Two hours past sunrise…

 

It seemed that even in the eye of a magical current, vestiges of sunlight could still reach them, because at the moment of dawn, the love-potion took down Aya’s sensibilities like a shark in a carp-fight.

“You son of a lop-gilled trout!” Aya shrieked, trying her best to swim away from him, and though her efforts weren’t much more than an inconvenience to him, he was somewhat relieved when she seemed to be running out of energy.

“I’m cecaelian,” he said dryly.

“That’s worse!”

“I know,” he said, his voice sounding bland, even to himself. Two tentacles fastened firmly to her tail, he didn’t have to do much to keep her moving forward with him, but the screeching was beginning to grate on his sensitive ears. Two hours after the sun’s ascent, and Aya still hadn’t run out of insults to throw at him. It was actually rather impressive. Not twenty four hours before, he wouldn’t have thought her capable of the things she’d been saying—not that he was paying her much attention anymore.

After the sunrise, she’d been confused:

“Why are we here? You’re helping me? Are we going to see my Ellian?” The questions had been endless.

Then she’d been love-lorn:

“Wait until you see him, the way he swishes his tail—”

“He hardly has one,” Kai had said, unable to help himself.

“His eyes look like treasure,” she’d cooed.

“They are a virulent, diseased orange,” he’d said.

“Every bit of him looks delicious. I could just—”

“Spare me,” he’d pleaded, something in his lower stomach curdling at the thought of what she might say on that subject.

Then, probably because of his comments, she’d been mopey:

“We’ve been in this current for hours,” she’d whined.

“One hour, forty-seven minutes,” he’d corrected.

“I’m so tired… Why am I so tired? Will you please just carry me?”

“Princess, you are perfectly capable of swimming on your own,” he’d said.

Then she’d tried to be charming:

“Please? You look so strong. I bet you’d hardly notice.” She’d stopped fighting his pulling her along, then, and tried climbing into his arms on her own. His innards gave a nasty tug as he forced her away.

“Princess, a gentleman would keep his distance from you as much as possible while you’re under the influence of this curse.”

And after that, as much as possible, forever, he’d promised himself, although there was some internal dissension at that thought—which he promptly ignored.

At last, she was angry—oh, so angry. It would have been highly entertaining had his ears not been quite so sensitive, and in such close quarters to the noisy little mermaid.

“I was offering you an honor,” she snapped, all pretense of charm evaporated like so much cauldron steam. “My prince would die for the opportunity to do the same!”

“I do so hope he does,” Kai muttered fervently.

“Who would say that sort of thing, you horrible tentacled minnow!” she exclaimed, having overheard him.

His mouth quirked.

“I’m a bit bigger than a minnow. We’re going to have to work on your insults.”

She rose to the occasion.

“I’ve had better company that crawled out from under shipwrecks! You’re the kind of scum even crabs avoid!”

“If only,” he said, his thoughts casting back to Herb and Frank. “Try again, Princess.”

“Hagfish wouldn’t swim through your messes!”

He shrugged. “That was better. The messes I make would probably turn a hagfish all sorts of colors. Cauldron fumes do that.”

“You’re slimier than an eel in heat!” she snarled.

He rolled his eyes. “The irony.”

Words nearly failed her in her rage.

“Bring me to my prince! Where is Ellian? Let! Me! Go!”

Dragging her by the tail with a pair of tentacles as she struggled, the other six propelled them forward, and his arms kept them balanced only through great difficulty. At this rate, he was actually considering devoting two of those six to plugging his ears as they swam.

Aya tried with admirable effort to get free. Eventually, they were going to catch up with Adin, who seemed to have been sucked much farther along the direction of the curving, tunneling current. It was lucky for the young merman that they’d been so close to the current’s entrance when he’d decided to interfere. Kai didn’t have the time for a drawn-out fight, and he would have hated to actually harm Adin—even if he was acting like a complete loach.

After what felt like an eternity, the current at last spat them out onto a barren sandy bank. It wasn’t as deep as the Depths would be, and, to Kai’s eyes, certainly wasn’t as dark. Very faint sunlight still streamed from overhead. If Kai had to guess, he would say they weren’t more than one or two leagues down. Squinting in every direction, there was nothing in the way of interest. Every few feet or so, scattered dead seaweed lay lifeless in the still sand, and there was the occasional pebble, but there were no other signs of life in the empty, shadowy waters.

Aya muttered something that sounded like another insult.

“Yes, Princess,” he said absentmindedly, searching the ground before them, and towing Aya in the direction the current had spat them. It wasn’t long before his efforts were rewarded.

“Castrated over-baked catfish!” she said a little louder.

“Language, princess,” he chided distantly. “We have company.”

“What is that?” She took a break from her scalding remarks for the question.

Kai spotted Adin near the base of a lone monolith looming thirty feet out of the silt. It was dim enough that he was surprised Aya could see, until he remembered that his ink would have adjusted more than just her blood and her breathing—and Adin was clearly in need of the same.

The merman clung to the rocky structure for dear life, eyes darting in every direction. The poor guppy probably thought he’d gone blind.

“We’re here,” Kai said quietly, as they approached the statue and Adin.

Adin, still gripping his spear for dear life, flinched back at the sound of Kai’s voice, and Kai fought an aggravated sigh as he summoned enough ink to fill Adin’s gills. Likely, Adin wouldn’t appreciate what he’d done, but he also wouldn’t be able to get out of here on his own without it. Annoying or not, Adin was a friend to Kai—at least, he had been.

Ejecting enough ink to darken the water around Adin’s face, Kai waited through the young merman’s coughing and spluttering until at last, his eyes refocused, and his breathing grew less labored.

“Better?” Kai asked.

Adin shuddered, and nodded.

“Convinced I’m not trying to hurt you?” He pulled back from Adin to give him room to take in their barren surroundings.

It seemed that though his vision had returned, Adin still had to squint to see Kai and Aya right in front of him.

No, Kai realized. That was just suspicion.

“Sort of,” Adin said, though he still gripped his spear in terror.

“Adin?” Aya gasped, changing direction as she struggled in Kai’s tentacles. “Adin is that you? You’re a guard! What are you doing? Get me away from him! Can’t you see he’s trying to keep me from my fiance?”

“I am, indeed,” Kai admitted bluntly.

Adin looked between Kai and Aya,, gripping his spear to his chest as though scandalized.

“Um, Aya…” Adin stammered.

He was clearly still shaken from the twisting, writhing waters of the current that had brought them down here. Without sight or decent instinct, he wouldn’t have been able to balance himself as well as Kai, and was probably nursing a dizziness headache. Though his confusion made Adin less aggressive, he wasn’t exactly friendly, either.

“Well?” Aya snapped again. “Don’t just sit there, Adin! Distract him! Fight him! Get me back to the surface!”

Kai hadn’t heard Aya this angry since she was much younger, and had tried to confront a group of bullies on her own—they’d backed off of course, once they’d learned who she was, but that didn’t stop them from laughing and jeering at her tears.

“Not like her to order you around like this, is it?” Kai said dryly, watching Adin blink at the sight of her. His surprise was on full display as Aya’s agitation grew worse.

“He’s my guard! I’ll order him around if I like!” she snapped. “And he’ll obey like a good citizen—unlike you, Kai! Have you forgotten who I am?”

“I’m…at your service, princess,” said Adin obediently, but he didn't try to attack Kai again, even on his princess’s orders.

Slowly, Kai sat down next to Adin where he still clung to the base of the rocky monolith. Adin tensed at Kai’s proximity, and he found himself raising an imperious brow down at him. Even up at the dropoff, Kai had never hurt Adin, and the guppy didn’t have any reason to believe he would.

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“If you’re not convinced I don’t want to hurt you, I’m sure you can at least believe that something’s been tampering with her head. Believe me, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to make her like this while we were in that current,” Kai said quietly. “Even if you don’t think it was the prince who did, you have to know it wasn’t me, Adin.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me! I’m just tired! Take. Me. Home!” Aya insisted again, waggling a weak finger at Adin’s nose. She thrashed her tail hard, but since Kai’s tentacles still had ahold of her tailfins, all her efforts only served to throw her hair in her face, which she swatted at indignantly.

Kai ignored her, wondering just how badly the potion was affecting her if she thought the trembling young guard before her could do anything about her situation in these dark waters. It wasn’t just ridiculous, it was completely unfair to Adin, who, considering his worship of the royal positions, probably thought he actually could do something. Kai pushed his fingertips to his forehead, feeling a familiar throb in his temple.

“I’m going to find her a cure.” Against his better instincts, Kai kept his voice gentle, willing Adin to understand him. It wouldn’t kill the guard if Kai just left him here and came back for him, but there was the distinct possibility that he would wander off—which certainly would kill him so far from the city. The last thing Kai needed was more damage to his conscience. “In three days, whether or not this is fixed, I will return you and Aya to the surface waters safely. You have my word. However; it will be fixed,” he said fiercely. “Then, whether or not Princess Ayalina wants to marry the eel, it will at least be her choice.”

Adin’s grip on his spear tightened like he was planning on strangling the little weapon. He cleared his throat, and put on a naively brave face.

“Sorry, Kai, but I still don’t believe you. Why does something tell me you had something to do with this?” The merman must have been neglect of his senses, because he decided scowling at Kai was a good idea.

Kai ground at the rock under his tentacles, fighting for patience.

“You’ll do it anyway, Adin, because you need me alive and willing to give you ink if you want to survive the pressure and the darkness in these trenches—like it or not. And Adin,” Kai warned, baring his teeth a little closer to Adin’s face than necessary. “If you could barely touch me with that little stick, what on earth makes you think you can fend off the things that live down here?”

That at least had an effect.

Adin paled, and though he didn’t let it go, he shot a panicked glance between his spear and the endless open water around them. Evidently getting wrung out by a magical current hadn’t robbed Adin of all sense.

“Are you even listening, Adin? I didn’t want to report your negligence to Pastian, and I won’t, but only if you get me out of here—” Aya started again.

One of Kai’s tentacles shot out and wrapped itself around Aya’s mouth. He winced when she bit him, but her little teeth couldn’t do much damage, and it hurt less than listening to her protests another minute.

“That’s enough of that, Princess,” Kai growled. “Adin?”

Adin rose shakily from his seat on the murky sand, and steadied himself on the statue. “Looks like I have to go with you. More the better, actually,” he said at last. Still trembling, he straightened himself. “Princess Ayalina, I can’t get you out of here alone, but I promise to escort and chaperone you both until we’re safely back to Atlantis.”

Adin punctuated his pledge with a fist across his heart in salute.

“Many thanks,” said Kai, resisting an eyeroll. He pushed himself up as well, disting the silt from his vest. “Now that we’re all on the same lovely quest, let’s figure out where we’re going, shall we?”

As Adin and Aya both gave him a welcome—albeit forced—silence, Kai rose several feet in the water to see the whole monolith, which he now saw wasn’t made of rock at all.

He shivered as he circled the statue, and it took the shape of a colossal, twisted tentacle, frozen as if reaching out from the abyss. At its peak, it was tall enough to reach the waters where the sunlight just struggled to reach, somehow pulling just enough light down its surface to reveal sucker discs the size of dining tables. Carved with meticulous and almost lifelike detail, the stone tentacle’s surface was marred by colonies of barnacles and gnathlids that might have taken centuries to build up.

Nothing Cirrina had told him hinted at anything like this, and though he knew there was a possibility his information had holes, he’d trusted in his ability to follow the scent of magic like those that had pointed him to the first current. This statue was ominous and cold, so devoid of magic or life aside from the colonies that dotted its surface, that Kai was thoroughly flummoxed. The tentacle pointed straight up, so that wasn’t the clue. It faced the opposite way of where they’d came. That seemed too direct, somehow…

Why would this path need to be traveled by a cecaelian? Where was the clue?

“Princess, I’ve been bitten by things with sharper teeth than you. I’m not letting go, so stop that; it’s distracting,” he muttered, swimming another lap around the tentacle statue’s circumference.

It wasn’t until Aya switched from biting to poking him that he glanced over to her, and saw that she was pointing at the upper side of the statue, where odd shapes were stuck out from beneath a particularly thick colony of barnacles.

“Cirripedia and Sessilia, Princess,” he said, with a sigh. “Those barnacles aren’t anything like you haven’t seen before.”

Mouth still covered, the princess responded with a huff and folded arms.

He swam another lap. She poked him again, pointing to the same place.

“Fine,” he groaned, reaching for a branch of the crusty creatures.

With considerable effort, Kai scraped off a thicker chunk of the barnacles, and handed some to the princess, who cringed away from them, still pointing. Then, he saw why.

Kai didn’t want to know the sorts of things she’d say about his intelligence at the moment. Now that he saw it, it seemed so obvious.

A carved set of letters that had been hacked into the stone, and Kai knew they’d found their clue. The trouble was, that none of the letters were legible, all too faded to be read.

Aya poked him again.

“What?”

Aya mimed blowing something onto the letters, and he understood. Screwing up his lips, he blew a stream of ink onto the words, and they lit up on contact, glowing a faint blue. They didn’t have their own magic, then. They’d needed some of his.

Clever.

Each word awakened with a brighter glow as he read them aloud:

Alle ye who seek saftye, follow my hands, eight.

I pointe for those who new lives make.

In shadows cast by moonlit skies,

Beware deceit in friendly eyes.

 

In depths below, I lie unseen,

Where siecrets of the seas convene.

Start your path, my arm to mark,

Leave me, and embrace the dark.

“What in the trenches does that mean?” Kai hissed aloud. “Cirrina said any cecaelian could find the Depths. This should be magical—intuitive! It’s anything but!”

“It sounds like it’s trying to get us to just…swim into the dark,” Adin said nervously from below. He hadn’t yet left his perch at the base of the statue. “Maybe another one of the currents will pick us up if we just swim into the blackest part?”

“I think that sounds like a great way to die,” Kai growled. “Currents like that don’t just take you. You have to enter them on purpose.”

“I didn’t enter it on purpose!” Adin pointed out.

“Oh, there was purpose,” Kai growled under his breath.

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, and almost didn’t notice the exasperated bubbles snorting from Aya’s nose.

There was nothing for it.

“I suppose you have something to say, Princess?” he asked.

Under his tentacle, she nodded.

“How tragic. You’ve already said enough for a week, I think,” he grumped, and turned away, setting back to his pacing.

This riddle—this instruction—was designed for someone like him. Even if it wasn’t intuitive, he should be able to figure this out with enough time. Having Aya insult him more would be a noisy distraction, and while that wasn’t directly harmful, her shrieking could summon all sorts of creatures to this place, now that the words had been activated.

“Let’s see…” he muttered. “There’s a warning in that first part, but that’s pretty much a given down here. It doesn’t seem to give any directions until the last part, but none of them actually make sense.”

Aya had drifted close enough to poke him in the side, and he swatted her away.

“Unseen, where the seas convene? Some kind of oceanic border? But we were hundreds of miles away from the nearest one…that can’t be the entrance. It has to be closer than that—”

She poked him again.

“It couldn’t just point the way? Everything is dark down here!” said Adin.

He wasn’t fighting Kai anymore, but his whining wasn’t helpful.

At this rate, Kai was going to fail the first test, and they wouldn’t even make it an eighth of the way there. Cirrina had never mentioned anything like this in her journals and drunken rants, which meant she’d never been down here before, and if that was the case…he didn’t know anyone who could help them.

Aya’s poking was getting more insistent.

“What, Princess?” Kai finally snapped at her. Before she could make a permanent indent in his ribcage, he caught her hand, and gave her his full attention.

Aya was pointing from the last verse of the rhymes to the base of the statue, then to the left, and back again. Kai squinted at her.

“I’m not sitting here until your guards come looking. You do realize that unless your father personally visited this trench with the bident, he wouldn’t be able to sense you down here?”

Aya only rolled her eyes at him and pointed to the tentacle over her mouth.

“I think not,” he said wryly. “As much as I enjoy soliloquy, I’m afraid I still have a headache from your last batch.”

She glared, and resumed her pointing.

At last, he sighed. “What, you think you could do better?”

She matched his glare, and for the first time since the sunrise, she looked like herself—but not enough for Kai to want to uncover her mouth.

“Where seas collide…” Kai muttered, and immediately, Aya pointed straight down. “You think it’s a direction? We can’t swim into the silt.”

She pointed down again.

“South?” he guessed, and she nodded. “South, as in where the oceans convene…the abyss. I suppose that make sense. And the rest?”

She pointed left.

“West,” he said flatly. “Why west?”

She indicated the faint sunlight above, and pointed left again. It took him longer to understand her motions this time. He gave some serious consideration to ungagging Aya, but the thought of having to re-gag her, or the danger they’d be in if she did start yelling again was something he planned on saving as alast resort.

“West as in….away from the sun? That would be toward the darkness,” he mused, but nothing happened.

At that, she jabbed him again in the ribs.

“Ach!” He jumped, and pulled her tail as far away from him as she would go—not far enough that she wouldn’t be able to reach him, but enough not to do any more damage. “That finger could do more damage than your guards’ spears,” he complained, swatting at her hand.

She caught at it, and slid her hand into his palm and up his pointer-finger. Guiding him by the hand, she traced the directions again.

“South…west,” he said, following her finger. “South-west.”

At his words, there was a horrible grinding sound, and with a great shudder, the stone tentacle began to move.

Kai flinched back, pulling Aya with him before the statue could knock them sideways as it changed shape, belding and twisting in the water like it really was alive. He didn’t hear Adin’s cries of alarm until the stone stopped moving.

“What was that?” he was shrieking. “It moved! The whole statue moved!”

Kai examined the statue’s new position.The tip of the tentacle had gyrated on a pivot both mechanical and magical to point at what Kai could only assume was south-west. As he watched, a single blue line of magic traced its way through the darkness, marking the way.

“Can you see that?” he voiced.

“The new direction? Yes,” Adin said, clearly not seeing their new beacon.

Aya, however, nodded, and made another attempt at pushing off the tentacle over her mouth.

He gave her a wry smile. “Not until sundown.”

Adin darted back and forth from the base of the tentacle, apparently looking for seams, or mechanical workings. He even slapped the statue ones or twice, as though still unconvinced that it was real.

“How did that happen? The statue moved, did you see it?” Adin asked, gasping.

Kai tugged the drifting princess back, and ushered Adin around toward the light, grimacing.

“It was hard to miss. Come on, Adin. The instructions said there are seven more of these, and we have days to make a journey that should take weeks. I can’t imagine they’re going to get any easier.”

“Instructions?” Adin was the picture of shock and confusion, and for once, he didn’t argue with him. Kai could live with that.

“Hm.”

Kai led the way forward along the trail of light a dozen feet, and then a hundred. Swallowed by the blackening water, they were just out of sight of the statue when Kai saw it—the end of the beacon was marked by a single, shining bead. Just like before, he grabbed Adin by the tail the way he had done with Aya, and he grabbed it.

In a much more violent pull than the last current, it took them.