Page 36 of Secrets of the Void
It felt good to use her body. The stones were rough against her palms, abrading the skin there and giving a texture to the environment around her. The pressure of the surrounding ocean muffled all sound. She could breathe, but only barely through Pilot, who was trying to conserve her oxygen.
Ellie had to remember the exact path the drone had gone. Otherwise she would end up stuck in this labyrinth for good. But it made her mind laser-focused on keeping her alive, ensuring that nothing went wrong. Adrenaline poured through her, making her muscles seem stronger, her mind quicker, her entire body ready to do whatever it took to get to the next rock and then...
Light.
Beams of it against the stones, even though she knew that wasn't possible. Light couldn't exist down here when the storm was raging over her head.
She pulled herself a little farther through the stones and felt the pinch of how tight they had gotten. She had to turn her body through some of them, twisting and tugging at her hips that got stuck in another section, and then she was through. The stones opened up here, not tighter, but giving her so much more space.
And there was light. Glimmering at the top of her head where the water met the air.
She had no idea how long she had been pulling herself through those stones, but she was here now. Staring at a surface that wasn't quite glassy at all. Almost as though a slight breeze ruffled it. That breeze turned the surface into glittering diamonds.
Pilot's legs moved against her face, and suddenly the droid detached from her skin. Oxygen now gone, she used her hands to pull herself up the wall of stones and lift her head out of the water.
She was assaulted with gold.
No, not gold.
Sand.
There was so much sand everywhere her eyes looked. Bright yellow and illuminated by overhead lights, there were dunes lifting over everything that might have once been the remains of humankind. Massive pillars held up the ceiling, painted in jewel tones with depictions of humans and undine alike. Carved sea creatures swam with them up the columns, to a ceiling that was entirely gold. Some parts of it had fallen now, as the gold foil was visible in massive chunks on the floor.
This room was beyond reason. Beyond understanding. It was so big, so tall, that the more she looked, the larger it seemed to get.
Ellie was used to Tau. Yes, there had been large rooms, but nothing like this. It was as if she clung to the side of a hollow mountain, and so much space made her dizzy.
"What is this place?" she asked as Pilot crawled out of the water with her. He shook water off himself before crawling up onto the sand.
"Welcome to Sanctuary, Ellie."
Fifteen
Proteus
The old paths into the Sanctuary were no longer open. Time had collapsed the tunnels, so it took him a little while to figure out how to get back inside. Eventually, Proteus grew tired of waiting and just shoved the stones out of his way. Sure, there had been a few more cave-ins that were more annoying than they were deadly to one as large as him.
The stones were easy to move. They just took time. And all the while, his mind wandered back to the little human who had been unable to swim.
She had surprised him.
But then again, many of the humans he had met couldn't swim. They were all so terrified of the ocean, uncertain when an undine would appear and drag them into the depths, so many had decided to forgo ever learning how.
He hadn't even thought about it when he ripped her out of that pod. He'd been wanting to destroy it since the first moment she'd asked him not to put her back inside of it. Yes, the healing capabilities were useful, but also very unlikely to be neededagain. He'd already decided he didn't like it when she was hurt. Liked it even less when he was the one doing the hurting. Which meant he was going to keep her safe for the rest of her days.
No one would ever touch her again. Not even him.
She was the safest person on this planet now. A god of the sea himself was going to keep her safe, and no one would take her from him.
Finally, the rock wall gave way, and he entered the room that had plagued his dreams since he'd been captured. This had been where it had all started. This was where he had been so close to making a truce with the humans and learning how all of them could benefit from each other. But that had all crumbled because of greed from both sides.
This had once been a facility that would have rivaled the dreams of the gods. He remembered it being full of light and technology. All the equipment that they had struggled to make work had taken up nearly every free space. All of it was in use. All of it was used to research more and more incredible things that would have helped the ocean and the land at the same time.
Now, the equipment was gone. He poked his head out of the water to discover an empty room. The channels that used to be filled with water were still attached to the walls, at least. He would be able to move about the room once those systems were turned back online. They were little more than giant troughs that surrounded the area, but they had been useful back in the day, so he didn't dry out. The other undine who had helped him were also more likely to use those. Comfort was paramount while helping the humans.
Everything else was sand. He could see there was a small section of wall that had been blasted into the building, although it was hard to see that it was a hole at all, as the sand filled that so much it looked like it was part of the room. But he knew therehadn't been a door there, and the massive amount of sand in that area suggested that was where most of it had come from.
The wind he couldn't guess at an origin for, however. Perhaps there had been windows. He honestly did not remember.
