Poseidon's Scar

by Matthew Phillion

  “Echo,” Artem said, pointing down.

  On the ground, they could see tracks. Human-sized, the footprints were clearly not human, with four toes, webbed feet, unnaturally wide at the ball of the foot. There were many tracks, but with the blood spatter and puddles of seawater, impossible to gauge an accurate number.

  “Ever seen tracks like those before?” Echo said.

  “Sure,” Artem said. “A humanoid with webbed feet? I grew up on the Island of Unwanted Things. Half my friends had webbed feet or claws.”

  “So that’s a no,” Echo said.

  Barnabas brushed past them, following the glittering blue trail. Artem looked vaguely offended.

  “How often does he want to go first?” Artem said.

  “My spell detected life, Artem,” Barnabas said. Around the next corner, the trail ended at a barred door. The door itself was battered and cracked. Another human body, mangled and brutalized, lay on the ground just outside.

  “So, by ‘life,’ do you mean, life in need of rescuing, or just, anything, like, living in general?” Echo said.

  Barnabas held his sword out in front of him and called out.

  “Hello? Is there anyone in there?”

  There was no answer. The magician turned to Echo.

  “There’s someone in there,” he said. “Friend or enemy, I can’t be sure, but…”

  “Something tried to get in there, and someone died stopping them,” Echo said.

  “We’re here to help,” Artem yelled. “It’s safe to come out.”

  He turned back to Echo.

  “It’s safe, right? Are we in agreement that it’s safe?”

  Echo shrugged. Barnabas walked right up to the door, squeamishly stepping over the body, and knocked. Echo and Artem joined him.

  “Okay, we’re coming in!” Barnabas said. “We want to make sure you’re all right, but if you don’t want the door kicked in, you should probably open it!”

  No answer again. Barnabas reared back and kicked the door.

  It didn’t move.

  “Ow,” he said. “Maybe you could, like, with the super strength, y’know?”

  Echo repeated the kick and the door swung open.

  Then they heard singing.

  It was wonderful singing, Echo thought. She didn’t understand that language, but that didn’t seem to matter. It spoke of distant lands, of love lost, of places you know you can never return to. It made her heart hurt. She glanced at Artem and saw a single tear escape the corner of his eye. He let his swords lower toward the floor, lost in the music.

  “Oh, no, no you don’t,” Barnabas said gruffly. “My mother was a sea nymph. Those song spells don’t work on me, sorry.”

  The wizard waved a hand and the room flashed with a soft purple light for just a moment, and instantly, Echo felt her broken heart return to normal. Artem snapped out of his dreamlike state as well, lifting his swords once again.

  “What was that?” Artem said.

  Barnabas held up a hand for the warrior to be quiet. Sitting on a rickety cot, they saw a young woman with dark hair, a knit hat pulled down over her head. She had one hand protectively in her pocket, and the other was held at an awkward angle that Echo recognized was a gesture associated with spellcasting she’d seen Barnabas perform. The remnants of a failed spell fell from her palm like pollen.

  “It’s okay,” Barnabas said. “I’m sorry for that, but I couldn’t have you hypnotizing my friends. I hope you understand.”

  The woman nodded to Barnabas. Her irises a dark sea green. She stared at the magician intently.

  “Your mother was a nereid,” the woman said.

  Barnabas smiled.

  “Her name is Galatea,” he said. “Do you know her?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “I’m not a nereid. I’m… something else,” she said.

  “What happened here?” Echo said.

  The woman shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was locked in here to keep me safe from the sailors, but…”

  “Something else got the sailors first,” Artem said.

  “They’re all dead?” the woman said.

  “Seems so,” Barnabas said. “Something terrible happened here.”

  Echo held out a hand to the dark-haired woman. She took it, and Echo helped her to her feet.

  “Well, you can’t stay here,” Echo said. “Will you come with us?”

  Artem shot Echo a questioning look. Echo ignored him.

  “If you’ll have me,” the woman said. “You don’t have to take me with you if…”

  “You are more than welcome on my ship,” Barnabas said.

  Artem and Echo both gave him questioning looks. He knows something about what she is, Echo thought. I suppose that’s good enough for me.

  “I’m Echo,” she said.

  “My name is Muireann,” the woman said.

  “Well, Muireann,” Echo said. “Welcome aboard. Let’s get you out of here.”

  Chapter 6: Autopsy

  Gilos Vos was among the more ridiculous denizens of Atlantis. Grimmin fought the urge to shake his head as the jittery professor trampled his way into the morgue, a mop of bright purple hair curling off to one side like it was trying to escape his head.

  “I have things to do, you know,” he said, giving Grimmin the evil eye. “This better be important. My students need me.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Grimmin said patiently. He gestured over to the stone slab where the remains of the seahorse were stretched out. “Right now, though, your kingdom needs you more.”

  “Oh look,” Gilos said. “A seahorse carcass. There. I’ve properly identified it. Can I go now?”

  “Gilos, I hate to play to your ego, because you don’t need it, but you are the most knowledgeable zoologist in Atlantis,” Grimmin said. “And we need you to look at that body and tell us who ate it.”

  Two of Grimmin’s rangers were in the room as well, one, the young soldier who had found Grimmin in the council chambers, looking squeamish, while the other, a more grizzled veteran, simply watched Gilos Vos with a sort of bemused expression.

  Gilos meandered closer, feigning disinterest, but leaned in cautiously for a closer look.

  “Gods below, what did you do to this poor creature, Grimmin?” Gilos said.

  “This is what we’re trying to find out,” Grimmin said. “If anyone can identify a predator by bite marks in this city, it’s you. What did this?”

  The zoologist, invested now, took a monocle from within his robes and affixed it over his eye. He rolled up his sleeves and began to inspect the dead beast.

  “My, my,” he muttered. “Interesting.”

  The younger soldier turned to Grimmin with an expression filled with questions. The old spy waved him off.

  “What do you say, Gilos?” Grimmin prompted.

  The zoologist turned his attention on the spymaster, the one eye behind the monocle comically large and out of focus.

  “First of all, this animal was not eaten,” Gilos said.

  “Sir?” the young soldier said.

  “Those do look like teeth marks, professor,” Grimmin said.

  “Oh, these are teeth marks, or most of them are. But look at the wounds,” Gilos said, gesturing. “They are ragged wounds, very clearly made by creatures with a large, circular bite radius, but they were not pulling the flesh away. These wounds were made to cause pain and injury, not for sustenance.”

  The young soldier blanched. Grimmin winced, thinking of the rangers who hadn’t returned.

  “Can you think of creatures who hunt like this? Who might… I don’t know, bleed out their prey first?” he asked.

  Gilos shook his head.

  “Oh, there’s any number of creatures whose jaws match this pattern,” he said. “The teeth are clearly narrow and pointed, not serrated and triangular like a shark’s, so that narrows it down. But as for not consuming its prey? I’m not sure. There are, of course, creatures who play
with their food—you’ve seen an orca throw a sea lion around like a toy, I assume?”

  Grimmin nodded his head. Even as a hardened warrior, he found that sort of hunting—which, he understood, was a learning exercise, not vindictive—to be unnerving. Just eat the damned thing, he found himself thinking the first time he’d seen it happening.

  “So, you’re saying the predators that did this were… toying with it?” he asked.

  Gilos shrugged insolently. He lifted the body to examine the other side of the seahorse, but finding much the same, gently placed the remnants back down on the stone table.

  “I can’t tell you their motivations, Grimmin,” he said. “This was an act of violence, but nature is violent. By nature. You know what I’m saying. I will say that this does not appear to be a hunger- or feeding-motivated attack. Either the creatures felt threatened, or they participate in acts of violence that are not hunting-related, which might indicate sentience, or might not. Again, I’d need more evidence to tell you which is the case.”

  “What about numbers?” Grimmin asked. “Can you tell how many creatures attacked the seahorse?”

  Gilos twisted his mouth into a derisive sneer, then shrugged insolently.

  “Have you looked at the body? There are hundreds of bites. It’s partially decomposed. I mean I could hazard a guess and say…”

  He looked at the body through his monocle again.

  “Oh, at least… maybe, a dozen different sets of jaws, just eyeballing the various injuries, but I really don’t know. I’d have to do a very extensive accounting of all the wounds, compare the dental structure, reconstruct the pieces of the body that are sloughing off… do you want me to do that? I can do that.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t honestly,” Grimmin said. “I feel like your time is better spent doing something else.”

  “Good, because I don’t want to do that, at all,” Gilos said.

  Grimmin looked at the ravaged body of the seahorse one more time and sighed.

  “Question,” he said.

  Gilos raised an impatient eyebrow at him.

  “What do you know about the ecology of Poseidon’s Scar?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Gilos said.

  “Strictly between us, that’s where this attack happened,” Grimmin said.

  “Huh,” Gilos said.

  “You’re uncharacteristically mum right now.”

  Gilos wrinkled his nose at the spymaster in an angry grimace.

  “Nothing lives there, Grimmin,” the professor said. “Creatures pass through, of course, as they do everywhere, but there’s nothing there. It’s a barren landscape. Little to no vegetation for fish to feed on, and without prey there, the predator population doesn’t spend much time in the Scar either. It’s a dead zone.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Grimmin said. “Maybe this was a school of… something passing through?”

  “Possibly,” Gilos said. “The other possibility is it’s something from deep down in the ravine, but there’d need to be a good reason for anything down there to come back up to the shallower water.”

  “But it’s possible,” Grimmin said.

  “I suppose it is. I’ve never been down inside the Scar before,” Gilos said. “Have you?”

  “Not yet,” Grimmin said. “But I have a terrible feeling that might change very soon.”

  “Well, if you go, bring me back specimens,” Gilos said.

  Chapter 7: Water spirits

  Barnabas instructed the ghosts to get their ship as far away from the derelict fishing vessel as possible, with Artem darting up to the crow’s nest to watch for anyone, or anything, that might pursue them. The Endless headed southeast, powered by a fair wind and whatever mystical manipulations the spirits and Barnabas conjured up to move the craft along.

  When they sensed they were a safe distance away, Echo called the two men over to her and together, they sat down on the deck with Muireann.

  “So,” Echo said. “That was a thing.”

  Muireann nodded to Echo, an unenthusiastic smile on her face.

  “I mean, we’ve been in bad situations before. You’re safe here with us. I promise. But that,” Echo said. “That was intense.”

  “I’m sorry you saw that,” Muireann said. “But I’m glad you found me. I don’t know how long I would’ve stayed in that room.”

  Artem disappeared briefly, then returned with a metal pot and several cups. He handed one to Muireann and poured her a cup of coffee, then one for Echo, and one for himself. Barnabas eyed him expectantly, but the Amazon man did not offer the magician a cup. Barnabas went below deck and returned with a chipped mug of his own and helped himself, glaring at Artem as he poured.

  “You have no idea what attacked the ship?” Artem said.

  “No,” the dark-haired woman said. “It was horrible. They came out of nowhere. I was already locked away, so I never got a look at them, as I said.”

  “And you were locked away to protect you… from the crew,” Artem said.

  “I was the only passenger, and we’d had a bit of bad luck with a storm,” Muireann said. “I think they felt superstitious about it.”

  “Was anyone after you? The crew, I mean. Did you have any trouble?” Echo said.

  “No,” Muireann said. “Well, not really.”

  “Not really,” Echo repeated.

  “There’s someone looking for me,” Muireann said, meeting each of their eyes separately in turn. “But he wouldn’t do that. He’s not a monster. He just…”

  “I don’t want to pry,” Echo said. “But we did take you onto our ship. If someone’s after you, we need to be ready. If he’s trouble we’ll protect you, but we need to know what we’re up against.”

  “Oh, no, we should pry,” Barnabas said. He pulled a bottle of unlabeled booze out of his coat, poured some into his coffee, then offered it to Muireann. She seemed almost confused for a moment, then nodded, and Barnabas added a splash to hers.

  “Barnabas,” Echo said.

  “What?” the magician said.

  “What is that, and where did you get it?

  “It’s rum, and look at me,” Barnabas said. “I’m a pirate magician. You’d be disappointed if I didn’t have rum on this ship.”

  He waggled the bottle at Artem, who shook his head, then looked at Echo, then handed his cup to Barnabas.

  “Artem?” Echo said.

  “I can’t get the smell of the blood on that ship out of my nose,” he said. “So, yes. If there’s someone after you, Muireann, we need to know who it is.”

  “And what you stole,” Barnabas said.

  “Barnabas!” Echo said, appalled. Artem’s eyebrows shot up like arches.

  “You took something they want back, didn’t you?” Barnabas said. “Not whatever killed the crew of that ship. The person chasing you.”

  Echo began to protest, but Muireann spoke up first.

  “Yes,” she said. “He wasn’t using it, but it seems like it’s always the case that men most resent when you take from them things they don’t need.”

  “Barnabas, now I feel like you know something the rest of us don’t,” Echo said.

  He sat down cross-legged across from Muireann and sipped his spiked coffee.

  “You’re an ondine,” he said.

  “A what?” Echo said.

  Muireann looked horrified for a moment, and then, strangely, she almost smiled.

  “I haven’t heard that word in so long,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “I wasn’t pulling your chain when I said my mother was a nereid before,” Barnabas said. “She taught me about all the ocean spirits and nymphs and mermaids. I knew what you were the minute you tried that charm spell on me.”

  “You are really not… I’m not sure the right way to say this. You’re not pretty enough for me to have guessed your mother was a nymph,” Muireann said.

  “Wow,” Echo said.

  Artem began howling with laughter and had to walk away for a
moment before he could pull himself back together.

  Barnabas, oddly, didn’t seem the least bit put off by it.

  “It’s the beard, isn’t it?” he said.

  “And the tattoos. And the scars. Also, you look really angry all the time,” Muireann said.

  “Nereids are angry a lot,” Barnabas said.

  “But they hide it better than you do,” Muireann said.

  Echo sipped her coffee and scratched at the stubble along her temple.

  “I feel like I’m listening to a private joke I’m not in on,” Echo said.

  “You sort of are,” Barnabas said. “So, Muireann… what did you steal?”

  The ondine’s mouth twisted up into a sheepish smile and then she reached into her pocket, drawing out a gleaming golden sphere.

  “Oh, you didn’t,” Barnabas said.

  “What is that?” Artem said.

  “You took his soul?” Barnabas said.

  “What?” Echo said, more loudly than she intended.

  “It’s not his soul!” Muireann said. “It’s just… a fragment of his, y’know. Eternal life force.”

  “So just a fragment of his soul,” Barnabas said.

  “If you’re going to be gauche about it,” Muireann said.

  “Souls are real?” Echo said.

  “It’s not a soul. It’s a piece of his spirit.”

  “Wait, why did you steal a piece of his spirit?” Artem said. “And what do you mean he wasn’t using it?”

  Barnabas at this point was coughing from belly laughing.

  “I thought that part about ondines was a myth,” he said.

  “It is a myth,” Muireann said. She looked at Echo, seeing that she’d taken on a panicked expression. “The myths say that ondines don’t have souls, and the only way to get one is to marry a human man, which, quite frankly, is sexist bullshit.”

  “I completely agree,” Barnabas said.

  “You shut up,” Echo said to him. “So, what is that, then?”

  “We do need to, um, we need to borrow some essence from mortal beings, though. Not their soul. Just something to sustain our magic. Sometimes it’s given freely, but why should I have to go around asking for someone to give up a bit of their life force? So I… take it from bad people.”