Guarded By the Vodnik (MONSTER SECURITY AGENCY) by Layla Fae EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Layla Fae
- Language: English
- Genre: Paranormal / Sci-Fi
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Vodyan
The soft sand of the lake bottom brushed my tentacles when I followed
the cargo walker along the main road between Yeseera, the vodnik
city, and Copper Harbor on the shore. I’d made this trip dozens of
times in the past year.
It was a long, arduous walk, usually uneventful. The cargo walker
was a simple platform on six crablike legs that slowly navigated the lake
bottom. The eighteen-mile trip, which would have taken me just over an
hour if I could swim freely, took about eight hours at the walker’s speed.
The road connecting the vodnik city to the shore was marked out
along the shallowest parts of the lake bottom, but it was still over 150 feet
underwater. It was dark and cold, the waters of the lake calm and quiet. Just
as I liked them.
I pushed away from the bottom, my tentacles flexing with power.
Propelled upward, I spread them out to float easily and did a full sweep of
the area, focusing on the sparse plants that could potentially hold a lurking
thief. My cargo was beyond precious, which was why I had been chosen to
guard it.
Below me, the cargo walker crawled steadily up the road, faint
lights mapping out the route. It wasn’t really a road in the human sense.
Outside Yeseera and the graveyards, nobody built on the lake bottom. But it
was the safest, shallowest route connecting the human world to the vodnik
city, and as such, it was marked with flickering red lights placed at regular
intervals.
They looked eerie in the cold, dark depths.
Walking along the road, my cargo was dangerously exposed, but
this was the fastest route. Then again, it wasn’t like I minded a fight. An
attack would do nicely to break the monotony of my assignment.
For now, all was clear, no suspicious shadows lurking around. I
floated back down to the walker, letting the cold of the dense, clear waters
numb my skin. My senses were still keen, but my scales felt porous, my
body’s temperature matching the water.
I was one with the unfeeling, deadly mass of the lake.
Some time passed like this, and I lost myself in the soothing rhythm
of travel. The red lights flickered, the sandy bedrock passing evenly under
my tentacles, and the darkness around me stretched into infinity. I let my
mind fill with the cold nothingness of the deep, keeping my senses alert.
Down here, the only currents were the ones caused by my and the
walker’s movements. All was still and felt safe, but that didn’t lull me into
carelessness. The cargo, stacked high on the walker’s platform and secured
with chains, was the most expensive thing that ever graced the depths of
Lake Superior.
Shanta.
It was a plant that grew only in the post-glacial, clear waters of the
Great Lakes. Cultivated exclusively by vodniks, who possessed the secret to
making it thrive, shanta yielded a substance that healed neural degeneration
in humans and other species with similar brain physiology.
It was our wealth and the source of our significance. While humans
measured their worth in gold, vodniks measured theirs in the units of shanta
they produced.
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