Zuvok by Athena Storm

Author:Athena Storm [Storm, Athena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Athenaverse Press
Published: 2019-09-10T05:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Alundra

My limbs move slowly, as if I’m trapped in molasses, but still I flee the ominous presence behind me.

There’s no doubt that it pursues me specifically. Despite the abundance of shimmering bioluminescent creatures which pulse and bob in the air? Water? Around me. I don’t know what nightmarish landscape this is, or how I came to be here. I only know if I slow my pace at all the terrible thing following along will catch up and do—I don’t know what.

Above me there’s a vast, blurry orange blob that might be a sun shining through the strangely clear water. My legs burn with the effort of trying to run through the thick soup that surrounds me on all sides. Ahead, a wall of red spiraling coral or something similar looms. If I try to run around it, I may be overrun.

Fortunately, my body behaves much as if I am underwater. When I bunch up my legs and launch myself upward, I continue to rise long after my momentum should have ended. My feet just clear the red wall of coral as the shape smashes into the other side.

I’m afraid to even look at it. There’s a sort of hunger emanating from it, a desire to catch me at all costs that drives my fear to new heights. All I see is a flash of something that resembles a crustacean’s claw, then the sea floor boils with stirred up silt.

The silt storm engulfs me, cutting off the one sense I had to navigate with. My legs stretch in the vastness, seeking purchase to continue my flight. At last my foot strikes down on something that feels solid, and I push myself forward through the roiling, gritty silt.

Something akin to a terran alligator swims up into my field of vision. My mouth opens in a silent scream, but the scaled beast doesn’t seem to notice me. It just swims/ flies past, jaws open as if filtering the silt.

My outstretched hand clears the debris field first, and then my head. Once again I’m in crystal clear waters, fleeing for my life in slow motion. Behind me, the red wall of coral cracks in half, falling into the boiling explosion of silt. Within the amorphous borders of the silt storm, I can see the dark shape still coming onward.

Nothing stops it, nothing. How will I ever escape? Shouldn’t I have to breathe at some point? A thought occurs to me that maybe I don’t have to breathe because I’m dead. But if I’m dead, then why am I running away from an unseen monster? Is this some sort of endless Hell, a torment I brought upon myself by fleeing my familial obligations?

The thought of my uncle and Cousin Reinhold seems to anchor me somewhat, even if it is unpleasant. Wait a moment, how did I get here again? Wasn’t there something I was doing a short while ago?

No time to ponder this. There is only time to run. I leap over a ravine in the ocean floor, and behold a plethora of shelled creatures swirling about in the deeper dark.

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