Reading 5X5 x2: Duets

Reading 5X5

x2

Duets

edited by

B. Morris Allen

ISBN: 978-1-64076-044-8 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-64076-045-5 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64076-046-2 (hardcover)

from

Metaphorosis Publishing

Neskowin

From the Editor

Welcome to this second installation in the Reading 5X5 anthology series — great SFF stories that also take a look at the writing process. The first Reading 5X5, published in 2018, asked five authors to write stories based on the same brief, for five different briefs in five genres; twenty-five stories in total. The Writers’ Edition included an extra two stories, all the briefs, and an author’s note for each story.

This volume, as suggested by the title, Reading 5X5 x2: Duets, takes the idea in a different direction. Here, each of five authors was asked to co-write a story with each of the others, as well as to write a solo story — fifteen stories in total, as well as authors’ notes on how the collaboration process worked.

As with the first Reading 5X5, the principal criterion for the stories is quality — the intent of the anthology is to bring you great stories. That said, it’s fascinating to see how authors’ voices change and blend when they cooperate with each other, and the results are as varied as they are gorgeous, from epic duels both human and divine to alien spaceships to a train full of sacrifices barreling straight toward a god’s seat of power.

I hope you’ll enjoy these stories as much as I have; these are stories that will touch your heart, raise your spirits, and inspire you — with a few darker ones mixed in as well. And so, with just one more word about artwork below, on to the stories!

B. Morris Allen

July 2020

Iconography

The icons that work as scene breaks are also a minor memory aid. Each represents a single author, with an image drawn from their solo story. Two icons side by side tell you at a glance which authors are involved.

For those interested, there’s also a little more to the cover art. As above, the icons represent solo stories, and the connecting lines represent collaborations between authors. The color of the icon or line tells you the genre, with SF being yellow, and Fantasy being red.

Duets

Table of Contents

Children of a Wine-Dark World — David Gallay and Douglas Anstruther

The Relic — J. Tynan Burke and L'Erin Ogle

Lambs Fight to Die — Evan Marcroft

The Third Chamber From the Left — Douglas Anstruther and L'Erin Ogle

Boro Boro — Evan Marcroft and J. Tynan Burke

Instar — David Gallay

Snakeheart — Douglas Anstruther and Evan Marcroft

Sudden Oak Death — J. Tynan Burke

Titanotheosis — David Gallay and Evan Marcroft

Memories Written in Scars — L'Erin Ogle

Project Blackbook — J. Tynan Burke and David Gallay

The Blood Dance of Ape and Mouse — Evan Marcroft and L'Erin Ogle

The Firmament — Douglas Anstruther

Daylight — L'Erin Ogle and David Gallay

Infernal Policies and Procedures Have Changed — Douglas Anstruther and J. Tynan Burke

Children of a Wine-Dark World

David Gallay and Douglas Anstruther

The three snail farmers floated up to their favorite corner of the taverna, where the filter’s gentle current maintained the perfect euphoria-inducing concentration of bitter nox. Miniature arc-lamps gleamed through the taverna’s cloudy water like strings of jewels. Below them, another group of harvesters tore open a net of wrigglers. Laughter erupted as the panicked fish unsuccessfully tried to escape the forest of grasping hands.

The trio had just settled in when Demod started back in on his current obsession.

My guy at cataract station tells me they’ve been getting implodes down in the Beneath, he said, whipping his wrist flanges for effect. Shuck, woom! Shuck, woom!

Coronis scratched absently on his writing pad of pressed kelp. Both he and Naus had known Demod all the way back from clutch and usually attempted a good-natured yet skeptical approach to his ramblings. It helped pass the time during the grueling hours of the snail harvest. But this latest nonsense about the Beneath rubbed both of them the wrong way.

Yeah? And how do they know it’s not just seismic? Coronis said. Heard over the wire that the northern plume’s been active.

Weren’t no seismic, Demod said. Heard it myself. Reverb all the way up the world-chasm. Quavers your teeth like you bit into an ‘lectric cuke.

It’s not implodes, ‘cause there’s nothing down there, Naus said. She stretched out, letting her toes scrape against the ceiling. It had been a rougher shift than usual, leaving them with aching muscles and chipped fingertips. At that pressure it’s just worms and bones. Like Cor says, bet it’s just methane pops.

I tell you, there’s a whole world down in the Beneath. Point a scope down the cataract, you’ll see it too. Lights racing back and forth, faster than any zip. Wait long enough, you hear singing too, real singing, not squid whistling. Here, here, look at this … Demod glanced around the taverna before slipping something out from his satchel. It was a small trapezoid of unfamiliar metal, slightly larger than a bone-coin. It gleamed with a yellowish-green luster. Tidy rows of unrecognizable pictograms were etched across its face, as if scratched with a fine needle.

What is that? Coronis asked.

Naus snatched it out of Demod’s hands and examined it in the light.

Seen these at the hag market along with the glowglass and hydra skeletons.

My man at the cataract says things like this are dragged up in hot volcanic plumes all the time, Demod said, grabbing back his trinket. Other things too. Said he’s not allowed to talk about it.

Fake, fake, fake, Naus said.

One day I’ll go down there, Demod said. Then we’ll see who’s the faker.

No one stopping you, Coronis said. Just strap on some stones and step off the ledge. Float me a letter when you hit bottom. Better yet, come back with a squirmin’ hydra on the hook.

Why don’t you go first, Cor? Demond shot back. Maybe then, you’d have something to put down in yer poems, ‘stead of just floating there an’ doodling. Say hi to Elpin while’s you’re down there. He stuffed his mouth with ferment and curled up in a sulk.

Demod! Naus exclaimed. Leave the dead settled where they fall!

Coronis self-consciously tucked away his pad. Naus eyed him with concern. Demod’s comment stung and she knew it. But another round of ferment, maybe a short bath of nox, and all would be forgotten. At the end of the day, they would go their separate ways, to start the whole thing over again tomorrow. That was what life was. There was no mystery, no unseen worlds. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Another night at The Happy Squid and its small, dull dramas. None of it inspired him. Coronis hadn’t written anything worthwhile since the rebellion was put down, when he was still young. Now, approaching middle age, he wondered sometimes if he missed war. The rush of battle, all those moments charged with violence and blood. No. Of course not. Still, sometimes it seemed that the only novelties of life were draped in death.

Well, I’ll let you two finish the night without me, Coronis blurted out. See you both on the glimmer. Before anyone could argue, he pushed downwards and darted outside before too much more nox could soak into his gills. Maybe another night he would be tempted to get drunk on the heady mix of pheromones, carbon dioxide, and plankton motes that clouded the taverna. But it was getting late. Already the outdoor arc lamps were boiling, filling the avenues with sharp angles of emerald illumination. Echoes of evening revelry rolled through the City, carrying the taste-smell of cracked mussels. Luxury zips ferried passengers between the narrow precipices that lifted the City out from the depths. Their lamplight skimmed across the cliff-edges of the cataract and pushed against the reach of the Above, where only the most expensive engines didn’t sputter out under the low pressure. Cetus lighthouses, those ancient towers of stone named for the legendary benefactors who once gave their knowledge of artificial light to the sea-folk, encircled the cataract like silent guardians. Their sulfuric arc lanterns gently suffused even the darkest waters with twilight. The City at night was a beautiful, pulsing dream, awash in clean currents.

It was also all too familiar, predictable, and claustrophobically monotonous. This was the peace they had fought for. Died for. Soon another perfect morning would announce itself with a dull, coppery light, sending the dreamers back outside to face another day much like the last, and the one before that. Ahead lay a string of endless, identical tomorrows. The City was safe. The City was eternal.

The blank pages of his pad flapped in a sour current.

As one, every arc lamp in the City flickered out. The headlights of distant zips faded to dim ultraviolet and disappeared among the buildings. Window shutters clamped down. Portal bolts clacked in unison. The City was plunged into the safety of darkness. The only sounds were the whispering currents of the night and the soft clicking of lovers in the crevices. A cool draught rolled past Coronis, cascading a twitch of nerves up his dorsal. There was only one only reason to put out the lamps; a report of wild skylla in the city limits. Usually the predators kept their distance from civilization, preferring to hunt in the coral forests bristling the edge of the cataract. But occasionally they wandered up into the City, attracted by the bright lights and warm blood. They stuck to the shadows, and if you saw one, it was probably too late. A brush of their nearly invisible whiskers meant instant paralysis and death by slow consumption.

No, no, no, Coronis seethed. He was exposed on the open streets, alone in the dark. Endless drills in the clutch had trained him to seek shelter. He looked around, but there was nothing. He thought about turning back to the taverna, but the thought of returning there to cower after his hasty exit was untenable. Besides, wasn’t this exactly the type of excitement he was craving? He welcomed the rush of adrenaline and pushed onwards, skylla be damned. Using hesitant flutter-kicks, he pushed on through the darkness with only a vague idea of direction, only realizing he had taken a wrong turn as he felt the tug of a sanitation whirlpool pulling him forward. His wanderings had brought him to the edge of the City, where ancient filtration machines churned through millions of gallons of water with every turn of their unrelenting blades.

While simultaneously trying to remember the direction home and contemplating the countless other nox-soaked souls lost to the whirlpool’s vicious slipstream, Coronis detected a new smell. Thick and organic, it sent a chill up his dorsals. He turned to face the darkness behind him. There, floating in the blackness, a bioluminescent light repeated a sequence of hypnotic patterns that even a child could recognize. Frozen in terror, Coronis did nothing as the skylla crawled towards him. Its gaping mouth and its sawtooth smile gleamed in the glow of its bobbing lure.

It lunged. Coronis did the only thing he could think of; he flung his writing pad at the creature. Its teeth easily tore through the kelp pages. Even in the face of horror, Coronis couldn’t help but imagine Demod laughing at future retellings of this story, as his pathetic doodlings were appropriately ripped apart by a wild beast. Then they would celebrate his miraculous escape from certain death with enough nox to knock out a Cetus.

But there was no miracle. No escape.

Shaking away the last shreds of the pad, the skylla closed in for the kill.

Left with no other choice, Coronis kicked backwards, flinging himself towards the industrial maelstrom of the whirlpool, knowing that even being vivisected by the blades was a preferable death to being devoured alive. As he braced for the rotors, a violent blast of bitter, ashen water rushed up from the cataract, flooding over the filtration machines. The resulting slipstream grabbed him up as easily as child having a tantrum with a cheap toy. It spun him around and slammed him hard back against the street. It dragged him along the wall of an adjacent building, painfully snapping scales from his back. Finally, as if having grown bored with the game, the wild current viciously flung Coronis up towards the Above. The City buckled away from him, its darkened spires growing smaller and smaller, the cataract at its center a shrinking pupil. The entirety of known civilization could fit in the palm of his hand like a crust of glittering sand. The veins in his gills swelled painfully as they strained for oxygen. Vision fading, he gasped for breath but found none. The rising current was still carrying him fast and far as he slipped into oblivion.

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My head. Oh, my head.

A terrible squeezing pain rippled between his temples, across his chest and groin. Coronis knew he was too deep. He cradled his skull in his hands and rocked his body. He hadn’t felt depth-sickness like this since the war. His squad had been tasked with placing implodes on the outcrop of a revolutionary station, a hollowed-out scarp along the City’s southern cliffs. Even with frequent doses of the gelatinous nalox fruit, the pain had been constant and the narcosis only a long blink away. He barely remembered finishing the job. Only the signature sound of the bombs going off. Shuck, woom! Just like Demod said. He’d been lucky. Not everyone had made it out in time …

It came back to him. The taverna. The arc lamps flickering out. The skylla. The whirlpool’s slipstream. He must have passed out from the height. At some point, the rising current must have released him. With nothing to stop his descent, he’d sunk. Down, down, into the dark wildernesses that lay beyond and below the safety of the City.

By some miracle, he was alive. A quick inventory showed that he had survived largely intact. Several dozen scales were torn away. A stinging tear in his left toe-web had reopened. His writing pad was gone. Perhaps that hurt the most. It was one of the first things he had bought after the war, back when he had grand dreams of documenting an epic new life of adventure, back before he’d accepted the drudgery of snail farms and wasted evenings at the taverna.

By instinct he scanned the horizon for lighthouses. Their towering parapets should be visible for miles. No sign of them, no sign of the City at all. In every direction, nothing but a vast, kelp-covered plain lit by a dim, golden twilight. Twisting currents danced among fronds glimmering with faint bioluminescence.

Coronis tingled with excitement. Despite the direness of the situation, he felt strangely liberated. Or, that could be the narcosis. He had certainly sunk several fathoms below the City’s depth. It wasn’t deep enough to kill him right away, but without any nalox fruit to adjust his biology to the pressure, he wouldn’t survive long enough to tell the story. He needed to keep moving lest sleep take him and never let go. Coronis ignored the pain, chose a direction, and began swimming.

He didn’t see the thing hidden by the kelp until he practically stumbled into it. It wasn’t a skylla or any other creature he recognized. It looked like a strange, hobbled child, combing the undergrowth for morsels. Closer inspection revealed something more like a gathering of eels in a vague person shape. Its arms and legs were vestigial stumps with long spider-like fingers it used to sift through the grass. It didn’t quite have a discernible head, more like a nub of black jelly.

A hydra; a real hydra. Not a mummy, not a hoax, not a children’s puppet. Alive.

Coronis unintentionally clicked in surprise.

The hydra spun to face him. No eyes, but plenty of teeth, most of them clumped with squirming crustaceans. Like a living cloud of ink, it twisted and darted through the water, constantly changing shape, limbs undulating asymmetrically.

S … sorry, Coronis stammered as he hunkered into a pugilist’s stance. His eyes reflexively polarized, enhancing the contrast of his vision. His fins flashed bright crimson and gold as they joint-locked. I didn’t mean to interrupt … whatever …

A blur rippled across the hydra’s body. Its mouth and all the little carrion-soaked teeth were absorbed into itself. A diaphragmatic slit opened across its torso, vibrating with a dissonant bleating that gradually grew clearer, like a warped cylinder played in reverse, until distinct notes emerged, then individual words. Coronis tried to make sense of what he was hearing through his thudding brain. Whalesong. The damned thing was talking whalesong.

The hydra fanned out its long fingers as wide as they would go. No harm, it sang. The creature floated closer. What are you?

Um, me? Coronis stuttered in whalesong as he nervously eyed the hydra’s razor-edged claws. I’m, I don’t know. Just me.

Oh? The hydra sounded disappointed. Is that all?

Coronis floated motionless, torn between screaming and giggling. I’m a poet, he bleated without thinking. Well, what I mean is …

Ah. A poet’s eyes. You are precisely what we have been looking for. Excited spasms rolled up and down the hydra’s gelatinous body. Sea-folk will accompany us?

Where?

The hydra pointed vaguely upwards. Up.

Up? You know a way? Maybe you can help me find The City. You know the City?

Yes, we go up. To the empty. You will be our witness. For me, for the Bright Ones. With your help, the bridge that burns will —

Coronis swooned. When he came to, the beating in his skull had grown louder. He could feel inner valves closing up, fluids thickening.

The hydra took what might have been a thoughtful pose. You do not belong down here.

Cornonis’ thoughts began to blink out, one by one, inner voices fading into the darkness. He released his grasp of the waving kelp and floated away. Let death come, he thought. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide with adrenaline as the hydra grasped him and forced something into his mouth. It dissolved before he could spit it out, and soon a cold sensation washed down his spine. The headache dissolved, his veins opened wide, his gills breathed deep.

You have nalox fruit? Coronis asked. According to his superiors during the war, like the lighthouses and whirlpools, nalox were another gift of the Cetus. They were incredibly difficult to mature, requiring arcane knowledge of the botanical sciences that should be far beyond primitive species like the hydra.

Yes, but not many. We must hurry. We must go down now.

Hold on, Coronis said. I thought you wanted to go up.

Up is death. First down. Get us a — it spat out a gibberish mix of chords and clacks — then we go up.

Coronis fumed at the trick, but had no choice. He was tempted to just swim away and find his own way home. But how to even start? Even with his head clear, all he could see were miles and miles of kelp. And without any more of the hydra’s nalox fruit, it would become his grave as well.

Guess I’m stuck, he said. Do you have a name?

The hydra pondered this for a moment, mouth flapping silently, as if having an internal conversation with itself.

Ogi, it finally answered.

Call me Coronis.

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They followed the gentle slope of the forest downward, vigilant for predators hiding among the kelp. The terrain became steeper as they went, and the occasional outcrops of pale granite were replaced with jagged eruptions of volcanic rock. The lush kelp thinned out, and grew delicate, translucent, like fields of ghostly threads. A slow rain of organic detritus fell across the terrain, collecting in soft drifts. Signs of life were few and far between. Like Naus had said, nothing down at this depth but worms and bones. When the gauzy veil of night began to fall, they found abandoned boreholes to hide in. As Coronis picked over the few bony wrasses he had been able to trap, Ogi sang whalesong ballads of murdered gods, of tragic lovers driven cannibal by nox-lust, of terrible battles that cracked the ocean floor in half.

On the third night, Coronis asked why all his songs were so grim.

Ogi answered with a phrase that roughly translated to ‘A Thousand Tides of Sinking Bones’.

What is that, some kind of war?

Yes. A war. Always a war. Only a war.

Well, I’ve been in a few fights myself, Coronis said. We still found better things to sing about.

Ogi considered this. His morphic scales rippled one way and then the other, as if different flows of thought were contending for control. Then, it began to sing in a voice so low and quiet it was almost unrecognizable, its diaphragmatic slit barely vibrating the water. Coronis leaned in to listen.

"The journey will be exquisite

Across the bridge that burns

When the path of every hand

Finds the drowning light

A million Bright Ones

Wait on the other side of Death

Across the bridge that burns …"

Coronis didn’t understand, but woven within the sad whalesong was the impression of beautiful purpose. Ogi. Why are you going up, to the Above?

Keeping a promise, Ogi answered. The Above is the way home for others, not only you.

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After another full tide of swimming, they arrived at the end of the world.

Coronis couldn’t help but grin as they hovered at the precipice. The Beneath, he said. Demod, you idiot. You were right after all.

Once, as a child, Coronis had swum directly over the cataract on a dare. He’d never forgotten the sensation of terror staring down that black throat while frantically kicking and paddling his way to the other side. But the cataract was a trifle compared to what lay before him now. There was no other side to this pit, only a gulf of darkness that went forever in every direction, an endless midnight sea scabbed with titanic mountain ranges that could fit a dozen Cities inside their crags. Massive smoker plumes roared from the darkness like furious demons, pustuled with methane fire, veined with lightning. And in every direction, enmeshed within the staggering landscape, chariots of war glided through the chaos like schools of giant luminous mudfish, each pulled by a magnificent armored Cetus. Even the smallest chariot easily outsized the largest zip Coronis had ever seen. They dripped with weapons, spikes and hooks and blades and chains forged out of that same yellow-green metal Demod had been showing off. Coronis watched in horrified fascination as a distant pod of Cetus war-chariots approached a spongy outcrop from which a swarm of eels poured. There was a blink of light and the outcrop simply disappeared. Minutes later, a thudding pressure wave slammed Coronis in the chest. Shuck, woom!

Ogi, what is this war about? Who’s fighting? Ogi — ?

Ogi had curled into a ball, its limbs tightly wrapped around itself. Anxious spikes rolled up and down its fluid skin. Its claws scratched against each other.

Sorry. Back home. I heard all. Too much. The hivemind sings of terror and betrayal and carnage. Wait a moment. I’ll recompose. Ogi motioned for Coronis to keep close as it led him to a narrow groove carved into the side of the chasm wall. This leads us to our goal. Follow. Careful. Quiet.

Where exactly are we going?

The Castle of — followed by an unpronounceable trill of internal clicks and grinds, teeth scraped against stone. There we find what we need to continue our journey.

Coronis was too stunned by everything he’d seen to ask more. To think that there had been entire civilizations below the City this whole time, strange creatures building castles and machines, fighting wars. What other wonders had this world kept hidden from him, and the other naïve sea-folk? For the first time since being cast off from the City, he thought of Naus and Demod, back home, plucking snails. He wished they were here to share these marvels.

Their path wound back and forth along the wall. It tunneled through sparkling deposits of quartz and around impenetrable forests of petrified coral. They passed the rusting ruins of abandoned war machines cracked open like eggs. Some were still leaking unctuous clouds of toxic nox that refused to dissipate. At each new curiosity, Coronis wanted to stay and learn more, but Ogi dragged him forward. No time, he said.

The path grew narrower the further down they went, until it was little more than a cleft in the canyon wall. With every step down they took, they lost some more light. When the darkness became absolute, even with every eyelid opened as wide as possible, Coronis stumbled to a stop.

Must keep moving, Ogi urged. Almost out of nalox fruit.

I know, Coronis said, trying not to show his panic. But I’m blind.

Sea-folk, blind? Ogi touched him lightly on the head. Quiet. Listen. Let sound guide you.

It had been years since Coronis practiced his echolocation. It was taught to every clutch, but with arc lamps lining the streets and the constant glow of Cetus lighthouses, most let their echo skills atrophy. Coronis flexed his pharynx bones. Long unused muscles crackled in pain. A scruffy click bounced off the canyon walls. After a few more tries he could at least internally synthesize a foggy sense of the surrounding rocks, the edges of the staircase, the monolithic silence of the depths. Good enough not to accidentally lose himself in the Beneath. He made sure to remain no further than an arm’s length from Ogi’s amorphous sound-shape as they ventured further into the midnight waters.

They arrived at the Castle near the end of the second tide. The last dose of the nalox fruit was wearing off, leaving Coronis increasingly vulnerable to the crushing, freezing waters. They crept into the Castle, which was more like a labyrinthine cavern hollowed out of the chasm wall than any sort of actual structure. No one came out to greet them, but based on the size of the doorways, Coronis felt that was probably a good thing. Ogi led them deeper into the Castle.

What exactly are we looking for? Coronis whispered. Each chamber they entered was larger and more mysterious than the one before. One was a boneyard of broken machines. Another was ornamented with a trio of immense crumbling statues, gray sea-moss draped over their faceless heads like hoods. They entered an eerie space with no walls and no ceiling, where all echoes returned twisted, as if the water itself were suffused with some invisible malignancy. Even Ogi was spooked, and they crossed through as quickly as possible.

Eventually, they came to a large cavern that held an exotic menagerie. Cages lined the walls, some barred with that yellow-green metal, others composed of translucent pearl that phosphoresced against the shadowy creatures imprisoned within. Ogi pointed to a cluster of oversized crustaceans clinging to the far wall. They were blanketed from eyestalk to tail in thick, matted fibers.

What we seek, it whispered.

What, those … centipede … things? Coronis paced in circles around the room, kicking up dust. The caged animals squealed and growled in agitation. I thought we were looking for a zip or maybe one of those war machines?

Quiet! Ogi hissed.

The menagerie suddenly went silent.

Too late! Cetus! Hide! the hydra said before disappearing behind one of the cages.

Wait — did you say Cetus — ?

The chamber flooded with a blinding indigo light. A voice like a breaching volcano bellowed out in an ancient whalesong dialect. Its words thundered through the water.

Stranger! Miscreant! Who intrudes into the House of Nyx-Phemos?

A colossal shape moved in front of the light, eclipsing it like a mountain breaks a tsunamic surge. Coronis scurried after Ogi into the shadows. His veins pulsed red and gold in terror. His only knowledge of the Cetus came from vague myths of the Lost Time, back when the City was less than a hundred strong. Legend told that the Cetus had come up from the cataract and given the City the language of whalesong, so that they could communicate with other denizens of the world. They had taught the people how to farm the snails and how to ferment plankton. Their final gift, before returning down the cataract, had been the arc-light. They had left the Cetus lighthouses behind as a guide should they ever choose to return.

In the stories, the Cetus were described as titanic versions of the gold-scaled sunfish that the royals trotted out on menagerie days. Grand, angelic, eyes deep with wisdom. This giant was nothing like that. The titan’s body was a decrepit wreck of deep, white scars riddled with parasitic barnacles. Moldering vestments hung from its flukes, decayed ribbons of skylla hide, serpentine bones, squid tentacles preserved and bound in wire. Exposed talons of bone erupted from the vestigial fingers ridging its pectoral fins. Its teeth were rotting shards of shale. A grotesque weeping tumor encased nearly half of its skull, while a vomitous brume of nox bubbling from its mouth obscured its only working eye.

Speak, stranger, the monster demanded. Nyx-Phemos knows you are here, trespasser. Nyx-Phemos can hear the beating of your little heart.

Coronis thought back on all the tales of the great Cetus benevolence. How they favored the people of the City. The many gifts they left behind. Seeing no other way out, he responded in formal whalesong.

Forgive us, Lord of the Deep! We are lost travelers from above.

Nyx-Phemos peered about the chamber with its good eye.

Above?

Yes, we come from the City, where we still revere your ancestors, Coronis said. I humbly ask you to show us some hospitality, as we only seek to return home.

A horrible, phlegmatic noise rolled from the throat of the Cetus. The sound trembled through the creature’s massive body, casting off bits of decay and rot from its vestments. The barnacles on its stomach flicked their tongues in and out. The opaque tumor of its dead eye shivered.

The monster was laughing.

Ancestors? Poor miscreant, Old Nyx-Phemos strode the barren roads of your mid-ocean ‘City’ when it was nothing but a reef of frightened polyps. But there was sunlight, wasn’t there? Yes. My brain can almost recall it. Why not come out where Nyx-Phemos can see you, sea-worm? Help me remember those better tides.

A cool, raw sensation surged through Coronis. It wasn’t shock or fear. It wasn’t even disappointment; after all, most childhood stories curdled with time. He felt awe at the sheer impossibility of descending into the Beneath only to find himself in the presence of this ancient, terrible Cetus. He felt a thrill from the danger it presented and despite that, a cool confidence. A gift from the war perhaps, from times when the corpses of his friends danced in the water, and he hid from the enemy in an expanding pool of brackish offal, his thoughts clean as a newborn tooth.

My lord, I do not deserve to be witnessed by your great presence, Coronis said. Grant us leave, and we shall never bother you again.

Leave? Stranger, do you not know where you are? The Cetus aimed its blinding torch at the ground. Waves of intense heat cascaded through the chamber. The creatures of the menagerie screamed and thrashed in their cages. There is no ascension from this cursed midnight country. Do you think we would have warred with these damned hydra and their nekyia masters for all these years if we could simply return up to our proper thrones? Stupid cow of a sea-folk, old Nyx-Phemos remembers taking up your kind two at a time and crushing you against the rocks and cracking your thin clam skulls and scraping the blood and brains up with my tongue. You screamed and we ate, and it was all good and delicious until the traitor Nyx-Theus with his arc-fire and his damned subsonic bells banished us down to this hellish underworld. No matter. Soon you will be cooked and dead and Nyx-Phemos will happily chew the meat from your bones.

The water of the chamber was warming up to an unbearable degree, making Coronis dizzy. The agony of the crushing depths returned, even in his eyes, which felt like they might implode any second with a small and terrible shuck-woom of their own. He tried to come up with ways to defend himself, to attack the Cetus, to flee without being caught, but his mind was too torpid.

Just as he prepared to step out from his hiding spot and surrender to death, a low, murmuring song reverberated through the room.

"The mind nectar of the ancients

Carried on ships of flaming sails

The Bright Ones poured themselves

Deep into the bowl of the ocean

And offer them the drowning light

Drink deeply my old friend."

A shape flickered past Coronis and up into the chamber, a smear of opalescence, passing through the boiling light of the torch without slowing down. It threaded itself through the tumorous eye of the Cetus as easily as an eel slinking into its burrow. The monster stopped laughing and began to shriek.

What? What is that? Demon! Nekyia! Get out of my head! No! The Cetus lifted its torch away from the ground and aimed the tip of it at its good eye. Stop! Something is controlling me! Sea-folk, you miscreant, you brought this devil! I command you make it stop! Help old Nyx-Phemos!

Coronis called up to the monster. But I see nothing! What is the name of the beast capable of harming such a majestic creature as yourself?

It has no body! It is no one! Nyx-Phemos screamed as it furiously recoiled from the torch in his own clawed hand.

If it is nobody, no one, it can only be your own foul spirit, Coronis said.

With an involuntary jerk, the Cetus jammed the flaming bulb of its torch deep into its own eye socket. Boiling blood spilled out in clouds of red gore. The torch pushed down until the optic nerves were burned black. The Cetus screamed and crashed into the walls, sending bricks the size of boulders tumbling down through the fog of thickening nox.

Ogi was already swimming toward a gap in the base of the chamber, a pair of the fur-coated crustaceans gripped between its claws. Coronis kicked hard to catch up, skimming through the cloud of brackish blood and past the pitiful, moaning Nyx-Phemos. Even as they cleared the first turns of the bedrock beneath the Castle, he could still hear the screams of the blinded Cetus echoing through the world-chasm, cursing at no one.

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The lava tube twisted and turned for hours, its rough walls returning Coronis’ meeps and clicks with maddening irregularity, while leading down into ever colder and denser waters. The last of the nalox was wearing off. Invisible hands squeezed his skull, his ribs. A deep loam coated the tunnel walls, the slightest touch casting off billowing clouds of fine, ashen dust which further choked his perception.

They cleared a turn and found a great, hoary gate of that exotic greenish-yellow metal barring their passage. It was carved with the same alien designs as Demod’s trinket.

Be careful here, Ogi warned.

What is this place?

With a grunt, Ogi swung the gate open. Thick flakes of corrosion broke off and floated into the void beyond.

It is the afterdeath, the Bottom, the Infernum. It is the realm of the Nekyia.

They emerged onto a vast sunken steppe of stone and ice. The water was heavy and old, miasmic with churning banks of black nox. The light of battle chariots scratched foreboding lines in the glassy darkness above them. Crooked outcrops of volcanic stone jutted from the earth like dead, broken teeth separated by ugly fissures that glowed a baleful red. Unlike the decrepit strangeness of the Beneath, this place felt ancient, forgotten, reeking with the smell of decay after all the meat had fallen away.

Coronis gazed upon at the malign landscape with equal parts astonishment and dread. Above them, the war between the Cetus and the hydra scarred the darkness with fire. He flinched as explosions lit up the world like flashes of daylight.

We are going to die down here.

No, Ogi said.

We can’t go back, Coronis said. And even if I had the strength, there’s no way we could swim up through all of that.

There is another way, Ogi said. Trust us. We continue onward.

A movement nearby startled Coronis — another hydra tumbling through the murk, its spider-fingers spasming in the final throes of death. They watched its inexorable descent to the illuvial seafloor, where it was met by forms rising from the dust — shapes of creatures, some Coronis recognized, others he had no words for. They dissolved and reformed but more came than went and soon a crowd had accumulated around the dying hydra. When it had twitched its last, the shapes descended upon it, their liquid forms flowing into its corpse. It vibrated once, twice, then righted itself and began pumping its revivified limbs to head Upward, its faceless head fixed on the war it intended to rejoin.

The Nekyia have recruited another, Ogi said solemnly.

Coronis stared agape. He wondered if pressure narcosis had reached his brain.

What did I just see?

This dust that surrounds us are the spores of the Nekyia. They spawn from beneath the ice. A fungus that reanimates the dead as it feeds upon them. Eventually, it consumes all, even their memories. The shades that you see are the spores manifesting stolen memories under the light of familiarity.

I thought the war was between your people and the Cetus. But now you’re telling me that those are … dead … reanimated … I don’t even know what to call them.

The slithering parts of Ogi shrugged. The relationship between my people and the Nekyia has never been … simple. Not enemies, not friends, but each requires the other. Just like you and this asphodel. He handed Coronis one of the shaggy, wriggling crustaceans. "Now, friend, I will go find our way out of this place. But I must go alone. Please wait