“Forgiveness?” he repeated.

“For me.” Mitéra’s colors flashed blue, then a deep black. “For I was the one who sent them to their ends.”

He would waste no more time. Arges bent back into the sand, whispering the words of his prayer to every god he could think of. He asked for speed. He begged for their grace and to allow him to find their people quickly. None of them could afford for him to waste any time in getting to them. He would rush through the waves, and the currents would toss him to the achromos’ home.

And when he finished, he didn’t even look at Mitéra. He threw himself into motion, his tail springing into action and his gills opening wide so he could get enough air to chase after them.

Hearts thundering in his chest the entire journey, he rushed forward into the unknown until he met the massive wall that led up to the human home. Even looking up, he could see the bright flashes of light that preceded the blinding pain of the achromos’ weapons. Small explosions rocked through the water, raining debris down on his head.

His people were fighting. As he surged forward, up the cliff, closer and closer to the battle, he could see they were losing.

Badly.

A body floated down into the depths past him. Her hair had been seared off, and part of her face was missing. Though her gills still fluttered, he knew she was already gone. Her torso led the way back into the arms of the abyss, her tail trailing after her.

And then another.

Another.

So many that he could hardly count through the bodies floating past him and disappearing into the darkness of the deep.

Arges moved faster. He pushed the muscles of his tail and back hard, until they screamed with overuse, then he burst above the cliff and out into the madness beyond.

His people had swarmed the achromos’ home. So many People of Water were attached to the glass structures, arms flexing in the bright flashing lights the achromos used. Their weapons glinted, striking the metal and glass tubes, and then bouncing right off.

They didn’t have the right weapons for this. They had nothing that would help them defeat the city.

Frantically, he searched through the crowds of his own people for anyone who would listen to him. Maketes. His brightly colored, yellow finned brother was in the distance, dragging a body toward the edge of the cliff.

“Brother!” Arges shouted, swimming closer and hooking his claws underneath the injured man’s arms. “We need to get them out of here.”

Dark blood already bloomed from Maketes’s ribs, and he winced. “You think? This was a terrible idea.”

“I did warn you all.”

“And yet, here you are.” Maketes grinned, even through the pain. “Here I was believing you didn’t have a hero complex. Yet you cannot keep your nose out of our deaths, even!”

“Shut up,” he growled. “Where is Daios?”

“I don’t know. He led a larger group toward the central tower. He said that was where the weapons were kept.” Maketes pointed up.

Arges swore. “Of course he did. The fool.”

“I’ll gather the others. Get them to start heading home and lick our wounds. Yeah?”

“Don’t forget the dead.”

His usually playful friend’s features darkened. “I never forget the dead, Arges.”

Leaving Maketes to do the right thing, he speared through the water toward the command tower. What had been his brother’s plan? Take out the weapons with sheer force, and then perhaps the achromos would have nothing left to fight them with? This was a foolish mission, and he should have seen it from the very start.

Anger heating his blood, he pivoted to round the central tower only to find himself immersed in even more chaos. He’d never thought to see such folly from his own people.

So many dead floated around his brother and a small pod of others who were still alive. They wrestled with one of the mechanical blasters, similar to Mira’s junk that she insisted on bringing with her. But their wrestling was only blasting more pieces of them into chunks.

As he watched, two of their people fell away from his brother, and Daios lost his mind. Enraged, colors flickering brightly and teeth bared in a grimace, his brother grabbed onto the blaster and wrenched. It gave one final pulse of heat, then his brother twisted. He couldn’t rip it off the platform and instead, the weapon took his arm.

Arges watched as though time itself had slowed. His brother’s arm fell first, black blood pluming in the water like his brother had startled an octopus. It didn’t seem real that a limb could come off so easily, and so quickly, and yet... it had.

He raced forward, wrapping an arm around Daios’s waist before forcing them both back. Toward the edge, toward safety. He could save one person, and let it be his blood brother, the idiot who had been with him in the womb.

“Stop!” Daios shouted, and Arges had to wonder if the pain had yet to hit him. “We almost succeeded!”

“You almost died!” Arges argued, throwing him down over the edge with those who remained. “You killed nearly everyone. When will it be enough?”

Daios shoved him, clearly trying to do so with both arms. And then his brother noticed the wound. The lack of a limb and the pain that came with it.

All the lights in his tail went out. He lifted a shaking hand to the piece of him that was no longer attached, and his gills shook along his sides. “What⁠—”

“We stop,” Arges said, then shouted it again. “We stop this now before we lose even more!”

A small murmur started up through the crowd of his people. Some were dragging the injured back, but he saw the truth in their eyes. They were afraid. They understood why he had made them wait for such a long time, and he was sorry they had to discover his reasoning like this.

He saw movement at the edge of the cliff and watched as his dark brother backed away from them all. “No,” Daios muttered. “No, this isn’t over yet.”

“How is it not over? You’re missing an arm, Daios. You need help.”

“There is another who can give us answers. You have never done your job right, Arges. Never completely.” And something black flashed through Daios, something down right evil. “I will get us answers if you cannot.”

And then his brother took off into the depths. Toward the one thing that made Arges’s hearts stop beating before he raced after death itself.

Not death for him.

But for her.

OceanofPDF.com

Nineteen

Mira

Not for the first time, Mira was a little overwhelmed.

And by a little, she really meant a lot. Getting stranded in the middle of the ocean with only her prototype rebreather to keep her alive was a little more than she expected to handle right off the bat. She might have hyperventilated the first night, certain that she was going to die. But at least the bell had more air in it than she had expected. It hadn’t run out of oxygen through all her crying and panicked heaving, which was a reassuring start.

The plant did eventually run out of air, though. And then she moved onto the next one. By the time the water had turned into that crystalline blue again, which she assumed was daylight, she had gotten a hold of herself a little better.

Her stomach eventually grumbled for food, and she’d convinced herself that she could do this. Even if the undine didn’t come back for her, she was capable of taking care of herself.

Her father had always said she was a force to be reckoned with, and now was her time to prove that.

So she had settled her rebreather back on her face, made sure that her goggles were clear with spit and wouldn’t fog up, and then she dove to investigate her new... home.

The kelp forest was surprisingly diverse with creatures. She’d known it would have some kinds of sea creatures in it, obviously, but she hadn’t expected there to be quite so many of them. All the fish she’d seen, even the ones that Arges had told her to catch, came in every color she could imagine. They swam around her in tiny schools. Swirling like she’d used to do with her mother’s scarves, trailing them around herself as she spun in circles.