Page 32 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)

Thirty-Two

Fortis

F ortis had known this would be difficult, but he hadn’t realized just how bad it would be. His people were ruthless in their pursuit of knowing everything about her. They grabbed onto her shoulders, arms, back, legs, anything they could get their hands on as they tried, desperately, to see into her future.

And in some way, he’d been tempted as well. He’d fallen into her future with them, even though he promised himself he wouldn’t do that without asking. Her future was just too intriguing, even to him. But the future they all saw together was muddy. There were too many currents she could take. Too many opportunities for her future to split.

He hated looking into futures like this, because it was always harder to guess what people like her might do. Fortis knew her better than the rest of the depthstriders, and even he couldn’t follow the currents that would allow him to guess where and when she was going to be. He didn’t know if she was given the opportunity to betray him, whether or not she would.

Eventually, light bloomed in the distance. Mitera had never been one for darkness, and soon enough, he could find the homeland of all the depthstriders.

He tried to see it through Alexia’s eyes. She was used to metal cities that burst through the sea, forcing everything around them to bend to their will. But this city was built out of the sea itself. Silty towers of mud that had been hardened by deep-sea vents, where multiple depthstriders leaned out of carved homes. Their tails were still deep within the tunnels, leaving them to appear almost human-like as they watched them pass.

Lights illuminated from the many bioluminescent plants. Usually these species wouldn’t survive in the sea the way they were, but they were protected by the depthstriders themselves. Lights were useful this deep, and it was exhausting for his people to constantly light themselves.

And then there were the patterns. Swirling stones in rippling circles that spiraled in on themselves, marking where certain families lived. Each of those swirls had a meaning. Some patterns were directions, some were family markers, others were areas of the village they were in. His people had done all they could to make this a home, even in the deepest of the sea.

They had created an inspiration of architecture out of the stone and mud, spires that twirled around themselves, homes that were deep winding paths and kept the families within safe.

“Is that... a farm?” she asked, her voice catching as another depthstrider grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged gently.

He looked, but he already knew what she was referring to. They had been cultivating fish for a very long time. The woven nets were made of sea fronds that had been dried in caves before returning them under the sea and weaving them into a braid that was then used to create nets. All of these contained massive amounts of fish, living intentionally and without too much concern for their wellbeing. It helped this deep in the ocean. There were very few hunting grounds here, and most of them, if not all, were taken up by the wild animals that lived deep in these waters.

“It is a farm. But don’t look around too much, Alexia. The depthstriders won’t like it that a human knows so much,” he murmured.

The knot of depthstriders around them dispersed, although he could hear them murmuring. She wasn’t natural. She shouldn’t be here. What was he thinking bringing her into the heart of their home?

He had been thinking this was his last chance, and none of them seemed to understand how meaningful that was. Soon enough, they would know how little of a chance they had left.

He had seen it. And he was certain the rest of them had seen it as well. They knew their ocean was threatened. They knew that the humans were so close to destroying everything they all held dear.

They were running out of time. Or perhaps his real fear was that he was running out of time. His death barreled toward him and Fortis’s use would soon come to an end. At least this he could still do this.

Mitera drifted out of her home, floating before them with that billowing jellyfish like hair that always looked so beautiful. All her iridescent coloring, floating around her head and undulating with her movements, used to captivate him. Just looking into her pale white eyes was to see every color that had ever existed. She was the most powerful of them, seeing into the future further than any other.

He hoped he wouldn’t even need to argue after bringing Alexia here. Mitera would see the future clearly, as she always did. She would know, without a doubt, that he wanted them to fight for the right reasons.

But from the expression on her face, he knew he’d been wrong.

Fortis murmured under his breath, “That is Mitera. She is the oldest seer, the mother of us all.”

“She’s your mom?”

“Not biologically. She is... somewhat of a wise woman, you could say. She is the oldest and most practiced of us all. We trust her implicitly. This is the woman we need to win over.”

“Understood.” She swallowed hard, and he knew that his words hadn’t helped to settle her fears. If anything, he’d only made it worse.

“Fortis!” Mitera’s voice called out. The sound erupted from the water like whale song, or perhaps the voice of a goddess herself. “You have returned to your people and violated our greatest law.”

“It was necessary to do so.”

“There is nothing that could give you the right to bring one of their kind here.” Mitera’s hair turned a vibrant shade of red, only barely visible this deep even with all the surrounding light. “She has no right to be here. Not in our home. Not even in our sea.”

“She is from Tau.”

Angry hisses rose around him, all the people surrounding them enraged by what he said. Because if she was from Tau, that meant she was part of those who had hurt them, maimed them, killed them. She was part of the evil they had never been able to exact revenge upon.

Exhaling bubbles from his gills, he hugged her a little tighter before turning her around to face Mitera. Alexia had been looking over her shoulder, of course, but she would want to face her opponent directly. He knew his virago well. She would battle until her last breath.

“She has agreed to help us,” he called out, trying to get his people to see reason. “She has left her city, knowing that she would betray all those she had once lived with. Their city is worse than we ever imagined, and that means she deserves to enact her revenge. She has just as much reason as we do.”

“Reason?” Mitera hissed. “She has no reason to be here. If she is going to fight with us, then let her fight with Arges and all the others who can stand to be surrounded by their stench. Leave that life to those who are foolhardy and see no issues with how her people live. This is not the way of the depthstrider.”

“There is more we can learn from the humans than you give them credit for, Mitera. I would see that she is taken care of, and that we use the knowledge only she can share.” He took a deep breath, knowing his next words would not go over well. “I am here to ask the depthstriders to fight with us. Attack Tau with me, take the information that we have been given by this woman, and we will destroy the city once and for all. Then we can rebuild this sea with the humans. Together, we will learn how to live with each other after we cut the head off the achromo cities.”

Mitera stared at him like he’d lost his mind, and every other depthstrider stopped moving. Not even a flicker of a hip fin stirred the water surrounding them as they all realized he wasn’t joking. He hadn’t brought Alexia here to be punished.

He wanted them to work with humans to destroy humans. And he already knew they were going to deny him even that.

But he would not give up. Wrapping his hands around Alexia’s waist, he gave her a little squeeze. “Talk, virago. Give them a reason to believe us.”

She took a deep breath, and for a moment, he thought she would deny him. After all, she was not the perfect person for this. She had been a warrior her entire life, and while they would respect that, they would not praise her for it.

“I hate them as much as you hate them,” she finally said. At their hisses, she lifted a hand for silence. “I know that is hard to believe. Perhaps there is a part of you that thinks that if I lived there for so long, that surely I agreed with what they did. But they manipulated me, they genetically enhanced me, they created me for everything they wanted me to do. I had no choice in anything that happened.”

Mitera’s hair flared wider, making her look like one of the massive jellyfish that absorbed all its prey. “I care little for your story.”

“And yet, it is a story you will have to listen to. The people in that city don’t care who you are, what you are, or why you want to go against them. Greed is the only language they speak. They have lived for hundreds of years. Countless of them, the original people who destroyed our world above and then decided to take over yours. There is no fixing what they have done. There is nothing humans can do. But you cannot truly believe that all of my kind deserves death.”

A sudden, long silence was her answer. He felt her ribs expand in a shocked breath that she let out very, very slowly.

“Oh,” she whispered. “You do believe we should all die.”

“I don’t care what you do with yourselves,” Mitera said. “But you will not stay here in our ocean, ruining everything for the rest of those who live within these waters.”

“We have nowhere to go.”

“It’s not my task to keep humans safe. There are others who I am certain can do that just fine.”

Alexia’s shoulders straightened, and he could smell her rage on the water. The others would soon smell it too, and they would rise to the challenge she had no idea she was issuing. “The people who are supposed to look after us are corrupt. They are the ones who have harmed you as well. They are the people none of us can trust, yet you expect me to go back to them?”

Mitera’s hair alternated between putrid yellow annoyance and bright red rage. “It is not my responsibility to convince your people that empathy is worthwhile.”

“That’s rich coming from a creature who won’t even offer help to those who need it.”

Oh.

That wasn’t the right thing to say to Mitera, but he could hear the rumblings from a few other depthstriders. They were all thinking the same thing. Why shouldn’t they help the humans? Clearly, help was needed, and they were uniquely qualified to offer it.

But Mitera had never been a forgiving woman.

“We will not help the achromos. We’ve tried to fight Tau before, but your people are as slippery as eels and as deadly as the greatest of foes. We have lost more lives to your city than you could imagine. Your people deserve what they have been fighting to get for centuries now. If that requires the loss of all your lives, then it is just the will of the sea.” Mitera gave her one more look up and down before tsking. “You waste all our time.”

He knew before Alexia even spoke that she was going to do something stupid. He could feel it bubbling up inside of her. Fortis tried to smack his hand over her lips, but it was too late.

She called out, “Then look into my future! You are the best of them, are you not? What the others could not see, you should be able to find easily. Look into my future and see what it is that I will do.”

It was a temptation even the greatest of them could not deny. Someone asking a depthstrider to look into the future gave them so much more ability to see even further. There was always a fight when the person was unwilling. The future seeker had to wade through all the things the person was afraid they would see, or perhaps even just walls they hadn’t realized they’d put up. It was a struggle to see the future of a person who did not wish them to see it.

But this? This was offering up an entire future on a platter and begging Mitera to peer into it.

Their leader looked at Alexia again, this time with a clear and direct threat. Fortis tensed, not sure what Mitera would ask.

Their mother replied, “I will look into your future, willingly and gladly. But I request you allow me to show everyone here that future. If you are so confident that you will not take part in the destruction of our people and our sea, then I would have everyone confirm this confidence.”

Fortis couldn’t let this happen. “Mitera?—”

“Fortis, keep your mouth shut. This is her choice.”

Alexia was all too quick to reply. “Let them all see.”

But that was dangerous. She shouldn’t just let anyone peer into her future when he knew what her future was.

Death only waited there. So much death, and Mitera would see it too quickly.

But Alexia had already wriggled her way out of his arms. She approached Mitera and the two of them collided with a rough embrace. He didn’t have time to stop it, because Mitera’s colors swirled in a rainbow of patterns, and then all he could see was Alexia’s future. He saw himself returning her to Tau. He saw the plan they would make, all the details and hidden secrets she would reveal.

It was good. Though he couldn’t see the details, he knew without a doubt that it would work. He saw the hope that blossomed amongst his people. The feeling that they could do this. For once, they were going to destroy the people who had threatened them. They were going to win.

And then he saw white walls, just like his wife had seen. White walls, bright lights, and dark hair sliding over his features. He wasn’t sure what the others saw. Perhaps they saw the future from the perspective of someone else in the room. But for him, all he could see was what he was going to see.

The calm. The peaceful relaxation of death. And the knowledge that he was finally returning home.

Although this time, he also sensed that there was some hesitation in him at leaving. He wasn’t ready to go. All the other times he had seen this future, he was always ready to seek out his wife in the afterlife. But this time, he wasn’t. There were reasons for him to stay and he was sad to go. He didn’t want it to happen so soon.

Each depthstrider rumbled with anger. He could hear their frustration and rage at what was revealed. They didn’t look past that moment, though. They didn’t seek out what happened after his death and he wanted to scream at them because they needed to look past that. They needed to look into the future further, because maybe she killed him for a good reason.

Instead, they stopped there. Mitera pulled back from Alexia with a pleased expression on her face. Even she knew this meant the depthstriders would remain in their safe darkness while the rest of the sea boiled.

“You will kill him. A dear friend of our people, a male who has proven himself worthy time and time again,” Mitera said. “Why would we ever help you do that?”