The pulses continued until they were blinding, neither seeming to be any brighter than the other. No sign of which was stronger, gold or blue. So there came other acts. A blue spire conjured forth, curling up one side of the dome and down the other.
“That almost looks like Steep Mountain!” Eddy said excitedly.
A gold pool grew and spread, seeming to smooth away and burrow down into all that surrounded it.
“And that’s Deep Swell!” he cried, pointing enthusiastically.
“What are those things?” Rustle asked.
“Seamarks! Steep Mountain is… Wait. We watch the story first…”
Light of alternating colors now had shifted to forming complex and astonishing shapes. They were so intricate the detail seemed to fold in upon itself, never truly reaching an end. But each time some feat was concocted by one of the colors, the other matched it. Until finally, blue light wove and curled along the looping forms of the creature that dominated the background of the carving. The beast then moved, sliding along behind the details of the other lights and carvings until it came to rest behind the blue point.
There was a moment of stillness, then a faint gold haze pulsed, seemingly from everywhere along the dome. It moved like smoke, gathering into a brighter cloud behind the yellow point of light.
Eddy swam up to investigate.
“It is many small points. Like glowing dust…” Eddy said.
He recoiled backward as the massive, shifting behemoth surged across the carving and the cloud of yellow wafted toward it.
A new clash, infinitely more violent than what had been illustrated before, played out across the dome. Everything that had been created or depicted to this point served as little more than dry grass to be trampled by the behemoth and the haze of light. The tower Eddy called Steep Mountain fractured and tumbled. The magnificent shapes conjured in each color were wiped away. The destruction grew and spread, but there was no sign the battle would end.
Then came white light, the glowing figure of what Eddy had identified as the goddess Tria. Her many arms rose and with them rose a shimmering wall of white, completely encircling the battle. It continued to rage, sundering everything within the wall. Soon the actual temperature of the water around them began to rise. The water in front of the carving simmered, then boiled. Eddy finally retreated to a reasonable distance as the water at the top of the chamber entirely boiled away and, behind it, flames broiled and charred the stone, swallowing all else.
The flames died away. The golden haze was still now, tracing out chaotic, marbled lines across the walled section of carving. The massive behemoth lay motionless, though its eyes were still open. The figure of Tria waved her arms and the six attendants surrounding her whisked through the wall into the blackened wasteland beyond. The three mermen tugged at the limbs and tentacles of the beast, maneuvering it into the position of the original carving and forging the massive chains. The mermaids gathered the haze of golden light just as it began to churn again. The original points of yellow and blue drifted toward the wasteland, flaring to brightness once more, but Tria thrust her arms up and down. The chains pulsed again, and the lights were snuffed out.
With that, the glow of the wall faded, the blackness and char wafted into the water and dispersed, and the carving was as it was when they arrived. The glowing figure turned to them again.
“Do you understand…”
“I understand much,” Eddy said.
“I don’t understand very much at all, but what I do understand, I don’t like,” Rustle said.
“The tall thing. That was Steep Mountain. Very near to the center of the Crescent Sea. It reaches almost to the surface. The top is strange and sharp. It looks like from this story it was even taller, tall enough to be above the surface.”
“You mean like an island?”
“You call them islands. We call them mountains. I suppose this big creature—there is just one of it, so I guess that is the Great Ancient—broke the mountain. That is why there is the jagged top. And then Deep Swell. It is a very low, very flat area. That is the home of the great council. It is our capital.”
He squinted his eyes and gazed up toward the dome of the chamber.
“Steep Mountain was there. And Deep Swell was there… And all of that… fire happened all about here… That would be the Broken Fields. A very large place where the ground is sharp and pointy. Like broken glass. Does fire make glass?”
“I don’t know, Eddy, but we shouldn’t be wondering about that sort of thing while she is still here staring at us,” Rustle said.
Eddy looked to the glowing form, waiting patiently within her prison, watching them.
“You are right, Rustle.” He addressed the glowing figure. “Does fire make glass?”
“That’s not what I meant!” Rustle hissed.
“Fire turns sand to glass…” came the reply. “And so it shall boil away the sea and turn the sand to glass again if you do not heed my words. In life, I was the mage Stuartia. Many of the feats depicted here are my own. My foe was the dread wizard Merantia. I can feel the heartbeat of the sea… I can feel the waning slumber of the Great Ancient. Each time it stirs, the land and sea shake. If it wakes… The sea will boil and burn…”
Rustle’s blood ran cold at the words of ill omen dripping into his thoughts. He saw images of ruin. This mysterious, freshly discovered undersea world torn asunder. His own forest washed away by a wave sweeping in from the sea. He didn’t know if the images were the products of his own imagination, messages from Stuartia, or some horrid premonition. He turned to Eddy.
The merman’s eyes were twinkling, his face utterly dripping with raw excitement. He reached out and grabbed Rustle by the legs and shook him.
“Adventure, Rustle! Adventure!” Rustle raved.
He turned to Stuartia.
“What do we need to do, Great Mage!” he said, his posture straightening like a soldier preparing for orders.
“I cannot speak with certainty…” the deceased mage replied. “But if the Great Ancient stirs, then Merantia’s spirit must cling to this place as well. You must find it. You must do what can be done to end its influence, to shatter its will, to release its control over the Great Ancient. And you must do it quickly.”
Eddy looked about and swiftly set about collecting his things.
“Quickly, Rustle! We have a job to do! A call to adventure!”
The fairy attempted to form the words necessary to even attempt to convince Eddy to think it through, but the merman’s excitement was impenetrable. He grabbed his pick, gathered the spell book and both pieces of the glove Rustle had used to try to chisel him out. In a flash he was fully equipped and ready to go. He streaked by Rustle, who barely had time to grab his flowing hair as he swept past.
“Eddy! Eddy please, wait!” Rustle called.
“We know the way the Broken Fields were made, Rustle! And how Steep Mountain and Deep Swell were made. I’ve never heard those stories! And we are going to save the day! A good mage and an evil one. A mission to save the world. It will be the greatest story. A story to tell children for the rest of forever!” He glanced back at the fairy entangled in his hair. “They will write songs about us, Rustle!”
“Fairies don’t do this sort of thing alone. We should get help!”
“You aren’t alone. We are together! It is the two of us. A team! And we cannot get help. We cannot leave until the water is high enough. At least, I cannot.”
“Fine. Fairies don’t do this sort of thing at all.”
“Neither do mermen. But we do now! We are the first. Except for maybe the merman attendants of Tria. And they did not even have their own names. They were just Tria’s Left Hands!”
“But what are we supposed to do?”
“This is our story. We decide what we do. Think of what we’ve done. You are curious about things you don’t know, and you find me, able to show you so much you don’t know. And I am curious to find people who can teach me things as well,
and I find you, able to teach me so much I don’t know. I show you the place I spend all my time, and you find something new! We venture to that place, and you find something amazing! You freeze me to a wall, and I wake to find a mission to save the sea! It is all falling into place, Rustle. It is our adventure. Whatever happens, Rustle and Eddy can do what needs to be done! And this next piece is easy. We find the other wizard. You found this one. Just look for the same.”
“I don’t know, Eddy…”
“Neither do I! Let us find out together!”
Chapter 8
Eddy drifted gently along in a mild current, trying to let his tail recover a bit. His enthusiasm for the adventure ahead hadn’t cooled in the slightest. His body wasn’t holding up nearly as well. His tail burned with fatigue, but the smile had yet to leave his face. This was all in spite of the fact that it had been hours since they’d left they mysterious chamber of Stuartia and little of interest had presented itself since then.
He held Rustle gently in his hands as the fairy did whatever it was fairies did to sense the magic of the world around them.
“You are searching, right, Rustle?” he asked. “Not just hoping to spend all of the time until we can leave?”
“Even though that would be a good idea, I’m doing my best. It isn’t easy. I can still feel that first chamber. It’s so much more powerful than everything around it. You’ve got me looking for a specific drop of water in the whole of the sea.”
“If it was easy, it wouldn’t be an adventure. Chores are easy. Adventures are hard! Keep trying.”
“I am. Just try to be quiet. It takes a great deal of concentration.”
Eddy nodded. He flicked his tail a few times to keep them moving. Doing so must have jostled him a bit, because his stomach released a churning grumble that, in the relative silence of the tunnel, was enough to startle Rustle.
“What was that!?” the fairy yelped.
Eddy took one hand away to rub his stomach. “That was the sound of hungry.”
“Uh-oh…” Rustle said. “There isn’t any food here for you!”
He shut his eyes and shook his head. “Do not be silly, Rustle. Always the sea gives us what we need. If you cannot find something you want to eat, it means you aren’t hungry enough.”
“You should eat some of the sweets,” Rustle said, tugging himself free of Eddy’s grip and darting into the bag.
“No, no, no.” He retrieved his friend. “You are not an eater like me. You need the sweets, and one or two won’t do me much good. You keep the sweets. And keep looking for the evil wizard! I will look for something tasty. That way we are both doing something we are good at.”
He glanced about, seeing little but the endless black volcanic stone that formed the rest of the tunnel and the rippling pocket of air above him.
“Strange that there is nothing alive here. It is not easy to find a place in the sea where there is not something alive, and this place is very much not alive at all. Even the wizard was not alive.”
“Which is another good reason not to take orders from her.”
“Ah, but you are wrong, Rustle. Because dead people at least know what killed them, and they can tell you not to do that. Also, she is the least dead dead person I have ever met.”
“That’s only because we accidentally… Uh…”
Eddy tipped his head. “What did we accidentally do that made her less dead?”
“Uh…” Rustle repeated, looking a bit anguished.
“Come to think of it. She was only less dead when I woke up.” He grinned. “Did you do a dumb thing to make the adventure move forward?”
“I said it was an accident. I was trying to get you free and I spilled some of your blood. That dish in the middle of the room was an altar. It was… we sort of did a ritual, I think.”
Eddy nodded slowly, a knowing smile on his face. “A ritual by mistake. That is a very ‘adventure’ thing to happen. It proves we are on the right track. Always things like that happen. That is fate making sure we turn the page. So, is that what it takes? Some blood on an altar to make people less dead?”
“I think? These are all stories I’ve heard from fairies who heard them from fairies who heard them from fairies.”
“Stories from long ago. Also a very adventure thing.”
“You make it seem like we can’t make a mistake.”
“We can’t. This is our adventure. You never hear a story about adventurers who make a blunder and fail, do you?”
“That’s because those adventurers died, and no one ever heard from them again, Eddy.”
He scratched his head. “… I do not like that sort of thinking, Rustle.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“It’s too true. Too true is not fun. Maybe true, that is fun.”
Another rumble rolled through the water around them.
“We really need to find you something to eat,” Rustle said.
“That was not the sound of hungry,” Eddy said, glancing off into the darkness. “Oh, yes! We were looking for a sound before we found the wizard! Since we can’t find the next wizard so easy, let’s look for that again!”
“Eddy, can we please stay focused!” Rustle snapped. “You can’t just go charging off after every shiny thing you see!”
“Did you see something shiny?” Eddy asked, craning his neck and glancing about.
“No. I mean we can’t let ourselves get distracted or we’ll never get anywhere.”
“I am not distracted. This is what you were teaching, right? The wizard, and whatever you are looking for, is a maybe true. I like maybe trues, they’re fun! But the sound we just heard? That’s very true. Too true. And you think those are better, right?”
“… I suppose there is some logic to th—”
Eddy grabbed him and thrust his tail. “We go!”
#
The burst of excitement energized Eddy enough to bring him a fair distance off to the side of the cavern. As they’d traveled, the sheer size of the place became increasingly awe-inspiring. By now they’d probably traveled as far under the sea floor as they’d traveled to get to Eddy’s farm.
Their detour from the admittedly aimless search Rustle had been conducting had revealed yet another mysterious and distinctive feature of the cavern. There had been no shortage of tunnels thus far, but all of them had the meandering, jagged quality of things crafted by the whims of nature. As the dim glow of the fairy and the merman cast upon the floor of this stretch of cavern, they found a branching series of tunnels that were anything but natural.
“Look at them…” Eddy said, running his hand over the smooth surface of a tunnel that was a bit wider than his arm’s width and perfectly circular. “Even when I try very hard, I cannot make the walls of my mine this smooth.”
“They’re like glass…” Rustle said, flitting up to the shiny black surface.
His distorted reflection stared back at him and reflected his light back in hypnotic ringlets all around.
“It is polished,” Eddy said. “Not like with chisels and sand and cloth. Like what heat can do. More Glowing Pools things.”
“Are we getting close to this Glowing Pools place?” Rustle asked.
“No, no. That is very far. But I suppose there can be places besides the Glowing Pools that can do such things. If we find a place like that…” Eddy looked aside. “The things I could do if I had a Glowing Pool of my own…”
They swam forward. The tunnel was much more direct than the others they’d explored. It had no sharp turns and ran in a straight line with a broadly downward trajectory. There were only minor deviations upward or downward. After having the whole of the cavern open around them, the tunnel felt oddly cramped to Eddy.
“Most of my own tunnels I make when I mine are only a little bigger than this,” he said. “But the big cave is much nicer.”
Rustle nodded. “I don’t like it here. It feels closed in. I don’t like closed-in places…”
“Lucky for you
you’re so small. Smaller places feel bigger for you.”
Rustle shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. Big or small, once I’m trapped someplace, all I can think about is how I can’t get away if something comes along to try to get me.”
The fairy was still oddly transfixed by the glassy wall. Eddy looked ahead.
“So things in tight places are scarier for you than things in the open?”
“Yes.”
“You should not look forward then.”
Rustle’s head snapped around and his glow flared. Ahead, something had caught their glow. It was smooth and metallic, but in all other ways was more deserving of the label ‘monster’ than machine.
They couldn’t see much of it. The thing was almost precisely a match for the size of the tunnel. Its form was composed of bronze or brass plates, marbled with a green patina but otherwise smooth. They joined with impossibly complex linkages, such that it looked as though this might be a suit of armor for a horrible beast, or maybe the scales of a fish or dragon that was never meant to exist. A stout, tuna-like tail hung limply against the floor of the tunnel. It had six legs, each built of metal segments and tipped with pincer-type claws composed of a dark, stone-like material. The segmented legs joined to the hexagonal body smoothly, just where the tail thickened to nearly the diameter of the tunnel. Its body blocked the path ahead, and thus hid the rest of its form.
“Is it dead?” Rustle asked, peeking out from behind Eddy’s ear.
“This is a thing someone built. Things you build don’t die. They don’t live either.”
“Built?” Rustle leaned out further, curiosity starting to edge past fear. “But it is so complicated. You can build something that complicated?”
“I cannot,” Eddy said, tugging at the blunt edge of the fin. “But someone can.”
Eddy leaned closer, bringing Rustle along with him. The fairy’s curiosity was piqued, but not yet to the degree that he was willing to get as close as the merman wanted to be. He flitted out and watched from a safer distance as Eddy grabbed hold of two of the legs and gave another tug.
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 9