Of Depth and Deception (Part 12)
(POV — Skehl)
Skehl didn’t like the direction their planning had taken.
“You’re right…” Thressel said after mulling over the Favored’s proposal to use his compulsion to force the families they were after to leave the trench and remain on the island. “Sometimes you have to make someone do what’s best for them. Even when they don’t agree…”
“Glad you finally see it my way,” the Emperion said, slurring his words.
Really? Skehl shuddered. That’s the plan you both settle on after an hour of bickering?
An unsettling turn, indeed.
The Emperion had arrived late at their secret spot — and very drunk on ink-bubbles. Likely the doing of Vibers, given his treatment of Rehmi in the Pleasure Room yesterday. A staple in any experienced Viber’s pleasure arsenal, ink-bubbles had a giddying effect on heavy slurpers, making them easier to satisfy and much more pliable. However, this did raise the question of the Emperion’s ability to handle the job, to which he replied with eyes glowing, “I’ve dealt with more precarious assignments in more delirious states. I’ve got this.”
Skehl and Thressel had arrived early. He had come directly from his first Seeing lesson, eager to share his experience with Thressel. She wanted no part in hearing about it, constantly finding ways to redirect his attempts at sharing to focus on their evening mission instead. That had hurt. Her blatant disinterest. He hadn’t expected her to rustle with excitement, but couldn’t she have at least pretended to care?
Perhaps that was just too much to hope for. She’ll never support me… Not in this.
“We’re agreed, then?” the Emperion asked.
“Yes,” Thressel said, resolved.
It isn’t right, Skehl thought. Leaving should be their choice.
But he said, “Sure.”
“Excellent!” The Emperion clasped his hands and belched another yellow bubble. “Thressel, you said you’re familiar with the district where our first targets reside?”
“I am.”
“Alright. Then you take the lead.”
She nodded, then mumbled under her breath, “Though I still think we should just spread the word throughout the clan. That would save a lot more than some coward’s paltry list…”
The Emperion hiccuped more ink, then growled, deep and condescending, the lines across his body flaring, “But again… what of the panic that would ensue? The needless spilling of lifelight when the Emperion Reefguard are deployed? The Tethien Reefguard? If everyone knows, then the Emperor will know. And if the Emperor knows — no one survives. It’s noble, your idea. It is. But it’s also the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a very long time.”
Thressel blanched. And Skehl shared in her embarrassment — though, he couldn’t deny the smug satisfaction in finally watching her attitude earn her some harsh ridicule. Rare as such a thing was.
“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, dressed in a purple clam-shell top. “We’ll stick to your plan.”
“My client’s plan,” the Emperion corrected. “I’m just the insurance.”
Thressel forced a smile, then said to Skehl as she slipped out of their little coral-cave, “Get him into the cloak. I need a little of Cal’s moonlight before we begin.”
He hurried to do so, helping the Emperion into the cloak of red kelp.
“Gods, it’s so cold and itchy!” the Emperion complained, slipping his arms into the sleeves.
Skehl bristled, knowing exactly the Emperion’s preferred material.
“My apologies, Favored… But will keep you well concealed. No one with spheres enough to afford a more comfortable cloak would be caught dead in level nine. You’d stick out like a shark amongst minnows.”
The Emperion sighed.
“Fair enough.”
Then they hurried after Thressel and started down into the trench. Deep, deep down.
The darkness grew thicker as they went. Eventually, the only light came from Skehl and Thressel themselves, emitting faint blue and magenta glows — and the light of trenchsnail-slime smeared over the entrances to each deeper level carved into the trench walls. Thressel kept ahead of them with Skehl and the Emperion trailing after her together. The lingering effect of the ink-bubbles made it a struggle for the Emperion to swim straight on his own, so Skel wrapped his arm around the Emperion’s waist to offer support.
It was awkward, to be sure. Being this close — touching — a god. Skehl blushed, heat flushing his cheeks as the Emperion’s firm muscles flexed against his arm, pressed into his ribs. Almost intimate.
Focus, Skehl reminded the loneliness within. We have a job to do. That’s all this is. A job.
Thressel halted before a wide entryway into the trench’s western wall, marked with a large nine etched across the top, colored yellow from glowing slug-slime. She leaned in and whispered to Skehl while the Emperion was distracted, taking in the flurry of commotion rustling through the bazaar just inside, “Keep your eyes open in case we’re being followed. I still don’t trust him.”
Skehl nodded. And they entered.
The level was dim, slug-slime smears the only consistent lighting source. Shadows shifted and splashed across every roughened face and craggy surface. Conflicting aromas warred through the water — various trench herbs, sweet and bitter and spicy; the putrid stench of decaying snails and fish, mingling with the choking wrongness of unkempt scales, some gritty and grimy with full-blown cases of scale-rot. Every breath was a painful, throat-burning victory for Skehl as he pressed on after his sister, winding through the alleyways. Crowded and tight. The Emperion gagged, his face twisted in revulsion, still occasionally belching out yellow bubbles that popped in the water’s churning turbulence, leaving yellow ink-clouds trailing them.
Honestly, Skehl thought, glancing up at what should have been a black stone ceiling, stained colorful from decades of belched ink-bubbles, his state might actually be helping us fit in better…
They rustled past gambling dens, brightly smeared to distract from the deadened, soulless expressions of their patrons, rolling dice — losing strands of their lives. In the Pleasure District, the Emperion perked up. His breathing grew wetter, heavier. His dark eyes seemed to prowl the pallid, haunting faces that called out, offering “a good time.” Skehl kicked his tail, hastening his pace and lugging the lusting Emperion along.
They rounded a corner, entering another bazaar, lined with more shabby shops covered with tattered, kelp-twined roofing.
Skehl felt a tug as a hand ran through his tentacles, and a raspy voice said, “Oh dear, swimming about so shabby like.” The vendor smacked her lips and refused to let go when Skehl tried pulling away. “Yes. Yes. I have just the set to help a roughened boy like yourself look beautiful again. Earn you plentiful spheres in the Pleasure District, they will. Distract from that rotted blindness in your eyes.”
“I don’t — ”
“Ah!” the vendor interrupted, wagging a knobby finger in his face. “But with a face like yours — with this set…” She nodded to a dozen or so tentacles that almost matched Skehl’s own coloring. “You could work your way up the levels, no? Course, they’d never let one with your condition past level five, but with these, I could get you there. I hear even a few of the lower Reeflords slither their way down there from time to time.”
Heat flooded Skehl, red embarrassment. And shame. It was moments like this that reminded him why he despised leaving the palace… His blindness a marring he could never escape.
They are beautiful… And I am so tired of always feeling so broken…
“Leave them,” the Emperion said, his face still cloaked as he yanked back one of the vendor’s fingers until she released her grip on Skehl’s tentacles. “Yours are much prettier.”
Skehl swallowed, not knowing to say.
They caught up with Thressel and turned into a quieter corridor. Residential. Only wide enough to swim abreast. The homes were more like hovels. Hastily constructed, carved into the black stone of the trench. Crumpled and torn kelp stalks acted as privacy curtains — no one this deep would be foolish enough to hang tentacles, they’d be stolen the moment you blinked. Skehl peeked into one dwelling as they passed by, noting how familiar the cold, dark emptiness of the space was.
Just like with Binah… When three wizened anemones were all we had…
For those who had anything worth protecting, there were Clawfer vaults available throughout the level, secured the Clawfers’ ability to shape the stone. Otherwise, you kept your belongings with you — or, cleverer yet, refrained from owning anything you’d be crestfallen to lose.
“This is it,” Thressel said. She and Skehl both glanced at the Emperion, belching more bubbles, eyes wide and stained-mouth gaping at all he saw. “Ready, Favored?”
“Huh? Oh! Sure… Sure.” But the Emperion’s gaze flitted away again.
Skehl placed his hand on Thressel’s shoulder.
“Maybe… we could at least try my way? They might be reasonable.”
Thressel pursed her lips and sighed.
“Have you seen anyone down here you’d consider actually ‘reasonable?’”
Skehl shrugged.
The Emperion blew out another bubble, his eyes intent, watching as the thin haze of yellow ink whirled through it.
“Fine. Fine.” Thressel groaned. “But I’ll do the talking. You just stay behind me and try to look… non-threatening, I suppose.”
Because, of course, my eye would look threatening…
But he said, “I can do that.”
They left the Emperion to his bubbles and swam over to the hovel numbered 1097 smeared over the entryway in glowing slug-slime.
Thressel knocked on the stone beside the entryway, half-draped with yellow kelp.
“I said I’ll get you the fifty halves next week!” came a shrill, male voice.
Over Thressel’s shoulder Skehl spotted a bony, brown-colored Skaltressian with only a handful of tentacles dangling from the beaten and bruised squishy dome atop his head. When the Skaltressian noticed them, contempt pinched his face.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“Good evening,” Thressel said. “We’re here to — ”
“We don’t have anything; we don’t want anything. So, please, just go.” He waved them off.
“Told you,” Thressel whispered to Skehl.
“Especially you!” The Skaltressian was pointing directly at Skehl’s blind eye. “I’ll not have any of your madness in my house. You hear me?”
Thressel bristled, static crackling across her tentacles. “Watch. Your. Words.”
“Who are you insulting this time?” came another voice. Softer, prettier.
Two sisters swam into view from a room in the back. The older — Skehl presumed she was the one who had spoken — had purple-colored tentacles and a soft, round face. The younger, likely just past her youngling years, glittered like stars across a golden suns-rise — and was blind in both eyes.
Seizing the opportunity, Thressel dived into the story Skehl had suggested earlier while they had been waiting for the Emperion at their secret spot. A story that was mostly true. Of how Skehl was an apprentice in the Tide’s Eyes, and that he’d seen that a Reeflord meant to come and take their golden sister from them. She told them how their best chance at remaining together was to follow them to a secret location where they would be protected. That they had to leave tonight.
The sisters were both terrified, but their brother wore a fiendish grin that revealed his many missing teeth. “A Reeflord, you say? Well, perhaps he and I could work out some sort of agreement, eh? A–a reasonable price? He wouldn’t want me damaging little Tehna’s tentacles before he could get his hands on ’em, no?”
“What?” Skehl blurted out, brushing past Thressel. “She’s your sister.”
“Times are tough. And more siblings always come,” the brother said. “Besides, it’s better we make something off getting rid of her, before she tries to shatter us with her.”
“B–But that’s not how it works…”
“See?” Thressel said, elbowing Skehl back behind her and flashing him a snarky I-told-you-so look. “So reasonable.”
Movement behind them, and Skehl noticed two glowing gold lights reflecting in the brother’s eyes.
“Your way — ” belch “ — is taking too long.” The bodies of all three siblings went rigid, their eyes glossy and vacant. “And the night’s ebbing away from us.”
Hey! Glad you read to the end! I’m currently working on this longer serial project (sharing scene by scene of a novella I’ve been working on since last October), and would love to know your thoughts along the way!
If you haven’t read part 1 yet… Click, click! 💫
Or… if you want more now, check-out these stories that are already available:
When Gods Feel —
Meet Revion! The Emperion imperial-heir who sneaks away amidst a raging storm, overwhelmed with grief for a horrible thing he’s done. (Dark Fantasy)Promise in Pearls —
Meet Marette and Keon! After seven years of “not really dating,” Keon makes Marette a promise, drawing even the gods’ intrigue. (Romance, Forbidden Love)The Weight of Expectations —
Meet Tristyn, a Dhargonian crown-Rising who has to make a life defining decision: abide the wishes of his own heart, or relent to the expectations of his siblings? (Family Pressure)If you like what I do and want to support my upcoming stories, check out my !
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