‹ Prequel: Ninety Days of Water
Status: Active.
Tundra
Chapter XII – Fall – Part I
Underground, Aais came to the place inside the hollow glacier where rivers met; that heart of the labyrinth that arteries pumped around, while chambers echoed with the sound of separate but synchronised, lapping tides. For days, he had been following the trail of his god, walking upright and aching in the empty caverns, until he feared he was lost at the Seafarers’ instructions, and walking was all he could do to stay sane. Eventually, the trail ducked underwater, and Aais plunged happily into the freezing river with glee, letting the oxygen he had been gasping for fill his gills and flow through his paddling arms and legs. For a moment, he savoured the return of his liquid world, letting it redeem him. Flecks of krill like dust in motes floated around him– that meant he was getting closer to the behemoth gods the parasites survived on; gods so huge that they could manipulate the tides and thus pull on the tether to the moon.
Of course, Hassis was only a small god, in his usual form, but he was a god nonetheless, and gods were enormous. Hassis would equal the size of the largest of sailing ships quadrupled. He was not the size of a continent, like the biggest of his kind, Gyish and Dreyfus, the sabre-toothed whales on whose gigantic backs whole ecosystems were supported, but he was powerful enough to smash up beaches and turn the currents. He had been powerful enough to save Aais, most importantly.
Normally, a god would not have registered the presence of something so small swimming around it, but in the bottomless underground lake that lunged further than the heart of the world, right into its core, the krill and other parasites began to stir, dissipating and regrouping as Aais passed through them as though their shoals were beaded curtains. As they moved, the greater vastness that was the discovered god began to rumble, filling the cavern before the drop with a fluted song. Hassis was truly his own world, surrounded by other life forms, fish and bottom-feeders, as a sun is ringed by satellites.
Then, something else plunged through the perfect pattern of host and parasite, shattering the synergy. A body was falling, just as Aais had fallen once, and this body was Hassis incarnate. It was strange, therefore, that the small sharks and others that normally groomed the great god went after him. The water ran red where he was falling, leaking, this avatar of the god in front of its normal body wounded and possibly dying. Aais let out a bubble of surprise, and scooped the falling one up in his webbed arms. Together, they rushed to the surface once more.
Of course, Hassis was only a small god, in his usual form, but he was a god nonetheless, and gods were enormous. Hassis would equal the size of the largest of sailing ships quadrupled. He was not the size of a continent, like the biggest of his kind, Gyish and Dreyfus, the sabre-toothed whales on whose gigantic backs whole ecosystems were supported, but he was powerful enough to smash up beaches and turn the currents. He had been powerful enough to save Aais, most importantly.
Normally, a god would not have registered the presence of something so small swimming around it, but in the bottomless underground lake that lunged further than the heart of the world, right into its core, the krill and other parasites began to stir, dissipating and regrouping as Aais passed through them as though their shoals were beaded curtains. As they moved, the greater vastness that was the discovered god began to rumble, filling the cavern before the drop with a fluted song. Hassis was truly his own world, surrounded by other life forms, fish and bottom-feeders, as a sun is ringed by satellites.
Then, something else plunged through the perfect pattern of host and parasite, shattering the synergy. A body was falling, just as Aais had fallen once, and this body was Hassis incarnate. It was strange, therefore, that the small sharks and others that normally groomed the great god went after him. The water ran red where he was falling, leaking, this avatar of the god in front of its normal body wounded and possibly dying. Aais let out a bubble of surprise, and scooped the falling one up in his webbed arms. Together, they rushed to the surface once more.