Chapter 410 - Far Future Ch. 120 – Down Where the Dark Things Dwell (1/2)

Devilsight let me see through any darkness as if it were bright day. I could even see normal colors, straight through the spectrum.

Smokesight and cloudsight let me see through suspended particulate matter of water or earth, respectively, while Devasight would deal with light distortions from temperature or reflective surfaces.

Suspended salts in water with no light? No problem at all. My visual acuity was basically as clean and clear as if this was the clearest water in the world.

Oh, I could TELL it was pitch black. I could see the lights of the alka-shrimps or neo-plankton. But it basically looked like I was moving through a heavy sky, falling away below and above as I descended.

My Vajra was grabbing the water ahead of me, streaming it behind me, and reforming it. The water to my sides was simply suspended, like an ongoing tunnel... there was no cleaving of the water, no bow wave. My swimming was smooth, almost traceless, barely rippling anything despite the speed I was moving at.

I was heading for the underside of the city.

My pint-sized daughter Colby's deep raids with some Striker teams, senior Termites, and pissed off Undermobs had revealed that the cerevores had somehow blocked off a deeper layer of the stone the city was built atop of, and made some massive caverns down there to breed their Xenos in, helped by illicit biomass pumped down from the city above, and of course many, many lost humans over the years. They also fished the seas, and they had naturally started subverting a lot of the wildlife, as the xenos were very non-discriminatory in what they laid their syms into to replace.

So, the seas down here were even more dangerous than might be intimated in a warp-affected, alkaline sea of phrenic monstrosities.

They weren't going to see me coming, and they weren't going to psense a Null. My Vajra would suck in any sonar they used, so I was empty air as far as they were concerned... unless I needed to hide against something, at which point I'd be stone if I needed to be.

There wasn't a lot of life down here, which didn't surprise me at all. The cerevores would be catching and harvesting it for biomass to build xenos. What I had to be careful about where the things that WERE down here.

Aaaaand that looked like one of them.

It was the size of a whale, but eel-like, with grasping tentacles trailing after it. Its eyes were big to pick out even the faintest traces of light, and it was winding its way through the deep, occasionally opening needle-toothed jaws to snatch up a passing bundle of light.

And then it lunged forward, spinning as a great black mass three times its length hove out of the depths with great speed, carapace shell gleaming, a head part insect, part reptile opening wide to take a bite as it reached for the eel at great speed.

The eel almost got away when a truly massive claw scissored forward and down, and clamped onto the back third of its body. With awesome strength, the huge aquasym stopped the great eel in place, and lunged forward to get a big bite into the middle of its body.

No, no, I hadn't seen the little plunger in its mouth, driving deep into the hapless predator, and planting the egg.

I sighed and diverted course.

These two underwater behemoths were stirring up a lot of water, but the pressure waves blew past me as I drove in on their blind spot, came up on the eel's tail, and plunged in Chalice.

I flowed by underneath the long length of it, and a foot of leathery hide parted wetly before the silent edge of Chalice... silent, because her song would carry for literally miles down here, and I didn't need to announce myself.

The eel was pinned in the jaws of the aquasym, the paralytic excretions of the implanted egg taking hold, its motions becoming spastic. At the same time, its lower body was silently opening up and spilling its life out into the water.

Without a living host to nourish it for at least a short time, the egg would die, and wouldn't even be able to consume the biomass.

The aquasym was relying on pressure senses, some form of lateral line, and psensing life to tell what was nearby, in addition to rote light and hearing, and not getting any action off of any of those.

It was really, really surprised when Chalice drove into its eye like the point of a torpedo, and I fired off a Shard right through its brain when her point stopped a few inches short.

Acidic blood jetted out at high speed, making the water froth and sizzle as acid met base and both got excited to see one another. It let go of the dying eel, spinning and whirling even as I flowed out of place and reach, its brain already shredded by Sun Strikes ripping through it.

I circled it from a hundred feet away, flowing away from its writhing struggles. It started tearing at itself, and the sea started to get real frothy as more of that acidic blood started boiling in the brine, but I didn't care about its death struggles.

The cerevore ejected itself from under the aquasym's crest, telekinetically hurling itself away from the wounded biovore, yet was still swatted by the writhing body and went tumbling out into the water rather haplessly at the impact. It was the size of a pig, a five-legged fungoid brain as hard as stone, little manipulator tentacles flailing at the water as it fell towards the sea floor.

The pressure wouldn't bother it at all, and it could survive in a vacuum, it didn't need to breathe or worry about the cold or alkalines. Getting to wherever it wanted to go might take a while on foot, since it also couldn't swim for beans, but nigh-immortal aberrant brain-eaters had a surfeit of patience.