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After spending the better part of a day in total darkness Adalai was overjoyed to find himself in natural light once more, no matter how distant the source. The arrival at half a dozen armed Benthic did little to dampen his mood. The natural difficulty of moving through water did make drawing his weapons harder than normal and he omitted his usual flourish as he leveled their points at the undersea denizens but for a brief moment he was optimistic about their ability to deal with the creatures, out numbered or not.

Then the Benthic came to a stop floating ten feet overhead and Adalai realized the obvious. If it was just a question of martial skill they might have had a chance. However the Benthic were built for the water and in it they had the luxury of fighting in all three dimensions. Land bound bravos didn’t stand a chance.

One of the Benthic lifted up its spear and a voice echoed over them. “Dry born souls,” the creature said in rich, feminine tones. “The Gulf of Lum is closed to you. Is there not a treaty between our people and yours, signed by Lum the First and Porphyrio del Torrence? The arid land is pledged to the sons of men and the sinking land to the Benthic Stellaris. You have no place here.”

Adalai let his weapons drift down until the points were towards the sea floor. He’d never heard of a treaty with the Benthic. He did know that the City of Torrence was ruled by a family that shared its name. The Torrence family also had a claim to the throne in Lome, so perhaps one of them had come to an agreement with the Benthic at some point and signed it on behalf of all Nerona.

Unfortunately he was not in a position to explain that.

As soon as he realized that Adalai found himself staring impatiently at Verina, waiting for her to say something. While Cassian had already reached that epiphany and Marta didn’t lag too far behind the two of them, the Benthic themselves apparently weren’t waiting on an answer. “You will be held prisoner until such a time as the descendants of Torrence shall answer our summons and explain this injustice.”

“Wait!” Verina called finally realizing she was the only one who could communicate with the creature. “How long has there been any treaty between Nerona and the Benthic?”

The spokesperson for the guards drifted down until Cassian’s head was roughly equal with its waist. For the first time Adalai had the opportunity to take a good, hard look at a Benthic. To his surprise they did not look a much like the creatures they had seen the day before.

Their tails were long and thick but the edges were lined with delicate, almost frond like fins. Their upper bodies were more humanoid than Adalai had presumed. They had two arms in much the shape and place you might expect and their fingers, while decidedly webbed, were otherwise quite human.

The biggest difference was in their faces and heads. They had no hair, just more of the delicate fronds, on top of their heads and the eyes in front were small, beady and solid black with no visible pupils. The overall shape of the skull was more tear dropped than egg like. They had no discernible nose. And, of course all their exposed skin was covered in light blue-green scales.

The leader wasn’t showing much skin, though. She was covered, from neck to what Adalai thought were her hips, in what looked like the shell of a crab. It was presumably a form of armor. He wasn’t sure how effective it would be against steel weapons, though here under the ocean he suspected facing steel wasn’t something the Benthic did on a regular basis. She wore a helmet of the same material that covered the top and sides of her head but left most of her face visible.

Even without the helmet Adalai wasn’t sure how to read her expression. Like a fish, most of the Benthic’s skull bones were very close to the skin, leaving little flexibility in her face. The creature did have clear eyelids that flicked and fluttered and the fronds on her head twitched in ways that seemed to have nothing to do with the currents in the water. As she spoke to Verina the gills on her neck fluttered. Adalai wondered if that was how she spoke or if their speech was some kind of magic innate to the Benthic.

“How is it you speak on the waves, dry born?” The Benthic asked. “Even among the dry born those who can survive in the bosom of the ocean cannot speak without air.”

“I’m not sure,” Verina replied. “We fled into the tunnels behind us to escape a dragon that emerged from the ocean. Until we did that I had never put my whole self below water. I was as surprised to discover I could speak here as you were.”

At the mention of the sea dragon the Benthic leader motioned with her spear. Two of her underlings slipped past the human quartet into the tunnels with great speed. “You are fortunate to survive,” she said. “That creature has enslaved many of the Benthic Tidallais and bent them to its dark works. Does it still pursue you still?”

“No. When I last saw it the tunnels proved too narrow for it to proceed.”
For once Adalai was glad he couldn’t speak under water, it made clamping down on his laugh fairly simple. The Benthic leader just nodded. “It has always come over the arid walls in the past so I am not surprised.”

“You’re familiar with the dragon?”

“It has been a plague the Stellaris as well as the Tidallis for some eight cycles of the evening light.”

Verina perked up a bit. “Perhaps we could offer you some help with the dragon to compensate for our trespass in your territory? We came here because we were in great danger. Furthermore I have never heard of a treaty between you and the Prince of Torrence.”

“Yet it exists.” The two Benthic that had left earlier now returned. Adalai didn’t hear them say anything but from the way they stared at their leader while gesturing he got the feeling they were communicating somehow. After a few seconds of that the leader gestured down at the anemones. The other Benthic quickly began moving the glowing things out of the way. The lead Benthic motioned them out of the ring. “You will come with us.”

Verina gave a resigned nod. “If we must. Where are we going?”

The Benthic leader bobbed along beside them at head height but with her body trailing behind her, parallel to the sea floor. “You will be taken to the Nest of the Ursus. The dry born can be held there until the Court of Torrence takes custody of you.”

Cassian grabbed Verina’s arm and gestured to her. The Slavic woman gave him a blank look. “What?”

Cassian tried a number of things, like counting on his fingers, pointing upwards and finally clapping his hands in rhythmic fashion. Verina did her best. “Numbers? The sea? Applause? Clapping? Counting claps…” The idea visibly clicked into place. “Counting time. How long will it take for someone from Torrence to answer you?”

“It depends. In the time I have served the Descendants of Lum it has taken between eight and twenty days. However no one has come to us from the Court in the last four cycles. You may have to wait at Ursus Nest quite some time.”

Cassian immediately got upset, trying to tell Verina something with an increasingly frantic set of gestures. She ignored him, instead staring off into space for a long moment. “Tell me, do you know how many dry born have been found in this area in the last month? Or the last cycle.”

The Benthic leader gave her a sharp look. “I haven’t found any but there are many who patrol these waters just as there are many who guard the arid wall, as we do. Are you seeking someone who was lost?”

“Yes, some of us are.”

“Then you will be given the chance to look for them at the Nest. I can tell you no more.”

Cassian calmed down some after he heard that but he still didn’t look very happy about it. Although he lacked the other man’s personal stakes in the matter Adalai was sympathetic. Hopefully they’d reach the Nest quickly. He also wanted out of the water as fast as possible. It was cold, dark and the boyancy made every movement three times more difficult than it needed to be. Frankly, he didn’t know why anyone deliberately trespassed on Benthic territory.

The walk from the exit of the mines to the Ursus Nest was hard to judge, what with the lack of sun from above and the lack of watches in Nerona but Adalai guessed it took them almost two hours. By the end of it even the Benthic were visibly frustrated with their pace. It had to be nice having the option to swim freely over any obstacle in their way. Adalai was tempted to try it himself once but as he started testing how much upward motion he could create using his arms the guard leader said, “Stay on the sea floor. The currents here are strong. Few humans have the strength to swim against them. Even if you were one of them you’d do better to conserve your strength for the journey.”

So they walked. The sea floor proved very beautiful. There were plenty of anemones littering the sea floor, most casting a dim light like those they’d seen by the mine. The mix of pale blue, green and yellow light gave the ocean an unearthly appearance. The leafy and frondy sea plants that sprouted among them cast odd and haunting shadows. The silhouette of fish darted among them but didn’t approach. They seemed as wary of Benthic as rabbits were of humans.

Ursus Nest itself was a sight as well. Adalai had been expecting coral, as it was something sturdy and relatively easy to shape underwater. If you had the time to direct its growth, at least. However Ursus Nest proved to be an enormous cave complex that looked like it had been carved out of a spur of rock. It towered almost forty feet off the sea bed. It was a halfmoon shape with the bottom pointed towards them. The sides tapered slightly towards the top and were riddled with openings. A constant stream of Benthic were coming in and out of it.

Their escorts brought them in through a lower entrance. Instead of going up into the main spur of rock the entrance sloped down into a large cavern. They stopped at the entrance, which had an odd distortion across it. “You will stay here,” the Benthic lender announced. “The captain may wish to question you about the dragon but that may not happen some time. You will be fed meals that have proven compatible with humans.”

Verina nodded and said, “Of course. Are all the humans the Benthic capture held here?”

“Only those captured by the Stellaris. Enter now.”

There wasn’t much to do but cross the distortion. It proved to be little more them a sideways surface to the ocean. On the other side was breathable air, dim lighting provided by anemones is shallow pools scattered about and maybe a dozen people scattered about a cavern some fifty or sixty feet in diameter. The air was damp and fishy but very breathable. Adalai indulged in a few deep breaths before he took stock of the rest of the situation.

Naturally, Cassian was already marching through the cavern looking people over. “Is there a Cazador Clayheart here? Or anyone who traveled here with him?”

“Sorry, friend,” said a big man with particularly long hair and beard growth. “The name isn’t familar.”

“Is there any other place the Barthic keep prisoners?”

“If you try to escape they put you somewhere else,” the bearded man replied. “If he got here before me he could have wound up there before I saw him. But I’ve been here a good six mouths, maybe more. It’s hard to keep track down here.”

Marta paused in the middle of wringing out her kerchief. “No. It’s been longer than that. Braxton, is that you?”

The bearded man straightened up in surprise. “Marta Towers?”