Icebound

Chapter 22

Her lungs felt near to bursting as she kicked up towards the surface triumphantly, a wave of adrenaline fueling her efforts.

Almost there...

She needed air in her lungs or she'd combust.

Please, just a few more seconds...

She felt herself slipping towards unconsciousness.

More limbs latched onto her, halting her ascent and dragging her back down with a sharp jerking motion. Down, down, down, until the ray of light was just a speck and then vanished entirely. Her one last chance of life, gone.

Her vision was going blurry, her thoughts growing fuzzy. She couldn't do it any longer. She took a gasp of air and-

Instead of the expected rush of water into her mouth and nose, she breathed in normally. Her body relaxed as if it had been replenished with oxygen. But that was impossible. There was no oxygen. She was underwater for the gods' sakes!

The water was becoming lighter, as if something was illuminating it from farther below. Anyu turned to try and get a look of her captors and her heart stopped and restarted beating in its chest.

The faces that looked back at her were only just barely humanoid, covered in skin that was completely white and had a slimy, gnarled appearance. The beady black eyes were sunk back deep in their sockets and surrounded by thick, gruesome wrinkles. Their mouths were huge, stretching from ear to ear, and seemed to be permanently stuck in maniacal grins with thin, shark like teeth stuck close together. Stringy black hair sprouted from the creatures' heads and trailed behind them as they swam like oily seaweed. The creatures' bodies reminded Anyu of both a human and seal form. Their limbs were much longer than any normal human's, with twig like fingers that were nearly a foot long. The skin was a sickly shade of off white and the slippery quality of it reminded Anyu of blubber. Those were the slimy limbs that had grabbed onto her and were still pulling her down.

She had never seen one before, but she knew what they were: qalupalik. There was no way it could be anything else. From the flowing dark hair and the grasping fingers, the description matched too closely.

Qalupalik, the treacherous demons of the sea. With long fingers to snatch children and beautiful voices to fool any who heard them, they kept the Nenet constantly wary of the water. Anyu shuddered in disgust. After seeing their horrid faces up close, she knew she'd never want to go near any body of water ever again. But that was optimistic thinking. First, she would have to survive long enough to get back to dry land.

The qalupalik finally made their haunting humming noise, tossed her down, and swam away. She hit a rocky floor covered with a strange fuzzy substance that pulsed with a soft glow. It allowed for a modicum of visibility in the otherwise pitch-black depths. It was green and smooth and felt soft under her fingertips, but Anyu didn't have a name for it.

Taking a deep breath of- water? air? She didn't even know at this point- Anyu lifted her head to take in her surroundings.

She was at the bottom of some kind of underwater fjord. Two massive cliffs rose on either side of her, completely blotting out her view of anything above. The cliff faces were made of a smooth black material that was dark as night but with the same sparkling sheen of clear ice. They were almost too precise, too orderly to be natural formations. It looked more like someone had cleaved the ocean floor cleanly in half. Anyu gulped. Not so long ago, she wouldn't have paid such a thought any mind. But now...

"Welcome," A silky voice echoed from the darkness.

Anyu snapped her head back from craning up at the cliffs to the source of the sound. It came from a corner of the rock face, too hidden in shadows for Anyu to make out.

"Who are you?" She called out nervously, fearing that she already knew the answer.

The figure of a woman swam into view. A woman from the waist up, at any rate. Her top half was that of a beautiful young woman, albeit somewhat off-putting with her green skin and thin-lipped smile. Her eyes glowed a menacing orange, and they did not appear to blink. She had long, thin arms, and her fingers were webbed, just like an otter's. Below, her narrow waist tapered into a tail of mottled gray and green scales. But her tail, although surprising, was not what drew Anyu's attention. All of the stories of Sedna spoke of her as part sea creature, whether it be half fish, seal, or whale. What the stories did not mention was her hair. At first it had been hard to notice; it was the same black hue as the surrounding water and blended in well. But as she drew closer, Anyu couldn't help but gape at the sheer mass of it.

She had thought the qalupaliks' hair was long. That was nothing compared to this. Her hair was easily three times her own size, perhaps more. The rippling black locks flowed every which way in the water, giving her the appearance of having a veritable mane.

"Welcome," She repeated, drawing closer with a swish of her tail. "I am Sedna." Her lips parted to reveal two rows of pearly white teeth as she smiled deviously. "And I have a very important task for you."