A couple more days, give or take, came and went after that. During which the turtle continued to cover for Noel and Caleb by luring in fish to eat, making sure no dangerous creatures were nearby, and most of all leading the way towards their first rift. All while Noel and Caleb continued to practice moving with their new limbs, which resulted in them gradually becoming faster swimmers over time.
“I don’t think you two swam this fast when we first started out, I honestly had to slow myself down for you so I wouldn’t outswim you. It’s good to see your speed increasing as you keep swimming.”
Upon hearing the turtle’s compliments as they kept swimming during their third day or so of having their legs replaced with tailfins, Noel and Caleb grinned in appreciation.
“The least we could do is to get used to traveling as merfolk so we can move faster and thus get rid of the rifts just as quickly, when you’re always doing so much for us.” Said Noel, to which the turtle seemed to grin back in response, though it was hard to tell due to its unmoving mouth.
“I really don’t need you to do anything for me in return since it’s only natural that you aren’t used to these kinds of environments, but I greatly appreciate the gesture.”
Caleb shrugged, the slightest bit of a flattered smirk just visible at the corner of his mouth. “There ARE a lot of rifts out there we have to get to, so the quicker we can reach each one the better.”
“I like that attitude. Guess that makes all of us.”
Noel nodded in agreement. Thinking back to the small number of survivors still on land that they had seen and reached out to through the web, she supposed all three of them were also hoping they’d be able to achieve their goal – before the aliens got all the information they needed about the world outside of water and broadened their hunting horizons.
With that in mind she asked the turtle, “How long do you suppose it’ll take for us to fully sever the connections between the two worlds? Just asking for your opinion because I’ve no idea.”
“I knew you’d ask me that as soon as I noticed you were thinking of the others of your kind who still remain unaffected. Given that we have to travel what’s essentially two-thirds of this planet’s surface to destroy the rifts, and taking into account the possibilities of my kind attempting to replace any of the rifts once they’ve imploded, at the pace we’re moving right now I hope we can finish the job before they fully accustom themselves to this planet’s above-ocean terrains.”
“If they do try to replace the rifts we destroy, does that mean we have to keep going around here and there destroying them all until they think it’s not worth it and give up?” Caleb asked, no longer smiling. “I don’t like the sound of that a single bit.”
“Your concerns are understandable, Caleb. However, there’s something else I ought to tell you about how these rifts work. The longer the distance, the more time and strength it takes for them to create and connect those rifts. But as you may have guessed, imploding a rift happens in an instant. So it’s safe to say in the time it takes for them to replace one imploded rift, it’s possible for us to destroy several more.”
“That sounds promising.” Noel muttered with a thoughtful nod. “We may still have to go around the world more than once to fully sever the link, but the job hopefully won’t be as hard as Caleb initially thought it would be.” To which the turtle also nodded.
“Kind of strange, when I think about it – very much like life itself, it takes great time and strength to biologically create these rifts, and also just like life they can be gone in only an instant…”
“Why did that sound deeper than it should have, or is it just me…?” Caleb wondered to the others.
* * *
By the time the sunset came around to turn the surrounding water’s color a somewhat cozy shade of orange, Noel began to notice something in the distance and pointed it out to Caleb and the turtle. What seemed to be a faint speck of light like a single star in a night sky was coming more and more into focus as they continued to swim in its direction.
“Well you two, I do believe that’s the first of our many targets we’re approaching.”
Noel and Caleb gasped in awe. To think they were so close to their first ever step to taking the world back from the aliens was more than enough to make them feel all sorts of things in themselves. Nervousness, anticipation, a slight bit of fear, and even a sense of excitement all came together to tie their stomachs in a knot and make their hearts feel like they would explode. Yet they knew they shouldn’t let such things make them lose their heads, not when this was the part of their journey that was expected to require the most composure and concentration.
“You’re right to feel the way you’re feeling right now, but rest assured, as long as you follow my lead this won’t end in failure.”
“It SHOULDN’T end in failure.” Noel said with her hands balled into fists of determination, though her voice that spoke inside the minds of the other two wasn’t without a bit of trembling. “There’s no practice session or anything for this, it has to be done perfectly in one shot…”
“That really helps me with my nerves.” Caleb replied sarcastically, which Noel couldn’t blame him for because from the way his voice was trembling too she could tell he was trying his best to properly brace himself for what was to come.
“Now before we get up close to the rift I’ll have to explain the more detailed parts of how one works so we can properly destroy it – you may think all we have to do is to destroy only the rift’s end on this world to cause the implosion, but here’s the catch; that will still leave the rift’s end on my kind’s world intact, which will most likely enable my kind to simply repair the rift with what’s left behind. And you can probably imagine that process will take up much less time and energy to do.”
“Not hard to imagine that.” Noel replied, her mind jumping back to when the turtle explained to them why the aliens only partially shapeshifted their prey instead of completely changing their body structure. Similar to that rule, what the turtle was saying here was that it was easier for them to take one half of an imploded rift and rebuild it rather than create one from scratch.
“So what are you saying, we have to destroy both sides of the rift?” Caleb asked, to which the turtle nodded. “How are we gonna do that without being in two places at once?”
“If you remember how I said anything that passed through the rift will be sent back to where they originally came from upon said rift imploding, then you’ll know we don’t have to be on two sides of the rift at once to destroy both sides of it.”
Both Noel and Caleb took a moment to figure out what this meant, and they finally understood what they had to do. While they were having this conversation the rift they were approaching had now come into much better view than when Noel had first spotted it, and so she and Caleb could make out its more detailed features. From where they were, they could see that the rift consisted of a mass of what they could only describe as a bright blue light. To both of their surprise, said light didn’t seem to hurt their eyes at all no matter how directly and how long they looked into it. Surrounding this mass of light was a transparent spheric substance about as big as a Zorb, which they assumed was the so-called “biological protective layer”.
Gripping his harpoon in both hands, Caleb asked, “Harpoons out, do you suppose?” And Noel nodded to that, doing the same.
After Noel and Caleb had braced themselves, they continued to swim towards the rift until the turtle swam right in front of the two with its front fins held up in a gesture to stop.
“Not so fast, now… I can sense we have company.”
“Where?” Noel and Caleb held their harpoons at the ready and looked around frantically for any signs of an alien swimming towards them from a distance, but the turtle told them to keep paying close attention to the rift as it pointed a fin at the ground right below the bright mass of light.
“It’s over there, guarding the rift… damn, they wanted to make absolutely sure nothing bad would happen to their hard work, didn’t they…”
Noel and Caleb tried looking in the direction the turtle was pointing at but couldn’t see anything. Regardless, they decided to take the turtle’s words for it and kept their eyes on that particular spot on the sandy ocean floor, not lowering their guard for even a fraction of a second.
“It’s hiding under the sand, I can sense it’s there. Now you two hide behind that big rock formation over there, I’m going to get under the sand and disable it enough for you to strike it and finish it off. After that’s done we can safely take care of the rift.”
Noel and Caleb spotted a nearby rock the size of a bus that the turtle was pointing at with its other front fin and swam towards it. Once they were sure they were well hidden from the view of whatever creature was hiding under the sand, Noel asked the turtle with nervous uncertainty, “But the thing you say’s guarding the rift is probably huge as hell like what we saw on the bridge, how are you gonna weaken it on your own?”
“You said it yourself a couple of days ago, bigger isn’t always better. Consider this the perfect time to showcase that to both you and them.”
That still didn’t fully convince Noel, and the skeptical look on Caleb’s face implied he was thinking the same. But again, they put their trust in the turtle and hid well behind the rock to let it do its thing, whatever it had in mind.
The turtle gave them one final nod of reassurance, and swam closer to the rift with great caution. Noel and Caleb could only watch the scene unfold as the turtle eventually dived into the sand and out of sight. At that point they were so nervous of what was to come they even forgot to breathe at one point, while their palms started to hurt from their hands clutching tightly at their harpoons.
Then the silent moment of suspense was over, to be replaced with a loud one of shock. The sand below the rift erupted in a thick cloud of ivory-colored mist, accompanied with a weird noise Noel and Caleb couldn’t identify. Only after the sand was cleared away by the movements of whatever had come up into view could they make out what was going on, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
The thing that had been hiding under the sand turned out to be what resembled a giant yellow stingray, and from the way it flailed its body and tail about, it seemed to be in some sort of pain.
“Holy shit…!” Caleb uttered in a shocked rasp as he and Noel huddled against the rock they were hiding behind right as the stingray soared over their heads like a bizarrely shaped UFO, to cast a big round shadow over where they sat. This sight was so baffling, they didn’t even notice the turtle swim back to their side until it let its presence be known through light taps against their shoulders.
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“I found its face once I dug underneath the sand and bit at its eyes hard to blind it; the tail was not flexible enough to bend all the way over to the face. Now we have to finish it while it’s disoriented and can’t see, before it tries to heal its own eyes!”
Noel and Caleb didn’t need to be told twice. As much as the long poisonous-looking stinger at the end of the creature’s tail was frightening, they knew they weren’t going to find it piercing either of their skin while its owner couldn’t see its targets. But like the turtle just said, it wouldn’t take long for the creature to think of healing its ruptured eyes, and so they were on borrowed time.
Quickly and carefully the two of them swam underneath the stingray-like alien’s white, flat underside, where they could see its mouth, nostrils, and two rows of gills. With no time to hesitate, they readied their harpoons and slashed and stabbed away at every inch of the thing’s skin that they could reach. It wasn’t easy, especially when the thing was very large AND was still flailing around while they attacked (with said attacks not doing much to make it stay in place), but not giving up despite the difficulties paid off, when the stingray eventually went limp and slumped onto the sand with a massive whisp of ivory and crimson colors.
“It’s finally down! Now’s our chance to get rid of this rift before the blood attracts anything!”
Noel and Caleb nervously swam up to the big mass of light shining inside the bubble of protective layer, where the turtle was waiting for them while seemingly concentrating at it for some reason.
“What are you doing? I thought you told us to hurry once we finished that thing off.” Noel asked, to which the turtle instantly answered by telling them it was trying to see if there were any other creatures roaming near the other side of the rift.
“Oh yeah, mustn’t forget this thing leads right to the belly of the beast.” Caleb muttered nervously with a nod. “Thanks for the extra precaution, don’t know why we didn’t even stop to think that.”
“Not at all – please wait, I do sense something on the other side… but I don’t think it’s any of my kind, what I’m picking up right now isn’t like them… it’s weird…”
“What?” Noel and Caleb were just as confused as the turtle at this. “There’s something alive on the other side but it’s not one of those things?” Noel pointed over her shoulder at the dead stingray lying motionless on the sand.
“It’s definitely not them, so I guess that means it’s safe to go through… but I’m still not so sure…”
Caleb took a moment to look back at the stingray’s corpse still blossoming clouds of blood into the open water and with a slight rise in panic in his voice said, “If there’s no aliens on the other side of the rift then let’s hurry up and do it, we don’t know what other monstrosities might smell the blood and come swarming the place.”
“Well then I’ll go first and see if it really is safe, then you follow suit if I come back in ten seconds.”
With that reassurance, the turtle swam up to the rift and, to the slight astonishment of Noel and Caleb, went straight through the protective layer before going out of sight as it entered the mass of light. The ten seconds that passed afterwards felt more like ten minutes of uncertain anxiety as the two of them kept looking out for any approaching dangers that the smell of blood might’ve attracted. But luckily for them the turtle came swimming back out of the rift like it had promised.
“It is indeed safe on the other side, but probably not for your eyes… I say this as a warning to what I just saw, because although there’s no danger, it’s still not any less unsettling.”
Noel and Caleb exchanged looks with each other, now even more nervous to go through the rift than ever. The assurance of there being no aliens was a relief, but knowing there was still something to mentally brace themselves for almost cancelled that sense of relief out. Nevertheless, the still growing threat of the still bleeding stingray corpse potentially attracting any predators was enough for the two of them to grit their teeth and get it over with as soon as possible.
Caleb swam up to the rift first saying, “As long as nothing on the other side wants to eat us.” And disappeared into the light. The turtle looked at Noel and nodded once, which she responded to by saying, “Yes, I’m ready.” And swam into the rift together.
The experience of travelling through the rift was very uncomfortable. Noel felt like her whole body was being squeezed through a passage too narrow for her, as if she was being pushed out of a tube of toothpaste by a pair of giant hands. This was why she was relieved that the sensation only lasted for a fraction of a second and she was floating next to Caleb again, just in different kinds of waters this time. Even if she didn’t know the rift would take them to an alien planet, Noel thought it probably wouldn’t have taken her long to think that was exactly the case as she felt the water around them. The very touch of the water, as well as the surrounding atmosphere, was nothing like Noel had ever felt back on earth, and that was saying something considering everything she and the other two had been doing for the past two days. The best way to describe it was that every inch of the place radiated an aura telling them their presence was not welcome here.
That said, Noel didn’t even have enough time for this to properly register with her as the unsettling sight that the turtle had warned her and Caleb about greeted their eyes. Turns out the rift had lead them into what seemed like a massive underwater cavern, yet they could still see relatively well in front of them due to some bright bioluminescent substance covering the rocky walls in large patches. But Noel would’ve rather had the rift they had just come through be the only source of light in the cavern, because that way they wouldn’t have been able to see many other bubbles of biological protective layers floating around the cavern, all of them much bigger than the rift, and containing clusters of various huge marine animals such as sharks, whales, manta rays, and even rare species that Noel never thought she would ever see with her own eyes such as giant squids.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing…” Noel muttered, carefully approaching the closest bubble and looking into it to see all the animals inside swimming around in a mindless manner. The constantly moving animals only stopped for a split second when they accidentally bumped into each other, before resuming their movement. It felt like looking at a bunch of aquatic robots made to look as lifelike as possible, but with zero sense of navigation. Obviously this being the result of all the animals still being in some sort of trance that the aliens put them in when hunting them down.
“You think this is where they collect all their prey to eat up later, like how we store food in fridges?” Caleb asked in a cautious whisper.
“One of the many places of its kind, I assume. I recall them using caverns like this for such usage way before all of this began. It’s brutal, I know. That’s why I needed you two to brace yourselves for what you were about to see.”
Noel couldn’t agree more. Finally bringing herself to look away from the bubble she was staring at upon seeing a presumably mere month-old baby dolphin swim past her face with glassy eyes (and also no doubt modified by the aliens to be able to breathe underwater like a fish), she said, “The less we see of this the better, now let’s just destroy that rift and get the hell out of here.”
Caleb nodded in agreement as he swam back over to the big mass of light from where they had emerged from and said, “I can’t take much more of this either, so let’s get on with it quickly.”
“Right, now all you have to do is do the same thing to the protective layer that you did to the creature you just killed moments ago. That should rupture the layer enough for your weapons to reach into the rift itself, and you can probably guess the rest.”
Noel and Caleb wasted no time doing what they were told and tore down part of the protective layer with their harpoons. Upon doing this, the sharp steel ends eventually cut through the mass of light that was the rift, and as soon as this happened, Noel felt her body do the same thing it had done when she had first entered the rift. A very brief second feeling of getting squeezed through a narrow passage later, Noel found herself back where they had been before with Caleb and the turtle – the water around them felt normal again, and they could still see the dead stingray bleeding out on the ocean floor.
“That’s one side of the rift done, now for the remaining end!”
Even as Noel and Caleb hacked away at the end of the rift they had first used to cross over, it looked like it was starting to implode already from the way its light was dimming and the waters right above it began to swirl gradually like a whirlpool.
“Got it!” When the two of them had successfully done their job to this end as well, with their harpoons piercing the still dying mass of light, the turtle urgently told them to swim away from the rift. They didn’t ask any questions as to why, knowing what was to happen next.
Swimming back to the rock formation where they had hid from the stingray earlier, the three of them watched as the tattered bubble that was once the rift suddenly collapsed in on itself as soon as they peeked their heads out from behind their hiding place. Next, the whirlpool that had been forming above it became bigger and taller until it seemed to reach all the way up to the water’s surface, becoming what looked like a giant version of the kind of whirlpool you see in the bathtub drain when you pull the plug from it while the tub’s full.
Though the whirlpool didn’t seem to affect them in the slightest, Noel and Caleb instinctively held tightly to the rock formation as they kept their eyes fixated on this tremendous sight. And as if things couldn’t blow their minds away enough already, the next thing they knew they could see large whisps of what looked like the aliens whizzing through the water and over their heads at an incredible speed, before getting sucked into the giant underwater vortex in front of them. The longer they watched, more whisps like this joined the previous ones and also disappeared into the whirlpool, out of sight and most likely back to their home planet.
Not only that, the whirlpool also seemed to do something of the opposite at the same time. Caleb first noticed this and pointed it out to Noel, who looked closely at the vortex to witness several other whisps shooting out of it. These whisps, once shot out of the whirlpool, stopped a short distance from it after a split second or so of whizzing through the water. Once stopped, they formed into tangible shapes, revealing them to be the marine animals held captive in the cavern earlier.
Watching this, Noel asked the turtle, “About what you said about whatever passing through rifts being sent back to where they came, does that rule apply to these animals too?” to which it nodded.
This seemed to go on for a full minute or so, with more aliens getting sucked into the imploding rift and more marine animals shooting out of it (to the point where the water above their heads grew darker from all the whales, sharks and such obscuring the sunlight). Eventually, the whirlpool also collapsed in on itself like the rift had, leaving no trace of anything in its place. Even the dead stingray had vanished from where it was laying, blood and all. Everything about the surrounding waters was peaceful, except for the marine animals now freed from captivity hovering over their heads like an immense horde of streamlined clouds with fins, all of them still looking very dazed.
“Wow… even I didn’t think a rift’s implosion would result in such a sight… but what’s more, you did it! You’ve successfully destroyed your first rift!”
Only after the turtle broke their silence and said this did Noel and Caleb finally feel safe enough to come out from behind the rock formation and make sense of their surroundings. After what they just witnessed, the suddenly peaceful waters felt a little unsettling at first, but then it didn’t take too long for the reality of the situation to hit them and they looked at each other with wide eyes.
Their first major step of the journey was done! They had destroyed their first rift unscathed!
Relieved and excited smiles began to spread across their faces as the realization sank in, and they cheered out loud in unison before engaging in a celebratory hug with each other.
“Yeah, I’m just as relieved as you are over this, even though there’s still many more to go…”
Hearing the turtle say this momentarily snapped Noel and Caleb out of their excitement and made them realize what they were doing. Both blushing and awkwardly letting go of each other, they exchanged a few sideways glances before trying to break the awkward atmosphere by changing the subject. Noel waved a hand at the turtle and said, “Come on man, like we would have been able to pull any of this off without your help… you lead the way and we did the rest, so don’t leave yourself out of it when you say we did it.” And the turtle responded with a friendly nudge on her shoulder with one of its front fins, visibly flattered again.
Meanwhile Caleb turned his gaze to the countless marine animals still hovering above them and asked, “Those animals though, what’ll become of them now that they’re spared from getting eaten?”
“I fear even if they’re set free for now there’s no doubt my kind will try to hunt them down all over again… The best solution I can think of would be to provide their brains with the same protection I gave you two so my kind can’t lure them in again, and then scatter them everywhere.”
“That sounds like a good solution to resort to at the moment.” Noel replied, and Caleb sighed a bit through his nose, presumably out of more relief at the idea they could at least do something to help the animals from becoming alien food.
“I’m off to do just that right now, so can you two please find a safe place for us to spend the night? No doubt the sun will be down by the time I’m done with this, so…”
“We’re on it.” Caleb replied with a little salute to the turtle, then he and Noel swam off in search of tonight’s shelter.
Minutes of thorough searching later, Noel and Caleb found the perfect spot to settle for the night in the form of a cave in a massive rock formation not far from where the rift had been. They swam inside and looked around to make sure if the cave was fit to stay in before sitting down on the sand-covered ground. Knowing the turtle would be able to sense where they were once it was done providing protection for the newly freed marine animals, they decided it was best to wait for it here.