Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

Still, there was no light shot forth from her hand to ward off the darkness.

And why should there be? Sydney knew, lowering her arm and the crude, training weapon she held. Yvla is dead . . . and everyone I love is gone, taken, or else betrayed me.

Her fingers clenched tighter at the last thought.

She pictured the king, Darius, in the above, the one her memory still named as father. Though all else was dark, Sydney perfectly remembered the image of his scorn at the appearance of her shark tail. Worse, him striking her mother, Nattie Gao, thereafter. Sydney scolded herself for ever having named Darius as her father then, even though it was only in her mind. He’s not though. She reminded herself. He’s not my dad. Not really. He’s never been your real dad.

Then who? Her conscience tormented her. If not the king, then who?

Sydney had toyed with that question too inside the oubliette. Quill, maybe? She thought, cheering at momentary idea and the evidence - the memories of how he spoke on Nattie Gao, his odd reaction when meeting her for the first time, and his sister, Yvla, being her godmother.

For every time Sydney believed in the assumption, she discounted it the next. If Quill is my real dad, then why wouldn’t he just say it? Why not tell me when I was in hiding with him and Yvla for so many days?

Sydney could make no sense of it as she used her hands to touch the sides of her tail in reminder of her Nomad origins. Though the skin felt smooth in one direction, it rubbed her fingers like sandpaper when she reversed the movement. The shark skin felt nothing like her Merrow tail. Again, Sydney frowned at what her Mako shark tail and the meaning of it had condemned her and others to suffer. She looked up to where she imagined the ceiling to be, the place where light had once existed. Where light might still exist if the giant stone were rolled away.

A little light, she prayed. Please, just let in a little light.

That too went unanswered, just as so many other prayers she had made for the same request had done also. Instead, her mind wandered to a more familiar call, the same as Sydney repeated on and on, if only to keep the memory of her former mentor alive.

Again, Sydney . . . she swore that she could hear Yvla calling to her from afar. Again.

Why? Sydney wondered, allowing herself to sink nearly all the way to the stony bottom of her cell. What’s the point of training if I’m never going to escape this place, or even hold a real jelly whip?

Though she could no longer see them, she pictured the bone litters of the oubliette’s former occupants littering the floor all around her. Not for the first time, she wondered whether or not those aligned against her – the king, the Blackfin, and their minions too – if all meant to keep Sydney trapped in the oubliette forever. Lost and forgotten to darkness like all the rest whose anonymous bones were strewn across the bottom of her cell.

The idea of the former prisoner and their lingering ghosts haunted her. Aye, stupid girl. You’re no different from any who suffered here . . . those in the above will leave you to wither and starve like they did for us.

The thought made Sydney immediately kick away from descending all the way. She rocketed upward as if the phantoms in her mind meant to chase her in ascending. Sydney swam all the way to the surface, bursting above the water line.

The never-ending dark and the cold lived there also.

Despite them all, Sydney welcomed the idea of breathing air, rather than Salt. Though she marveled at her ability to breathe both above and beneath the surface, Sydney swore she would never get fully used to the feeling of swallowing water and exhaling. Not that the musty air in the above felt much better. Her lungs screamed with the burning sensation as she choked the oxygen down in replacement of the water she had been breathing below.

This place is death. Her instincts signaled with the combined, rotted taste of mildew and Salt. Death and decay.

Sydney was already diving again when a rumble came from the ceiling. She winced as a tracing of light cut through the dark. Small and thin at first, an orange and yellow flickered hue brightened for every continued rumble.

Sydney flip-turned to locate the light’s source. She cringed at the onslaught to her vision, even as she craved more of it. Shielding her face with her trembling forearm, Sydney dared to resurface and look upward as a portion of the hulking stone ceiling was rolled away to reveal a manhole-sized escape. She had scarcely seen the two-toned faces of Orc soldiers bearing torchlights when a shadow plummeted through the hole. Sydney yelped at the splash made when a bucket landed nearby, dousing her with more water.

The Orcs laughed in the above. “Climb in, savage,” one of them jeered. “The king wishes to see you.”

Sydney sneered at the others’ continued mocking. When she did not move for the bucket and rope cast down, the Orc called to her again.

“Two ways to do this, love,” said he, a voice that Sydney swore she recognized, yet could not put a name to. “Your choice, but both decisions will end the same.”

Then it’s no real choice. Sydney thought, remembering the voice’s owner then for the same Orc who had caught up to her and Yvla in the sewers after the attack on Catcher’s Corner. Solomon. She searched and found his name among the memory and all that happened when Yvla had fought him anyway.

Solomon called down to her again. “Make your choice, girl . . .”

Sydney swam toward the rope line. A bucket large enough to place her feet inside hung from the end. Sydney shifted her