PLAGUE
by Obsidian Blade
Rock Bottom
'It's not that,' said Shiraar Rinaari. 'I know we're almost an entirely new group, but we know what we're doing. The plague is just too much.'
Kabtaar Tziir nodded slowly, watching the young kabutops as she made a deft slice in her sandy, soft healer skin and trickled blood into her patient's mouth. Her movements were professional and precise as she licked the cut shut and flicked warm sand over the prostrated raakin. Even the swelling under her left shoulder plate where Shaaca had struck her drew no complaint.
Tziir couldn't help but be impressed by the way she handled herself, going about her business with an air of confidence despite his presence. She seemed at ease with making him wait as she checked over the acid burn wounds marring the young warrior's shell and, tired as he was, the kabtaar appreciated the casual lull. Observing her regulated actions was soothing after an ill-fated attempt to submit the raakinoi to an early morning training session.
Apparently satisfied with her findings, the shiraar shook sand from her blunt scythes and approached her leader with the blades angled respectfully inward.
'How does he fare?' inquired the larger kabutops, peering down at her questioningly.
'His current wounds should heal swiftly, Kabtaar,' she replied, 'But I think we both know what is coming. He shows no sign yet, but it's only a matter of time.'
Tziir raised his head higher, willing despair to slide down the sweeping shield and away.
Her voice distinctly tentative, she continued cautiously. 'I do believe I can prolong his life some, though.'
The kabtaar's head snapped around sharply, his angular blue eyes focusing on the healer's meekly bowed head. Slowly her eyes rolled up to meet his gaze. She tensed.
'How?' he enquired, voice harsher than he had intended. More gently he added, 'Have you discovered something new?'
Hesitating, the healer glanced over to her peers - three others who attended various different ka'aan around the shiraan - and then back to the kabtaar, eyes pleading. Eyeing her curiously, he inclined his head in the direction of the beach and swept out a scythe in invitation.
'Perhaps words would come more easily out in the open air,' he said smoothly, rewarded with a warm look from the female.
Together, they walked along the waterline, the surf splashing around the kabtaar's talons as he strode ahead, his considerably smaller companion trotting just behind. A strong wind swept off the water, swirling around the pair before soaring off up the beach to where the raakinoi scuffled in the sand at a sensible pace for once. Eyeing them fleetingly, Tziir gave a curt nod of approval before slowing and addressing the healer.
'Shiraar Rinaari, I presume there is a reason why you weren't willing to discuss this in front of your peers.'
She turned her head away slightly, obviously uncomfortable.
'It's not their fault, Kabtaar. They're tired. Actually, we all are. We want a cure for the plague, which my discovery doesn't contribute towards; that makes it of little interest to them. I've been told to put it out of my mind to make room for more important things,' she told him, a determined note threading through her voice as she continued. 'Now that we're on the cusp of decisive action, though, I think prolonging the sufferers' lives is worthwhile. If we can keep everyone in the shiraan alive until you've crushed the omastar and removed the source of the sickness they could be cured!'
Quickly tightening his muscles to avert a telling change in body language, Tziir did his best to ignore his darkening spirits at her words. The mere mention of the planned offensive was enough to take his mind to unpleasant places. It disturbed him that a subject that brought him such discomfort had given young Rinaari such hope. Especially as he knew her optimism in the face of bloody war was entirely his doing.
'Kabtaar?' she enquired, her enthusiasm visibly tainted by Tziir's hesitation.
Shaking his head to clear it, the hulking kabutops tapped the tips of his scythes against his thigh plates in acknowledgement.
'What exactly is your discovery?' he asked.
'When the plague first struck, sufferers took weeks to die. Since then, the time it takes the sickness to kill has become shorter and shorter. We thought it was because of decreasing numbers of experienced shiraari,' she said, 'But now I think it's actually more to do with a decreasing number of kabu full stop.'
The kabtaar frowned. 'Fewer hunters?'
Rinaari crossed her blades. 'No. Fewer visitors.' Seeing his look of confusion she continued, 'Kabu left alone go faster. Those with friends or family at their sides last longer, sometimes even seem to be recovering.'
A short pause where the only sound was of distant splashing and the more rhythmic flow of the waves allowed Tziir to digest her words.
'I think that's why Kognook lasted so long. His mother provided him with someone to hold onto,' she added softly, glancing sideways up at him.
The widening of her eyes and ducking of her head made it evident that he had failed to hide his pained expression at the thought of that ill-fated family. Inwardly cursing his poor form, he smoothed his gaze into one of calm interest far too late.
'I'm sorry we couldn't do more for Kognook, Kabtaar,' the healer murmured, 'Or for his mother. I know she was dear to you.'
Increasingly violent splashing in the distance went beneath Tziir's notice, the kabtaar far too struck with the healer's words to pay his surroundings any further heed. I know she was dear to you, said as though the black kabutops was already dead, or that his affection had worn away at some point in the past, the ageing and eventually expiring remnant of an old tenderness akin to something familial. Had it really seemed that way to the people around him? That he had ceased to care? That the distance set between Shaaca and himself had stopped his chosen champion, his aashnin, from possessing his love? He set his jaw at a more pressing worry. Had it seemed that way to her?
Tziir took a deep breath. 'Aashnin Shaaca and I-'
Raakin Siira's cry as she thundered down the beach cut him off: 'Kabtaar! The kiteraan shelf!'
Even without explanation, the urgency in her shout was too strong to misinterpret. Pushing past the bewildered shiraar, Tziir broke into a sprint along the shore, heading for a massive outcropping of rock that protruded up from the sea onto the beach. Reaching it, he clambered up its steep side, a rain of dislodged seaweed and shale falling in his wake.
He launched himself from the top just as Siira reached the gap between his perch and the sheer cliff wall bordering the bay. Landing just ahead of her in the shallow water of the shelf, the kabtaar was already accelerating again in the direction she indicated when the scene ahead struck him directly in the chest, leaving him breathless with surprise. He stumbled and slowed for two strides before lurching back into top speed with a kabutopian roar of fury. At the edge of the shelf where the seabed fell away twenty meters, a large shape thrashed amongst plumes of spray. Jakinzaa.
It was impossible to identify her attackers in the foam frothing up around the tmiirin, but gashes in her legs and abdomen made their intent clear enough. Her useless scythes slapped at the dark shapes, catching one and sending it hurtling clear of the water. Rows of white and red fins flailed along its sides, grey, armoured claws reaching for Jakinzaa before it disappeared back into the spray. Tziir had never seen anything like it.
'We're coming!' cried Siira at his elbow.
Jakinzaa staggered at the sound of her voice, her head snapping up towards them. 'Stop, Tziir!' she cried.
The creatures stole the rest of her words away, three of them bursting from the waves and crashing solidly into her chest. With a gurgle, she pitched backward and disappeared into the deep water of the kiteraan.
Both warriors reached the edge a split second later. Tziir did not hesitate: he dug his talons into the rock and pushed off hard. Together they dove, arms and fins pressed flat to their bodies as they powered downward.
Far below, rank upon rank of dead kabutops floated just above the sea floor like a sunken army, tethered with lengths of woven seaweed. Some had decayed to nothing more than empty shells years ago, their hollow helms nodding in the current with the last ghostly curls of membrane blooming from their eye sockets. Those closest to the shore were victims of the plague: over fifty corpses all dead for less than a month, all perfect feeding places for every hungry sea creature from remoraid to krabby. What rigidity their remaining flesh provided for their limbs failed to keep them still against hundreds of burrowing jaws; the newest dead jerked and danced in the water.
The perfect hiding place, Tziir realised with disgust, and the perfect place to drag Tmiirin Jakinzaa. No self-respecting kabutops could enter the kiteraan save to tether new dead; its sanctity was one of the few unspoken rules never to have been questioned in living memory. To plunge in there with violence in mind was unthinkable.
There was no doubting the creatures' comprehension of this fact. Swarming around the thrashing shape of Jakinzaa, they forced her deeper through the water, their flat bodies bending easily out of the way of her increasingly desperate swipes. Around flurries of bubbles and swirls of blood, Tziir counted eight, maybe nine of them. Amongst the cadavers, those numbers could prove fatal.
A quick burst of bubbles ordered Siira to take the right flank. He didn't wait for confirmation. A concentrated jet surfaceward forced the last of the air from his body, sending him hurtling toward the bottom. In seconds, the first enemy came into range, the eye stalks on either side of its head straining to focus on the kabtaar.
It had no time to dodge. Tziir's strike caught the joint where head met abdomen, slicing straight through its exoskeleton in a burst of blood and translucent tissue. Forcing its body further open with a twist of his blade, he yanked its claws from Jakinzaa's flesh and hurled it away. Another struggled to detach itself from the elderly kabutops, caught between two armour plates, and he dispatched it with cold fury.
To his right, Siira deftly decapitated another before ramming its companion with her elbow. Blood flowed over the sweeping planes of her head as she swept around in the water to finish off her stunned foe, but no sooner had she cut through one side of its fins than another enemy slammed her from behind, a flurry of bubbles bursting from her mouth.
Without a thought, Tziir launched himself over her, slicing downward at the attacker. It darted aside, his scythe cutting empty water, but a powerful jet from the kabtaar's mouth spun it around. Disorientated for a split-second too long, it dove in a weaving line towards the kabutops graveyard, only for Jakinzaa herself to kick it solidly in the back, her gnarled talons tearing it open.
They were perilously low now, not a scythe's length above the nodding skulls of the tethered dead, and still outnumbered. Swatting two of the remaining four leeches from the tmiirin, Tziir went to signal for Siira to tow her to the surface, only for Jakinzaa's flailing knee to catch him solidly in the centre of his chest. A pressurised jet gushed from his mouth at the impact, blasting Siira in the shoulder and sending him flying backward between two of the oldest corpses. Sand bloomed up around him as he struck the bottom.
Grit choked him, obscured his vision; blindly he lashed out to right himself, only to catch his arm behind the blade on woven seaweed. Somewhere above, Siira continued to fight, sending flurries through the cloud of silt around Tziir. Sprawled on his back with his arm pulled taut, the kabtaar struggled to free himself, tensing against his bonds to no avail. They had been woven to endure the strength of the sea itself; brute force would never break him free. Overhead, the source of the swirling currents fell still.
Turning onto his belly and bringing his legs up beneath him, Tziir froze in his crouch, fins spread along his back in search of a reassuring eddy from the raakin. The seaweed was only looped around his arm, caught on the knuckle of his elbow, but thrashing had done nothing to fix it. Instead, he had succeeded only in shaking the empty armour of the dead kabutops overhead. Dislodged algae and strips of ancient membrane floated down around the kabtaar. He slipped the blunt edge of his free scythe under the braid, pulled it loose around his arm and worked his way free. It was the only procrastination he could justify.
'Raakin?' he enquired with a few sharp clicks.
Slowly he pushed away from the sea bed, floating level with the disturbed corpse. The solid plates had once housed a warrior far broader across the chest than Tziir himself, with longer barbs at the elbows and unusual spikes following the upper curve of the eye sockets. Though the ancient cadaver still floated in one piece, the kabtaar ducked his head apologetically.
'Kabtaar! They're dead. I have the tmiirin. Are you alright?'
Siira's response came in a harried series of clicks and scrapes of scythes on armour, and Tziir couldn't help but slump with relief at the sound.
'I'm fine. I'm coming,' he replied in the same fashion, raising his head to give the dead one last glance.
He was just about to kick off when he realised the corpse's left eye was staring back. Confusion caught him for a second. He floated in the water, peering through his third eyelid, questioning his own senses. Perhaps it wasn't an eye. More like an oval of red, hanging behind the dead kabutops' empty eye socket. The kabtaar peered closer. An oval of red on a dark grey background, drifting within a warrior's skull. Hiding there.
The red shifted and a real eye took its place, mounted on a living stalk.
'Siira!' clicked Tziir, darting away.
The corpse was alive with them: now that he was looking, the kabtaar saw fins and claws protruding from the cracks between armoured plates, glassy eyes watching him from every gap. He glanced around swiftly. The other bodies were the same. Their arms and legs jerked as the vermin within hurried to come out.
'To land! Now!'
He hurtled straight up, out over the seething kiteraan. Not far ahead, Siira dragged Jakinzaa's unresponsive form towards the nearest outcropping of rock, struggling with the unwieldy burden. Tziir powered after them, easily catching the raakin and slinging the tmiriin's dragging arm around his shoulders. Together they strained for speed, but with her shielded head tilted against the water Jakinzaa became a boulder strung between them. Even simultaneous jets from the two warriors failed to provide any substantial leap forward.
Instead, all the attempt provided was the first real glimpse of the enemy's numbers. They poured from the kiteraan, a swarm of hungry monsters that must have been close to forty strong. Hard to gauge for certain, but precision hardly mattered. If they caught up, the kabutops would be torn to pieces regardless.
Turning away grimly, Tziir found some satisfaction in the determined glint of the raakin's eyes. Panic in either of them would doom all three for certain, but it seemed she had a chance. As they swam, neither looking back, he drew in water until the armoured plates parted over his bulging abdomen. The cold weight sat heavy inside him; on land it would render him utterly helpless. Down here he trusted it with his life.
'No matter what,' clicked the kabtaar as they rose into the furthest weak ribbons of sunlight. He could hear the rumble of waves against rock. 'Don't stop.'
His fins flared, blades slicing through the water as he pivoted sharply. They were even closer behind than he expected; he impaled the closest by chance alone, then went after the next without a pause to shake the first corpse free.
These were the fastest, the most eager; those who had swept ahead of the rest without a second thought. Suddenly finding themselves facing the huge kabutops without proper support, some of them hesitated, others crashing into them from behind. Tziir had no qualms in taking advantage of these blunders. His scythes swatted and cleaved until the water around him was thick with gore.
But more were coming. They flew from the bloody murk in flurries of three and more, driving into the kabtaar even as his blades tore through foe after foe. One glanced off the flat of his helm, jerking his head back on his neck. Another slammed into his thigh, digging its pincers into the gap in his leg plate before a wild kick drove it away. Still more pummelled his back, his chest, his tail and fins, and the water in his reserves threatened to surge out uncontrolled. He bit it back, then writhed as an enemy thrust its claw deep into his side between his back and chest plates. Battered fins flaring in agony, he crushed its head with his elbow, a dark stream gushing from the narrow wound it left behind.
One slipped through his guard, chasing after Siira. Hurling away an armful of its brethren, Tziir sliced upward as far as he could reach, cleaving through the creature's stubby tail. He didn't see if the blow stopped it altogether. His blade was at full extent, his whole underarm left vulnerable, and an enemy struck without hesitation, nearly wrenching the kabtaar's arm from its socket. The creature's claws cut through his flesh and lodged deep inside, locking the joint solid.
One-armed, Tziir thrashed. It was no use. Enemies crashed into him from all sides, slamming him backward. They sliced at his joints. One gouged clear through his third lid, salt searing his left eye. They pummelled the kabtaar until water flowed freely from his jaws and his flesh swelled against his own armour.
Then his talons met rock.
It was the same outcropping he had cleared to join Siira as they ran. Rising from the sandy slope of the sea bed, through clouds of blood and silt, it pressed against Tziir's feet, then his fins, as the swarm forced him further back. With parasitic bodies lining every gap in his armour, his strength ebbing like the tide, the kabtaar looked upward through the blood, to where the sunlit surface undulated green and gold and crashed against the rock. His useless scythe waved not a head's width from the air.
Tziir's eyes glowed a brilliant white. The rock groaned and shifted all around him; he clenched his jaw, willing his strength to last, willing the stone to move, because if it didn't, this would be the last thing he ever tried. Cracks cobwebbed out below him, dislodging barnacles and seaweed. Through some curious extension of himself, he felt each split dig deeper, carving three separate hunks of rock from the ground. Trembling from the effort, the kabtaar snarled.
A solid lance of water burst from his bloated reserves, slamming into the swarm and hurling them away. Helpless in the current, their tiny bodies crunched together, claws flailing. The tail end of the group hit the first waves from behind, forcing them together into one sprawling, panicked mess of little scavengers.
His blood surged at the sight of them. Tziir swept his good scythe forward, the first boulder hurtling along the same arch and crashing through the parasites. They parted in a sudden flurry of movement, only for the second and third boulders to drop down on them from above. Body crunched against body crunched against stone. The kabtaar released another blast of water, driving the hulking lumps of rock and their trapped victims toward the ocean floor.
Exhaustion deadened Tziir's limbs. A blind swipe with one blade forced a few claws out from under his armour, but it was a futile gesture. The dislodged parasites swam nimbly out to the regrouping cloud of survivors. They floated in a half-crescent of grey shells and pearly eyes, claws clicking as they eyed the weakening kabutops expectantly.
'Rrriiith,' one trilled, and they drew further back, watching.
Tziir hadn't the strength to hiss in return. He drifted above the steep slope of the outcropping, buoyed by the current.
'Get off,' he said weakly against the water to one of the creatures still wedged under his armour.
Its eyes rolled up at him without the slightest glimpse of compassion, and its claws tore out a strip of his flesh. Prey. The kabutops kabtaar was prey. Tziir's eyes rolled in his head, nausea flooding through him at the thought.
A familiar, sandy-skinned arm locked around his useless elbow and pulled.
Rinaari's round features swam into view as Tziir broke the surface with her help, hope surging back through him at the sweet sting of air against his injuries. Water gushed from the slit in his third lid and the flat of his scythe groped and slipped on the rough stone as he fought for purchase.
'Raakin!' cried the shiraar, digging in her talons and hauling on Tziir's arm with all her might.
They weren't getting anywhere; the sea gripped the kabtaar with no intention of relinquishing him. He let out a growl as something stabbed at his tail, certain that it would be the first attack of many.
Siira crashed into the water beside him, looping one arm beneath the base of his fins. Her scythe screeched against his chest plate just as her head broke the surface by his shoulder, spitting out a mouthful of pink.
'Ready?' she snarled.
'Ready,' said Rinaari gravely.
All three kabutops heaved, scythes and talons scrabbling on rock as they hauled Tziir out of the ocean. His left foot slipped on seaweed, smashing his kneecap into the ground, but the kabtaar threw himself forward with the two females' strength right behind him. Sharp rock gouged his chest plates as he collapsed, gasping for air. His whole body throbbed.
Siira's muscles sang at the sight of him. Sick with fury, she sliced the writhing parasites from between the kabtaar's fins and along the seams of his armour, then whirled to strike at those stupid enough to try and follow the kabutops onto land. Lurching from the waves, they skittered over the rocks towards Tziir. The raakin killed them all, until blood ran from her feet and scythes. The waves broke in showers of pink foam against the kabutops' perch.
'They're falling back,' said Rinaari quietly from behind her, 'I think they're falling back.'
She was right. Siira caught a few last iridescent flashes of bulbous eyes through the water, but nothing else came onto land.
She began to shake. Her joints like jelly, she staggered to the others and fell to her knees. The kabtaar sprawled beside her, his body heaving with each wet, gulping gasp of breath. His right pupil followed Rinaari as she glanced over his wounds, but the second lid seemed stuck over the left, torn across the middle and steaming up until the whole eye turned milky white. Siira's stomach twisted all the more as she realised she was on Tziir's blind side. The first of the Bladesworn lay helpless, bleeding. She had never even seen him sit down to rest before.
'I can't believe we made it,' she said, her voice shrill and forced. 'I didn't think we were going to make it.'
The kabtaar offered no reply. She saw his good eye roll toward her, but the central arch of his helm blocked her from view.
'And then,' she continued, driven to fill the silence, 'And then I was out of the water, Kabtaar, and you weren't, and there was all this blood, and I thought you were going to die.' Her voice hitched on the last word; the despairing panic she had smothered deep in her chest seethed against her throat. 'I thought you might be dead too.'
'We should move,' said Rinaari. Siira saw her gaze shift.
'I'm not dead,' said Tziir to no-one in particular, his deep, once-reassuring voice faint and bewildered.
She watched his gaze follow Rinaari's, skimming over the bloodied rock with its torn shawl of seaweed. Though she tried to stop them, her eyes did the same. They traced the cracked, ancient curve of a drying scythe. Together, the three kabutops regarded the huddled bulk of Tmiirin Jakinzaa, turned on her side with her wooden ornaments tapping lightly against her motionless shell. Seawater dripped steadily from one upturned eye socket.
'No,' said Siira, wishing she could keep her mouth shut, just this once. The truth trickled out nevertheless. 'But she is.'
