by Eric Asher
Nixie turned to the guardian. He’d finished his dinner, and now floated calmly in the bay like the world’s biggest murder log. Nixie smiled to herself when she remembered Damian’s name for alligators, but it was quickly replaced by a heaviness in her chest.
She had another mission, and that meant it was time to go home.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nixie swam beside the guardian as they left the bay, angling toward the Mosasaurus’s resting place. She thought about leaving the guardian there to settle into the mud and debris above the chasm, but the thought of what might wait below chased the idea away.
Instead, they dove together. The guardian’s tail snapped and rocketed the beast forward, cutting through the water fast enough that Nixie had to pull on the ley lines to match the guardian’s speed.
The relative brightness of the shallows dimmed, and the warmth of the waters turned to a bitter chill. Undines were built for the seas and, without thinking, Nixie’s body changed. The magic flowing through her veins shifted, adapting to the cold until she didn’t feel it anymore. Her vision dimmed as her eyes altered in the depths, and the shadows of the trench resolved into fractured stone and a brilliant array of anemones.
The color of those creatures, and the gray of nearby sharks, faded, replaced by clouds of debris and tiny clusters of swimming creatures surrounding Nixie and the guardian. Their speed and wake dislodged a small avalanche of silt and stone that clouded the ocean above them.
In moments, they passed out of the zone most commoners were familiar with. They hadn’t managed to reach the floor of the trench yet, but Nixie suspected it was only a matter of time. Bright fish and flora were replaced by an odd glow. Intermittent glimpses of distended mouths and hanging lures in front of needle-like teeth showed Nixie an array of anglerfish. Though they were terrifying at first glance, Nixie had spent more than one day in the depths, watching the creatures hunt.
The bioluminescence of the anglerfish faded, and the glow around Nixie’s armor brightened, giving off just enough light for her altered eyes to pick out the walls of the trench, and any threats waiting nearby.
But what she saw wasn’t a threat. It was a squat little octopus the commoners had taken to calling Dumbo. Stubby arms gracefully pulsed as its body compressed and its oversized “ears” slid through the water. As fast as it had arrived, the creature vanished into the shadows.
Sea stars with long frilled arms crawled past on the sand and stone, searching out their next meal. But their slow-moving bodies returned to the darkness as quickly as they’d come into her vision.
An eel slithered past, darting into a crack in the jagged rocks near a small sponge as the looming shadow of the Mosasaurus crossed its path. Deeper, even sponges became sparse, and on the shelves of rock where carcasses had fallen, Nixie could see small clusters of snailfish swarming the remains.
They were far beyond where humans could survive now, and what waited below meant death and oblivion to most life of the world.
But they weren’t alone. Giant anglerfish, far larger than Nixie had ever seen prowled the deeps. She couldn’t imagine what the monstrous fish had been feeding on until something white and armored scuttled past and wedged itself into a narrow crevasse.
Things had changed in the depths of the trench.
Before she could register what had happened, another of the squid-like leviathans surged out of a cavern. The jaws of the guardian snapped closed around it in a heartbeat, severing the tip of the mantle and leaving a trail of tentacles to drift toward the sea floor where they stirred the mud and sand. Tentacles and debris vanished as the guardian gulped down its snack and they continued on.
The Mosasaurus slowed, circling the bottom of the trench while Nixie floated in the depths, eyeing the lights waiting beyond the collapsed ribs of the ancient city. What had been a canal when Atlantis ruled the Atlantic had fractured and fallen, only to sink into the muddy banks and provide a different path than the one that had once been for boats and triremes.
She held a hand up to the guardian. “Go. I will return.”
The creature circled her twice with slow sweeps of its tail before drifting up into darkness. Nixie’s gaze trailed away from the retreating guardian and focused on the tunnel before her.
It didn’t appear much had changed since the last time Nixie had visited Atlantis. Centuries might have passed, but the entryway remained untouched. She drifted to the bottom until her boots made contact with the mud. Even in her current form, she started to sink into the debris. Nixie grimaced and pulled herself free, deciding to float just above the surface instead of risking getting her boots stuck.
The light from her armor showed enough detail she could see that the archway she now floated through had once belonged to the outer wall of Atlantis. Discolored brass lined the stone, and Nixie remembered what it was like when it had been above the sea and polished: a shining beacon to all who would visit, a second sun on the horizon for any ship sailing into its sights.
But that was no more. Now it was broken, lost forever in darkness, except for the sparse lights in the distance drifting in the cavern of the city.
Nixie needed the Eye of Atlantis, and she knew it would be near the center of the fallen city. When last she’d visited, she’d found fragments of the Temple of Poseidon: pinnacles coated in gold and mangled pillars with a silver sheen. The undines hoarded their treasure in the temple, and more than one map had been found in the room she’d inherited as queen. When the city sank, it didn’t come down in one piece. It fractured and shifted, striking the ocean bottom in various areas before the continent itself collapsed around it. An insurmountable mountain of earth buried much of the city, but other parts remained trapped in hollows and caverns. Supports rigid enough to stand up to the crushing depths of the ocean held the stone above it.
Nixie passed the edge of the discolored brass walls and the narrow tunnel expanded into the first cavern. Here a guard tower stood, almost as if it had been designed to always be there. But it sat at a slight angle, and the architects of Atlantis would never have allowed such a departure from perfection.
Another light bloomed deeper in the cavern. And then another. When she’d seen them from a distance, she’d assumed they were deep sea anglerfish, perhaps not as massive as the mutations she’d found earlier, but durable enough to survive at this depth.
But the lights didn’t move. They didn’t dance in front of a menacing mouth of teeth. Nixie’s pace slowed. Instead of continuing forward, she drifted toward an overturned aqueduct. It gave her shelter and concealed her movements as she ducked inside the upturned trough, shooting forward deeper into the cavern. It didn’t much matter what the things were. They were between her and the Eye, between her and what she needed to help Damian. That meant she’d either pass by them unnoticed, or slaughter them on the spot.
Halfway through the aqueduct, Nixie dimmed her armor. The intricate silver no longer cast an eerie electric blue glow around her. Now there was only darkness, except for the lights that still shone in the cavern.
Nixie reached the edge of the aqueduct and stayed close to the ocean floor. Her boot brushed what should have been mud and silt. She frowned when the metal thumped against stone. The sediment had been scoured away by something. Perhaps the aqueduct had become home to a creature, but whatever the cause, she figured it would be best to move away from it.
She slipped out and took shelter behind an ornate pillar from a fallen temple. Nixie glanced up at the dented statue standing beside it. It was one of the original ten kings of Atlantis, a statue that had once stood in the outer ring of the city and marked a zone of private dwellings there. Nixie drifted up toward the top of the pillar until she reached the peak of the shattered support and slid onto the rough stone.
She was closer to the lights now, but she could only see two of them hovering between the squat stone buildings that once housed merchants and families. Before there had been at least ten of the lights, and Nixie frowned at the change.
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“Move and you die,” a smooth deep voice said behind her.
Nixie didn’t speak. She moved. Magic channeled through her armor and she rocketed forward, far faster than whoever had spoken could keep up. In one move, she drew the sword from her belt and turned it on the man who had dared threaten her. But as she twisted toward him, her blade stopped cold. A face she had not seen in a millennium greeted her.
“Pace?” The name trailed off and echoed in the water of the cavern.
“Stand down!” he shouted, the deep blue of his skin a natural camouflage in the shadowy cavern. Only as he said the words did Nixie realize there was another of the blue men behind her. They’d always been stealthy hunters, a force to be reckoned with, and a rival to the undines in the deadliness of their skills.
“What are you doing here?” Nixie asked.
“Rebuilding what we lost. We spent centuries around Scotland, taking what and who we wanted. But that kind of piracy …” He patted his chest and lowered his trident. “It leaves a hole. We needed a home.”
Nixie eyed the man. “I understand.”
Pace frowned at her, the bluish flesh of his forehead furrowing. Midway down his waist, his body turned into more of a fish than a man. But the entirety of him was blue, which is where the blue men of the Minch had gotten their name.
“You wear the queen’s crown.” His tail swished and he locked his gaze on her. “What has happened?”
“A great deal of things,” Nixie said. “A very great deal.”
More lights flashed on around them until, after a time, the entire cavern lit up like a city at night.
Pace gestured to Nixie. “Come. Tell us why you’re here. Tell us why you’ve returned after all this time. I thought the undines had left this place forever after it fell. We’ve seen a few of you return over the years, though we normally watch from the shadows. Our people have not always been allies.”
Nixie gave him an empty smile. “You’ve always had a gift for understatement.”
“And you have always had a gift for dismemberment.”
Nixie’s smile turned sly. She’d play his game for now, but if he stood in her way, she’d remind him exactly why she had that reputation.
CHAPTER FIVE
“It’s been nearly a century since we’ve seen any outsiders here,” Pace said.
Nixie almost argued at being called an outsider, but even though she’d once called Atlantis home, this was no longer what that great city had been. Instead, she nodded and studied the dwellings Pace and his people had rebuilt.
“I remember that courtyard,” Nixie said, gesturing to a fractured marble statue that had once been a fountain above the seas. She drifted closer to it and swiped away a thin layer of sediment around the base.
“Seeing if we pillaged the orichalcum?”
Nixie glanced up at the blue man. “I wasn’t, but I was curious if it was still here. You know, more than one story laid the blame for the sinking of Atlantis at the feet of our greed.”
Pace nodded. “Of course, had that been true, you wouldn’t find a scrap of metal left down here.”
Nixie rubbed her fingers together, feeling the smooth silt sliding between them. “I imagine there wouldn’t be. You know most of the commoners don’t believe orichalcum ever existed?”
Pace shook his head. “Ridiculous. It was an attractive alloy, nothing more.”
“Perhaps a bit more.” Nixie looked toward a small tunnel as a row of lights appeared inside of it. She frowned at the dim shadows.
“Would you like to see the rest of the city?” As if Pace’s question had been a signal, their escort of blue men drifted away. A few headed for the tunnel, while others vanished into the rebuilt dwellings and guard houses.
“There’s more?” Nixie asked. “The Temple of Poseidon?”
Pace narrowed his eyes a fraction. “You are not here for the deserters, are you?”
“Deserters?” Nixie frowned.
“Come,” Pace said after a moment’s consideration, gesturing for Nixie to follow. “There are others who may like to meet you.”
Before they reached the tunnel, Pace’s hand flashed out and grabbed Nixie’s arm. “Be still. We are not alone.”
Nixie followed his gaze and the irritation at his touch faded. One of the massive anglerfish drifted by overhead, its lure a beacon in the shadows.
“What the hell happened to those things?”
Pace glanced at her and slowly released his grip on her arm. “Some fifty years ago the commoners started using the trench as a disposal site. They dropped barrels of drugs, some called steroids, others we could not pronounce.”
He nodded to the giant above them. “Some of the wildlife consumed the waste. The mutation was rapid. Only a few generations before their size grew to be a threat.”
“Why do you not slay them?” Nixie asked.
Pace gave a humorless laugh. “They are not harmful to us so long as we are careful to avoid them. And can you imagine a more frightening deterrent should the commoners reach these depths one day?”
Nixie cocked an eyebrow. “You’re using them as guard dogs.”
Pace grinned in earnest. “An apt description.”
The jaws floated past, teeth as long as Nixie’s forearms protruding from the gruesome face.
“Beware the lights, my queen, for they are most often not your friend.” With that, Pace led the way into the lighted tunnel, his body gliding in an effortless arc with broad strokes of his tailfin.
Pace was disarming. That wasn’t a trait Nixie remembered of the blue men of the Minch. Blood and savagery, those were her most vivid memories of Pace’s people. They had a history to rival Graybeard’s when it came to plunder and piracy. Only whereas Graybeard might have spared the lives of many commoners, the blue men didn’t.
Nixie’s hand drifted down to hover near the hilt of a stone dagger. She didn’t need to get caught off guard any more than she already had been.
They passed the lights, and Nixie marveled at the lanterns housing the golden flames. Pulsing orbs brightened and dimmed inside ancient orichalcum vessels. The golden alloy had retained much of its color in the depths of the sea.
It was about that time Nixie recognized some of the metalwork inlaid along the ceiling of the tunnel. It had once been part of a beautiful mosaic that lined the bottom of one of the watery rings of Atlantis. This was a place where her people used to live, and the commoners would sail their ships above. But now it was broken, fallen to the bottom of the ocean, where it had been inverted and changed and lost.
Seeing that place pulled at the hollowness in her chest. It carved a wound in her defenses, so that instead of being on high alert for anything looking to ambush them, she was instead remembering the past. Remembering a life that had long been gone.
“Tell me about the deserters,” Nixie said, making an effort to keep her voice steady. She hoped the change in conversation would bring the focus back to her attention. The blue men would know how to kill an undine. Of course, she knew well how to kill a blue man, too.
Pace didn’t answer.
“I’m not here for them.”
“I am glad of that,” Pace said. “But you must understand, the deserters came here with their own story. One that I found somewhat hard to believe. They say another undine is looking to overthrow the queen. And last I had heard, Lewena was the queen of the water witches. So perhaps their concerns are not so unfounded?”
This was what Nixie had been worried about. She could lie to them, but he might be testing her. She figured that only gave her one real option. “The world above the sea has changed. And you need to know what’s going on.”
Pace released a humorless laugh. “My Queen, we are in one of the deepest trenches of this world. This is one of the few places we do not need to be concerned about the commoners.”
“And yet they’ve poisoned your water. Mutated the wildlife here. You said yourself those anglerfish were the commoners’ doing.”
Pace didn’t respond.
“Gwynn Ap Nudd has torn Falias out of Faerie. Killed millions of commoners in the process. Started a war only he wanted. But the commoners can be as stubborn as he is. Warmongers alike, for that they surely have in common.”
Pace slowed. “No king would do that.”
“Agreed,” Nixie said. “But not only did the king do that, but Lewena, then queen of the water witches, joined him. Together with Hern, they set out to rain destruction on both their enemies in Falias, and the commoners.”
“I never much liked Hern,” Pace said. “A pompous fool, so tied up in the old ways he would give his life to see them preserved.”
Nixie shrugged. “And perhaps he did. For Nudd had other goals. Damian, the necromancer known as the mortal prince of the water witches, was one of Nudd’s targets. He trapped them both, awoke a force in Damian …” Nixie’s words trailed off. She wasn’t sure how to say it, and she didn’t want to say it.
“Like Leviticus?” Pace asked, an edge to his voice.
Nixie couldn’t remember if the blue men had been at the fall of Atlantis. There were details she found difficult to recall about the end of that era. But one that always remained vivid was the colossal form of Levi trying to save the city. Nixie shook her head. “Like him, but not like him. This is darker. Nudd’s playing with forces he doesn’t understand. And I suppose that makes a kind of sense, because Nudd is the Mad King.”
Pace froze before continuing on. “So that’s what happened to him.” He rubbed slowly at his jaw. “That surprises me less than other things you’ve told me here. But it confirms what some of the deserters have said. And they tell me that if an undine comes here who is not a servant of Lewena, they will be hunting them.”
“I am servant to none, and I hunt no one.”
