- Writing Levels
- Adaptable
- Genres
- I'm wary of magic with lots of rules.
Chapter 8
Dead Awakening
Dead Awakening
The diver switched on the lamp. A thermic gem touched a thin wire, heating it white hot, and crude glass threw the light into a cone.
The pale thermic-light played across the twisted shapes littering the sea floor. The gigantic bodies were frozen in contorted rictus and rigor mortis. The sea sent tsunamis for a month after the Cataclysm from the constant rain of bodies, which piled over one another at the seabed, so great was their number. Each body and their associated objects were easily a hundred men long. The creatures of the old seemed to possess an inner vitality that allowed them to ignore the laws and limitations of the present-day Sunnepheins.
For a three hundred year stint at the bottom of a relatively shallow sea, the graveyard was curiously in a mixed state of decay. Some bodies were completely rotted through, their bone-and-metal skeletons hosting a city of fish. On some, the skin was starting to peel, and the more voracious scavengers actively picked at the flesh underneath. Others were half consumed by the sea. And there were others that seemed to be only taking a brief rest. From them, the deep hum of the inner fire glowed ever bright.
And as he swung the light over one of the bodies ... the eyes returned his gaze.
The chain and air-hose suddenly went slack. "What's going on?" The foreman gestured to the machine room. "Haul it up. Quickly!" Steam blasted and gears churned, the steel rope sparking on the winch. It came up empty. The end of the metal was red hot - the passage through the water did nothing to cool it - and it would stay that way for ten days.
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"Worthless." The worst insult a merchant could hurl at another, to call his wares, his trade, pointless.
"That's what K'Larr's promise has amounted to. He promised us a safe place to do trade, free from other the Czar, the blackguards, from Hosian taxes ..."
"Then he fucking forgets to mention that there's no one to buy stuff!" The cup slammed on the table, spilling drops of cheap sea rum.
"Shut yer mouth." A Lord of War sounded from the dim confines of the bar. "That was only the first step."
"You don't get it, you worthless cunt," the merchant spat. "Out on the sea, we cannot create wealth. What are we going to trade them? Rotting fish? Salt? Worthless trinkets from the bottom of the sea?"
[/dash]"That's what K'Larr's promise has amounted to. He promised us a safe place to do trade, free from other the Czar, the blackguards, from Hosian taxes ..."
"Then he fucking forgets to mention that there's no one to buy stuff!" The cup slammed on the table, spilling drops of cheap sea rum.
"Shut yer mouth." A Lord of War sounded from the dim confines of the bar. "That was only the first step."
"You don't get it, you worthless cunt," the merchant spat. "Out on the sea, we cannot create wealth. What are we going to trade them? Rotting fish? Salt? Worthless trinkets from the bottom of the sea?"
Scaled fingers ran over the stone tablet as they had done a thousand times. This one was merely a copy of the original, the nail's caress so obsessive that it threatened to wear away the message within. A copy of the diving report was grasped in the other hand.
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The Lord of Timber kicked the table over. "My last shipments of timber have been chewed out by termites on the Prosperos islands. There is no more to harvest from Hosia. K'Larr shipped all the Lords of Materials out into the ocean, but only the Avarathi can still dig their shit from the sand. The Hosians get nothing. You can keep selling your death, you worthless merchant, but I'd like to see what you're going to do in a yea-"
The arrow jutted from his throat, and he toppled over into a forest of sword and spears. An entire city-ship would be split by factional struggle.
[/dash]The arrow jutted from his throat, and he toppled over into a forest of sword and spears. An entire city-ship would be split by factional struggle.
"Get another team of divers."
"K'Larr, what happened to the first and second diver will happen to the third ..."
"Not with the divine word."
The Tear of Uvekely stood within its water-filled chalice, a ball of liquid metal that thrummed with hidden life.
(image: kill six billion demons)
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