Princess Araxa's Arc

Chapter 2 of 14

Araxa moves through the water with the bone blade strapped to her side. Tide swims close, his silver glow steady in the dark. The deep feels different now. Less empty. Something down here sees her, knows she exists. The thought sits strange in her chest, half comfort and half warning. The seafloor drops away ahead, and light bleeds upward through a crack in the stone. Not the soft blue glow of the creature's cavern. This light is white, sharp, cutting through the water like a wound. The fissure runs jagged across the bottom, deep indigo rock split open, and the brightness pouring from it makes her eyes ache. Around its edges, coral grows in twisted shapes, blue and green branches reaching toward the light like hands. Araxa slows. Her fingers touch the blade at her side. She wants to see what's down there, what makes light like that in a place this deep. But Tide stops swimming. His silver dims to almost nothing, and he hangs in the water between her and the fissure. His whole body flickers, pale blue light pulsing from his eyes and fins in short, urgent bursts. He won't go closer. Araxa reaches for him and he darts back, still between her and the light. She's never seen him refuse her before. The coral near the fissure looks wrong now that she's watching it, bent at angles that don't match how things grow. The white light shifts, and for a moment she thinks she sees movement in the crack, something large and slow. Tide flickers again, brighter this time. A warning. Araxa pulls back from the edge. Her body wants to swim down, to touch the coral, to see what lives in that light. But Tide knows these waters better than she does. She learned that when the predator came, when he scattered before she even saw the teeth. She turns away from the fissure, the bone blade heavy against her ribs. The light fades behind them as they swim higher, but she feels it still, a pull in her chest she didn't expect. She wanted to go down there. She still wants to. And that wanting sits in her now, proof that the thing she feared is already happening. These waters are starting to hook her.