The party swam close to one another while quickly pressing through the waters, dark cliffs of coral-blanketed mountainous rock looming shadows down from above. The silence was so unnatural it almost seemed to echo in the sights and sounds of the world around them. The water’s breeze was still and calm and nothing moved as they swept by. No sounds could be heard and no creatures, even tiny bottom-dwellers, seemed to exist except themselves.
“Why is it so silent?” Anna asked the question they had all been thinking. “It’s as if the ocean’s soul has left this place.”
Sift turned back to her. “It’s possible the ocean’s creatures sense something we do not.” As he said this his sight moved from her eyes to the distance behind her. Even in that vastness nothing broke the stillness. And then something, sounding as if it were coming from far away, hummed gently in his ears.
“Something’s coming, young ones,” he warned them while turning again to see if he could see the thing approaching. It had the shape of one of the tailfinned beings and swept so swiftly toward them that within seconds it darted from the point of being almost non-visible to looming down above them. Sift swam up from Lola’s back and latched to the being’s tailfin. “Venge!” he cursed.
“Let loose my fin. I’m not here for you,” the boy gargled and spat into the waters through sharp-gritted teeth, his crimson eyes beaming into Sift’s. “It’s the girl I’m interested in.”
Sift’s arm muscles flexed as he spun, fighting against Venge’s powerful tail in the currents. The boy struck at Sift with his sharp whale-bone knife as the man attempted to dash him into a nearby rock cliff. “Swim!” he shouted to his companions. “I will fend Venge off and meet up with you!”
He climbed up the boy’s fin and latched his grasp to the boy’s neck, driving him toward the sands below. And in the final moment before impact with the ocean floor Venge thrust with his tail against the sands below, thrashing Sift upon the sands instead, causing him to loose his grip upon Venge’s neck.
The remaining threesome hadn’t fled and instead watched the commotion, uncertain of what to do.
Venge rose and pushed swiftly away from Sift, lobbing his tailfin against the man’s chest while propelling himself upwards.
“Protect Anna!” Sift called out to the others. “He wants her.”
Heartbeats seemed to arrive in a slow motion barrage in Maanta’s chest as he rode Archa swiftly to Anna’s side, grasping a long sharp stone shard from the ocean floor as he reached her. A heat burned from behind his eyes as he glared at Venge, who was rushing towards them. “I won’t let you have her,” he spoke before noticing something off about Venge’s movements.
The fiery eyed Venge gargled a sinister laugh while fixing his sight not upon Anna but instead on Illala a ways behind her. Maanta had been attempting to protect Anna, and Sift was headed for them now, but Venge gushed above and behind them, quicker than Maanta could turn to see, wrapping his arms across Illala’s waist and ripping her from Lisaly’s back.
“Wrong girl!” he called out to Sift above Illala’s shrieks and calls for help.
The waters seemed a solid mass, slowing Maanta as he braced his hand to Archa’s smooth forehead, telling her to pursue Venge. Archa and Lola thrust forward, carrying Maanta and Anna to Illala’s aid. With the sight of this Venge beat his powerful tailfin once and, as if he had ceased to have ever come, disappeared to nothing amongst the fathoms behind them.
“Follow him! Sift come atop Lola with me!” Anna called to Sift and then looked back upon the man, a cold hardened look of despair portraying itself upon his features.
“There would be no use. He is too quick and there will be too many places he can hide.” Mentally Sift cursed himself for not gripping tighter to the boy and for not stopping him from stealing off with Illala.
“Well, I’m Zharista now and I say we can’t just give up searching for Illala regardless of if we think it would be impossible to find her,” Anna said. “There are so few of my people left. We must not give up on her.”
“It’s useless. We’ll never find her.”
“Then be alone as a man who has lost his hope. Maanta, will you come with me?”
“Wait,” Sift spoke, his wrist and leg fins gliding him towards her now. “If Venge had meant to kill her then she would be dead. He must have been here for another reason. I know where his home, Sangfoul, is. Surely they are going there. In time we will go there with your and my people to stop what they are doing to our peoples. I pledge this to you. We will find and rescue her. Right now, in this time, there is no use.”
Maanta looked to Illala’s fish, Lisaly, as Sift spoke, a being without its companion.
“We will find her.” He looked into Anna’s eyes. “I promise I will be there when we do and won’t rest until she’s found.”
“Ok, but I’m not stopping until we find her again and I’m holding both of you to your word.”
Sift felt the cool waters play across his lips. “I pledge my soul to you, Anna, until we have saved Illala and your family’s realm has been restored. Accept my trust and friendship.”
As Sift spoke Maanta reassured Anna by placing his hand on hers. Before him the cool bright blue light of midday darkened to a deeper shade, heading toward nighttime hours once more.
“We need to move if we’re to reach Orion’s Birth before darkness falls.” Maanta looked again to Anna’s pure eyes as Sift wove through the waters and settled upon Lola behind her. “I know it will be hard to do but maybe you should ride Lisaly. She’s a friendly and trustable companion. You need something to move more quickly on and surely Illala wouldn’t wish us to leave her companion behind.”
“I was thinking the same thing although I feel kind of bad about it all the same.” Anna’s fins raised her from Lola’s back of glistening multicolored scales before she swam to Lisaly. The smaller fish wriggled and jerked as Anna tried to sit on her but with soothing words and gentle caresses of the hand, Lisaly calmed and let Anna ride her. “She misses Illala but I think she’ll be alright.”
“Follow my lead.” Maanta sped forward upon Archa’s smooth back, watching tiny sand grains beneath him mesh together into a blurred tapestry below.
Anna followed closely, her red curls rippling in the currents, and Sift moved, alert and close, behind her. What had happened once with Illala, the group would not allow to happen again.
Peering from cavern holes and coral weavings below, Maanta saw small fish looking upon them and moving about. Venge must be far off now because they no longer sense him and have resumed their rituals, he thought. A shark glided below them, and they swam slightly higher to avoid it. A family of pink shimmering jellyfish glided beside them for a while as they swept onwards.
Gelu bless Illala, Maanta thought. The world is moving on without her.