The Body

The treaty lands were relatively barren. At first Lubic wanted to refer to them as a desert, but he quickly revised that thought. The barrens were a wasteland. In deserts, life is still present; in this wasteland, there was nothing. No colour. No movement. No life.

“It’s just a little further,” Azalyn called back to him.

“How can you tell?” Lubic was swimming hard, trying to keep up with her. “It all looks the same to me.”

“Remember what I told you about being able to feel where your people are?”

“Never mind. Forget I asked.”

Suddenly, Azalyn stopped, pointing ahead of her. Lubic was still looking around and almost ploughed into her. Luckily her attention was riveted on the area her webbed finger indicated. “He is there.”

Azalyn was indicating a hill, much like all the others they had passed. Lubic moved forward cautiously. As he came closer, a body gradually took shape before him. It was humanoid, but like Azalyn, rather fishlike. The scales on the body were a dull brown. Even the hair was a mousy brown colour.

“Do your people turn brown when you die?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course we don’t! Are all humans the same colour?”

“Look Azalyn, I have no idea how things work with your people.”

Getting a little closer to the body, he was able to see the mess of the torso. There were gashes across the man’s chest, where something had ripped chunks out of him. The left side of his body was a torn up mess. His right foot was almost severed.

“Wow. Whatever did this must have large teeth!” Lubic exclaimed after taking a closer look. He was amazed that everything looked so well preserved; being under the sea, he thought it would have decomposed a lot more by now.

“The Camathu are sharks. What do you expect?”

“Just because they are sharks doesn’t necessarily mean they’re big, Azalyn.” The marks from the teeth were relatively clear. Whatever did this knew exactly what it was doing; this man died very quickly. “Wait, you told me about some kind of war. Did the Camathu eat your people? Or did they just kill them like this?”

“I’m honestly not sure. Like I said, the war was before my time.”

“Can the Camathu see very well?”

“As far as I know, they smell better than they see.”

“Have you ever seen a Camathu attack anything before?”

“We try to leave them alone so they’ll leave us alone.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Look Lubic,” Azalyn was darting back and forth in a controlled line, like she was pacing. “Why don’t we go and talk to their Starlord? He can answer your questions better than I can.”

Lubic took another look at the body in case he missed anything important. “Okay. Where can we find him?”

“I am here, Spacelord” said a voice from right behind Lubic.