Chapter 17-443: The Deepsea (1/2)

Shvaughn was a bit surprised when her descent through the Rift suddenly morphed into being swept along a mighty undersea river and getting sent over a gargantuan underwater waterfall.

The waterfalls continued, cold and powerful, enough to easily batter any normal human to death, but in sirine Elemental form, it was no different for her than enjoying a brisk wind.

The rivers of sea water separated in all directions, probably following paths all over the place, and inevitably down to the Hollow World. How it all came back was a different story.

She noted the number of fish and living organisms was almost non-existent, and even the salt tang was dissipating as the current flowed along. An inbuilt mechanism to purify the waters down here, and for the planet as a whole? Interesting ramifications...

Consuming intellectuals meant questioning things, always learning. Doing it to children meant being ready to learn forever.

Doing it to an erinyes meant nigh-infinite memory capacity. The Fey could have long lives, but it wasn’t the same as the rulers of the realms of the dead souls. They might forget the mortal lives of the souls they were made from, but their own lives could outlast anything save any native gods sitting around... and perhaps even them, if the things she’d seen in Remarriu’s memories were valid.

Hell had certainly been around longer than mere Christianity and Judaism... or the Chinese versions of them.

She was following a group of muuk who had been released from their duties, or were ferrying scrolls or something away from the falls, which meant they needed someplace to store them. Her Detect Location was reading twenty-six miles down from the surface, but could only reference her private Visual File, as The Map of the whole Allegiance’s view of the world was not available.

What an astonishing and wonderful tool that was, in all the ways. She was still adding temporal episodes to it on the sly, creating timelines within the worldviews for those curious enough to watch the changes over time, and naturally enough, her own Lived-Lines extended all over the place, including into locations a great number of people wouldn’t believe she had been.

She picked up a lot of things when she Consumed people, and Consuming those who Consumed others was even more efficient. Alas, she wasn’t permitted to make some Pact-fools to do some work for her... which led to that nasty slide Down, so not a Bad Thing at all.

With no wake or pressure wave, she followed the muuk easily, able to track the fish-men easily in the darkness and rapid currents. She could probably have stayed almost on top of them, but there were times to be daring, and there were times to just do the job. She wasn’t raiding, so daring wasn’t necessary.

She felt the waterfall coming up, judged it not all that large compared to those behind, and followed the muuk over the edge a few seconds later.

She saw the lights and the towers on the way down, and immediately slowed her plummet despite herself, letting the tons of water slide right on past her as she did so, catching glimpses of quays and pillars below, and having an idea of what might be going on as she hit the pounding rush, was pressed down towards the bottom of the chamber, and heard a ringing sound.

She couldn’t see with all the bubbles, but she kept right on going down, below the flow of the water, feeling ahead of herself carefully as the foam from above dissipated, and she finally came to a stop over two hundred feet below.

A long net had been erected across the entire river, designed to catch anything that might want to cross into the waters beyond. The bells sounding probably indicated the muuk had swum into the net, alerting those here of their presence, and they were either going over it the hard way, or simply coming to the surface and waving at the alert guards.

She drew on her sirine ability and dissolved completely into water. Totally liquid now, she flowed through a two-inch square on the wire-bound net without touching the sides, which definitely carried some kind of warning effect. Most Elementals would simply flow around all sides of the net, letting it pass through them, instead of vice versa.

Her other alternative was using invisibility and flying up out of the water, but she didn’t doubt that spotters with inhuman patience were looking for just that kind of thing. Likewise, she was pretty sure the psychic vibe in the air would react to dimensional movement.

She noted the water here was several grades fresher than the ocean water outside, part of the active filtering effect which seemed to be centered on the waterfalls. She shoved it all to the back of her head as she regathered herself from a long, narrow stream of water into an operating form.

Staying in stealth, and noting that there were now fish swimming through the waters around her, Shvaughn headed for those towers, and the lights.

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As she expected, it was a slave colony in the deeps.

Sirine memories considered it similar to those of the Deep Ones, although those tended to use artificial chambers, as opposed to these vast, low caverns in the Felldeep. There were neandrathalic, simian bipeds there, possibly inbred or mutated humans from the surface, possibly natives of the Felldeep. They had a bulbous, long-jawed look to them that confirmed they were muuk-spawn, and when their humanoid bodies died, they would rise again as unaging muuk to serve the lethomorg, a tidy and efficient process.

In the meantime, they birthed more proto-muuk humanoids to make more muuk.

Shvaughn painted in the towers and their vacuous, dim light; part phosphorescence, part psychic gleam, letting her Visual File store it all as she drifted in best sirine fashion with the waves from the waterfall behind her, watching fish-faced scaled muuk interacting with hairy, bent ape-men in the fashion of rulers to servants, or elders to children.