The questions started immediately.
“What are you doing here?”
“Where have you been?”
“How is the ship not flooded?”
“Who in tarnation is this fella?”
The last came from Ryuuk, who hadn’t really met Matthew during the initial attack. He walked up to the young man dressed in dark purple robes and tipped his hat up with one finger. Ryuuk peered at him suspiciously before reaching out to poke him in the forehead.
“Phew,” he said. “Ok, you’re real. For a moment there, I was afraid I’d done passed out from lack of air and this was all a hallucination.”
“Oh! Uh, give me just a minute, guys,” Matthew said. “I’ll be right back, just let me get us moving.”
I shared a questioning glance with Dick, and we both moved to follow Matthew down the hallway. I arrived in the now bone-dry passenger cabin just in time to see Matthew leaning out of the breach hole and waving to someone above the ship. Seconds later, there was a slight shift to the ship as it smoothly began moving forward in the water.
Being so deep underwater, there was no natural light to illuminate the water outside. However, the walls of the canyon seemed to be veined with some florescent substance that cast a faint but beautiful glow across the area. The ship appeared to be encapsulated in some sort of bubble that appeared magical in nature. The bubble extended in a sphere around the entire ship, so there was room to lean out of the breach hole and look around. I did just that.
Above the transport and beyond the circumference of the bubble, I could see the navigational lights of a large water vessel. A blue beam shot from a contraption underneath the ship and attached to our bubble. This was a type of magical technology I had never encountered before. Given the completely dry state of the cabin’s interior, I assumed this bubble was some sort of water repelling magic field. Also given the fact that we weren’t all dead from it, I subsequently assumed it only worked on sea water.
Vomero had arrived at the breach hole to study the bubble, as well. I wondered what his take on it was but didn’t have time to ask as a commotion broke out behind me.
“Whoa,” Matthew said, prodding a dead Merdude’s body lightly with his foot. “Who are these guys, and what happened to them?”
“Those are the guys who tried to kill us while you ran away and left us to die!” Cash said. Nearly dying in a watery grave hadn’t put him in a good mood.
“What?” Matthew said, nervously. “I... I didn’t leave anyone to die. I’m pretty sure I just saved you from dying.”
“Saved us from a situation you put us in to begin with,” Cash continued.
“I mean, you could have let us know what you were doing,” Dick agreed. “You just disappeared. We figured you were gone for good or never made it out to the other side.”
“Where did you go?” I finally joined the interrogation.
“I came through the portal like everyone else,” Matthew explained. “I was the first to wake up. Everyone was unconscious, and I knew we were in trouble. So, I portal-jumped out to go look for help.”
“It never occurred to you to portal-jump the rest of us out, too, instead of leaving us trapped in a sinking ship?!” Vomero questioned.
“It...doesn’t work that way. I’m the only one who can use the void portal to move around freely.”
“Then how did we go through it in the first place?” I added.
“It only worked because we were inside the ship,” Matthew rushed to explain. “And even then, I had no control over where it took us. If you tried to void walk without some type of barrier...well I don’t know what exactly would happen, but I know it would be bad.”
“Fine, I get that,” said Dick. “But if you had stuck around long enough to tell us what you were planning, it might have saved us a lot of issues.”
“That’s true,” Ryuuk added. “I only went out to look for a place on account I thought we had no other options. That’s when the fishmen followed me back.”
“And it was their attack that sped up the sinking process,” Vomero said.
“Guys, I’m sorry,” Matthew said, sitting down on a nearby chair and burying his head in his hands. “I...I didn’t think it through, I guess. I really thought I was doing the best thing to help us all out. I didn’t mean to put everyone in so much danger. I didn’t know!”
“Lighten up on the boy, a little.”
This came from the old man, whose name in my mind was now permanently “old man.” Everyone turned to look at him where he rested on a bar stool.
“What really matters is that he came back, right? We’d all be dead soon if he hadn’t.”
A collective mumble of reluctant agreement rumbled through the room’s occupants. I turned to stare back through the breach at the passing ocean scape outside. Eerie iridescent sea creatures dotted the water as we sped through the canyon. Occasionally, shadows of larger creatures would swim past, some bigger than the transport itself.
“So, who are these people,” I said pointing up at the sea vessel, “and where are they taking us?”
“They don’t seem to be taking us up to the surface,” Dick pointed out. “In fact, I think they’re pulling us deeper into the schism.”
“They’re part of the local civilization here,” said Matthew. “I portal-jumped to the nearest place I could find and ended up in some crazy underwater city. I managed to convince the local port authority to help me out. That’s who these guys are. Also...we may owe them money for this? I’m not that familiar with the language.”
“You said this city is underwater?” Cash asked, incredulously. “Ohhh. That’s just perfect. Stuck in a city underneath a thousand miles of water.”
“I think they kept referring to the place as Veridi,” said Matthew. “Something else is called Syreni, but again I couldn’t make out exactly what.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I wanted to question Matthew about being a Void Worshipper, but I knew any questioning I did would also reveal things about myself and my Zodian heritage. Given what we found in the cargo hold floor, I decided to reveal as little as possible to as few people as possible until I knew who I could truly trust.
Glancing at Matthew, I reflected on the stories my aunt told me about Void Worshippers. Truly, some of them sounded like boogey man stories meant to scare little kids into behaving. Others painted them as dangerous zealots, relentlessly pursuing the will of the Void. I had to admit, Matthew didn’t look like either of those stereotypes. And despite personally having reasons to distrust him the most, he was the least suspicious person among my companions. Well, I thought, looking at Ryuuk who was pruning his charred feathers, next to least suspicious. There’s no way that guy has a clue about what’s going on.
Vomero straightened from where he had been leaning out the breach hole inspecting the bubble and vessel.
“I’m going to see if some of the ship’s systems are operational, again,” he said. “If so, maybe I can find some information about this planet.”
“And I’m tired of staring at these dead fish guys,” said Cash. He picked up one of the bodies and hurled it out of the breach hole. He and I watched as it fell through the floor of the bubble with a “plop” sound and disappeared. I looked at Cash.
“Good to know,” I said. “Careful around the exits, I guess.”
“If you want, I can take a look at that there rifle of yours,” Ryuuk said to Cash. “See if I can fix it up.”
“Thanks, but lizard boy broke it. So, he can fix it like he promised,” said Cash.
Vomero paused at the exit and grimaced.
“I’d take him up on his offer, if he can actually fix it,” said Vomero.
“What do you mean?” Cash said. “So, you don’t know how to fix Carla?”
“It’s not just that I don’t know how to fix...uh, Carla. It's that I’m pretty sure your rifle is toast now.”
“You told me you could fix her!”
“We were about to die, and you were clinging to our only option like a security blanket,” Vomero explained in frustration. “Surprise, surprise. I lied. I'd do it again if I had to.”
With that, he departed toward the control room. Cash pulled Carla off his back and held the weapon reverently in his hands. Ryuuk patted him comfortingly on the shoulder and put a hand over the gun.
“Don’t worry, fella. I’ll see what I can do. They don’t call me Gun Guru Ryuuk for nothin’, ya know.”
I rolled my eyes but said nothing. Ryuuk’s boast, whether baseless or not, seemed to mollify Cash. Who was I to take such small comfort away from the big man?
I saw Dick wander back toward the cargo bay, and my eyes narrowed suspiciously. I took a seat near the hallway so that I had somewhat of an angle on what he might be doing back there. I wasn’t worried he would try anything with whatever was in the floor; it seemed firmly integrated into the ship itself. Still, I’d rather keep an eye out.
Matthew wandered over to sit across from me, his back to the cargo bay hallway.
“I...I’m sorry if I made you all think I had abandoned you,” he said.
“You had your reasons for what you did, I’m sure.”
I scanned the passenger cabin again. Ryuuk and the old man were at the bar looking over Cash’s weapon. Cash was still hauling bodies to the breach and tossing them out. He seemed to be having more fun than felt appropriate for the task. With Dick in the cargo bay and Vomero in the control room, Matthew and I had a moment of privacy to talk about the real issue on my mind.
“How long have you been a Void Worshipper?” I asked. “That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
He looked uncomfortable and shrugged.
“Barely,” he said and pointed to the faint tattoo on my hand. “You’re Zodian.”
“You know what a Zodian is?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
“Of course. My family is Zodian...was Zodian.”
“You lost them?”
“When I was five,” he said nodding.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. I knew the pain of losing family.
His narrow shoulders shrugged again. “I barely remember them, to be honest.”
“And how did a Zodian orphan manage to become a Void Worshipper?”
“We prefer the term Acolytes,” he said quietly.
“We? I have been roaming the stars for more than a decade, and I’ve never met another Void...Acolyte.”
“Yeah,” he said, with a sigh. “I guess it’s more of a metaphorical ‘we’. The truth is I’ve only ever known one other follower of Boötes.”
For some reason, the name sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. Maybe it was some deep-seated reaction associated with my Ecliptic House. I suppressed it and continued. The opportunity for this kind of knowledge was beyond rare. I couldn’t help but press for details.
“This...follower, are they the one who taught you how to Void walk?”
“When my family died, I didn’t have anyone who would take me in,” he explained. “I spent time in and out of orphanages on my home planet. I already had one tattoo that my father gave to me before he died.”
He rubbed his arm through his robe sleeve. “It’s gone now, though.”
I couldn’t help but feel a pull in my spirit, a profound sadness. A Zodian’s tattoos felt like a sacred piece of their soul, it left a mark much deeper than the skin on which it was placed. My mother and father had died before I got my first tattoo, but I couldn’t imagine losing such an intimate connection with them. I stared intensely at Matthew’s face as he stared off into nothingness, recalling his story.
“One day, a visitor to my orphanage noticed the tattoo and took an interest in me. He gave me a home, an education, but, mostly, he gave me a place to belong. Like my parents, he had been a Zodian. He explained to me that the tattoo on my arm meant my family was once loyal to the House of Ophiuchus. But that House no longer existed. They had found a new way, a different source of strength to devote their lives to. That’s what he was, my mentor, Atreus, an Acolyte of the Void. And he wanted to educate me in the faith of my family.”
“And that’s how you learned to void walk?” I asked, finally.
“Yeah, eventually,” he smiled sheepishly. “Honestly, I’m not a very good Acolyte. It took me forever just to learn basic Void magic, and I still get it wrong a lot more than I get it right.”
“And your tattoo?”
“It’s...an unfortunate casualty of making the switch,” he said, hesitantly. I could tell talk of his tattoo made him feel uncomfortable. “You probably know enough about the whole void vs ecliptic stuff to know you can’t dabble on both sides.”
“I probably know a lot less about it than you’d imagine. Void magic is almost an urban legend to my kind. But I can see how the two would be too antithetical to coexist.”
“Basically, yeah. When I consigned myself to Boötes, my tattoo disappeared.”
Part of me wanted to yell at this young kid that he had been manipulated and lied to about Ophiuchus and the Void. But in truth, I knew less than he did about it, and I recognized my opinions were heavily steeped in bias. I also didn’t feel it would be right to take everything Matthew had devoted his life to and try and rip it away based solely on my own beliefs. He was obviously committed to his faith, and telling him I thought it was crazy didn’t seem kind or wise.
Luckily, I was saved from the temptation to lecture by Dick’s return from the cargo bay. His path and my vantage positioning put us in closer proximity than we had been in since before the ship sank. I noticed that his pheromonic effect on me was not quite as powerful as before, but he might have been telling the truth that part of it was just baked into his DNA. I was mollified that he seemed to have deferred to my objections and toned down the sex appeal sauce. Unfortunately, that still left me with a healthy dose of good ole’ attraction.
He did his part, Skye, now do yours and ignore it.
A glance into his stormy grey gaze made me realize he could probably tell the way he still affected me.
Just then, the interior of the passenger cabin lit up with an aqua green glow. It was coming from outside and filtering in through the breach hole. We all moved to peer through at the source.
A vast underwater metropolis pushed back the encroaching darkness of the trench. The city was spread out like a wheel with about a dozen spokes surrounding a central hub. Each spoke ended in a bubbled dome of air. The central hub was made up entirely of what appeared to be a large palatial estate. Unlike the spherical bubble domes, the palace seemed to be encased in a bubble spike shaped like a spiral seashell.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Ryuuk, as our tow escorts began to slow upon approach. “What did you say this place was called again, Matty?”
“Veridi.”