World Warden, page 39
None of the wurl walked away. If anything, they projected firm determination more clearly than before, as well as a desire to accompany them. Narev approached Elias, and Vanor walked over to Tristan’s side. Siv waded into the water and looked back in a clear invitation.
“Looks like they want to come with us,” Tristan observed.
“Okay. As a team.”
Elias climbed onto Narev’s back, and Tristan did the same on Vanor. Gripping Sizzra’s spine tightly in his right hand, Elias directed his thoughts at the wurl.
Let’s go.
Vanor and Narev walked into the water. They began to swim after Siv.
Elias was nervous, and he tried to be on high alert. He looked everywhere around him as they swam but saw nothing threatening. Their destination was barely a couple of kilometers away, according to his link, and he expected to be there in a few minutes. As they quickly approached, Elias kept scanning the water.
It was a rather beautiful place they were crossing. The Spine wurl were swimming over the continental shelf that Elias had identified with help from his link, and as a result of the low depth to the seafloor, the water was a sparkling medley of aqua, emerald, and light blue. It looked like the waterfront of an expensive beach resort on one of the settled worlds, a magnificent seascape fit to be immortalized in a painting, a destination worth crossing half the world to reach.
A few meters below, Elias could see a veritable forest of coral covering the shallows, the sessile organisms sporting a breathtaking array of different shapes. The sections of seafloor not covered by coral had white sand instead, which reflected the morning light in a striking way. The water was so clear that Elias had no trouble looking all the way down, and it felt to him as though he were in a huge outdoor aquarium or a natural swimming pool of sorts that should have been teeming with life. Some of the coral even grew out of the water, making incredible sculptures of natural origin that had been carved by erosion over millennia. A few of the coral columns spread out at the top, looking like irregular rocky tables balancing precariously on flimsy foundations, their sun-facing surfaces green and lush. Many sported capricious geometric shapes that were odd yet entrancing, and the entire place looked like the epitome of what an ocean paradise should be.
Except for the fact that something was missing.
That’s odd, Elias thought as Narev sped through the water with a graceful paddling motion aided by his muscular tail. There are no fish.
The submerged coral reef was devoid of anything that moved. There were no small crustaceans scuttling about, no fish darting in and out of cover. It was odd and slightly disquieting. Even out over the open ocean Elias had frequently seen fish swimming about, and the Spine wurl had never had trouble finding something to eat. Here, however, there was nothing. Even the coral looked odd. Although beautifully shaped, Elias realized now that most of it, both above and below the water, was white, bleached.
Dead.
Almost as if sensing his stress, Vanor and Siv approached so all three wurl would be swimming very close to one another in a tight formation.
“What’s wrong, Eli?” Tristan asked. The place was so quiet that his voice carried easily.
“There’s nothing here,” Elias answered, pointing all around him. “No life.”
“Maybe this is how it’s supposed to look.”
Elias shook his head. “No. Something’s wrong. This is the place where the second Flower rests. It should be the epicenter of life in the ocean. Instead, it’s… it looks abandoned. Like a disease took hold and killed everything.”
“Okay. Stay alert, whatever happens.”
The atoll was fast approaching. The closer they got, the more nervous Elias felt. He avoided looking directly at their final destination, in fact, and only realized they had arrived when Narev grunted and climbed onto solid ground.
“By the generation ship,” Tristan said under his breath. He pointed with his shock spear. “Eli, that’s….”
Unable to avoid looking anymore, Elias took in the entire scene in a single glance.
They were standing on a very narrow strip of land that was almost perfectly triangular. It appeared to have been made out of the coral reef, and it was about ten paces wide although very long, each one of its three sides spanning a considerable distance of at least half a kilometer from end to end. Sparse vegetation grew on it, but it looked brittle, and it crumbled underfoot when the three wurl walked closer to the other edge.
The other side overlooked a chasm.
The change in the color of the water was shocking. Behind them, the water was a gentle shade of blue-green. In front of them, however, the water inside the triangular atoll was the shade of the sky at dusk, a deep indigo that darkened with shocking suddenness. In places it was almost black, and the contrast was not only stark but also mildly threatening.
“Why is it like that?” Tristan asked quietly. “Why is the water so dark?”
“There must be a huge abyssal pit underneath,” Elias explained, trying to remain rational despite the fact that he was shaken for a reason he could not quite place. “Behind us the water is not very deep. Five or so meters at most. And here? It could be thousands of meters. This chasm could lead all the way down to the blackest depths of the ocean floor. There’s no knowing how far this goes.”
“And…,” Tristan began, and his voice, usually so steady, shook slightly. “At the center, there….”
Elias lifted his gaze and met the object at the center of the world, unblinking. “That’s the Flower of the Deep.”
The wurl made a sound very close to a whimper. All three of them stood stock-still, looking ahead. Elias remained motionless next to Tristan, finding himself unable to do anything except gaze at the second nexus of life on New Skye.
The Flower that rose from the ocean had the exact same shape as the Flower that grew on a windswept mountaintop, and yet it was completely different in almost every way. Where the Flower that Sizzra had once guarded had sported iridescent petals of white and green and light pink, shifting endlessly in the light, this Flower had petals that mirrored the ever-changing shades of the gold-plated radiance of the sun. The Flower glistened, its petals dripping moisture as if covered by water, although they were rising out of the waves. Immediately below it, three thick vines were partially visible before they disappeared into the depths below, a perfect mirror of the vines that had connected the other Flower to the rest of the world.
Elias could feel its energy. It was not like before, when he had been entirely cut off from the world as an alien and had been able to hold the Life Seed in his hands. He was now part of the world, and he felt the power coming from the Flower. He understood perfectly why the Spine wurl did not want to approach any farther.
No creature should ever touch the Flowers, none of them. Not even their guardians.
“It’s calling me,” Elias said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It wants….”
Narev, still carrying Elias on his back, took a step forward. Then another one. He did not want to, and Elias was not sure whether he wanted to be there, but the call was urgent, impossible to ignore. Vanor moved as well, as did Siv.
Together, the three wurl crossed the narrow atoll and jumped into the dark waters that surrounded the Flower.
At the same instant, one adult and two juvenile Singers discarded their camouflage and flickered into view, revealing the fact that they had been lurking beneath the water’s surface. They screamed and launched themselves at the intruders with grasping tentacles writhing.
“Incoming!” Tristan shouted, an instant before madness broke out.
The three Singers were like living bullets that shot straight for the Spine wurl. Elias had only a moment to register their attack before Narev used all of his strength to propel himself to the right, barely avoiding one of the juveniles that came, jaws gnashing, within centimeters of Elias’s leg.
Watch out! Elias thought, urging Narev to swing forward just as the second of the juveniles came upon them. One of his tentacles reached out to grab Elias, but Narev was able to avoid him by coiling his body and submerging himself as he powered down through the water with his tail.
Elias gasped as he was completely submerged along with his ride. The water felt different, as if saturated with something foul. It pressed all around him and appeared to want to take something important away.
He opened his eyes underwater and caught a glimpse of something that luminesced faintly in the deep dark, an afterimage of light blue in the blackness all around, but Narev twisted in the water at that moment, and Elias was forced to shut his eyes tight and hang on to Narev’s scales with all of his strength.
The two of them burst out of the water, and Elias looked around wildly, taking stock of the situation. He could not see Vanor or Tristan, and Siv was trying to keep one of the juveniles at bay.
Ahead of them, the adult Singer appeared out of his shroud of invisibility and roared.
Elias recognized him by the silver spine still embedded in his neck. He was a terrifying vision, a powerful creature of the ocean who radiated strength and deadly agility.
Narev stopped his forward motion with an effort, attempting to swim to the side, but the Singer reached forward with its two front tentacles, aiming for Elias. He was too fast. There was no time to move away.
Narev’s entire body stiffened underneath Elias as Narev fired two spines that whistled through the air and met their mark an instant later, piercing the flesh at the tip of each of the two tentacles that had been about to grab Elias.
The Singer howled, and the sound paralyzed Elias momentarily. He fought against it with everything he had until he was able to move again.
The atoll! he told Narev. We have the upper hand if we fight them on land!
Narev understood and swam away at once, aiming for the nearest sliver of land, but he was cut off by a juvenile. He swerved, avoiding another tentacle from an unseen source, and swam as fast as he could across the depths of the atoll and toward the shore at the far end.
The Singers pursued. Elias could only hold on, and he glimpsed both Vanor and Tristan chasing, trying to help, but they were too far away to do anything.
Narev scrambled onto the atoll and whirled about, roaring out his own grating defiance. Elias jumped off him and whipped out Sizzra’s spine, assuming a fighting stance.
“We don’t have to do this!” he shouted out over the water, hoping against hope that the mad creatures about to come upon them would understand. “We don’t have to fight!”
Three Singers went invisible and dived under. Behind them, Vanor and Siv were in hot pursuit.
“Where…?” Elias began.
This question was answered immediately when big splashes to his left and right indicated that at least two of the Singers had surfaced again and were climbing onto the atoll on either side, still invisible, but betrayed by the dents their heavy bodies made on the brittle grass and the narrow sand-covered platform.
Thwock!
Narev fired a spine at the nearest Singer. It struck the creature, who howled in pain and shuddered into view.
“Eli!” Tristan shouted, close enough to be heard. Elias glanced in his direction in time to see the adult Singer appear suddenly, fully visible, and slap the water with his tentacles as he blocked the way, preventing Vanor, with Tristan on his back, from approaching.
To his right, Elias heard something slither very close.
He slashed at the air with his spine. It caught on something, and an instant later the second juvenile became visible with a brief spurt of hot red blood. It had been about to grab Elias with a tentacle, but the creature backed away from the spine in his hand.
“Stop this!” Elias shouted, swiping with his weapon to make the creature back away further. “We aren’t your enemies!”
A roar behind him yanked his attention in that direction. Narev jumped out of the way of the Singer on the other side, coiling his body into a ball. He fired two more spines, but the Singer leaped into the water and avoided them. Narev landed on the ground, hard, and roared again at the juvenile still on land, who Elias was trying to fend off.
There was commotion in the water, but Elias could not look. The Singer in front of him was not going away. He approached again, his tentacles dodging Elias’s swipes, reaching, intending to grab.
There were too many tentacles. Elias sidestepped one, punched another one away, but the third one slithered under his weapon and coiled around his waist.
Vanor came out of nowhere. He fired a spine that struck the creature in the shoulder, and it screamed.
No, Elias thought, flinching as though he had been hit. This isn’t right.
“Eli!” Tristan yelled, jumping off Vanor’s back and running at him. Siv launched himself out of the water an instant later and landed next to Vanor. Together, the three Spine wurl retreated until they were standing back to back, surrounding Elias and Tristan in a protective triangle of dozens of upright, quivering spines ready to fire and kill.
The adult Singer opened its segmented maw and screamed again. It was not a song, but he was still terrifying as he propelled himself out of the waves created by his own motion and landed with a tectonic tremor on the atoll before Vanor, his barnacle-encrusted body a wall of muscle and scales. The two other juveniles retreated to the water but remained close, blocking every avenue of escape.
Elias clearly felt the burning determination in Narev, Siv, and Vanor as they prepared for a fight to the death. There was no fear, only defiance and a fierce challenge from which there was no backing off.
They are going to die protecting us, he realized.
The fully grown Singer opened his segmented maw again, exposing his rows upon rows of needle teeth.
“This is wrong,” Elias said under his breath.
The Singer moved forward immediately in front of Vanor, almost as if he sensed that Vanor was the strongest of the Spine wurl.
“You’re right,” Tristan said suddenly. “We have to stop this.”
The two male wurl in their prime looked at each other for an eternal, fragile second. Then they attacked.
“No!” Tristan shouted at the top of his lungs, and with a last look at Elias, he ran forward, faster even than Vanor, and stood immediately in front of the adult Singer wurl with shock spear in hand.
“Tristan!” Elias screamed.
Tristan lifted his shock spear, its deadly ends sizzling with electricity. The creature in front of him appeared to recognize he was holding a weapon and reared its entire front body on four of its tentacles, using the other two to slash at the air.
“Tristan, duck!”
Instead, Tristan tossed his only weapon aside.
Elias watched, horrified, as the shock spear sailed through the air and fell to the ground, inert. Tristan stood defenseless against a creature as large as Vanor with no means of defense. The Singer fell forward onto all six of his tentacles and rushed the last few meters to where Tristan stood.
Tristan did not move away.
Elias watched, shocked, as the Singer stopped and did not attack.
“We’re here,” Tristan said in a loud, clear voice. “I don’t know if you can understand me, but we are here. Whatever the reason you brought us to this place, we can help.”
“Tristan!” Elias yelled again, and jumped over Narev’s tail to run to where Tristan was standing.
“It’s okay, Elias,” Tristan told him without breaking eye contact with the Singer adult. “I finally understand. These wurl never attacked us. All they wanted was to bring us here.”
Elias’s eyes flicked between Tristan and the Singer, who remained where he was, his massive scaly chest heaving, his eye cluster fixed on Tristan almost as if he were able to understand. “What?”
“The first time we saw one. A Singer. Remember?”
“At the river,” Elias answered, sparing a nervous glance backward. The three Spine wurl were standing at attention, ready to fight, but the Singer juveniles behind them were also standing still. It was surreal, almost as if somebody had paused a scene in the middle of a video or frozen time.
“Right,” Tristan confirmed. “A juvenile. He didn’t attack us. He attacked the Flyers.”
Elias remembered the event well. “We were paralyzed by the song.”
“Yes, but the Singer did not attack us. He scared the Flyers away and killed one.”
“But at the beach….”
“They were trying to lure you to them. He, specifically,” Tristan said, lifting his finger to point at the adult Singer in front of them. The creature made a low sort of gurgle with its throat in response to the gesture. “That’s why you were having the dreams. But Narev intervened.”
Elias looked at the spine still embedded on the side of the creature’s neck. “That night, in the darkness, I thought Narev had saved me.”
“I think that’s why they lured Narev away later,” Tristan continued. “To separate him from you so they would be able to get you.”
“But there was a battle. On the ocean maw,” Elias countered. “So many died.”
“And yet Singers did not attack us directly, only the Flyers. Think back. They were protecting us, Eli.”
“Protecting us? But….” He remembered the carnage. The chaos. And yet, not once during that entire interaction had a Singer attacked him directly. In fact, now that he thought about it, the Singers had killed all of the Flyers and then left after the sonic bomb had gone off.
“Finally, they did not attack us when we were on the ocean maw, even though we were very vulnerable,” Tristan explained. “It made no sense to me. Why avoid us when we were so weak we could barely stand? And just now. They could have paralyzed all of us with a song, but they haven’t done so. Why?”
Elias took a step forward. “Why?”
Elias did not let go of Sizzra’s spine, but he raised his other hand, palm outstretched, and stepped forward again.
Why? he asked with his mind, attempting to reach the creature in front of him.
Another step forward.
