Chapter 4

Four

Arges

His mind was all frayed after the interaction with the achromo. She was not at all what he had come to expect from their kind.

Her plan was solid, although told to him through confusing hand gestures and words that made his head ache. She was like listening to a chirping child, constantly prattling on about things he didn’t care about.

The achromo was rather clever, though. If only she were stronger, she might have finished her plan impressively fast. Apparently, air was more important to them than it was his own people. She’d nearly passed out, and he was still holding his breath comfortably.

He’d seen her drowning, watched as the ocean had her way with the limp body and he just... hadn’t been able to let her die. It was stupid. He’d taken a risk in letting her live now that she’d seen him.

But the moment his lips had touched hers, as he’d breathed air into her lungs, he’d known it was the right choice. Deep in his bones, he felt the rightness. As though the ancients of the ocean had touched his heart and told him that she needed to live. The lights along his tail lit up when her tiny hand had rested on his shoulder, and then the other, frantically sucking up any air that he could spare for her. And his gills had fluttered along his ribs, even the ones that usually laid flat along his jaw burst out.

He’d never fluttered in his life. Arges had always known his gills to remain flat and unaffected, no matter what female was around him. And yet, this one made him shake like a child. Like he’d never had a woman touch him before.

As he watched the strange contraption take her up and away from him, he found the sight didn’t settle well, either. It wasn’t that he wanted to follow her. He couldn’t go into her realm any more than she could exist in the sea.

But the muscles of his tail bunched, regardless. He wanted to touch her again. He wanted to feel the powerful heat of her body, even underneath the cold press of the waves.

How strange it was to watch her leave him. To know that he’d likely never see her again, and if he did, then it would be her floating body. They were going to conquer the beast that was the achromos. They were going to wipe them out of the sea, and he would not rest until they all floated up to the surface or were food for the sharks.

His gills fluttered again. This time, even his tail shook. More of the lights flickered through his body, lighting up like he was a beacon for her attention.

Damn it. What was happening to him?

Running a hand down his scales, he slapped at his tail a few times before forcing himself to turn away from the city under the water. Arges needed to find his pod and his brother. Surely they had succeeded as well, and if the achromos were stuck in the center building, then it was time to figure out how to attack the monolith.

Even the whales couldn’t harm this building. They weren’t strong enough to tumble the metal structure, but soon they would find its weakness. They always did.

He picked a current and let it guide his body home. Though he flicked his tail every now and then to keep up his pace, he mostly allowed the ocean to draw him where it wished for him to go.

Arges had always loved this feeling. The few times he’d been to the surface, he had seen strange creatures in the sky. It was the same sensation, he supposed. When the ground dropped out from underneath him and water surrounded him. Nothing that he could see for miles on end. Just water, darkness beneath him, and the quiet movement of the sea, carrying him farther and farther from that city that always tainted his gills.

Flipping over onto his back, he popped his shoulder back in black and tried to relax as the salt water buoyed him closer to what he knew was success.

Though he hadn’t heard his pod’s excitement, he knew they had succeeded. He’d broken one of the metal tubes, and he was the least of the men he guided. Surely they had done more damage. There was only celebration to be had tonight.

Something struck him out of the current. His tail coiled as he spun restlessly through the water. Flaring out his webbed hands and slapping at his attacker with the powerful whip of his fluke, he managed to stop himself and the other from wildly spinning out of control.

Righting his body, he puffed out his chest, so he looked bigger and faced whatever was foolish enough to attack one of the People of Water. No shark sought out its death so foolishly. Neither would the speckled whales that hunted in pods like his own people. None would be so foolish, so blind, so...

Enraged.

His brother floated before him. Daios heaved breath in through his gills, everything flared wide and angry. Ropes of glimmering red pulsed from the top of his head all the way down his back, to his tail, even into the fine filaments of his fingers. He was beyond enraged. So close to berserker that Arges feared his brother didn’t even recognize him.

Holding up his own hands, pulsing a faint, calming blue, Arges asked, “What has happened?”

“What do you mean, what has happened?” his brother hissed. “You weren’t there. You were supposed to lead the pod, and you weren’t there!”

“For what?” He had been so certain everything was exactly the way it was meant to be. Nothing could have happened to the pod. He watched the achromos for months before this attack. He knew where everything was, and he’d told them everything to do as it needed to be done.

Daios pointed behind them, his claws jabbing through the cold water. “the achromos knew we were coming.”

“They couldn’t have known.”

“Ekhetes is dead,” Daios said. His words fell flat in the water, but the current brought them back to Arges’s ears over and over again.

Ekhetes is dead.

Dead.

“How?” he rasped. “Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.”

“Where. Were. You?” Daios asked again, but then he swam a little closer and his eyes widened in horror. Those dark orbs narrowed on him and Arges knew what his brother had scented.

Her. Of course her scent clung to him. the achromos all had a specific taste in the water. Even now, if he focused, he could taste her on his gills. She was sweeter than most achromos, not quite so terrible to breathe in.

She tasted like the deep candies that his people liked. Tiny pods of bright flavor that burst on the tongue and made the back of his mouth salivate. Not quite sour, but a flavor that both hurt and intrigued.

She was all over him, he realized, and that was his fault. He should have swum through a kelp forest, brushed all the scent off his scales before going anywhere near any of his people. And yet... His scales seemed to clasp her scent underneath them. As though he wished to taste her later, when it was just him and the sea.

His brother’s gills flared again, and this time Daios did lunge. With a flick of his thick tail, he was upon Arges again.

Arges put up a fight. Blood bloomed around them, clouds of their black blood thickening around them until he could barely see. And then a clawed hand clasped around his throat. Though he fought against his brother’s grip, they were already plummeting to the depths.

He twisted, trying hard to get the upper hand, but his brother was massive. Large enough to rival some whales. Arges was dragged to the deep, only exhausting himself further as he tried to get away.

Eventually, he fell limp. He let his tail streamline them because he already knew where Daios was taking him.

Home.

Where else would they go?

In the distance, he saw the light of their homeland. Okeanos. His heart filled with love as it did every time he saw it, although he winced as pain flared in deep cuts dug through the flat planes of his chest. The blue, glowing lights of his body soon dimmed in the bright white of the glowing plants that lived deep inside their home.

Coral mostly, larger than he was long. So tall they sometimes looked like the buildings the achromos had made. Long tendrils of glowing pale coral that bathed their world in an icy glow. His people made their homes in the base of the coral, underneath the rock and stone. Long tunnels, dug with claws and kept clean with quick sweeps of their tails.

And in the distance was the largest coral that stretched its tendrils throughout the entire city in which they lived. A root system that could never be broken, even this deep in the depths.

The People of Water swam throughout all these clinging, thick roots. Tiny ones crawled through them, getting stuck in certain places and lashing their tails until their laughing mothers pulled them free. He remembered getting stuck in the same root systems. He’d scraped the scales off his back so badly that his mother had been concerned he wouldn’t ever grow them back.

Daios shifted his grip to the back of Arges’s neck, forcing him to stare down at everyone who looked up at them. Until finally they reached the center of all that coral. Where it spiraled in one central area, flattened out, and became a swirling pattern upon which all of their greatest decisions were made.

Daios slammed him down so hard in the center even the coral complained. Plumes of sand burst up around him, scattering small schools of fish in their wake.

Groaning, Arges spat out sand and dust. His tail stretched out behind him as he leveraged himself only up onto his hands. The elders were already here. They’d swum from their homes, now hauling themselves over the lip of the central coral. Their ancient fingers curled, the webs almost gone with age. But it was only one of them that his eyes locked upon and stayed.

“Mitéra,” he said quietly, watching as she swam above all the others.

The Matriarch of their people was stunning and otherworldly. Long ago, she’d given herself to the coral. She’d died in the roots, and then allowed the sea itself to fill her. Her hair had turned into a bell of shimmering color, like a jellyfish lived atop her head. Her skin was entirely transparent, flickering with electric lights that rolled across her entire body. Her tail was covered in scales pale as a pearl that changed color when she was angry or happy or sad. But it was her eyes, those iridescent, terrifying eyes that had always seen right through him.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked, her melodic voice floating through the currents.

His brother was so agitated that his hair floated in front of his face. With an angry shove, Daios pointed at Arges and said, “He left the pod to fend for itself and Ekhetes is dead.”

A murmur broke through the crowd that watched. Big, black eyes watched him with a hundred colors of tails and textures of skin and faces. These were the people he fought for, had always fought for.

Would they really believe this?

Mitéra paused, her eyes looking over both of them before she inclined her head at Daios. “I have heard you, little brother. Now I will hear your blood speak.”

She turned her attention to him and Arges nearly forgot how to speak. Those eyes saw right through to his soul, as they always did.

“I fought the achromos,” he croaked. “Their air supply is destroyed. But when I went to see what my attack had wrought, I was trapped by one of their kind.”

Daios snorted. “Is that why you reek of one?”

Cutting a glare toward his brother, he let out a little growl before returning his attention to the more important person. His hands curled in the sand, and the icy touch of an unknown current carried his words. “I was trapped, as I said. I was inside their city when one of the achromos was trapped with me. She devised a plan to get us out of their home in return for my assistance in bringing her to one of their clear boxes. She saved my life and, as such, I had to repay her in kind.”

The current played across his shoulders and drew the scent out from underneath his locked scales. He couldn’t stop it from taking her scent and drawing it right to Mitéra.

She sucked it into her gills, her frail ribs spreading with the effort before she frowned at him. “There is no fear in this scent.”

He’d noticed it, too. The female hadn’t been afraid of him, not really. Just a spark of it here and there, enough to be enticing to say the least.

He shook his head. “No, she was not afraid.”

“Why?”

“I do not know.”

Mitéra hissed, and the bell of her hair spread around her body. “Have you seen her before?”

“Only once. I scouted out the seventh air tube that we abandoned. She was fixing a glass dome that I needed to remain broken, so I destroyed it.”

“Did you speak with her?” Those flickering lights were not a good sign. Red, like his brother. Yellow, a color that spoke of fear.

“No. I nearly killed her both times.”

Mitéra’s colors rippled again, this time turning a soft blue that eased the tension in his shoulders. “You are not lying.”

“No, Mitéra.”

A low hum rumbled from her throat. She twisted closer to him, spiraling through the water until her hair billowed around them both. She cupped her hand behind his neck and drew him forward. The thin tendrils of his hair coiled together with hers. “She is not afraid of you, my son. This is a blessing and a curse.”

No, he didn’t want another curse. He didn’t want a blessing, either. He’d said goodbye to the little achromo, and that was enough. Even though it makes his gills ache and his tail ripple with color.

Her claws pierced through his neck and he scented his own blood on the water. Again. Bleeding out for his family as he always had.

“She is a current,” Mitéra said, her voice low and quiet. Her hair swallowed them up, like they were the only two people in the ocean. “You will follow that current. Use her to the best of your ability, my son, my child, soul of my soul. You will take her from her safe home. You will make her trust you. And in doing so, you will learn the secrets of the achromos.”

“I do not wish to return to her. I wish to serve our people.”

“And so you will. With every secret you unveil from her pale soul, you will save us. Arges, you are the first to find one unafraid of our kind. Draw her to us.” Mitéra backed away, just enough for him to see a hundred colors swirling in the depths of her eyes. “Go collect your strange new friend, Arges. With her at our side, we will finally destroy them all.”