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Begin.

Smoke rises from the gaping hole in its abdomen, guts swirling like purple snakes as you dip in a hand and pull out some organ you can’t quite place. A thickening liquid splatters across your face as you take a bite, the tar-like substance as warm as a daughter’s hand trailing across your cheek, but the meat stringy and difficult to choke down. You’ll have to manage, show them all what you're really made of.



The dying groans of the fish-man begin to fade away, though you manage to draw one more by digging your fingers into the jagged tear in its belly, nails clacking against the floor as you swirl a hand in the puncture wound going right through its abdomen. This is the fifth one you’ve killed so far, and the oceans will bleed red before you are done.



Your radio blares, connecting you with the rest of your squadron. "Surmila," comes the voice, though the hiss of the radio masks the speaker's identity, "have you secured Quadrant Four?"



Of course you haven't. You don't have the time for such things when there are more left to kill, when they all must pay for all that they have taken from you, when a hundred-thousand years of basking in their screams would not be enough. You only agreed to the mission so that you could reach the Deep and the secrets that lie below, do what you have yearned to do for more than a decade.



For a decade, you have been biding your time until the moment was perfect and the fish-men were fated to be no more than a blip on the grand clock of humanity's conquests. You will be the bringer of their fate, weaving their tapestry, wiping their names from the annals of history, relishing the screams of the damned as they burn in hellfire, skin crisping and crackling, and damned they are, damned the instant they dared touch her...



Ah. You've gotten derailed in your own delusions.



Your mind has a tendency to wander, a habit picked up from a decade of patience. No, you have not secured your quadrant, though perhaps the fish-people and their incoming demise can wait just a bit while you do so. Just a few minutes that will mean nothing when looked at from an objective eye a thousand years in the future, even though they mean so much now. A few minutes can be the difference between life and death, like they were for her.



Your muscles ache to keep up this massacre, your finger twitching on the trigger of your grappling hook, and your bones scream deep shudders down your spine that they must pay, and that they must do so now.