Chapter Text
Aud did not want to be here.
Her eyes darted about the scene, glancing back and forth between the slick steel of the power plant and the pitch black of the sky. Hundreds of chum constantly squirmed and shoved past her, mouths gaping wide to draw in the taste of salty, ink-tainted water and slime Aud had grown to dread. Their destination? A flailing squad of four. One glowed with the mark of death, clinging close to the wall with panic in its eyes. The one closest to it was picking off those who chased the marked squid. Bodies burst into bits at the floor of the tower, and the flesh of chum and spilt eggs filled the sea with a new, all too familiar smell.
Aud's mind raced. "Don't look... Look away."
Another swung its brush about frantically in a futile attempt to defend itself, the useless click of a dry weapon bouncing off the walls and bodies of crazed chum and fellow enlightened Goldies. The mark of death had moved to a new target; it wouldn't last much longer. Soon it would join Aud's brothers and sisters in the piles of gore that littered the beach, another number. Another tally.
That is, if not for the fourth. Rising up like some kind of savior, energy surged around its body, culminating in the massive, deadly blast it held in its palm. The squid's face was cunning, its hair spiked up in an intimidating mohawk, it looked undeniably like a salmonid in a squid's form. Like that ancient serpent of old Aud bowed to with reverence, the squid carried with it the power of a god, even if it was a fraction. Stolen power. Blasphemy. A mockery. Power it used to vanquish her brothers and sisters below, all to take away the children of their future and do god knows what to them. Those lives lost to the words of the serpent and the greed of the squad, those precious enlightened minds and the children they carried. Now those children squirmed in a basket, ready to be shipped away to the beast that consumes all.
Water from a receding tide rushed into Aud's mouth. Her stomach churned with disapproval, wrinkling her snout at the taste. Just as quickly as it arrived, the mark of death dissipated. Those surviving returned home. Aud had sat there the whole time silent and still, only moving when all those who lived had already gone. Wet sand clumped around her hind fins as she moved herself to the center of the site.
"This is how it is."
Aud preached not to the living.
"We fight. We kill. We eat. It's the way things are. The never ending cycle of consumption and rebirth. As the serpent bites its own tail, we fulfill the cycle with our death."
Her fins balled up, claws rubbing up against each other.
"And we eat and be eaten for nothing. Not a soul bothered to stop and ask why. There is no point. It's the way things are."
Aud paused, drawing in shaky breaths. That scent of death and seawater hung heavy in her lungs. Among the carnage, she saw familiar faces: Neighbors, friends, enemies, people she saw earlier that day, passersby's she exchanged greetings with in the roads. Even those she could not name, they each had a life, yet they chose to become food, scraps under the table for the beast.
The power plant was silent save for a gravely whimper and splash of a tail. Water rushed past Aud's scales, shimmering gold against the green. The water was turbulent as her mind, now allowed to think after the brunt of the emotions have cleared. This was nothing new. Every time these past few advances, doubt sunk its teeth further and further into her skull. The question of it always revolved around "why." "Why," regarding her own life, family, culture, her whole worldview. Why do salmonids like herself go into a crazed fit over that mark of death, and why was she exempt from that? Why is this just "the way things are?" Why did she have to suffer these... feelings?
Glancing back at the shore, now a splotch in her eyes, she drew in a breath from her gills, and let it go. Best to leave that terrible place behind; there's no use preaching to the dead.