Leaving the lab was difficult, but still easier than finding the way home. I don't have a map with me and Tjaru is in an area that we don't swim much. I have to get home and report back to the village. Could it be that there are other, intelligent beings who talk and act? And obviously mean the Ravi harm? I simply have to find my way home. But how?

I have swum a few hundred body lengths away from the lab into a dark chasm. Nobody finds me here for the time being, while I think about what to do next.

Visibility in the water is not very good. The deeper I swim, the less I can see. The furthest I can see is at the surface. But I can't stay there for long before I run out of air.

Further away from the lab, I can see a mountain wall rising towards the surface. The less I'm in open water, the better. The mountain wall offers me protection. I swim up the mountain as far as I can. The mountain doesn't quite reach the surface of the sea. I have to swim a few body lengths in open water. My head breaks the surface and, as usual, hot air rushes towards me. I look around quickly.

It looks the same in all directions, sea everywhere. Saturn above me. Only behind me do I see an all too familiar structure protruding from the water. The jag, the place where Enlil caught me. I know the way home from there. I'll have to swim there for a while.

I slide back into the water and memorise the direction. Down the mountain and along crevices I finally reach the pinnacle. All around me, I see hatchlings disappearing and glow-in-the-dark mushrooms shedding their first light. It is morning.

The sea is particularly quiet here, as if everyone is avoiding the place. I finally arrive in Tjaru. The shattered village still lies there in silence. It was right to come here. And yet it is now time to swim home again. I am happy, grateful to know the way. And at the same time, I have done my duty for the Hathor festival. A good feeling takes hold of me and I swim even faster. Even the great depth hardly frightens me today.

As I get closer to the village, I see a few Ravi in the water. They are looking away from the village. When one of them catches sight of me, he calls out: ‘Nanshe, there she is. Come all together!’

A crowd quickly forms around me.

‘We've been looking for you.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Get Ningi, he'll be grateful.’

I barely get a chance to answer and when Ningishzida finally arrives, I'm still out of breath from the fast swim. Dumu probably wouldn't have gasped. He comes to me together with Ningi.

‘Nanshe. We thought we'd lost you to those demons. How good that you seem to be alive and well.’

‘They're not demons, Ningi. They are intelligent beings. They can talk and act. And they don't seem to live in water.’

A murmur goes through the crowd.

‘But they locked you up, captured you.’

‘Yes, but only because they didn't yet know that we speak and think. There are two beings. One caught me, but was good to me and helped me escape. The second was evil, bared its teeth and wanted to kill me. We have to protect ourselves from him.’

‘You speak in riddles. How can one be good and the other evil?’ asks Dumu.

‘It's like us. Some throw stones, others use words. The beings are divided, just like us. But one seems to mean us no harm.’

Ningi's gaze wanders at these words. He seems satisfied with my answer. No punishment this time.

‘What's that on your dorsal fin?’ one of the women asks.

Everyone's eyes, like mine, go to my dorsal fin. Sure enough, a small, black dot, barely bigger than a pebble, is stuck to me.

Ningi swims closer.

‘It's not a stone and it's not a crab. It looks artificial, not created by Ravi Flosse.’ His eyes show deep concern. ‘Maybe it's from the creatures. Maybe they're haunting you with it.’ A wave of horror goes through the group.

‘You led them to us! The evil one will harm us.’

‘But I didn't want anything bad, just to get home,’ I moan.

Ningi protects me once again. ‘It's not your fault, but now we have to...’

‘Quiet! Do you hear that too?’

Everyone is quiet. And indeed, a sound like countless fins in the water comes closer. It quickly gets louder. Most of the others have already swum away, into the village or to safety. No escape will help me, not as long as that thing is on my fin. Ningi and Dumu are with me, but they are just as helpless as I am.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

A cone of light becomes visible. Some kind of large capsule is approaching, propelled by rotating fins. The capsule comes closer, only a hundred body lengths away. And I recognise something else: the capsule is partially transparent. Marduk is sitting in it, showing his teeth again. He is wielding a long stick and suddenly small stones whistle towards us from two openings. They hurl up the ground and rocks around us. Ningi hides behind a rock, I follow him. The rock shakes under the small stones. The noise is booming.

‘If we touch the flying stones, we're dead,’ says Ningi calmly. ‘Dumu has been hit. The water smells of his blood.’ I don't see Dumu.

‘Can we stop the capsule? Throw something at it? And we have to help Dumu.’

‘First we have to protect ourselves. And stop the capsule. I'm afraid we can't do that easily. The capsule probably only has a few stones and can't throw them forever, just like we can only pick up a handful of stones at a time.’

A lot of stones have flown in the meantime, but Marduk doesn't seem to need to pick up new stones.

I'm literally bursting out of my mouth. ‘That's Marduk, he's the evil one of the two beings.’

Ningi looks at me. ‘That's what I thought.’

We hear the spinning fins coming closer. We are not safe here. ‘Ningi, we have to get out of here. Marduk will get us if we stay here.’

Ningi points with his tail fin in the direction of the nearest mountain. ‘There, in the chasm, Marduk can't get in with his capsule and we'll get to the other side of the mountain. Let's discuss it in the chasm.’

‘I'm faster than you and swim off first. That way I'll distract Marduk from you.’

‘Be brave, but not cocky.’ Ningi looks at me seriously. Stones are hailing down around us again and the rock is already breaking into pieces.

I swim off, Ningi follows me directly. I take a few stones as grazes, the pain is numbing, but I keep swimming. Out of the corner of my eye I see the capsule, traces of the flying stones in the water. And a dark shadow around the capsule. What malice does Marduk have in store for us? We reach the chasm. The water smells of blood, my blood.

But how strange. The capsule has not followed us. The slingshot continues to throw, but misses us completely. I peek out from cover and see Marduk shaking his stick wildly. Something is wrong. There he is again, the shadow. He's quick at the slingshot and then gone again. When Marduk notices him, he makes short work of it and the slingshot throws again. Suddenly there is a bang and one of the two slingshots bursts into a cloud of smoke and sand. A crack shoots through Marduk's capsule before it implodes. Marduk is flung back and forth inside, wriggling wildly. Then he is motionless.

‘What happened there?’ Ningi mumbles to me.

We slowly emerge from our cover. The shadow glides towards us.

‘Dumuzid. What have you done?’ Ningi calls out to him. Now I recognise him too.

‘I put manna in the fins and, last of all, in the slingshot. Apparently the slingshot isn't made to be stuck.’ Dumuzid looks at us with a mixture of pride, relief and exhaustion. He was quick, incredibly quick. And he has bleeding wounds on his right side. One of the fins is visibly injured.

‘Dumu, even with your injuries, you were still that fast?’ I look at him in disbelief.

Dumuzid presses on. ‘I wanted to protect what was important to me. It was easy to be fast. It just happened.’

‘What's this again?’ Ningi looks anxiously in the same direction Marduk came from. A smaller capsule slowly comes out of the murky water towards us. It is Enlil. He makes the same gestures as when he realised I could think. Big eyes, big mouth. No teeth.

‘That's Enlil, he's been good to me.’

Ningi looks at him. Enlil waves his fins.

„*Pido disculpas por los actos de Jesús. Queremos la paz contigo. La ONU hará de este planeta un santuario de tu gente. Por favor, no malinterpreten los actos de Jesús como un consenso entre la humanidad. Lo siento mucho. Por favor, déjenme llevarme el submarino y a Jesús conmigo, para que no puedan hacerles más daño.*“

Enlil seems speechless that we have incapacitated Marduk.

‘I think he wants to take the capsule with him.’ Ningi nods at him. Enlil makes the same gestures again. A small fin emerges from the capsule and grabs the other. Marduk now looks very different, his skin is completely black. Then Enlil swims away.

The others from the village come out again.

‘Dumu saved us from the creatures.’

‘Long live Dumu!’

Apparently they have seen what Dumuzid has done today. Dumu is clearly uneasy about this recognition. But, with a few twitches here and there on his face, it's also clear how much he's enjoying it. He's done it.