*
This was proving to be better than her time in the lighthouse.
In fact, it was a lot more like an all-inclusive hotel.
She spent four hours cleaning. The ancient stove had startled her when she first turned the handles. She had expected nothing from it. The boat must have spent centuries adrift inside the belly of a beast. Everything was falling apart; there was no way anything worked. She guessed that the boat was hundreds or even thousands of years old.
But her fingers were curious, had twisted and turned the knobs like a child and the iron belly had awakened with a low mechanical, noisy hum. It had shivered, dust spraying all over the air, the motes curling in the gentle wind. She screamed when strange runes flared beneath the cake of dust. It bloomed into a steady flame that did not smoke. It did cough a few times, hacking more dust through its vents but eventually it settled.
Fire.
How the fuck?
She stared; hands hovered over the flames. It was some kind of old, foreign technology. She did not dare inspect it deeply, but strange circles had been carved into the metal and the circles lit up when used. The civilization that had created the stove were clearly godly at long lasting technology. The warmth spread quickly through the cabin, and she managed to light the old lamps hanging all over the boat until a soft golden light pushed the darkness away. In the newly found light, the good ink remained just as dark, but it did have a more liquid-like, glossy consistency.
She boiled some of the fish and seaweed in a large pot she found in the cabin, reducing everything into a thick gloopy soup. Curious, she had scooped a bucket of the black ocean, had inspected it, sniffing. It smelled like nothing. She'd motioned to the ink, asking if she could drink it. They said yes, but she boiled it all just in case, expecting bitterness or salt like the sea. Instead, it held no salinity, no sweetness, a clear lack of minerals. It was simply an empty flavour. But it must have been drinkable, because she found the black water in jugs in the cabin. Jugs, that seemed to be storage containers for drinking. She'd shrugged at that and taken multiple swigs, quenching some of her thirst. Then waited to see if she'd shit herself, but she didn't. After that, she'd gulped down two glorious bottles.
It wasn't the crisp, cool, delicious taste of water, but it was still good.
Easy.
Too easy.
Water all around. Food under her feet. It was a million times better than her old cell. And so, when she finally swallowed the first mouthful of her shitty fish stew, tears had sprung to her eyes. Grateful, pathetic tears. It was crude, under-seasoned, a little fishy and merely protein boiled together into a sticky goop. But after everything that had happened it was the finest meal she had ever eaten in weeks. Not counting Edmund's fake inky shit. She was really more interested in the warmth that it brought to her belly than the flavour.
The broth coated her throat with a golden sort of heat. The fish was rich on her tongue; the bite had a good chew. Her belly was finally filled after days of almost nothing. She ate too much, had sat back content for a minute or two trying to keep the nausea down. Only after the feeling had ceased did she finally allow herself to properly look at the men sleeping on the deck. She'd draped cloth over their bodies, had shoved more under their heads.
Her next task was to fix up the beds.
Their chests still rose and fell from slow, steady breaths. Good signs. They looked peaceful. But now that death was not an issue, she feared everything else. Coma. Memory loss. Rue lowered herself to a squat, wrapping her arms around her knees. What if this was all the ink had accomplished? A broken brain was still a broken brain. What if they never ever woke up ever again?
That thought chilled her to the bone.
Her eyes snapped to the endless black ceiling. She'd long realised that the only way out was her boys. Kieran could teleport through light. Levi was capable of entering the shadow realm. Out of all seven, the two were technically the best men capable of transportation. They would be able to travel through the universe. But there was a limit in distance and reach depending on their strength. And she knew that Cetus sapped their strength, that outside of his belly, its proximity had burnt their skin. They would have to be strong enough to travel out of the planet. But even if they woke up, would they have the strength to leave? She forced herself to stand before despair could deepen its root in her brain. Fuck it. She decided. She'd live in the present, and think about the future later.
Beds first.
The cabin held tons of scraps, weathered blankets and torn canvas in boxes. It was a good thing, she supposed, that the belly of Cetus had no bugs or fungus to eat away at the fabric. But the fabric was clearly wasting away quickly and all she had from her findings were shreds. The remains of mattresses and clothes. She tugged at a rag. But she supposed, the materials were different from what she knew which led to their endurance. She gathered everything she could find, layering cloth upon the cot until it formed some kind of shitty mattress. A little lumpy and hard, but it was good enough. She checked the boards, patched up the holes. It wasn't the best.Together with the good ink, she settled the men onto the makeshift beds. By the time she finished, sweat clung to her skin despite the air drifting through the cabin.
She lingered for a moment. Colour had finally returned to Levi's face. The terrible grey pallor of death had been replaced by the flush of living. Even so, he remained impossibly still. His eyelashes laid against his cheeks without so much as a flutter. His breathing remained slow, so slow that she still found herself counting every rise and fall just to reassure herself. Her fingers brushed his hair away from his forehead. The curls were a little wet.
Kieran was no better.
Now that she had the time to sit and stare, she noted now that the darkness in their veins remained after the ordeal. The coal like spread stretched all over their flesh like stained lightning scars. It reminded her of varicose veins. But the dark root-like structure all over their bodies was not her main concern. It was the pink scarring, the fresh skin that threatened to tear.
And she was a hell lot more concerned for those wounds.
"Sleeping beauty," she teased. "Will you wake up soon?" The words caught painfully in her throat. She fought back a snort. Fuck, the man had just died. She should give him a little time. He couldn't possibly recover that quickly. But her gaze drifted toward the pot still simmering gently atop the stove. "You have to eat and drink."
The thought bubbled within her, a sudden horror. No food, no water. Back home, they'd have had to administer an IV drip to deliver fluids and vitamins. She licked her drying lips, heart suddenly falling.
"They'll die if they don't wake." She hadn't meant to say the words out loud, but now that she did it seemed terrifying. She shivered at the thought. The shadows gathered by her side. Rue looked toward them hopefully. "Do you think they'll wake soon?"
The good ink shifted uneasily, lowering steadily towards the floor almost as if apologetic. She was beginning to understand its movements, the body language of the shadows. The way it shifted in response. Rue let out a long breath through her nose.
"I figured." She was asking for too much. Rue reached instead for a clean scrap of cloth, filled a bowl with boiled black water, before kneeling beside Levi. She dipped the cloth into the bowl. "I'll just keep his lips wet. That's what the nurses do, right?" She snorted to herself.
Rue had barely reached forward before the shadows moved. Several tendrils gently wrapped themselves around Levi's jaw while another reached towards the bowl in her hands. Rue watched in confusion as the good ink dipped itself directly into the water. It jerked, and she stared in shock as it seemed to carry the liquid inside itself. The liquid shimmered through expanding translucent strands of black ink, much like water suspended beneath glass.
Rue's eyes widened. "Wait!" She lunged instinctively, trying to grab the slippery tendrils. "He'll aspirate! You can't just force it into his mouth; you'll get it into his lungs—"
The good ink slipped into his mouth and she watched as the muscles beneath his skin moved. His adam's apple bobbed. He was swallowing. She stopped protesting now as they moved to work on Kieran as well. It was a slow process. But she stared as they seemed to go deeper now, pouring fluid into their stomachs. The speed increasing.
"Not too fast," she whispered in awe. "Just in case."
They slowed down.
"You can transform into a feeding tube?" she hissed. "Goddamn!" The good ink it seemed, understood human anatomy perfectly. When the shadows were done, they seemed to pause expectantly for praise. The bowl was now completely empty. She applauded. The good ink was godly as caretakers.
That night she slept on the floor, but she slept peacefully.
*
Their days continued.
The good ink gathered food while Rue prepared her stews. Together they fed the sleeping men, cleaned them, checked wounds for recovery. She worked hard to clean up the space, somehow fashioned a broom from broken strands of weathered wood. The shadows helped to repair parts of the boat, fixing loose planks and removing rot.
They were a team.
Time lost all meaning inside Cetus. Without a sun rising over her head, or a moon to mark the nights, there was no true natural rhythm to mark the days. Rue tried to count, and like all cliché survival films, she marked the days on a plank of wound. But she was beginning to lose her sense of time. Eventually she judged time by hunger. Three meals, and then sleep. That was a day.
The shadows themselves appeared to have lost the concept of time entirely. They neither slept nor were they ever tired. They simply existed as they were, listening to her words, drifting through their tasks. And whenever she found herself with nothing to do, she explored the boat. She talked to the good ink all the time. But it was clear that there was a limit to their knowledge.
For one, they didn't what they were.
She'd pressed and questioned. But they did not seem to know why the boat was in Cetus. They did not know how the ocean seemed to exist. But what they did know was that there had not been any other person for years. Or at least they did not remember anyone else. She'd asked if it remembered the occupants of the boat. It seemed to know somethings, specific things, like where the knives were, and the mugs. It knew that she ate fish. But when questioned specifically about items on the boat it shook and shrugged.
She realised quickly that the shadows were not a single entity. Sometimes it seemed to fight itself, two tendrils tussling, other times they wanted to say different things. A nod and a shake of the head instead of a collective answer. The good ink it seemed consisted of multiple different personalities.
But with more cleaning, warped floorboards revealed hidden compartments. Loose panels concealed stacks of paper. Entire lockers had been built into the walls, so cleverly disguised that she only discovered them while hammering away at broken shelves. Support beams were hollowed to store items. The more she unveiled, the more obvious it became that whoever had once lived here had devoted their lives to preserving something.
Books.
They were everywhere, wrapped in waterproof fabric, covered in leather. Bundles upon bundles sealed within waxed containers and plastic wrap. The preservation had been meticulous. Whoever occupied this vessel had considered these writings more valuable than anything else. Rue had opened them eagerly. She did not understand a single word. The language belonged to no alphabet she recognised from the planets. They were like runes, curling circles filled every page, fading from age, inked by hand. And the strangest thing was that they contained illustrations.
Hundreds of drawings of women.
Women in power.
Page after page depicted women unlike anything Rue had ever seen. They stood crowned in dripping headdresses, hands raised towards the skies, radiant light poured from their bodies. They gathered in circles. And they led armies, performed ceremonies. There was one page where they seemed to stand before a city. A civilization. It was a matriarchy. There was only one matriarchy she was aware of.
The Heras.
She gasped.
It did not take long for her to make her assumptions. The occupants of the boat had been Heras. It was a concept she assumed, for their hair and eyes seemed pale. And that meant that the boat was not just old, it had been here for millions of years. She had gawked at the structure when she first realised the truth. Because how the fuck was it all still standing and working? It seemed impossible. She sucked in a long breath. Was Cetus' belly capable of preservation? Or were they simply just that good at making items that lasted for years?
She poured over the books after that, flipping the pages quickly. She wanted information on bad Titans, fucked up Titans. It sucked that the shadows did not seem to know how to read for they merely tilted in question when she asked if it could find pictures of men. She must have flipped through a hundred books before she found her first goddamn clue.
A whale.
Cetus.
It wept black tears, surrounded by women who held hands and stood in a closed circle. The illustration was horrid, the tears seemed to flow like rivers, creating a massive black pool. The black ocean? She turned the page. Nothing but more scribbles. God, she wished she were a linguist. Rue frowned. She studied the image for several minutes before glancing toward the nearest good ink. It was sweeping the deck with impressive dedication. The good ink was using broom 5.0, a creation she'd made from underwater reeds. Others were hauling in the latest catch of fish.
She held up the page, calling. "What do you think this means?"
One good ink turned to look.
"There's a whale," she said. "It's a picture that features a crying whale, surrounded by crying women." The tendril paused. Then shrugged. Rue blinked, a sigh exhaled. "You all really can't read." But a few tendrils slithered over like snakes, tips bending to look. She showed it to them. Some got bored over time, others remained.
It was becoming clear to her that they were a collection of beings.
As the days passed, she developed the habit of showing the illustrations to the shadows. She realised they did react differently. Some more enthusiastically than others. Others crowded around, bobbing excitedly whenever certain images appeared. They liked depictions of the lands, she realised. They liked the pictures of castles and buildings. Others enjoyed fashion. She supposed it was fun. But sometimes, the illustrations made some of the shadows grow still. She'd notice them drifting away after, turning into puddles of ink, falling into the sea.
That alarmed her.
She stared, turned to the others. "Did I kill them?"
They shook their heads, or at least what she assumed were their heads.
"They're hurt?"
Not really.
"Sad?"
Yes.
"Why?"
The shadows did not seem to know even when she pelted them with questions of their origin. Their place of birth. Their existence as perhaps, tools or companions to the Heras. It was obvious it must mean something. They merely shrugged. All she got from them was that the pictures made them sad. Two thousand books later and she found a picture that made her heart race.
It was a woman who stood with her hand to her heart. Above her head were images of family. And this time, there were clear depiction of men, smiling men, laughing men. Memories. The next drawing revealed an extension of her hands. Light blossomed from her palms. Rue tilted her head.
"Huh."
It looked less like a storybook, more like instructions. Almost absentmindedly she mirrored the drawing. One hand rested over her chest. She left the book upon her lap and furrowed her brows. She exhaled. In the lighthouse, without the boys by her side, with hunger weakening her body, she'd been unable to do anything. But now that her mates were with her and now that she was strong, she had tried to use their powers.
She failed.
Rue had attempted to conjure light and shadow, tried to summon the shadow realm. But nothing had happened, and she'd simply spent hours looking constipated. She'd sighed after that, shaking her head. Her previous control had been borne from rage and desperation. In the hive with Dante, she'd been frightened by the Titan. She'd pulled on his lightning, lightning that he was already using. It was easy to wield it like a weapon then, to coax it from his grasp and make it her own. But her boys were now asleep and weakened, she supposed there was no pre-existing power to draw from them.
She'd given up on the idea of using their powers.
Her eyes drifted toward Kieran, and now she was thinking of him, thinking of the good times. She remembered him howling with laughter until he cried because she'd accidentally set the fucking breakfast on fire and Seraphim was losing his ever-loving shit. She remembered his hands stealing food from her plate with tease in his eyes. She remembered him shamelessly pulling her into a dance when music played, bumping her hips against his own. She remembered the nights with his shoulder against hers on the couch. She remembered the sweet carnation blush of his cheeks. The gorgeous, blinding smile.
Rue.
His honeyed voice chiming in the air.
A golden warmth swelled inside her chest with so much force it hurt. Her eyes prickled. And something sparked inside her palms. Rue's breath caught. The sensation spread slowly from her chest, down her arm and to her trembling fingertips. Soft light spilled from her hands. She froze. The cabin filled with an amber glow like the afternoon sun. Tiny motes of dust drifted in the air, swirling above her fingertips. The warmth felt impossibly familiar.
Kieran.
The light felt like Kieran. She could feel him within her. Her gaze darted to the sleeping man. But he did not seem to be affected and he remained as still as before. His features did not even twitch. But she could scarcely describe how it felt. The way it rolled in her chest like the bubbles of his joy, like the essence of the man she loved. It danced and bounced, darting within her soul. And it flowed gently through her hands, a beacon in the dark. Her own breathing became uneven as she stopped to reach for the book, flipping the page.
The books were teaching her.
*
She was obsessed with the books now that it had proven its worth. Now that she had evidence that the knowledge was real and important. And her newfound ability to use the powers of her boys could only grow stronger. Golden balls of light now illuminated her surroundings. She created fake mornings with huge balls of light hanging over the mast. And at night she wrestled with the ink using Levi's shadows, strengthening her control.
The routines of survival had become largely mechanical now. She was used to it. But she did change up her meals. Sometimes, she fried the fish in its own fat. Other times, she had shellfish and crabs for dinner. She made noodles from seaweed. The good ink continued feeding her boys for her. The days crept by, it must have been two weeks, or more. Her tally was two. It could be three.
At night, she studied the books she unearthed. The language remained impossible to decipher. There were thousands of books, and the deeper she cracked open the boat, the more she found in trapdoors and hidden basements. They were practically hauling an entire library with them, or at least the occupants of the boat had written an entire library. She now had a stupid name for the good ink. Inky. They didn't seem to mind, not that she asked.
It was during one of those long afternoons that she found it.
She'd slammed the book shut immediately, eyes wide. What the fuck? She opened it again. Two figures, a woman straddling a man who seemed to be asleep. She thought they were fucking because on the next page, her lips were on his throat. But she paused, staring at the page. No, it wasn't a kiss. She was biting him.
Claiming him.
Around them swirled strands of light. It seemed to connect their hearts together in intricate knots that reminded her of roots from a tree. Light burst from their hearts. And on the next page, the man appeared to wake with a brilliant smile, exchanging a kiss with his lover.
How convenient.
"That's just freaky porn."
Rue closed the book hard. The sound snapped throughout the cabin, almost seemed to rattle the windows. The orbs of light blinked. Several shadows looked up in surprise. She pushed the book away, then she picked it back up. She scrutinised the illustration.
On the first page, she noticed now that the Alpha had bandages all over, that there were cuts on his cheeks. They had intended to make it obvious because, for fuck's sake, they'd drawn eyebags and lines on their faces. His body was illustrated stained with black marks that ran up his arms like roots of a tree. But they all disappeared when he awoke. And he was beaming like some propaganda picture of health. They'd even drawn blush on his fucking cheeks—She shut the book. It was fucking obvious, like spelling out some kind of information sheet for babies.
Claiming them would heal them.
"Bullshit."
She swallowed hard. That wasn't a part of claiming 101. Biology lessons had never said that claiming would heal someone. If it did thousands would start claiming cancer patients. They'd use Omegas to heal others. It made no fucking sense—She opened the book, flipping to the end. Okay, and now the book was turning into a sex manual. The happy couple was now either fucking or guiding. She closed it and sighed. She could feel heat creeping to the tips of her ears.
"The books are full of shit," she declared to Inky an hour later. The group of them swayed. "If everyone could be healed by claiming, that would have happened a long fucking time ago." She frowned, cleaning the beams. "Besides, I claimed Valentino and Dante claimed me, nothing happened then. Did they become miraculously healthier? No. It was just painful with Dante. And with Valentino? I don't know. I was fucking depressed because of the rejection. It wasn't an incredibly healing experience."
She retorted continued with her rant.
"The books are my only clues to I guess, civilization. But I can't just do whatever the fuck it tells me to do. It might be lessons, it might be history. It might also be fiction, and who knows it could be porn," she muttered. "And I don't claim people without verbal consent. I can't just bite them for fun."
She turned to reorganise the supplies, busied herself. The book was about claiming bites, tying two souls into one, forming a pack. Maybe, it was just something cultural. Maybe, it was just some kind of metaphor. She paused, eyes darting to her boys. Levi's hair had grown long enough to fall into his eyes. Kieran's curls were growing unruly. She leaned forward, brushing it aside. She would not say that they were any healthier. They were surely better, but they remained the same. Alive, but unconscious.
She swallowed hard. The shadows did everything they could do to help her, even going as far as to brush their teeth when she asked them to. She looked around the cabin. The pile of fish bones outside on the deck. The flutter of drying seaweed hanging on the line. The massive collection of books she'd sorted into careful piles, creating walls along the boat. There was a still a good amount left to go.
She stared at blankets she'd washed so many times that they no longer smelled of herbs. The trio had been here for days, weeks, maybe a month if her count was far off from the truth. She didn't know for sure. Only that it had been too long. Far too long to hope for someone to come save them. It had been on her mind, as dangerous as Cetus was, that the rest of the pack might come. She had waited, had been passive because she had hoped that they'd send a rescue team. But it seemed that it would take more than just a while. But—She brushed Levi's cheeks with gentle fingers. His cheeks were pink; his lips were pink. Thanks to the good ink, they both seemed alright.
They could last for a couple of months if they had to.
That night, she decided to forget that book, pushing it into a ledge and reaching for the next one.
*
She woke up with black tips on her fingers.
It had startled her. At first, she assumed it was merely a stain. But then washing didn't make it come off, so did scrubbing. She stared now at the tips of her hands. It looked like it was dying, completely black like a strange large mole. The first thing she did was rip off the blankets on her boys. They seemed intact, she even checked their dicks for signs of death. But just like her, their fingertips had black spots on them. She screamed for Inky. They crowded around her sympathetically.
"It's turning black!" she had gasped. The nails were tipped in darkness, so were the flesh. "Am I dying from something? Is it the lack of the sun? Something about the food? Did I eat too much?"
The ink swayed, caressing her. They shook their heads. They did not know. She fuzzed over her boys for hours and then did her chores. That day she swept through more books than usual. There was nothing about weird fingers. Maybe it was the food.
She was fucked.
*
Two days later, the black was obvious, had spread to the very first joint of her fingers. It was the same for her boys and with a growing sense of doom, she knew that their time was now limited. She conjured a ball of light to look at it carefully, squinting at her flesh. It seemed that her nails had merged with her flesh into a dark blob. That was the best way she could describe it. It was a bit glossy, completely black, almost liquid-like. It resembled the good ink and when she squeezed it there was a slimy translucency to her stained appendages. It seemed almost jellied. She'd been pale after her confirmation, ice in her veins. Was this how Cetus digested its occupants? By turning them into a black—
A lightbulb had detonated in her head almost immediately, far too rapidly. It fucking exploded. It did not take a genius to connect all the dots. She turned now to stare at the good ink. The good ink with their human-like demeanour. The good ink who did not know how they appeared. The good ink who was sentient—
"You were the occupants of the boat," she gasped, falling to her knees. "You're what becomes of the people that get consumed by Cetus." The ink swayed. "You're people." She gagged, turning to vomit the remains of her lunch into the black water.
She should have known.
*
She confirmed it that night, prodding and twisting her own fingers and then squeezing Inky. The consistency was similar. It was clearly not dead flesh but a liquid like darkness that she could still control. They might be turning into the sentient good ink. She was even starting to suspect that black water was a decomposed version of the good ink.
It was all starting to make a lot more fucking sense.
"I'm fucked," she declared to the good ink. "There's always a time limit. I let my fucking guard down. Do you think it happened really quickly?" She licked her lips nervously. One death flag after another. "Probably not, right? These books…They seemed to be written here on this boat. It must have taken a while. Or there was a lot of people." That horrified her.
She figured that out when she realised the books seemed to be made of seaweed. That finding had been terrifying.
"Did they write these books desperately to preserve their history?" She swallowed hard. "There must be a warning about this in one of the books. The books I've yet to read." Her eyes darted over to Inky, welling up with tears. "This is why you're sad when you see the pictures. You miss your homes, your lives." She began to weep, frustrated as fuck. "God, I can't catch a fucking break. I can't." Rue was pacing. "We're still going to die. I mean this wasn't a good life, but at least I had hope. I'm fucking destroyed now. Fuck. Fuck!" She stood, ran to the ledge of the boat and screamed. Her voice echoed in the void. "FUCK!"
There were tears now running down her face.
"FUCK YOU!" she screamed into the darkness, a finger in the air. "FUCK YOU ALL FOR MAKING MY LIFE HELL! FUCK YOU ALL FOR ALWAYS TRYING TO KILL ME! FUCK YOU FOR TAKING THEM AWAY, GIVING THEM BACK AND THEN TRYING TO KILL US ALL! FUCK YOU!" She was panting after, heaving for breath, choking back tears and sniffing back snot. "I'm so tired," she wept into her hands. "I'm so tired of this shit." She choked back a sob. "I have no time. My back's fucking aching." She whispered. "I'm tired."
But she wasn't doing this just for her, it was also for them. And the concern for others and not herself was exactly what she needed to stand again. She could not give up now. Fucking hell, she'd experienced so much, suffered for so long. For this? Spite had her vibrating with new energy. She swallowed hard.
"I must finish those books."
She was on borrowed time.
*
She closed the last book three days later when the ink had reached her elbows, the spread was quicker than she had anticipated. But she found the last entry they'd written a day earlier, hands shaking as she read. The squiggles were different, slurred. But short like names.
Signatures with dates.
She knew they were signatures of women because they drew themselves next to their names. There were hundreds, and when her hands leafed through the volume, it was thick and heavy. Thousands of women. Omegas. Girls. They were all girls. Her horror hollowed her. Girls. The timing was different. The same year but different dates. They did not go out at the same rate. Some took days, others months. A group took years. One girl lived alone for decades. Her name was the very last entry.
Decades.
Rue's eyes flickered to Inky and she stroked the tendrils with quivering hands. But when she read the very last book, it was the one that she needed. The one she had been waiting for. She'd been pissed that they had not written more books on the topic. But Rue supposed that the Heras had assumed that Cetus was common knowledge. And it might have been then. Or that they too did not know anything about the whale. The pictures were easy to understand and as she petted Inky she narrated it all.
"The whale used to live in the ocean," she whispered. "It sings desperately for a mate. But it's alone." She moved her fingers over the pictures. She brushed her thumb over its tears. "It was caught by men," she murmured. Men with lightning. "Zeus."
Her heart pounded as she flipped the pages.
"They tortured the whale and it became sick." The whale seemed to scream on the page, tentacles erupting from its body. It was surrounded by other aliens. Poseidons. Hades. She stared horrified as the next image pictured were caged women poured into the whale's mouth, screaming women. "They fed the whale Omegas." She turned the page. Bodies in ink. "The women died in the whale. They longed for their lovers." She whispered. "Their bodies transformed into ink."
She turned to the last page.
"The men used that ink as weapons against the world."
She closed the book, rubbed her eyes. A sigh escaped her.
Fuck.
There was no escape in a massive cauldron like Cetus.
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