Adei felt whole. Or was it hole? She wasn't sure, but at the same time, she now knew more than ever. Funny how that happened: as she learned more about herself, the questions only grew, both in number and size. She was filled with feelings and sensations she could never fathom, but that only made her aware of the cruel emptiness that permeated her in every cell, every limb… well, almost every limb. Yes, as Etafàzo had so well described and reduced her to, she was a vessel. And now she understood: She wanted more. Or rather, she wanted all. She had to hold it, hold it and unleash her power on the first passing enemy, or she would lose control and this time she would not stop. She kept it together, and this time by the will of her own soul, they had to hurry and seek and find. Seek and find.
"Adei, were you listening?" Her empty eyes turned to the warrior. She nodded.
Ocy scuttled forwards "What's with your maniacal smile? We're just going to go north."
The girl internally cursed at her transparent face but thanked her muteness for bailing her out of this situation.
"So," continued Nomu, "I will repeat that we're going off Nerei land, into uncharted territory, this is because any Nerei soldier will probably kill us on sight and our alternative, Hellimade, seems just as pleasant. Let's get going, we want to minimize night travel."
Travel. The one thing that had never changed ever since she first gained consciousness. Never idle, always fleeing, arriving, fighting, chasing… She hoped she could one day find rest, but of course, that was just wishful thinking.
Slowly, so very slowly that only Adei could see it (as she was not blabbering) the sun was getting darker. It was not moving below the horizon, nor losing its shine, but the image of it was fading. Soon enough, they walked over a small hill, and sure enough, there was only a black mist past it.
"Well, now we know why it's uncharted territory…" mumbled Ocy, "I'm a scout and you guys couldn't pay me to get lost in there. What do we do now?"
Clicking sounds were the answer. Adei faked a satisfied smile.
"Right, the girl can echolocate…" Continued Ocy "But that doesn't solve all our problems. We need signals to know what you 'see' and where. For direction, simply point. If you don't do anything else, we will assume it is an enemy. For a small organism, jump once in place. For what seems like a village, hit the ground so that we can hear it."
Adei nodded, and without further ado, they descended into the gallows of hell. Foolish.
Inside, they were silent. They could see about 5 meters in front of them, so they were huddled like penguins moving through a snowstorm, all swords drawn. One step, two, bones were sticking out of the ground, three, four. They lost count. Adei raised her hand. She pointed at it. She pointed at them. Wriggling. A wriggling, moving sound. More clicking. Lots of clicking. Not Adei's. Approaching fast. A tsunami of fins, claws, bloodshot eyes and razor teeth. They couldn't run. The girl didn't even need to call upon Etafàzo, he was already slowing down time. They arrived. She stabbed. White blood splattered on the floor, but three more were already there. She slashed. Screams overwhelmed the clicks, but in a tenth of a second, ten more surged at her neck. She threw out another blow, only got nine. The other bit her arm, but thankfully her armour held, she plunged her other hand's claws into the creature's head. She hadn't even slowed down the wave. She fell backwards to the ground. Nomu stood in front of her. They bit his shell, but he held. He wildly swung his massive swords at the hundreds of monsters.
"I'll hold them back!" he lied. "Go find help!"
Like there would be any help out here.
"Curse them!" she thought. "Curse those damn… Tritonians!"
She dropped Etafàzo. Her arms moved without her even thinking.
"Wrv! Wrv!" she yelled, as she plunged her hands into the skull before her. Who's? she didn't know. On her lips, covered by the hurricane of white splashing all over her body, a satisfied smile. Her armour expanded to become the millions of spikes it once was. It pierced through everyone and everything.
An Ounga came, which immediately got opened from the bottom up. She then turned and slaughtered more enemies. She lunged at another, but he was robust. She readied her claws and plunged them-
"Adei! Adei! It's me! Adei!"
Her black iris appeared again. Her spikes retracted back into her sturdy armour. She was on top of Nomu, claws a centimetre from piecing his eyes. She had killed so much that she was almost entirely covered in a thick layer of blood. There was not a Tritonian in sight.
"Never do that again!" Exhaled Nomu, panting. "…Thank you."
Adei picked up Etafàzo, the sword stayed silent. Nobody exchanged a single look. Ocy finally dared to breathe.
"What do we do now?" he asked.
"We clearly can't keep going, there's no way there was only one group of monsters in this huge area, and we can't let Adei go into a rampage again… Do you know the way back, Adei?"
She shook her head. It seemed that the mist was thick enough to dampen sounds, she couldn't locate the dune they had come from.
"Come here!" It was a sharp, decrepit voice which seemed to emerge from the sands, and sure enough, a pair of eyes were on the ground. In a camouflage almost as good as Ocy's, someone emerged from the soil. The group was weary.
"Come on, take my hand. Or do you prefer waiting for another wave of Obscuru?"
Ocy jumped on Nomu, not even looking a Adei, and they followed the stranger, which immediately dusted away a pile of kelp to reveal a concealed underground entrance. They jumped in.
They only fell for about a second, but it felt like an eternity. Adei was happy, but was she? Was she really fine with ignoring her own morality in profit of her ruthless instincts, to rip and tear all she could? Was that choice even really hers?
She had reached the ground. They looked around, their eyes slowly adjusting. It was the first time they had entered a city and felt… pity. Dimly lit by a few bioluminescent worms, a few dozen citizens struggled for survival. There was almost nothing of notice about them, except for the fact that they had no shell. Otherwise, they were extremely slim, with large fins on their back and especially their arms. They were the colour of dirt. Their gigantic eyes were on either side of their head, pearly black. Their arms had large fingers to move big quantities of dirt in a short amount of time.
However, they did not seem discouraged, and in fact, hope was given off by the citizen. A few of them worked on extending the cave, digging on the sides and scavenging for any small edible bug they could find, and indeed other villagers were behind them, sorting the piles of wriggling food into even portions. This was odd in Salcia, as the food was plentiful: Even in the sandy depths of Pasmathe, simply digging a small hole into the ground yielded many small creatures, and the Tritonian's meat was strong but savoury and in great amounts. Nomu had never even asked himself what he would eat, and there were those poor citizens aggressively digging to get a modest supper. Did nothing proliferate in this dark realm?
In the centre of the large cave system, around a big central pillar, there was a multitude of beds: small thatch beds which seemed to have a large amount of fluff. This place had just the bare minimum to survive, nothing to hunt, nothing to play, barely enough to write, though there were a few cave openings which the group did not see.
The person who carried them inside went to talk to someone before returning. "Make yourselves at home, don't worry, we only occasionally bite." He then climbed back up the hole they had fallen into, sticking his arm fins into the soil to replace climbing gear.
Another villager advanced towards them.
"Hello, travellers, I am a caretaker of this village, I make sure everyone is happy, please call me Drago. Welcome to Hypnocamp! Tell me, what brings you to this desolate place? Are you Salcian?"
This brought a smile to Nomu's face "Hello, Drago, I come from Pasmathe and-"
"Wait, Pasmathe? What city is that?"
"Erm, right, you did not have any contact with the outside since the war, right?"
"Why do you think we live underground? Before, we were part of a larger kingdom: Preteus, populated with colourful Salcians, but you would be lucky to even find a single soul outside. We were devoid of colour, so we survived when the black mist came along."
"I see… Well then, we all come from Nerei, do-"
"Nerei! We just had people just like you arrive from there!"
"Can you stop interrupting… wait what did you say?"
Ocy chuckled "A surprise Pasmathan Rambo? Where are they?"
"Oh, follow me, we can take this occasion to show you the rules here. I heard you killed many Obscuru, so you are our ally."
Nomu looked down. Rage. Why? She saved him, right? Why was he angry?
They started walking. A few people looked towards them with curious faces, but most stayed focused on their tasks.
"On the right, you have our food production, I hope you like bugs, because that's all we have! They are very nutritious. Next to the central pillar, you might notice our beds are close together. That is because our sleeping places are also our most sociable place, where everyone is encouraged to participate in a small chat to make sure everyone is doing fine and to know what to do the next day. If you want to sleep here, you also will have to come here, otherwise, we will not accept you." The group progressed forwards out of the main entrance and into one of the secondary caves. It was a rather small one, with a large leaf on which were put many valuables. "This is the storehouse, where we keep weapons, money in case someday we can escape, as well as raw materials which we do not need right now. We also have a small section for growing plants on the left, but there is no sunlight here so we need to stockpile glow bugs first"
"Hang on… you mean you haven't found a way out of here?" asked Ocy.
"No… we have sent scouts to go around, but whenever they went farther than viewing distance from the village, we lost them. We do have some guards hidden in the ground to guarantee the safety of our hiding spot, but they do not leave. You may have noticed we cover our entrances in leaves. Tritonians are not very smart, they don't know how to dig, or spot a camouflaged entrance."
"And… I have a more personal question. How do we differentiate guys from girls?"
Drago smiled "In general, men are slightly larger while women are slightly thinner, so we sent the women out to guard as they were better camouflaged. This made the women's fins shorten due to all the climbing they had to do, so if you're confused, look at the size of the fins. Otherwise, our voices are the same and in general the children are taken care of by the entire village."
"So… if I get this right, you're a girl."
"That's right! But the other caretaker is a man. Now let's move on. We have one last room to visit, this is the playground, well, a leisure space. You will see, we have benches, books conserved from before Tritonians and more!"
They advanced and walked through one last dirt entrance.
"Élen! Katala!"