Chapter 13
The Monster's Mercy
Mira
They carve his monument from the most pearlescent stone in the city.
A single day has passed since the coward's retreat.
The water in the central plaza tastes of raw fear and bitter exhaustion.
Elite stonemasons strike pristine marble with iron chisels.
They shape a towering, muscular fiction.
They carve a hero gripping a heavy triton spear.
The real Vaelis held no such weapon in the freezing trench.
The Council built him to be bait, not a soldier.
I float in the shifting current, staring at the false statue.
My hands shake with a tremor I cannot suppress. I remain covered in dried battle-slime and the gray dust of the terrified retreat. I have not washed the stench of failure from my skin. I have not slept a single hour.
A voice travels through the heavy water.
"I have the final casualty report from the outer perimeter," a Vanguard captain states. His tone is flat. "We lost sixty Vael soldiers in the Gray Wastes. The swarm broke their defensive line."
Elder Soryn sighs. The sound holds no grief. It holds nothing but boredom.
"Sixty is an acceptable expenditure," Soryn replies. "They served their purpose. Clear their names from the active registry. Draft another hundred from the lower rings by the next Mourning Tide."
I freeze. My grip tightens on my iron harpoon. The Vanguard instructors swore the Council valued every life in the Reef. We bleed to protect the light. But Soryn speaks of the betta-mer soldiers like rusted, disposable spears. A cold, heavy knot forms in my stomach.
The captain bows and swims away.
Soryn turns. He hovers beside me in the water. He wears his finest ceremonial robes. He looks solemn. He looks satisfied.
"It captures his noble spirit. Do you not agree?" Soryn asks, gesturing to the marble.
I turn to face him. The faith I held in the High Council is shattered. I am a weapon, and I refuse to be a tool for a butcher.
"His spirit?" I ask. My voice sounds like grinding stones. "He is not dead, Soryn. He was taken."
Soryn sighs. The sound holds no grief. It holds nothing but boredom. "He fell in battle, Mira. We all witnessed the tragedy. The entire Red Squad was destroyed. The Great White took him."
"Another shark-mer took him down to the shelf," I snap, swimming closer to the Elder. "He didn't eat him. The strike was clear, but another monster grabbed him and dragged him into the abyss. I saw it. He is alive. He is a prisoner."
"And what if he is a prisoner?" Soryn asks in a low tone.
The harsh question stops the breath in my chest.
"What?"
"If the mer is alive," Soryn says, his eyes cold and pragmatic, "then he is in the hands of a Basalt-Kin. He is suffering terrible torture. Or he is being turned into a beast. Or he is serving as raw meat for their young."
He gestures with a manicured hand toward the towering marble.
"Here in the light, he is a pristine hero," Soryn says. "Here in the city, he is the striking martyr who drew the enemy fire so the Reef Guard could regroup and survive, ready to strike again upon recovery. His tragic death united the fractured clans, Mira."
The grand plaza is full of mourning citizens. Vaels weep in the open. They hold glowing memorial stones. They swear blood vengeance on the monsters of the deep trench. They chant the names of those lost in battle.
"The people need a pure symbol," Soryn says. "A dead Red prince is a perfect symbol. A live, traumatized hostage is a political liability."
The world spins around me.
Soryn and the silent Council members hover in the shadows behind him. Their faces are impassive masks of calculated statecraft.
They knew the risks.
They put the Red Squad on the front line for a dual purpose. Vaelis was bait for the sharks, but he was a planned sacrifice for the city. They wanted him to die in the mud. Vaelis was a beloved prince. He was worth more to the Council as a piece of tragic marble than as a living, breathing mer.
"You are not sending a rescue party," I whisper.
"We are sending a small patrol to secure the upper perimeter," Soryn corrects me. "We cannot risk more valuable lives to recover a ruined corpse."
"He is not a corpse!" I scream.
The raw sound cuts through the crowded plaza. The rhythmic chanting stops. Hundreds of mourning mers turn their heads to stare at me.
"He is alive!" I yell, backing away from the corrupt Elder. "And I am the only soldier in this army who gives a damn about his soul!"
"Mira," Taren swims forward from the gathered crowd. His silver armor is dented and scarred. "Stop this display. You are exhausted. You are grieving your friend."
"I am not grieving!" I snarl, shoving his dented armor. "I'm planning a rescue."
I turn my back on the false mourners.
I leave the crowded plaza.
Three heavy days pass in the shadows. I refuse to return to the military barracks.
I refuse to return to my private quarters to rest. The stench of the Council's lies clings to me like sea-slime.
I spend the hours memorizing guard rotations and stealing clearance codes.
The Council assumes I am hiding my tears in solitude. They underestimate my rage.
On the third night, I go to the restricted docks.
The military docks are under strict lockdown. Heavy armored guards patrol the main gates. But I am Mira. I am a decorated Lieutenant of the Watch. I know the timing of the shift changes. I know the blind spots in the patrol routes.
And I know the location of the forbidden prototypes.
The Hunter-Class Skiff.
It's a small, ugly, brutal machine. It is a single-person submersible built of reinforced iron-glass and driven by a pressurized hydro-engine. The engineers designed it for deep reconnaissance missions in the crushing trenches. It possesses floodlights. It possesses a heavy harpoon cannon.
It's forbidden for a Vael to dive that deep.
I slip past the main guard post. I use the dark shadow of a supply crate to mask my approach. I reach the isolated dock.
The skiff waits, bobbing in its metal cradle. It looks like a mechanical beetle. It looks like a heavy iron coffin.
I strip off my silver armor. The metal plates are too bulky for the cramped cockpit. I leave the armor on the wooden pier. I am left wearing nothing but my simple cloth tunic.
I climb inside the machine.
The arrogant engineers ran their tests here before. The sequence is clear. Ignition. Pressure seal. Ballast release.
The hydro-engine coughs to life. A low, angry rumble vibrates through the iron hull.
"Hey!" a guard shouts from the pier. "Get away from the restricted vessel!"
The young soldier stands framed in the iron-glass viewport.
"Tell Elder Soryn a message for me," I say, my voice amplified by the skiff's external comms. "Tell him if he wants his prized vessel back, he must come into the dark to get it."
I punch the heavy throttle.
The skiff lurches. It rips from the heavy docking cradle with a screech of tortured metal. I point the iron nose into the black water.
I bypass the grand city gates, a ghost in their own machine. I evade the blind patrol lines, their lights sweeping past my stolen vessel. I steer the roaring machine toward the dense shadows of the Silt District.
I remain unfit for the crushing Abyss. I possess the machine, but a iron hull is still insufficient for the entire journey.
I lack the raw biology. The crushing weight will shatter my betta mind and snap my soft bones.
To drag Vaelis back to the light, I must break the pressure seal and abandon the armor.
I can only hope he has survived the dark on his own until I reach him.
I require dark magic.
I must once again seek the Witch.
I park the stolen skiff in the dense shadow of the lower ridge. A cluster of rotting waste-pipes hides the machine from the upper patrols. I swim to the hidden fissure in the rock.
Oona is waiting inside the cave.
She is always waiting in the dark.
"You smell like fresh treason," the old witch croaks as I enter her domain.
She hovers over a bubbling jar of liquid. The brew glows with a sick, green light. Her long, sensory barbels twitch in the water, tasting the sour adrenaline pouring off my skin.
"I need to go deep," I say.
"How deep?"
"Abyss deep. Trench deep. Monster deep."
Oona pauses her work. She turns her blind, eyeless face toward my voice. "You are a delicate Vael, little guard. The gods made your kind for the warm sun. The abyss will crush your pretty bones into fine powder. You are not acclimated."
"I have a pressurized skiff," I tell her. "I have a reinforced hull to get me most of the way down, but it's not enough."
"A metal hull protects the fragile body," Oona wheezes. "It does not protect the fragile mind. The silence down there is a weapon. It gets inside your skull. It squeezes the sanity out through your ears."
She swims closer to me. The smell of decay follows her.
"You gave me a small fortune for a specific poison," she says. "You wanted to silence a trench monster. Did the venom work?"
"Yes," I spit. "But he took the prince. The monster took him."
"Ah," Oona smiles. It is a wet, unpleasant expression. "You want blood."
"The venom was not enough. I must kill the beast," I say. "And I want to bring Vaelis back to the light."
"Vengeance," Oona muses. "A costly endeavor."
"I have nothing left to trade," I confess, the words tasting like acid in my mouth. "The Council has likely marked me for treason. I am a rogue soldier... I have nothing to give you—"
"I do not want your petty coin," Oona says, her voice a dry rasp in the oppressive dark. "I want your considerable potential."
She reaches toward the highest stone shelf, her blind face tilting upward. A small bottle rests there, crafted from pitch-black glass and sealed with wax the color of dried blood. Her long, skeletal fingers close around it.