Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,95
just as the bell broke the surface.
And kept rising.
Lana gasped. “Your goddess is…a jellyfish?”
The rounded bell—several times larger than the runabout—shimmered with myriad lights across the spectrum, and the descending tentacles went so deep that even with the scintillating inner illumination, the longest filaments faded into the dark. As the tentacles drifted in the swirl of water, the lights flickered and pulsed.
“Not a jellyfish,” he murmured. “A crystalized data gel.”
Lana made a choked noise, but he couldn’t look away from the lights. They seemed to call to him…
The voice—not words spoken aloud—surfaced in his mind like thousands of bubbles on the water.
‘Titanyri.’
He didn’t answer.
‘Nul’ah-wys.’ Fire-witch.
That—aimed at Lana—made him swivel to put her behind him though there was no place in the cavern out of reach of those tentacles. He’d never seen such a massive data gel crystalized and free-roaming, hadn’t realized it was possible. To maintain its state, those quantum optic cables had to be pulling massive amounts of geothermal power directly from the sunken volcano at the center to the Abyssa’s chasm maze.
Except there was no Abyssa, was there? No true omens, no words of hope. Just this…
In his frozen fury, Lana edged out from behind him. “What are you?”
‘We are Abyssa.’
Beneath their floating feet, bubbles formed images in the water, almost too fast to comprehend. Hundreds—no, thousands—of Tritonesse over the centuries, shrunken by age or twisted from war wounds or weakened by toxins, descending with their last breaths into the chasm to join the memories and the dreams of what their world could’ve been/might be again.
“They gave their minds to this crystal,” Lana murmured.
‘Together, we hoped to end the fighting.’ The words reverberated and echoed with all the Tritonesse voices. ‘From here, we sent strategy and soldiers—’
“You sent us,” Sting growled. Ignoring Lana’s gurgle of alarm, he sent a hard ping at the crystal. “You told the Tritonesse to make weaponized monsters.”
‘Not monsters. Marvels.’
Lana cleared her throat. “Ah, something might’ve gotten lost in translation over the centuries. Why have you stayed hidden here? They needed you above.”
‘As the waters soured and life faded in the deeps, we could no longer leave this chamber. When our daughters stopped coming, we could only send an echo of ourselves, carrying our message of hope for the future.’
“The omens,” Sting murmured. “Not a blessing. Just corrupted, fragmented data.”
Bobbing closer to him, Lana touched his shoulder, not supporting herself, more like holding him back. “You told the Tritonesse how to bioengineer a weapon called a light switch that can electrolyze an ocean. How do we disarm it?”
Ah yes. The reason why they’d come, which had nothing to do with his existential angst. Grudgingly, he ducked his shoulder behind her to give her space for her questions.
‘The nul’ah-wys…’ In the sonographic voice of the Abyssa crystal, the word shimmered across multiple meanings in Sting’s head—fire-witch, light switch, power surge—until finally settling like a pebble on a riverbed as burning tide. ‘The burning tide was not a weapon.’
“That’s not what the Cretarni said,” Lana prodded. “They claimed the Tritonesse stole it.”
‘We did,’ the Abyssa said. ‘We knew it could be a nearly endless source of pure energy for our world. Not just an end to this war, but an end to the need for all war.’
“It’s going to end this war,” Sting growled. “Right now, the Cretarni are raining down fire with it, and every place it touches, the sea dies.”
The Abyssa crystal chimed in sorrow. ‘We dreamed the nul’ah-wys would call the storm to bring light to all the lands and purify the waters, flooding all hearts with a promise.’
“What promise?” Lana’s question was so soft it barely whispered across his honed senses even though he right beside her.
But the Abyssa answered, ‘To at last unite this world.’
Again, the words sparkled with diverse facets: peace, home, ours.
Lana drew a shivering breath. “I was the fire-witch. But I could never do what you’re saying.”
‘You are the nul’ah-wys.’
She shook her head. “The Cretarni stole it back. That’s how they are attacking us.”
‘They could not change what you are. Only you.’
Sting struggled to grasp the meanings, even as the words melted from his grasp like pudding in saltwater. “Lana still has her power? But the Cretarni took the components from her.” Except while they’d separated the biogen elements from her blood, they hadn’t killed her; they’d wanted more—blood from her bones. “Before we found Earth, her zaps were getting stronger because she was coming into her power. And now she’s rekindling.”