Heretical Fishing-Chapter 67Book 4: : Worthy Purpose

In a place of darkness, I looked out through the eyes of another being—who seemed just as confused about the eight limbs adorning his body as I was. He pushed in every direction at once, and the surrounding membrane popped.

He slipped out of its confines and into frigid ocean water.

He was far from the first to escape. Thousands of his brood had already departed, judging by the empty egg sacs sticking to the cavern’s walls. Hundreds of his brethren clung to nearby rocks as they explored their bodies. He didn’t waste a moment. Still learning how to operate this strange vessel, the octopus fry slipped out into open water—and immediately learned why so many had remained within the den.

A school of colorful fish with sharp beaks was waiting. They’d discovered that food came from this gap between rocks and coral. Before he even knew what was happening, pain lanced through him, one of their deadly mouths taking two tentacles with it.

This was the way of the sea. The truth about mother nature’s indifference. Perhaps this sudden death would mean some of his brethren would escape. Perhaps it would mean the survival of the fish that would eat him. Or maybe it would do nothing, his momentary existence as pointless as it was short.

Others might have given up when faced with certain demise. A sister beside him certainly did, remaining frozen even as she was eaten whole. But this octopus wouldn’t go down so easily. He raised the rest of his tentacles and opened a tiny beak, intent on extracting his pound of flesh from any creature that dared come close.

A blur of motion from the side. A cloud appeared. Blackness. Encompassing limbs. Crushing strength. Movement. Passing water. Cold. Numb. Fading awareness.

Then, release.

The crushing grip let go, and the octopus, his vision swimming, looked up at a giant. It had tentacles too, even more than him. They parted, and a maw just as deadly as the fish’s opened up. The newborn that would become a kraken tried to lift his limbs—tried to reveal his own sharp mouth, insignificant as it might be—but he’d lost too much blood.

He stared defiantly up, resolved to at least witness his demise. But when the guillotine opened, it wasn’t death that was delivered; it was life. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny organisms were expelled out.

The giant retreated, pressing its long body and undulating fins against a crack. Light vanished, but that did nothing to rob the baby octopus of vision. He was back in his… no, a different den. The creature before him had sealed off the only exit.

And food had been trapped in with him. It took all of his strength to grab one of the glowing organisms and press it into his mouth. As he crunched down, life flowed through him, its bioluminescence seeming to light his body from within.

By the time he’d consumed half of them, his limbs had regrown. He gave it not a second thought, and neither did he worry about his newfound speed, enhanced vision, nor increasingly complex hunting strategies.

When only ten remained, he circled them on nimble tentacles, corralling each flitting speck toward a back corner. They fell for his machinations. He spread the base of his body and opened his beak as he descended, the aftertaste of his last bite still radiating from both his mouth and soul, and… ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

Pop!

The transformation was immediate, as was knowledge. When the blinding flash of white disappeared, he stared down. Were these limbs really his…? Grey and mottled skin with rings of bright blue reminiscent of the glowing plankton he’d devoured.

Not just regular plankton, his magnified awareness knew.

They’d been filled with chi—harvested from a part of this ocean so deadly that no unascended beast would survive. His eyes flicked to the animal on the wall. Slitted pupils stared back. They possessed intimidating depth, and he could only speculate about the malicious thoughts playing out behind… them?

The cuttlefish floated toward him, its fins undulating with an emotion so strong it bounced off the walls.

Joy.

By the divines above! the stranger burbled into his mind. It worked! Its body flashed through various colors. Red, blue, yellow, green, brown, grey—each intended to camouflage with different underwater scenes. It worked, it worked, it worked!

Thoughts raced through the octopus’s head faster than he believed possible, but no matter how many came, he couldn’t decipher this strange spirit beast’s intent.

Sorry! I can feel your confusion. I’m just. So. Excited! Its fins undulated so swiftly that water started to swirl around the den. Geez, I’m messing this up. Here. Let me just… There!

Memories. The cuttlefish’s. They slammed into the octopus.

This spirit beast was on a mission. A quest of the grandest scope. He sought ascension—and someone to willingly take those steps with him. There was more. His greater purpose was equilibrium, a current he and his partner would swim to ensure the forces of this world didn’t continue their downward spiral.

This made the octopus’s eyes widen. It was so far-fetched that his thousands of thoughts hadn’t even come close to considering it. There was no malicious intent. No reciprocity demanded. The ascendant cuttlefish had prevented death without strings attached.

Why me? he asked, unsure if his savior would get his message. Why save me?

He clearly did; his fin undulated with excess energy. Because you didn’t give up!I watched thousands of your brood-mates exit that den. He scooted closer, his pupils dilating. “How many do you think stared death in the face like you did?”

“Hmm…” The octopus’s mind raced, running calculations based upon sheer conjecture and the universe’s limited knowledge of his species. Seven?

“Seven…?” The cuttlefish blew a stream of amused bubbles. “None! You were the first!” More bubbles. “The moment I saw you—a newborn creature the size of my suckers—resolve yourself to take a bite of the fish thousands of times larger than you…” His tentacles wiggling around in delight. “I knew I had found my partner, the brother that I could trust to stare into the void, and not flinch when it stared back.”

The cuttlefish froze as a sobering current washed over him. “If you choose to, of course. I will force nothing.”

As soon as he heard those words, the octopus envisioned a future where he felt something he knew existed, but had yet to experience for himself—an emotion that his limited knowledge told him was vital for all lifeforms.

Platonic love—philia in the old tongue.

“And then!” The cuttlefish continued as excitement returning to his body. “Your moves against those plankton! Wow! I expected you to survive despite the blood loss, but divines below! Even missing limbs and chilled by our passage here, you were incredible! You didn’t even need to eat them all to awaken! With that, as sure as I am that otters cannot be trusted, I knew I’d made the correct choice in saving you!”

Dozens of thoughts crossed the baby octopus’s mind in the second of silence following that statement—one of which was a great curiosity about what otters had done to receive blanketed distrust from the cuttlefish—but none of them led him to believe the potential friend was being deceptive. Happiness pulsed from his newly formed core, and his eight tentacles writhed in excitement.

Right? The cuttlefish ask-yelled, clearly sensing his eagerness. His undulating fin slowed, then froze, and a serious current crossed his features. Does… does that mean you’re willing to join me?

The octopus that would one day become a kraken nodded.

His saviour remained somber. “Listen, when I found the being to share this endeavor with, I planned on introducing them to it slowly… but my soul is screaming for me to tell you immediately. I can’t say why, but I’ve learned to listen to my instincts—they’ve helped me survive every trap thus far.”

“Traps?” the octopus asked. “Set by who…?”

“Yes. You’ll understand once I explain. Again, though, I want your approval—is it okay if I show you?”

He didn’t even consider it. He nodded emphatically, trusting his own instincts.

The cuttlefish’s solemnity vanished, fins and limbs waving chaotically. Wonderful! Okay. Okay! Here. We. Go!

A tendril of essence reached out toward him, its movement slow, searching, care—

***

A jarring sensation crashed into me as both sources of the memory—the kraken and the earth elemental—screamed out into the void, ejecting us all. One’s voiceless scream was filled with despair; the other’s was laden with rage. Both stood in stark contrast to the blossoming friendship and hopefulness of their first meeting.

I released roots of pure chi into the vast nothingness we floated in. A memory was trying to pull us in, and I did what I could to soothe and coax them toward it. They eventually relented, but only because they wanted this over with—and, like me, had realised the only way out was through.

We swirled down together into a different time and place, and as I looked out through the cuttlefish’s eyes, frustration and regret roiled within him.

“Please, brother…” the Kraken—who was now much closer to his future size—implored in a deep voice. “This is not the way.”

Over a millennium had passed. Perhaps multiple. They had meditated for too long in the ocean’s abyssal depths to be certain.

“Not your way, you mean,” the cuttlefish that would become an earthen elemental replied.

“Don’t be like that. Our cores are different, but that doesn’t mean we no longer tread the same waters.”

“I am starting to think it does mean that, brother.” Even as he spat the last word, he regretted it. The chi filling his core, however, rolled right over it, a landslide that smothered any remorse beneath tonnes of sediment. “Perhaps it is time we go our separate ways…”

The sadness on his brother’s face—an octopus fry that had grown into a monstrous creature of the depths—made sorrow dig its way to the surface. But then boulders of shame tumbled down to join the landslide, their weight crushing his emotions once more.

“You think you’re better than me, don’t you?” Stop, a part of him begged. “You have looked down on ever since I grew an affinity with earth. You succeeded in collecting abyssal chi, and I failed. That’s it, right?” Please… that small voice beseeched—but the boulders and sediment were deaf to it. “I finally understand, brother. You only keep me around to feel better about yourself, right? Or do you pity me too much to sever our ties yourself? Fine. I’ll make the decision for you!”

All three of us experiencing the memory knew what actually fuelled the anger. Centuries of self-doubt and perceived inferiority had become too painful to stomach, so his subconscious had turned them into something even uglier: fury and resentment, projected onto his brother, the only being on Kallis he had ever loved.

But the three of us were only witnesses. There was nothing we could do to stop the cuttlefish from burrowing down into the ocean floor, his essence opening the path and closing it behind him with ease. A league under the sea, his pain only grew.

Please don’t leave me, that little voice begged from within. I need you...

Unaware of this yearning, the kraken gave his brother what he’d verbally asked for. Hints of his abyssal chi flowed down toward the cuttlefish, making him all too aware of his only friend’s rapid departure.

When the kraken was just on the edge of their communication range, he froze. Hope flooded through the cuttlefish’s every cell, but then his former partner spoke.

“Have it your way, brother,” he said, wielding as a curse what had once been a term of affection between them.

It hurt too much. The cuttlefish tried to yell, half in apology, half in rage, but his power couldn’t pass through the world like abyssal chi could. All he could do was sit and dwell as his brother’s essence—the very aspect he yearned for, yet would never grasp—faded away.

***

I was again drawn from the memory by a jarring sensation. Before I could adjust to the vast nothingness surrounding the three of us, the reason for my ejection washed over me. The former brothers’ emotions had… swapped? Partially, at least.

The kraken, formerly filled with despair, now radiated resentment and bitterness, and a gloomy dejection had muted the earth elemental’s fury.

I made the mistake of trying to understand why. They both lashed out, treating me as the punching bag for their negative emotions. I learned the lesson, instead encouraging them to dive back in with tendrils of soothing essence.

Left absent choice, they reluctantly capitulated.

Hundreds of years later, we gazed through the cuttlefish’s eyes once more. He was yet to become an elemental, but in the centuries that had passed, he’d grown incredibly strong. The memory began with him turning a mountain of stone to dust so he could free a school of… seals and humans? Wait,are those fracking selkies? What the shi—

I shook my head, returning to the present. Er, the past, I mean.

Focus, Fischer.

Power and wisdom were seldom found together, but the cuttlefish proved to be an exception to the rule—not a day went by that he didn’t regret pushing the kraken away. He thought of the tiny octopus his brother had once been as he watched two adult selkies in human form swoop into the silt that remained of the mountain to collect a gaggle of children.

It only took seconds for all those trapped to be rescued by the supernaturally swift creatures, which wasn’t really surprising considering they were gods-damned selkies right out of fracking myth—

I mentally slapped myself.

Focus, Fischer! This isn’t the time!

Freed, the pod of chi-filled beings swam the cuttlefish’s way, but then an aspected pulse rippled through the ocean. Everyone froze. It was no mere wave of power that washed over them.

If it had come centuries ago, it would have sent him into a rage strong enough to split tectonic plates. Now, though, it set his multiple hearts to thumping, doing their best to beat right out of his mantle. He recognised the aspect—the element.

His brother, the kraken, had succeeded. He’d achieved the impossible task they’d set out to accomplish all those millennia ago.

Before the selkies could respond, the cuttlefish rocketed away, the ocean a blur as he shot jets of earthen chi from his siphon. He had searched for his first friend for so long. Imagined the words he could say to make his brother forgive him. And after so much time, he’d finally have a chance to do so.

That nagging voice in the back of his mind tried to steer him away, guiding him toward self preservation. The divine gods would respond to the open use of abyssal power. They would come. That voice, however, was easily quashed. His brother was nothing if not careful, and he would have stuck to the plan, if not developed an even better one over the centuries. He wouldn’t openly control such heretical chi unless within a masking barrier.

With how fast the cuttlefish travelled, it took less than an hour to reach his destination. He knew this island. It was one he had always avoided, because there were a few-dozen bipedal reasons to give the landmass a wide berth.

Humans. Some of them were cultivators, and though they weren’t yet mad, such things were only ever one foolish decision away. Not at all deterred by their presence, he swam forward carefully, not wanting to disturb the nullifying shield his brother must have erected.

But no matter how many meters he crossed, the anti-divine barrier never arrived. Had his brother not taken the planned precautions? If not, why were the gods not currently raining holy fire upon him…?

Confused, the cuttlefish slipped into one of the tricks he’d learned since separating from the kraken. Camouflage. It hid both his body and essence, which allowed him to get close enough to…

Every clump of his earthen chi turned to ice.

There he was. The brother he had dreamed of reconnecting with for hundreds of years. Two humans were astride his mighty head, riding him like one of the brainless bovines used to plow fields. They laughed as the tentacle of a mighty kraken reached up to tickle them, of all things.

The cuttlefish knew he shouldn’t do it, yet he couldn’t resist. He dropped his stealth and extended muddy strands of chi. He had to know. He needed to understand the truth. And even from a distance, his worst fears were confirmed.

The kraken had just become an abyssal elemental… by bonding with two humans. That was why the gods hadn’t acted. He’d chained himself to their offspring—he willingly served those that saw him as inferior.

His brother should have felt the cuttlefish the moment he dropped camouflage, but he was too busy chasing orbs of abyssal essence, the bubbles that arrived following the ascension of an elemental. Long ago, the cuttlefish would have happily indulged in such a delicacy, hoping it would unlock that same chi within his core.

Disgust, resentment, and budding anger caused him to rocket away once more, but the emotions weren’t for his brother—they were only for himself.

The kraken was the wisest being he’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. His brother was infallibly intelligent. For him to have bonded two humans meant that there was either a valid reason for doing it, or he had been left no other choice.

As he got further and further away, the cuttlefish’s negative feelings swelled, doing their best to crush him. He’d waited centuries for a reunion that would never be. Worse, the dissenting voice in his head, the one lingering for thousands of years, had been right all along.

My brother really is better off without me. Look how far he has—

***

Two souls in the nothingness cried out, unwilling to witness any more. I’d been keeping them pacified as best I could with my pure chi, but their emotions had grown too strong.

They’d drifted even further from their original positions. The kraken was belligerent, railing against the confines of whatever this non-temporal prison was; the earthen elemental, once blind with rage, now wallowed. Despite their feelings on the matter, I could feel the apex of this bitter-sweet song approaching, so I forced us back in.

When we looked out through the Kraken’s eyes, hundreds of years had passed since the last vision. A holy war was being fought out in the open, and he and his beloved masters had long ago stopped pretending to side with the ‘divine’ gods above.

They’d just learned an attack was coming against one of their allied continents, which was why they raced through the ocean at a swift clip, his pulse seeming to thump despite his elemental body’s lack of a heart. His masters responded by sending platonic love through their connection, both for each other and for him.

Calm ease replaced his frenetic thoughts. He returned his affections to Garret and Jenny, the husband-and-wife duo he’d bonded with. He didn’t know what he would do without them. In the back of his mind, a nagging voice chose that tranquil moment to strike.

What if it’s him…?

The attack was rumored to come from an earthen elemental.

“Then we will have finally found your brother after all these years,” Garret said, his voice sturdier than deep-ocean diamonds.

“And we’ll correct his misguided ways!” Jenny added, words chipper.

Their statements weren’t empty. They believed it down to their very cores. And he loved them all the more for it. Completely camouflaged, they raced along through the waves.

Almost there…

***

Our perspective shifted. Both beings in the nothingness with me tried to scream, but I’d expected it—I held them steady with thick tendrils of light, letting the next vision draw us in.

We looked out through the eyes of an earth elemental that’d once been a cuttlefish. He, too, thought of his oldest friend. He had long ago come to terms with their estrangement, and though the invisible scar sometimes itched, today it felt completely healed—as it always did when he found an opportunity to help his brother from the shadows.

He’d been lost for a good many decades after the last time he saw the kraken, especially after the war began in earnest. But that had all changed with a single discovery, a blessed revelation—his brother and his two humanoid masters had only been pretending to capitulate with the divine gods. They’d announced their allegiance to the allied forces in spectacular fashion, taking down swaths of corrupted humans in one fell swoop.

On that day, the cuttlefish had taken up arms—or tentacles, as it were. This thought made him smile. It was a welcome distraction from the death and destruction that might follow.

If his partner arrived in time, they were going to sink a continent.

***

Back in the nothingness, only one of the voices raged.

“Liar!” the kraken yelled, his voice hitting me from all directions at once. “Liar, Liar, LIAR!”

He lashed out with abyssal chi, his form shapeless, diminished, yet more than enough to annihilate the defenseless target of his ire. The earth elemental didn’t even try to shield himself from the attack. His sightless eyes gazed into the surrounding nothingness, catatonic.

I blocked the blow, saving one from death, and the other from a terrible mistake.

This left the kraken off balance, so I grabbed him and sent us whirling back into the same… no. A different vision. We looked out through the eyes of a cuttlefish that was no longer an earth elemental. We’d gone further back in time.

The cuttlefish had always known this war would arrive—it was why he’d sought abyssal chi all those millennia ago—but he never expected just how vicious the bloodshed would become. The entire world had been plunged into darkness, each being forced to choose a faction. Except for him, of course. He chose melancholic isolation instead, unable to find energy or reason enough to care; his former brother was a key weapon for the divine side. The wrong side.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Then, blessed revelation. As soon as the kraken openly joined the allied forces, the cuttlefish thought to do the same. If they couldn’t be brothers, perhaps they could be brothers-in-arms. For that to be possible, he needed to get much, much stronger.

He meditated long and hard in search of enlightenment. The centuries raced by. As his strength and affinity with earth increased, he dug deeper beneath the seafloor, descending through so many layers of rock that the ambient heat could melt stone. There, embracing an aspect he’d once resented, he experienced his elemental awaking.

So far down, no one else could sense his breakthrough—or so he’d thought.

Only minutes after his breakthrough, another came to greet him. He prepared for battle, willing to annihilate them if it meant the success of his mission. Instead, he found a curious soul, one not so dissimilar to him.

The first sister.

She was a volcanic elemental, and she’d also sensed a conflict coming long ago. Her aspect was useless against fighting the divine, so she’d retreated to the center of the world, choosing to live a peaceful and lonely existence.

He told her all about the war, the shifts in power, and the plan he’d developed over his own centuries of isolation—his plan to become a hidden arbiter of justice. Because of his affinity with earth, and to camouflage ability, he was uniquely suited to espionage. He needed neither glory nor recognition. All he cared about was the allied forces’ victory.

He didn’t tell the first sister all this to win her over. He simply intended on informing a kindred spirit of all that’d happened. Yet he won her over all the same. With that, he found another sibling—one that decided of her own accord to assist him from the shadows.

***

We shifted again, and as before, only a single voice called out in the nothingness. The kraken’s scream was wordless, his accusation clear. The earth elemental was lying. These memories were false. They had to be.

I felt great compassion for him, and though it broke my heart to do so, I wrangled him all the same, sending us whirling down into another vision. The moment we got there, the kraken froze, his fury blunted by twin torrents of confusion and curiosity. It was his brother’s camouflaged eyes we looked through, and for the first time since coming to this world, I witnessed gods.

Two beings entered a concealed cavern, one via a water-filled tunnel the cuttlefish hid within, the other by a hole in the roof. Rays of reflected sunlight shone down through the opening up high, further enhancing the god’s already-brilliant aura. “Greetings, D—”

“Use not that name!” the oceanic god interrupted. They were wreathed in lengths of seaweed that hid their true form, but their voice was decidedly feminine.

The divine god landed on the rocky floor with a mirthless grin. His features were flawless, yet his smile was uglier than an eel of the pungent variety. “Tell me of your progress, traitor.”

Even concealed by layers of plant-matter, the apparent saboteur’s frustration was palpable. “The central continent is ready.”

One of the golden being’s annoyingly well-groomed brows rose. “Truly? Already?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful. And how do you plan to stop this island from being swallowed by the ocean before the rituals complete? I seem to recall receiving this same news twice already, only for them to vanish into the earth. One might start to suspect you of being a double agent…”

“Agreed, which is exactly why I have prepared the sacrifice of an important piece from our polis board…”

Back in the place of nothingness, the kraken’s curiosity was gone, replaced by dawning horror. He didn’t try to escape my grip—he couldn’t look away. We both rejoined the vision.

“Ah!” the divine god replied after a moment. “I believe I know who you must mean.” A wicked grin appeared on his otherwise-flawless face. “What perfect irony. I assume they’re already on their way?”

“They are, yes. If we have been correct in assuming our meetings have been spied upon…”

They both turned right toward the cuttlefish, golden eyes and a shadowed face staring at the water-filled tunnel he hid within. Terror gripped his heart—as it did mine—and he almost lost the control of his camouflage, but then both gods’ gazes shifted to scan the rest of the cavern. They hadn’t detected him.

“If we do have a spy,” the kelp-wrapped figure continued, “it’s too late for them to do anything about it. The central continent will be saved, the rituals will succeed, and the war will be won—all in a day.”

Numbness flooded the earth elemental.

“One more question then, deceiver,” the golden god said. “Can you be trusted?”

“Yes, sir,” the bundle of seaweed replied, their last word filled with… was that mockery?

“I will take your word for it, Dolos.”

“As you should, sister.”

The cuttlefish didn’t understand. Dolos? The god of deception? If that were true, his sister—

“You dare?” Lines of light shot out from the winged god as he flew forward, and the other’s seaweed unravelled as they met in the center of the cavern. But rather than fight, they seemed to embrace one another, their forms shifting.

The golden male became female, and lines of divine essence tore through the last few strands of seaweed from within the formerly concealed figure, revealing a masculine face and well-defined muscle.

The earth elemental recognised them. All knew to look out for the siblings Dolos and Apate, yet the former had somehow managed to infiltrate the allied forces…

There was another moment of numbness as the earth elemental reconciled all he’d just seen and heard. Then, an invisible and silent patch of dirt departed as fast as it could without being noticed. Only when he’d made it kilometers away did he reach out to the first sister.

Now! he yelled through their connection. We need to move now!

***

Back in the nothingness, the kraken’s will roiled like an ocean in storm. Understanding had well and truly dawned; his shapeless fury threatened to tear us all apart. By contrast, the being he’d once called a brother was completely comatose. There were changes happening within the cuttlefish that, when combined with these haunting memories, seemed to rob him of all emotion—which only seemed to fuel the kraken’s desire for wanton destruction.

I didn’t understand. The kraken’s anger thus far had always been directed at something or someone. Now, he wanted to tear everything down—himself included.

Thankfully, his lack of focus allowed me to skull-drag him into the next memory. The sooner we finished, the better for all involved.

Despite the deceptive gods’ words, the earth elemental arrived at the central continent before the unknown counter-attacker, but he couldn’t complete his duty alone. So, he waited for his sister, praying that she got there first.

She did.

The moment her awareness bubbled up beneath him, they began, his earthen aspect ripping cracks and ravines into the tectonic plate below. Her magma poured into the gaps. The earth quaked. This mass of land was much larger than the other two islands they’d desolated, but that meant nothing before their combined might. In seconds, the coastlines would sink. In minutes, the entire continent would be underwater.

But then they arrived. A black hole seemed to open up, and it drank both his and his sister’s essence hungrily, not allowing another drop to alter the tectonic plates below.

Desperately, the earth elemental called out toward it, broadcasting images of the meeting he’d just witnessed.

We shifted perspective again, and I knew where we were going. I didn’t need to force the others to stillness. Confusion and denial had taken hold of the kraken, and the cuttlefish remained catatonic.

Though we now looked out through the kraken’s eyes, we saw not a thing. His power was being pushed to its limits—his abyssal aspect drawing on the power of not one, but two elemental beings. Both were ferocious, their earthen and volcanic powers closely aligned.

The former tried to reach out to him, tried to send him information in the least-subtle- and most-dangerous of ways. He sucked the messages into the abyss without reading them, letting them get swallowed, smothered, by the rivers of essence already flooding in.

A single thought forced its way through his mental exertion. After centuries, he had finally found his long-lost brother. The cuttlefish had grown to become powerful. Strong enough to shape the world. And he had chosen a side in the war—the wrong side.

He was using his potent ability to help the ‘divine’ usurpers.

This knowledge shook the foundation of the kraken’s being. It could be no misunderstanding. Two allied islands had recently been swallowed whole, and he now understood why. They’d been trials. Mere practice for the true target—an entire continent, along with the millions of uncorrupted humans calling it home.

Privy to his thoughts, his masters yelled out, bypassing the essence flowing into him.

“So we’ve found him after all!” Garret said.

“This actually works so well!” Jenny added. “We’ll go bundle him up! The volcanic elemental won’t be able to do a thing on their own!”

The kraken railed at the suggestion. His brother had clearly become corrupted, and he didn’t want to risk either of his masters. They both poured love and affection through their bond, touched his head with a palm each, then departed.

“We’ll be right back!” Garret called, disappearing into the abyss.

***

The earth elemental tried to reach his brother again and again. He had to let him know the truth. Had to share the deception they’d all fallen victim to. But no matter how many times he tried, they were drawn in. Anyone nearby could intercept them, but he didn’t care. If he didn’t get through, all would be lost.

He couldn’t feel the corruption atop the island, yet he knew it was there. They’d not sensed it on the islands either, but those humans were corrupted all the same. Mountains of proof laced the underwater rubble. Even now, he could feel the power emanating from atop the island—the rituals were progressing.

Reaching deep into himself, the elemental prepared to reach out to his brother again, but the kraken appeared before him instead.

No, he realized—the two masters. They were already on him, having concealed their presence until they made contact.

They were a fault line made manifest, and if he chose the wrong action here, the world would be shaken into an era of darkness it might not recover from.

With the weight of consequence resting on his back alone, he made a split-second decision. Some would call it foolish. Others would think it akin to suicide. But he trusted his brother implicitly—by extension, he trusted the humans his oldest friend had chosen as masters.

The cuttlefish ripped opened up his soul in its entirety, inviting them to see everything. His thoughts washed out, his darkest secrets and most-pivotal memories leading the charge, all of which were related to the kraken.

Each scene I’d been exposed to rushed by, absorbed into their abyssal cores with unbelievable speed. When they witnessed a conversation between two gods, they grasped the implications immediately.

At the same time, his earthen essence tried to assault the land in all directions with unveiled strength, great gouts flowing from the self-inflicted rupture in his soul.

In the moments that followed, either of the humans could have taken control, co-opting his mind as well as the power he wielded—and not just temporarily. Such was the risk of opening one’s soul in the presence of a being with equal or greater strength, let alone two.

The woman, Jenny was her name, reached toward the center of his being. Her fist balled, opened, and… poured intention out across the jagged tear.

“Thank you, sweetie,” her calming voice said, her potent will sewing his soul back together. “For saving our beloved, for stopping us from doing something incredibly stupid, and for risking yourself to do so.”

“Aye,” Garret agreed, and as he helped his wife mend the wound, he let some of his own thoughts flow out. The man was awestruck, lost for words at the cuttlefish’s selflessness.

Selfless? It was the last word he would use to describe himself. I’m only in this position because of envy and spite…

Jenny giggled. “You sound just like someone else when we first met him…”

“Makes sense, really,” Garret added, the whisper of a smile coloring his voice. “You are brothers, after a—”

A deafening sound cut his brother’s master off, a terrible ripping that came from within.

***

We shifted through kilometers in an instant. None of us managed a word as we looked out through the unseeing eyes of the kraken.

When he felt his brother’s soul open up to Garret and Jenny, he couldn’t put his joy into words. Anyone allied with the divine would never give an enemy the chance to wrest control of their core. Such an action meant only one thing: his brother wasn’t evil after all. Even through the additional earthen essence putting his power to the test, countless hopeful thoughts crossed his mind.

But then two gods arrived. Their golden spirits burned his hope to ash.

In that moment, he might have accused his former brother of orchestrating a betrayal of the unbelievable magnitude and callousness, but that would have to come later—the gilden aspect antithetical to his own flowed into the black hole that was his abyssal element, joining the twin rivers of earth and magma already streaming in.

Overwhelmed, his mind shut down.

***

The cuttlefish could do nothing to stop the divine siblings from tearing his soul asunder. They laughed. It was the first time they’d ever shown him their true feelings, yet he couldn’t appreciate that fact—he was too busy having his mind and body flayed.

Despite the all-encompassing pain, his thoughts were mainly for another. Golden light flowed alongside the torrents of earth and manga being sucked into the abyss. Dolos and Apate, those dreadful and cunning gods, were going to annihilate his brother.

Abruptly, the cuttlefish’s awareness shifted within, and though his soul’s destruction had paused, it took a few seconds for the echoes of agony to fade away. He found himself in a mental cave, its walls laced with ribbons of the horrific, golden chi.

“Oh, little earthen soul…” Dolos said, arriving in the center of the room. “You must have known how foolish it was to broadcast your thoughts out.”

Apate came next, stepping through space to stand beside her twin. “And to think you had a connection with the tool sent to deal with you… such delicious irony indeed.”

She snapped her fingers.

Garret and Jenny appeared in a flash. They were hogtied by golden ropes, their cores suppressed. A boulder of despair formed in the cuttlefish’s stomach. In his attempt to save the world, he’d condemned his brother’s masters to a fate worse than death. Those that dared go against the divine weren’t slaughtered—they were unmade.

Despite the damnation hanging over their heads, both were serene.

“Any final words?” Dolos goaded, his body appearing before them in a crude show of dominion. “Naturally, we cannot let you live now that you know the truth.”

“Regrets?” Apate bent down with a vicious smile as she materialized before them. “Or maybe even some curses?” She got closer, whispering, “The curses are my favorite.”

Garret and Jenny, in the face of such cruelty, wavered not an inch. They turned to each other, pulling at their bindings as they leaned in to share a kiss.

Dolos sneered and clapped his hands. The golden ropes sought to deny the couples’ affections, tightened, stretched, and broke.

Their lips met as the remnant strands of divinity sloughed off of Garret and Jenny.

“I love you,” a wife said.

“I love you more,” her husband replied.

“What—” Apate started, but then inky tendrils of essence shot from the abyssal cultivators, covering her mouth.

Black roots raced from the former captives, destroying any divine chi they touched as they encompassed the cavern. Suddenly, the cuttlefish recognized the terrible truth.

They were unmaking themselves.

Both gods were thrown aside, slammed against the now black walls before getting swallowed whole and becoming a part of the room.

Jenny and Garret locked eyes with him, only their faces not yet unmade. The kraken’s brother understood. This was the only way. They had to sacrifice themselves, lest the rituals complete, and the war be lost.

“No,” Garret’s disembodied denial came from everywhere all at once. “Well, not exactly…”

“Sacrifice implies some kind of loss,” Jenny added, her voice incredibly powerful, yet calm. Soft. “Dying so the rituals can be stopped? For sure, that’s a sacrifice.”

“Taking these usurpers off the board, though?” Garret smiled, his lower jaw just now obscured by unwinding tendrils of midnight. “That’s a blessing—one that the entire world will reap.”

“But… you’re being unmade! I—”

“No.”Garret’s rebuke was sharp, kind, and spoken from afar. “You two have each other…” He was barely audible now. “And the world has the both of you.”

“Take care of our cute little octopus for us,” Jenny said, a mere whisper on the wind. “And we’re sorry…”

“Sorry?” He didn’t understand. “What could you possibly have to be sorry fo—”

His words cut off as ribbons of black slithered into his mind, seizing control.

***

The kraken regained consciousness to find something powerful drawing from the hungering void that was his core. Still groggy, he allowed himself a smile. His masters were removing the caustic divine essence he’d absorbed, sharing the burden equally between them. Somehow, against all odds, they had survived.

But when two-thirds of the golden chi been removed, their abysses only grew more insistent. He reached out to them, tried to tell them not to go overboard, and found their connection… unravelling.

Confusion. Fear. Denial. Despair. Rage.

They were fading away—being unmade. Someone was using what remained of their spirits to channel their power. Their murderer started absorbing more from the kraken’s abyssal essence sucked out alongside the divine corruption.

***

“I don’t want this!” the cuttlefish roared, anger and grief fighting for control.

Jenny’s last word lingered. Sorry.

They were forcing him to pull them apart, and he couldn’t understand why. They guided him toward their latent chi, all the essence in their cores now his to command. It was the power of two cultivators bonded to an elemental. The strength of two beings that had almost advanced enough to ascend from this lower realm.

They forced him to grasp it. Showed him how to harness the abyss. He should have been ecstatic. He’d fantasized of wielding such energy for millennia. Instead, all he felt was betrayal. They’d given him that which he most desired, but at the cost of his own agency.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

Someone else answered. Dolos and Apate, like two hands clawing up from the underworld, dragged their way back into his mental space, their statuesque features stricken and wild.

Garret and Jenny pulled this way and that in his mind, showing him how to counter their divine protections—something only abyssal chi could do. The gods’ emotions hit him as if they were his own. They were desperate. Rabid. Their feigned death, their final gambit, had been uncovered.

They flailed and stabbed with blades of divinity, tearing through the black tendrils that sought to consume them. The cuttlefish finally understood. He’d assumed the gods defeated; his brother’s masters had known better.

Still in control of his being, they fought the usurpers off. They drew on their bond, and the kraken’s essence came pouring in. Identical to theirs, it obeyed them—obeyed him.

Coming to terms with the role he had to play, he examined an aspect he’d always dreamed of, yet long ago accepted he would never wield. Abyssal chi. It felt right, even more aligned with his soul than he’d imagined. He hated every moment.

It was unfair. It was cruel. And there was no other way.

He could do nothing. He couldn’t even look away. His only option was to witness the final stages of the unmaking, forced to take part in the annihilation of two usurpers and two allies.

His own power called out. The earthen chi was being pulled into the void, as was the first sister’s volcanic essence. He tried to reach out to her, tried to tell her to flee, but the void was too vast—any attempt at communication was absorbed as an afterthought.

There was only one task left for him. A single job to pour his anguish into. Using the sliver of abyssal chi not being used to suppress the divine gods, he sucked in the still-molten rock beneath the continent. Even that fraction of power was catastrophic.

In moments, a full half of the landmass dropped five meters, the coastal regions swallowed by the ocean. He needed more. It needed to happen faster. He didn’t want to think any longer.

When all the magma was absorbed, he focused on solid rock, absorbing hundreds, then thousands of tonnes a second. The continent shuddered and cracked and split, one solid piece becoming countless disconnected fragments.

The divine gods were almost consumed now, so he grasped more of the abyssal chi, tearing it out of Jenny and Garret’s fading hands. They seemed to urge caution. When he didn’t listen, they tried to fight back, but they’d become too weak.

He couldn’t care anymore. The more he channeled, the fewer thoughts he had. Emptiness was the closest thing to peace he could find. He sucked in everything around him, going above and beyond the destruction he and the first sister had planned.

A full megatonne of material was gone from the world now. His mind was blank. A single thought came to him, and he eased back, letting it expand. He would need to stop soon. Despite his anguish, he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially his sister and brother, who were nearby.

He prepared a pulse of affection to reassure them, loosened his grip on the abyssal chi, and—

Something screamed in warning. A line of burning agony shot into his core. Its serrated tip took hold. A golden spear. Two different beings laughed from the weapon now embedded in his soul.

A wave of white-hot disgust washed over him. Those two voices… the abyssal cultivators… they had done this.

“Liars!” he bellowed.

They’d deceived him. Betrayed him, just like all the others had, or eventually would. Such was life in this treacherous realm. That burning line deep within encouraged these thoughts, adding fuel to the flames.

He could only trust himself. Nobody else could be relied on. With that, he thought of his brother and sister, the only family he had remaining. His earthen core roiled. Those closest to him were the least trustworthy—their betrayals hurt the most.

Fine, he decided, harnessing earthen, divine, and abyssal energy. With that unholy trinity, he drew his siblings in, broadcasting his intention with a single blast of will.

Surrender, he ordered. Assimilate, or be destroyed.

***

As we shifted toward what I instinctively knew to be the last vision, I let out a shaky breath that matched the state of my soul. Frack me. I hadn’t expected sunshine and rainbows, but this…?

Another agreed.

“Stop!” the kraken begged, inky tentacles shooting out latching onto the nothingness we floated within. “No more!” His voice was raw. Guttural.

“Mate…” I said. “This is the last one. We’re almost done. I prom—”

“No more!” he repeated. He was no longer a concept in this space. His emotions were so long that his body had materialized, and hundreds of powerful suckers gripped whatever they could find.

I cocked my head to the side as I saw two of the eight limbs weren’t in use—those that had once been chomped off by a hungry fishy with no idea of the terrifying being its snack would one day become. The kraken noticed my attention and tucked them back against his body.

I let out a slow breath, not happy about the tactic I was about to employ, but determined to do it anyway. I nodded at the catatonic shape that was the kraken’s brother. “He won’t be healed until we see the last vision, mate. Something has been afflicting him, which is why he’s unconscious.”

I took a step and appeared right before the kraken, reached out toward one of his retracted tentacles, then thought better of it, instead resting my palm against the base of his body.

He flinched when I made contact, but I forged onward. “I reckon I have a good idea what’s afflicting him, and I bet you do, too.”

The empty voids where the kraken’s eyes should be flared, and understanding made his entire form shake. He let out three silent sobs, then two quiet ones, his grasping limbs fading in and out of view.

Finally, he released his grip with a quiet whimper, and we spiralled down toward our destination.

We slammed into another’s awareness with finality, and though the mind belonged to a past version of the kraken, their emotions weren’t all that different. Myriad negative feelings hit him like tidal waves striking a barren shore, any sand, shells, or creatures long ago dragged out to sea.

His brother had betrayed not only him, but the entire world. He’d dispatched an entire continent, along with every poor soul calling it home. It was an unfathomable loss of life. But despite the many lives robbed, the kraken felt no sorrow for them. He couldn’t.

Losing his masters had left a yawning maw in his soul. Even now, it called out to him, demanding his attention. One of Garret and Jenny’s favorite names for him was ‘He Who Stares into the Void’, a moniker gifted to him by one of the myriad churches that deified him. But no matter how accustomed he was to staring into the abyss, he could not face this darkness. The pain was too much.

And then it got worse, two other aspects coming to reinforce the power drawing him in. Earthen chi strengthened the black tendrils, and ribbons of golden light looped outward, wrapping around his limbs in search of its opposing aspect—the essence his entire body was made of.

Surrender, his former brother screamed. Assimilate, or be destroyed.

He fought back. He wouldn’t go so easily. The maw within tried to steal his resolve; he decided to use it instead. No hesitation remained as he spun and latched onto its edges with his many suckers.

The golden ribbons approached.

He pulled himself closer to the terrible fissure in his mind, bracing for what was to come.

The divine loops started closing around his body. If they took hold, they’d never let go.

The kraken gathered his will, steeled his nerves, and stared directly into the void. So much torment flowed out from him that everything paused, even the threads of divinity disoriented by the onslaught of emotions. The volcanic elemental must have already been absorbed; their magma swirled out alongside the other aspects assaulting—

The scene froze as the current version of the kraken thrashed in the nothingness we occupied. Whatever he was so petrified of reliving… it was almost here. I reached out with pillars of pure essence, both firm yet caring with my encouragement.

He raged, heaved, then let go, allowing the scene to resume.

There, it all happened at once.

Memories of his masters didn’t so much wash over him; they struck with the mass and devastation of a meteor. He reeled back, but only for a fraction of a second. He steadied himself by picturing their faces.

They’d gone against their own gods. Defected to the losing side of a war, knowing it to be a just cause. They were sources of light, joy, and everything good in this uncaring world. He spoke an oath to himself, but it was garbled. The world shook. He’d acknowledged their passing. Truly internalized the fact they’d been unmade. They would never be reborn.

It seemed to split him in two—but that was the point.

Two partitions formed, and he focused one of them on each of his foremost tentacles, creating something forbidden by the laws of nature and the heavens above. They were smaller than pinheads. Despite their size, they both contained almost half of his essence.

Such things were potentially cataclysmic, depending on the aspect of the user—and his was the worst imaginable.

They pulled at the limbs he’d put them in, and before his entire body could be dragged into their gravitational pull, he ripped them off.

Thankfully, the demon he’d called a brother was so corrupt as to be mindless. The once-cuttlefish sent his quad sources of chi out toward the pinheads that dared oppose him. He wanted their power. If he failed, well, the killer of the kraken’s masters would be no more. It’d destroy the central continent too… but that was already gone, along millions of innocent lives extinguished.

To his dismay, the earth elemental succeeded, its combination of divine, abyssal, earthen, and volcanic chi able to draw power from such incredibly dense gravitational fields.

It did, however, allow the kraken’s retreat. He was already gone. Weak and almost entirely drained of chi, he slipped along the ocean floor, remaining invisible by focusing on an oath taken, replaying it over and over and over in his mind. Each repetition was garbled.

Sending a part of myself out into the nothingness we occupied, I my tendril of pure essence approached the Kraken’s trembling body, but he spoke before I could.

“I know,” he said, his voice and spirit depleted.

A heartbeat later, we went back in time, arriving the moment he’d first spoken it.

I swear on my masters, and on the demon that my former brother has become, and on my very soul…

The world vibrated, and spikes of his own chi prepared to solidify within his body.

I will not rest until I have avenged the unmaking of my masters, and found a purpose worthy of their memory. If I turn from this course, let me join them in being unmade.

Everything shook. The spikes of abyssal chi lanced through his nexus of power before shrinking. There they remained, infinitesimal lines of potential that would either disappear once his oath was completed, or detonate if he broke it.

I finally understood. Appearing back in the nothingness, the kraken stared into space, the last of his shame and regret laid bare. I didn’t say a thing, instead shining beams of pure essence upon his awareness, the rays lacking any of the golden hue that haunted him so.

Together, the nothingness vanished around us, and we were sucked back out into the waking world.