Chapter 2 #2
It gave him a few moments to look at the man he had worked with over four hundred years ago.
Even in this glimpse, he was older. Proteus remembered him with wild, curly black hair.
Not the curls that were rather limp with gray streaks running through them.
His face was thinner too. More hollow when it had been plump.
He hadn't been remarkably tall or short, nor notably handsome or strong.
This was a man who could walk through a crowd and no one would remember he had been there.
That had been his superpower. No one had ever questioned a man like him, who was so hellbent on destroying the world.
"Show me," Proteus snarled.
All the screens on the wall burst to life at once. There were thirty of them, each depicting many scenes of what he had missed.
"I have been assured that your ability to absorb knowledge is renowned," Pilot said, its voice floating around him like some kind of omnipotent being. "Thirty screens shouldn't be too much for you, is it?"
"No," he muttered, his gaze already flicking between each screen. "Track my eye movements. Once I have seen enough, change the screen."
"Understood."
And so he remained there for days on end, watching what had happened to the world he'd left behind.
He knew the humans had been bloodthirsty, but he hadn't thought they would destroy their own planet with such ease.
There was a sadness to it that he hadn't expected to feel.
The ocean had endured, as it always did.
But it enraged him to watch the lands above that he had always been so enthralled with slowly disappearing.
The storms that brewed killed so many. The wildfires ate and consumed until there was little left.
What had once been lush and green turned barren and ashen.
The world was no longer what he remembered, and he watched it all happen far too fast. Then the humans had come into the sea, and he watched the wars start.
He watched as the People of Water fought to maintain what was theirs, to control the destruction of the ocean that happened.
It infuriated him to no end to watch them slowly, bitterly, unendingly losing.
Where was their drive to fight? How had they been beaten so thoroughly? They were creations of the sea herself, beings who had endured for centuries on end. They should not have failed.
But then he watched the People of Water regroup, gather together. He watched the humans patch themselves back up, even after losing cities. The need for life flowed through all of them, no matter how hard it became. They weren't all that different from each other.
He watched love bloom while battles were won and lost. He watched people become new beings and new lifeforms, all in the need for progress.
And at the end of it all, he knew what he had to do.
"I do not wish to work with the same people I worked with before," he murmured. "But I do know what our path must be next."
"Oh good," Pilot said. "I was worried you wouldn't understand the message."
There was much he had to plan to do this, though.
The world above had been destroyed, and there was little room for what he wanted.
But he would see the humans removed from the oceans once and for all.
They had tried working together. They had tried to collaborate, but it always ended in bloodshed. Now, he would separate them for good.
“How do the People of Water refer to the land now?" he asked.
"Above."
He tsked. "Of course it was would be that simplistic. And what is the state of the land?"
"Not good."
"Clarify."
The droid unplugged itself and hopped down onto the floor.
"I would suggest that the land is likely beyond saving at this point.
There are still pockets of land that support some life forms, but there are not many.
The airborne droids that were assigned to the surface have all long since died.
Access to sunlight is no longer consistent enough to power them, and without solar energy, they are unfortunately incapable of continuing their work. "
"So we will have to see it for ourselves then.
I find it hard to believe that all life forms were wiped out.
And even more than that, I remember the resilience of the human spirit.
We will discover what has happened Above.
" He slapped his tail against the metal.
"This will work. But I will need someone more talented than you to help me.
There are many places that a droid simply cannot reach. "
"No one is alive who would be able to help. They are all long dead."
"Tau?"
"Destroyed when you helped the depthstrider."
Ah, now he remembered. That was why he had helped the depthstrider as well. He had prophesied that Tau would be destroyed and that it needed to be for the betterment of the world. But why...
Then he remembered. "I made a deal with that depthstrider. A gift to the ocean. What was that?"
The sea itself had told him to make that bargain. He needed to swim in this direction, or the future would never be right. He needed whatever sacrifice the depthstrider had been willing to make.
"A pod," the droid replied. "There was a pod dropped into the sea, and it was supposed to be a gift for you. I do not know where it landed, though."
He hummed low in his chest, the rumbling sound igniting the lights of his ribs. "Then I suspect we need to go find it."