The terrain was relatively uniform. All of the area around the dome was flat, and was mostly still within the area of the lights suspended above. Leon figured that it was and possibly even leveled before the original construction of the dome began.
As he got further out, he had to rely on his head lamp in order to illuminate anything, making the task at hand seem even more like traveling into the unknown. He could see formations that almost looked like sand dunes, except teaming with life. There was a chasm off to his left hand side deeper than his light could reach down, with fish and crabs swimming and climbing within its depths.
“You’re getting close, Leon,” said Kim. “Try to…the dome…”
“Kim, your transmission is cutting out,” Leon said. “Kim?”
The only response was static. Leon thought about turning back for a moment, but decided against it. The water was a dense medium to transmit anything through, and he figured the tropical storm might also be contributing to the interference. If he was close, there was no harming in quickly checking in on the new dome site and seeing if he could complete the mission on his own.
Leon’s suit had a small LED based computer screen built into its wrist, which had a compass, temperature, battery level and suit functioning information on it. He made sure that he was still headed east, and then turned on his water turbine, pushing forward at a medium pace.
The construction site of the new dome was unmistakable, and he approached it cautiously. It was still in its early stages, just a large hole in the ground with another flattened area surrounding it. Just from shining his light across the edge of it, Leon was able to tell that it was big, at least two or three times the size of Project Cobalt, easily.
“Kim, are you there?” There was still only static over the line, but he figured that it was best to keep transmitting just in case her reception was better than his. “I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary, it all looks pretty-“
Before he could finish his sentence, something moved in front of him. It was big, and swam by him close enough to give him paused. Leon turned behind him, shining his head lamp around frantically, and then felt something strike into him, hard.
CHAPTER 9
The water was too buoyant for Leon to be knocked far, but the panic that overtook him was debilitating on its own. He tried to turn on his water turbine, but something wrapped around his arm, and then both of his arms. It was impossible to struggle, but he managed to shift his head enough to get a look at what was happening.
The thing that had grabbed Leon was clearly some type of giant squid or octopus, a mass of tentacles at least fifteen feet in length. What made him uneasy was that there were other, different creatures around it that took a strange and confusing form. They looked vaguely human, much more human than anything as deep under the surface of the ocean as he was should look.
He trained his light on one of them for long enough to make out more detail. They were tan skinned, not dissimilar in color to any people that would be normally found on the surface, at least in their top half. In the place of legs, they had teal colored, fish scale tails, extending down a little further than the lower half of a typical person.
Leon noticed that they were all naked. The one that he was looking at was a female, with long black hair, strikingly beautiful breasts that floated freely in the water, and a face that looked soft, even kind. She was examining him closely, and was communicating with the two male creatures to either side of her through some type of clicking language.
“Mer people…” said Leon. “Oh my god…”
There was more communication between all the mers, and from what little Leon could read of their body language, and it looked to him as though they were having an argument about something. It was hard for Leon to not be mesmerized by the movements of the female, who had a body that was phenomenal, even by human standards.
After a couple of minutes, the mers seemed to come to a consensus. They started swimming off in a northern direction, and the squid carrying Leon followed, dragging him along with them.
“Kim! Kim!” Leon began to frantically subvocalize as he was brought further and further away from the dome. There was no response back. This was it, he found himself thinking. This was how he was going to die, deep within the ocean, held captive by an unknown species.
The only thing he had to see by was his head lamp. The mers had no need for such things, and were able to navigate well enough in the dark easily. Leon tried to keep the beam of it focused back behind him, towards the construction site, but the sea creatures moved quickly and the ocean surface seemed to twist and shift in a way that made it near impossible to keep his orientation.
After a while, he couldn’t be sure how long, the pace of the group slowed. He turned his head forward, and felt his breath catch in his throat at what he saw.
Ahead of him was a large underwater chasm, a couple of hundred feet deep and several kilometers wide. It contained hundreds of giant formations of something that looking almost like coral, but exponentially more complicated and evolved.
The formations were different colors, bright red and almost neon yellow, twisting around into structures that looked like habitats. That’s exactly what at least some of them were, Leon realized as they came closer and he could make the shapes of more mer people swimming around.
There were holes that seemed to lead into reinforced underground areas, and giant crabs scurried around on the ocean bottom. Leon could see large cages weaved of seaweed that looked like organic fish farms, tended to by more mer people who were busy harvesting them with little spears.
It was overwhelming, but in a strangely satisfying way. His dad had known about this, Leon realized. Whether he had ever seen it up close or only suspected, he had no idea, but Leon was sure of it.
The mers holding him captive began to descend, bringing him with them. A couple of armed and armored mers swam up from the edge of the city and seemed to communicate with the ones escorting him. Again, the attractive female mer seemed to plead her case, and after a moment, they were allowed to continue.
Leon instantly began to feel like a spectacle. Some of the creatures swam up as the saw him, dropping whatever they had been doing to watch the group swim through the city. He would have waved to him if his arms had not been bound. Instead, he just found himself feeling like a prisoner being led to jail, or worse, execution.
The female mer moved closer to him, and brought her face close to his. Leon felt his heart skip a beat as he stared into her eyes, which were purple, unlike anything he had seen before in a human. She smiled, and ran her hand across his face, and Leon understood. She was on his side.
The group swam forward through the city. They were headed down a road, or some type of channel, which was lit on each side with photo luminescent plants. Leon felt as though he was on another planet, and the mers were playing their role by treating him like the alien he was to them.
In the very center was a larger coral formation, with shells and large pearls worked into the structure. Leon felt a small wave of panic flood over him as they passed through the open gateway into it. The female mer seemed to sense it in him, and smiled at him encouragingly.
The closest thing his mind could reference against what he saw was the court of a medieval king or lord, except everything was designed for and taken from the ocean. Leon was surprised that the one floating where he would have expected the throne to be was female, and youthful looking. Two large, powerful looking squid, flanked her on either side, along with a small cadre of well equipped mermen.
The purple eyed female mer swam forward, and began speaking in the language of clicks. Leon desperately wished that he could hear what was being said. He felt restricted by his suit, as though he couldn’t even properly convey expression through his face and body language.
The queen mer’s expression was similarly neutral and unreadable. She spoke in slow clicks, and Leon could tell that she was very deliberate in her communication. After seve
ral back and forth clicks, the purple eyed one acted enthusiastic about something, and the queen relented and waved her hand to one of her advisors.
He swam up to her, and then swam through a small opening in the back of the room. A minute later, he came back, holding a piece of chalk in one hand and a small stone slate in the other. The squid holding Leon released him, and he had to contain his excitement as he slowly drifted down to the floor, pulled by the weight of his boots.
The mer began to write on the slab, moving his hand slowly and making crude symbols. The creature seemed unsure of itself, but Leon immediately began to recognize what it was writing.
“WE ARE SEA FOLK”
Leon nodded, and began to look around the room. It looked different now to him, as though he his perspective shifted into a new paradigm. He wasn’t their prisoner, and he wasn’t going to be executed. Rather, they had him there as a diplomat, a person from a faraway land, and they were doing their best to receive him graciously.
After a moment, he held his hand up, and reached for the slab and chalk, making it clear that he intended no ill will. The translator mer handed it to him, and after wiping away the original message, he began writing on it, making his letters clear and in all caps similar to the message he had just read.
“I AM LEON. I COME FROM THE DOME CITY. I MEAN YOU NO HARM. WE MEAN YOU NO HARM.”
The translator mer studied Leon’s message for a long while. After what must have been a full minute, he began clicking out a translation in his own language, turning from person to person and speaking to the entire room. The queen mer clicked back to him after a minute, and then the translator began writing again.
“STAY TILL DARK? WE WOULD LIKE TO BE FRIENDS.”
Leon grabbed the slate from him and began writing as soon as he could.
“YES,” was his reply.
This seemed to delight the mers. The translator mer clicked and seemed to almost beam through his body language, and then surprised Leon by making a sound that he recognized.
“Leon!” said the mer. He pointed to him, and repeat it, and soon enough, all the mers in the room were speaking his name. He couldn’t help but smile. It was hard for him to have any other response to the strange reception that he had received.
The mers led Leon out of the throne room after another minute. It was a very different process leaving it than it had been entering it. The group that had guarded him before seemed to scatter, no longer considering him a threat. The only escort he had was the purple eyed mer, who led him out by the hand and across the city.
The stares and attention the Leon received was about the same as before, but it also seemed somehow kinder, as if the mer had developed a better idea of who he was and what he represented. The mer clicked away at him, but outside of the occasional time that she would say his name in English, he understood none of it.
Leon found himself being surprised by just how detailed and how urban the underwater landscape of the mer felt to him. It had many similarities to the city of the surface, and he could even identify which structures were shops, and which were houses. He saw one and from the stoic nature of the mer around, was able to recognize it as a place of worship.
The female mer led him into a smaller habitat, off to the side of the city. She let go of his hand after they entered, and dropped down a thin weighted curtain of seaweed, which slowly sank to the ground and blocked the view of anyone looking in from the outside. Leon could immediately tell that it was her home, just from the way she seemed to naturally begin manipulating the objects inside and being at ease.
Leon felt like he could relax, and in the process he found himself admiring his female host. She was beautiful, unlike anyone Leon had seen on the surface or even within what little he had seen of the mer city. She seemed to move effortlessly through the water, which made her slim figure and attractive bust seem even more heavenly and erotic.
The purple eye mer moved up to him slowly. Leon found himself wishing that there was someway for him to take off his suit, and from the actions of his host, he could easily see that she was having similar thoughts. She smiled at him, and then seemed to move her hands on to his chest slowly and cautiously. Leon nodded to her, and brought his hand up to her face, caressing her cheek.
He could feel the woman's touch through his suit surprisingly well. The warmth and softness of her fingers passed right through the thin membrane. The mer was curious about him, and about his anatomy, and before he knew it, she had brought one of her hands down do his crotch and was cupping his balls and cock with her palm.
“Hey, what are you…” Leon’s words were drowned out as the woman began to intensify her come on. She pushed her breasts, naked and supple, up against them, and Leon found his objections being pushed to the wayside in place of the pleasure that he was experiencing.
His suit was tight around his body, but that didn’t stop his member from hardening, and becoming even more sensitive to her touch. The anatomy of the mers was still somewhat of a mystery to Leon, but the inverse was clearly not true for his purple eyed host.
She said something to him in mer language, and then began kissing his neck and pushing up even more tightly against him as she stroked him off. Leon’s hands went to her breasts almost instinctively. It didn’t matter to him if she was technically human or not, all that mattered was that she had gotten him aroused, intensely and insatiably so.
The two of them began to dry hump against each other. Leon wished that he could take his suit off, so badly, but he made do as well as he could. Somehow, the impediment only seemed to make the encounter hotter, as though the two of them were subverting a barrier that kept them from the urges and desires harbored within.
Leon reached his hand down to her lower half, feeling the tail that made it up. There was a tiny opening that he hadn’t noticed in about the same spot as a woman’s vagina would be on a human, and he pushed one of his gloved fingers into it. He half expected her to stop him, but she seemed to let out a strange, small moan, and spurred him on by rubbing his cock more quickly.
It was hard for him to really know what was going on. The same foggy veil of sexual lust that he had experienced during sex with human women descended over him, his emotions having no prejudice towards his new and unusual partner. The water made it feel as though his body was being caressed and massaged from even more places than he really was, and though foreign, the sensation was amazing.
The purple eyed mer was biting her lip, and Leon could tell that she was headed towards the same outcome as him. He wanted to do more, to kiss her, and feel her flesh against his, but in that moment, it was enough that the two of them were on the same page.
His host began to tense up and he pushed his finger deeper inside of her. Just a second later, Leon felt his cock begin to pulse with pleasure, and he began to fire his seed into his suit, somewhat guiltily. It felt almost as though he had done something wrong, as though he was a youth that was just experimenting with his own body and accidentally ejaculated into his boxers. But it also felt good, as though he had managed to truly connect with another intelligent creature.
The two of them just stared at each other for a moment. Leon picked the slate and chalk up from where his host had set them, deciding to write on them and see if she could understand him.
“THAT WAS NICE.”
The purple eyed mer smiled at him, and then took the slate out of his hands. She erased what he had written, and then in very basic, forced looking letters, wrote something of her own.
“DIMITRA”, read the chalk slate. She pointed to it, and then to herself, and then back to it, several times. Leon nodded, and then subvocalized the name inside of his suit, knowing that there was no way that she could hear him, and no way truly that he could hear her, either.
CHAPTER 10
Leon spent about half an hour writing various words on the chalk slate, and trying to communicate with Dimitra. All he managed to discover was that her vocabulary was very limited, in fact all she
seemed to know was her name, though she was an eager learner.
Another mer appeared at the door, and after a short clicking conversation that still sounded completely foreign to Leon, a group of mer escorted him out of the coral habitat and through the city again. It seemed like the buzz around him had died down a little, though his presence still did seem to generate some attention.
He reentered the chamber of the queen mer, who appeared to have arrived at a decision. The translator took the chalk slab from Leon and wrote something on it. He took it back and slowly looked at the words, and the entire room seemed to wait for his reaction.
“GO BACK TO DOME. BRING MAX TO CASIA.”
Leon blinked several times, and made sure that what he thought he was reading was really there. It all made sense, and fit with what he knew about his dad, but it also raised a thousand more unanswered questions in his mind. He felt a strangely powerful emotion well within his chest as he began to write his response, and it seemed to match that dark blue of the water.
“MAX IS DEAD. I’M HIS SON. I CAN HELP.”
The translator didn’t know what to do with the words when he saw them. He tapped several times at the word “son”, and Leon found himself at a loss for how exactly to explain it to them. He took the stone slab back after a minute and reworded his message to something that he hoped would have an understandable, and hopefully vaguely interpreted meaning.
“MAX IS DEAD. I AM MAX. I CAN HELP.”
He smiled, out of reflex, feeling himself mourning for his father almost as much as he had after originally hearing about his death. He handed the slab back, there was more clicking, and all the mer in the room seemed to understand that at least some of what he was trying to get across.
“WE BRING BACK TO DOME. WE WANT PEACE. DO NOT WANT WAR.”
Depths of Desire: Complete and Uncut (Taboo Erotica) Page 5