Chapter 6

Six

Arges

Watching her was incredibly boring. How did the achromos live like this?

Arges had never wasted his time trying to understand her people. He was more interested in finding flaws in their city. Dents in the armor that he could use to his advantage as he attacked and destroyed. Now, he was forced to watch them. He had to see what they did with their lives as he tried to find an opportunity to steal her away.

And by all the seven seas and the gods within them, they were boring. How did the achromos survive like this? They did the same thing every day. They walked the same corridors. Seemingly performed the same jobs. Day in. Day out. They even seemed to eat the same food. Some wet looking gloop that made him want to vomit the first time he’d seen it.

No wonder they were so aggressive. He’d have gone mad long ago as well if he was forced to live such a life.

Of course, his achromo did the same thing as the others. It only took two days for him to know everything she was going to do every day.

She got up and went to one of the halls where there were many achromos. She ate that horrible, wet substance, then walked down the same corridor. They appeared to meet with large groups of achromos often. She didn’t make a lot of effort, nor did she often speak at those gatherings. Instead, she did a lot of head bobbing, which he assumed was meant in an agreeing gesture, not aggression.

Then she would sneak off with another male, one he already hated, and they would disappear into one of the rooms he couldn’t see.

Was she mating with him? The idea shouldn’t be so frustrating, but it made him very angry the first time he’d seen the pattern. Why else would a female and a male disappear into the same room? The thoughts dug through him like puffer fish spines, angering him even more.

He told himself it was because he would smell the other male if he had to steal her away. She’d smell like someone else, and her scent was the only one he found... tolerable.

It took days for anything to change. the achromos bored him with their monotonous schedule and never ending patterns. At least until he saw his achromo disappear with the other. Not to the same room that they had been going before, but to a different part of the city. A deeper part. Nearly at the bottom, where they had never been before.

At least, not while he watched. So he followed them, alone this time rather than with one of his pod. The others had given up on hunting with him.

After all, nothing ever changed. They weren’t learning anything about the achromos other than that they were boring.

They’d already known that.

Arges swam to a hidden part of the city, ducked deep into the kelp and behind a very large boulder while he listened to his achromo and the male wander over his head. They chattered in that horrible speech, and he almost wished he could understand them. Perhaps then he would know their nefarious plan.

But then he saw the opening into their city.

How had they missed this? He remained where he was, watching as two metal plates shifted and then revealed bright lights and metal panels. There was an opening inside the city that he’d missed.

An opening that could easily be pried open with sharp weapons. And the achromos had hidden it from their eyes for such a long time.

He ground his teeth in anger. Who was supposed to be watching this part of the city? Likely, no one. He’d never assigned anyone to the very bottom of the city because there was nothing here. Just a wall that dug into the stone and leaked rust into their gills.

Arges was the fool, then. These achromos had tricked him well enough, and now there was nothing he could do about it.

They’d wasted so much time. He could have attacked them from the inside. And he’d proven himself within their tubes. He could fight them even there, and a whole pod of his people? They would decimate the city until their corridors ran red with blood.

Seething, he pulled himself closer to watch and see what the achromos were doing now.

One of the plates that he and his achromo had destroyed was slowly lowered into the sea. He bared his teeth in a silent hiss as a metal arm helped guide it through the water and then propped it against a stone at the bottom. He hated seeing those arms now that he knew what they were capable of.

But then he was both shocked and horrified to see an entire metal creature drop to the ocean floor. It fell through the water like a stone, plummeting to the bottom where sand and debris plumed around it. And it didn’t react. He’d have thought such a jarring thud, one that he could hear from some distance away, would have made it at least shake the pain off.

It didn’t.

A soft grinding noise rippled through the water and then twin antennae appeared over its head. Another click, and beams of light speared out of them. And then the being turned. It looked right at him. He was certain it had seen him and he readied himself to flee, but then it just... didn’t move. It stayed so still it was almost like it was made of rock. No movement. No breath. Nothing at all.

The water above it rippled and Arges wondered whether he should leave. He could take this information back to his people. They should know the achromos had weapons they had not seen before.

They all knew about the weapons on top of the tubes and attached to the city. He knew many People of Water had been touched by their flames that somehow lived even in the sea. They had all been seared, or knew someone who bore scars from an attack.

But this? the achromos had birthed a new being made of metal, and it would be one who was extremely difficult to kill.

Another form dropped out of the city, this one lithe and gleaming. For a moment, he thought it was some kind of pale fish that they had tamed, but then he realized what it was.

It was his achromo. In the water, swimming with him.

He’d never mistake the shape of her body. He’d had her pressed against his chest, her tiny hands skating over his gills even though he thought she had been unaware of the intimate touch. And this was... her.

Her body was covered in some silvery material, and it moved with her like a second skin. Bright and lightly colored, it mimicked fish scales in the light. Her hair was covered as well with the same material, and some strange device covered her eyes. But what covered her mouth had his attention like nothing else.

It was clear, like a bubble. He could see her lips moving as though she were talking to herself. But it was clearly doing something to allow her to breathe. He could see her chest moving in and out as she sank through the water toward the metal monster.

Some insanity pushed him forward. He had to flick his tail in the opposite direction, so he stopped swimming toward her, as if to... save her? No. He didn’t need to save her from that metal creation. If she approached it and it crushed her, then that was her own fault. And all his problems would be fixed.

But it didn’t attack her. Instead, she swam around the back of it and fiddled with something there. He moved a kelp frond out of his way to see her better, and yes. It appeared she must have spoken with the creature, because it turned around and reached for the glass pane.

His gills flared as he saw with horror that it picked up the side of a tube with ease. The entire panel, metal frame and all, as though it weighed nothing. Now he knew that he could likely have lifted it, but the achromo certainly couldn’t.

She watched the creature move and then made a gesture above her head toward the surface. He watched the panels close and thought this was his moment. He would take her now, but the damned metal creature certainly made that a little more difficult.

Instead, he resolved to watch her. And he was glad he did.

She had fins on her feet. Delicate and thin, like he did, but very narrow and very long. Shocked, he watched as she glided through the water after the metal creature that stomped across the ocean floor.

The gills on his neck flared as he watched her swim. She moved with an innate grace that he hadn’t expected. The first time he’d seen her underneath the waves, she’d been shivering and struggling for breath. When he’d breathed into her lungs, perhaps he had given her a part of himself. Because she moved like a fish.

Her body slowly rolling, she kept one arm in front of her as she swam, parting the resistance of the ocean as she followed the metal creature. And with the lights on the exterior of her city, she looked like she glowed.

Then she reached up and touched something next to her head. A beam of light erupted from her skull, and he was shocked once again. Did the achromos have the ability to create light?

Glancing down at his hands, he flickered his own lights in his palms. They were faint though, bioluminescence rather than the massive swath of light that now illuminated everything in front of her. She was creating light like some of the deep-sea creatures did. How was that possible?

He swam alongside them, following them across the ocean floor. And he noticed that his achromo did not flinch away from fish or the massive crabs that hid underneath the tubes of her city. She watched them with careful attention before dismissing their danger. If there were sharks in the area, or any of the other more aggressive fish, she would have been in trouble. But those were so rare in these parts, considering the sights and smells of the city.

These were terrible hunting grounds for any predator.

He soared over an outcropping of stone and hung over the edge, watching her work with a tilted head. She followed the metal creature without hesitation. His attention rarely strayed from that strange being who moved a little too stiltedly to be alive... Surely they had created it, not birthed a new species?

He heard the sound of something swimming toward him long before he scented one of his pod on the water. Maketes was one of his best warriors, and a strange one at that. His yellow tail made him rather easy to spot in the water, but if one had seen him, then they were already dead.

His warrior quietly swam up beside him, peering down into the depths before rearing back in shock. “What is it?”

“Hush.”

“They cannot understand us. the achromos have always been deaf to our language.” Maketes pointed at Arges’s achromo, who had yet to hear them or notice that they were watching. “It will not look up.”

“She,” he corrected, “has another creature with her. Do you not see it?”

With a roll of his shoulders and a flutter of his fins, Maketes showed he cared very little. “Another tool made of metal that would break down within five moons. It will fail like all the others. I do not fear their metal creations.”

“Hm,” Arges replied, staring down at the female and creature, who continued to stomp across the ocean floor. “I do not share your confidence.”

“She?” Maketes rolled onto his back, arms cushioning his head as he watched a fever of rays swim above them. “How do you even know it’s female?”

It was hard to tell. The achromos were not as obvious as the People of Water. The females he was used to had pretty frills along the fronts of their tails, and lovely colors that burst to life when they were ready to mate. They were delicate and fearsome all at the same time. Their flukes were wider than Arges’s narrow, sharp spined tail. Instead, they were broad and fluttered in the currents with a lovely grace. And of course, their females were significantly larger than Arges or Maketes.

Looking down at the achromo and her metal machine, he couldn’t compare the two species. She was finless. Completely incapable of protecting herself, no matter how many weapons she had. Helpless, even worse than their children.

Maketes rolled back over, his hair billowing around him like a cloud, and hummed low under his breath. The sound carried through the water, and would have easily been picked up on the opposite side of the achromos city. He would have heard it and known who had made the noise. But this achromo? She didn’t even look up.

His pod brother shook his head in disgust. “You see? Broken, these achromos. They think all the sound in the ocean is just that. Ocean. There is so much they do not know, and yet, they think they own it all.”

He nodded, agreeing with his brother. Still, there was something about her that caught his attention.

She might not have fins or pretty frills, but she moved through the water like she’d been born to it. She used her hands now, pulling herself up and over rocks as the metal creature took the long way around. It was still carrying that panel, and he couldn’t imagine what they were going to do with it.

Until Maketes pulled himself completely over the edge of the stone, hanging with one hand on it as his tail loosely swayed in the water. So easy for her to see if she just looked up.

Sometimes, his pod brother was far too careless.

“She’s going to fix the section of the city that you broke,” Maketes mused.

“What?”

“That’s why it’s carrying the panel. They’re heading in the right direction for it.” He pointed, and damn it, his pod brother was right.

That little mudskipper was going to fix what they had broken together. He hadn’t gone through all this trouble to have her fix everything that easily. Didn’t she realize what destruction they had wrought together? This was a good thing. The ocean could take back what they had destroyed.

Already there were barnacles and clams growing in that tube, through the hole they had created together. Life continued, the sea took back what it was owed.

“That little—” he ground his teeth, flowing over the edge and past his brother.

“Go on and get her, brother!” Maketes called out. “Bring her back for us, yeah? I think most of the people would like to speak with her.”

How they were going to do that, he had no idea. But Arges refused to let her fix any broken pieces of her city. If the metal creature tried to fight him, then he would learn the best way to battle it for his people. He would fight with honor.

She might not know it yet, but that achromo was his. And he intended to take her.