Mervidia (21 page)

Behind him, the
captain’s soldiers surged forward, swimming through the doorway and around their leader. Most had drawn smaller weapons, daggers and short blades; their usual spears were too unwieldy for the tight confines of the faera house.

Stonegem’s house guards rushed forward to repel the invaders, but they were no match for the much larger merwin.
A red cloud blossomed in the antechamber of House Stonegem, as the blood of the faera, who were being slaughtered by the Palace Guard, began to rapidly spread throughout its front rooms. Tiny bodies, torn and rent by the ethyrie weapons, floated in the expanding haze; grizzly chunks of merwin in the oncoming cloud of coral-hued death that snaked out along the various corridors.

Breete looked down at the dagger in her hand, a tiny needle of spell-hardened coral compared to the blades of the larger merwin who were
slaughtering their way through her house. She did not remember drawing the weapon, but knew it would be less than useless against the invaders. Faera were skilled at assassinations in the middle of the night, not open warfare.

“To the tunnels!”
the domo quickly commanded and swam down the hallway behind her, darting into one of the smaller passageways that was carved into the stone of the building. The small corridors were large enough for a full grown faera to swim through comfortably, yet entirely too narrow for any of the other merwin races to even think about entering. They were also roughly head-high to the average ethyrie, so they provided the perfect vantage point from which to launch a quick attack and then retreat to safety. The Palace Guard’s spears could be thrust down into the tunnels, but the bends in the tiny passageways combined with the speed of the smaller faera would make such a tactic futile.

Who do they think they are?
Breete asked herself, angrily.
Do they think that just because they’re bigger than us, that they can come into a faera home and slaughter us?
Every faera home was riddled with smaller tunnels, both above and below ground; a warren of tiny corridors where none of the other races of merwin could hope to follow.
These lumbering oafs made a grave tactical error coming in here,
she thought.
They cannot get to us and we have plenty of supplies to last until the rest of Mervidia finds out what is happening here. They’ll put a stop to this madness, and in the meantime, we can kill these ethyrie pieces of fish crap at our leisure.

A smile was just starting to turn up the corners of Breete’s
mouth, when she began to hear screams behind her. They were coming from the tunnels, but were too close to be from the larger hallways or even the tunnel entrances. The yells of panic and agony were coming from deep inside. As she rounded one of the many turns, she spared a look over her shoulder.

A
faera female with long, flowing yellow-orange hair was just coming into view when she was suddenly snatched back. A quick yelp of shock was followed by a painful scream cut abruptly short. Breete had just enough time to see a small puff of light red blood, before she lost sight of the merwin who had been snatched away.

What in the Deep’s name is going on?
she wondered.
There is no way their spears are that long or can go around corners. How are they reaching us?
Breete beat her tail frantically, gliding deftly around turn after turn. She took side tunnels in an attempt to elude her pursuers, all the while the map of the warren remained firmly entrenched in her head. She was taking a circuitous route, but still moving inexorably towards her audience chamber, the large hall where she spoke with official visitors. It was an open room, but a score of tunnels hidden behind woven kelp tapestries riddled the walls of the room. Plans had been put in place long ago for just such an occurrence. As unthinkable as it was that House Stonegem would be so blatantly invaded, Breete, and the domos before her, had prepared for it.

Another scream sounded from behind her as Breete started down the last long tunnel before
reaching her destination. Again, she risked a look over her shoulder in an attempt to find out what it was that was killing her people. She slowed in hopes of catching a glimpse that might solve the mystery.

Breete
immediately regretted it.

A wall of spined fangs rounded the corner and rushed down the small tunnel towards her.
Small bits of torn flesh and sheets of glittering scales hung from the creature’s toothy maw, as it wriggled quickly down the tunnel to engulf the last faera behind her in its blood stained jaws.

Before Breete’s brain could register what she was seeing, her tail had begun pumping furiou
sly once more, pushing her as rapidly as it could away from the oncoming threat.

Frilled sharks,
her mind finally said, naming the fanged monstrosity pursuing her.
They loosed frilled sharks into the tunnels!
The horror of the act silenced Breete’s agile mind. Fortunately, her survival instincts were still fully active and she did not hesitate in her retreat.

She darted out of the tunnel into the audience chamber, reaching out with her hand to trip the lever beside the tunnel’s entrance.
A lattice work of hardened bone slammed down behind her, clipping the end of her lavender tail. She heard the frilled shark crash into the gate. Its advance was stopped short, barely a hand’s span behind her. She turned to see the lithe killing machine slamming against the bone lattice work, unable to proceed and just as unable to turn around in the narrow tunnel.

As she watched the creature, she realized her initial mistake.
These aren’t the frilled sharks they use for mounts,
she thought.
At least they’re not full grown ones. They’re babies. Full grown frilled sharks wouldn’t be able to fit in the tunnels.

Another wave of horror hit her.
They’re not full grown! Which means they’re not trained. The Palace Guard has no way of calling them off.
Breete’s mind reeled with the implication.
They’ve been set loose in the house with no way of controlling them.

A tiny tendril of blood leaked from the tip of Breete’s tail where it had been clipped by the closing gate.
The sliver of rosy fluid snaked its way across the gate and was greedily inhaled by the young frilled shark. The creature went berserk at the whiff of blood and redoubled its efforts to get through the tiny portcullis to reach its prey.

Even though she knew that the shark would never get through the gate, Breete backed away from the tunnel; the instinct to survive ma
king her retreat involuntarily. She stopped.
This is not the way the Domo of House Stonegem acts,
she berated herself.
Soon the rest of my merwin will be here, and we can mount a better defense. We’ll hold these pieces of fish crap off until help arrives and then take our case to the Coral Assembly. Iago will regret the day he made this mistake. It will cost him....

And then the screams hit her ears.
Not the occasional yelp of a faera getting caught in the escape tunnels by a frilled shark. Those cries had been coming sporadically from the tunnel mouths, hidden behind the tapestries along the tops of the walls of the audience chamber. They were decreasing in frequency, but they could still be heard.

These screams were different; they were more high pitched and somehow smaller, although they shrieked with the same volume as the others.
She turned to the hidden tunnel entrance at the back of the room. Her attention had been drawn drawn by the clouds of red and pink rolling out into the room, a creeping wall of pain and sorrow, driven forward inexorably by the screams of the dying and the echoes of the dead.

“No,” she whispered, her voice faint even to her own ears.
“They didn’t. They couldn’t.” Breete stared in horror as the ruddy roiling cloud moved ever closer. Too shocked to move, she floated helplessly in the water.

The tapestry exploded into the room, torn off its rod by the weight of dozens of frightened
faera darting into the audience chamber. Swimming through the pink and red clouds of their kin’s blood, Stonegem merwin of all ages flowed into the room with sheer panic making them claw their way over and around the merwin who swam before them. As the larger faera tried to escape their pursuers, their tails beat frantically, many getting tangled with the others jammed into the tunnel beside them. Smaller merwin darted into the room, mature enough to swim on their own, yet not old enough to prepare for a Culling that they would never see.

The nursery!
Breete’s mind screamed, unable to make her mouth utter the same fateful word.

One of Breete’s cousins held her fry in her arms, as she
darted into the room and hid behind the domo’s chair. Her chest heaved from the effort of her retreat, and her eyes found Breete, wordlessly begging the domo to save them.

A green-scaled, orange-haired
faera barreled into the room, both of her arms wrapped tightly around a small translucent sphere in her hands. Her tail beat back and forth at a rapid pace, as she used her shoulder to batter her way past the other merwin and protect the egg in her arms. Her expression quickly changed from one of panic, to one of relief, and then slowly to one of resigned horror, as her terrified eyes scanned the room.

Breete knew that her own face must
have worn the same expression. The house guard was supposed to be here.
They should have retreated through the tunnels to this central chamber to regroup and defend the rest of House Stonegem
, she thought frantically. There was no sign of them though.

Breete opened her mouth to speak
words of reassurance to her family, just as an armed and armored faera burst into the room. The domo’s heart swelled with relief to see her guards arrive, only to shrivel again in her chest as the
lone
merwin tripped the portcullis, sealing a juvenile frilled shark deep in the throes of a blood frenzy in the tunnel behind him. The faera warrior was unaccompanied. Only he had made it through. As he turned, glancing at the rest of the room, a now familiar look of resignation crept onto his face. He briefly met eyes with Breete, before his shame caused him to look away.

As time dr
agged on, more and more faera fled into the audience chamber, dribbling in from the emergency passageways in ones and twos then slamming the gates shut behind them. As they did so, the same series of emotions played across their faces. Panic became relief. Relief became horror. Horror became hopelessness. Three score faera, all that remained of House Stonegem, huddled in silence. They were too shocked at the turn of events to do more than cower together like a school of fish, trying to seem bigger as a predator approached.

Breete quickly swam to the remaining open gates, which no faera had made
it through alive to flip the mechanisms to close them. The bone gates crashed down in the domo’s wake and she returned to huddle with her kin. She hoped that together they could fend off the oncoming predators and prevent any more from entering.

A scrabbling noise came from the tunnel at the back of the room and reached out into the eer
ily quiet room. All eyes turned towards the red cloud of water that lingered outside the rear tunnel, now so thick that it completely obscured the opening. Time seemed to drag on forever, as the scrabbling noise grew louder and the roiling crimson began to jet out in spurts into the room, pushed forward by the creatures making their way up from Stonegem’s nursery up into what was supposed to be the safest room in the building. Only one entrance was big enough for the other larger races of merwin to enter, and it was sealed by a thick stone door, barred by a thick rod of spell-hardened coral. Even an uklod, had the huge creature even been able to fit in the hallway outside, would have been hard pressed to batter its way in. Breete’s ancestors had not thought to put a gate to block off the nursery though. They had assumed any attacker would have had to approach from the audience chamber where the house would make its final stand.

T
he Palace Guard had come prepared. They had brought their baby frilled sharks, most likely emptying the smaller pens behind the palace that housed the younger predators, and set them loose in the tunnels. The faeras’ last place of refuge was now compromised by the monsters that the Divine Family kept as pets.
They got into the nursery,
she thought stunned. Breete shuddered at the thought of the ravenous animals that had been turned loose on the eggs and young merwin and were now making their way up the shaft to the audience chamber.

Domo Breete looked down at the tiny dagger in her hand
and at the last of House Stonegem, floating like chum in the water.
No,
she said to herself.
We are Merwin. We do not resign ourselves to being eaten by others. We make them pay for every inch, for every life, for every….

The roiling red cloud exploded in a swarm of jagged spined teeth and thick dark grey skin.
The room filled with screams, as frilled sharks poured into the chamber and latched their fangs onto the closest faera they could find. They shook their narrow wedge-shaped heads back and forth, tearing the merwin apart. Shouts of pain and fear fell dully on Breete’s ears, her mind blocking out the sound to protect her sanity from the horror of it all.