“You think they want us to keep going?”
“I think they would have tried a lot harder if they didn’t. False confidence will get us killed.”
“In other words, let’s not get comfortable.”
“Cap’n,” David said.
I spotted him looking through the spyglass dead ahead. Vidar left the formation to join him and snatched the spyglass, staring out into the night. The expression on his face when he lowered it prompted me to go to him and see what it was he was looking at. The moment I lifted the spyglass to my eye, a dark horizon came into view and on it, the silhouette of something even darker. A towering collection of sharp, jutting peaks reaching toward the stars like they were trying to stab the sky, but these were not like the canyon cliffs. They were taller. More deliberate.
“If they’re not trying too hard to stop us,” Vidar said. “Odds are there’s something worse there waiting for us.”
I handed the spyglass back to him, glaring forward.
“And if there is?” I turned to look at him. “Would you rather turn around?”
I knew there was a tiny part of Vidar that wanted to say yes to that. The part of him that didn’t like the idea of David dying in that place. Or Mullins. Or me. Or any more of his men for that matter. Men he was responsible for and despite the fact that they all knew the risks, the chance that we’d have to watch more of them die had not escaped our notice.
“No,” he finally answered. “We’re past that, love. There’s an end coming. Let’s make sure it’s not ours.”
Those words replayed over and over in my head as the Weaver drifted closer to the shadowed city in the fog. By the time we could see it without the help of the spyglass, the air grew colder as if to remind us that we were entering the true nightmare. We were in Theloch, a city no siren remembered building. A place that hadbeen the subject of stories since I could remember. The place I was born, just like many before me.
When the peaks emerged from the fog, it was like watching the claws of a mammoth beast rearing from the water to feed and the closer we sailed, the more my eyes could detect. Sculptures carved from the stone sat half-submerged. The battered and rotting corpses of ships long destroyed on the jagged rocks sat impaled on obsidian spears. The air was stagnant and old like that of a tomb that had sat closed off for too many years. Death was everywhere and yet Theloch seemed alive, every slow churn of the water like a heartbeat.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones who have washed up here,” Vidar said, eyeing the shipwrecks in the distance.
“But we’re going the be the only ones to leave,” I added.
Ahead of us, the tallest tower stretched upward like a monolith, a centerpiece to the rigid archway that stood at the end of a long, flat bed of slick rock. Were the tide lower, I imagined it would look like a bridge, but the waves were slowly swallowing the whole place.
“Looks like the closest thing to a dock,” Vidar said.
Nikolai needed no instruction and began to navigate toward the cliffs. Hearts were beating wildly around me. I could hear their frantic tones as if reality had finally set in for the crew. We were in an ancient and dangerous place. Even I was feeling the teeth of death’s dogs on my ankles, telling me we were someplace we weren’t supposed to be.
Cut the strings and the puppet is not free
It simply collapses
for it was not built to stand on its own
~ Marcus Holt
A flash of light erupted from the torch as Mullins struck the fire steel, nearly blinding me in the process. It had been ages since I’d witnessed anything beyond the soft glow of a lantern. Vidar, noticing me flinch at the intensity, kindly lifted his torch higher, away from my eyes. We had a few lanterns and a couple of torches among us, but I couldn't shake the feeling that they wouldn’t be much help once we stepped through the gates of Theloch.
“This place is going to be underwater soon if the tides here are anything like they are in the rest of the world,” Mullins said.
“I doubt they’re like the rest of the world, but we should act as if the water could rise at any moment,” Vidar said. “Not all of us can sprout gills. Nazario. You have the ship in my absence. Keep men on the guns and along the sides to defend her.”
Nazario gave him a curt nod. “We’ll be making all the repairs that we can while you all venture into the temple.”
While they discussed a few last-minute things, I turned to Aeris. She had her arms crossed over herself like she was guarding her chest, her entire demeanor obviously uneasy. I approached her, wary of her condition.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s so… quiet,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Well, no one comes here anymore. Kroans have busied themselves too much with killing men these past decades to bother coming here.”
“No, it’s not that. I haven’t been able to feel anything since we entered the fog. Not until that canyon and now that we’re through it…” She rubbed her arms as if cold. “Even Nazario’s presence eludes me here, like…”
