Kia Veil Netherrealm's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Six sailors gone in a month, and Kia Veil Netherrealm meant to name the thing that took them. She counted the empty hammocks each night from her tarot house of black stone and gold. A restless spirit haunted the black sand tides. It dragged drowned men down into the water. Kia listened to spirits and read their answers in her cards. Tonight she would force the spirit to point her the right way. She knelt at the dark pool ringed with rough black rocks. The water lay flat as glass. Her blindfold let her see past it, into the realm where the dead still spoke. She pulled her deck close and shuffled the black and gold cards. Sayd Fin slid up beside her. He was her lover, and he loved the cards as much as she did. His black and yellow tail curled against the stone. "You shouldn't read alone," he said. "Not for this one." "I read better when you're near." She squeezed his hand. "Watch the pool. Tell me what moves." Kia held the cards over the water and let go. They rose instead of falling. The deck spun upward in a slow spiral, each card turning in the air. She reached through her veil and asked the question aloud. "Which way do the sailors go?" Three cards broke from the spiral. They dropped and floated on the black water. The first showed a drowned figure sinking. The second showed a deep pool with no bottom. The third showed a hand reaching up. "Down," Kia whispered. "It pulls them down and holds them. There's a place under the tides where it keeps them." Sayd leaned over the water. "Kia. Look." The pool rippled without wind. A shape climbed out of the dark and gripped the stone rim. It was a merkitty, soaked and shaking. Its small face sagged. Its clawed hand stretched toward Kia and then went limp on the rock. She caught it before it slid back. The creature weighed almost nothing. Its blue eyes barely opened. "It came up through the pool," Sayd said. "From below." "Then the pool connects to the place the cards showed." Kia held the shivering merkitty against her chest. "It escaped. The others are still down there." The merkitty's claws twitched. It made one weak sound, then sagged again, spent from the climb. Kia looked at the three cards on the water. The spirit lived beneath the black sand tides, and this dark pool was a door to it. She had her direction now. She also had proof the sailors were alive down there, trapped and waiting. She wrapped the merkitty in her arm and turned to Sayd. "We know where it hides. Now we have to go down and bind it before it takes anyone else." Sayd stared at the pool. "Down there. Into its own house." "Yes," Kia said. "Into its own house."