The Way Forward
Part Two
Gypsy Moth had been right: the seas were smoother than clearstone, and the steady thrum of the Sea Holt’s twin steam engines proved as calming as a soft rain falling outside a tree-den. In the end it was the sudden absence of motion that woke Swift from a dreamless sleep.
Rayek slept on. Taking care not to wake him, Swift climbed out of bed and parted the curtains at the little window. Outside lay a flat, featureless plain of deep blue, ending in a razor-straight line below a cloudless sky.
Swift dressed and went out on deck, taking her long coat against the cool ocean air. She ran her hand along a varnished railing – painstakingly carved by hand – as she walked around the upper promenade. The Sea Holt was less a ship than a floating village, completely self-sustaining but for the loads of coal and the little luxuries picked up at various ports. In the old days the Sea Holt had been built from wood and powered by wind and wave alone; now its hull was reinforced brightmetal and its engines fed on steam from their boilers. A smokestack rose from the aft observation deck, but only the faintest wisp of steam escaped from the funnels. Standing almost as tall, the tops of the trees in the central Grove were still, leaves barely trembling in the soft seabreeze.
Swift glanced at the sun, perhaps a third of the way into the eastern sky. If it was morning here, it had to be another midday in Oasis. She wondered if Weatherbird had shaken off her hangover yet. Her granddaughter had been more than happy to remain behind and keep an eye on Haken. “Don’t bother coming back for me, Swift,” she’d said, her words only slightly slurred by drink. “Can’t say how long it’ll take to unbend all of Haken’s corners, after all. I’ll just send for Father when I’m ready to come home.”
Swift found Gypsy Moth on the forecastle, mesmerized by something off the starboard bow. “Nice coat,” Gypsy Moth remarked with a smirk. The younger elf wore a nearly-identical style, but the leather was dyed a dusty pink instead of Swift’s dark blue.
Swift flicked the large captain’s hat Gypsy Moth wore. “I should have brought my hat too, but I left it in the Palace. Didn’t think I’d be out here with you. So are we here? The site of the messenger sphere?”
Gypsy Moth shook her head. “Still another half-day’s steam to the south.”
“Then why did we cut engines? Humans?” Though encounters were inevitable as more and more human tribes gained the power to cross the Vastdeep, the Waveriders always did their best to avoid crossing paths with unknown ships. Not all humans were as helpful as Cam Triompe and his merchant fleet.
“No. Slap-tails!” Gypsy Moth pointed.
At first Swift saw only the tiny white crests of wavelets. But as she trained her eyes on the water, she made out imprints on the sea, almost like tracks. “Tail prints!” she exclaimed, a moment before a large blow breached the surface just ahead of the tracks.
One whale surfaced, just long enough to steal a breath of air. Its back humped and its tiny dorsal fin winked above the waves. Then another surfaced, and still another. Swift counted at least five separate blows, and when she lifted her eyes from the foreground she saw more spouts in the middle distance.
“How many?” she asked.
“At least fifteen! We never see them this far south this early in the season.”
“Maybe they want to get a head start – snatch up the choice winter waters ahead of their kin. Oh look!” Swift pointed out the closest whale. It had left its companions to investigate the now-idle Sea Holt, and it appeared to have rolled over onto its side. A thin sliver of its head peeked above the water, and when Swift squinted she swore she could see an eyeball staring back at her.
“He’s curious,” Gypsy Moth grinned. “Probably a yearling. Hallooo, whale!” she called, waving. “Oh, I never get tired of sights like these. There’s something about slap-tails… even the young ones, they’re so… tranquil. Like they understand the world completely and they’re at peace with it all, even the rotten parts. I know it’s silly, but sometimes when I’m swimming with the babies and I look into their eyes, it’s like I can see the wisdom of all those generations back… like they’re born knowing everything there is to know. They're like the High Ones of the sea.”
“Where is our High One, by the way?”
Gypsy Moth pointed towards the twin bows of the massive catamaran. Timmain stood on the starboard prow, a silver statue, her gaze fixed on the whales. “Like swims to like.”
“Bet you five gold wolves she eventually jumps in with them,” Swift quipped.
“Shapechanged?”
“Of course.”
“I’d pay five hundred gold wolves to see a Timmain-sized slap-tail!” Gypsy Moth laughed.
* * *
In time the whales moved on, and the trolls in the boiler room started up the engines again. Swift and Rayek broke their fast on fresh chowder with Gypsy Moth and Sandpiper in the captain’s quarters, then went down to the Grove with Timmain.
They met up with Sea Raven en route. The olive-skinned elf was all smiles until Farseer’s name came up. “I was just on my way to check up on her myself,” he admitted, transforming from carefree rogue to concerned older brother.
From her first days at sea on the Sea Wolf, Gypsy Moth had been determined to keep a piece of the forest with her. At first it had been a single potted tree, but after thousands of years of practice, her treespeakers had managed to cultivate an entire grove of hybrid mangroves and banana trees. The plants filled the great open atrium of the Sea Holt’s midship, forming a ring of greenery around the moon pool and artificial beach.
“Remarkable,” Timmain breathed. “And you built this all without magic?”
“Just practice and patience,” Gypsy Moth confirmed proudly.
The Sea Holt floated on twin hulls, joined by a large frame of brightmetal sheeting. The moon pool was simply a square hole in the frame, placed exactly at midship. The mer-elves of the crew could thus easily enter and exit the sea. When the Sea Holt was at rest, a large door built into the hull could be opened and closed on pulleys, enlarging the moon pool and forming a ramp covered with a spongey surface on which tailed elves could rest. With the engines at full thrust, the ramp was raised and locked well above the waterline. Lounging on the sponge was the fattest seal Swift had ever seen.
“Rummy!” Sea Raven greeted the seal with a series of slaps to his belly that made him huff in delight. “You remember Rum Keg?”
“I don’t remember him quite so fat.”
“I do,” Rayek remarked.
“Ah, he’s getting on,” Gypsy Moth sighed. “Doesn’t even hunt much any more. Just sleeps and eats.”
“He never hunted for anything besides handouts,” Rayek said.
They found Farseer lying down in the shade of a tree, her head in the lap of a willowy beauty with golden hair nearly as long as Timmain’s. While Farseer was dressed in typical Waverider linens-and-leather, her companion wore a billowing gown of sea-green moth-fabric, using a corner of the hem to wipe the sweat from Farseer’s brow.
Sea Raven sat himself down next to her. “Still surviving, sister?” he asked.
The daughter of Fisher and Mimic shifted her head slightly, wincing at the movement. In her face Swift saw hints of both Yun and Eyes High. “Oh, I’m keeping it together. Just barely. The dizziness is getting a lot worse. It’s easier under the trees.” She looked up at her lifemate. “Coris is taking good care of me.”
Coris smiled warmly, and continued to stroke her forehead.
“Surprised you can stand all that jingling,” Gypsy Moth said wryly. Coris was indeed decked in jewelry: a delicate gold coronet, swaying earrings, and multiple bracelets that clinked and chimed with every movement. Coris merely pulled a face at the captain.
“And you say others have been affected by the sphere?” Swift asked her daughter.
“None as bad as Farseer. But a few of us – the healer, the treespeaker, magic-users mostly – they’ve heard the sphere too.”
Sea Raven silently raised his hand.
“Humming and buzzing,” Gypsy Moth went on.
“Clicking,” Sea Raven specified. “Like a pod of dolphins chittering in my head.”
“Seasickness. Strange dreams – even I’ve had a few of those. Did you?”
Swift shook her head. “I slept like I was cocooned. Rayek?”
He shrugged. “Some dreams… but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Starstone dreams aren’t out of the ordinary – for you, I mean,” Sea Raven remarked.
“True.”
“You are of Skywise’s blood,” Timmain said to Farseer. “You were the first to notice the sphere?”
“I noticed something. I mean, we were all on on deck to watch for the Reappearance. We couldn’t see much of course, just the glow of the forest fires on the peak, and then a flash of light. Pop! – then it was gone. But just as it went, a couple of us saw a tiny spark arcing up – like a shooting star but going backwards! It went up into the sky and we lost sight of it.
“Everyone else looked back at the coastline, I guess. But I was trying to follow the shooting star. I tracked it through the sky, counting as I went, trying to guess where it might be. And then I saw it again, coming back down, getting brighter and brighter. Shooting stars almost always burn up on the way down, but this one just kept coming. I called out, but by then everyone could see it. It was trailing a long tail by then, and it was almost as bright as Daughter Moon.”
“When could you first hear the song?” Timmain pressed.
“About the time it crashed, I suppose,” Farseer said. She tried to sit up, but a wave of vertigo halted her.
“Easy. Keep your head down,” Coris urged. Swift noted with wry amusement the slight start Timmain gave at hearing the delicate elf’s undeniably masculine voice.
“It was like getting an old tune you’d long forgotten suddenly stuck in your head,” Farseer went on. “And you can’t remember most of the notes, so the ones you do just keep repeating over and over. I didn’t think much of it at first. I tried to ignore it. But once we started heading south, it just kept getting louder and louder in my head. Then the dizziness started. Soon I was puking like a lander on his first swells, and I was born at sea!” she finished indignantly.
“Timmain, you said the sphere is meant to make contact with other High Ones,” Rayek said.
Timmain nodded. “It may be that this child made a tenuous connection with the sphere as it passed overhead. Can you sense it now? Could you point to its position?”
Farseer raised a hand, gestured towards the bow. “Dead ahead. It gets a little stronger each hour.”
“Fascinating,” Rayek remarked. “You’ve become a living lodestone. Your great-grandsire would be proud.”
“It's making her sick,” Coris said sharply.
“The sphere is most likely damaged from its impact,” Timmain said. “That is why it causes her pain. Once we recover it we can return it to the Palace. The sphere will convert back to simple starstone, and the psychic call it is putting out will cease.”
Farseer’s pain and nausea only grew more more pronounced as the day wore on. Soon Coris sent for the healer, a blue-skinned mer-elf named Reef, to help her to sleep. Farseer was no longer needed to track the sphere’s location. By mid afternoon Timmain and Rayek could hear the call, a steady tune thrumming in their heads. Several other elves took to their beds with nausea and headaches. By the time Gypsy Moth ordered a full stop, even Swift could hear it: a faint hum pitched ever so slighty off-key.
They gathered on the aft-most deck, over the twin pontoons and propellers, and stared down into the featureless ocean. “It is some distance below us,” Rayek said. “Perhaps one of your 'leagues'.”
“We’re over one of the deep trenches here,” Gypsy Moth explained. “Too deep for an elf to dive – even our self-shapers. She smiled at Rayek. “Don’t suppose you can float it up from here, Father?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“We could try the diving bell, but we’ve only got a little under half a league of chain.”
Rayek glanced at the starstone pod, resting on the terraced quarterdeck above them. “The pod could take us down.”
“Not at its present size,” Timmain remarked. “The water pressure will crush the walls. Not even your shield could withstand the weight of an entire ocean atop you.”
She climbed the steps to the quarterdeck. She touched the pod’s surface and the egg shrank before their eyes, until it was a bare third of its original size. The top of the egg was no taller than Timmain’s head. The walls peeled back like the flesh of a fruit, revealing an empty space inside.
“There. I have reinforced the walls. But I fear the hollow within cannot hold more than one elf.”
“Two elves,” Swift insisted. “Rayek and I will take it down and recover the Sphere.”
Rayek waved his hand and the pod floated down to the pontoon deck. “Do not attempt to leave the confines of the pod,” Timmain warned. “Your shield will not hold. Once you have found the Sphere, draw on the power of the starstone and raise the Sphere to the surface. Be mindful – it will be more challenging than floating an object above water.”
“I’ll make a tail,” Coris spoke up. “Follow you as far down as I can before the pressure gets to me, then wait for you to return with this Sphere. You get it up to me, I can take it the rest of the way to the surface.”
“Can you hold your breath that long?” Swift asked skeptically.
Coris smirked. “No. But I can shape a wicked set of gills.”
Swift whistled appreciatively. “Nice.”
“Well, someone’s going to be insufferable for the next eight-of-days,” Gypsy Moth quipped. “And you’re not going down there alone, Coris. We don’t know these waters well enough, and you’re too damn pretty to lose to a shark. Don’t even think of starting to shape until I get Raven and Gannet in the water too.”
“Cane-fins…” Coris muttered.
“One of those cane-fins in my son,” Gypsy Moth countered. “And I’ll say his water ram is a damn sight more useful than your pretty gills.”
**What’s ‘cane-fin?’** Rayek asked Swift.
They found out when Gannet appeared on deck, bearing her speargun and a large fan-shaped structure made of woven cane. The black-haired maiden sat down on the edge of the deck and strapped the giant fin to both her ankles. Then she slid off the edge into the water and trode water with slow undulating kicks of her legs.
Sea Raven took longer to appear, but eventually Swift caught sight of the black-haired elf swimming just under the surface, his legs likewise strapped into a cane-fin. Sea Raven surfaced, then rose up until he was all but standing on the waves, buoyed up by a shimmering column of water.
“You called?” he asked, sounding remarkably nonchalant for an elf suspended in a waterspout. “Don’t tell me, Grandmother wants to go for a swim.” He gestured and a second pedastal of water rose up from the surface, twisting itself into a shape that almost resembled a chair.
Swift made a face. Trust the pup to remember a time when she was too shy of the deep water to go swimming without Raven’s watershaping to hold her up.
“Haven’t needed that in a long time, Raven,” she called back.
“Oh, by all means, dive in and show me,” he teased.
“Leave the lander alone,” Gypsy Moth warned. “How’s it look under there?”
“Leagues of empty blue, Captain. Not so much as a minnow.”
“Well, don’t let your guard down. We’re on a migration route if those slap-tails are any sign – and I don’t know what that chunk of starstone might be doing to the sealife. Coris will do a gill-dive. You and Gannet are surface support.”
Gannet and Sea Raven nodded. Coris began to strip. The flowing silks puddled on the deck, baring an unambiguously male form, still sparkling in jewelry, but now clad only in a simple loincloth.
Coris became aware of Timmain’s searching gaze. “May I ask a question?” the High Ones asked. “I mean no offense, but I do not wish to mistake your identity and–”
“Lad,” Coris said brusquely.
“It is only that I have found on occasion one’s shell and one’s soul–”
“Lad – head, hand and heart.”
“I asked because across all elfin cultures there are certain commonalities in gender presentation–”
“Lad who likes dresses,” Coris’s expression was mild, but his voice suggested he was beginning to lose patience.
“Thank you for clarifying.” Timmain hesitated a moment, then added, “In the days before the Firstcomers, we had no gender-specific cultural markers–”
“Sounds boring,” Coris replied. He shed his gold coronet and earrings, but left his neckring and armbands in place, before diving off the edge of the ship. Gypsy Moth turned a sympathetic smile on the High One.
“Don’t feel bad. He’s been known to throw a couple folk off the scent. Now and then.”
“Ready?” Rayek asked Swift.
Swift nodded. They climbed into the pod, struggling a little at the tight fit. They were nearly embracing by the time Rayek was able to seal the door behind them. He turned the walls transparent as he floated the pod over the water. Sea Raven and Gannet swam back to give them room.
The pod touched down, bobbed on the waves for a moment, then began to sink. Sea Raven and Gannet dove, following them down. Swift noted with admiration how well the cane-fins seemed to work – while Raven’s speed could easily be attributed to his watershaping, Gannet kept pace easily.
Above them, Swift saw Coris join the dive. Shaping his legs into a long, brightly colored tail took only a few moments. Forming his gills took longer: first three little slits opened up along each side of his ribcage, then they slowly fanned out into frilled gill-covers, flexing as the mer-elf took a deep breath.
The water grew bluer, swallowing up the sunlight. Gannet followed the pod as long as she could, but before long they peeled off, climbing back towards the surface. Sea Raven continued to dive, his watershaping skills keeping a bubble of air around his head. He swam up alongside the pod, waving.
**All good? Do you have enough air in that egg?**
**We should be fine,** Rayek sent back. **And you?**
**Oh, We’ve gone a lot deeper than this!** Coris’s sending broke through.
The water had turned a deep blue. Rayek commanded the starstone to radiate its own light, to keep Sea Raven and Coris clearly in view. When Swift tipped her head back and looked up, she could scarcely see the glimmer of the surface.
They continued to fall in silence. Sea Raven used up most of the air in his bubble and returned to the surface with an apologetic sending. Coris seemed to be having to work harder to keep pace with the pod. Hair that had once floated freely about his face was now streaming behind him as he pumped his tail.
**Keeping up?** Rayek asked.
**You’re the one who’s speeding up!**
They were now in solid blackness. Swift let out a shriek of surprise as something bumped against the side of the pod. It looked like a cross between an octopus and a jellyfish.
**What is that?**
**Ghost-arm,** Coris answered. **Probably drawn to the light you’re putting out.**
A short while later Coris was steadily falling behind. **I’m really feeling it in my ribs now,** he sent. **Any deeper and I won’t be any use to you. I’ll wait for you here.**
**Don’t be foolish,** Rayek sent back. **Get up to a safer depth. We will return soon.**
Whether Coris obeyed or not, Swift couldn’t tell. Soon he was swallowed up by shadow. The pod continued to sink.
“How much further, you think?” Swift asked in a faint whisper. In the tight confines of the pod, it might as well have been a shout.
“Nearly halfway there, I think.”
Sometimes Swift swore she could see other lights beyond the clear walls – tiny little fireflies in the depths of the ocean. Another ghost-armed jelly passed near the pod, one long tentacle brushing against the wall as the pod rushed by.
“I think Coris was right – we are gathering speed,” Rayek said.
“Because of the messenger sphere? Is it drawing us down like a lodestone to metal?”
“Perhaps.”
“What’s that?!” Swift cried out as a huge shape suddenly loomed out of the blackness. Rayek flicked his wrist and the pod displaced a safe distance moments before it would have scraped up against rock.
“A mountain,” Rayek breathed. “An undersea mountain. The sphere is at the base of it, I think. Can you hear it?”
All Swift could hear was her heart pounding in her ears. But she breathed slowly to calm her pulse and extended her senses as Rayek had taught her. The hum of damaged starstone was indeed growing stronger.
Rayek increased the light emitted by the starstone pod. They could make out the terrain below them now – ridgelines of twisted rock and plains of silt lying between them. The cliffside they had nearly scraped against was merely the edge of a great canyon gouged into the seafloor.
“It’s like another world,” Swift breathed.
Slowly the floor rose to meet them. Rayek steered the pod between two ridgelines to set it down on a bed of silt. Immediately the pod tried to sink deep into the soft ground, and Rayek had to float it back up. Their aborted landing disturbed a multitude of bottom-feeding fish and crabs; Swift watched as they swam and scuttled in search of darkness.
“Where is the sphere?” she asked. “I can hear it, but I can’t see it.”
Rayek dimmed the light of the pod until they were almost in darkness. And then Swift could see it, a twinkling of light in the distance. Rayek steered the pod towards it. The bottom sloped down gradually: a great impact crater. In the center, resting on a piece of ancient bedrock, lay a small ball of starstone, cracked open like a broken egg. The faint light was coming from its core – a pulsing jelly-like mass that shone dreamberry-purple. Swift winced at the pain in her head.
“Timmain was right: it is damaged.”
“Can you float it?” Swift asked. “Ugh… can you make it quiet?”
“Hold on.”
Rayek lifted the pod above the broken sphere. He reached out with his magic and gently floated the sphere off the ocean floor. Infused with fresh magic, the sphere suddenly healed itself into a perfect ball. It sailed up into the water, soaring high above the pod. Startled, Rayek lost his grip, and the sphere lost momentum. It slowly drifted back down, broken again.
“Well… the humming’s stopped,” Swift remarked.
“Mm. It is a messenger sphere – perhaps it believes its message has been delivered.”
“That was quite the trick. I almost thought it might float all the way up without us.”
“Unfortunately, without my guidance, it is as heavy as any stone. We will have to try again.”
The ball had settled on the edge of the silt plain. As Swift squinted at the muck, she swore she saw a wave moving through the silt. “Rayek….?”
“Mm?”
“Did you see that?”
The ball rolled off the lip of the rock and sank deep into the silt. “Oh no, you’ll not escape so easily,” Rayek vowed, directing a beam of light to burn off the silt.
“Rayek!” Swift tugged at his sleeve and pointed at the wavefront bearing down on the light beam. Rayek halted his light beam just as it exposed the sphere – and the bottom-feeder tracking it.
“Bearclaw’s beard!” Swift exclaimed as the dark form swallowed the sphere whole.
It was some sort of monstrous flatfish, with a huge maw and trailing fins. Rather than disappearing back into the silt, it beat the water with its tri-lobed tail and rose off the sea floor. It sailed under the pod and disappeared into the shadows.
“Follow it!” Swift ordered. Rayek steered the pod in pursuit, but the fish moved with remarkable speed. Rayek soon lost sight of it. Even when he heightened the pod’s light, he could not see it.
“It could be anywhere,” Swift cursed. “Quick, can you track the starstone?”
Rayek concentrated. Frustration furrowed his brow. Minutes passed in tense silence. “No,” he said at length.
“But surely the pod can call to it–”
“No. Perhaps if I had Sunstream down here with us – or Timmain…. It’s no use, Tam. The sphere is no longer singing. It has gone dormant. For all I know, it’s gone completely inert.”
“What do we do?”
“Return to the surface. And hope that wretched fish chokes on it!”
* * *
Timmain confirmed Rayek’s fears. The sphere had fallen completely silent. Either Rayek’s brief contact or the flatfish’s ingestion had severed everyone’s psychic link. Farseer woke from her sleep untroubled by nausea or humming in her ears, and the other elves who had reported feeling ill were now in fine health.
“Something that big, it almost sounds like a belly-ripper,” Sea Raven decided when Swift described the beast that had swallowed the sphere. “But they’re coastal fish.”
“We’ve never really charted the deep depths,” Gypsy Moth said. “Maybe there’s a breed that makes a living off whalefalls and the like.”
“What will happen to the sphere now?” Farseer asked. “Can it… survive getting shat out by a belly-ripper?”
“Now there’s an image,” Sea Raven snickered.
“It survived falling from space,” Rayek pointed out. “Though I cannot speak to the efficiency of belly-ripper digestion.”
“Likely it will lie dormant until another of our kind reawakens it,” Timmain said.
“So what? Father takes the pod down again and starts shouting for it until it answers?” Gypsy Moth asked.
“The sphere requires close contact to reawaken it.”
“And given the ground that fish was covering, I don’t think it’s likely we’ll just stumble on it,” Swift said. “Even if we wanted to spend the next eight years sifting through silt.”
“A powerful blast of magic could burn off both silt and water,” Rayek offered dryly. “But I would not recommend the Sea Holt remain nearby. Or sea life, for that matter. Timmain, suggestions?”
“As loathe as I am to abandon viable starstone… the wisest course may simply be to call off this hunt. We have had a partial success, after all. You have ended the message – no more elves will be harmed by its call. The sphere is damaged – left on its own at the bottom of the sea, the starstone should slowly degrade until it becomes completely inert.”
“We, uh, we aren’t gonna wake up to a ‘Kahvi belly-ripper’ are we?” Swift asked.
“If you are asking can the starstone merge with beasts of this world, the answer is no. The Palacestone bonded to Kahvi because of her own latent magic – faint as it was – and her immortal elfin blood. The worst the sphere can do to the fish is kill it.”
“Suits me,” Swift said with a laugh. “All right, Raven. Back in the water. It’s time to show you that this wolf can swim.”
* * *
Some hundred leagues west of the Homeland, the sun was setting on patch of the Vastdeep Water, utterly featureless but for a solitary islet poking above the waves. The barren rock was a speck of black on the blue sea, too small to support even the humblest plant life. But below the water, it was the proud summit of a great mountain range extending halfway across the Vastdeep.
Seated on the islet, an elf’s body waited patiently for its soul to return. Enough spark of life kept heart beating and lungs pumping air, at a rate far slower than natural sleep.
Far below the surface, but rising rapidly, the belly-ripper followed the slope of the mountain peak. It fought the agony in its muscles and the suffocating lack of pressure. Creatures meant to live in the deepest sea could not survive in the surface waters, and there were limits to the art of fleshshaping. But the fish’s dull brain did not comprehend its impending death, and the soul controlling it did not care. The belly-ripper was simply another tool, to be used in its time, and then discarded in favor of a better one.
Organs distending from the change in pressure, heart pushed to its limit, the belly-ripper lurched ever closer to the light. With a final burst of effort, the fish breached the surface and collapsed on the rocky beach, a lifeless, disintegrating mass of flesh.
Safely back in her own body, Melati opened her eyes and smiled on her handiwork.
The journey to the coast had been the easiest part. Then she had a spent full night in the air, flying herself to the islet. She had pushed her sending powers to their limits, moving her soul from fish to fish, making her way to the very middle of the Vastdeep to recover the sphere.
She rose on unsteady legs and walked over to the belly-ripper. At her touch, the flesh melted away, revealing the broken messenger sphere. It looked like a chunk of rock crystal, preternaturally smooth perhaps, but hardly remarkable.
She picked it up and turned it over, grimacing at the slime of digestive juices. She took it to the waterline and washed it off. On the broken side, the interior of the sphere looked like a bruised berry.
She touched it, and her fingers sank into the jelly. A bright light pulsed outward; for a moment, a perfect sphere of light encased her hand.
“Be still!” Melati commanded, withdrawing her hand. The sphere obeyed, turning back to dull crystal.
“And stay that way!” Melati ordered. The last thing she wanted was to alert the Palacemasters… or Lord Haken.
She had sworn to return with the messenger sphere, and she meant to do just that. Eventually. In the meantime, there was surely much she could learn from the sphere. To hear Haken describe it, contained a wealth of ancestral knowledge. If there was any way to unlock the secret of true immortality, it lay with the sphere.
She would complete her work. And no one, not even her lord, would stand in her way.
Elfquest copyright 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2015 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.