#fantasyfriday

“I would hope you know who I am. You’ve been visiting me in this cave since you were a young child hiding from your brothers.” He got up from the rock and swam towards her so that they were only a few inches from each other’s faces.

He had always been old, even when she had met him as a young child. His scales had always been cracked and scarred. His eyes a dull pale green. But today he seemed much more ragged and older. As old as the waters they lived in.

“You’re not Llyr.” The words spilled from her mouth before she had a chance to second guess what she was about to do.

“Oh no?” his tone was light and his eyes were filled with laughter. “Who am I then?”

“Neres.” As she said the name Llyr’s face fell and his eyes grew hard and weary. “Vessel for Zherir the Great Old One.”

“I haven’t heard that name in a long time.” He turned from her swimming back over to his rock and taking a seat. “Where did you hear it?”

“I overheard Talise speaking to Nahla’s mother about what she might become.”

He slammed his fist against the wall. It shook slightly. “We had a deal. My name was never to be said. Ever.”

“Why?”

“Because when people know of me they come to me like you are now and ask me to awake the Great Old One. Is that not why you are here? You want to ask me to help you save Nahla? Stop Ac’thuzid?”

“I am.”

Llyr shook his head back and forth before dropping them into his hands. “Naida I can’t help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He lifted his hands from his head, glancing over at her. They stared at each other for a moment before he let out a heavy sigh. “I won’t.” His voice was quiet and small.

She swam over to him and stared down at him. Anger and disappointment painted hard lines in her face. “You’ll stand by and watch people suffer. Watch your people su-”

“These aren’t my people!” His voice thundered through the caves as he rose from the rock. “My people died centuries ago! I owe no one anything!”

Naida bit her bottom lip to stop it from quivering. She looked at the face of the man who had in many instances been a father to her once her own was gone. She took in every way in which his rage altered the gentle and wizened face she was used to. Finally, she turned to leave as one solitary word slipped from her mouth. “Coward.”

---

“Do not forget who the real villains are,” her voice was magnified by Ac’thuzid’s power. It reverberated through her bones and the water flowing around them. “They poisoned our oceans. Hunted and ate our young. We went to their leader and he did nothing. The he laughed in Amatheia’s face. They were warned and now they will suffer.”

She kept her forehead firmly planted against the sand as she spoke. Nahla might be channeling the spirit’s power but Ac’thuzid was ancient and any slight against it would have dire consequences. “Great Ac’thuzid have they not suffered enough? Millions are dead and hundreds of thousands are suffering. Nahla,” Naida’s voice hitched in her throat for a moment then she lifted herself from the sand to stare into Nahla’s eyes, “please, please you can’t keep doing this you have to stop –”

Ac’thuzid’s tentacle shot out catching Naida in the stomach. She flew back into the cave wall, her skull cracking against the stone. Blood oozed from the wound coloring the water around her head.

“You dare try to command us? You dare plead for the lives of those who murder us? We are Ac’thuzid vast and endless. None command us!” The tentacle that hit Naida wrapped around her waist and pulled her towards Ac’thuzid’s beak. “You shall share their fate.”

As Naida was about to be swallowed two tentacles, ten times the size of the one that held her, rushed into the cave. One grabbed Naida, yanking her from Ac’thuzid’s grasp and dragging her towards the entrance. The other wrapped around Ac’thuzid’s body and pulled them in the same direction.

As they were pulled through the cave they thrashed and bellowed. They tried to constrict the tentacle that held them. Finally, they were pulled out of the cave and into the open waters. Before them was a monstrous beast, a gargantuan eight-tentacled-creature that glowed with an eerie blue light and at the center of its head was Llyr. The tentacle holding Naida placed her gently on the sand below the creature

“You named yourself vast and endless. We are Zherir the Great Old One and you are nothing.”  The tentacle holding Ac’thuzid tightened around them and they screeched in pain.

Ac’thuzid’s beak protruded from its tentacles and snapped down on the tentacle that was holding them. The beak sliced through the flesh and it fell to the sand, as dark purple liquid poured from the wound. Zherir’s yell echoed through the waters, trembling the sand and plants beneath them.

“You have no business being here and once your vessel is dead you will be here no longer.” Ac’thuzid brought together its tentacles into a sharp point before launching itself in a corkscrew motion towards the center of beast’s head.

Llyr looked down and saw a tentacle sticking through his right leg, his left shoulder and one sticking right through his chest. His legs went slack. He gripped the tentacle sticking out of his chest, trying to pull it out.

They laughed at his weak attempts. “Your end is drawing closer. I will take great satisfaction in watching this vessel perish as you have watched mine perish countless times before.”

“Nahla!” bellowed Llyr, blood trickled out of his mouth as he yelled. “Release Ac’thuzid. Send him back to the void.”

They pulled themselves closer to Llyr. “And why would I do that? I am protecting my people. No one will ever harm us again.”

“Protecting your people?” he coughed, blood trickled from his mouth faster, now a steady stream. His eyes shot down to where Naida was lying, motionless. “Is that what protecting your people looks like?”

Nahla faltered, Llyr pressed on ignoring the blood pouring from his chest and mouth. “You hurt your best friend. Release the creature before you do something that you will truly regret and have to carry with you for the rest of your days.”

“I –” As she opened her mouth to speak her eyes became a startling white, the same color as Ac’thuzid’s body and then another voice spoke. “Fool you waste the last of your breathes. She will not wrestle control from me. I will not be banished to the void again.”

Llyr could feel the life draining from him and Zherir’s body was growing stiller by the second. With what he assumed would be his last breath he pled with Nahla one last time. “I remember when Naida stopped coming to see me as much as she had before. It wasn’t until sometime later I learned the reason why. She had met you and you protected her from the others. Nahla. You’re stronger than this, fight, for Naida.” The words escaped from his mouth as Zherir grew still. Llyr’s body went completely slack, his arms slid from around the tentacle in his chest.

“What is happening,” roared Ac’thuzid a few moments later. The light the surrounded his body was growing dimmer and his form began to become more and more translucent. “No! I will not be banished I will not retur-”

In a blink of bright white light Ac’thuzid’s body faded out of existence.

Moments later Llyr’s eyes snapped open. He hacked and wheezed as the wounds left by the tentacles began to close. The body of Zherir began to move once more. A singular tentacle made to grab at Nahla but Llyr’s battle-horse voice called out to it.

“Don’t.”

The tentancle dropped back besides the others. As if shook from her stupor Nahla rushed pass Llyr and down beside Naida, scooping her up in her arms in one fluid motion.

“Naida. Come on wake up,” she’s shaking her gently. “Sea lion this isn’t funny. Okay wake up.”

A hand touches her shoulder. She looks up and see Llyr floating beside her. The massive body of Zherir is gone. “Nahla I’m so-”

“No!” she shrugs off his hand and turns back to Naida. “No, don’t do this. Please, you can’t just leave.”

@diversetolkien