The man arrived from the distant void, following a dream.
He turned from the Sunken City and looked again at the Sea of Stars. The battle had finished a few short hours ago, leaving little but the floating remains of countless warships. Thousands upon thousands of bodies bobbed gently in the calm water, waiting to be collected by those beneath. Each time a dead body was pulled below the sea, the man heard a sucking sound, followed by a pop, and the corpse was gone. Sometimes a fishy-crest would break the glassy surface, or a bulbous limb would be visible, but the creatures beneath remained hidden. They collected every sword, axe, shield, piece of armour and plank of wood. They even began disassembling the wrecked boats, though to complete their task would take several days. Eventually, everything would be dragged beneath the Sea of Stars, never again to surface.
A vast fleet had attacked the Sunken City. That is to say, a vast fleet had tried to attack the Sunken City. They’d been destroyed within sight of it, dying without a single blade being swung. The swift warships had approached at speed, with sails billowing, and ballistae armed and ready. A hundred thousand warriors, maybe more, had sailed a great distance to pick a fight, only to enter a battle they couldn’t win. Those beneath had been waiting, just under the surface. They had strange depth barges of jagged coral and thick, membranous seaweed, able to skewer the hulls of the warships and drag them underwater. Then the sea had boiled, cooking the survivors alive, inside their leather and steel armour. Some had tried to swim ashore, some had clustered together, roaring defiance to quieten the screams, but all had died.
The man had watched from a cliff, invisible to those below. He didn’t know who they were, or why they’d come south with such ferocity, but he felt the pain of each departing spirit. Despite their defeat, the dead men and women were creatures of power, and they would be missed. Somewhere else in this realm of form was a kingdom to whom this fleet belonged, though that was all the man could sense. He’d arrived only moments before the battle, and was not even sure where he was, only that he’d been pulled to the Sunken City from far away.
The man stepped back from the cliff and sat against a rock, his eyes flickering between the steaming ocean and the bizarre, cyclopean structures of the Sunken City. The bulk of the metropolis was blessedly obscured beneath the still water, but it was slowly rising, with windowless spires of black stone poking through the water for leagues in every direction. In the centre, dwarfing the surrounding structures, was an immense stone edifice, covered in seaweed and a slick of mouldy green algae. It was a tomb of sorts, though the dead thing within could still dream. It would take decades, perhaps as long as a century, but eventually the Sunken City would be sunken no more. There was certainly enough time for the people of this realm to assemble another fleet. But the man suspected it would meet the same fate as the first. More than that, when the edifice opened, it would unleash primal chaos on the world.
From along the cliff, he heard footsteps, and turned. He knew nothing of this realm or those that dwelt within it, but he knew he was not in danger, especially not from the old man who approached.
“I have been waiting for you,” said the old man. He had wrinkled skin of a light brown, and colourful feathers woven into his waist-length grey hair. He belonged to a different order of men to those of the destroyed fleet, with no armour or weaponry. He had nothing but a wooden whistle, tied around his neck. He averted his deep-set eyes, then bowed his head.
“How did you know I was coming?” was the response. “Does time work differently in this realm?”
“For some,” said the old man. “For most it begins in the morning and ends in the night. But for the oldest spirits, it works backwards. I have travelled far to greet you, for the great turtle spirits of the Father remember your arrival, and your deeds not yet done.”
A loud creak sounded from the Sea of Stars. The hull of a warship was split in two and pulled beneath the surface, causing bodies to drift away on the sudden waves.
“Do your spirits remember this battle?”
The old man nodded. “In the years to come it will be called the Battle of the Depths, though no tale will recall what truly happened.”
“Tell me your name.”
The old man tensed his back and stood as upright as he could. He grasped the collar of his thin canvas shirt and ripped it apart, displaying his skeletal chest and the deep scars that covered it. “I am Ten Cuts, speaker of the Rykalite, and I will be your servant. If you will have me.”
The man considered it. To accept Ten Cuts would be to accept that he would stay, and care about this realm of men. It would be easier to leave, travelling back to his hall and ignoring the dreams. “Deeds not yet done,” he said. “What deeds? What do your spirits remember me doing?”
The speaker of the Rykalite moved past the man and looked at the Sunken City. His eyes widened and his hands began to shake, as his mind recoiled from the impossible spectacle. He was a mortal man with a fragile mind, unable to comprehend what he was looking at. “I have walked for twelve years to greet you,” he replied. “I knew of this place, but thought less of it than I did of you. Now I see both, and you give me less pause.”
“Answer my question. What deeds?”
“The spirits tell me only what they tell me,” replied Ten Cuts. “That they have not told me. But they told me Mathias Blood and the Sea Wolves would assemble a fleet and attack the Sunken City … and they did. And they told me you would be here … and you are here.”
“Why did the fleet attack?” asked the man. “Did they know what they faced?”
Ten Cuts rubbed his eyes vigorously, as if to scratch the image from his mind, and stepped back from the high cliff. He walked on unsteady feet, to bow before the man. “The fleet set sail as an act of retribution. The Sea Wolves and their Eastron kin are intractable, and far mightier than my people, but they are relative newcomers to this realm and ignorant of its true nature. They thought they were sailing to a great and inevitable victory. As they had done when they first invaded, forming their Kingdom of the Four Claws from the corpse of the Pure Lands.”
The man stood, mumbling to himself. He reached out as best he could, trying to feel the pulse of the world, but it was dim and erratic. He’d not been here long enough to sense anything of depth or texture. To help the mortals of this realm would be the endeavour of decades, and he could not predict the result.
He looked at Ten Cuts, assessing his age to be at least seventy years. “Twelve years to walk here, twelve years to walk back,” he mused. “Time may catch up to you before you see your home again.” The man smiled and took a breath of air. “But, if you’re to serve me, I can’t have a trivial thing like old age claiming you. Besides, you have much to tell me, and we have much to do.”
The Invaders came from across the sea
They claimed our rock, our fire, our tree
They followed their Always King and his Claws
Bringing their steel, their ships, their laws
They had no gods and they had no fate
They had void and wyrd and they taught us hate
They invaded the Father and the Sons
Killing the Pure Ones
Traditional song of the Mirralite Pure Ones,
written after the First Battle of Tranquillity