LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
Campus Cuda, 2,056 years ago
Soledad coiled her long and flexible tail around Apkallu's midsection, tugging him in to plant a long, passionate kiss on his muzzle.
"Ah," he said sweetly. "I love ye, Queen Soledad."
"And I love you, good King Apkallu." She tugged on him once again, using the momentum to drop both of them down to the large white bed in the center of their personal chamber.
They laughed as they snuggled closer together. Apkallu caressed Soledad's face, nuzzling the bony plates between her eyes with his nose. He stared at her tenderly, and she closed her eyes, hoping to conceal their rage, as they kissed.
"Mmm, honey," Soledad whispered. "Why don't you put on the royal headdress?"
Apkallu glanced in surprise at where it was, hanging on a hook on the wall, the golden crown with its great orange horns and red teeth. "Ye want me ta wear yer da's headdress?" he said doubtfully.
"It's not my dad's, it's mine," Soledad said defensively. "I bet you would look so regal in it. Come on, let me get it on you…"
She lashed out with her tail and snatched the headdress off its hook, fitting it gently upon Apkallu's head.
"Ooooh," she purred. "Very dashing." She kissed him once again, pushing him downward and pressing him deep into the soft mattress. He responded by running his lips down the length of her long snout, then kissing her jaw line, his eyes as close to hers as he could get.
"Ah, my darling," she whispered. With a faint click, a pair of fangs emerged from her mouth. She tilted her head, piercing the skin on Apkallu's neck. Blood started flowing from the wound, and Soledad sucked up as much as she could; the rest floated out into the water.
"Och, that's… that is strangely pleasurable," Apkallu muttered, his eyelids fluttering involuntarily.
"Isn't it?" Soledad whispered, kissing the wound to seal it up. "You taste like heaven, darling."
He hugged her tightly to his body. "Ah, me queen…"
They continued kissing and necking passionately, unaware of two thick red tentacles which had gently opened the doors to Soledad's balcony and were sliding into the room—unaware until the tentacles lifted the bed and began pulling it out onto the balcony.
"Wha—?" Apkallu said shrilly, hanging onto Soledad tightly.
"What is this?" Soledad growled, looking around anxiously.
The tentacles lifted them up to the castle roof, and they saw that the appendages were attached to the midsection of an enormous gray shark, with a gaping mouth baring its rows of teeth, and solid, shiny black eyes.
The beast looked at the two of them, breathing heavily. It held the bed high up over its body with its tentacles, and turned around, swimming over the castle and away from the city.
"Oh, what is this?" Soledad said again, snarling, looking over the edge of the bed at the creature carrying her.
"Be still, Queen Soledad," the beast said in a calm and gentle voice.
"Oh, you talk," Soledad said dryly. "Who, or what, do you suppose you are?"
"I am Evade, to answer the first part of the question," said the monster.
"And what are you?" Soledad demanded. "Some kind of shark… topus?"
"I am a leviathan."
"Ah. Well, I'm going to call you a sharktopus."
Evade didn't answer for a moment, before reluctantly stating, "I am the last leviathan."
"Ohhh," Apkallu said sadly. "Och, I'm sorry ta hear that."
"Yes, tragic," Soledad sneered. "Where exactly are you taking my bed?"
"That remains to be seen," said Evade.
"You mean you don't know?" Soledad exclaimed. "Hey, I just realized: we can swim away. Come on, my love." She hooked her arm around Apkallu's and swam off the bad, back toward the castle.
Evade's other two tentacles lashed out, wrapping around their bodies and coiling around them tightly. Evade held them underneath his body, the bed still held overhead and all without disrupting the rhythm of his swimming.
"Well, this is just…" Soledad grumbled, struggling. She froze, smelling the water flowing in her face, noting the northerly direction they were travelling, and seeing a pair of great stone gashes on the ocean floor a half-mile ahead.
"You're taking us to the Crags of Okeanos," she accused.
"So it would appear," Evade agreed curiously.
He slowly dove down to one of the entrances of the stone chasm. The mouths of the Crags were each only a few dozen feet wide, offering little or no hint to the labyrinthine world contained within. Evade followed various tunnels without a second's hesitation, all huge tunnels which could easily contain his bulk, and went steadily downward.
"Soledad, love," Apkallu whispered anxiously, reaching out for her blindly. "I canna see a thing. What's happenin' around us?"
"Nothing, he's just swimming," Soledad hissed, looking around. "I don't know what he's up to. I can see perfectly. Can't you see anything at all?"
"Nay, just yer eyes," he mumbled.
"Okay." She turned to him, facing him directly. "I'm looking right at you, darling. Don't look away from my eyes. I'm here for you."
"A'right," he said shakily. "That's… that's comfortin'. I can see ye."
The tunnel suddenly ended, opening into a massive canyon, its walls close together but empty water as far as the eye could see both above and below. Evade followed the canyon until it intersected with four others like it. In this huge intersection, Evade stopped swimming and sat still, waiting.
"What's happenin' now?" Apkallu whispered. "Has he stopped?"
"Yes, yes he has," said Soledad. "And I'd bet that even he doesn't know why."
"A wager you'd win," said Evade. "But we shall see."
Several moments passed in silence, until a large black dolphin came rushing out of the darkness, cackling madly. "Hellooooooo, Mr. Evade!" it giggled in a squeaky female voice. In mid-swim, it changed into a white manta ray. "So good of you to bring our quarry to us!" Shifter finished.
A swarm of tiny yellow octopuses with blue ring-shaped spots came jetting up from the depths. "You've served the Old Gods well, leviathan," they said in one voice.
Evade bowed his head. "And an honor it is to serve, though I knew not what I was doing at the time. It would have been comforting to have been forewarned."
"We apologize," said Hukwurm, the numerous octopuses clenching their tentacles in barely-restrained frustration as they turned their gaze to Soledad. "We didn't have the time… we'd run out of patience."
"What's goin' on?" Apkallu peeped, glancing around, his eyes seeing nothing. Soledad shushed him in what she hoped was a soothing tone.
Carto floated some distance away, just barely close enough for Soledad to be able to see her, her five paddles churning up the water as usual and her eyeless gaze turned upward at nothing in particular.
"I thought you three were supposed to be retired," said Soledad as Evade released her and Apkallu. Apkallu froze, barely moving from the fear brought about by his blindness in this environment.
"Oh, we just needed to check for a return on our investment," said Hukwurm. The octopuses changed into white squids covered in jagged brown markings, which formed a ring around Soledad, circling her menacingly. "You are quite the disappointment, 'Queen' Soledad. You were supposed to be our trump card, the first new goddess."
"I didn't ask for this," Soledad said coldly.
The squids scattered as a long-toothed viperfish lunged at Soledad's face, its bulging eyes furious. "You were going to be a queen!" Shifter exploded, her outline blurring and becoming a sharp-nosed and jagged-toothed goblin shark. "We thought a queen would take responsibility for her kingdom!" A second later, she was a much bigger and bulkier shark, this one with milky white eyes but the same wicked teeth. "We thought you would be our legacy! Instead, you're a total waste of our time." She changed to a huge, black-and-white killer whale, her conical teeth gnashing in Soledad's face as she spoke. "How many more generations have to suffer before you realize that you need to start earning yourself some glory, glory for us!" Then she was a colossal black whale, still with sharklike teeth. "The one creature I ever loved parted ways with me because I chose you and not him to ascend to the new pantheon! Now I regret that, and it's too late."
Finally, she transformed into a scaly green sea serpent, hundreds of feet long, which huffed in Soledad's face, releasing a stream of bubbles, before retreating a fair distance away, glowering at the seapony queen, its form already blurring into whatever Shifter was changing into next, something substantially smaller.
"Maybe you should have gotten to know me better first," Soledad sneered. "I didn't want to be a queen either."
"This isn't what we had in myind for our ryetirement, our gyift being squandered lyike this," Carto said sadly.
"But… but… hey, you're the ones who told me I had all the time in the world!" Soledad objected. "I am getting better, you know. I have a husband now… we've been together almost four years. He's done wonderful things for my soul, and if you don't mind, I'd like to return the favor by doing nasty things to his body."
"Oh yeah?" said Hukwurm, the squids of his body once again forming a ring around Soledad. "He's gonna make you better, is that it? Yeah, I can see that happening… him being there for you as long as he lives. But he's mortal. What happens when he's gone?" The squids spun around and changed into spiny purple sea urchins, which covered Soledad's body and began rolling all over her. "Then are you gonna go back to being what you were before? Lazy? Pathetic? Useless?"
"I… I don't know," Soledad admitted.
"It's just, you're such a waste of space," Shifter lamented, appearing as a golden seapony stallion with spiky blond hair and heavy-lidded eyes. "I liked you at first, you know." She changed into a slick silver seal. "Your moodiness, it was kind of appealing to me, I'm kind of into that, but—"
"Wait a minute!" Soledad said wildly.
"Hmm?" Shifter said curiously, now a tiny pink dolphin.
"You were Maol Straume! You just changed into Maol!" Soledad cried, lunging at Shifter furiously. "Were you Maol the whole time? Was it all some kind of secret test?"
Shifter changed into a huge, armored coelacanth, which blinked at Soledad nervously. "…No, not at all," she said hastily. "I can't maintain one shape for more than a few seconds…" She became a chubby, algae-covered manatee. "I could, in theory, stay a seapony for a while if I concentrated hard on every seapony I've ever seen, but that would end up looking like this…"
The next moment, Shifter was the spitting image of Soledad's father, King Nimo. A few seconds later, she was Dorado… and a moment after that, Jolly.
"Stop it!" Soledad snapped.
Shifter changed into a young seapony filly, pale green with a tightly-curled purple-and-pink mane and sad green eyes—what Soledad had looked like before becoming the hideous goddess she was now. "Am I making you uncomfortable?" Shifter cackled. "Well, you make me uncomfortable, Soledad. You and my decision to let you live forever."
The purple sea urchins rolling over Soledad's body changed into three-foot long shrimp-like creatures with hard brown shells, vicious mandibles, and big black eyes mounted on stalks. Each was nearly as large as Soledad herself, and there were well over fifty of them, seemingly fighting for the right to crawl all over her. She shuddered at their touch.
"Well," Hukwurm said thoughtfully, "you know, I just, I hope you know that you've disappointed us sooooo much and that we have to retire feeling like this and you'll never be what we wanted you to be and you're incompetent and you'll never be worth anything and I hope you're happy." The creatures scattered into various directions.
Shifter, now a copy of Soledad's current self, grinned awkwardly and made a gentle "so-so" gesture with her hoof. The creatures that made up Hukwurm gathered up into a swarming ball, and he and Shifter disappeared in two giant pillars of rainbow-colored fire.
Soledad scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean? That they're retired now and never coming back? That's what I thought last time, and yet here you are."
Carto chuckled.
"That sure was a nice vote of confidence from those two," Soledad grumbled. "How much they hate me and wish they'd never let me live. Yeah, now I have a will to change. Sheesh…"
"Obviously, they are hyoping you'll tyake the byait and seek to prove them wrong," said Carto. "You will do that, won't you? I do believe lyove has made you stryonger, but you've had this lyove for quite some time. Are you cyertain its effects will ever be felt by your kyingdom?"
"Of course they will," said Soledad. "I promise."
Apkallu frowned deeply.
"I can see you, Apkallu," Soledad reminded him.
He jumped in surprise. "Right," he said apologetically.
Carto inclined her head. "Fare thee well, Syoledyad." She, too, was enveloped in the rainbow of fire.
"Honey, I'm sorry," Apkallu said shakily. "I didn't mean ta react that way. Please dinna leave me here in the darkness."
"Of course not," Soledad said tenderly. She looked up at Evade. "All right, sharktopus, take us and our bed back to the castle."
The leviathan stared down at her disdainfully. "No… I don't think I will," he said. He dropped Soledad's bed and turned, swimming away.
Soledad dove to catch it before it sank too far. "Hey!" she called after Evade angrily, bearing the bed on her back. "You do realize I'm a goddess, don't you? I could tear you to pieces while still holding this bed! But I won't. Make of that what you will, I don't really care what you think my reasons are, I just won't do it."
"Darling, I can't see ye," said Apkallu. "I'm freakin' out a bit!"
She realized that the lights of her eyes were blocked by the bed she was carrying. She quickly swam up level with him so he could see her. "Shh," she assured him. "I'm here. I used to come here all the time, when I was mortal. I could navigate it by sound and feeling. Now, I can see, so… we'll be fine. Here, I'll hold you."
She hooked an arm around his, locking them together, still holding the bed over one shoulder as she led him back through the tunnel from which they had been brought.
"These tunnels used to be where I'd come to think about things," Soledad said bitterly. "But it's where I died, and it's where those Old Gods found me, so it's kind of lost its appeal. I never want to think about this place again." She glared at him. "Now, about my promises…"
"I'm sorry," Apkallu said hastily. "I reacted unwisely. It was—"
"I know what it was," said Soledad. "Look, can't you accept that I'm all I'm ever going to be?"
He stared at her. "No," he said simply.
She chuckled. "All right, then. That's very sweet."
"I mean it," he said darkly.
She stared at him in concern. "All… right then," she muttered, hanging onto him tighter.