“The AHF reclaimed Galileo. While most of our viewers won’t recognize the significance of that, we here at Hound News do. Clearly, the only reason they cared about it was because there is a Serum factory hidden in the mountains. They don’t worry about people like you and me; we are little more than a means to collect tax dollars. If they cared, wouldn’t they have gone back to Earth and taken it back? Instead, all they did was evacuate a few people and abandon the rest. We know where their loyalties lie, and for these race traitors, they lie with the enemy.”—The Alex Moans Show, expose’ on the AHF and its practices.

  “How in the hell can we fish for three days without getting a single bite?” Dave complained, sitting on a rock with an improvised fishing rod made of a stick and some extra line Candice brought with her.

  “Because we’re just not good at this,” the binder replied, lying on another rock with a length of cable extended from the bracer. She kept up the illusion of fishing by giving her hand a little flick now and then, but any further effort was simply too much. While it wasn’t uncommon to see the girl wearing the source component of her power, it was uncommon for it to be her sole article of clothing. She rested with one hand above her head, hook hidden in her palm as she took in the comfort of the warm sunlight.

  “Jack caught one last night, wasn’t big… but he caught it.” Dave said, flicking his line.

  “Yeah, but he also had to clean it and roast it. Is a little seafood worth the extra work?”

  “Ain’t work if you enjoy it.”

  “Is sitting on a rock, off duty, away from all responsibilities, not enjoyable?” Candice asked, animating her line and pulling it into her hand before using her power to reattach the hook and drop it back in the water.

  “Most of the time, yes. Especially when it’s accompanied by beer and a pretty lady such as yourself. However, when you spend three days hoping for literally anything to bite and nothing wants to play ball. Well, it gets a tad boring, don’t you think?”

  Dave stood and pulled his line from the water to find a bare hook, picked clean of any bait. He lifted it to his eyes and made a face Candice truly wished she could record, but alas, her Vis-HUD was on the beach, tucked into the front pocket of her pack and far from her reach. Contrary to popular belief, one did not need to have an electronic device constantly on hand to enjoy a beautiful day. Since Jack was busy being responsible, she considered it her solemn duty to embrace the technological silence for him.

  “No, I don’t think that at all.” She said, shifting her gaze to the ocean.

  “And that’s exactly why we need to win this contest and bring back the biggest fish anyone has ever seen.” Dave declared.

  “We’re all from Earth, Dave. None of us have seen a fish. Everything that lived in Earth’s water is either poisonous or so mutated they aren’t nutritionally viable.” Candice sat up and pulled the thread into her bracer.

  “So, here’s my idea.” Dave continued to ignore her protests. “You and I are going to jump into that water with a bubble wrapped around us. We’re going to sink about thirty meters, and then you’ll use your cables to grab anything we see. Sound like a plan?”

  “No. No, it doesn’t,” Candice said, a smile crossing her face. “We’re going to need a ninety-minute air supply. That way, we can go deeper for longer.”

  The Aegis’s eyes lit up, the spark of adventure growing as he faced the beach. “That’s perfect. I saw a few in the equipment crates when Jack was setting up the hammocks. You hang out here, and I’ll be right back.”

  Without waiting for a response, Dave jumped into the knee-deep water and ran to the shoreline, excited that someone was willing to go along with one of his schemes. Since being on Erochea and showing everyone how a touch of crazy could be a good time, he’d dragged all but one person into his shenanigans. And if he had his way, he’d convince Jenkins to come along eventually. He hadn’t succeeded in three years, but there was still plenty of time before the possessor could retire.

  “Keep that open,” he yelled, right as Jack was closing a crate. There were still roughly twenty meters between him and the beach, but he really didn’t want to open a box that was already open.

  “Why?” the optic questioned, stepping back and staring at Dave with a suspicious glare.

  “Me and Candice need something outta there.” He said, purposefully remaining vague as he dug around for the two air canisters. “Don’t worry about why; we’ll bring ‘em back.”

  “But why do… You know what, I’d rather not know,” Jack said, walking away with a chessboard under his arm.

  When Dave really considered it, it was probably better that Jack didn’t know the details of his planned adventure. At least this way, when things inevitably went wrong, the squad leader had a reasonable excuse for why he didn’t know what was happening.

  And that was something the Aegis could respect.

  Dave tucked the canisters under his arm and ran back through the water, not slowing until he reached Candice with a goofy grin plastered to his face. Sitting up from the clearly comfortable rock, she laughed when she realized he was serious about his plan to hunt for fish underwater.

  “Here, these should have about ninety minutes each.” Dave said, handing the binder a canister and picking up the improvised rod.

  “What are you going to do with that?” she asked, nodding toward the stick.

  “It’s a spear. That way, if our abilities don’t work, we can stab the fish.” He replied, pulling the line off the rod and ushering Candice into the water. His right arm flashed blue, and a sphere of power formed around the pair, sealing them in a bubble that pushed the water out.

  “You know, if anyone else were here, they would say this was a stupid idea.”

  “Alec wouldn’t. He would already be in the water waiting for me.”

  “Oh, I’m not saying it won’t be fun, but I’m not the one controlling our little submarine.” Candice said, nodding toward the rocky shelf, “Lead away, cowboy.”

  Like an ancient god commanding the seas, Dave ordered the shield to slide forward and sink below the waves. The sheer control he exhibited over his power truly highlighted the amount of training he put himself through every day. Despite the air inside trying to escape and return to the surface, his force of will pushed them to deeper depths.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  After descending to nearly thirty meters and searching a reasonably wide footprint, the pair came across a small squad of red, bioluminescent squid that drifted lazily. Being the first creatures they’d found, Dave pointed and nodded his intention. “Think we can bring one of them up?”

  “I think the decision is about to be made for us,” Candice replied, opening the ports on her bracer and extending three lines of yellow power. “They saw us first, and I’m betting we look a lot like food.”

  Dave turned to look at the squid, watching curiously as they approached and wrapped their arms around the bubble. Able to get a closer look, he saw four sections of serrated beak biting at the shell and attempting to break through. In a terrifying development, the beaks spun, reminding Dave of a margarita blender in slow motion.

  “We can’t have this shit.” Dave grumbled aloud, “I’m going to pull them into the bubble and take the water from them.”

  Not knowing the capabilities of cephalopods, Dave expanded his shield and pulled multiple creatures inside. They paused for a moment, lulling the pair of humans into a sense of superiority while they adjusted to their new environment.

  “Well, that was easier done than said.” Dave commented, poking the nearest one with his stick as he willed the bubble to rise. After his second poke, the Aegis noticed that his stick did not come back as easily as it should. Looking down, he cursed as he moved to avoid a tentacle reaching for his leg.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, yanking the stick back and doing his best to impale the creature. Before he could get a handle on the situation, several more tentacles wrapped around his limbs, dragging their destructive beaks across his body and leaving small lines of blood in their wake. Before the squids could rip into his flesh, cords of yellow light wrapped the invertebrate’s limbs and tightened, slicing off the appendages. Pressed against his back, Candice wove five cables in a pattern, protecting them as the daylight grew brighter. Distracted by another foe, a squid got through her defense and wrapped a bioluminescent limb around her ankle, pulling itself in for an attack.

  “Air!” Candice gasped, turning the knob on the first canister and dropping it to the floor. Luckily, the metal cylinder landed on the squid trying to bite her and distracted it long enough for Dave to kill it with his stick. “For the love of God, don’t let it slip through.”

  Dave cast a glance over his head and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the glittering surface of the water not far above. Fresh air filled the bubble as the canister expelled its payload, allowing the Aegis to reshape the shell. Outside, another group of red squid clung to the bubble, their gnashing beaks trying to break through.

  “Get close to me. I’m going to partition them off.” Dave said, twisting the knob on the second canister and summoning more of his power. As his concentration deepened, a wall of sapphire energy formed between the humans and the squid. Beside him, threads of energy wove through the enclosure, pushing back the cephalopods when they got too close to the partition.

  The sphere broke the surface with a splash, knocking the humans from their feet and almost costing Dave his concentration. For a split second, the walls of his barrier were non-existent, and both canisters slipped into the depths below.

  “Think Jack can make an excuse for those?” Candice asked, regaining her footing.

  “Don’t really care right now,” Dave replied, finishing the framework of the squid’s prison and sealing it shut. Around them, a dozen more glowing squids tried to break through their barrier, their beaks digging into the glasslike surface of hardened light. “Do you have enough line to reach the cliff?”

  “Maybe?” she asked, trying to judge the distance between themselves and the land.

  “Good. I’m going to drop a part of our shell. I need you to reach out and grab a rock or something.” The Aegis punctuated his statement by opening a small hole in the barrier and waving for the binder to do her part.

  Candice pulled the weave of defensive cables back into her bracer and commanded the threads to bond into a single length. Turning her back on the horde of angry squid, she pushed the thread across the water and onto the distant shore.

  “Got it.” She said, feeling around the rocks until she located one stable enough to tie off to. Not wanting to spend any unnecessary time in the water, she pulled their makeshift boat toward land at a constant but slow rate.

  “Faster!” Dave panicked after a few minutes. “All this chum in the water attracted the big boys.”

  Behind them, a V-shaped dorsal fin broke the surface as a predator chased the conveniently packed meal of squid. Panicked, Candice dug deeper into her power, pulling the watercraft with everything she had. Dave, for all his desire to eat the squid, wrapped his arm in a shell of force and grabbed one before tossing it across the water to distract their pursuer. Almost to the shore, the pair could finally see the shadowy line of the ocean shelf. The predator gobbled its meal and turned its attention back to the boat filled with food, and resumed its chase. They crossed the divide, and the creature raised a serpentine head, trying one last time to secure its meal.

  Candice released the thread and tied it to an inner portion of the inlet. The creature lurched forward and struck, barely missing the impromptu boat as the binder pulled them into the protected inlet. It struck again, ramming its gargantuan head against unmoving columns of stone multiple times before finally giving up in pursuit of easier prey.

  “What the hell was that?” Jack asked as Candice beached the boat and dropped off the two human soldiers. “And why the hell do you have a pile of squid?”

  “Well, Jack, that was the apex predator around here. And I’m pretty sure it’s a big fan of calamari.” Dave replied with a wide grin. “As far as the squid go, we figured the group could use some seafood, and this was the first thing we caught.”

  “You’ve been fishing for days, and this is your first catch?”

  “No, no, no, don’t let him tell you we caught all that on a line. This absolute genius of a man had the great idea to go underwater to get them.” Candice said, holding up a finger to pause the conversation. “The real question here is: can we actually eat these things? Because I’m not about to eat some random fish just because the cowboy says we should.”

  “It’s in the water. How bad could it be?” Dave asked, pulling one of the faintly glowing creatures from the makeshift tank and spearing it with his stick. A stray tentacle wrapped around his arm in one last attempt at freedom, leaving a line of blood in its wake as barbs in its suckers cut through Dave's unprotected skin.

  “Hold up, Dave. Bob, I need you to scan these things and tell us if they’re edible.” Jack addressed his AI, trying to ignore the crestfallen look on the Aegis’ face.

  “Well, it looks like your thrill-seeking partner in crime has indeed found something you can eat. The creatures he collected are called Sangui Lolligas–or The Blood Squid. They are a hunter species known for their ability to take down much larger prey by attacking in groups and burrowing into the flesh of their target. They are edible, as long as you cook them thoroughly and remove the ink sac and beak first.” Bob explained through Jack’s Vis-HUD, “But, I have to ask… are those two okay? That was possibly the stupidest thing I’ve seen in all my years, and I’m paired with you.”

  “They’re fine, Bob. Just a little shaken from the experience.” Jack said, walking up to Dave and conveying the preparation instructions.

  After thirty minutes of continuous attempts to cook the squid, the group of soldiers finally had one roasting on their fire. The shadows from the flames cast a beautiful glow across the lagoon, tails of fire dancing merrily as the sun sank below the horizon. In that instant, Jack decided moments like these would be the cornerstone of who he was. He wouldn’t mourn the memories of this place. Instead, they would serve as an inspiration for what he envisioned for his future. He listened to Dave and Candice retell the story of their aquatic adventure, and finally realized how soldiers could always keep fighting. It wasn’t about the horrors of the past, nor the trials yet to come. It wasn’t the memories of friends long gone or the adventures shared between them. The thing that drove soldiers to fight was the same thing that inspired artists and poets throughout history: hope.

  We rise, Son. Above this, we rise.

  Their respite would soon be over, and then it would be time to wear the mask of the warrior once more. As the voice of his father echoed through his memory, he knew that hope would be the defining factor in his longevity. Without it, he could never rise.