39. Chapter 39

Captured by a bunch of sirens. I should have been mortified, instead my emotions ran in a mix between fury and utter astonishment.

The sirens took us through a labyrinth of tunnels that kept us swimming up for the most part, until we broke through the surface. For a moment I thought we were back out in the open, but that moment didn’t last very long. Our surroundings were dark, I didn’t see any stars or moons in the sky, just darkness interrupted by small circles so high up it could have been mistaken for stars in the actual sky. A faint light came through those openings, confirming that it was indeed still night on the other side. I removed my facemask and breathed in air that held the unmistakable smell of a cave. It wasn’t rotten or stale, just dank from no wind ever stirring anything in this place. It dawned on me that the sirens had led us deep into the heart of the mountain.

The water around us was calm, the only small waves lapping against the shore further ahead of us came from our bodies as we surfaced and swam toward it .

I checked my gage, the oxygen tank was still more than half full, but even if it would have been possible to carry two or even five, I didn’t think we would dive our way out of here.

The mantadors would be gone, but I doubted any of us would find our way out of this mace of tunnels back to the other side of the mountain. It would take days. We would drown before we even reached the cursed split.

Snyg. There had to be a way.

While we approached the shore, my brain worked furiously through scenarios, I could send scouts out, one at a time, start drawing a map, until all our tanks were empty. Only one of us needed to make it to the other side, then again, if it took us a week, I doubted the boat would be still waiting for us on the other side.

It was a day’s drive by boat to get from Fall Mountain Island to Aecor none of us would be able to swim that distance—even if the sirens didn’t pursue us.

We were doomed to stay here, for now, and I didn’t like that idea, at all.

As we swam toward the shore, I took in the mountain walls surrounding me from all sides. At some point either of them was too steep to climb up, but I decided to keep my mind open on that route of escape until morning, when it would, hopefully, be a little brighter in here. For now I still held hope that once I spoke with Sarissa, she would take us simply back to Aecor, albeit humiliated.

As we neared the shore, details became more visible, revealing the shapes of small huts. Suddenly, excited shouts reverberated through the cavern, causing me to furrow my brow. Squinting, I observed figures appearing from the huts, rushing towards the shore shouting and waving.

The sirens had taken our weapons, but we were still trained warriors. I whispered sharply to my dragoons, "Stay alert.”

It didn’t take long until my fins hit ground. Treading water I removed first one then the other, watching my dragoons contort themselves in the same way. I kept the fins in one hand, they would make a good weapon if needed be.

“Warcome, frunds,” a tall male stepped into the lapping water, greeting us. His words were laced with a thick accent, but he spoke Leander, enough for me to understand him.

“Who are you?” I stared at the aqua colored male with black hair and black eyes, looking very much like any other Leander I had ever met.

“Zuten,” he replied, “me nome is Arcoro.”

“Myles,” I shook his outstretched arm, while my mind turned into a tornado of questions. The Zuten were the very people who had been said to have lived on Oceanus before it filled with water, making it mostly inhabitable.

“You live outside?” he asked more clearly or my ears were getting used to his accent.

“Zyn,” I nodded, staring from him to the sirens, who had also slithered out of the water.

“Arcoro, make these males comfortable, give them a home, this is Vissigroth Myles, he is very important to Queen Sarissa. See that they are well taken care of. ”

“Vissi… grath?” Arcoro asked, doubtlessly not having the faintest idea what the title meant.

“He is a king,” the siren snapped, coming to the same conclusion.

A loud whisper rolled through the assembled group that came to the shore to stare at us, all of them male.

“Queen Sarissa will talk to you in a few days,” the siren slithered back into the water, where her brethren waited. Sirens didn’t feel comfortable on land and avoided it wherever they could.

“What is this?” I asked Arcoro when the sirens were out of sight.

“Come to my home and I will explain,” Arcoro invited, not waiting for me, but moving with purpose, forcing a throng of males to step aside to open a path for him and us.

The males mumbled to each other, staring at us as if we were aberrations.

My dragoons kept watchful eyes on them, even though the welcome seemed friendly enough. None of us wore weapons, but neither did Arcoro’s males, I noticed, with them outnumbering us at least ten to one, it evened the odds considerably.

Arcoro led us to an array of caves, that didn’t look natural, the edges were too rounded, too polished. These caves had been carved out of the rocks over a long period of time.

“Some of my males prefer to live in houses, others, like me prefer the caves,” Arcoro explained, as I was getting used to his accent, making it easier for me to understand him. He gestured for us to enter. I followed him, but waved my males to stay outside .

“Collo, fetch some refreshments for the newcomers,” Arcoro instructed a youngling of about ten.

“A gift for good behavior,” Arcoro stated dryly, but with a wistful expression that was telling of how fond he was of the youngling. Growing more questions in me than I had answers for so far.

The inside of the cave wasn’t much to look at. Two beds occupied two sides, a table and two chairs stood in the center. Trunks had been moved against the third side, filled with bowls of food and pitchers.

“Are you hungry, thirsty?” Arcoro moved to the trunks holding the refreshments.

“Some water if you have it,” I said. Even though the breathing through the new masks was easier than through the mouthpiece, the rich oxygen still dried my throat.

Arcoro filled two cups, handing one to me, “I imagine you have questions.”

“I imagine so do you,” I countered.

He indicated the chairs by the table, and we took a seat, glancing uneasily at each other across the surface. I wondered if he felt threatened by my presence, by the looks of it he was the leader of this group, with me as a vissigroth, he must have felt his position was at risk.

“I have no intentions of taking your leadership or of staying,” I assured him.

At that he broke out in laughter. Not the amused kind, but a loud, heartfelt laughter, that brought tears to his eyes .

“I don’t feel threatened, son,” he uttered when he finally got a hold of his emotions. I blistered slightly at him calling me son. He was older than me though, so I let it go.

“You can be the leader here if you want to. But unfortunately, there is no escaping this place, trust me, we’ve lived here for thousands of generations. If there was a way out, we would have found it by now.”

I blinked at him in astonishment, “Thousands of generations?”

He nodded, having completely sobered from his laughter. “Zyn, and we only have ourselves to blame for it.”

I leaned back in my chair and waved my hand, to motion that I was all ears for his story.

He took a deep inhale and began, “My people, the Zuten, were very advanced in biochemistry. Sorintos was our home, but we ventured out into our galaxy to bend other planets to our will. Sorintos was a paradise, a dream to live on for any species, where swamp made a region inhabitable, we drained it, rocky areas we turned into luscious fields by turning the rock into the most fertile ground anybody could imagine.

“Deserts we turned into gardens.

“But we weren’t satisfied with that. Oh, ney. We set our minds to controlling the weather as well. My ancestors created a gas that tenfolded every water molecule in the air, or so they believed. In reality it was much worse. It began to rain and it never stopped. It rained for years, all over Sorintos, no matter what the scientists did, they couldn’t stop it .

“When it became clear that the entire planet would soon be flooded, people fled to surrounding planets. But we didn’t have enough starships for all of them, compared to our other advancements, spaceflight wasn’t that evolved and many of our people had to stay behind.

“Some, like my ancestors, chose to stay behind, they fled to Mount Gorgolum, the highest mountain on Sorintos. It was unique as others called it hollow mountain , because of its vast cave system. The bowl shaped peak was ideal to grow crops, and my ancestors created openings through which they could enter and leave.”

Arcoro stopped to take a sip of his water, giving me a moment to digest his words. It wasn’t that hard to figure out that Sorintos was the name the Zuten called Oceanus and Mount Gorgolum was now part of Fall Mountain Island.

“The rain however,” Arcoro continued, “didn’t stop for many more years. Some feared it would flood the entire mountain, as many caves had already become inaccessibly with water.

“That’s when they had another one of their brilliant ideas,” he rolled his eyes. “If nature had made us in a way that didn’t allow us to breathe underwater, we would rectify that error. The scientists knew that they wouldn’t survive, but at least they thought they could create a new race of Zuten that could live in the water.”

He paused and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I sensed what they had done.

Oblivious to my discomfort, Arcoro continued, “You see, they already had successes with breeding new kinds of livestock. So they began crossing amphibians with aquatic animals, before they moved on to crossing that with their own DNA. Creating—”

“Sirens,” I finished his sentence.

He inclined his head. “You’re sharp.”

Sweat drenched the nape of my neck, not because it was hot in here, but because of what I was learning.

“So some of your ancestors took to the stars, and created my race, Leanders over many generations,” I concluded. “And then, thousands of years later, my ancestors returned to what you call Sorintos and we Oceanus.”

“You have resettled Sorintos? Did the waters recede?” He furrowed his brows, “Ney, the water would have retreated in the caves.”

“Ninety nine percent of the planet is still encompassed in water, but we have learned to build cities.” I filled him in.

He looked deflated, “Like I said, we’ll never get out of here.”

“You said there were opening in the ceiling of the cave,” I pointed my finger up.

“Zyn, but the sirens cut all the lines for us to get up there thousands of years ago. Since then, we, our ancestors and us have been trapped inside Mount Gorgullum. The sirens feed us, provide us with many things we need and now and then give us younglings to raise to continue our race.”

I drummed my finger against the table’s surface, “Why would they do that? Sirens are notoriously selfish, why would they keep you ? Feed you, bring you younglings? ”

Arcoro was obviously surprised I didn’t know, “To harvest our sperm to fertilize their eggs.”

Stunned I sat back in my chair. My mind working through what he said and what I had seen in the underwater caves. “So they’re keeping you as… their… studs?”

“Don’t sound so condescending, I don’t imagine it’s any different for your males, Myles.” Arcoro replied a bit acidy, I must have hit on a sore spot.

“Ney, I guess not when it comes right down to it, except we were under the illusion we were negotiating trade agreements.” I sighed, conveying an apology with the tone of my voice.

“Are there no suffies, on the other planets?” Arcoro asked, slipping back deeper into his heavy accent. I must have truly offended him , I thought, deciding to be more diplomatic from now on. Figuring that by suffies he meant seffies, I filled him in.

“Zyn, there are, plenty of them, they just don’t like to live on Oceanus for some…” I slapped my head. “The sirens of course. They must have done something to make our seffies want to leave and not stay here.”

“Sounds like them,” Arcoro grumbled.

“When we were down in the caves, we came upon a place filled with eggs and embryos, is that…”

Arcoro nodded. “I have never been there, but a few of our ancestors have and reported of the nesting place. Nursery, whatever you want to call it. For a while there had even been plans on destroying that place, just to stop this madness. ”

“The sirens would have just started over somewhere else,” I speculated.

“Zyn,” Arcoro looked defeated before he rose with a deep sigh, “Let’s go and find you and your males a place to stay, because like I said, you’re not going anywhere.”