Chapter 11
A Comforting Silence
Vaelis
"Kael!"
The name tears from my throat, a desperate sound lost in the rushing current. The water devours my voice, leaving only the frantic hammering of my own heart against my ribs.
He doesn't look. His focus is fixed on the charging swarm, his heavy arms spread wide, his broad body locked into a rigid line of defiance. He tries to create a barrier of flesh and bone, to stop hundreds of apex predators with nothing but his own imposing presence.
The Great White now continues its acceleration.
It ignores Kael, charging past him.
Why would a starving monster stop for a gray, silent shadow when a bright, crimson distress flare drops directly from the sky?
The shark commits to the kill. His black eyes roll backward, protecting the vulnerable tissue for the strike. The gills on his neck and ribs flare wide. His tail snaps with a terrifying force, sending a physical shockwave rippling through the freezing water.
He's coming directly for me.
I try to twist my body in the water, to use the downward momentum of my dive to spin away from the open jaws. I try to flank him, as the rigid military training manuals instructed the Vanguard to do.
Use your natural agility, the scarred Sergeant barked at us in the armory. Your bones are lighter. You are faster.
I am lighter. I am not faster.
The collision hits me like a falling mountain.
I don't feel the razor-sharp teeth at first. I only register the devastating impact.
The sheer, crushing weight of the shark-mer slamming into my fine body knocks the precious water from my burning lungs.
It snaps my ribs. He spins me around in the water so hard the entire world becomes a nauseating blur of gray shadows and white foam.
Then, the agonizing pain arrives.
It's cold. It's razor-sharp.
The teeth tear through my left shoulder. They shred the useless mesh vest. They slice through my skin, deep into the muscle underneath, grating agonizingly against my collarbone.
I scream.
The sound is wet and garbled. A frantic burst of silver bubbles, dark blood.
The shark-mer thrashes, its head jerking from side to side. The rough, abrasive skin scrapes against my bare side like coarse sandpaper, grating against my ribs. He has me in his jaws. He's tasted the red.
I stab blindly into the dark with my tiny ceremonial dagger.
The short blade strikes something hard. It hits bone or dense cartilage and skitters uselessly off the target.
I strike again. Desperate, sobbing uncontrollably into the freezing water.
The sharp blade finally hits the soft tissue of his torso.
The Great White jerks backward, surprised by the sudden sting.
He releases his crushing grip on my shoulder.
But he doesn't let me go because I hurt him. He lets me go because it wants to reposition his jaws for a fatal bite.
I swim backward, tumbling helplessly through the turbulent water. My left arm hangs uselessly at my side, paralyzed by the devastating nerve damage. A billowing cloud of dark red blooms in the water around me. Bright and horrifying.
My blood. A blank thought forms, staring in morbid fascination at the expanding cloud. I'm bleeding to death.
The grim realization is slow and distant. Medical shock sets in rapidly. It wraps my panicked mind in a numbing layer of heavy cotton.
I look down into the abyss.
Kael is there.
He finally spots me.
His heavy head is snapped back, looking upward. His dark eyes are wide with a pure, unadulterated horror breaking his stoic, monstrous mask. He spots the cloud of blood. He spots the towering Great White turning its heavy body for a second, fatal pass.
Kael moves.
He does not swim. He explodes.
His body launches upward, abandoning his position with the terrifying force of a thing that has nothing left to lose. He hits the Great White exactly as the larger shark opens his bloody mouth to finish me.
The physical impact is terrifying to witness.
Kael is significantly smaller than the Great White, but he hits the beast with the devastating force of a falling meteor.
He slams his heavily scarred shoulder directly into the shark-mer's sensitive gills, right at his ribcage, driving the predator off its attack course with a sickening crunch of displaced cartilage.
The Great White snaps wildly in the water. His bloody teeth click shut mere inches from my face, the sound a dull vibration through the water that rattles my broken ribs.
Kael roars. A silent, furious vibration of displaced air that I feel in my very bones. He grabs the Great White's towering dorsal fin and twists his entire body. He uses his own weight and the ocean's gravity to drag the flailing shark down toward the abyss.
They tumble away from me. A chaotic, churning tangle of gray bodies and thrashing tails that creates a vortex of silt and blood.
I am alone in the open water. I'm bleeding. I'm sinking.
I look up toward the high Ridge.
My assigned squad is up there. But the celebrated Reef Guard is not watching me. They are engaged in a brutal, desperate slaughter.
The gray swarm did not stop when the Great White broke formation to claim his bright red prize. The rest of the horde crashed into the glittering shield wall. The freezing water above me is a chaotic, churning nightmare of thrusting iron pikes, screams, broken crab-chitin, and snapping jaws.
I fulfilled my horrific duty. I distracted their most powerful, terrifying leader. I gave the Vanguard a tactical opening to hold the ridge.
But they are still outnumbered.
Through the cloudy, blood-stained water, the Vanguard Commander comes into focus.
He hovers near the bright woven banner, his face pale behind his iron helm as he surveys his collapsing line.
He registers the overwhelming size of the gray swarm tearing through his betta soldiers.
He spots the terrifying bulk of the Great White thrashing in the open water.
He registers the grinding Shell rising from the deep trenches behind Kael.
He looks down at me.
Our eyes meet across the freezing, bloody distance.
I lift my good right arm. A pathetic, trembling gesture. A desperate plea for my life.
Please help me.
The Commander's jaw locks tight behind his iron helm. His eyes sweep across his collapsing infantry line, now drowning in the churning gray tide of frenzied shark-mers. His eyes lift to the relative safety of the upper defensive boundary, a glittering promise of survival.
He makes a calculated, cowardly choice.
"The shield wall is breaking! Fall back!" The mental command rips through the water, sharp and merciless. "Leave the Reds! Fall back to the upper defensive line right now!"
Leave the Reds.
The cruel words hit me harder than the shark's teeth did. They strike deeper than the bone, a venomous poison that paralyzes what little fight remains in my body.
Paralyzing horror sets in as the glittering line of iron pikes recedes into the shadows.
Taren hesitates for a fraction of a second, his silver eyes meeting mine with a flicker of regret before he turns his cowardly back, following his orders to survive.
Mira screams something unintelligible, fighting the scarred Sergeant dragging her backward.
She thrashes until two more soldiers seize her arms, hauling her into the retreat.
They are leaving me to be eaten alive.
I am nothing but trash to them. Disposable, decorative debris. My crimson fins, once a symbol of my people's pride, are now nothing more than a target painted on my back.
I stop kicking my tail. My shredded shoulder burns with a cold, sickening, venomous fire. My golden vision is tunneling. The bright edges of the world turn a bruised, flat gray.
I am going to die here.
I am going to die alone in the freezing Wastes, betrayed by the very light I always worshipped.
I close my heavy eyes.
I am so sorry, Kael, a weak thought forms, letting the darkness take me. I tried to be a bright signal for you. I only managed to be a meal.
The water surrounding my sinking body churns. The ambient pressure shifts.
Something grabs me.
It's not a set of teeth.
It's a hand.
Strong. Desperate. Trembling.
I force my heavy eyes open.
Kael is there.
He bleeds from a jagged new gash on his high forehead, dark blood diffusing into the water around his face.
His chest heaves with exertion, each breath a visible struggle in the cold.
But his dark eyes are locked onto mine, burning with a fierce, terrified possessiveness that anchors my fading soul to this broken body.
He has abandoned the fight with the Great White. He has abandoned the defense of his glowing Shell. He has come straight for me.
His hand, strong and trembling, grabs my good shoulder. His fingers dig into my uninjured skin, the pressure a desperate anchor in the churning chaos. He shakes me, the movement sharp and urgent.
Wake up, his frantic eyes scream at me, the words forming only in my mind, not in the water.
I try to smile at him, the effort splitting my lip. "You came back," I whisper, the words barely more than bubbles escaping my lips.
He doesn't answer me. I know he can't.
He wraps an arm around my waist, pulling my broken body against his broad chest. He feels solid. Real in a world made of lies and false promises.
He glances over his scarred shoulder. The shark-mer swarm is regrouping below. The towering Great White turns back toward us, his dead eyes black with feral rage.
Kael stares down into the abyss.
The conch Shell grinds its heavy way up the steep slope, its copper cage inside pulsing with a frantic, blinding blue light.
Kael tightens his iron grip on my waist. He angles his heavy body downward.
He's taking me deep into the dark. And for the very first time in my sheltered life, as the freezing water closes over my head and the false light of the surface fades away, fear vanishes.
I am chosen.