Chapter 137: Sea-Born

Chapter 137: Sea-Born

Seros swam down as a ghost through the currents. n0ve(l)bi(n.)co/m

Tail flicking and webbed claws tearing at the depths, he slipped past the evening-dark waters and into the grey-blue far below, to the base of the mountains that housed his target. It could not be truly called shelter, really, even for one like him who had spent much of his life in a rocky crevice and thought it paradise; the mountain had been notched, a strip carved out and hollowed near the base, with a city shoved into the place left behind.

The merrow had never been unconquerable, even past when they had opened a new hell into the dungeon, but Seros had at least thought they'd be more capable than this. A cold world, tucked away from the sun and the current, deep below a fragile kind of existence. There was still no mana here, nothing but empty grey and a drag against his scales, the tug of a current without a dungeon to guide it. What existence was that?

And what existence was the force behind the current he could feel, in a part of his brain that murmured only into gentle blue-green for the blessing of the depths? Not the Otherworld, not the dungeon, he knewbut some twisted reflection. A mockery.

He shook his head, bubbles twining through his fangs, and entered Arroyo. The merrow haven, land of their birth; where they lived and fought and died.

The city was barely standing.

Seros knew destruction; he'd seen the wreckage caused by the high invasion, where fifty souls marched in with death on their minds; he'd watched the dungeon carve through stone with deliberation or shriek and wreak havoc until the mountains trembled. And this city had felt all of that and morea shell of a place, still standing with none of the deliberation that needed to some with it. Just husks, where memories of life had existed.

What had happened here?

Movement, from the corner of his eyes.

Seros whipped around, tail lashing and claws out. Nothing.

The last remnants of Otherworld mana hummed in his chest.

He paused, letting the current tug him further along; another flicker of movement below, a reflection off something further within, but he kept his gaze fixed forward. The light didn't move, didn't reappear further within. Just one flash and then gone, the only lasting effect being a curl of mana, slowly filtering through the surrounding water.

It was an illusion. There wasn't a merrow therethere had never been one. Seros twisted, rotating around with eyes narrowed; but every flash of scales and pale light was nothing. The tunnels stayed empty; the dens stayed hollow. A lifeless city in what had once been something sprawling and enormous.

where were they?

Seros had come to investigate, to scrape the mystery free from the marrow, but excitement in his chest was from the hunt. The kill, if he could find one deserving from it, something to test his fangs against before dragging their corpse back to the dungeon. And when he'd been near the surface, hovering in the cradled arms of a current that didn't seem to listen to him, he'd seen movement. Flash of scales and a many-armed beast, slinking from tower to tower, grey stone against the darkened overhang.

But now that he was here, there was nothing. Just shadows and their memories.

A rumble built in his chest.

He stopped looking for movement and looked instead at what was leftat the towers, spiraling upward and out, the majesty of pillars that would never again reach the peaks they had once been. Delicate strands reaching up, anchored to stone above and below, with holes for traversal but now holes from powerful blows carved through their supports until they broke beneath them. Furrows, plowed into fields of sand. Grey stone blackened and warped under power.

Ruin and rubble, riddle and raze.

Familiar.

Seros' tail lashedhe had felt fear for his life until he was elevated beyond it, when mortal worries stayed in the hands of those who perished beneath his claws and fangs. When the dungeon with its unconquerable power wove together stone into paradises from the corpses of those fallen.

But there had been one such corpse that had not received a victory upon its death. One that had only brought fear back from the death he had torn from it.

A corpse black and endless, with twin maws.

Pitch-shark.

This wasn't what it had wrought, what destruction it had leveled within the dungeonbecause he knew that what it had fought had been young. It had to be, to fit through the entrance at all, the dungeon had told him; that what information learned from its corpse had said the one he encountered was little more than a youngling chosen for how small it was.

What had happened here was more.

An adult.

Seros didn't feel fear. He didn't allow it, not with his power, not with the dungeon.

And so it wasn't fear that made him latch onto the closest tower and splay his neck around, tendrils of mana racing out from his scales as he sought to see if anything was around. Any last remainder from the carnage.

From the old carnage, in truth. Ruin and rubble, but the kelp forest had returned, and the place had been swept clean of jagged edges until water-softened ones remained. No, this destruction hadn't been recent, though he didn't know enough about ocean patterns to know how long ago it was. But long enough for the merrow to move elsewhere and fake living here.

Where had they gone?

Anything to flee the pitch-shark, that much he could attest to; but close enough to leave their spells here, to still invade the dungeon en force and trade with Calarata. What could they have left behind to show where they went, without being enough to summon back the pitch-shark?

His thoughts roiled at the memory. But he knew the pitch-shark had eaten mana, drained its surroundings to desiccated husks of corrosionso perhaps it was magical. They could leave a mana-filled trail, content in the fact that the pitch-shark would destroy it with its presence long before it could discover where it led.

Seros paused.

There was no stopping in open water, but he stopped deliberately holding his position stillhe drifted up and around as his head swiveled in towards the sound, eyes narrowing. It hadn't been the screeches or the click-language, without words or understanding, but something older.

He didn't know what.

The merrow's white-ringed eyesand not white like humans, with colours intermixed and sharpened, just pure white with drops of black in the centernarrowed, its clawed hands raising. It rumbled again, something deep and thrumming. Almost melodic.

Almost like a song.

Seros flicked his tail and drifted down, doing his damnedest to seem composed despite how the current fought against him. The merrow's eyes locked onto his, despite being half of his size, a batifish against the predatorbut it rumbled like a song, and it spoke to him. Not words. He had never seen any point in words, in the fleeting construction of sounds for organizationmeaning would come where meaning was needed.

And the rumble had meaning. Faint, indistinct, coming through murky watersbut a feeling of wariness. Tension. Battle-ready.

Not a challenge, but a statement. The merrow was not one to flash its stomach, even though it must have known there was no chance for it to survive against a draconic monitor.

The last time he'd fought merrow, it had been in the murk of the Underlake, with a goddess-made whirlpool and dungeon-fed mana. Seros had been a god there, undefeatable, a monster of teeth and claws.

But here, surrounded by currents that listened to a song apart and waters without easy obedience to his calls, Seros was no longer above and beyond. He was no longer the first Named, not to this merrow that had no idea of the honour.

But just because it was not his home, did not make him weak.

A life he had spent weak. This merrow would not be the one to take that from him, no matter how quickly and lithely it moved through open watersit had secrets, secrets of the sea, and Seros would claw them from its corpse.

The dungeon had sent him to the cove to learn the seato learn that which he would become. Already he had seen the majesty of the cove's size, felt the disobedience of the currents, heard the murmur of a distant, ancient song.

Seros would not fail.

The merrow saw this, perhaps, widening its white-ringed eyesand then it turned, tail lashing, and disappeared into the kelp. Trusting whatever defense was within to protect it.

He pursued.

-

The beast wasn't sea-born.

Cssio darted through the bloodline kelp like the night itself chased him, wave-warden gripped tight in his fist and every drop of mana urging the current to take him faster; he could hear it behind him, the savage speed of a monster, even one untrained and fumbling.

Katharra below, why did this happen to him?

It had been as it always had been; swimming through the remains to harvest the nets they set up in Katharra's currents, for his goddess to deliver them what food she felt they deserved. Expertly hidden, tucked away in corners and crevices, both to hide from the prey and the predators; for Arroyo could not be discovered. Not again.

Arroyo was less than a sea turtle's shell, a shattered piece of legacy now little more than a shield. Great, once, and every memory of that greatness made raw by its current lack; by the fragile hope that perhaps one day they could reach those heights again.

But not now, and not while the tyrant who called himself Lord lived in the cove above.

So Cssio crept through murky waters to the surface above and took fish below to his people, through endless disguises and defenses and an existence that didn't feel like existing. Survival.

But now there was a beast. One of the sea, with blue-green scales and water attunement and the faintest grasp of the sea-tongue, but it wasn't sea-born; it didn't know the push and the pull of currents, didn't know how to movement and twist, trying to stay locked in place. What would have seemed like a harpoon loosed from a hunter's hand to terrestrial creatures was clumsy ungainliness as it swam, no true knowledge, no understanding of where control ended and the Song began.

To be discovered was a dangerous thing. Fatal, if it came to that.

Arroyo would not be discovered by a beast like this.

Cssio reached out and grasped for the Song, for the melody Katharra offered with the love of an ancient. The currents opened before him, tugging him to followone spiraling up, one curling around and out of the bloodline kelp, a third twisting through the old shattered towers.

But no.

The beast was not sea-born; it didn't know the Song, know the call of the inevitable, know that the world gave what she gave and all there was to do was respond. Sing back the Song.

Cssio darted down into the hidden current, the one protected by Katharrathe one that headed down into the true Arroyo, past the faade shown to the outsiders, to the Dread Pirate and his monsters.

Let the beast meet the true power of the sea-born.

Let the beast meet its end.