She zoomed over, around, under, and through the other ships, each of them smaller than theClodion. Each of them sealed, intact, surreal in their emptiness.
Each of them Ixian.
Every missing vessel was here.
Why were Ixian ships beneath the city of Abyssa? What had happened to everyone on board? How did they get here in the first place through the labyrinth of tunnels?
Stomach lurching, she looked upward and hummed a few notes loud enough to light up the dark. The tunnels appeared to shift in all directions, their walls groaning as stone and sediment moved to create new pathways and close others.
More alarming, though, was the number of eyes peering back at her from the edges of the space.
The Hollow.
There were hundreds of them, silent, creeping out of holes and crevices and from around corners in every direction. The dull shine of their eyes and the pale blue of their sun-starved skin caught the only light for mere moments before the dark consumed them all again.
They could see down here without sound.
Yemi considered going back the way she’d come—funneling them to force an attack from one direction instead of all of them—when the scent of fresh blood invaded her nostrils again. It was easier now to be overtaken by it. Any ability she’d had to fight it seemed to weaken every time. Her senses sharpened, her gums itched, her grip tightened on her spear, and she could see now the hundreds of bodies rapidly closing the distance again. The illuminated blood trail led again to the elder she’d bitten, and he was leading their charge.
She no longer had an urge to flee. She would fight and she would feed.
She took a position in the clearing before the ships, chuckling darkly, coaxing the swarm toward her.
The elder sounded his signal, and they attacked. Yemi kept her spear spinning in great rounds for a full minute, barely feeling the impacts when it sliced through her targets before they seemed to back off abruptly to regroup. The fallen lay in chunks in a nearly perfect circle like a halo around her.
“More!” she cried. “More!” She had never been so thirsty, so insatiable. She would know no peace if she didn’t kill every last one of them.
But the Hollow kept their distance. She watched as their gazes gradually drifted well over her head to the ships behind her, where something growled. In less than a second, the swarm scattered, leaving her alone with the walls and water vibrating around her. She raised herself to a better vantage point where she could see over theClodion’s deck into the gaping void beyond it.
Eyes.
Two giant orb-like eyes on the ends of stalks bobbed in the warship-sized hole. Far beneath them, dust stirred on the ground as if it were being tapped by a dozen feathered feet.
“Show yourself, meat,” Yemi called, still more fight than flight. The words activated whiplike antennae that arced overhead, and trails of light raced along the length of brightly colored raptorial appendages slowly extending upward. The world shook, and the air grew hot.
Some kind of… mantis god?
As if understanding and responding to her taunt, the creature punched forward into the grotto with enough ferocity to trigger Yemi’s common sense. She ducked behind theClodionas the force of the strike blew a crater into the wall behind her and sent the ship skidding sideways into it. Her eardrums rattled, and she lost her bearings as sound and balance left her completely. She gritted her teeth and clawed her way along the hull to keep from being pinned. Otherwise, she was defenseless.
This was no longer a fight she was interested in, but would have to wait for the world to stop spinning before she could escape. At once, she was overcome and struggled to breathe. What was this hell that she’d walked into on purpose, with a devil at home in it?
When some semblance of orientation returned, she peered into the dark hole of the grotto and found the creature had gone, likely satisfied it had silenced the nuisance that had awakened it. She screamed long and loud and hard until her fear, her rage, her loneliness, and her adrenaline were all expelled. She was beaten and exhausted and moved as such. The medallion once tangled in her hair now bobbed against her chest. She had a queen to interrogate and a commander to avenge.
16
• YEMI •
Yemi stuck to the rocky edge of the sleeping city until she found an outcropping of rock near the surface that offered her a decent vantage point overlooking Helene’s palace. Guards were positioned at openings along the tall coral stalks that made up the vertical hallways. But none of them had the tools to carve new entrances. And none of them were this high up.
She exhaled slowly and tightened her grip on her spear, carefully descending to drift along what constituted the palace rooftops, peeking down into each stalk from the grated holes that functioned as windows to get her bearings. Her hackles raised. The endless dark parade of bottomless corridor after bottomless corridor grated on her. Time was limited, as were the shadows that could hide her. Her hope was that they thought she’d either left the city or met her end warring with the Hollow. She worked her way inward to where soft gold light emanated from slits on the roofs of grander rooms. Royals were always housed in the innermost this or that, never far from the throne.
At last she found it, following tiny gold fish like fireflies dartingin and out of the grating above a thicker hollow. Peering through the swarms, she found a room with a mesh hammock strung from three anchor points at its center, and towering, faceless merpeople carved in relief into pale blue walls. The room was lit by these shimmering fish feasting on clusters of thick green algae that lined the ceiling. Their light bounced off round mirrors that descended the walls, giving the room the illusion of warm, electric light.
Helene hunched over a vanity adorned with strings of pearls, her exposed back bowed so deeply the vertebrae were visible beneath the dark tattoos that trailed from her head. She picked lazily at glass bottles of potions and products, gazing hollowly at her reflection. Her massive antlered crown rested atop a golden orb anchored by rusting chains to a shrine-like section of the wall.
Yemi activated the spear and cut out a rectangular section of the coral grate large enough to fit herself through. She placed herself on the other side of it before putting it back to hide her entry from anyone who might wander overhead. She dove quickly, her form obscuring light from the mirrors for the span of a blink, long enough for Helene’s curiosity to force an upward glance as Yemi landed behind her.
“A word, if you would,” Yemi said quietly. The queen spun in horror and confusion. She made as if to scream, but Yemi thrust her spear forward to within an inch of Helene’s throat, and the sound gurgled there but made it no further.
