It was said the Empire brought ruin when it cast its shadow over Miwam, but the truth was that the swamp had been claiming the Hideca homeworld for centuries before any had ever heard the name Bythos. The great inland waterways that had once been vital to trade routes across the planet had silted up, separating the seas and cutting off the submerged cities. Amstreshia, once the crown jewel of Hideca culture, a city of wealth, art, and science, gradually fell into stagnation and then hysteria, culminating into its tumble into the infinite darkness of the Tsuromi Abyss. The other great cities fractured and warred amongst themselves, democracies giving way to tyrannies and what had mere decades before been considered outdated tribal feuds. By the time the Bythos Empire arrived to blot out the sun with their warships, Miwam had fallen into the grip of a dark age, where millennia of history and culture had been washed away, leaving only the songs and poems the land-bound were so fond of to keep tradition alive. By then, some considered being conquered an improvement.
It was only natural that what remained of the Hideca elite resisted. Sub-surface to air weaponry had survived in some form, and that bought them time to fortify before the Darem adapted and deployed their own submersible tools. Dho-zi had memorized a long ballad chronicling the Battle of Griga-cho, where the barbarian king Yosho-ki made his stand against the Imperials from behind the fortifications of the eponymous reef. Many verses were dedicated to the preparations—the arming of soldiers, the manning of the defences, the king’s inspiring speech to his people—only for the battle to conclude within two lines when a torpedo launched from a scout-class micro-sub struck the central column of the reef and wiped out Griga-cho’s entire ruling class. With that last bastion of the old, rotten world gone, the Empire was free to remake the Hideca in their image.
But it was too late for Miwam itself. Petty wars had left major bodies of water polluted and unlivable, forcing many of the sea-bound off-world to join imperial colonies. The land-bound still clung to their villages, their distance from the seas making them more resilient to their world’s collapse, but now they were beginning to feel the hardships as the rivers, lakes, and streams their settlements depended on had begun to dry up or turn stagnant. The swamp had spread across most of Miwam now, turning once clear, life-giving water a muddy brown.
Land routes were unpleasant and uncomfortable, but had become the norm for the average Hideca who couldn’t afford the expense of air travel. Still, Dho-zi preferred to swim, and had decided it was best to just suck it up and get a little dirty. She dove into the river outside her hovel early in the morning, one tentacle wrapped tightly around a watertight bag which held her belongings, and sped through the murk. The increasingly brown tint of the water could make it hard to navigate, but a pair of goggles and her own better-than-average sight allowed Dho-zi to avoid the detritus that had gathered on the riverbed. She corkscrewed around a mountain of trash sitting in her path, broken food-containers and the shredded remains of drysuits, then turned down an offshoot from the main current, following it a couple of miles to its end in a small pond.
She emerged onto the soft, muddy land that ringed the pool, lifted herself onto two tentacles, and strode towards a large rock sitting beneath the canopy of trees overhead. Hideca had muscle where most species had bones, and although they were amphibious, most didn’t have the strength to walk upright on land without the support of an exo-suit. Dho-zi was stronger than most Hideca, and she could go a fair distance on two of her prime tentacles alone. Even with an aquatic race, nature tended towards bipedalism in intelligent creatures, and each of a Hideca’s four prime tentacles ended in a flat, spade like ‘foot’ that helped distribute her weight. She held her bag between the twin-pronged ‘hands’ of her spare prime appendages, and reached inside for her drysuit. Nudity was a complicated matter for her kind, but it was always smart to wear water-retaining clothing on land to keep hydrated. She slipped the black, elastic drysuit over her sleek form, her prime tentacles slipping through openings in the fabric, while her six secondary tentacles and the cape-like membrane that linked their bases rested over top the suit. There was still the risk of her extremities drying out, but keeping her body damp would mitigate most of the discomfort.
She took note of her surroundings. A forest: small, secluded. She hadn’t been here before, just followed the directions Gi-wa had given her. She assumed her little brother had chosen this place for its privacy. A shuttle roared high overhead, destined for the imperial spaceport in orbit, but its passengers would never look down on this small patch of Miwam.
She turned her attention to the grey boulder she’d been deliberately ignoring until now, specifically the irregular bulge sitting on its corner. “I can see you, little brother.”
The bulge shifted and unravelled, the illusion of rocky texture smoothing out and giving way to purple flesh. Gi-wa’s head emerged from the tangle of tentacles, his dark globe-like eyes narrowing peevishly. Little brother; their births had been separated by only a minute, but tradition gave Dho-zi the right to use that title to her heart’s content. Being her twin, Gi-wa was nearly identical to Dho-zi: his nose-less face was dominated by two large, black eyes and a wide, expressive mouth, with six red-fringed external gills protruding from the sides of his bulbous head like ears. As a man, his secondary tentacles were a few inches longer, though he’d lost one a few years back to a school of hornet sharks. He slithered across the damp, mossy ground, coiling up like a spring by her ‘feet’.
“Is everything set?” Gi-wa was like that sometimes; to the point, no time for idle talk or even a greeting when he was focused.
Dho-zi gave in to gravity’s weight and dropped to the ground, meeting her brother at eye level. “You’re supposed to say hello, little brother. Yes, everything is ready. The exo-suits and everything else is packed. He said we would meet soon, and after that…” she raised a tentacle and gave it a slow twirl; the Hidecan equivalent to a shrug. We’ll figure something out.
Gi-wa slithered back towards the boulder, his longer tentacles rippling across the ground to carry him forward. He disappeared behind it for a moment, then re-emerged with two tentacles wrapped around a long, black rifle. He leaned against the grey stone and lifted the rifle into position, his eye narrowing to a dark line as he looked down the scope. “Red tree, about 80 kilometres to the left.”
Dho-zi slithered close to her brother. “Do we have time for this?”
“He’s not here yet, is He?” Gi-wa replied, curtly. “Red tree, 80 kilometres to the left. Do you see it?”
Dho-zi blew air through her gills and turned her head to follow the rifle’s barrel. “I see it.” It was a scrawny-looking tree, likely suffering from some kind of disease. Its branches were thin and leafless except for the very ends, which were crimson in colour.
Gi-wa grunted, lowering his head back to his scope. A second later, there was a sharp bang, and the longest of the tree’s limbs snapped free and fell to the ground. “Nailed it,” he said, letting the barrel drop.
“Glad to see you’re keeping in practice, little brother.” They were going to need that precision very soon.
“I’m proud that both of you are so eager.” The voice was powerful and arresting, but not as startling as it had once been. A silver shimmer had appeared by the pond, a roaring fire in bipedal form. The twins turned to it with inexpressive faces, so unlike how they’d reacted six months before.
“Father,” Dho-zi said, holding in her enthusiasm. “How do you fare?”
“I am troubled, my dear child, as you well know,” answered the shimmer. “The death of your brother still hangs heavy on my heart, and his murderer still goes unpunished. Justice must be done.”
“It will be, Father,” the twins spoke in unison. A brother they had never met, killed before they had even known of him. He was a stranger to them, but the blood of their kin had been spilt, and Hidecan tradition demanded vengeance be exacted and their Father’s grief eased.
“We are ready, Father,” Dho-zi said. “We only need the killer’s name.”
“Very well,” said the shimmer, seeming to grow in brightness. “The wretched mortal who dared to take the life of your brother was a human, Marissa Rhapsody.”
Gi-wa jammed another shell into his rifle. “Then this Marissa Rhapsody is about to meet with severe misfortune.”