'What? What is it?'
'Silus, you tried to kill him.'
A chill ran through him. Silus tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing.
'I had no idea, really Kelos. You have to believe me. I remember nothing.'
'The Chadassa within you was driven on by Belck,' Kelos said. 'He made you open Dunsany's throat. I thought we'd lost him. I thought we were all dead. But the Calma rescued us.'
Kelos gestured with a hand and a part of the hull became translucent. Through it Silus could see the chaos that had come to the Chadassa city.
Things that looked like giant starfish moved over the citadel; some emitting brilliant beams of light that seared the flesh off any Chadassa they touched, others wrapped themselves around the coral towers until rubble rained down on the fighting below.
'Calma attack ships,' Kelos said. 'Their footsoldiers are in the city below, taking on the main Chadassa forces.'
Silus saw that though the Calma were outnumbered they were quick and vicious as sharks. They would dart in, their silvery tails rippling, and wrap the tentacles of their flails around their enemy before darting away again, leaving a charred corpse rolling in their wake. For all this though, the Calma were being slowly whittled down and it would be only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.
'The Calma think of you as their chosen one,' Kelos said. 'That's why they helped us rescue you. While one force attacked the main defences, we freed you from the Queen. We managed to kill the majority of the Land Walkers and interrupt the birth, but some of the creatures still escaped. I only hope that the forces on the peninsula will be sufficient to stop them.'
'And what about Katya?'
'The Calma will bring her safely to us,' Kelos said. 'Don't worry, we can trust them.'
There was a flash of light and when it faded they saw that part of the citadel had disappeared. In its place now was a vast area of scorched seabed over which fell a slow rain of corpses; Chadassa and Calma alike.
'I have to find her,' Silus said, before adding, 'I'm sorry about Dunsany, Kelos. Really.'
Kelos reached out to him but, before he could say anything, Silus stepped through the membrane in the side of the ship and into the sea.
He breathed deeply, energised by the cold burn of the salt water in his lungs.
Belck had made him embrace his Chadassa nature and use it against his friends, but now he would use it against the Chadassa themselves. As he thought of Katya, trapped somewhere within the city, and of what had been done to Zac his rage intensified.
Ahead of him four Chadassa were tearing into a single Calma, oblivious to him in their killing frenzy.
Silus barrelled into them, grabbed one by the head and squeezed until it came apart. He didn't feel the blows of the other Chadassa as they fought him and when he turned on them they came apart just as easily. One of them he left alive, but only as long as it took him to peer into its mind and find out where Katya was being kept. After that he slammed the creature into the ground again and again, his fingers dug deep into the flesh of its throat. The Chadassa flopped in his grip like a rag doll as a strange, high-pitched keening made his skull ache. It took Silus a moment to realise that the sound was coming from him. It shocked him out of his fury and he stood in a cloud of sand and viscera, wondering just what he was becoming.
Kelos had taught him that he was special and the Chadassa had shown him that he was a monster. Silus knew that he was both.
He kicked away from the seabed, darting into a forest of weeds when he was spotted by more Chadassa. He lost them amongst the fronds, only to be startled by a shoal of gemfish that exploded around him as he swam into a clearing.
Ahead of him lay the centre of the citadel. Its dark coral towers swarmed with the Chadassa as they tried to defend them against the Calma ships. One of the towers fell; fortunately, Silus saw, not the one that Katya was imprisoned in. However, he didn't have long. Already several of the Calma ships had fallen — great clouds of sand and silt marking their impact sites — and more Chadassa were boiling up from beneath the city all the time. Silus even thought he saw the twisted form of the Great Ocean amongst the chaos, but couldn't be sure.
He looked for a way in, but knew that to wander into the centre of the fighting would mean death. Somehow he had to make it to the prison tower unseen.
A flash of neon caught his eye and he knew what he had to do.
Silus called the gemfish to him and soon he was hidden within the glittering shoal. Together they moved into the heart of the conflict. Several times, when they ventured too close to the fighting, the shoal threatened to break apart, but Silus reasserted his will and kept the gemfish close. To those caught up in the chaos it would merely seem that a school of fish had come to feed on the detritus of the battle.
But there were bigger scavengers than the gemfish around and soon a gaggle of razor dolphins had closed in on them, picking off the glittering fish and picking apart Silus's carefully constructed shroud. Realising that his cover was rapidly disintegrating he tried to bind the razor dolphins to his will; however, their minds were slippery and soon they were darting away again in search of more food.
Silus floated, isolated in the middle of the conflict, wondering how long it would take for the Chadassa to spot him.
It wasn't the Chadassa who noticed him first, however, but the Calma.
Gesturing to its four comrades, one of them swam towards him, the light shimmering on its gossamer tail as it approached. The last time Silus had been this close to the Calma, he had been killing one of their kind, driven on by Belck's manipulations. Something of that bloody hunger must have been obvious in his eyes now as the Calma suddenly hesitated in its approach.
A Chadassa riding a giant, horned eel swooped in, spearing the Calma through the chest with a barbed javelin and scattering its brethren in the wake of its mount. The Calma soon regrouped, however and, as the eel turned for another pass, they brought their flails to bear.
Amazed at the Calma's bravery Silus moved to join their defensive line.
The eel coiled around a tower and out of sight and, for a moment, Silus thought that it had moved on to other prey, but then — with a terrifying screech — the sinuous beast was amongst them.
The rider lashed out with its javelin, only for one of the Calma to wrap its flail around the shaft and pull. The weapon slipped out of the Chadassa's grasp and started to fall towards the seabed. Silus snatched it up before it could disappear and turned in time to see another Calma entangle its flail around the wrist of the eel rider. Within moments, however, the Chadassa had unsheathed a knife and severed its own hand, freeing it of the Calma's hold. Dark blood boiled into the water, throwing the eel into a frenzy that jolted the rider about in the saddle, but it soon had its mount back under control.
The eel opened its jaws and rushed another of the Calma, only to find Silus barring its way. The creature came to a sudden halt, jerking its rider forward in the saddle, its long, slim tail coiling behind it. A stream of bubbles slowly rising from its nostrils, the eel's eye slits narrowed as it considered this new thing now before it.
However, Silus didn't give it long to calculate its next move. He lunged for the eel, wrapped one arm around its thick neck and drove the barbed point of the javelin deep into its mouth. The eel let out a shriek that sounded like sheet metal tearing before rapidly ascending, taking Silus with it as he continued to cling on to the shaft of the weapon. The Chadassa crouched low over its mount's skull as it urged it on, trying to shake Silus off with rapid twists and turns.
As the towers of the citadel rolled dizzyingly around him, Silus saw that the remaining Calma were following in the eel's wake. He urged them back, not wanting any more of their blood on his hands but, despite his gestures, they closed on the beast.
One of them latched onto the eel's dorsal fin and tore into the ridged flesh, causing the creature to buck and writhe as it attempted to dislodge its attacker. Another Calma descended on the rider and tried to pull it from the saddle, but this attack met with less success and soon the Calma was tumbling away from them, blood gushing from its throat.
Silus's arms were beginning to ache with the effort of maintaining his grip on the javelin. Blood was pouring freely from the wound in the eel's mouth and the strong oily taste of it, as it clouded the water around him, was beginning to make Silus dizzy and nauseous.
They were not far from the surface now, but instead of launching itself from the sea, the eel began to slow.
