"Carry the dome by the handles and, once it's secure, keep your gear on at all times. The clamps are strong but the seal is only as good as the substrate it's bolted to. Keep your tether connected. If we start to lose containment, Ahsa will bring us somewhere safe."
Eris Morn listened intently to Deputy Commander Sloane's last minute instructions as the Drifter nervously checked over her diving gear and then his own.
"If you somehow become separated," Sloane continued, "…do not try to swim to the surface. We're a thousand feet down. You're not getting up there on your own and with nothing but a diving suit, one wrong gravitational anomaly and you'll be a puddle of jelly faster than you can blink all three of your eyes. Stay put, broadcast your position, and wait till someone finds you. Any questions?"
Eris shook her head.
"Nah," Drifter grinned at the Titan. "Good to go. Finally getting to see the Long Girl in the Soup up close and personal. Can't say I'm not a little excited."
Sloane sighed. "I still can't believe you got me to agree to this."
"Me neither, truth be told." Drifter's eyes glinted from behind his faceplate.
"Right. One final check-in." Sloane closed her eyes and let her arms fall just slightly away from her sides.
Sloane's eyes opened wider than they normally did and an eerie light shone from them as she looked from Eris to the Drifter and back again.
"Tithebearer. Consort." Her altered voice was resonant with ancient power. "Welcome. I await."
Sloane gasped and staggered forward as the possession ended.
"Consort?" the Drifter asked. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Companion… usually romantically bonded to a monarch or equivalent. It is… a title." Eris answered.
"Huh." Drifter smirked. "Not gonna complain about that."
Sloane groaned and rolled her eyes as she checked the rope tied between the three of them and then on her signal all three dropped down into the circular diving pool.
The methane sea muffled sound and slowed movement, not unlike water on Earth. The three of them approached and then picked up a large clear dome deep enough for one of them to stand up in the middle of it. It would have been far too heavy if they were on the surface but the liquid methane gave buoyancy in ways similar to water. After a few more steps they were at the edge of a railing with nothing but blackness below.
"Hey, uh… Thunderguns?" the Drifter asked through their shared comms. "You sure she's down there?"
"I'm sure. Up and over in three… two… one…"
All three of them stepped off the thin brightly lit catwalk together and began floating down into the abyss.
Only the lights from their suits illuminated the "ground" when they landed. It was like walking on a stiff sponge. They felt the low rumbling groan up through their boots more than heard it as Ahsa acknowledged their presence upon her.
Various growths and protrusions caused Ahsa's back to be quite uneven terrain to traverse and for about ten minutes their primary goal was to lug the clear dome along with them without anyone twisting their ankle.
Finally, they reached their goal. Rising from a cluster of much smaller crustations, a large but empty barnacle, its barrel wider than two of them lying down, protruded from the proto-worm's hide.
"This is it." Sloane said and together the three of them lifted the dome they had brought up and over, letting it rest just inside the outer ring of encrustation on Ahsa's skin. As they sealed the edge of the dome with clamps to the inside of the circular protrusion around them, Eris asked a question.
"Deputy Commander. Are secretions such as this not normally made by an animal? This one appears uninhabited."
"It wasn't uninhabited the first time I found it," Sloane answered. "They don't hurt her, but they cause drag and are a general annoyance. That thing fed me for almost six months."
The Drifter chortled as he finished the clamp he was working with and moved to secure another one.
"So… What'd it taste like?" he finally asked.
"Clam," Sloane said without elaboration.
"This is congruent with my own understanding." Eris said quietly to no one in particular. "Similar entities on Earth are in the same family as mollusks."
The Drifter looked over his shoulder at Eris appreciatively and then resumed his work. Soon enough, they had a small clear bubble attached to the barnacle on Ahsa's back. Sloane sat cross-legged on the "ground" with her eyes closed for a few moments and then they all felt the water begin to rush by them.
The Drifter sat next to Eris, holding her hand. They'd turned off all the lighting on their suits and, while at first the darkness of the deep ocean around them seemed absolute, as their eyes adjusted (Eris' Hive eyes being much faster and more apt at seeing in darkness than either of the other two) they began to make out more and more of the faint bioluminescence around them.
The deep was not empty, and the darkness was not absolute. It only seemed that way because of all the ambient light. And as their eyes became more and more accustomed to the environment, the Long Girl in the Soup dove down into the depths of Kraken Mare, Titan's deepest sea.
Ahsa let out a long low groan which rose in pitch until it became a squeak.
"What's she sayin'?" the Drifter asked Sloane.
"She isn't saying anything. She's using the sound to map her environment."
The Drifter looked impressed. "Like sonar?"
Sloane nodded.
"Damn!" he whispered almost reverently, the way he said it when Eris did something that he found both awe-inspiring and a little terrifying.
Eris squeezed his hand and received a squeeze in return.
"Is that them?" she asked and pointed.
Both Sloane and Drifter looked in the direction Eris indicated.
"I can't see nothin'," he told her.
"Wait," Eris said.
Moments later, the Drifter and Sloane were able to make out a faint glow that grew brighter as they approached.
Ahsa began to slow.
"Yeah," the Drifter whispered. "I think that's it."
Summer on Titan was a complicated affair. Being a moon and not a planet, its seasons were affected by the orbit of Saturn around the Sun, one revolution of which was just shy of 30 Earth years. But Titan also orbited its Saturn every fifteen Earth days. Tidal forces were exerted in a roughly two-week cycle with gradually increasing and then decreasing amounts of sunlight, reaching a peak during the Saturnian Solstice.
Life on Titan (which had blossomed during the Golden Age, had been first driven to the brink of extinction during the collapse, and again when Titan had been swallowed by the Darkness) moved in cycles along with these different planetary and lunar rhythms, ebbing and flowing. The Drifter, who had spent considerable time running salvage operations on Titan, as well as Deputy Commander Sloane, were both aware of a natural phenomenon which would only happen during "Summer Solstice" on Titan, during one ten hour period every thirty years.
The three passengers began to see large blooms of glowing translucent jellyfish slide by in the distance, dragged first one way and then another on currents Ahsa seemed to be purposefully avoiding.
Their bodies felt heavier and colder as they sunk even farther into the depths. They passed clouds of tiny blue shrimp, pale thin sea-spiders with long spindly limbs, and one solitary giant nudibranch, twisting and flopping its way through the ocean in brilliant hues of orange and purple, its feathery plumes glittering like they were sprinkled with diamonds. Drifter tensed and held his breath when he saw it, not relaxing until it was out of their field of vision. Eris squeezed his hand once in question.
"Those things are nasty," he whispered to her. "Nerve poison. Anything that flashy down here is announcing to everything around it that they do not mess around. You see one of them comin', you get the hell away as fast as you can. Real painful way to die. Ask me how I know."
"Hmmm…"
They reached the deepest part of the ocean floor. Thermal coral forests stretched out in all directions, their various colorful tendrils wafting in the dark. Human, Eliksni, and Hive shipwrecks dotted the landscape along with clumps of fossilized Egregore and the pale bones of large, long-dead creatures picked clean by the scavengers of the sea floor.
Dominating their vision, however, were what could only be described as dozens of whirling electric tornadoes. Each one was brightly crackling with energetically slithering bioluminescent eels.
Within their bubble of water on Ahsa's hide, all three humans felt the crackle of Arc energy as the water around them became increasingly charged with power.
Soon everything began to take on a blue-white glow.
The proto-worm stopped far enough away that they would not be harmed but close enough to the many swirling eel funnels that her three tiny passengers could watch the brilliant galvanic dance being performed in front of them. The electric eels of Titan were shy and elusive. They only congregated once every Saturnian Summer for this frenetic mass interaction. It was something very few human eyes had ever seen and neither the Drifter nor Sloane had ever witnessed this closely.
Within their suits their skin was tingling. The hairs on their body were standing on end. Drifter grinned and held his thumb and index finger in front of him, bringing them together and then slowly pulling them apart. Sparks began to sputter and fly as white root-like feathers of electricity flickered in long spindly trails between his fingers.
He heard low giggles and looked over at Eris. Her three glowing eyes were washed out by the brilliant light from the ball of lightning she was holding in her hands.
The Drifter's face lit up in a different way from the flickering lightning all around him. He looked over to Sloane and mouthed the words "Thank you" to her. The Titan shook her head and smiled. Together they watched Eris's delight, lightning crackling all over her body, while the Arc-energy overloaded eels spun and whirled together in their frenzied gyrations outside.
They remained nearly an hour, craning their necks to watch the awe-inspiring display until Ahsa eventually returned them to the Arcology. This was, of course, not before Eris and the Drifter had begun purposefully shocking each other like small children unable to sit still and Sloane had threatened to abandon both of them at the bottom of the methane ocean floor.
Once they were back in breathable air, Ahsa took over Sloane's body briefly to speak with them, taking both of their hands into each of her own.
"A gift," Sloane said, her voice alien and powerful. "Sharing. Not Tithes. Not Death. But Life. Joy."
The Drifter squeezed Ahsa-Sloane's hand and said "Thanks, Long-Girl. For everything."
Sloane's head turned and regarded the Drifter. Eyes aglow, Ahsa spoke a single word through Sloane's lips directly to him, and to him alone.
"Stay."
The Drifter's grin softened, and he blinked. "I'm stayin'," he said, quietly. "I ain't runnin' off no more. Trust."
"Yes," the ancient proto-worm spoke through her human vessel's lips and then turned to Eris and said, "Trust."
Eris nodded and her eyes flashed as she responded, "Aiat."
Deputy Commander Sloane lurched forward as the connection between her and Ahsa was broken and both Eris and the Drifter helped her keep her balance while continuing to hold her hands.
She took a few deep breaths and then asked. "I take it you got what you were wanting?"
"Yeah," the Drifter said warmly.
"Very much so," Eris added, her face relaxed and her lips forming an effortless small smile.
Sloane nodded and stepped back, letting go of their hands, then pointed at the Drifter. "You owe me."
"Sure do," he nodded. "Say, what'cha doin' for dinner, Thunderguns? I'm makin' chili garlic prawns tonight. They're pretty great."
Sloane gave him a mildly disgusted look, like he'd offered her a piece of rotting Hive Thrall.
"I assure you," Eris stepped forward slightly. "The Drifter's known proclivities aside, his culinary skills are, in fact, exceptional and the dish he has proposed is genuinely good. The meal is not at all as repulsive or unsanitary as one might expect and is, in reality, surprisingly flavourful."
"Unsanitary?" The Drifter put his hands on his hips. "Thanks, Three-Eyes, you're doing great job at selling her on it."
"You're welcome," Eris replied, ignoring his frustration.
"What do ya say?" He turned back to Sloane with a smile.
Sloane stared at him, chewing her lip and thinking.
The Drifter licked his lips and swallowed, his body language and bravado deflating slightly as Sloane's silence continued.
Eris put her hand on his arm and tilted her head sympathetically. The Drifter looked away.
Sloane sighed. "I've had nothing but freeze-dried rations for three weeks. So… against my better judgment… that does sound pretty good."
The Drifter's smile broadened. He slapped his hands and began to rub them together. "Hell yeah, Sister. Let's go eat. Good to go now?"
"Ready as I'll ever be, I guess." Sloane said, already regretting her decision.
This week revealed that when Eris invoked the worms, she also invoked Ahsa. And Ahsa responded. Eris' tithes are effectively working through Ahsa as any other Worm god. And Ahsa accepted this willingly because she recognised that Eris is not only doing this altruistically, she is also putting herself as well in the line of danger which means that is fundamentally different from the pact with the Witness that Ahsa refused to take. Insane.
Unfortunately this is exceptionally dangerous to both Ahsa and Eris so we have to speed things up so they can be free of this bond. I need these women to survive and be well forever and ever.
