saw the underside of rolling white breakers. A brilliant shoal of iridescent fish darted in front of him and when they parted he found himself surrounded by the creature's brethren. They were swimming down towards a great domed building. Entering it they left they filed into a huge circular chamber. They congregated before a dais on which stood one of their own.
"There are many more," Fitch said. "Hundreds."
"Can't it speak for itself?"
"Apologies Anointed Lord, this method is more direct and I don't think that the creature has an affinity with the human tongue."
"Very well," Makennon turned her attention back to the prisoner. It was breathing shallowly, wheezing gasps whistling through its many vicious teeth. "I think it needs dousing again." The attendants threw salt water over the creature and it seemed to recover slightly. "Now, why the attack on Turnitia? What possible interest can you have in Twilight when the whole of the ocean is your domain?"
Fitch's found himself standing closer to the dais. The creature that stood above him was aged and stooped. In one clawed hand it grasped a staff, inset in its tip was a scarlet jewel that shone with an inner light. The ancient one was telling its people of a battle to come and Fitch could feel the blood lust and joy move through the crowd as the thing's words inspired a dreadful passion.
"I believe that they mean to make war on us Anointed Lord."
"War? And how can you possibly hope to succeed when there are hundreds of you and thousands upon thousands of us?"
Sweat started to break out upon Fitch's brow and he could feel the resistance of the prisoner increasing as he probed even deeper.
And now he was on his own with the old one from the dais and the creature was showing him the pages of a book wrought entirely in metal. It moved its fingers across characters and diagrams but despite Fitch's concentration he could make no sense of the information. The thoughts that flowed into him began to cloud and Fitch pushed hard against the interference, his heart thumping heavily in his chest as his vision was obscured.
Out of the darkness emerged a single unblinking eye. Fitch was lost in the vastness of its pupil, around him he could sense an infinity of nothingness.
"Fitch?"
He couldn't feel anything. Not his fingers in the creature's thoughts, not even his own thoughts.
"Fitch?"
And then that great eye was speeding away from him and Fitch was falling at an astonishing speed. For a moment Kerberos hung before him and he had time to watch the flickering of lightning deep in its clouds, before he was slammed back into his body and sent flailing across the cell.
The creature snarled and snapped forward in its chains. Makennon felt a waft of its foul breath as it screamed.
"Your kind's days are numbered! The half-breed will father the new race and the Chadassa will stride through your land! The Great Flood is coming!"
Fitch raised himself, unsteadily, to his feet and reached for the instrument tray.
"The Land Walkers will lay waist to Twilight and break open the World's Ride mountains! The Great Fl -- "
The creature slumped forward and Fitch threw the heavy, blunt instrument back into the tray.
"I cannot apologise enough, Anointed Lord. Its will was exceptionally strong."
"Querilous, how did it learn how to speak our language? And, more importantly, what is the Great Flood?"
Chapter Four
Beyond the Storm Wall, far and deep off the coast of Twilight, beneath waves that rose to the height of mountains before crashing into troughs so wide they could accommodate an entire fleet of ships, stood a city that no human eyes had ever seen.
Great structures of coral and mineral, fused together and roughly shaped, rose from the seabed. Vicious, many spiked towers were linked by archways, carved from rock and glittering with iridescent minerals. A wide avenue, illuminated by the glow of gelatinous octopus-like things staked at regular intervals, linked narrow streets and alleys. At one end of the city, before a series of rock shelves fell away into darkness, a great mound heaved and shuddered. Its surface looked like stone but moved like flesh. Fissures ran zig-zagging across it, occasionally emitting chinks of brilliant light, making the water around it boil briefly, before the mound settled back into a restless slumber.
No lights came from the buildings of this deep-water metropolis and the sea was quiet for miles around. Not even the leviathans, who had no natural predators, would swim these waters and