Incarnation | Wandering Stars Volume One

Chapter 26

THE GREAT WATERS

Kai-Niquel's sleek body cut through the water with little resistance, requiring only a slight rippling movement of his tentacles to propel him forward. At this depth, the sea was completely black. But Kai rarely used his eyes for much of anything. Instead, he generated a series of clicking sounds from an organ behind his blow-hole. The returning waves of sound brought a detailed understanding of the terrain as his resonating jawbone interpreted the echoes.

But the information had stopped hours ago. With the sea floor thousands of fathoms below, there was nothing to return the sound waves. Now, the only other presence in the water was his division of Vidirym, followed by a handful of Myndarym. In the silence, they pressed on, having traveled for nearly twenty four hours without stopping.

Gradually, Kai began to pick up a presence below him. The faint echoes grew stronger as the sea floor rose. Now, only a few hundred fathoms of water lay below him, and the distance was closing fast. He released a louder pulse of sounds, a blend of moans and chirps, telling his soldiers that they were approaching the target. The floor continued to rise by dozens of fathoms per minute, gradually tapering off into a gentle upward slope. With the coastline in the distance on his left, Kai altered his southern course a bit to the east and searched the shelf for a change in texture. As expected, a smooth delta of sand spilled out into the deeper water, signaling that Semjaza's fortress was near.

Halfway across the wide sandbar, Kai turned directly east and slowed his approach. Just as the Myndarym described, he could feel the jagged mountains rise from both sides of the delta, while directly in front was a flat wall, spanning the fifty fathoms that separated the sea floor from the surface, blocking their entrance to the cove. Descending to the sand below, Kai came to the base of the wall and waited for his team to catch up. Then, he rose slowly, bouncing sound waves off the wall, scanning the front surface for the passages that the Myndarym had described. It took only seconds to locate the first one, but to his surprise, it was blocked by a lattice of metal bars.

Kai could sense the confusion from the Myndarym, but remained silent while resuming his work. Using a methodical serpentine pattern to scan the wall in ascending passes, he found one barred passage after another. Finally, he backed away and drifted toward the Myndarym who had been hanging back. "Any other ideas?" he whispered.

"There's one more at the top," one of them replied.

Kai nodded, then brought his tentacles together, propelling his body upward toward the surface. He came to a stop less than ten fathoms below the rippled ceiling. At this depth, the miniscule amount of light coming from the starry skies above allowed his eyes to add visual information to his understanding of the obstacle. He could now make out the bottom of an unblocked passage. But his sensitive ears, if they could be called such, picked up something else—subtle vibrations coming through the passage. Someone was on the other side, waiting.

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THE MOUNTAINS SOUTH OF MUDENA DEL-EDHA

Sariel came up silently over the rocks, riding the gentle updraft that was forced against the mountains from the wind blowing across the Great Waters. The back of an Iryllur sentry came into view and Sariel glided toward the enemy with one vaepkir ready. Without a sound, Sariel tackled the soldier from behind, simultaneously clasping a hand around his mouth and driving the vaepkir beneath his right forewing and into his chest cavity.