by Raymond Cain
Copyright © 2017 Raymond Cain.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
If you liked this novelette, please join Flynn on his adventures in the Secret Depths Trilogy, a series of three full-length novels that take place entirely on the ocean floor.
Secret Depths Trilogy
Seahaven — released early 2017.
Deepstone — released mid-2017.
Graveport — will be available late 2017.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
From The Author
Chapter 1
Alive!
Flynn was alive. And in pain. Light stabbed into his eyes and someone’s voice sliced into his brain. His head felt like a blacksmith was pounding on it, smashing his thoughts into incoherent wisps of memory. His mouth was dry, inhabited by the decaying stench of cheap liquor and chocolate-covered shrimp, and his breath was foul enough to kill seaweed. It seemed each of his senses was under attack.
Tasker Arcturus, Flynn’s older brother, stood over him. The fair-skinned twenty-one-year-old was an engineer, a skilled craftsman who specialized in building magical items capable of manipulating water. He wore brown kelp work clothes covered in pockets that bulged with tools. The thin man brushed a strand of disheveled black hair out of his face and wrapped one hand around his stubbled chin. His other hand held a moving object, but Flynn’s vision had not yet cleared enough for him to make out what it was.
“Are you finally out of your comatose state, Flynn?”
Flynn winced at the sound and rubbed his temples. “I don’t know what that means. Can you talk quieter?”
“NOT REALLY,” Tasker shouted. “Are you listening to me?”
“Of course,” Flynn replied in the sincerest-sounding tone he could muster. The truth had no business getting involved in the answer to that question.
“Then what did I just say?”
“You asked if I was listening.”
Tasker rolled his eyes so profoundly that they appeared to make a complete rotation. He brought the object closer, further impeding Flynn’s ability to focus on it. It smelled of seawater and ale.
“What I requested,” Tasker continued, “is an explanation as to why this is crawling around in here.”
When his eyes finally adjusted, Flynn realized his brother was holding a crab. And not just any crab, but the hermit crab he had entered in a crab-racing competition the previous night. Memories began to take shape, and he recalled the crab winning quite a few races. Judging by his vicious hangover, his winnings must have gone toward alcohol.
“Don’t hold him like that,” Flynn said, plucking the crab from Tasker’s hand. “He’s an athlete.”
Tasker raised a skeptical eyebrow. Or perhaps it was an annoyed eyebrow. It was hard to tell.
The hermit crab snapped at Flynn, slicing a finger with one claw. He yanked his hand free and poked the digit into his mouth. Tasker’s eyebrow rose even higher.
“We’re still getting to know each other,” Flynn explained. “And he won his freedom last night. I told him I’d set him free.”
Sighing heavily, Tasker continued. “You’ve extracted an adequate quantity of crystal ore from the mine lately, but if we wish to continue paying the bills, we should not rely on a single mine. I’d like you to collect a core sample. I’ve extrapolated a new potential source of crystal ore based on indicator minerals and isothermal… ”
It was Flynn’s turn to roll his eyes.
Tasker let out an exasperated sigh. “I want you to dig a hole.”
“There now,” Flynn said, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “Was that so hard?”
Tasker cringed from the shoulder clap and stepped back. His work clothes were covered in grime, but he brushed off his shoulder where Flynn touched him as though it left behind something far worse that needed to be wiped away. He walked over to a stone table laden with tools, paper, and writing implements. There were no chairs at the table, but a hip-high sphere of water rolled toward him, bumped into the back of his legs, and shaped itself into a chair. The liquid oozed around his thighs and back, molding itself to his contours and assuming a comfortable shape. He dipped the needle-like sea urchin spine into a bottle of squid ink and began drawing what Flynn assumed was a map.
Flynn tried to push himself off the round cushion of water he was lying on, but his arms and legs sank into the liquid. Eventually, he gave up and slid off onto the cold stone floor. Hunks of scrap metal were strewn everywhere and a propeller blade poked into his back.
“Thanks for the help,” Flynn muttered, shoving the propeller aside as he got up to his feet. Tasker grunted in reply.
On a wall hung one of Tasker’s inventions, a mirror created from silver-filled water. Flynn looked back at himself and found a wild tangle of chestnut brown hair sticking out at all angles. His bright green eyes had lost some of their luster and a day’s growth sullied his cheeks and neck. He poked the mirror, distorting his reflection with widening ripples.
“Here,” Tasker said. His watery chair pushed him to his feet, then assumed a spherical shape and rolled away. He handed Flynn the map. “I trust you can follow this.”
The map depicted a straight line connecting their domed underwater city to a nearby deep-sea mountain that towered miles above the ocean floor. Flynn clenched his teeth—did his brother think reading a simple map was beyond his abilities? “I’ll try.”
“Good. I left a water-powered drill in the ship, along with a belt pouch for collecting the sample.”
Flynn tapped the map with his finger. “This takes me over those ruins they discovered the other day.”
“The Ruins of Scell, so they claim,” Tasker replied. “It would be interesting to know if the scell civilization was truly as wealthy as they were purported to be. But the ruins are off-limits and heavily guarded until the city guard is done excavating.”
Flynn scoffed. “Until they’re done plundering, more likely. Why else would soldiers be doing it?”
“In any case,” Tasker replied, dismissively, “you’re far too busy to engage in something as trivial as exploring ruins.”
Flynn knew his brother wanted him to agree with the statement—so, naturally, he didn’t. He was about to stifle a yawn but, remembering the night of ingesting cheap liquor and chocolate-covered shrimp, he set the yawn free to assault his brother instead. Tasker reeled and his features pulled back as though his face was trying to escape the stench. Feeling satisfied, Flynn added, “Well, I guess I better be going.”
With the crab in hand, Flynn picked his way through the rubble of Tasker’s unfinished inventions and made his way into the Pool Room, a square chamber illuminated by glowing crystal discs in the ceiling. A circular pool was built into floor, surrounded by a low shelf of square blue stones. A one-man submersible floated in the pool.
The ship’s steel hull was punctuated with crystal windows and four propellers protruding out the back. A pair of triangular wings extended from the sides and four spring-loaded projectiles protruded from the belly of the craft. The hull bore the scratches of heavy use and the crystalline windows emitted a faint glow that reflected in the water and cascaded onto the walls.
Flynn’s family ring flickered as he approached the vessel, triggering the ship’s enchantment to open the hatch. He dropped down onto a sponge-padded pilot’s chair and leaned forward to carefully place the hermit crab on the floor by his fe
et. He sat up and bumped an elbow on his brother’s drill, a metal pole with padded grips at one end. It was wedged between the seat and the inner hull, and it pressed against his side. “That’s going to be annoying,” he muttered, under his breath.
“One last thing,” Tasker added, poking his head into the Pool Room before Flynn closed the hatch. “Don’t bore deeper than half the length of the drill. The slope may be unstable.”
Flynn offered his brother a thumbs-up and pulled the hatch closed. He placed one hand on a steering globe, a one-foot-wide sphere of water suspended above his knees, and the other on a pair of acceleration levers. The cool water oozed between his fingers and he spun the globe forward, submerging the vessel. He pushed the levers forward with his other hand, initiating the four propellers and launching the craft down a long tunnel below the pool.
The vertical descent flipped the crab onto its back and it flailed its legs angrily. “Sorry,” Flynn said, grinning.
The rumble of stone grinding against stone echoed through the shaft as he neared the end of the tunnel, and a rock wall slid out of his way. He rotated the steering globe, leveling off the ship, and plunged into the ocean depths.
Chapter 2
The hermit crab righted itself and latched onto Flynn’s right boot with both pincers. Flynn wrinkled his nose in pain and parked the ship to pry the crab off his foot. “I’m trying to save you, you know.”
The creature glared back at him with dark, elliptical eyes, and snapped its pincers in indignation.
“Some gratitude would be nice,” Flynn said as the ship settled onto the ocean floor. He picked up the crab with one hand and opened the hatch with the other. Blue crystals around the hatch door glowed as their enchantment prevented water from entering the vessel, and he tossed the creature into the depths. He kept his eyes on it as it sank past the window, snapping its pincers and staring at him as it descended. With a shrug, Flynn closed the hatch, shoved the acceleration levers forward, and launched the vessel from the seabed. He skimmed a few feet above the ocean floor and a cloud of soil, seashells, and starfish trailed behind him in his wake.
At nearly six miles below the surface, only magical creatures could survive the crushing depths. Through his ship’s crystalline windows, Flynn observed countless fish lighting up the seascape with their magical glow like millions of swimming candles. He soared over a seascape covered in glowing, multicolored vegetation and weaved his ship between a forest of glowing kelp trees that swayed slowly in the barely moving water.
A group of leatherback sea turtles crossed his path and Flynn spun the steering globe, making the vessel perform a barrel roll. The spiraling ship slipped between the creatures without touching a flipper, yet coming close enough to dislodge a pair of suckerfish that were latched onto one of the turtles’ shells. They quickly returned to the turtle they were dislodged from and latched onto a fungus-covered section of its shell.
When he faced forward again, Flynn’s panoramic view of the brightly-lit seascape was obscured when a blobfish collided with his ship. The jellylike creature had a droopy face and bulging pink lips that appeared even more comical after they were stretched out across the window. Its distended mouth offered Flynn a clear view of the partially-digested shrimp and krill it had eaten that day, and he fought to keep his own last meal down. As hideous as the sight was, he couldn’t help but look—in part due to a self-betrayal of his own morbid curiosity to view the creature’s insides, and partly to see where he was going. The gelatinous fish soon dislodged, and he faintly heard a slurping sound as it peeled off the window. A circle of slime remained as a grim reminder of the unwelcome passenger.
The domed city of Seahaven shrank in the distance behind Flynn and the Shark’s Teeth Mountains came into view. Orange, luminescent algae grew along their bases and the peaks disappeared into the blackness above, an area where magic reputedly ceased to function. The thought of someone entering those dark waters and suffocating or getting crushed chilled his spine, and reinforced his desire to remain close to the ocean floor.
The blue lights of breathing helms came into view, indicating the city guard and the recently-discovered ruins were not far away. The scell—four-armed humanoids that lived in the area centuries earlier—built structures next to an underwater volcano and Flynn’s people would have discovered the structures long ago were they not covered in a black crust from volcanic eruptions. Dozens of soldiers were chipping away at the lava, exposing any artifacts—or treasures—that lay beneath. Hoping to get a close look at the ruins, he cruised low to the ground until a trio of grim-faced soldiers levelled spears in his direction. He ascended high enough to avoid a conflict but low enough to get a good look. Most of the ash-encrusted ruins appeared no different from ordinary rocks but several restored columns and sections of wall appeared well-made and decorated with engraved images. There were a few towering statues of humanoid races entombed in ash and algae, including a bearded human male wielding a trident.
A plume of black water spewed from a hydrothermal vent in front of him and Flynn plunged his ship through the middle of it. Wisps of black, mineral-rich water trailed from his wings and the temperature inside the ship rose as he passed through. Below him, hairy-bellied yeti crabs scurried to collect tiny morsels that rained down on them from above. Flynn shook his head in disbelief at the sight of crabs thriving in the superheated water and he chuckled at the thought of how to eat one. Boiling them clearly wouldn’t work.
Flynn reached the mountain indicated on his brother’s map and he flipped the ship onto its side, cruising in an upward spiral along the mountain’s base. Banking his ship slowed it to a sudden stop and Flynn hovered a few hundred feet off the ground, a short distance above the orange algae that surrounded the mountain’s foundation. He popped the hatch and the crystals along the hatch door’s perimeter shone brighter as their enchantment prevented water from entering the vessel.
Before exiting the ship, Flynn donned a breathing helm. The open-faced helm was solid crystal and it covered the top and back of his head. As he entered the water, it created a pocket of air in front of his face that enabled him to breathe and see clearly underwater. He took a deep breath and angled the drill out through the hatch. After strapping on the belt pouch and tying it open, he kicked off from his ship, hurtling himself toward the mountain.
The drill was one of Tasker’s inventions. As Flynn pressed its grooved tip against the mountainside, two watery tendrils emerged from a metal casing on the opposite end and latched onto the cliff face. The tendrils pulled the drill toward the stone, a feat that would have been near-impossible for a person to perform in a watery environment.
The ingenious invention did all the work. A liquid-filled steel casing at the back of the drill spun the shaft, boring it into the rock. The tendrils contracted as it bored, maintaining constant pressure against the rock face. All that Flynn was required to do was collect the core samples that fell out the back.
“One more thing,” Flynn said, wagging a finger and imitating his brother’s voice. “Don’t bore deeper than half the drill.”
A cloud of soil and rubble spewed from the back of the drill, forcing Flynn to look away. He held open the pouch on his belt to collect a soil sample and wondered what happened to the scell. Were they killed in a volcanic blast? Did they migrate somewhere else? He peered over the vents he sailed through but couldn’t make out the scell ruins on the other side of the volcano.
A resounding ‘crack’ interrupted Flynn’s thoughts and reverberated for miles through the depths. He snapped his attention back to the drill and found that the entire shaft was buried in the stone. His inattention had allowed the drill to go twice as deep as Tasker warned him to go, and he berated himself for it.
Flynn flicked a switch on the drill’s housing, reversing it out of the hole, but it was too late. The deafening sound of breaking stone tore through the water a second time and a thin fissure burst open in front of him. His ears rang from the noise as a section of the mo
untainside fractured.
After a period of turmoil and destruction, the slope slid away. An avalanche of rock poured onto the seabed below, slamming into the ground and creating a tidal wave.
The glowing fish below scattered as the rockslide accelerated across the ocean floor. Positioned at the top of the slide, Flynn was safe from harm but terrified of the damage his mistake was causing. He pushed himself away from the mountainside to get a better view of what was happening below.
The wave became dark from the soil and vegetation it absorbed from the seabed. Appearing like a solid wall as large as a building, it rolled along the ocean floor, consuming everything in its path. Gradually, it lost strength and stopped when it rolled over a distant valley, dumping its contents on the writhing plants below.
The thought of creatures getting caught in the avalanche gnawed at him and Flynn hurried back to his ship to take a closer look. After sliding the drill beside the chair and closing the hatch, he guided his ship through murky water and set it down at the mountain’s base. As he landed, a widening ring of dust rolled outward from the vessel, restricting visibility in the muddy water. He popped the hatch and dove into the depths, straining to see through the gloom. It appeared that creatures in the landslide’s path either swam away or were swept aside by the wake.
A nearby black-ash encrusted stone pillar toppled over. Some of its ashen shell broke away, revealing hand-carved stone beneath. It appeared to be part of a column, perhaps a cornerstone to an ancient temple, and Flynn realized his reckless behavior had inadvertently uncovered more scell ruins. He picked up a piece of rubble and rubbed his thumb over a carving of a merman engraved into it. There were tool marks around the engraving, likely the result of unscrupulous people prying out gold or gems that were encrusted in the stone long ago.
When he turned back toward the mountain, what he saw made him drop the stone and gasp in surprise. A cave, barely wide enough for him to fit through, had been uncovered by the landslide. It was circular, about as tall as he was, and scell carvings decorated the walls. The glitter of gold and jewels in the engravings made it clear that he was the first to discover the cave.
