There were about ten Calma ships visible from this side of the Llothriall Llothriall, but Kelos knew that at least twice that number followed in their wake. Shoals of gemfish surrounded the ships - drawn either to the lichens that encrusted them or their lights - making it difficult to discern their shape. If Kelos had been pressed to describe their appearance, however, he'd have to say that they looked like nothing so much as giant starfish.
"It was in one of those that we came to Morat," Kelos said.
"You never realise quite how big your world is, do you," Bestion said, "until you're forced to leave home?"
"Quite, and I can assure you that the crew of the Llothriall Llothriall know what it is to be exiles. If we ever returned home we'd be tried and executed for heresy." know what it is to be exiles. If we ever returned home we'd be tried and executed for heresy."
"Your church would do that?"
"It isn't my my church." church."
"But you believe in the one god, just as we do?"
"In my own way, yes, though I don't think that we can say that we really know Him. Or Her. Or It, for that matter."
"I know what you mean," Bestion said. "I always thought I knew our world and our god but then you came along. Our world fell apart and our god abandoned us." Not hearing it in Bestion's voice, Kelos looked for any sign of anger or hatred on the priest's face but all he saw there was exhaustion. "And this fight, is it worth it?"
"You've met Silus. I know that you've sensed how extraordinary he is. Would you say that he's worth fighting for?"
Bestion watched the Calma armada as it followed them, the great limbs of the ships propelling them slowly through the darkness.
"You know," he said, "I'm not quite sure why I believe this but yes. Yes, I'd say he's worth fighting for."
Chapter Twenty-Five.
The Great Ocean stood with its followers, watching the twitching and trembling of the Queen. The heat rising from the great mound was so intense that it instantly cooked any of the sealife that came within a mile of it. The Chadassa themselves were standing at a safe distance, not wanting to join the litter of dead fish and marine mammals that radiated out from the great mound.
Silus had entered the embrace of the Queen only hours before and, already, the process was near completion. The birth of the new race had taken millennia to prepare yet only moments to realise. Soon the Chadassa would leave the sea behind, there to call forth a much greater ocean; one that was infinite, untainted and pure.
The ground shuddered and cracked. Vents opened up around the Queen, spewing black jets that bubbled high before solidifying into thin, twisted ebony sculptures. The heat suddenly died away and a cool tide rolled over the gathered Chadassa.
There was silence then and the Queen was still.
The Great Ocean could feel the expectant stares of the congregation. The elders clutched at their robes, willing forth the progeny of their god. The creature that had been Zac twisted and thrashed, while the Chadassa younglings hiding within the hollow of the Great Ocean's torso chattered in their idiot language.
The Queen sagged, the walls of flesh bowing outwards, rolling towards them a little way before coming to rest. Then she ruptured; a thick soup of amniotic fluid and shredded flesh boiling into the sea. As the cloud rolled over them the Chadassa tried not to gag on the nauseating stench that flooded their gills. They could see nothing of the Queen now. Some of them tried to make their way towards the mound, but the Great Ocean called them back, knowing that it would mean death for those who wondered into the path of what was about to emerge.
A pale light suffused the fog of debris and low, dark shapes could be seen within, shambling towards them. They grew in stature as they neared, looking much like the Chadassa themselves in outline, but when the first of the creatures stepped out of the cloud the differences in the new race were more marked than the similarities.
The Land Walkers stood twice as tall as the Chadassa and whereas the Chadassa were dark and scaled, these creatures had smooth, pale hides. The same vicious, quills ran from the top of the skull but they did not stop at the base of the spine. Instead they ran down the length of a long, thick tail that trailed behind, dragging along the seabed. The arms were shorter than the Chadassa's but well muscled, with hands almost human in appearance. Though these creatures had lost their brethren's talons they had developed a more powerful jaw. The snout was long and lupine, lined with razor-sharp teeth and crowned with wide, deep nostrils that looked capable of smelling out the smallest of prey. The eyes were entirely human in shape, only the night black pupils, flecked with gold, spoke of their alien ancestry.
The Land Walkers ignored the Chadassa before them - despite their calls of praise - and strode away from the citadel. The Great Ocean knew that if they tarried beneath the waves for long they would die. The sea was not their home, instead they would become the new masters of land and bring death to the human race.
The Great Ocean looked up to where the faintest glimmer from Kerberos pierced the waves.
A long time ago, before Twilight even existed and when just a handful of planets hung turning in the void, that azure globe had given birth to the Great Ocean. For a while the Great Ocean had worked in perfect harmony with the rest of the universe, but it had soon grown envious of creation. And so it had come here, to the best loved of all the worlds, and seeded it with creatures of its own imagining. For that the Great Ocean had been exiled to the very edge of the universe, where the roaring nothingness was barely held back by the fabric of reality. Over the millennia, though, it had begun to hear another sound. The call of its children. A plea no parent can ignore.
When the Chadassa had grown sufficiently in power they had pulled their god out of exile, drawing it across the universe with the force of their will. As the Great Ocean had phased into orbit with Kerberos it had thrown a blanket of silence over the planet, so that none would hear its call. Now it was time for the Great Ocean's children to leave the cradle and remake reality in its name. It understood now something of the pain Silus had gone through when his child had been taken from him. The pride that the Great Ocean felt in the creatures that marched towards land was so fierce that it regretted the brevity of the lives it had given them.
The ground shook as the birthing process accelerated. The Chadassa continued to gaze in awe at the rank upon rank of Land Walkers that marched past them. But these wonders were the smallest part of what they would soon behold. Soon, all of creation would ring with the songs of their praise and the Great Ocean would be all and all would be the Great Ocean.
Not far from where the Great Ocean stood, two Land Walkers dropped, their flesh burning. They made no sound as they fell and for a moment the god didn't understand what had happened, but then it saw a flash of light at the edge of its vision.
The ships unfolded from the darkness, glittering with light as they discharged their weapons. The Great Ocean had only a second to call a warning before the citadel began to fall apart.
Something was pushing down on Silus, smothering him as it closed over his face like a wet blanket, pulling him out of his warm, safe slumber. He scrabbled at the thin membrane, tearing it away before it could suffocate him, and fell to the sticky floor when the webbing that had held him in place gave way.
Something was wrong with the Queen.
All around him egg sacs were bursting as they putrefied, spilling out half-formed and aborted Land Walkers. One creature cracked as it hit the floor, its eye sockets empty and dry. Another crawled towards him dripping mucus, a fat black tongue lolling from its wrinkled jaw. Silus backed away from the abominations only to be dragged to the floor as a large wet hand closed over his face. A Land Walker that was little more than a torso squirmed over him and clamped its mouth on a nipple, futilely trying to suckle. When Silus pushed it away his hand sank into a skull that tore like wet paper, the brain beneath a sponge that crumbled beneath his touch.
There was a dull thud then and the chamber shook. Silus noticed the rent in the wall just a second before the sea rushed in.
He flailed in the darkness, a multitude of limbs brushing up against him as he tumbled through a nightmare of grotesques. A hand made a grab for him and he struck out, only to find his wrist clamped in a firm grip.
Silus turned to see what had grabbed him and found himself looking at his reflection in twin disks of glass. It took him a moment to realise that he was looking at someone wearing one of the underwater exploration suits from the Llothriall Llothriall. Above the figure hung the ship itself and it gestured towards the vessel urgently. Spurred on by the sounds of fighting, Silus followed.
On board, when he saw who was within the suit, Silus gave him a fierce hug.
"Kelos! Gods, it's good to see you. Where's Dunsany?"
From the pained expression on the mage's face he could tell that something bad had happened.
"What? What is it?"
"Silus, you tried to kill him."
A chill ran through him. Silus tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing.
"I had no idea, really Kelos. You have to believe me. I remember nothing."
"The Chadassa within you was driven on by Belck," Kelos said. "He made you open Dunsany's throat. I thought we'd lost him. I thought we were all dead. But the Calma rescued us."
Kelos gestured with a hand and a part of the hull became translucent. Through it Silus could see the chaos that had come to the Chadassa city.
Things that looked like giant starfish moved over the citadel; some emitting brilliant beams of light that seared the flesh off any Chadassa they touched, others wrapped themselves around the coral towers until rubble rained down on the fighting below.
"Calma attack ships," Kelos said. "Their footsoldiers are in the city below, taking on the main Chadassa forces."
Silus saw that though the Calma were outnumbered they were quick and vicious as sharks. They would dart in, their silvery tails rippling, and wrap the tentacles of their flails around their enemy before darting away again, leaving a charred corpse rolling in their wake. For all this though, the Calma were being slowly whittled down and it would be only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.
"The Calma think of you as their chosen one," Kelos said. "That's why they helped us rescue you. While one force attacked the main defences, we freed you from the Queen. We managed to kill the majority of the Land Walkers and interrupt the birth, but some of the creatures still escaped. I only hope that the forces on the peninsula will be sufficient to stop them."
"And what about Katya?"
"The Calma will bring her safely to us," Kelos said. "Don't worry, we can trust them."
There was a flash of light and when it faded they saw that part of the citadel had disappeared. In its place now was a vast area of scorched seabed over which fell a slow rain of corpses; Chadassa and Calma alike.
"I have to find her," Silus said, before adding, "I'm sorry about Dunsany, Kelos. Really."
Kelos reached out to him but, before he could say anything, Silus stepped through the membrane in the side of the ship and into the sea.
He breathed deeply, energised by the cold burn of the salt water in his lungs.
Belck had made him embrace his Chadassa nature and use it against his friends, but now he would use it against the Chadassa themselves. As he thought of Katya, trapped somewhere within the city, and of what had been done to Zac his rage intensified.
Ahead of him four Chadassa were tearing into a single Calma, oblivious to him in their killing frenzy.
Silus barrelled into them, grabbed one by the head and squeezed until it came apart. He didn't feel the blows of the other Chadassa as they fought him and when he turned on them they came apart just as easily. One of them he left alive, but only as long as it took him to peer into its mind and find out where Katya was being kept. After that he slammed the creature into the ground again and again, his fingers dug deep into the flesh of its throat. The Chadassa flopped in his grip like a rag doll as a strange, high-pitched keening made his skull ache. It took Silus a moment to realise that the sound was coming from him. It shocked him out of his fury and he stood in a cloud of sand and viscera, wondering just what he was becoming.
Kelos had taught him that he was special and the Chadassa had shown him that he was a monster. Silus knew that he was both.
He kicked away from the seabed, darting into a forest of weeds when he was spotted by more Chadassa. He lost them amongst the fronds, only to be startled by a shoal of gemfish that exploded around him as he swam into a clearing.
Ahead of him lay the centre of the citadel. Its dark coral towers swarmed with the Chadassa as they tried to defend them against the Calma ships. One of the towers fell; fortunately, Silus saw, not the one that Katya was imprisoned in. However, he didn't have long. Already several of the Calma ships had fallen - great clouds of sand and silt marking their impact sites - and more Chadassa were boiling up from beneath the city all the time. Silus even thought he saw the twisted form of the Great Ocean amongst the chaos, but couldn't be sure.
He looked for a way in, but knew that to wander into the centre of the fighting would mean death. Somehow he had to make it to the prison tower unseen.
A flash of neon caught his eye and he knew what he had to do.
Silus called the gemfish to him and soon he was hidden within the glittering shoal. Together they moved into the heart of the conflict. Several times, when they ventured too close to the fighting, the shoal threatened to break apart, but Silus reasserted his will and kept the gemfish close. To those caught up in the chaos it would merely seem that a school of fish had come to feed on the detritus of the battle.
But there were bigger scavengers than the gemfish around and soon a gaggle of razor dolphins had closed in on them, picking off the glittering fish and picking apart Silus's carefully constructed shroud. Realising that his cover was rapidly disintegrating he tried to bind the razor dolphins to his will; however, their minds were slippery and soon they were darting away again in search of more food.
Silus floated, isolated in the middle of the conflict, wondering how long it would take for the Chadassa to spot him.
It wasn't the Chadassa who noticed him first, however, but the Calma.
Gesturing to its four comrades, one of them swam towards him, the light shimmering on its gossamer tail as it approached. The last time Silus had been this close to the Calma, he had been killing one of their kind, driven on by Belck's manipulations. Something of that bloody hunger must have been obvious in his eyes now as the Calma suddenly hesitated in its approach.
A Chadassa riding a giant, horned eel swooped in, spearing the Calma through the chest with a barbed javelin and scattering its brethren in the wake of its mount. The Calma soon regrouped, however and, as the eel turned for another pass, they brought their flails to bear.
Amazed at the Calma's bravery Silus moved to join their defensive line.
The eel coiled around a tower and out of sight and, for a moment, Silus thought that it had moved on to other prey, but then - with a terrifying screech - the sinuous beast was amongst them.
The rider lashed out with its javelin, only for one of the Calma to wrap its flail around the shaft and pull. The weapon slipped out of the Chadassa's grasp and started to fall towards the seabed. Silus snatched it up before it could disappear and turned in time to see another Calma entangle its flail around the wrist of the eel rider. Within moments, however, the Chadassa had unsheathed a knife and severed its own hand, freeing it of the Calma's hold. Dark blood boiled into the water, throwing the eel into a frenzy that jolted the rider about in the saddle, but it soon had its mount back under control.
The eel opened its jaws and rushed another of the Calma, only to find Silus barring its way. The creature came to a sudden halt, jerking its rider forward in the saddle, its long, slim tail coiling behind it. A stream of bubbles slowly rising from its nostrils, the eel's eye slits narrowed as it considered this new thing now before it.
However, Silus didn't give it long to calculate its next move. He lunged for the eel, wrapped one arm around its thick neck and drove the barbed point of the javelin deep into its mouth. The eel let out a shriek that sounded like sheet metal tearing before rapidly ascending, taking Silus with it as he continued to cling on to the shaft of the weapon. The Chadassa crouched low over its mount's skull as it urged it on, trying to shake Silus off with rapid twists and turns.
As the towers of the citadel rolled dizzyingly around him, Silus saw that the remaining Calma were following in the eel's wake. He urged them back, not wanting any more of their blood on his hands but, despite his gestures, they closed on the beast.
One of them latched onto the eel's dorsal fin and tore into the ridged flesh, causing the creature to buck and writhe as it attempted to dislodge its attacker. Another Calma descended on the rider and tried to pull it from the saddle, but this attack met with less success and soon the Calma was tumbling away from them, blood gushing from its throat.
Silus's arms were beginning to ache with the effort of maintaining his grip on the javelin. Blood was pouring freely from the wound in the eel's mouth and the strong oily taste of it, as it clouded the water around him, was beginning to make Silus dizzy and nauseous.
They were not far from the surface now, but instead of launching itself from the sea, the eel began to slow. Thinking that it was finally succumbing to its wounds, Silus loosened his grip on the javelin and looked up to see how the Chadassa was responding to the imminent death of its mount.
But the creature didn't seem at all perturbed; instead it dug its heels sharply into the eel's temples and placed its remaining hand on the top of the creature's skull.
There was a flash of light and it felt as though a vice had suddenly closed on Silus's heart, as though he had been slammed into a brick wall at speed. One moment he was preparing himself to deliver the killing blow, the next he was falling, wracked with pain and paralysed. The water around him sparkled with electrical discharge and a dead Calma drifted down towards him, lazily turning, its eyes the white of cooked fish.
The eel coiled down from above and tore the creature in two, hungrily gulping down the innards that burst from its sundered flesh. But the Chadassa didn't give its mount long to feed and soon the eel was hurtling towards Silus once more.
He willed his limbs to move, he even attempted to reach into to the eel's mind and turn it on its rider, but all he could do was watch as death came to claim him.
He was about to close his eyes and offer up a final prayer to the ancestors, when a Calma ship closed around the eel.
The Chadassa was thrown from its saddle only to be cooked in an instant when a thin beam of emerald energy lanced from the ship. Riderless now, the eel coiled itself around the strange vessel and tried to close its jaws on the flesh-like hull, but the ship was clearly tougher than it looked. The eel worried at it in vain, rapidly becoming more and more enraged by its impervious prey. The ship withstood its futile scrabblings for just a moment longer, before suddenly flexing its limbs and pulling the eel apart.
As the sundered chunks of flesh fell slowly past, feeling began to return to Silus's extremities; but not quickly enough for him to get out of the path of the ship as it closed on him.
A thin, translucent tentacle unfurled from the centre of the craft to wrap itself around his waist. He knew that the Calma were on his side, but he couldn't help but feel afraid as he was pulled into the red, gaping maw that opened up at the vessel's core.
The mouth closed behind him and Silus was deposited into a small domed room that began to rapidly drain, leaving him on his knees, coughing up the seawater from his lungs. Once he was breathing normally again he managed to stand, though his legs shook with the strain and he had never felt so tired or so cold.
With a sound like lips moistly parting, a door dilated open above him and a hand reached through. Silus knew that hand and when he looked up, sure enough, there stood Katya. She helped him scrabble up into the ship's control room, where several Calma were busy piloting the vessel.
Silus and Katya didn't say anything as they embraced.
With his wife's arms around him, he realised just how long it had been since he had last held her. All the things he had taken for granted - the smell of her hair; the warmth of her skin - suddenly seemed as though he were experiencing them anew, and when she said his name he began to cry.
"I'm so sorry. So, so sorry," he said. "What did they do to you?"
"They took Zac away and then left me. After that there was nothing. Have you seen him Silus? Do you know where Zac is? He's safe, isn't he?" The look in Silus's eyes told Katya that he wasn't. "No, please no. No, please please Silus. Tell me that he's okay. Silus. Tell me that he's okay. Please Please."
But no matter how much she pleaded with him, Silus couldn't tell her what she wanted to hear, so instead he continued to hold her, and when the grief overcame her and she sank to the floor, he went with her.
"Make them pay, Silus," she said, "promise me that you'll make them pay."
As they sped away from the Chadassa citadel, Silus promised.