The full book is available on Amazon here.
Chapter 1
Skehl
Skehl trailed his sister into the Belly, a white-grey haze of glow and gloom greeting them like a watchful mourner—or an anticipatory accomplice. At this gelid, stale depth of the Aghata Trench, with all the heaviness of an ocean crushing down upon him, he could hardly breathe. Hardly think. He bit his lip, clenched his webbed-hands, and endured. Slinking through this thick, clinging veil had become just another reality of his life. Another of the myriad consequences resulting from his and his sister’s most treasonous decision to spare the living…
By stealing the dead.
In and out, he assured himself, kicking his long blue tail. Two bodies, that was all they needed. One each to replace the clan deserters they had only hours prior permitted to flee, escape. The sooner they found their replacement bodies, the sooner he could turn surfaceward. Towards the Skaltressian Palace where an entrance exam that would forever alter the course of his life was set to take place… if he hadn’t missed it already. Time was impossible to discern when down this deep.
A moment passed of silent swimming, and the first bodies began to appear. Each one manifested like a shadow, limned by the faint grey glow of that pervasive, sickly haze. Skehl flicked his gaze from one to the next. There was a time when their bloated, rotted forms would have sent chills like squirming eels down his spine. But no more. Months of experience had killed that instinct.
From their empty eye sockets, their gaping mouths, the final remnants of their lifelight wisped in languid, dull-white streams, thinning, melding into the gloom. Tethers of kelp-twine were all that kept them from drifting off; one end tied around their waists, the other around any of the countless sunken boulders, bedded deep in the sludge and grime.
A chill brushed against one of his tattered blue tentacles, on his left side—his blind side. He furled it at the tip, drew all of his few dozen tentacles closer. When he glanced back, he saw it was only a corpse’s splayed, frozen fingers. Imagined the dead actively reaching out to him. Like an omen of condemnation.
He swam on with haste.
His sister offered little help. Just swam steadily onward, her mass of usually mighty magenta tentacles rustling along her body, limp and lifeless. She moved as if lost in a daze. Or in the depth of herself. Her self-imposed distance, like armor, proved most impenetrable precisely when Skehl needed her most.
Like now.
This would go a lot faster if you would actually—There!
He beat his tail, swimming over a few more swollen bodies towards one a little fresher, nearly identical in color and size to one of their freed deserters. This one’s color was a slightly lighter green hue, but her length and build, as well as the circumference of the wide jellyfish-like dome atop her head, were close enough.
“Thressel!” he called, waving to get her attention. “How about this one?”
The body would suffice. He only wanted her to offer some semblance of presence, acknowledgement.
She gave neither, just continued her slow drifting. When she did move, it was only to clasp her hands at her waist, where the shimmering scales of her tail blended into the bare Lais-moon pink flesh of her lower torso. Across her chest, her kelp-shawl rose and fell in time with her breath.
“Thressel…” he said, kicking his tail, doing his best to close the space between them. “Can you be here, please? With me. I–I really need us to hurry.”
She turned to him, eyes wide with dull surprise, as if she had forgotten he was there.
“She’ll do.” Her voice was tired, brittle. Like the crumbling of sun-dried kelp.
Skehl sighed, his top lip twitching. “Great. Thanks.”
He turned from her and withdrew a clamshell-knife from his satchel, set himself to hacking through the twine.
“Here.” He held the corpse out to her. “Char away.”
Even with his back turned as he resumed his search, the brilliance of his sister’s Shock, reflecting off the haze, nearly blinded him. The sharp crackling of her power, the searing sting of it, poked and prodded him from all sides, like teeth closing in around him.
Sacrilegious as their actions here were—in this place meant for somber reflection, for family and remembrance—they worked. Rare was a raised eyebrow or a pointed inquiry when a body was returned to the palace marred beyond recognition. Such was the privilege of Trenchguards, of which his sister was one. One of the best.
Skehl continued in silence, doing all he could to ignore that warm, black stench of death that seemed intent on infiltrating his nostrils and gills. It might have been torture, had it not become so ordinary an occurrence.
As a distraction, he focused on time. Its steady passing.
He regretted it immediately.
I’m… not going to make it back in time, am I?
A faint purple glow appeared. Off in the distance.
Someone was coming.
No. No, I will not…
Read Chapter 2 here!
Joshua Stavick 
Leave a comment