Spoiler: Chapter Twelve: The Eye of the Deep (Part One)
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October 1114
Late one evening, the mercenaries are gathered together in an upscale café to meet with Lady Abasinia. As they snack on cappuccino and biscotti, she explains to them that an ancient merrow city lies beneath the village of Plum Tree upon the Tethys Sea. It has been abandoned for millennia, but recently a tribe of vores have taken up residence within. They are normally harmless, but have recently come under the influence of a sea-hag who is attempting to awaken the Eye of the Deep, an old bio-weapon left over from the Mesozoic wars. Should it escape into the open ocean and spawn, it could disrupt shipping across the entire Tethys Sea.
If they defeat or drive off the sea-witch, she will pay standard mercenary rates, plus a heft bonus if they also manage to destroy the Eye of the Deep or lull it back to sleep.
Feur jokes and says it is a good thing they are going after a see-witch, for he would hate to fight one who was invisible.
Krystal, on the other hand, complains bitterly about how little they are getting paid compared to how much money they will be saving the shipping industry. Abasinia, who doesn’t seem to pick up on what she Krystal saying, says that she likes them and is therefore giving them the first crack at the assignment in lieu of hiring more expensive agents.
Anani asks how they woke up the monster, and Abasinia responds that she imagines the hag likely tormented it by giving it bad dreams. Much the same as how the Lady would eventually learn of her scheme.
Valentine wants to know how to find the place, and is given coordinates and told that while there are numerous undersea caves that open onto it, they are all guarded and inaccessible to land-walkers, and she is to seek out a small pool on the bluffs for their entrance.
Quincy asks if there is anything else the group should know, and Lady Abasinia tells them that while she can’t give any specifics about the layouts or the inhabitants, she has never visited the place herself, portions of the complex are flooded and the group will need to prepare accordingly.
Also, she doesn’t think there are any shoggoths there, but if there are, run. The mercenaries are no match for one, especially underwater.
As Valentine rushes out to buy potions and bullets and to look into explosives that will detonate underwater, Lady Abasinia bids Kim stay a moment and help her with her hair, for she has a gala to attend and doesn’t have time to summon her servants.
Deciding that time is of the essence, they depart by train the next morning. Plum Tree is a small village on the shores of the Tethys Sea. It is far closer to Nightholm than Dungenus, but the Warlord Balthazar has more resources and is thus able to keep it out of Apollyon’s hands.
Before they arrive, Valentine pulls Feur aside and tells him she has a bad feeling about this assignment, and asks him to prepare a spell to turn back time if things go horribly wrong. He spends several hours in his compartment studying the scroll of eons and performing meditative rituals, eventually creating a special rune that will do as she asks.
After a long day of travel, the group rests at a cozy bed and breakfast overlooking the ocean. It is run by Uriah, a plump middle-aged woman who is raising her late brother’s daughter. For dinner, they are served Plum Stew, which tastes a bit like boiled cranberry sauce with root vegetables floating in it. When asked, Uriah tells her guests that it is a concoction she invented trying to replicate the taste of plums, for visitors expect a town named Plum Tree to have plum orchards, despite the fact that the name is actually a native word that, when translated into Terran, means something like gateway to the forest country.
They ask her about local rumors, and she tells them that three children have gone missing, and the mercenaries surmise that this is probably the work of the vores, and that while the town doesn’t know about them yet, the monsters will likely abduct many more people before long if they aren’t wiped out.
The most interesting thing going on in town is that the local fishermen are putting together a pot hoping to attract whalers interested in hunting a special prize. A massive mosasaur they have named Bertha entered their harbor when it was younger, and has now grown too fat to leave. Soon, it will devour all other fish in the bay, turn aggressive, and then starve to death, its rotting flesh fouling the waters.
In the morning they set out to the coordinates they were given, exploring the grassy bluffs, the sea breeze ruffling their hair and clothes. They find the pool, remarkably clear and with sides coated in thick saltwater vegetation, beams of sunlight disappearing into its depths. Valentine goes to distribute the elixirs of water breathing she purchased, but finds the bag empty. Feur looks back in time to see who removed them, but finds nothing; it appears the potions were never in the bag, even though Valentine clearly remembers packing them. Even more curious, the money she recalls spending to buy them is still in her purse.
After a moment spent fretting and cursing the mystery, and debating returning to Golgotha to resupply, Valentine gives the order to dive in without.
It is a deep hole which leads into a muddy twisting tunnel, but not un-traversable. Only Kim struggles to pass through, weighted down by her armor and chain, and when she is finally pulled out by Krystal, she is gasping and has nearly passed out from fatigue and lack of air.
The corridors they enter slant oddly, as if their builders feared right angles. The stone is slimy, and the light which reflects off of it is distorted into unearthly colors. After catching their breath, the group wanders a while, until they came to a junction that is guarded by a quartet of hideous creatures that can only be the vore.
These are truly monsters, even more repugnant than the omukudae, with a tauric body, heads like lampreys, legs like spears of bone, and long flexible arms that resemble a flayed spinal column. Their flesh is pale and slimy, with webs of blue veins visible beneath. Krystal wonders where such things came from, for they surely aren’t natural.
They do not hesitate in attacking, wielding odds metal rods with jagged edges. Two of them move to the front, to engage Kim and Feur, while two climb across the walls to strike at the back ranks. Feur strikes one solidly with a fist that hums with the power of justice and leaves a deep bruise, but does not stop the monster that spears his calf with its own bony leg. Kim is bowled over, and her attacker attempts to brutally crush her under its weight.
The pair on the walls lunge at Valentine, but Quincy makes quick work of one with his rifle while Anani drains the life from the other with her bloodstone pendant.
Krystal moves through the hellscape to flank her foes, but as she reemerges, she slips on the slimy floor. She catches herself by burying her sword in the monster’s belly, and as she slides down the path, she splits it apart, a flood of shiny black worms spilling from its guts. The group looks down at them, and surmises that these must be larva ripped from a pregnant female, but the truth is far more disturbing.
They move down the guarded path, wandering the twisting corridors of this ancient sunken city until they have travelled so far that they must actually be beneath the ocean floor. They finally come to a large roughly square chamber with runes covering its walls. It is the first room they have seen with proper angles, which makes its slight asymmetry somehow even more disconcerting. The walls and ceiling are porous, and the sandy floor is covered in waist-deep water.
As they wade across, the water forms up into a hulking wave, animated by some spiritual force that Anani recognizes as an elemental. She opens her mouth to call out, but it is upon her, forcing its briny body down her throat and filling her lungs.
Feur and Kim move to help her, when a throbbing pain fills Feur’s legs. He cries out and looks down to see that he had disturbed a large fish that was hiding in the sand, its body covered in long venomous spines. Kim acts quickly, casting an incantation that banishes all sand from the room, revealing a half dozen of the carnivorous animals.
Valentine orders Krystal and Quincy to dispatch the aquatic beasts, while Kim and Feur continue trying to get the water elemental’s attention. Unfortunately, their weapons simply pass through its liquid body. Kim finally manages to pull Anani away from it, and the spirit responds by bashing her into the ceiling with the force of a waterspout and then falling upon her like a riptide.
Once Anani has finally cleared her lungs enough to speak, she blesses the rest of the group’s weapons, and they are able to strike at the elemental spirit animating the water and drive it off. When they fish Kim out of the water, she is battered and bedraggled, looking like a drowned rat.
She shrugs off their offers to aid her, and instead begins to study the glyphs on the walls. The merrow script is odd, starting at the center point and then spiraling outward. They all feel a sense of déjà vu, they have seen writing like this before, but can’t remember exactly where. Kim does her best to take rubbings with her waterlogged gear, and is confident in time she will be able to decipher this, and maybe even publish a guide on translating ancient merrow into Terran.
Meanwhile, Anani gets to work harvesting the dragon-fish venom.
There are two exits to the room, one leads down, the stairs looking like a slow-running waterfall, and the other heads up. Quincy listens closely, and can hear high-pitched moans coming from that direction, and the group decides to head up that way, thinking it might be the missing children they heard about the previous evening.
They instead find a deep well, with a pair of hulking undines standing guard over it. These enormous crustaceans resemble bipedal sand crabs, and are known to be used as loyal guardians by many of the less savory peoples of Pangaea. The mercenaries do not bother trying to converse or intimidate them, and soon they know the crack of Quincy’s rifle.
During the battle, a lone vore, older and craftier than the rest, clambers out of the well and up onto the ceiling. It scuttles above them, and then lashes out at Anani, using an odd multi-angled surgical tool to cut deep into her arm, severing the artery, which gushes a prodigious amount of blood.
Her attacker then moves back out of reach, but unluckily for him, the stone he climbs atop, which has perched there for seven hundred millennia, finally decides to let go. The old torturer crashes to the ground, pinned under the rubble, and Krystal makes short work of him.
His insectile guardians are driven into a rage at his death, and must be put down. Feur gracefully avoids their crushing claws while Kim bashes their heads in with the heavy steel head of her meteor
hammer, and Anani drains the last bits of their life force to close the gash on her arm.
At the bottom of the pit lies what appears to be a humanoid dolphin. They are going to drop a rope for him, but then decide that he must weigh over twenty stone, and looks to be badly injured, and instead lower Anani to his side, though she is not happy about it. She does her best to treat his wounds, most of which look like they were caused by dehydration.
After the companions haul both them from the pit, the dolphin person thanks them for his assistance. He introduces himself by a pair of squeaking sounds that his rescuers are unable to interpret; the closest they can come is calling him Kiki. He tells them that he is a prince of the Cellunial, keepers of the sacred grottos, and that the vore were torturing him for information about how to open the sea gate which will allow them access to the open ocean, but so far he has been resolute.
Anani asks if he knows how to put the Eye of the Deep back to sleep but, unfortunately, they lack enough common ground to pool their alchemical knowledge.
In gratitude, Kiki takes them to an ancient place where the merrow grew crystalline coral, hoping they can sell it on the surface, and then tells them the way to the Sea Hag’s temple before departing to rally his people.
The temple has an almost normal architecture, with broad marble walls and numerous statues, fountains, columns, and burning braziers that look to have been looted from ancient Atlantean outposts, or perhaps even the fallen kingdom itself.
The side walls house alcoves with ancient tombs, art objects, and flowers, as well as spiraling stairs leading deeper into the merrow city. The far side of the temple drops below the water, its stairs creating an artificial beach with rolling waves, and floating atop these waves is an enormous pearlescent clam.
As they approach, the clam opens, revealing the most beautiful woman any of them have ever seen, the very image of Aphrodite born from the sea. She begins to sing a lovely song that mesmerizes her guests, and before they realize what is happening, they find themselves surrounded by a small army of vores drawn by the sound.
Feur shouts for Quincy to shoot her, but he is ignored, and then the vore fall upon them.
Anani summons a pair of shades to defend her, and they manage to hold off the vore, but she does not notice when Quincy puts his sawed-off scattergun to the back of her head and pulls the trigger.
Krystal manages to wade out into the water and engage the siren, but the clam closes tight, and even the enchanted blade cannot pierce its shell, especially considering that Krystal’s sword arm is still atrophied from the surgery to remove the parasites she picked up in the fungal swamps.
Kim does her best to keep their attackers away from Valentine, but is slowly overwhelmed.
Feur centers himself and uses his defensive martial arts to deftly dodge his enemies’ blows, but his companions are dying all around him, and just before Valentine is cut down, she tells him to activate the rune.
He nods, and speaks the secret words of command, turning back the clock and reversing the flow of time, until he stands with his companions on the steps of the ancient sunken temple, pondering how best to avoid the mistakes of the past and write a new destiny.
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