The lights in the cabin blinked.

  “Five minute warning to dive,” the sub’s PA system said. “Please find your seats and secure all drinks.”

  Rav laughed and fake-smacked his forehead. “Hey, what a pollywog, huh? I forgot to mention the open bar in the icebox over there. It’s not technically ‘open’ to everybody, even those with a Gold Below Surface Pass, but for friends of CPA agents, the drinks are on the house.”

  “Thanks, I’ll grab something if I get thirsty,” I lied. It doesn’t take long on a prison planet to realize that you never take something a slimy jerk offers you for free. It takes even shorter off a prison planet to realize that rule applies everywhere in the universe.

  Warcry came back, mostly dry by then, and took the seat he’d reserved with his bag. Rav didn’t mention the free drinks to him.

  Engines whined, warming up to speed. The cabin lights dimmed until only the emergency arrows showed on the carpet, pointing the way to the exit.

  Out the window, the running lights powered up, cutting into the gloomy green water. Way ahead, I could make out the cherry blossom patterned kimono of one swimmer. Another was dragging a briefcase down in one hand.

  “Diving in three… two… one…” the PA counted down.

  Metallic groans filled the sub, the whole place lurched, then we were gently sinking. The spaceport shrank behind us, and the crash of the waves on the glass tapered off and finally stopped as we left the surface behind. All landmarks—or ocean-marks, I guess—disappeared. In a few seconds, the faint light from the cloudy sky was gone, too. Without the subtle feeling of forward momentum, it would have been impossible to tell which way we were moving.

  Out of nowhere, a school of sparkling sapphire creatures that looked tadpoles crossed with seahorses flashed through the lights. A sleek, dark shape shot past the window behind them, snapping one up in its seal-like muzzle.

  “Takes about two hours to get to the bottom from here,” Rav said. He pointed out a button beneath the window. “You guys can enjoy the beautiful sights of Selk, or we can fire up the projector screen and watch the latest pay-per-view from Fight Month.”

  Warcry’s and my HUD buzzed at the same time, indicating a dive-guide for tourists using earshells stored in our seats’ armrests.

  “I’m doing the guided dive,” I said, flipping open the arm of my chair. The earshells were in a tiny sanitizer cabinet the size of my fist. “I’ve never been in a submarine before. I mean, submersible.”

  “Hey, I get it. First times are the best times and all that.” Rav kicked back his seat and started messing with his HUD. “I’ve got office work to catch up on, anyway. We can’t all have leave-no-info-trail jobs. Ha!”

  Warcry turned up the volume on his HUD. “I’m doing the guided dive too, so shut it, yeah?”

  The ginger was staring down at his screen, so he didn’t see Rav’s eye lace go flat black. In a split-second, it was back to normal.

  “Ha-ha, you don’t have to tell me twice, pal.” The CPA agent made the locking-mouth motion and threw away the invisible key. “Consider this clam clammed up.”

  I stuck the earshells in, glad I didn’t have to listen to Rav talk the whole two hours.

  “…now entering the Celestial Sea Kelp Forest,” the recording was saying in a cheerful female voice. “Originally harvested for its healing and anti-cellulite properties, the kelp forest is now a protected planetary landmark. Visitors with non-voluntary pressure regulation may feel a slight pinch in the inner ear and/or nasal passages. It is recommended that they equalize the pressure as the submersible descends by yawning regularly and cycling internal alchemy to any cavities or sacs adversely affected by compression.”

  Just as she said that, my ears popped. I winced and designated part of my internal alchemy to keep my head from exploding and my lungs from collapsing.

  We descended at an angle through the kelp, coming out the other side at what the voice called the central canopy, and continuing downward and forward. The running lights illuminated glittering gray scales, grayish-white skin, and long, flowing gray hair.

  I bolted up in my armchair. “Was that a—?”

  The sub honked.

  Right behind the first mermaid was a second one with emerald scales. They sped up out of the sub’s way, then spun around in the water, shaking webbed fists at the sub and yelling through pointed vampire teeth. No sound made it into the sub, but based on their glares, it was something along the lines of, “Hey, I’m swimming here!”

  “Savages.” Rav rolled his eyes. “We’ve got in-ocean agents who deal with them, but no matter how many tickets we dole out, Mer are going to ignore the designated sumbersi routes. Oh well! Natural selection and the engine turbines will eventually weed out the ones too stupid to get out of the way.”

  After that sighting, I stayed on the edge of my seat the rest of the dive.

  According to the tour guide program, there were three main races inhabiting Selk—Selkens, Mers, and these bipedal crustaceans called Kaner, which came in the red-shell and blue-shell variety. I didn’t see Kaner of either color on the dive. Maybe they followed the CPA approved swim routes.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The tour guide voice was just explaining how several clans of Kaner had emigrated to the Selken settlements in the Year of Something or Other to find steady work, creating a series of Little Kanerlands in cities across the planet, known for their lively festivals and Kaner food, when Warcry cussed and thumped his HUD screen.

  I pulled out an earshell. “What’s up?”

  “Bleedin’ thing quit on me,” he grumbled, showing me his screenful of frothing black and white static like an old television on a channel without a signal.

  “Must be Selk’s atmosphere,” Rav piped up. “The saltwater and storm humidity’s hell on those cheap foreign-made HUDs.”

  Warcry scowled. “This is a Hindre. Ain’t nothing cheap about it. It’s guaranteed in the most extreme environments in any settled planet and most of the unsettled ones.”

  “Didn’t you used to do an ad for them?” Rav squinted like he was remembering. “‘Hindre, official sponsor of the IFC. It’s the only HUD I trust wherever the fight takes me,’” he mimicked Warcry’s harsh accent. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “And it’s lasted me this whole time,” Warcry snapped. “Desert, bogland, jungle. Never lost a jot of resolution. Never got a dent in the screen or a scratch in the band. It’s a bleedin’ workhorse, worth every credit.”

  Rav chuckled. “I guess the moral is you don’t always get what you think you’re paying for. Especially at Hindre prices.”

  Glaring, Warcry stuck his hand out to me, palm up.

  “Give me that extra earshell, grav, before some Burning Hatred cove with a recently cleared criminal record gets done for murder of a CPA agent.”

  I forked it over. Warcry and I went back to listening to the guided dive, with one earshell apiece.

  Rav went back to working on his HUD, whistling a cheerful tune.

  In the distance, a column of Miasma rose through the currents like turquoise smoke. As we sank closer to the sea floor, I saw where it was coming from.

  “Up ahead, you’ll see the ruins of an ancient temple from an unknown prehistoric race,” the tour guide program said. “Excavations on the ruins began in the Year of the Bauxite, during the Ancient Cultures Craze that swept the inner planets. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons were used to build the structure, and a pit dug into the first floor was discovered to have thousands more skeletons within. Study of the temple was stopped before these races or their cause of death could be properly dated and identified, however. The dig was officially called off in the Year of the Sapphire due to the mounting toll of archaeologists, laborers, and camp followers permanently injured by dive sickness and killed by the strange living skeletons that inhabited the ruins.”

  The undersea temple was similar to the jungle ruins Warcry and I had cleared on Shinotochi-Sarca, like a massive Angor Wat, except this one was built out of bones, cut and mortared together to make the pillars, walls, and floors. Four tiers stuck up from the sea floor, with the lowest half-buried in sand and silt, so that only the tops of its archways were visible, like sleepy eyes about to close. It made a lot of sense that this place would be full of skelebuddies, too.

  In the jungle on Sarca, intricate bas-reliefs had shown winged people getting their wings hacked off, then being led up to the roof of the temple and forced to jump. Here, the bas-reliefs I could make out through the barnacles and coral showed a humanoid race with fins, rows of teeth, and gills getting hung up by their webbed feet and gutted like the great white in Jaws.

  I started to point the place out to Warcry, but he was already shaking his head.

  “Forget it, grav. I just got the stink of death off me from the last ruins.”

  “I didn’t say anything about going in there.”

  “Yeah, but you will do eventually. You Mortal coves can’t keep your hands off that stuff. You like to muck around in it, get it all over you.” He wrinkled his nose. “But that ain’t in me job description anymore.”

  From his armchair, Rav gave me a knowing smile. “The ruins are off-limits to civilians, but a private sea walk can be arranged on CPA business. Just say the word, Death cultivator.”

  Warcry smirked. “Yeah, Death cultivator. Just you and your best lad versus ten thousand skelebuddies.”

  I shot him the finger, then said, “Thanks, Rav. I’ll let you know.”

  Out of curiosity, I tried cultivating down there. I brought in a whole bunch of Saltwater Spirit, Silt Spirit, and Chemosynthesizing Life Spirit, which I was going to have to convert before I could use it. Converting between supertypes was strenuous, but it was good practice to strengthen your cultivation. There was also Decay Spirit from endless carcasses of creatures that had piled up on the sea floor over the millennia. Since that fell under the Mortal supertype, it was easier to absorb, and a faster conversion to Death Spirit.

  What I really wanted, though, was that Miasma coming out of the ruins. Pulling it through the water and into the sub was like trying to sprint on the bottom of a pool with a parachute strapped to your back. I’d come a long way since I first started cultivating, but I was breathing hard by the time I reeled that first bit of Miasma all the way to my Spirit sea.

  The ancient Death Spirit was icy and pure, refined by centuries beneath the waves. Similar to what had been hanging around the jungle temple, but concentrated. The pressure of sitting on Selk’s ocean floor acted like a constant Crucible Casket on the Miasma, crushing the impurities and perfecting what was left into something more powerful. An hour cultivating in those ancient ruins would be like a year cultivating from fresh kills on the surface.

  Maybe I would take Rav up on that ocean walk. Or maybe I could designate a part of my Spirit sea to be constantly pulling that in.

  Hungry Ghost could absorb the Miasma for the Death cultivator. Only ask and it will be done.

  The skull stone’s voice made me flinch. I looked around, but neither Warcry or our CPA escort was paying attention to me.

  Most of the time, I kept Hungry Ghost buried so deep under Jealous as the Grave that I couldn’t hear him. I checked to make sure the ancient khan wasn’t digging his way toward the surface.

  Still sealed up tight.

  The tour guide program kept yammering in my ear, but I ignored it.

  How are you talking to me right now? I asked Hungry Ghost.

  Smug silence.

  Did you find a way to pull in Miasma through Jealous as the Grave? I checked with Ki-sight, but didn’t see any unaccounted for Death Spirit moving toward me. Are you using Spirit cloaking somehow?

  Nothing. Douchebag.

  Frustrated, I heaped a ton of Miasma on him.

  That got my cabinmates’ attention. Warcry side-eyed me like he might have to dodge a sudden flare of Damnation. For a second, that brought back memories of the look he, Kest, and Rali given me when they thought I’d killed Sanya-ketsu.

  I could feel Hungry Ghost laughing. They pretend Death cultivator is their friend, but they never forget that he is a threat.

  “Just doing some maintenance,” I told Warcry.

  Weirdly, Rav was beaming at me.

  He’d said he was a big fan. Maybe he wanted to see me go off the deep end and kill somebody just for fun.

  Before I could figure out any answers, the CPA agent hooked a thumb at the window.

  “There she is, boys. Pearl City, the capital of Selk. Sure is a beaut, isn’t she?”

  In front of the sub loomed a city encased in an enormous, translucent dome, shimmering like a massive soap bubble or a…

  “Oh,” I said. “I get it.”