“Right ahead,” she felt the warning Nival jolted to her. She sensed the reason too. Something big was moving before her, stirring up the water. It was inching forward very leisurely, but still left a noticeable current. Her strongarms tightened their grip around her spearguns. Slowly, ever-so-slowly and carefully, she reached out with her jolts, as softly as she was able. Then she felt it. The giant predator was just ahead of her. Iphaete waited a second, then reached out again, gauging the shark’s speed and direction. She cautiously backed away.
“On three,” she jolted back to where she suspected Nival was. They swam backwards a few strokes, barely moving the water around them, their weakarms carefully retracted. Then they both fired, and all hell broke loose.
The shark’s first instinct was that of flight, of course. Even the most bloodthirsty predators don’t think of fight first when they are roused from their slumber. This shark had four arm-long spears burying themselves into its dorsal, and naturally panicked. Truth to be told, sharks tended to be on the cowardly side anyway. The great fish sprang forward in pain, while Nival and Iphaete clicked away as loud as they could.
Their timing was perfect. Dolvan and Kleios were exactly where they had to be, and the shark propelled itself right into their net. Now both sank their knives into the great fish and hung on for dear life while it thrashed and rolled in pain. The net was tight around the dangerous jaws, so Iphaete and Nival went in for the kill. They didn’t have to hide anymore, so they sent out their clicks and jolts without pause, getting a very accurate picture of their prey. Iphaete buried her knife into the animal’s side, aiming for its liver, while Nival sped forward under the shark’s belly to pierce its heart.
The beast was not entirely defenseless though, its tail slapped, and Nival could only just dodge it, while Iphaete was thrown aside by the sudden movement. The shark was turning on them, trying to bring its massive jaws to bear, alas Dolvan and Kleios hung on, and pulled the net even tighter, so the shark couldn’t open its mouth. Fighting through a wave of dizziness, Iphaete sensed the danger and darted upward. She barely avoided a head butt from her much larger opponent, and buried her knife into the beast’s eye.
The shark went mad with pain, fury, and fear. It threw itself to the right, to the left, its great body convulsing and writhing, and Nival was not fast enough to avoid a tail snap this time. But Iphaete flitted away from the great fish gracefully while it tried to headbutt her again, then dashed forward and buried her spare knife straight into the beast’s heart.
Power left the huge body in an instant. It still quivered and trembled, but it was not a deadly predator anymore, just a large lump of dead flesh.
“By the tree!” clicked Dolvan with fear, disbelief and relief mixing in his whistles. “By the fucking world tree, girl, you are going to get us all killed one day!”
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Kleios gave no sound, but Iphaete could practically feel agreement radiating from her friend.
“Come on, don’t be such a baby!” she clicked back, even flashing a few colors at her side. “The shark hit Nival, and you don’t hear him complaining!”
“That is because it hurts too much to whistle,” whined Nival. “Kleios, if you would be so good, and dive for my guns, I need a few minutes to just float in peace.” Iphaete felt Kleios shoot downwards, and she followed him.
“What do you think?” she asked cheerfully. “Any other great predator we missed?”
“Better not joke about that,” he answered earnestly. “We are the first humans to enter this leaf, maybe ever. It is possible that we missed another monster. You should not take danger so lightly.”
“Ugh, you are no better than those other two doomsayers,” she complained playfully. “At least praise me for my exceptional stealth and timing?”
Kleios’s side flashed red with mirth, and she congratulated herself. The boy was always too earnest, but his rare smiles looked good on him. One of these days, she would even bring him to laughter.
“You are the stealthiest cartographer in Helicon,” he clicked. “Not counting me and Dolvan, of course.” Then he sent a strong jolt towards her. “Here.” She stretched a strongarm, and took one of her guns away from him, then found the other one slowly sinking not far from it.
“Strange,” she mused, while they started to ascend. “How are we so good at all this?”
Kleios’s side flashed an uncertain blue, prompting her to clarify.
“I mean, we humans. We have a good hearing, a good sight, we sense the movement of water, and we even have the jolts.”
“Sharks have a good sense of movement. And they also feel the jolts,” pointed out Kleios.
“Not as well as we do. And they cannot make the jolts. Neither the clicks. Doesn’t it strike you as we humans have the best senses from all the dwellers of the world tree? How did we get so lucky?”
Kleios thought about that for a second.
“I think it is because the world tree likes us. I mean, I never heard a story where the world tree spoke to a shark, or a kraken. But it does speak to us. Sometimes.”
“I wish it spoke to me,” she clicked wistfully. “I wish it told me its secrets. I want to swim up, up, up, until I have seen all the leaves that are above us!”
She felt Kleios’s mood darken.
“Do you really feel Helicon is such a boring place, you want to leave it forever?” he asked, with some pain in his whistles.
“It’s not that!” she clicked back quickly. “You know I love Helicon! It’s my home! But… don’t you sometimes feel there should be more to life than that?”
“We are charting a new neighborhood now,” the boy pointed out. “Helicon is also rising. You will see a lot of new leaves, even if you spend your whole life at home.”
“True enough… But I want to see the tip of the tree. Shaman Endra told me that you can swim out to the outer ocean there, without being crushed or suffocated. I really want to try that!”
“That wandering priest two years ago said there was no ocean at the tip anymore,” Kleios said thoughtfully.
“So, what is there?”
“I don’t know. Something else.”
“You know, that just makes me want to see it even more with my own eyes.”
There was a small silence between them, as if Kleios was considering his words carefully. Then he started to whistle, and…
“Hey, you two lovebreams!” clicked Dolvan at them angrily. “Will you finally help cut these spears out? Or will you just chatter away till another shark shows up to check out what all this blood and gore in the water is about?”
Kleios turned away and swam to help Dolvan without saying a word. But even so, Iphaete heard the unsaid promise in that silence. If you really must go, I will swim alongside you. And even as she turned towards the bloody work waiting for her, she couldn’t help, but smile.