Chapter 513
The water held a somber, stagnant scent.
It was not the salty tang of the ocean he remembered. This was a different essence, something dead, decayed and alien that spoke of its foul creations and its new masters.
"We shouldn't stay," Aria stated; her eyes were hard, tired, and they carried far too many nights with little sleep and far too many memories that threatened to drown the last of what remained of the world she knew.
She tightened the grip on her weapon. A crude spear that had a strange sense of comfort after everything.
Cyrus, beside her, just stared at the oily surface of what used to be the beautiful and wild and wondrous blue and beautiful sky, his body rigid. The endless ocean before them was a reminder of everything humanity lost.
And of their next big problem, another terrible reminder that seemed to have never gotten to stop.
"Where is safe anymore?" he replied, his voice as dead and distant as his look.
Guyotlotls, they called them, those abominations that stole their home. The name, much like the reality, was crude and rough.
Born from the deepest abyss; sharks merged with the vile traits of mankind and became the terror that everyone came to call "God's creatures".
Their reign had left few behind, less than 10% of mankind scattered and broken; fighting with sharpened metal and tired hearts.
It was their purpose; a way to make peace with what they had no hope for.
The city once bustled with millions and now only offered graveyards in every form; all thanks to those dark creations, the real children of the dark depths.
"They're evolving." Aria said, "It feels different this time. They learn."
Her gaze drifted to her hip, the side holster for her machete that offered far too little when those creatures moved into their camps.
She could feel her bones ache and not from her tired frame, but from some kind of dread, some fear from a creature beyond simple terror.
A feeling not unlike one to stare up at "God", she thought, with an angry gaze.
The safe havens, or what they now came to know them by, were a constant movement of rusted structures and scraps of old civilization they now found.
They claimed these structures for their group, until; well, that dreadful night they saw in their nightmares came true once more.
Below, the dark water swirled; as dark and thick as oil in places, too still and too silent to just be random wind; it felt…planned.
"The way they attack; so well-coordinated...it's like a planned war now" Cyrus said quietly.
He turned his attention toward a distant metal tower they now were taking camp for.
Yet, it never held peace and the tension only was ever high with every passing minute, no second spared, no sound uncalculated, it always became a point for consideration.
Aria scoffed; adjusting her worn out straps of their scavenged backpacks; "We were the top of this stupid planet, we could do that as a species too."
It is a painful irony, they are all too aware. They lost it; all their supposed knowledge for all the supposed peace; it felt all like a twisted sick joke.
"The next step, or something much bigger…" Aria began.
She stared towards Cyrus now and gripped her machete tighter. "It could change everything for us now."
He was her family; her purpose here, along with her remaining people.
She held to these tiny pieces of connection just like she would grip the very weapons that helped keep her alive from day to day.
"If they see us" she went on, but her voice trailed as her own knowledge turned sour, heavy like her stomach did now.
Nothing would happen, they had no advantage here; she had been saying the opposite. Just wishful thinking now and she had learned to embrace her real outcome.
They took refuge within the tower, an old skeletal ruin that looked as tired and sad as the souls inhabiting it.
The rusted steel sang under their slow movements, too loud and too clear.
In their last shared moments of that dreadful evening; the noise gave them a somber song of their own fate that night.
It echoed and rebounded back from its metallic surroundings and out to what waited in the dark.
They ate; in total silence; knowing that the noise from their shared feast, small as it was, was a marker.
It was calling them from the bottomless pit to attack once more, an endless invitation.
Late into that wretched night, as Cyrus did his usual checkup of their meager surroundings; his voice, as hushed as it always came out now, found its way to reach Aria.
"There is something coming, it isn't…normal." Cyrus called out.
His words were cut off before his own growing sense of doom tried to eat away more of his being; like the ocean they all now dreaded.
Aria bolted up to stand right behind him. Her blade now held out with trained purpose.
The crew now stood, each and every one of their tired frames now full of tension, they could sense the shift, the wrong, something changed.
She moved forward now and saw something below in the water; her eyes, always keen from survival, pierced the gloom.
It was too big, something that dwarfed anything else, moving through water like some terrible leviathan she always thought would only come up in her bad dreams.
"How many?" She said, as calm as her voice could ever allow it now.
Cyrus narrowed his own, "Only…one." But it was what he didn't say that told her everything she needed to hear.
Or to be prepared for as those silent seconds crept up and turned to another moment and another, the anticipation never easing with the passing of time.
No ease offered in any case; or shape; or form, it all went the same and this…well this she felt. She knew she was correct.
The water moved and turned all at once. The surface breaking apart; sending plumes of liquid into the air.
From its depths; the monster emerged, far worse and so very different that even those tired, used to it; felt a new surge of fear.
Even more terror they thought couldn't be had before, not now; after seeing so many and yet, here they were, staring death in its true visage.
"By God," a survivor behind them whimpered; falling to their knees as all sense of safety was now erased.
Every single human mind shared one horrible, unyielding, reality and destiny.
The Guyotlotl towered, its head colossal and horrific. A shark's form twisted with too-human bone.
Eyes that held so much in its darkness that they all thought nothing had the power of showing; all of that in such little darkness that surrounded what stared out.
The maw opened, teeth serrated and awful, far more numerous and wrong; the thing pulsed in some twisted unearthly way.
More of those scaled freaks appeared from the murky surface with an unearthly, and very loud, cheer of the things coming for all of them.
It began, that sound of terror filled their surrounding areas with their vile laughter, this horrible choir that went with its movements.
Movements that were anything but fluid as they scaled, as fast as lightning, everything within the metallic surroundings they called home now.
"Hold the line!" Cyrus roared; firing off the crude crossbow, making it thud deep into one of their soft bits that tried to attack.
A brief but welcomed pause as they struggled with pain and confusion and even worse with it being another slow death for the creature in its many attempts.
"Don't let them through!" The group of survivors held their weapons high, they swung and slashed.
It felt like all at once but so slow that it almost turned comical; no human here had any say on any matter in all of this horrible, unyielding chaos.
It wasn't as though they just sat and watched and that was the case; not with Cyrus and the others.
The group knew the only answer was fight or to have everything be taken; they chose what they had; for better or worse, here; this moment.
The initial assault hit home. Harpoons, spears and other tools now did, just for a moment.
Piercing the Guyotlotl; but to little real effect. Just like that before; its terrible body seemed to shrug it off.
It moved faster now as it roared again; bringing in that awful awful orchestra; with the chorus rising higher than before.
The smaller ones struck out; those monsters they felt so familiar with; and were never easy in all their awful glory; even now in the midst of their despair.
A smaller Guyotlotl seized Aria, its claws dug into her shoulder, yanking her to the ground.
With that; pulling and trying to get some small taste from the living meal as its other pack took down a handful of others.
A very specific feeling reached Aria's throat. Her heart sank.
That same dread from her first battle against this endless horror; had risen in its own unholy way again, right in front of her in her face.
Not even holding anything back anymore; because…well, what good would be if it did?
It didn't have a use for a heart or feeling; there was none here to show off so this dread was just for her; to suffer by.
Aria pushed her machete upward and struck into its brain; it pulled back with what looked like absolute confusion for some reason.
That brought a cruel twist to Aria's own; this…it never had this feeling ever before.
It was… a moment for Aria but it also didn't do much because she was still on the ground.
Another monster tried for the soft flesh on her exposed legs; taking another piece before it.
This battle was nothing if it wasn't fast, awful, and sad; not for the crew; they always were going to die no matter.
But more for how their lives will fade away, never truly doing anything.
She gasped; and coughed from the horrid stench as she pushed herself back, back to the others who seemed to slowly dwindle with each and every moment.
It felt unreal and like the longest moment of her pathetic life and before she could reach her brother, everything stopped as everything started.
All the sound seemed to disappear and return even faster, even harder, than before.
She couldn't find Cyrus; she knew then; this had to have been how it was all to be.
Her very life force moved forward with another surge of dread as it took another swing to push it further in.
All the noise from the horrific fight was almost gone now and the feeling was something worse.
Only her very awareness remained, everything else just…disappeared, went blank.
Like the surface did as it closed once more to hide something evil from everyone; with Aria just a part of that hidden monster now.
Another joined with those twisted forms of her very death.
The monstrous Guyotlotl stood taller than before; the bodies all broken and twisted around it.
Cyrus joined Aria in this end, pulled under into the abyss in a quick moment with the others they thought they could call family here in the chaos.
With one more final bellow it submerged once more with all its prizes for the coming darkness in what remained and is to come.
This fight and the deaths meant nothing; humanity, like the others, became the final, sad and dark meal.
This story; like their lives; found its end once more; this time, final and always.