel loomed ahead in a drastic widening of the mouth like a river opening up into the sea.

  “It’s wide open.”

  “That’s good. I wasn’t looking forward to slamming into the door,” Abygale said.

  “They left it open.”

  “Just shoot ahead. Fill the space with as much as you can. I swear…” she grumbled something inaudible through the communication gem.

  He did just that, filling the current he intended to take with a spread of hard water spears. Thin and short to give him greater numbers, which meant greater coverage.

  The dark waters rippled and filled with crimson blooming like flowers as infested appeared out of their camouflage riddled with hard water spears.

  He shifted tactics, willing a net into existence and using it like a plow to push them out of the way before they could hit him with a violent response.

  Ragay cast them aside.

  “Still with me.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I am!” Abygale said.

  “That was close, but I’m clear,” Keisho said a beat after.

  They were through and into a tunnel large enough for a deep singer where the last thing they expected to see greeted them.

  …

  Sings Too Loud, oceanborn, as though a deep singer had taken humanoid form. Enormous, stout, blubbery, but not fat. Strong and solid. Strongest of all the potentials by a wide margin.

  He tried not to panic.

  The infested Malalians struck, clawed and did their frenzied best to crack the armored shell of his landsuit.

  He had hoped that they could’ve been saved by Miss Karagatan for he had the softest heart amongst the potentials.

  Tears wept upon his gray-skinned cheeks for he killed Malalians with every move of his armored bulk.

  It was as though they dashed their softer bodies against an undersea mountain.

  He worried for his friends for they were no longer visible nor audible from his position inside the massive bait ball.

  He aimed his sonar toward the bottom of the massive chamber.

  The clicking sound wreaked havoc on living creatures. The powerful sound waves damaged all parts of the body, all the way down to the internal organs.

  The Malalians semi-translucent red flesh allowed him the most unpleasant sight of their insides rupturing.

  The dark liquid spreading everywhere reminded him of the gel-based practice dummies he had trained with in the past.

  Except this time it was living blood and not colored water.

  One locked eyes with him as she tore nails on his helmet’s clear faceplate in a futile attempt to force him to join in their hive mind thing.

  Probably.

  He had no idea if it was a hive mind that the wriggling eel-worm parasites did.

  It certainly seemed that way judging by the coordination and lack of sense of self-preservation they all displayed.

  The worst were the tiny children and babies that were in the throng, dashing themselves against his armored bulk and the rest.

  They were the softest.

  Sonar emerged from the hole in his helmet.

  A risk, since it had to briefly open, which gave the parasites a chance to reach him.

  No choice but to trust in the suit’s systems to alert him of invaders, then to trust in his tough skin to keep the parasites out long enough to come up with a plan. Which was to ram into something hard and hope that he squished the parasites against the suit and his skin.

  It wasn’t a plan he had confidence in.

  He had always thought that it wasn’t fair that they weren’t armed to the fullest. Miss Karagatan’s testing was unnecessarily draconian, regardless of what the others thought. To him it seemed that the prudent course of action was to maximize the potentials’ survivability. At least at this late stage with only the seven of them left from the many that began three years ago.

  Three years?

  It felt simultaneously like another lifetime ago and that it was just yesterday that he had been a naive boy with starstruck hope, simply happy to be close to his hero.

  He swam down pushing and dragging countless Malalians.

  Infested Malalians, he reminded himself, they aren’t what they were. What they’re supposed to be.

  His vision blurred through the tears as he slammed into the chamber’s coral-like floor.

  The dark water clouded with Malalian blood and body parts as his bulk flattened them like fruit between an anvil and a machine press. The kind they used to flatten metal.

  He spun and dragged his back like a deep singer trying to scrape off itchy barnacles.

  He hated those things, but he’d have traded a back full of them instead of the wriggling parasites slapping against his faceplate.

  Skills and spells struck, damaging his suit’s outermost layer of armor.

  Thankfully, he had selected the heaviest, thickest possible.

  Sound waves vibrated him, but the suit was built to handle it and if that failed? Well, he could handle it too.

  He cried out in response, tearing apart a wide swathe of infested Malalians in a cone above his forehead.

  If only he could see how his friends were faring high above, but there was nothing but glowing red between him and them. He hoped that he was buying them enough time to escape.

  As for himself?

  He could swim around the massive chamber.

  The infested clearly couldn’t breach his suit.

  He had time.

  Miss Karagatan would surely save him.

  The worst part was all the killing he would have to do in the meantime.

  It wasn’t fair to the innocent Malalians.

  …

  Justavi and Tagge swam in frenzied arcs, using hard water weapons and the claws on their landsuits to cut the infested. Their ferocity drew the bulk of the attention away from the others waiting on the door to open.

  The latter couldn’t hide her feral grin.

  There had been too much swimming and hiding for her.

  This?

  The fighting. The blood.

  This was what she liked the most.

  The claws on her landsuit had been customized to copy her own.

  Thus, it felt like she wasn’t wearing anything at all as she sliced through an infested.

  Their soft skin and flesh parted like gelatin.

  She filed that thought away for future fights with Gossamare.

  Yes.

  She did often think and plan about how a true battle to the death would go for each of the potentials.

  Not that she looked forward to such on a personal level.

  She held no true animosity to any of them.

  Indeed, she liked Gossamare for the girl’s lack of condescension to her, which was the opposite of Justavi, who was all about condescension.

  Still, they were all part of a battle bevy that had drawn and shed blood together. And that counted a lot for her.

  “What’s so funny?” Justavi’s voice sounded like he was really gritting his weird conical teeth.

  “What?”

  “I can hear you giggling like some kind of pervert.”

  “I am not!”

  Was she?

  Yes, she might giggle and even laugh unconsciously while doing her favorite things.

  Which was battle, battle and battle, in that order.

  But a pervert?

  So condescending.

  She rolled her eyes and kept smiling as she gutted an infested with one hand will spraying hard water shards from her Heart of Sinaya with the other.

  Hands grappled her, but the suit’s armor and her natural landborn strength ripped her free.

  A thump boomed and suddenly had her flailing.

  “Whu—”

  Clear air surrounded her for a moment.

  A bubble inside the dark water.

  Red flashed all around her.

  Then she fell with a splash right in to a glowing maw.

  “Tagge!” Justavi snarled.

  Teeth like swords gnashed and scraped against her armor.

  It was like being inside a whirlpool of swords.

  Somehow, she kept her hold on her hooked staff.

  Instinct combined with focus.

  Something she wasn’t capable of before starting her training with Miss Karagatan.

  The Heart of Sinaya swirled.

  Its dark surface bubble like a pot of water simmering until erupting into a boiling mass of jagged spines that shot in every direction except toward her.

  Tagge burst forth with a triumphant whoop from the giant deep sea angler’s ruin of a head.

  “Hey, Justavi! I just discovered that the infested can still use their Skills or spells!”

  “Yeah, Tagge. We already knew that,” he replied flatly.

  “Did we? But, look at this thing.” She gestured at the dead creature slowly drifting away vaguely to the bottom of the massive chamber. “Has to be a high level summoner to bring out a flesh and blood creature that doesn’t disappear after I slaughtered it.”

  “Or it’s not a summoner, but a pet master.”

  “Well, did you see it earlier? Cause I didn’t.”

  “No, but it’s a little difficult to see much of anything besides this damned red glow!” he snarled. “Stop talking to me and keep fighting or I will curse you with my river god’s worst curses!”

  “This is why I like you the least.” She sighed and got back to it.

  …

  Justavi thrashed his tail.

  It was already a deadly weapon on its own despite him having lost a chunk at the end. It was made even deadlier by the landsuit armor and the addition of blades, spikes and sharp bits Miss Karagatan had allowed him to add.

  He had complaints about being sent into this river of death with a minimum of weapons and defensive systems.

  The suit was capable of so much more than just allowing a landborn air-breather like him to swim around in the ocean depths.

  Not that he’d ever say them out loud.

  Miss Karagatan was the Karagatan.

  She knew what she was doing regarding their training and the results were undeniable.

  The him of today would destroy the him of three years ago with or without the Heart of Sinaya.

  “Hey, Justavi. Why do they call them landsuits when we’re using them to swim down here,” Tagge said in a breathless voice in between that creepy giggling. “I’d have called them seasuits or oceansuits or watersuits. Not wetsuits though. That sounds dumb.”

  He tail-whipped a group of infested, wincing at the two small children he utterly destroyed.

  Not his fault.

  They had hoped to save the Malalians, but they had to survive to be able to save them.

  Getting infested meant that no one had a chance.

  He willed a copy of the animal that his type of landborn took their strength and some of the appearance from.

  Massive hard water jaws snapped conical teeth over three infested.

  Soft, translucent flesh burst like old fruit, spreading crimson through the dark water.

  An eerie sight in his helmet’s lights.

  He had tried using them as a weapon earlier.

  Malali was a deep city and its people were adapted to the darkness.

  Imagine his disappointment when shining lights in their eyes didn’t even make them flinch.

  More of a sign that they were beyond saving.

  Though, he kept that thought to himself.

  It served nothing to share it with Gossamare and that one un-infested boy they had managed to find.

  The construct whipped its tail, smashing infested as it swam, rolled and bit in a circle around Justavi, buying him a brief respite.

  For some reason he answered Tagge’s inane line of questioning before he could stop himself from entertaining her blabberjaw nonsense.

  “It was first invented to allow soft-bodied deep sea dwellers to explore the above water lands. Hence calling it ‘landsuit’. Allowing us to explore the depths was a convenient additional benefit.”

  He looked up.

  At least the helmet’s sense enhancing features couldn’t be removed.

  Despite the lack of light and distance he could see that his fellow potentials were no longer in front of the door. Neither did he see their body parts. And the infested were all swimming down toward him and Tagge.

  “Looks like they made it through okay.”

  “Huh?”

  “The others— never mind. It’s time we take care of our own escape.”

  “Huh?”

  “We can’t fight them all, Tagge.” He sighed.

  “I bet I can! They’re barely scratching my landsuit.”

  He could hear her roll her eyes.

  The thought made him grimace.

  That meant he was getting to know Tagge too well.

  Like she was one of his best friends.

  Which couldn’t be allowed.

  It had always been on his mind that the other potentials would eventually be a threat one day to his goal of becoming the next Karagatan.

  Kelp and coral suddenly appeared around him.

  A spell or Skill?

  It didn’t matter.

  Binding ropes and a barred cage.

  Not strong enough to challenge the Heart of Sinaya.

  Like Tagge he willed an expanding spiked sphere of hard water with him at the center.

  “Copier!” she laughed.

  “Just… c’mon, let’s join up with Sings.”

  Tagge burst downward past him with her powerful kicks and the propellers on her suit.

  “Race you!” she whooped.

  “We’re not— it’s not a competition.” He finished softly as he gave chase.

  Red lights flashed all around them as spells and projectiles cut through the dark water.

  Justavi grit his teeth at the impacts.

  He trusted the armor, but not as much as Tagge did.

  …

  Miss Karagatan floated in front of the unfortunate Malalians.

  A huge mass of them in a perfectly ordered sphere.

  Like a bait ball, if an unnatural one.

  Bait balls were ever in motion.

  This one remained in place despite the current in one of the deep city’s main tunnels.

  Large enough for a deep singer to not feel claustrophobic.

  She had to think about it but she was certain that there wasn’t an underwater craft built by any of the drylander nations with the technological knowledge and ability that wouldn’t fit with plenty of room to spare.

  Not that she’d ever allow one of those polluting things of iron to, well, pollute Malali.

  The city could still be saved for others.

  Sadly, it was too late for its current population.

  Except for the one boy her potentials had managed to rescue.

  They seemed to be doing okay, so she withdrew from giving them her full attention to focus on the parasite.

  The main one, the source, was somewhere in the massive ball.

  “How many times is this?” She regarded it with an impassive gaze. “You aren’t one of Suiteonem’s mind raping worms. I determined that with certainty two infestations ago. What I don’t know is if you are new or are connected to the previous incidents. I was always thorough in my exterminations, but I can’t discount that a piece of you escaped. Or is the true source hidden in a place I can’t reach? The oceans are impossibly large. And Sinaya makes no mention of you. Never has. Does that mean that you are beneath her notice? Not a true threat to her people?”

  A susuration flowed through the glowing red ball.

  Not a true answer, she felt.

  It never spoke to her after the first incident, only to others.

  Those it deemed weaker, those it could infest and subsume.

  “Or you’re a test? No. You are a test. Survivors level. Those that defeat you level.”

  The currents shifted.

  Imperceptibly to those that weren’t the Karagatan.

  “Taking my students won’t protect you. There is no hope. Not for you. There never was. There is nothing in the waters of this world that Sinaya cannot reach and touch. She is. And I am her instrument.”

  The ball broke apart.

  It was a dazzling sight of flashing red light and perfectly choreographed movement meant to hypnotize, daze and dizzy depending on the angle of viewing.

  It left no impression on her.

  She carried Sinaya’s Heart, she carried Sinaya’s Will.

  The constant oath Sinaya sang in her thoughts blared in response. A choir of deep singers worshiping in the temple that was the oceans.

  The parasites had lost from the moment of its birth or creation for they were in the waters and that belonged to Sinaya.

  The Karagatan destroyed them all in an instant explosion of hard water violence.

  All that remained was a spreading bloom of crimson.

  All except one.

  The source of the infestation.

  A Malalian.

  That she trapped in a bubble.

  She ignored it as her potentials swam up to her with wide eyes and gaping mouths, except for one.

  Her eyes narrowed at Gossamare.

  Still unconscious.

  Minus points, but the girl was still well in the positive from her previous accomplishments.

  Good leadership in terms of strategy and tactics.

  She should’ve opted for a landsuit to protect her more vulnerable deep dweller body.

  All of them should have.

  Pride, homesickness.

  Emotional things that had no place in a Karagatan.

  She’d work it into the debriefing and lessons to follow.

  But for now they had been traumatized and needed positive reinforcement.

  “Well done, potentials. Leave Gossamare and the Malalian sole survivor with me.”

  “Miss Karagatan, Sings, Tagge and Justavi are still out there,” Ragay said.

  “They are making their way here. And when they arrive I shall give you your orders.”

  “Miss Karagatan are there still other survivors?” Keisho said.

  She docked him a few points for missing the implication in her words.

  “If there were?”

  The dark-skinned half-breed straightened.

  “We must safeguard them immediately.”

  “If there aren’t?”

  “That is yet to be determined.” He hesitated. “Unless you have already…”

  “Unfortunately, this boy is the sole survivor.”

  “Then what else do we have to do?” Abygale said.

  She docked the pale-scaled and skinned girl a few points for the obvious fear and desire to leave Malali immediately.

  “The city must be scoured of any remaining parasites.”