Free Ragnarok by Ari Bach Page A

rocks around a deep ravine. The ravine was filled with buildings, land buildings. Ugly boxes like they loved to build. And in the center was a giant tree. Too big to be real, reaching up all the way to the sky, which held two moons and no sun. Every carving in the boat had a sun and a moon, save for this. Two moons. And the narrative pieces: Water flooding in from the ravine’s edge. Fire leaping up from the boxy structures. And one Cetacean man, one who looked remarkably as Pelamus would come to look, holding a trident up with one hand, catching a drop of water in the other. A mystery.
    After docking at the library, Pelamus went straight for the art section. He studied the symbolism of every carving done undersea. Within an hour he understood the two moons—night without day. That meant the location was either far north or far south. In two hours he was buried in a pile of literature on the history of the arctic circles. By nightfall he was studying geographic records of pits and canyons. A week passed before he discovered a science journal that shattered the mystery. In reading a one-page update on an obscure experiment that failed miserably, Pelamus became a believer in his father’s peace. And he had a purpose in life greater than any pirate had before him. He was to be the messiah of the seas, or the harbinger of the next deluge.
    The road ahead, he knew, would be difficult. He broke down his mission into outlines within outlines, goals to reach goals to reach goals. He consulted his captains and some scholars of the library. He sent for humans to scour the nets. He would need humans. Cetaceans, for all their enhancements, were only at their best in water. And half the key to peace was very far from the sea. Half of the key was in a place lacking not only water but proper air. A place so far away it cost a life’s fortune for every kilogram sent, and the key hidden there was listed as weighing 250,000 kilograms.
    But that meant money and work, and nothing else. Pelamus had more than enough in the bank. The other half of the key was that ravine. No science journal even hinted at where it was. It had been top secret when it began and was a closer kept secret now. There was only one lead in fact, one left by the absolute destruction of every other. Though the science journals offered no clues, a paper record in the pits of the library held accounts of financial transactions for the Ares Company, mentioned only once in the journal as the company responsible for the ravine. On page 1902, a mildewed and decrepit page, was the listing for payments on the delivery of several million euros of parts to…. Redacted.
    Of all his time in the library, Pelamus had never seen a censored word. Censored in bonding grease marker, and that meant it was censored while at the library, or at least after the volume headed underside. He marched to the eldest librarian present in the hopes he might remember something, anything about the desecration which could cost Cetacea everything. Pelamus and the seas were in luck.
    â€œThey gave no names. Just four humans who wanted to look through our collection,” said Dewey Otlet Putnam LaFontaine the Fourth. Not only the eldest librarian but the eldest Fish in Abu Qir colony.
    â€œAnything you remember will help, no matter how—”
    â€œLittle? Child, I’m senile as silt. I remember their shiny suits, I remember the books they wanted, I remember why they wanted them, and I remember what I bought with the gold they handed me.”
    â€œGold?”
    â€œThey paid me off, son. There was something dangerous in our books, something that could get them all killed. Now I was appalled at the thought of censorship. If they asked to take a line from Twain or a word from Shakespeare, I’d have kicked them out then and there. But they found their books and gave me a corvette’s worth of solid gold to take out a few spots in a tax log, a company financial serial