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For a brief moment Adalai let himself fantasize about the Mists in the Deep having a totally scientific, material basis that Benthic mythology had distorted into a legend over time. It was the kind of thinking most people back home had indulged often. Over the years since he’d left home he’d spent many a wistful night wondering what his life might have been like if it was true and there were no personal avatars of the inexorable forces of nature. Definitively shorter, for one thing.

However his life had not been short because death, at the very least, had spokesmen. He wondered what the Mists in the Deep actually spoke for. Nothing good, if what Trill said about the Benthic life cycle was accurate.

He wasn’t a huge fan of the way the Stellaris dragged them everywhere underwater but he did appreciate how quickly his Benthic minder got him down to the stone structure they’d discovered. He’d barely started examining it when Trill said, “It looks like the Sign of Folded Water.”

“That’s the primary Benthic god, right?” Cassian asked. “Is that good or bad?”

“The Stellaris don’t venerate any of the creatures the other Benthic worship,” Trill said. “But it was the Lord of Folded Waters who supposedly raised us up from eels and gave us minds and the power to control the tides.”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about the Mists in the Deep?” Adalai asked.

“No. Nothing of their songs or prayers were brought into the Stellaris when we were founded.” She stared blankly at the stone knot for a long moment then shook her head. “I doubt either of them will look on us with favor now.”

“If the Lord of Folded Waters thought it was a good idea for Benthic women to eat all their sisters I’m not sure his favor is something you want,” Verina said. She let herself drift down until she was on the bottom next to the stone formation.

Adalai settled next to her. “Do you see something?”

“No…” But her voice suggested just the opposite.

“Does the Linnorm see something?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not answering my questions right now, which happens every once in a while. This is the first time it’s happened when I’ve been in some kind of immediate danger, though.” She stuck a knuckle between her teeth and chewed on it.

“Have you been in danger a lot in your life?”

“The Slavs are lost, Adalai. I fear we’ll all be in danger until we find our home again.”

There was more truth in that than he wanted to admit so he ignored it. “So I guess we’ll have to figure this thing out on our own.”

“Why are we figuring it out?” Marta asked. “We could still try to bottleneck the Benthic up at the entrance.”

Adalai shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s going to work now. What was it you said back in Fionni, Verina? This whole job has the touch of inevitability to it, right? I think this is why.”

“I did ask you to come on this job because you have a Gift that gives more insight than the norm,” Cassian said. “However, in this case I’m going to need more than ‘a touch of inevitability’ to go along with whatever you’re suggesting.”

Adalai chewed on his lower lip, trying to organize his thoughts. “It’s not as simple or straightforward as you might like, Cassian, but I’ll try my best. The Kings at the Corners are revered in Nerona but they’re not from Nerona, if you see what I mean. Where I’m from we had a name for them but we didn’t have anything like the orders of Heralds, for example.”

“The Slavs are much the same,” Verina said. “But what does that have to do with this?”

“It’s the same concept, I think. The Mists in the Deep are revered by the Benthic but it doesn’t mean said Mists have no influence at all on the rest of us. Or that we have no value to them. Trill says they’re associated with volcanic vents which are created by liquid stone. Clayhearts can turn to stone and the sea dragon had a whole mess of them captured in its lair. A place that also had a scrying pool in it which I am certain was connected to this thing somehow.”

Cassian shook his head. “That doesn’t feel very concrete at all, Adalai.”

“I know, I know. There might be more I could get if I used my Gift on it but I’m fairly certain that if I did I wouldn’t live long enough to share any of it with you.” He rubbed his gloved palm with the tips of his fingers, wondering if he was about to say something foolish. “The worst part is I’m fairly certain those Clayhearts are dead, or close enough to it. I’m afraid that if your brother is up there we’re not getting him back.”

The other man had gone dangerously still. “Why do you think that?”

“Because when I looked into that scrying mirror I saw the King of Stars and I don’t think he was just there because a scrying shows you omens of things to come. Those pearls…” Adalai tasted bile in the back of his throat as he thought of them. “I think those pearls extract the Clayheart’s souls for some purpose. I’ve no doubt that at some point the King will have to take those souls into Eternity and that was the real reason he was there.”

“You can recognize the King of Stars just like that?”

“We’ve met.”

“Yes…” Trill said softly. “You said the only one you hadn’t met was the King of Dawn.”

Cassian ignored her. “You don’t know that-”

“No, I don’t.” Adalai let himself drift up from the seafloor and grabbed the other man by his shoulders. “Your brother may be alive. He may not even be one of the dragon’s prisoners, we didn’t have time to look at all of them. That thing over there might have nothing to do with the Mists in the Deep. But we’re out of options here. We can try and fight that Matriarch and her Benthic, however many there might be, or we can tamper with that thing, whatever it might be. But those are our choices. Only one of them seems like it might get us out of this alive.”

“So let’s get up to the entrance and barricade it before the Benthic get down here,” Marta said.

“He means this,” Trill said, pointing to the stone knot. “Matriarchs can have hundreds or thousands of daughters. There’s no way we can kill them all, even with the strange and unpredictable way human Gifts work.”

“That’s insane,” Marta snapped. She thrust the head of her mace at the knot. “We don’t know what that is and we don’t know how to manipulate it. If we fight the Matriarch at least we know what we’re fighting and when we’ve won, we touch that thing and we might not even realize when it’s killed us.”

“Marta.” It took a second for Adalai to realize who was talking. There was a chill in Cassian’s voice that made him sound like an entirely different person. “Look around. You’re not tired but that makes you the only one. Summoning the Linnorm in water took a lot out of Verina and I doubt she’s going to be able to pull it off again more than once. Adalai has used his gift a lot in the past few hours on top of the puking. Trill and her troops have been dragging us all over the ocean floor for half a day in addition to fighting with the Benthic earlier. Me? I suppose I just don’t have your stamina.”

The last one was the only one that didn’t have a basis in reality. Adalai watched Marta’s face as she looked around her and slowly realized it was true. “Fine. Fine. How are we getting into the middle of this thing, then? I can’t swing a mace fast enough underwater to smash it.”

Cassian peered at the stone, running one gloved finger along it, his sudden grim mood receding for the moment. “It’s not metal, so I can’t help.”

Marta glanced at Trill. “Can you four breathe air at all? I know the ones the dragon enthralled stayed on land for a good while.”

“We can hold water in our chest and breathe from it for nearly one hour if we don’t move much,” the Benthic replied.

“Better suck all that in, then. The rest of you, hold your breath.” Marta unslung her shield and raised it over her head. The metal scale pulsed with light. Unlike with most of the shields she created with her Gift this one did not simply appear at the size she desired. Instead it bubbled out slowly, pushing the water out from a central point and expanding around any solid object that got in the way.

Adalai wasn’t sure why she said to hold their breaths until his ears slipped inside the shield dome and suddenly heard nothing. There wasn’t any water inside the dome she’d created. There also wasn’t any air. It was a vacuum. They were going to have to try and smash the stone knot as fast as they could because he couldn’t breathe water from his chest for nearly as long as a Benthic.

Based on the strain visible on Marta’s face one of the rest of them was going to have to swing her mace for her. He doubted she had the energy to spare. So he reached down and grabbed it, only to drop it again when the Linnorm’s heads peeked into their world. They appeared as soon as there was space, their eyes gleaming with some emotion he couldn’t describe.

The spirit latched both its jaws onto the stone coils and chewed, spectral muscles on its necks standing out in ropes. He shot a look at Verina but she seemed just as surprised to see it as he was. The Benthic fell back from the Linnorm, shielding their faces against the heat they doubtless expected from it. Of course, in a vacuum they were in no danger but he didn’t think people in Nerona encountered those very often.

Adalai tried to find an angle where he could look under the dragon’s jaws. If it needed help prying the stone apart the mace was still near at hand and he wasn’t above contributing his own arm strength to the endeavor. Thanks to that he got a front row seat to the stone structure breaking apart.

It did not look like he’d expected.

Instead of a violent shattering or a sudden crumbling the loops of stone gracefully unfurled, at least at first. It reminded him of a flower blooming. Except halfway through the Linnorm got a solid grip on two of the petals and ripped them right out of the flower with a silent snap. The remaining three loops continued to unfurl until they pointed out and up towards the ceiling like curled fingers.

In the center of the newly created flower was a dull red thing that looked like clay yet glowed with its own light. It released a torrent of white, roiling mist into the vacuum. With no pressure to contend with the mist immediately boiled out to fill the dome, washing over Adalai and obscuring everything around him.

As soon as he was surrounded by mist Adalai noticed three things. First, he could hear again, which meant he was standing in the air or the water once more. Second, the mists were warm but not as hot as one might expect if they were coming out of a lava fed steam vent. Third, he was being watched again.

It had the same feeling as the thing that had watched him when he looked into the scrying mirror. Just much closer. To drive that point home the watcher chose that moment to speak to him.