Mervidia (45 page)

Chapter Forty-One

Lachlan saw Kopawe in the distance, steaming tendrils of bright orange-yellow illuminating the
seafloor all around it. He tossed aside his orihalcyon lantern. “Drop the lanterns!” Lachlan yelled to the Red Tridents behind him hauling the net, while he and Zane scanned the bottom of the ocean. Dozens of orange lights fell in their wake, a shower of ocher luminaires drifting to the seafloor. The small squad of mercenaries began moving marginally faster through the water, their sanguine cargo in tow. Merwin relied on their muscular tails and wide flukes to propel them through the water, caring little for water resistance which slowed their progress. However, every little bit helped at this point. They tucked their freed limbs tight against their bodies, narrowing their profile as they sped through the rapidly warming ocean water.

The
seifeira looked at the grizzly sight that followed behind him. A huge net, carrying a massive chunk of uklod flesh, rode in their wake. It took more than twenty merwin, the strongest the Red Tridents could muster, to haul the bloody hunk of flesh through the water. An additional thirty or so surviving mercenaries, bolstered by the Palace Guard, swam in a protective screen around them, killing or driving off any sharks that got too close. Those predators that were both brave and fast enough to steal a bite of the uklod flesh received a spear point for their trouble. Though a few absconded with a small chunk of meat, none did so unscathed. As the merwin’s journey progressed, though, the number of sharks increased. They would not be able to keep the animals away much longer.

If we can get close enough to Kopawe,
Lachlan prayed,
hopefully the heat and the sulfur will drive them off, and we can concentrate on the sea monster pursuing us.
The seifeira frowned at the looks of exhaustion on the merwin around him. They did not have much left in them. After the fight in the Ghet and the long journey through the city and past the kelp beds of House Ignis, their reserves of strength were beginning to dwindle. “Keep going!” he yelled. “We’re almost there. I can see Kopawe already!” Lachlan pointed at the mound covered in glowing veins of liquid stone in the distance. They would likely not have to reach the volcano proper, but it gave the soldiers a visible goal for which to strive. “Put your tails into it!”

“Red Tridents!” one of the merwin yelled.
The rallying cry was immediately echoed by all the other mercenaries. The net surged forward, impossibly gaining speed from the wave of zeal that pulsed through the laboring merwin’s tiring muscles. “For Mervidia!” they called.

Lachlan looked at Zane, who swam beside him, ever shadowed by Captain Raygo.
The neondra was scanning the seafloor ahead of them. Though they swam high above the vents in the seafloor, avoiding the hot sulfurous water spewing forth, the heat was still becoming rapidly uncomfortable. Lachlan joined his captain’s search, watching the glowing fissures below to choose the place where they would make their stand. Zane pointed at a potential site and looked askance to his friend. The seifeira followed the invisible line from the neondra’s finger and shook his head. While the liquid stone pouring forth was bright, its illumination was constant. “We need one that’s getting brighter,” Lachlan explained. “Those are the ones that are mostly likely to erupt soon.” Though Zane had the support of many of the commoners in Mervidia due to his sense of equality and straightforward nature, the neondra had not spent any time farming his family’s kelp beds. He didn’t know which crevices to give extra room.

And now we’re seeking one of those unstable fissures out, so we can be as close as possible to it when it erupts,
Lachlan noted. Not for the first time, the seifeira was beginning to question the wisdom of his own plan.

“There!” Zane called out, attracting Lachlan’s attention.
“How about that one?” The king pointed to a thick line of red light in the distance.

As Lachlan watched, he saw the ruddy glow grow slowly, but steadily brighter, shifting from dark to light red and beginning to move towards orange.
It was exactly what they had been looking for, although much larger than Lachlan would have liked.

“Perhaps, Sire,” the
seifeira responded. “It might be too big. Perhaps we should look for another?”

Zane looked over his shoulder and then back at Lachlan.
“I think that decision has been made for us, my friend.”

Lachlan looked behind them, past the net carrying the huge chunk of bleeding uklod meat and beyond the loose screen of Red Tridents and Palace Guard that were becoming hard pressed to keep the growing numbers of sharks away.
Coming out of the darkness behind them, at a speed which belied its gigantic bulk, was the massive squid.

At first, Lachlan saw only the top of its head coming into view, as it entered the faint radiance of the lanterns carried by the Red Tridents at the rear.
Then he saw the creature strike. An enormous feeding tentacle rushed out of the shadowy water from behind the squid and slammed into the back of a grogstack, who had been lining up his trident for a thrust at a nearby shark. The thick clubbed end of the squid’s appendage struck the merwin’s back, and the grogstack went rigid. As the lantern that had been in the merwin’s hand fell away, Lachlan saw a score of curved talons coming out the front of the grogstack. The hooks on the squid’s clubbed feeding tentacles were so large that they had completely pierced through the merwin’s thick body with easily half a dozen hand spans to spare. The thick end of the monster’s appendage was larger than the grogstack himself. The giant squid drew it back, and the dying merwin impaled on its long sinuous arm disappeared into the darkness. Lachlan had caught a glimpse of the sea creature’s gigantic beak earlier, when they had been fighting it in the Ghet. It could have easily ripped a full grown frilled shark in half. If the grogstack survived being skewered on the squid’s tentacle, he would surely meet his end in the monster’s maw.

Lachlan watched in horror as the giant squid began tearing through merwin and shark alike, its body cutting through the water like a spear
hurled at the large chunk of uklod meat. In the creature’s wake, more orihalcyon lanterns were dropped as their owners were slaughtered, drifting slowly to the seafloor and continuing to illuminate the horrific scene.

“Scatter!” Zane yelled, snapping Lachlan out of his fascination with the huge predator that was rapidly making its way towards them.
Instantly obeying their leader’s command, the Red Tridents who had been fending off the encroaching sharks broke off in all directions, swimming away from the large net and its bloody cargo.

Zane looked at Lachlan.
“It’s been an honor,” he said solemnly to the seifeira, nodded to Raygo, and then gave the order to dive. “Down!” he commanded, arching his tail and plunging towards the glowing scar of magma on the seafloor.

The tattooed
seifeira matched his captain’s angle of descent, swimming as fast as his muscular tail would propel him through the rapidly warming water. As they approached the seafloor, the water quickly shifted from being disturbingly hot to scalding. Arms out before him to cut through the water, Lachlan felt his hands and forearms begin to sear and blister. Beside him, the seifeira saw Zane’s skin begin to show the same effect. Raygo was obviously experiencing the same, but the ethyrie did not flinch from his duty to swim at his king’s side.

“Captain!” Lachlan called out.
“We can’t get much closer. We’re going to….”

A
chorus of screams from behind cut off the seifeira’s words. As he looked over his shoulder again, Lachlan’s worst fear became realized. One of the giant squid’s long feeding tentacles had latched onto the net. The merwin hauling the large piece of uklod flesh thrashed their tails frantically, trying to keep moving forward, but they were stopped dead in the water.
All for naught,
Lachlan thought morosely.
Something that big should not be able to swim that fast,
he lamented.
We underestimated how quickly it could move, and now we’ve failed so close to our goal.
He looked below them and saw the glowing fissure. The liquid rock had gone from orange to a bright yellow. It would erupt soon and they were still too far away.

“Zane,” Lachlan said, turning his head to
address his captain, his king, perhaps for the last time. “We did our best....” The seifeira’s words trailed off.

Zane was not there.

The King of Mervidia had turned in the water and was swimming
towards
the giant squid. Lachlan floated in the water stunned, as he watched Zane rushing forward, crimson-headed trident in one hand and the other tearing his dagger from its sheath. Pumping his tail desperately, Raygo did his best to keep up with the rapidly moving monarch.

Cycles of loyalty and discipline took over.
Lachlan also turned and darted after his captain, his body responding before his mind could register what he was doing.
Better to meet my end fighting,
he thought with determination,
and in better company than most merwin.
Lachlan rushed after Zane, desperate to be at the neondra’s side, fighting together one last time.

“Maybe we can wound it enough to drive it off,” Lachlan said desperately, when he had finally caught up with Zane.
“If we can purchase Mervidia’s life with our own deaths, then it is a price well worth paying,” the seifeira said, sullenly.

Lachlan had expected an expression of resignation on Zane’s face, but that is not what greeted the tattooed merwin when the captain turned towards him.
Instead, the neondra’s face was a hardened coral mask of determination. “The battle is not yet lost,” Zane said firmly. Without missing a tailstroke, the captain of the Red Tridents, handed his bone dagger to Lachlan. “Cut the remainder of the meat loose from the net if you have to. Then, as it falls, try to push it as close to that vent as possible. Get the others to help you.” Zane indicated the merwin still trying frantically to haul the tearing net through the water.

The giant squid was too
strong for them though. Already, the cargo of uklod meat was being drawn backwards, towards the ravenous sea creature. The Red Tridents refused to give up. Their tails thrashed in the water, their hands still tightly gripping the edges of the net.

Lachlan looked at the glowing fissure that was so agonizingly close.
Already plumes of yellow had begun to leak from its edges, sulfur being ejected from the fissure by the boiling water inside. The rent in the stone would erupt soon.

“And what are you going to do?” Lachlan asked, taking the blade from Zane.

“I’m going to distract it,” the King said and veered away from the seifeira.

Lachlan’s tail faltered behind him.
“You’re going to what?!” he yelled, but Zane was already swimming rapidly away, towards the massive beast. The seifeira couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His captain, alone and armed with only a red coral-tipped trident, was charging a giant squid. Lachlan hung motionless in the water, shocked into paralysis by what he was witnessing. He began wondering about his friend’s sanity but was pulled out of his contemplation by the sound of a merwin yelling his name.

“Lachlan!” another
seifeira shouted from afar. “Help us pull!” The merwin who were still hauling vainly on the net looked at him in desperation. Slowly but surely, the giant squid pulled the net backwards, and the Red Trident soldiers with it.

The tattooed merwin shook his head, breaking himself out of his stupor.
Zane’s plan,
he thought.
Zane’s
insane
plan. Cutting the net will take too long.
Lachlan called out to his fellow Red Tridents. “Let it go!” he shouted. “Release the net! When the meat comes loose, push it towards the fissure, there!” He pointed towards the glowing crevice below. The glow coming from the liquid stone was now bright yellow, nearly white.

The merwin obeyed Lachlan’s command, letting the woven kelp ropes of the net slip from their fingers.
As the ends of the latticework were released, they were snatched away by the squid’s tentacle, still firmly attached to the net. However, the curved talons of the giant squid’s two feeding tentacles had embedded themselves deeply into the hunk of flesh inside. The large piece of uklod meat was being pulled along with the net. The merwin didn’t dare try to wrestle the meat from the beast. They had learned earlier, to their sorrow, that they were no match for its strength.

Lachlan’s eyes widened in horror.
“It’s not letting go,” a merwin said, swimming up beside Lachlan. The Red Trident, a thick set ethyrie-neondra hybrid asked, “What now?”

“Wait and trust in the Captain,” Lachlan replied, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt.
“Be ready to move,” he instructed. The other merwin who had been hauling the net behind him began to cluster around the seifeira, desperately seeking guidance.

Lachlan watched as Zane rushed towards the mammoth sea creature’s head, darting between the squid’s enormous tentacles, each one intent on crushing the life out of the
neondra. Luckily, the monster was mainly focused on dragging the large piece of uklod meat towards its huge beak and not devoting its full attention to Zane’s desperate endeavor. The king dodged around one arm after another, passing up multiple opportunities to wound one of the creature’s limbs.