We look at each other. There is no brave camaraderie among us. There is only a shared, silent, paralyzing horror.
We are undeniably the brightest things in the entire ocean.
"Spread your line out," the Sergeant commands coldly, his fingers jabbing toward the empty abyss. "Stay exactly twenty lengths apart. Hover precisely ten lengths above the main infantry. Make sure the enemy sees you."
Ten lengths above the shields. Ten lengths of nothing between me and the crushing dark. We are going to be floating, isolated targets.
I swim slowly out to my assigned position, my tail still moving with a mechanical rhythm. I hover in the open water, dangerously exposed on all sides. Far below my fins, the main army hunkers down in the jagged rocks, their dark armor rendering them invisible against the basalt. Their heavy spears are ready to strike from the shadows.
I am nothing but a worm on a hook.
The Vanguard squad retreats into the jagged rocks far below me. They vanish completely, melting into the shadows. I am alone. The isolation is deafening. My fingers grip the useless knife at my side. My knuckles turn bone white against the rusted metal. The freezing water numbs my skin, a slow creeping death. My racing heart pounds a bruising rhythm against my ribs.
I search the pitch black void. My golden eyes strain to find shapes in the empty water. Every floating piece of kelp mimics a jagged dorsal fin. Every shifting shadow mimics a set of jaws. The waiting is psychological torture. The Council left me here to die. The dark takes its time to claim me.
Somewhere out there in the freezing black, they are waiting for us.
The Basalt-Kin.
My heart hammers.
Kael, I send the desperate thought into the void.Are you out there?
If he’s swimming in that dark swarm, will he even recognize my face?
Or will his venom-silenced mind only register a bright flash of red in the gloom and strike on pure, feral instinct?
Maybe it would be a profound mercy if he did. Maybe it would be better if his jagged teeth finally ended this nightmare. At least then, the very last sensation in this brutal world would be a touch I recognized.
"Movement in the dark!" a high sentry yells from the upper ridge.
The terrified cry cuts through the freezing water like a thrown spear.
"Twelve o'clock! They are coming in low!"
I squint my golden eyes into the pitch black.
At first, there is nothing. Only the gray, churning shift of the heavy deep-sea waters.
Then, the shadows detach themselves from the dark. They propel themselves. They cut through the heavy water with terrifying, muscular efficiency.
Massive gray shapes emerge from the gloom. They are completely silent.
Dozens approach. Maybe hundreds.
They are not swimming in a structured, predictable military formation. They are a chaotic, swirling swarm. They are a terrifying wall of pure muscle and jagged teeth moving upward as a single, hungry entity.
My breath catches painfully in my throat.
They are horrifyingly beautiful.
Even now, while terrified out of my mind, I see the brutal, ancient elegance of their bodies. They are the honest things Kael talked about in the cave. They are the violent, undeniable truth of the deep ocean.
And my people are the fragile, glittering lie about to be swallowed whole.
"Hold the line!" the Vanguard Commander shouts from the rocks far below me. "Do not strike until they engage the red signals!"
Engage the signals. The Commander's order is a vibration of death through the water.
