Shireroth

[This thread is part of the Morimoto Cycle, and will not make sense without having read the other five-ish parts.]

From the bridge of the submarine Avenger, Nereus Rotenaard, Duke of Straylight, gazed at what his predecessors had wrought.

The hopes and dreams of a long line of Straylightean Dukes had once centered around the Full Circle project. The massive, gleaming undersea dome still hinted at the glories it could bring. But the money had fallen through, the project had been forgotten, and the dome itself lost to the ravages of the sea.

Or so everyone had believed. Full Circle did not look like it had been in ruins for centuries. It looked like its ruination was just beginning.

The featureless white dome was being attacked by sea monsters the likes of which Nereus had never seen. Giant squid, colossal octopi, huge formless blobs of blubber. They were battering themselves against its walls, which repelled them with shocks of dazzling electricity - but cracks were starting to appear.

"What the bloody pee are aitch is THAT?" asked Tuomio Vere, the Avenger's captain.

"If I had to guess," said Nereus, "I'd say Zhaki, whoever he was, got here before us."

A voice crackled on the intercom. "Five Yardistani attack submarines, awaiting order to...er...engage."

Nereus considered his options. Blowing up Full Circle would probably eliminate Morimoto, but it would also kill several generations of sleeping Technomaezji, possibly a dead Kaiser or two, and a treasure trove of advanced technology. It would also lack style.

Sending in an assault force meant getting through the cloud of assembled sea creatures, and possibly being on the inside when the seals finally broke and the dome collapsed under an ocean of pressure.

"Send in an assault force," Nereus told the Yardistanis. Style was important. "Meanwhile, I'm going to try to do something about Flipper here." He turned to Captain Vere. "I want us to target some of those...whatever they are" he said, pointing at the sea monsters. "See if we can scare them away."

Just then, a huge sucker covered the front viewport of the Avenger. "We're under attack!" a sailor shouted. "Full speed retreat!"

"Can't move!" yelled another. "He's got us too..." Everything shook briefly. "Got him," said one of the torpedo techs.

"We don't have enough torpedoes to take on all these things," said Nereus. "Let's get out while we still can. West!"

Just then, a message from the Yardistanis. "Duke Rotenaard! Our men are inside. And...the creatures have stopped attacking the base. Request further orders."

"Sweep the base site for Ms. Morimoto. Keep an eye on those fish."

"Fish seem to be dispersing, Your Grace. If I had to guess, I'd say they're off to do normal fishy things."

"Your Grace," said Vere. "We've got a reading on something big ahead. Something big and mobile. Bigger than us, at least. Maybe an enemy sub. I don't think it sees us."

"Try to get within visual detection range," said Nereus. "I don't want any surprises."

"Your Grace!" said the Yardistani captain. "We've found a man inside the base. He says Morimoto's gone."

"Gone?"

"Those fish breached the base, and some men came inside, took her, and got out."

"Investigate further."

"Can't. The base is on the verge of collapse. There's water leaking in everywhere. We're getting the heck out."

"Understood. Run a scan of these waters, try to find anyone who could have taken Morimoto. Bring a few of the base people back to the subs with you for debriefing. Oh, and we've got an unidentified object here we're tracking. Send support."

"Aye aye, your Grace."

"Nereus," said Tuomio Vere, "you'd better come see this."

A camera on the bridge displayed the scene before them in the dim blue wavelengths that were the only light available at these depths. The ocean floor was covered with ooze, and directly ahead of them, a hermit crab the size of a battleship scuttled through the depths.

"This is quickly turning into not my favorite day," said Nereus. "Get a scan on that...thing."

"Infrared shows body temperature consistent with crustacean norm," said a tech. "The shell seems to be hollow, and there are brighter points inside. I think the interior is at least partly air, not water. And I think people live in it."

"Not people," said Nereus. "But whatever's in there, I'm guessing it's got Morimoto. Have you tried to hail it on shortwave?"

"Hail a giant crab?" the tech asked, incredulously.

"Just do it," said Nereus.

There was a brief pause, and in his most condescending possible voice, the tech said "No reply, your Grace."

"We are in range, you know," said Vere. "Permission to get its attention?"

Nereus thought for a while. "Granted."

A torpedo streaked out from the underbelly of the Avenger and caught the giant crab right in one of its tower-sized legs.

"Vere!" shouted Rotenaard.

"Well, that should get its attention," Vere said, wryly.

And wrongly, for the hermit crab seemed completely unfazed. Uninjured, without even so much as a limp, it continued onward at its breakneck pace.

"Scan results complete," said the tech. "Crab is heading in the general direction of Istvanistan at about about thirty knots. Its shell is made of some unidentified material, about three meters thick. If I had to guess, I'd say invincible."

"Isn't there a hole in hermit crab shells?" Vere asked. "For, like, the crab?"

"This one seems skin-tight," the tech answered. "Wait, no. I'm picking up...pores."

"How big?"

"Meter or two across. Nothing we could aim a torpedo through."

The intercom crackled. "This is Admiral Exhaarad. We've got two subs on the way, but you're moving too fast for them. Request you slow down for rendevouz."

"Denied," said Rotenaard. "We're pursuing something here." He turned to Vere. "We can catch up with this thing, right?"

"If we hurry."

"Hurry. We'll find it, clamp on, and send some men through one of the pores. They can blow up enough of the crab's innards to stop it until the Yardistanis arrive."

"That plan may be just crazy enough to...fail miserably and kill us all," said Vere.

"Y'know," said Nereus. "I've been pursuing our friend Ms. Morimoto for...a whole lot of years. And I just met this Zhaki fellow today, but I already feel like we're old, old friends. I don't know what either of them are planning, but I don't think it's anything good. I'm not letting them get away. I might be crazy. But I'm Duke of Straylight, and that comes with the territory. And if it helps, I don't think I'm going to get us all killed. I've lived a very long time, and that means that, statistically, I'm pretty unlikely to die. Anyway, that's an order, Tuomio. Catch up to that crab."

"Very heroic of you," said Vere, as he fiddled with the controls. "And you know, I've read enough stories to know what happens to heroes."

"What?" asked the tech.

"They succeed, save the world, get the girl, and live happily ever after. It's only the minor characters who support them who end up dying to raise dramatic tension. And that doesn't bode well for me at all."

"Tuomio, I love you very much," said Nereus. "Get me some gear and the biggest gun on this ship."

"You? You're going to go into that crab?"

"After your rousing speech, how could I not? Anyway, Morimoto and I have a date. With destiny. And Kender tells me I've lived too long anyway. And I've always dreamed of seeing the inside of a giant crab."

"I will not ask," said Vere, who had returned with a very large gun indeed. "This fires some pretty intense stuff, and works decent underwater. You should be able to gouge out a pretty big chunk of crab nervous system."

"I like it!" said Nereus.

"Ship's attached to the crab shell now," said the tech.

"All passengers leaving for certain death, please disembark at this terminal," said Vere.

"I also would have accepted 'good luck'" said Rotenaard, who opened the hatch and jumped through...

...into the shell of a colossal hermit crab. No light shone here, so Nereus turned on his flashlight, illuminating a corridor about three meters tall, carved out of crab goo, and half submerged in water. Nereus waded forward. Somewhere here, there would be the actual flesh of the crab, and when he found it, it was going down.

As he waded through the shell of a colossal hermit crab, searching for shape shifting dolphins and an the immortal biotechnologist he fancied and hoped to kill, Nereus Rotenaard reflected on how life made no sense. One could live for thousands of years, study all fields, attain the highest heights of government, and still encounter things so completely out of one's ken that one might as well have been a child. It was quite nifty. And he reflected on Maria Morimoto, and her decision to take over the world to pass the time. On why some people solved mathematical equations, and others discovered new continents, and others built boats, and what sort of a character flaw it might take to think that conquering a planet was the only form of recreation. And finally, he reflected on how he had been wandering identical corridors for quite a long time, and was terribly, terribly lost.

Then something huge and awful reared up out of the water in front of him - an eel or an oarfish or something equally dreadful. Nereus fired at it. A huge explosion shook the shell-world - Vere hadn't been kidding when he said it was a good gun. The corpse of the eel floated, red and accusatory, in the water before him. Nereus ran.

He ran through twisting, branching corridors of calcium carbonate, thrashing against sharks and massive lightning-quick lobsters and unnumbered and enormous polypi. And finally, he found himself in a huge room, where the water was blood red, and on a little island in the center, tied to a stake, was Maria Morimoto.

Purposefully, he waded through the ooze and muck and mud, until the low water level gave way, and after two centuries of searching, he once again stood beside the woman who haunted his dreams.

"Hello, Maria," he said.

"That's far enough," said Zhaki.

The dolphin surfaced from the waves, stood upon its tail-fins, and became a man. He was dark-skinned, red-haired, and ageless. He had dark eyes, a jutting nose, and an almost-beard. His race was not any Nereus had ever seen, but he bore - he thought - a slight relation to Kender Ly'Sakerdoet.

Nereus took his gun and fired. There was a flash of blinding light. When it cleared, Zhaki stood quite as before.

"I'm afraid that won't work here," said Zhaki. "I'm a user. Your people have never met my like. And now, you will die." He took out a gun. It looked very old, and as if someone who had only heard vague legends of guns had tried to reconstruct one from stories alone.

"Threaten to kill me," suggested Maria.

Nereus swung his gun around until its barrel was touching Maria's neck. "Shoot me," said Rotenaard, "and I shoot the girl."

Zhaki looked thoughtful. "I'm not sure you would."

"I've spent long years trying to kill her. I've become quite good at it. I dunno what a 'user' is, but I don't think you can stop me."

Zhaki smiled. "A user. A magic user. Have you heard of So Sara?"

Nereus examined the shapeshifter. "Island chain? A few hundred leagues north of here? Very sinful, summoned demons, everyone died, hubris of man, blah, blah, blah?"

"That's the one. We had magic, then. It was beautiful. With it we grew rich, we cured all diseases, in time we would have cured the world. But those who couldn't use magic grew jealous. They poked around with rust and oil and called themselves Technomaezji. They tried to tell us we were evil, for being able to do more than them, for trying to help them. And when we didn't listen, they started sabotaging our experiments. Little things, at first. Then bigger things. Finally, they went too far. A routine summoning went out of control. Full on demon gate. Pretty much everyone died, of course."

"Wasn't like that," said Maria.

"Shut up," said Zhaki. "The Technomaezji, of course, were well prepared, and they all scuttled away like cockroaches to their hideaways on the mainland. We users didn't have an escape route planned out. Only the ones of us who took to the seas survived.

"The most powerful users performed the Ritual of Iki'dierc, which burnt away our mortality and our human form, and turned us into immortal ocean spirits, appearing to humans in the form of a dolphin. It took us centuries before we regained our bearings, and by then the technomaezji and their puppet emperors had taken over the whole northern continent and we were unwelcome. So we settled the reefs of Istvanistan, drinking and biding our time.

"Our time came several thousand years later, when the hated line of technomaezji was almost dead and half-forgotten. Then we retook human form and walked among men. A word here, another there, and we had them doing our bidding. And finally, we tracked down the last of the technomaezji, a young boy who barely even knew what a technomaezj was and didn't speak a word of So-Saran. What a delicious victory. We took the very last technomaezj, and promised him power and riches, and he forswore his order and vowed to serve us.

"That boy's name was Ari Ly'Technomaezj, and in exchange for his loyalty we made him Kaiser of Shireroth. Kaiser Ari 0, you called him, and we taught him well, and he became the most powerful of users, and in time he became one of us. In Shirekeep there hangs a painting of him in dolphin form, swimming in the blood of his enemies. And we prepared for him the great empire of Tymaria, which encompassed the entire world.

"But the fool was too curious for his own good. In his magical researches, he discovered the history of So Sara, and the true nature of magic, and then he burned his spellbooks, dissolved his empire, changed colors again, and declared war on us. We, the last of the users, were driven again from Shirekeep by the man we built ourselves. And to add insult to injury, he rediscovered the old texts and reformed the line of technomaezji, so that we could never again rule the lands."

"And when he was dying," said Maria Morimoto, "he worried that the technomaezji would once again forget their purpose and dwindle away, as they had done before. So he found me, the first immortal, and he...did things to me. He bound me to the technomaezji, to protect them, and keep them on course. Even I don't know the full extent of his conditioning. But since then, no matter what my other plans, I've kept a special part of my heart for the technomaezji, and I've always tried to help them. I even helped Kender, while he sought my doom."

"Very touching," snarled Zhaki. "Even with Ari's meddling, we might still have taken over the lands. But our powers began to weaken. We had been out of human form too long, and with the memory of humanity the power of magic was fading from our veins. We began experimenting with the reversal of Iki'dierc, to regain enough humanity to become full users. We even succeeded, in part. But we ran up against a roadblock. Death. As soon as we became truly human, we would suffer old age and die.

"Which is where your friend comes in. She has a type of immortality not linked to use, one made of strong technomaezjik. Once we reach Istvanistan, we can take it from her, regain human form, and access our full powers. Then Shireroth will be ours, and not even the technomaezji will be able to stop us."

"Maria," said Nereus. "I didn't want to end it this way. I really didn't. But if this is true, I can't let the dolphins have you. Goodbye, Maria Morimoto." And he pressed the trigger of his gun.

...Zhaki made a movement with his fingers, too quick to see as more than a blur, and the gun flew out of Nereus' hands, spun through the air, and landed with a splash in the water a stone's throw away.

"You really think I was going to let you kill the woman?" asked Zhaki. "I went along with your delaying tactic because I enjoy a good chance to gloat about my plot as much as the next evil mastermind. That's all." He laughed, and it was the sound of evil clicking laughter.

"And now, Nereus Rotenaard, you die."