Page 49 of Whispers of the Deep
His people were fighting. As he surged forward, up the cliff, closer and closer to the battle, he could see they were losing.
Badly.
A body floated down into the depths past him. Her hair had been seared off, and part of her face was missing. Though her gills still fluttered, he knew she was already gone. Her torso led the way back into the arms of the abyss, her tail trailing after her.
And then another.
Another.
So many that he could hardly count through the bodies floating past him and disappearing into the darkness of the deep.
Arges moved faster. He pushed the muscles of his tail and back hard, until they screamed with overuse, then he burst above the cliff and out into the madness beyond.
His people had swarmed the achromos’ home. So many People of Water were attached to the glass structures, arms flexing in the bright flashing lights the achromos used. Their weapons glinted, striking the metal and glass tubes, and then bouncing right off.
They didn’t have the right weapons for this. They had nothing that would help them defeat the city.
Frantically, he searched through the crowds of his own people for anyone who would listen to him. Maketes. His brightly colored, yellow finned brother was in the distance, dragging a body toward the edge of the cliff.
“Brother!” Arges shouted, swimming closer and hooking his claws underneath the injured man’s arms. “We need to get them out of here.”
Dark blood already bloomed from Maketes’s ribs, and he winced. “You think? This was a terrible idea.”
“I did warn you all.”
“And yet, here you are.” Maketes grinned, even through the pain. “Here I was believing you didn’t have a hero complex. Yet you cannot keep your nose out of our deaths, even!”
“Shut up,” he growled. “Where is Daios?”
“I don’t know. He led a larger group toward the central tower. He said that was where the weapons were kept.” Maketes pointed up.
Arges swore. “Of course he did. The fool.”
“I’ll gather the others. Get them to start heading home and lick our wounds. Yeah?”
“Don’t forget the dead.”
His usually playful friend’s features darkened. “I never forget the dead, Arges.”
Leaving Maketes to do the right thing, he speared through the water toward the command tower. What had been his brother’s plan? Take out the weapons with sheer force, and then perhaps the achromos would have nothing left to fight them with? This was a foolish mission, and he should have seen it from the very start.
Anger heating his blood, he pivoted to round the central tower only to find himself immersed in even more chaos. He’d never thought to see such folly from his own people.
So many dead floated around his brother and a small pod of others who were still alive. They wrestled with one of the mechanical blasters, similar to Mira’s junk that she insisted on bringing with her. But their wrestling was only blasting more pieces of them into chunks.
As he watched, two of their people fell away from his brother, and Daios lost his mind. Enraged, colors flickering brightly and teeth bared in a grimace, his brother grabbed onto the blaster and wrenched. It gave one final pulse of heat, then his brother twisted. He couldn’t rip it off the platform and instead, the weapon took his arm.
Arges watched as though time itself had slowed. His brother’s arm fell first, black blood pluming in the water like his brother had startled an octopus. It didn’t seem real that a limb could come off so easily, and so quickly, and yet... it had.
He raced forward, wrapping an arm around Daios’s waist before forcing them both back. Toward the edge, toward safety. He could save one person, and let it be his blood brother, the idiot who had been with him in the womb.
“Stop!” Daios shouted, and Arges had to wonder if the pain had yet to hit him. “We almost succeeded!”
“You almost died!” Arges argued, throwing him down over the edge with those who remained. “You killed nearly everyone. When will it be enough?”
Daios shoved him, clearly trying to do so with both arms. And then his brother noticed the wound. The lack of a limb and the pain that came with it.
All the lights in his tail went out. He lifted a shaking hand to the piece of him that was no longer attached, and his gills shook along his sides. “What?—”
