Sea of Dekatos

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

“Cities represent order and discipline in a world of chaos.” 

-- Sento of Yang

Fangshao glanced down at the brilliant blue scales on his body as he drew his sword. Tante thinkers taught that their species was favored by evolution. They had slowly exterminated the other lifeforms in their sea and gained ascendancy, which convinced them of their own superiority. 

Fangshao had been driven since he had first gained consciousness in an egg cluster left by an unknown female. His was a waking dream of a personal destiny, a belief that he would rise to magnificent heights. Life in the Tante Sea had been difficult, but had served to strengthen him, illuminate his purpose in life, and reinforce his belief in his own glorious fate. 

His earliest memory was of drifting through the sea a few days after hatching and watching the warriors train. All other memories from those first days had faded, despite the near perfect recollection abilities of the Tante. He remembered watching the two fighters, their webbed feet gripping the rocks of the sea floor, their muscular arms wielding long blades underwater, thrusting, blocking, all under the watchful gaze of the Nobles. Fangshao had been enamored as a hatchling and dreamed of becoming a warrior. 

He had drifted through the sea for three years, developing an insatiable physical hunger and gorging himself on swarms of krill and brine snail. After he grew large enough, and the fin on the back of his head developed, the elder Tante swept him up and brought him to work in the warrens of mines and tunnels they had dug in the granite sea floor. By day, he used hammer and chisel to search for metal, but by night, he sought ways to bring about what he instinctively knew was his right and just destiny. He joined a hunting group.

The Nobles wanted young Tante to learn to fight, to develop the strength and skills needed to kill. The Tante Sea had been pacified long ago, with the other dominant races exterminated in the distant past, but the Noble’s technique of retaining power depended on securing the services of Benthic Tante of proven prowess. Wealthy Nobles hired a brace of ten skilled Benthics, lifting them up from the muck of the sea floor and into the towers or the crystal pyramid. They used the Benthics to fight off other Nobles in their various power struggles. Thus the hunting groups were formed. Young Tante of sufficient ambition could join them to learn the fine arts of killing, and the Nobles would select among them when they needed soldiers to conduct assassinations, sabotage, or further their political ends.

Fangshao had been told that he would be forever and at all times a Benthic. He was not born of a Noble’s mate. He had not crawled from a sticky clutch of eggs in the crystal pyramid, and he would never be a Noble. He had been born in the muck and grime of the sea floor, and would one day die in it, as was the fate of all Benthics. Even as a hatchling, Fangshao watched the swordsmen duel in the murky, dimly-lit depths and craved the nobility he was told he could never have. Eventually he had seen murder in a dark undersea grotto and learned afterwards that there was a way to become a Noble. A Benthic had to be challenged by one. 

A Benthic’s challenge to a Noble was unproductive and dangerous. The member of nobility would send one of his hunting teams to deal with the miscreant, killing the challenger quickly and without warning. If a Benthic, however, began to rise to power, either through accumulation of wealth, or undersea alliances, or by development of the Ancient Lapidary skills, a Noble would often enter the water and seek out the offending Benthic, issuing a challenge and attacking moments later. Strong, inviolable, unwritten rules governed the process, barring the other Nobles from entering the fray and overwhelming the Benthic. The law prevented the Nobles from massacring the Benthics, but offered the muck-dwellers no protection if they ever rose up and challenged the air dwelling Tante. It also ensured that if a Noble challenged a Benthic, the superior fish won, since the Noble had to fight alone. This process had been in place for most of the sixty thousand year history of the Tante, and it had served to keep the Nobles aloof and powerful, convinced of their superiority, unshakable from their perches as rulers of the Tante Sea.