The light came first. Not the hard, reflective glare of sun on snow, but a soft, pulsing radiance that breathed from the walls themselves.
Koronos opened his eyes to a world of liquid blue and green. He lay on a bed of resilient, spongy kelp, beneath an arching ribcage of coral that glowed with an inner, shifting light. The air was cool, thick with the scent of salt, ozone, and something organic, like crushed sea-blossoms. A low, resonant hum vibrated through the floor, a deep geological song.
He was inside a giant geode, but one grown by nature, not carved by stone. The chamber was an organic cathedral, its walls a mosaic of living coral, mother-of-pearl, and crystal that filtered a dim, aqueous light from beyond. Schools of tiny, bioluminescent fish drifted like living constellations in pockets of water held aloft by unseen forces. He could feel the immense, silent pressure of the ocean all around them, held at bay by a power as old as the bedrock.
Memory returned in a cold rush: the sabotaged portal, the lurch through screaming void, the crash onto a white sand beach beneath a crushing sun. Then, the silent, pale figures emerging from the surf, their large, dark eyes unblinking, their movements unnervingly graceful. There had been no fight. Only assessment, and a polite, implacable insistence.
They were guests.
He sat up. On similar beds, his surviving band stirred. Corvannafax was already on her feet, her crimson skin a violent splash of color against the serene blues, her hand on the hilt of her majikal Bergian crystal sword. Daggeroth sat curled in on himself, his eyes wide, taking in the impossible beauty with the hollow stare of one who has seen too much horror to process wonder. Zeyzey stood by a flowing curtain of living seaweed, her fingers tracing the patterns of light with a calculating curiosity. Shelove was a shadow in a recess, her golden eyes gleaming, her mind brushing his with a sense of strange-calm-deep-place.
The curtain parted without a sound.
She entered, and the chamber seemed to still. Matriarch Neri was tall, her skin the color of pearlescent, moonlit milk, traced with delicate, silvery patterns that mirrored the veins of the coral. Her hair was not hair, it seemed more a living cascade of fine, translucent cilia that moved in a slow, current-less dance. Her eyes were the deepest azure, flecked with points of bioluminescent turquoise. She wore no armor, only draped robes of woven kelp and fitted plates of abalone shell. Power radiated from her, not as a blistering aura, but as a profound, deep-ocean stillness. Koronos recognized the signature, the unique gravity. An Everliving.
"The storm-wrought sleeper awakes," she said, her voice a melody of liquid consonants and soft vowels, as if spoken through water. Her gaze settled on Koronos, and he felt a gentle, immense pressure, like the first fathom of descent. "Be at ease, Koronos of Kazar, from the other world beyond our skies. You are in the Pearl Court of the White Malataks of Oceanus. You are not captives. You are… a curiosity and a new piece on the game board of statecraft."
Koronos rose to his full height, the Sword of the First a comforting weight at his side. "You know what I am."
A slight incline of her head. "The song of the Everliving is distinct. Yours is… untuned. Raw. A chord struck on the surface, where the winds scream. Mine is of the quiet deep, where the great pressures shape." She glanced at the others. "Your companions are a discordant note in that chord. The broken one," her eyes touched Daggeroth, who flinched, "carries the old blood of the Island-kin, whom we shelter. The red one is an echo of a war we do not wish to endlessly wage. The witch," her gaze lingered on Zeyzey, "is a lit fuse, waiting for a spark." Neri's eyes studied Zeyzey for far too long, as if seeing something others cannot; perhaps she can? Her Everliving Powers are a black box of mystery wrapped in a blanket of raw power.
Corvannafax bristled. "We are not a song. We are survivors, Bergia capital has likely fallen to the Nightland incursion. Your entire realm is in terrible danger from beyond. We need passage east, to the Emberhold."
Neri's placid expression did not change. "Interesting, this will create a power imbalance on the surface world. About the warm and hot lands of our crimson cousins. A place of loud pride and bright death. Why would you seek such a place?"
"A way home, and if it pleases me, we must warn them of what's coming," Koronos said, his voice grating in the soft chamber. "Our path was broken by a Bergian sorceress that was loyal to a fool, a fool that is now dead. We require a new pathway home, perhaps Emberhold has such a device, unless you do?"
"Ah, and what of the Bergian emperor?" Neri drifted closer, her long exotic hair swaying. "The portals of the land-walkers are crude things and I believe they have such a device. And no, we don't have a device that can take you back to your realm, ours only goes to Spires. We of Oceanus know the sea-roads, the currents that fold distance. We can take you to the shores of Emberhold on a vessel swift and sure, made by the finest human craftsman." She paused, letting the offer hang in the luminescent air. "But the sea gives nothing freely. A balance must be struck. A service for a passage."
Koronos crossed his arms. "Naturally. And the ancient blue emperor is also dead, but not by my hand or by the hand of any of my own. But, what is a Spires?"
"It's another realm, a shattered world from the Great Fall that was loosely stitched back together by the gods from the Void. Neutrality is our covenant, as best as we can anyway, but with the troubles in Bergia, this may prove to be a difficult policy," Neri explained, her tone turning solemn. "We shelter the surface-kin, the humans of the outer isles, for a debt incurred when the world was young. We take no side in the wars of Red and Blue that scorch and freeze the realm, unless it suits us. But our peace is maintained by balance. A sacred trust has been violated."
She gestured, and the light in the chamber dimmed, coalescing into an image above her palm: a lustrous, milky pearl, from which a soft, calming light pulsed in rhythm with a slow heartbeat.
"The Tear of Talquoo," Neri intoned. "It rests in the heart of the geothermal vents that warm our city and power its shields. Its resonance calms the molten anger of the earth, allowing us to live in harmony with the fire within the abyssal black depths. It has been stolen. By our own kind, led astray by whispers from the midnight places."
The image shifted, showing a fissure in the ocean floor, glowing not with healthy earth-fire, but with a sickly, greenish luminescence. A shape, vast and tentacled, coiled in the gloom.
"Without the Tear, the vents will grow unstable. Within a cycle of the twin moon, they will erupt. Our Pearl Court, and all within it, will be boiled away into nothing." Her dark, star-flecked eyes held Koronos's. "You are a force of nature, Koronos… you don't even understand the magnitude of your powers. Your power speaks to the wild heart of things. You can go where we cannot, into the deep rage, and retrieve what was lost. The defilers and the thing that whispers to them… they have attuned the depths to reject our song. It is a poison to us. But you…" Her azure eyes fixed on him. "Your song is alien. Wild. It is of storm and earth and raw will. Do this, and our swiftest ship will carry you to your…" She paused, the turquoise flecks in her eyes swirling for a moment. "...to your redlands fate." The word fate hung in the air, too specific, too final. She recovered seamlessly. "My apologies. To your destiny, of course."
Silence filled the chamber, broken only by the hum of the living city. Koronos felt the weight of the proposal. It was not a request, but a test, woven into an offer they could not refuse.
Daggeroth, from his corner, spoke in a cracked whisper, his eyes fixed on Neri. "You… shelter the humans, humans are here in this realm?"
Neri turned her serene gaze to him. "We do and they are indeed. On the volcanic islands and atolls above because they are not welcomed in the lands of the reds and blue Malataks. They are the children of those who once aided us. Their safety is our promise. Your blood is their blood, broken one. You are, in a way, already home."
Daggeroth said nothing more, but a single, silent tear traced a path through the grime on his cheek. It was the first sign of feeling he had shown since the chittering, shambling shadows of the Nightlands had scoured his mind in Bergia.
Koronos looked at his battered, diminished band: his vengeful shield, his broken witness, his treacherous witch, his silent hunter animal friend. Then he looked at the Matriarch, this serene power of the deep who held their fate in her pale hands.
"Tell me of these midnight places," he rumbled. "And of the thing that whispers there."
Neri's expression finally shifted, a ripple of profound, ancient sorrow crossing her features.
"It is a piece of the quiet dark between the stars," she said. "A fragment that fell and learned to swim. It hates the song we sing. And it would see us silenced."
The deal was laid bare. To get to a war, they must first dive into an abyss.
"Very well, we will get your Tear of whatever-you-said," Koronos said, the words a vow etched in stone.
Neri bowed her head, the points of light in her eyes gleaming like drowned stars. "Then prepare to see the true dark," she said. "And may the deep have mercy on us all."