Heartworm

“Hvyzyahisjta wuxlhvaecaesin, thrisvojta.” The man from earlier returned, flanked on either side by rather intimidating looking Crutia. They were notably lacking any sort of armor, or even weapons as far as I could tell. Was this culture cultivated through a usage of magic for defense? It would explain the way that Nessyndra had earlier thrown me off my balance with the use of magic.

“Right. I guess I’ll take your house special, then? Any chance I can get my food to go?” I gave a smile towards the three fish-like residents and moved to try to walk past them. I doubted it would allow me to circumvent captivity, but I figured it was worth a shot since I had no idea what they were saying to me. The moment I moved towards them, they all flinched and repulsed back towards the doorway of the room. What Nessyndra had been telling me about her people seemed to hold up to testing. They were afraid of me, every word, every motion, it was all read as some kind of threat towards them. It seems that detainment was the next logical step after being threatened.

Rings of water quickly sailed through the air towards me, latching around my forearms with ring after ring of magically controlled water. In total, five rings of tightening water slammed my wrists together and kept them in place. All things considered, having my arms restrained by water was an absolute dream compared to the harsh rusted metal in Thrieve’s underground cell. It was forceful, yet cool. Strong enough to resist any attempted struggle, but still pliable enough to shift around my forearms like a thickened syrup.

“Damn that was fast. I didn’t even get to ask for a drink! Can I get-”

Another ring sailed towards me, this one wrapping around my head, slamming my jaw shut with a ringing impact through my senses. I sent silent blessings to the Gods that my tongue hadn’t been between my teeth when my mouth was slammed shut. Though my tongue would grow back, I didn’t care to deal with the inability to spit out the inevitable collection of blood. Was sarcasm the best way to handle my current situation? Probably not. But without our ability to understand one another there wasn’t much I could have done to improve the situation.

“Voghisvi!” The man in the center, Nessyndra’s father, demanded with a deep reverberating tone.

He did not look pleased in the slightest. From what I could read on Nessyndra’s mostly emotionless face, she was cautious of his intimidating presence. With a sideways nod, he commanded the two individuals on either side of him to lead the way out of the room. Whatever magic they had wrapped around my limbs responded to their movements and started to pull me along at a moderate distance from them. My instincts took over as I was forcibly pulled towards the door. I twisted my feet on the floor as they morphed into the shadowed claws of a Deathless. My talons screeched as they scraped across the floor until they sunk into the ground to hold me in place against the tugging of the magical rings.

A cacophony of indecipherable words erupted from nearly everyone in the room. In just a few moments Nessyndra’s father had pulled Nessyndra away from me, wrapping her up in his own scaled arms as he turned his back towards me to shield her from what he clearly perceived to be an immediate threat. The two escorts had immediately leapt into action. The ‘guard’ on the left flicked his three fingered hand forward, sending a surge of water towards me that stopped just inches away from my neck, extending into a spike of water, much like the very same Lilith had made using blood. A simple, yet effective weapon to construct and manipulate with magic, it seems. The ‘guard’ on the right spread their hands apart to spread a large but thin wall of water between me and the rest of them. I had to respect the incredible speed with which all of them responded to my semi-transformation. I had no intentions for it to be a threat, truly acting on reflex to prevent myself from being pulled off of my balance.

Without the ability to speak with the ring around my head like a tacky improvised bonnet, it was very difficult to explain the situation. Not that my explanation would mean very much to the Crutia. I wasn’t even sure if my tongue was capable of moving in a way to make the sort of sounds they made when speaking.

“Pok! Vuthhi rsjsh thric duxr!” Nessyndra pushed herself away from her father as she yelled at the other three. She continued to plead towards the others, but without her yelling anymore, I could only hear distant sibilance that made just as much sense as a cotton candy swimming costume. Whatever she had said to them, it seemed to work. The wall of water, as well as the spear of water that gently pressed up against my neck dissipated. Nessyndra took a step towards me, before being held back by her Father grabbing her hand.

“Please do not fight, Ester. They will not harm you. I will meet you in your cell with a fish soon, I promise.” Nessyndra spoke in Kistrin, much to my relief. Her father scowled at her as she spoke, though it was hard to determine if it was a scowl of anger or confusion. The idea of simply handing myself over to be placed in a cell was incredibly unappealing. Especially considering my recent stint in the Thrieve containment program that the Empire had swiftly put together just for me.

But Nessyndra was asking for trust, and if there was anyone I could put my trust in while deep beneath the Uroro lake, it would be the fish lady that saved me from a nautical demise. Hesitantly, I undid the transformation of my feet, returning them to a human appearance and allowing the escorts to draw me forwards towards the door of the room.

The many thoughts racing through my mind were dashed by the sensation of stepping through the doorway. I had seen the guards walk through first, in the same way that Nessyndra’s father had, simply walking through the viscous material. It didn’t change how strange it felt to slip through the door, a layer of moisture clinging to my face and body as I walked through. Without the ability to spit the slime out from between my lips, or wipe away the layer of mucus-like water with my hands, I was forced to follow after the guards with the clinging moisture blurring my vision and providing an entirely new sensory experience.

My curiosity plucked away at my mind, thinking of all of the reasons that they would construct entryways in such a manner. The guards didn’t seem to mind the layer of wetness that clung to them, which would make sense if they had adjusted to it over the course of their lifetimes. But there had to be a reason the doors were made of a thickened kind of water rather than the other material that walls and floors seemed to be made of. I hoped that if I survived my underwater vacation in Uroro, I might be able to get some answers from Nessyndra.

After five minutes of being pulled along through the walkways of Uroro, with every single Crutia I saw running or backstepping away from me out of fear, we arrived at what must have been their prison. I was placed inside of one of the cells before the water restraints around my head and arms were dispelled, soaking me in even more water. The first thing I did with my newfound freedom of my arms was to wipe away the slick liquid from my face, as well as wring out the remaining liquid that had soaked my hair. Once I had reached the most amount of comfort I was likely to find so far out of my depth, I took a seat in the center of the cell and did just about the only thing I could do. Wait.

* * * * *

“Ester? Are you there, Dryling?” I wasn’t hearing Crutian, which meant there was only one person it could be. Nessyndra had finally made it to my cell after 20 minutes of idleness. All I had managed to do in that time was fret over what could possibly be happening with Cecelia and the rest of the Belligerent Bandits. That, and accommodating myself with the strange material that most everything in Uroro was made of. The material was a soft light blue, that seemed to become more of a purple tone the more thin the material was. As far as I could tell from messing with the floor in the cell, it was alive. Or at least seemed to be composed of some biological material. Perhaps it was some kind of deep aquatic plant that had been utilized for construction due to its firm impermeable form. It did start to provoke some unsettling questions about the entirety of Uroro as a city. Were we inside of a larger creature? How did the Crutia in the city feel about the material?

All questions that I had yet to find an answer for when Nessyndra found me.

“Dryling? Seems a bit inaccurate considering the doors I had to sludge through.” I spoke from the center of the cell where I sat. Fortunately, I had not been tightly bound to the wall of the cell this time around.

“Ah. Another joke! You are an artist of your words, Ester. Unfortunately the current state of how wet you are does not change your nature as a Dryling. Otherwise you would not have to be saved from drowning.”

“Right. So… Dryling is just your word for anything that isn’t Crutia.”

“A word, yes. Surface dwellers, Drylings, Scale-barren. That is the closest approximation of the words in Crutian. We have many terms to describe that which we fear.”

“I understand. I was taught innumerable terms at Varenthell to describe demons. None too kind, in retrospect.” I relented, thinking of all of the different ways that demons were referred to not only by other students but also the professors in the academy.

“The fish you requested, Ester.” Nessyndra said, revealing an extremely disoriented looking fish that was suspended within a capsule of floating water that Nessyndra seemed to manipulate using her hands. The capsule of water must have been enchanted to be thick around the circumference to allow the fish to wiggle around within a contained environment. The care that she had put into bringing the fish to me only made me feel worse about what I needed to do. I had never once felt bad about eating fish before, but there was something unsettling about the concept when faced with someone who thought of fish like family.

“Oh. Right. You can leave if you’d like. I don’t think you’d like what you’d see very much.” I spoke softly towards the woman, whose seaweed-like hair sloughed over her face, covering her left eye. I thought it was hair at least, based solely on the position on the top of her head. It seemed to be made up of the same teal seaweed-like material that her three floating tails were made of. It gave her an overall ethereal sort of appearance.

“We do not have much time. I will turn around, you will eat, and then we will continue before our time runs out.” Nessyndra relayed her plan to me with confidence in her words. It clashed heavily with the hesitance in her eyes, but I made no effort to question it. Clearly she seemed to have already prepared for this while bringing the fish here. She floated the fish towards me within its magical capsule and dispelled her magic when it was directly over my open hands.

The fish landed within my grasp as the water splashed onto the floor by my knees. It was curious to watch as the excess water was gently absorbed into whatever material the walls and floors were made of. As soon as the fish landed in my hands, Nessyndra whirled around to face away from me.

“I can’t believe how fast that Deathless deboned that fish.” Nessyndra said, in a cadence that made her sound like she was reciting the words to a kind of ritualistic spell. “Is it done?” She added hesitantly, a few moments after her previous recitation of the joke I had told her earlier. It clicked in that moment that she must not have understood my words as a joke.

“No, sorry. I can eat fast, but that whole thing I said earlier, it was just a saying. ‘I’ll debone them faster than you can say I can’t believe how fast that Deathless deboned that fish.’ It’s like a joke… but like a format? I don’t know how to really describe it to be honest. Lemme dig in and we can just move on, yeah?”

“Okay.” It didn’t sound like she was fully following along.

As fast as I could, I sunk my teeth into the flesh of the fish. For the sake of Nessyndra, I did my best to limit the visceral noises that came with devouring the creature before me. With the taste of blood nourishing my senses, I was reminded of just how hungry I was. Lilith had gone above and beyond with expending our magic on the docks and I was paying the price right now. I was beyond thankful for the ability to eat something, however. It left me craving more, but it was enough to hold me over until I was ideally back on land. Back with the Bandits.

Once I had finished plucking the small bones from my mouth to prevent swallowing them, I moved all of the bones just behind where I was sitting so that they would be out of sight of Nessyndra. I was fairly sure that as a Deathless I was capable of eating the bones as well, but since I had yet to experiment with that, and my resident answerer of questions, Lilith, was nowhere to be seen, I relented.

“Done. Do you mind telling me more about what you said earlier? There’s absolutely no way that I can learn Crutian in an hour or two. I doubt I’d even be able to repeat a single word.”

“I understand your concerns. I do not believe a Dryling has learned Crutian in recent history. Some of our legends tell of people from long ago that communicated with our kind from the surface, but I find them hard to believe. There is very little proof that comes with the legends we tell. They are stories of faith more than fact.”

“Well I was worried I wouldn’t be able to learn Crutian, but now that you’ve assured me that it’s never happened before I’m incredibly confident.”

“You are excellent practice for me to better understand sarcasm.” Nessyndra replied, her eyes ever glossy and curious.

“Happy to be of service. Seriously though, you’re not giving the best pep talk.” I relented, resisting the overwhelming urge to roll my eyes as I spoke.

“You will learn our language. My grandmother will show you. You must trust me, and choose this of your own volition, Ester. Do you wish to learn from my grandmother, my rlvurrerossta?”

“If she doesn’t mind talking to a disease-ridden Deathless, or whatever Crutia view me as, sure.”

“I doubt she would care much in her current state.” Nessyndra spoke, kneeling down at the edge of the cell’s ‘bars’. It was improper to call them bars, when it was instead an odd mixture of threaded strips of the biological material. Between the lattice of wallthing that contained me, Nessyndra ushered me forwards with her hand. “Come here, Ester. We cannot afford to waste time.”

I hesitantly crawled towards the barrier as Nessyndra asked me to do. “Bring her out then. Let me see the brave woman that doesn’t care to talk to Uroro’s hottest celebrity threat.”

“Here she is.” Nessyndra spoke softly as she pulled a small, thin, pink crystal from the bag she had strapped to her back.

“Your grandmother is a crystal? I’m just gonna say it, Crutia culture makes no fuckin’ sense to me, Nessie.”

“My grandmother is not a crystal. These are her remains. Her remnants will help you to prepare for your trial. You need only take the crystal inside of you and everything else will sort itself out.” Nessyndra spoke to me with a calm expression that deeply contrasted with the insanity that was coming from her mouth. I didn’t even know where to begin.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“No excrement abound, Ester. Please turn around and brace. Unless you’d rather be prosecuted unjustly without any ability to defend yourself.” Nessyndra motioned with her hand for me to spin around in place.

Every part of me wanted to reject the offer. By all means, I was powerful enough to escape this situation on my own. With enough time, I could shred my way through the walls, slaughter anyone in my path, and find a way to swim back to the surface. But that wasn’t me. I was horrified enough that without Lilith to help me hold it back, my subconscious would have drained every poor villager in Urden to survive. I couldn’t entertain those thoughts.

“Do it. I better not be paying any fucking attourney fees after this.”