Chapter 18
The Choir of the Forgotten
Kael
Rising to my full height, I move to the copper cage. My heavy knuckles tap against the iron bars.
"Bolt," I command. "Lights. Full power."
"You do not give the orders in my house just because you have a working voice box, shark," Bolt snaps back. His words lack heat. He sounds shaken. Impressed.
"Lights," I repeat. "We're plotting."
Bolt sighs, a long crackling sound, and flares. Blinding blue light floods the shell, illuminating the tactical map carved into the wooden floor.
The Vaels slaughter my kind under false pretense.
We hunt during the Tide, but the Basalt-Kin have never pushed into Reef territory. During Vaelis's recovery, I plotted an end to the war I failed to stop the first time.
Having his blessing anchors me.
Having someone who shares my mind means everything.
"I want to help," Mira says, shielding her sensitive eyes from the glare.
I freeze. Vaelis frowns.
"The truth is, the war with the Trench is a fabrication," she confesses.
"What do you mean?" Vaelis demands. "I saw the military draft. I saw the fortified front lines on the ridge. I saw the swarm of sharks."
"Minor skirmishes," Mira says, waving a weak hand. "Orchestrated border raids. Provoked to maintain public fear. Distractions to keep the High Council in power."
A wet, rattling cough shakes her chest.
"But Elder Soryn wants more than political power. He wants absolute, permanent silence."
She stares up at me, terror in her milky eyes.
"He wants to eliminate the sharks in the Trench," she says. "All of them."
My muscles lock.
"He wants to wipe you all out," Mira whispers. "Not with iron spears. Not with a traditional Vanguard army."
She looks to Vaelis.
"He needed a visible martyr," she confesses. "He needed the beloved Red Prince to die in the jaws of a Great White. The public grief, the resulting anger, provided the exact fuel he needed."
"Fuel for what?" I ask. A dangerous growl creeps into my new voice.
"The Tidal Bore," Mira says, the name heavy with dread.
The strange name means nothing to Vaelis. It hits me like a detonating depth charge.
Bolt flares in his cage. "The Bore? It's an old myth. A Pre-Collapse terraforming engine."
"It's real," Mira says, shaking her head.
Vaelis swims forward. "You don't know that."
"I do." She bows her head. "I witnessed it years ago while hunting information on the Sea Witch. A sonic cannon. Built into the ancient foundation of the High Plaza."
She shudders under the blanket.
"I thought it was the right path, Vaelis. I lacked the truth. I remained ignorant of the shark-mer nature. I didn't know they were—"
She studies my scarred face. Vaelis wraps his hand around mine.
"Not monsters?" Vaelis challenges, his voice dripping with venom.
She ignores the challenge. "The cannon fires no iron projectiles. It fires an acoustic frequency. A concentrated resonance wave designed to liquefy solid bedrock."
She meets my eyes.
"He outlined a final blow in the last Vanguard meeting. He plans to fire it into the Trench," she says. "He plans to collapse the canyon walls. He intends to bury the entire shark civilization under a mountain of falling stone. Using your noble name, Vaelis."
Vaelis goes pale. Gliding backward, he hits the pile of woven nets.
"In my name?" he whispers.
"The Vaelis Memorial Strike," Mira confirms. "Scheduled for the climax of your grand mourning ceremony. Two days from now."
"Genocide," I say. The heavy word tastes like burning ash on my tongue.
"Yes," Mira says, tears falling. "Total. Absolute. With the deep trench gone, the glittering Reef expands. The Council takes the rich thermal vents. They harvest all raw resources."
She pulls at her silver wisps of hair.
"Ignorance blinded me," she sobs into her hands. "And Vaelis, after you were taken by one… I believed we fought mindless monsters. I missed our own transformation into the beasts."
Heavy, suffocating silence fills the shell.
Vaelis looks at me. Devastation mars his beautiful features.
"My tragic death," he says, his voice shaking with raw fury. "My death triggers the weapon."
Closing the distance, I place my hands on his trembling shoulders and ground his frantic energy.
"You remain alive," I say.
"They won't believe it's really me," he argues, shaking his head. "If I appear at the gate, it changes nothing... Soryn will brand me a disguised imposter. Or he will kill me to finish the job."
"He lacks the power to kill a living legend," I say, my voice dropping into a lethal, vibrating register. "Not when the legend becomes a signal for a reckoning they never saw coming."
Vaelis looks back at me. I frame his face with my scarred hands.
"My beautiful signal," I rumble.
A sad smile touches his lips. I brush the floating crimson hair from his cheek.
I turn to Bolt.
"Does this rotting shell possess speed?" I ask the eel.
Bolt snorts. "She's a rusted garbage scow, shark. Not a sleek military racer."
"How high can she climb?"
"Climb what?"
"The vertical face of the continental shelf," I say, pointing to the ceiling. "From the Silt District to the High Plaza."
Bolt’s light flickers. "A two-mile ascent. A vertical climb. Fighting the heavy gravity. Fighting the downward current."
"Can she do it?" I demand, my voice a booming roar.
Bolt studies the jury-rigged engine. He studies his own glowing copper coils.
"Overriding the mechanical safeties offers a chance," he says. "Burning the core to the breaking point might work. But we would have to rise naked. No shields or excess weight. The automated perimeter guns will tear us to shreds short of the halfway mark."
"Then we rise with company," I say.
Striding to the main entrance, I rip the heavy kelp curtain aside.
I stare into the freezing Silt District. Into the toxic smog. Into the deep shadows where the glowing yellow eyes tracked our arrival.
"What are your plans, Kael?" Vaelis asks, swimming to my side.
"I possess a voice," I say, flashing a feral grin. "And I intend to use it."
I swim onto the rusted porch of the shell.
Taking a breath, I fill my large lungs with the foul water of the outcast district.
I call to the dark.
Words hold no power here. I unleash the raw, undeniable frequency of the deep trench. A low, throbbing pulse travels through the silt, vibrates through the rusted iron pipes.
A summons.
Come.
The forgotten debris rises.
Come.
I wait in the freezing dark.
One agonizing heartbeat passes. Nothing answers but the heavy silence of the toxic smog.
Then a sharp click.
Another.
From the deep shadows of the discarded engine blocks, from the jagged cracks in the foundation, from the towering piles of rotting refuse, they emerge.
Crab-mers bearing missing, jagged limbs. Long eel-kin wrapped in scarred scales. The unwanted. The broken. The terrifying things the glittering Reef threw away.
They emerge from the dark, drawn to the impossible sound of a trench monster speaking their language.
Turning back, I face the shell.
Vaelis watches my display. His golden eyes shine in the dark.
"We possess an army," I say, my voice rumbling.
"Desperate scavengers," Mira whispers from her blanket. "They carry no military weapons. They have no training."
"They form the heavy shield," I say, my eyes locked on Vaelis. "We form the lethal spear."
I study my beautiful survivor.
"Are you ready to play the pampered Vael?" I ask him.
He straightens his spine. He strips the lingering fear from his face.
"No," he says, voice forged in iron. "I forfeit the Vael."
Lowering his eyes to the tactical map, he glares at the red circle marking the High Plaza.
"I intend to be a problem," he says.
I grin. Grinning with a roaring voice to back it up satisfies a deep primal urge.
"Bolt!" I roar into the shell. "Spin the engine to maximum! We go up!"
The depths answer the call.
The response starts with frantic clicking. The heavy silt shifts.
From the smog, the horde emerges.
The Reef understands traditional armies. This matches no such definition. No iron breastplates. No polished silver spears. No synchronized tail-beats. A chaotic riot of mutation and desperate survival surrounds us.
A Spider-Crab drags its body from a collapsed drainpipe, a rusted stop-sign patching its shell.
A chaotic school of Lantern-Fish, their bioluminescent lights flickering, swarms around a jagged piece of rebar.
A solitary Hammerhead, a brutal exile sharing my burden, comes out from the shadows.
A deep white scar runs through his left eye. He watches me, heavy with suspicion.
Hundreds follow. The refuse of the city. The dangerous things deemed too ugly, too broken, or too lethal to survive in the light.
They swim a tight circle around the House of Drift.
They offer no cheers. They offer no bows to Vaelis. They wait.
They demand proof of the roaring voice.
Swimming off the rusted porch, I float in the open water. I bare my form. The brutal scars on my flank. The dull gray of my skin. The posture of a jagged rock resisting the current, forsaking the stance of a dominant predator.
"Brothers," I say.
My brand new voice, deep and heavy with gravel, carries through the dense water.
The Hammerhead flinches. The Spider-Crab ceases its clicking.
"Sisters," I say, facing a group of ragged Eel-kin. "Debris."
I wield the ugly word the upper guards use as a weapon. I coat it in cold iron, abandoning the spit of disgust.
"The High Plaza calls us trash," I roar. "They call us monsters. They dump their poison on our heads. They block our sun. Now, they seek to silence the deep trench feeding our bellies."
A dark murmur runs through the crowd. Raw anger. Deep recognition.
"They construct a weapon," I declare, projecting my voice to the cavern walls. "A manufactured noise loud enough to crack the foundation of the ocean. It will bury the deep. When the deep shatters, where does the heavy rubble fall?"
I point my finger to the toxic smog ceiling.
"It falls here."