Tundra

The water was murky, and out of the murk swam shapes. These shapes were drinking in darkness, frolicking in the gloom with haunted eyes and limp fins, as Aais had once frolicked on the sunlit surface of the sea. The dark water ran red like blood around them, but on closer inspection the red particles could be seen to be tiny baubles, like spores. Anyone who was hearing closely would also have discerned voices, bubbling like trouble in the depths.

‘I could get used to this fish-body,’ said one of the swimmers. ‘It is closer to the Otherworld than the flesh is normally. I like being able to move in three dimensions.’

‘It’s not the same as flight, but it’s similar.’

‘No teeth, though. Did you see the teeth on those things we passed earlier? I want one of those bodies. If I had one of those, I would tear through everything I saw just for the joy of biting.’

‘Soon,’ said the first swimmer, in an eerie tone. ‘Soon we will have teeth and claws as well as fins and gills.’ As he twisted in the water, his head rolled back momentarily– he seemed to have snapped his neck.

‘How soon?’ mumbled another. ‘I tire of straining krill through my jaws. I want to rip something apart and swim in its blood. What is the good of these new forms if they can’t do that?’

‘Yes, how soon?’ chimed in another.

‘Soon,’ the first swimmer crooned again. ‘The hour is almost upon us.’

‘How can you tell? We have been swimming in these dark waters for far too long. Do you have any idea where we are?’

‘Yes. We are where we are supposed to be. Can you not feel the tides move around us? We are very close. We are almost there.’

Through more murk they writhed, wriggling like worms, uncertain of how to use their bodies with most efficiency and powered by an endless source of energy that made this a trifling matter. Something else also slipped through the tides. These fish men wore shells and spears. They moved as one body, swimming out of the water where they had lain in wait, and into the open stream. The oyster shells clamped to their fins denoted rank– these were the Protectors of the elder gods.

‘Menaus,’ one female called, ‘please, don’t do this. Go back to your school. Your family are waiting for you.’

The one who had been Menaus hissed. ‘They can wait forever. Menaus is dead.’

Spears were raised, not for throwing, but for lancing and jabbing in the water. In the ensuing fight, which was really little more than a scuffle, the breathless ones easily overpowered the ones who could still bleed. The fungus infected fish men progressed past the floating dead, forcing their way further into the elders’ territory. There they saw tentacles with suckers and terrible curved beaks, teeth as long as sabres or daggers and curved devilishly. They saw fins and flotation devices, and tendrils that ended in lamp-lit lure and poisoned barbs. These were the ocean’s assassins, engaged forever in an escalating arms race. Eyes loomed as large as dinner plates or as small, beady and numerous as spiders’ eggs. The one who had been Gyrissa watched them as they passed, long, lithe and emitting electric currents from a streamlined dorsal fin. They seemed to lash at their surroundings.

‘I want that body,’ she said. ‘Look at it. So sleek, so powerful. Like a sword given flesh.’

‘Soon,’ the one who was Menaus promised. ‘Soon every one of these creatures will be in communion with the Otherworld, and then we will have our pick of bodies.’

‘But I want it now!’

‘You can’t have it now,’ he snapped, whipping around. ‘Besides, look below you. See now what comes.’ He gestured with all dead fins at the yawning abyss, which was as dark and impenetrable as water may be.

‘There’s nothing down there,’ said the other, insolently. ‘That’s the ocean floor.’

‘No. It is not. Look down.’

Craning further, eyes became apparent, looming where craters had seemed to exist from long spend meteors crashed into the planet when it was young. The stalagmites that had been imagined gnashed together, and the flow of water the creature breathed included sharks and even giant squid that were filtered in and out of its gills, unharmed. Its scales were as large as icebergs, and seemingly like shale.

‘What is that?’ asked one of the party.

‘I had not known that such creatures could exist in the flesh,’ remarked another, awe-struck. ‘Do you think it can see us?’

‘Does it really have working eyes?’ posed Menaus’ bodily successor. ‘Does it need them? I can tell you that it perceives us and knows what we are. Whether it will act on that knowledge is another question entirely. Right now, we can but hope that we are beneath its notice.’

‘Look at those jaws! Never mind what I said before, this is the body I want. With that, imagine what kind of havoc I could wreak.’

‘Yes,’ crooned the leader. ‘Yes, yes. Truly, these sea-gods are kind to us.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘We have found what we were looking for. You go to the surface as we discussed. The rest of us will wait here until our brothers up there are ready. We will watch it, study its ways; try to avoid its attention until the time is right.’

‘How long will that be?’

He swore it again, like an oath. ‘Soon.’