They fed for a surprisingly short time until they turned their massive heads to the surface and flew in elegant wing beats over the top of the volcano and away.
I’d just watched the last one slip over the edge when something very big swirled the glittering water as it swept past me. It moved in fits and starts and swirled around the edge of the volcano frighteningly quickly. Within minutes it was approaching me again.
I flattened myself against the rock as much as I could and watched in fascinated horror as it slowed. A huge black eye regarded me coldly from within a volume of red flesh that was far wider than the length of my body and expanded rapidly as I watched. A jet of swirling water sent it skimming away from me at an incredible pace. Its tentacles trailed behind it, one of them curling and searching the water before reaching out lazily and wrapping experimentally around my thigh before whipping away.
My leg burned where its cold flesh had touched mine and within moments I could smell blood.
In the glow from the plankton I could see several puncture marks mid-thigh where the octopus or squid, I wasn’t sure what type of creature could get that big, had touched me.
Clamping my hand over the wound I searched for somewhere to hide. The rock face formed an impenetrable wall around the circumference of the volcano. The only escape was up or down and both routes were filled with water I was sure the creature could move through faster than I could.
I couldn’t see it any more, so I followed the perimeter of the volcano searching for the pinkish glow that had surrounded it. There was nothing. Perhaps I was too big for it to eat and it had found some other prey. The thought seemed more hopeful than likely.
The absence of colour and light directly in front of me expanded rapidly until suddenly a cloud of blindingly bright luminescent ink stunned me momentarily. Immediately several tentacles snaked towards me through the day-bright water.
Sound filled the space around me with a series of booming clicks that seemed to reverberate around the volcano and echo through the water. The combination of speed and light and sound was overwhelming as I watched the creature attack. The bite of a tentacle as it wrapped, snake-like, around my waist shook me from my shock. I grabbed at it, pulling with all my might as it curled in on itself and drew me towards the red-tinged black just beyond the still fading light it had injected into the water.
Desperately focusing my mind on strength I yanked at the tentacle again, this time managing to pull it from my waist just in time for another to wrap more firmly around my hips and a third to encircle my arm.
I screamed then, ineffectual blasts of sound that no one could hear and would do nothing to deter the hunter from making me its prey.
I was trying to loosen my arms from its painfully determined grip to make a ball of energy when I felt rather than saw the creature’s demise. A brief shudder of horror and fear rippled through its tentacles and was cut short as it stopped pulling me towards its mouth and released me instead, before it abruptly disappeared in a swirl of water.
The unmistakeable silhouette of a whale against the still luminescent water was macabrely marred by the wavering tentacles of the creatures in its mouth as it dove into the blackness of the depths.
I was horribly aware that where there was one hunter there was likely to be others, and if the whale ate creatures that big, I would be just as tasty a snack.
The realisation that I was helpless and very much alone solidified my impending death in my mind, because whether I swam out of the volcano or deeper into its belly, predators lurked everywhere and I was badly injured.
I was angry with myself, unable to make peace with the death I knew was coming, unable to say goodbye to Merrick and my family, unable to give up the responsibility I’d been given to help the Oceanids. My defiance seeped methodically away from me as I drifted in a cloud of pain and disappointment and the smell of my own blood as it filled the water around me.
Hands pulled me into the darkness of the rock as the murmur of worried voices drifted through my half-conscious dreams. Neith’s name was mentioned a few times and every time it was, I fought my failing body to wake and fight before the heavy exhaustion pushed me back down again.
Cruel laughter and the prodding of my wounds made me angry, but not angry enough to summon the energy to retaliate. I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone.
And then it was quiet again and I could drift in the dark heavy peace that surrounded me.
My eyes had a milky film over them when I pushed my lids open. I blinked but they didn’t clear. My hand, when I moved it to rub my eyes, brushed against a strange filmy substance that seemed to surround me and only came into focus when I pressed my hand against it.
It had an odd leathery texture and was translucent enough to allow the light through but not enough to provide any real details of the environment outside of it. It gave a little with the pressure from my hand but held enough rigidity to keep it from stretching out of shape.
My still confused mind was easily distracted by the unfamiliar texture beneath my fingers. I inspected my hand in horror, watching as the fine silvery net that encased each finger glittered in the faint light.
I pulled at the fabric. It was strands of hair-fine steel woven into a mesh that had been sewn in intricate detail into a head-to-toe garment for me. It fitted my body skimming up my bare legs and arms, encasing each finger and toe before billowing slightly at my neck, allowing my hair to float in the water. The elegant robe I’d hurriedly dressed in before diving into the ocean had been replaced by two narrow strips of coarse fabric that encircled my hips and chest leaving the rest of me naked. I didn’t want to know who had dressed me in this revealing outfit that fit so perfectly to my body.
I tried to turn around in the narrow space only to find the capsule I was in didn’t allow for that much movement.
Claustrophobia clawed up my throat as I pushed at the capsule again, desperate to find a way out. I tried to rip the capsule open, my net-encased fingers clawing ineffectually at the smooth “skin” that surrounded me.
I’d begun to panic when I saw the sliver of clear blue water above me. A narrow rubbery-lipped gap in the capsule stretched as I squeezed my stiff and sore body out into the water.
The capsule was attached to the floor of my cell – that was the only way to describe the rock-encased room with finger-thin slits at the very top and very bottom of one wall – by a purplish umbilical cord and it swayed in the slight current as the water moved in and out of the cell.
I examined the space in minute detail, which didn’t take very long as it was a box of stone only five paces wide, and deep and just a little higher than my head.
Blasting my way out of it was my first thought, but as I tried to form a ball of energy between my palms, pressing them together expectantly, a shiver of fear replaced the power that had run through my veins only a short while ago, because nothing happened.
I’d been confused trying to get out of the capsule, the absence of the strength I’d grown so used to a mere backdrop to the panic of being so tightly confined. Now though, when I needed to escape, I couldn’t seem to create the ball of energy that would ensure my release.
I closed my eyes, focusing my mind intently. The only sound was the muffled hush of the water as it pressed in on my ears.
It was my own fear in the end that forced me to face my vulnerability, because even as I felt it blossoming in my chest, thick with anxiety and panic, I couldn’t see any evidence of it in the colours of the water. Not a single wisp of spiritus drifted from my skin.
I was completely ordinary and that, for the first time in my life, spelt disaster.
How