Once Izena and Menelyn had recovered from Their excitement, all present began discussing the enemy, sorting out what They knew, and forming a plan. The project organizers were in high spirits.
Izena spoke first. Izenakee recognized Her emotional state as 'protective eldest Sister mode.'
"Are You sure it would be safe to connect to their minds? They might not have the range to connect to You, but what if You connect to them?"
Izenakee smiled to Herself. Usually when She felt this emotional state in someone who wanted to talk to Her, the person in question was worried about something like who her baby sister was dating. Her eldest Sister apparently felt exactly the same way when She worried about how much ocean She would need to vaporize in the worst case scenario, and whether that might cause ecological problems or pose an unacceptable danger to coastal cities.
But, She took the question seriously. Though the Goddesses had taught Her the basics, Izenakee had been the authority on red magic for centuries, without doubt the best in history.
"I would only find one and observe what it does, at first," Izenakee replied, struggling not to laugh at how even a baby Sister a few months past Her 500th birthday replies with 'Don't worry, I'll be careful.' "I would not initiate a connection until I felt confident that I understood their spells, and would not be surprised. I'm surely more powerful than they are, given the range disparity. But, We have Menelyn's purification even in the worst case. If it worked against the one in the laboratory, it will work on them all. I should be fine."
"Right, good," Izena replied, nodding. Izenakee covered Her smirk with a hand. Then Izena continued. "Finding one might be difficult. Only one has ever been encountered, and the laboratory was active for centuries. If they were abundant, they would be better known, and one probably would have found its way to the facility sooner. They must be rare, compared to creatures of the surface."
"That is consistent with there being less food available in the deep abyss. Populations tend to be smaller, life scarcer, as you go down," one of the proposal committee members chimed in, passion for his life's work having overcome his nerves.
Izenakee turned to him and nodded. "It may be hard to find one, if I even can yet. I can sense humans out to about the same distance as the depth of the ocean in Solenn, I think. If I were right on top of a target there, it would be near My current limit if I overdraw with healing from Menelyn, maybe a little beyond it. Searching a wide area would be slow and tedious, and I may not be able to do anything more significant than sense them yet."
"At least the ocean where these things live should always be that same consistent depth, same as in Solenn," Menelyn chimed in, "since they live in areas where the water pressure is enough to make ice at the bottom, and that depth is always the same. It's not like the shallower areas of the ocean, like near My Island or near most of the coast, where the floor is rock, at whatever depth the rock happens to lie at."
True, that's convenient, Izenakee thought.
"Could it be more difficult to detect their minds than human minds?" Izena asked.
"I can't be certain," Izenakee replied. "I've never practiced on another actual red magic user before, but I can say that birds and such aren't too much more difficult. Their emotions are maybe a little more difficult to understand, but not bad. If anything, I would expect the monsters to be easier to detect, but maybe harder to access if they can defend. But if they really are the only red magic users among ocean monsters, I doubt they're practiced at defending.
"Unless they attack each other," Izena pointed out.
"Mmmm, they surely aren't the sharing type," Menelyn replied, putting a finger on Her chin. "If they overlap in hunting range, I bet they attack each other. But that might be unusual, if they're rare, since they don't seem to be mobile and, as Oscanion wrote, they would be bigger players in the food chain if they had a range of more than perhaps ten or twenty leagues. There's no way they can reach higher than the still-relatively-empty middle layers. I bet they are typically separated by more than that on the bottom. Most of them probably have never had to defend against red magic before, and may not even know that they themselves can be attacked that way."
Then Menelyn felt compelled to point out a possibility, although She found it highly unlikely.
"We can't be certain that they're all uniformly evil. I find it unlikely that a species that enslaves minds as a basic hunting strategy has much in the way of empathy, but it could be that the one in Solenn was the equivalent of a human megalomaniac."
"Agreed. I would not harm any that display some ability to control their impulse to eat everything, or only use mind control to hunt what they need, not to enslave," Izenakee replied. "But I am skeptical that they will ever be like that. Their lifestyle is too intrinsically related to subjugation, and gorging themselves at any opportunity is too advantageous in the abyssal environment, with an inconsistent food supply."
She took a breath of determination.
"They will almost certainly need to be taught empathy and restraint in order to be trusted, if that's even possible. And if they cannot learn, they need to be exterminated. We cannot tolerate a population of creatures that will attempt to enslave and consume the world whenever given any opportunity, if that is truly what they are."
"Especially considering the long term," Menelyn added. "They may evolve to become stronger--Oscanion already hypothesized that their ancestors didn't have magic at all. They are a permanent existential threat to ocean life, all life really, from that perspective. It is best to deal with the issue now, one way or another, rather than wait until there's a runaway catastrophe in 100,000 years."
They all paused. It was a sobering thought for the immortals that They needed to think in those terms. There was no reason to believe that They wouldn't still be responsible for this world, even then. The Age of the Goddesses was already about 0.5% of the way there.
"For now, I suggest We go to the Temple in Kanenn," Izena said at last. "Their only known location is somewhere in the south off Solenn, and Kanenn's Temple is by far the closest, to the northwest. We can prepare for a trial search from there. It's still coastal."
The others agreed, and They made preparations to leave.
----
After weeks of painstaking, tedious searching in the deep ocean off Kanenn, Izenakee had found nothing consistent with Her target's mind within the limits of the range She could achieve by overdrawing with Menelyn's healing support--no hunger, no flashes of red magic, no love of death and rot, nothing of the sort.
But, She had found one mind at a range consistent with being at the floor, one mind putting out a strong and pure enough emotion for Her to discern it, very faintly. The Goddesses were hovering over it now, waiting for Izenakee to work out what She was sensing.
Despair. Complete, overpowering, soul-crushing, suicidal despair. Izenakee was glad that She was so far away. Close up, She would be unable to endure this. It would destroy Her.
Izenakee suspected that She knew what this was.
"These things have a shell grown by a so-called 'symbiont,' right? That was Oscanion's guess?" She asked. "He speculated that it was unwilling, but wasn't certain?"
"Yes," Menelyn replied. "The shell was quite impressive. It's grown with blue magic, so it cannot be from the red magic monster itself, and it must grow as the monster does while receiving a constant flow of power to the enchantment, so it's unlikely they just find their shells. Why?"
"So every single one of them has this symbiont?"
"They must. How else could they live in the ice? They seem biologically incapable of living any other way, with the specialized feeding tubes."
Izenakee had never in Her life felt so disgusted, outraged. Her voice lost the humming lullaby quality it normally had, heavily influenced by Menelyn's mannerisms. She spoke now with more clipped and forceful words, closer to Izena's.
"In order to use a slave's magic, which is bound to the slave's mind, it needs to leave a portion of the subjugated mind intact? It can't fully wipe the mind, only puppeteer it?" She asked, although She already knew the answer.
Menelyn and Izena understood at the same time, and tripped over each other's exclamations, before Menelyn spoke alone.
"You've felt the symbiont? It's lucid?!"
"I can't be completely certain, but it's a mind at the very bottom that wants to die with every fiber of its being," Izenakee answered, still spitting the words. "At close range, its despair would overpower me. It is lucid, lucid enough! It's praying for death with all of its ability to think. I can't make out how intelligent it is from this extreme range, I can just barely sense it, but it's the most miserable, suicidal mind I've ever perceived. It would kill itself at the first opportunity. The only possible explanation for why it still lives, is that it can't kill itself."
Menelyn and Izena struggled to maintain focus, their mutual outrage feeding off each Other's. The implications were appalling.
"It's lucid..." Menelyn growled through gritted teeth. "Oscanion..." She breathed in and out slowly. "Un-for-giv-a-ble."
"These things live a long time," Izena continued, in the same manner. "The 'symbionts' must be enslaved for centuries, millennia, paralyzed but aware, treated like inanimate enchanted items the whole time."
Izenakee closed Her eyes, trying to remain calm, to think things through carefully.
"How did My predecessors not notice this? Oscanion's mind must have been radiating--"
"You have much longer range and greater skill than any before You," Menelyn interrupted. "Remember, Your range used to be a few city blocks--that was about average. Any red mages who got that close to Oscanion were already corpses or smudges on the ground, and would have been surrounded by many minds feeling strong despair and suffering. We tried to keep them out of combat. I was only able to protect Izena and Myself against him comfortably."
Izenakee nodded grimly. She was more than eighty times stronger now, and incomparably more skilled. The mortal Izenakee who had made a vow to become a permanent Listener would not have known Oscanion was even in the area, at least via red magic, before being vaporized.
Somehow, this more than anything She had ever heard or considered made Her realize how truly terrible that war had been. Such slaughter. It was easy to understand how Izena and Menelyn had been deified, being able not only to survive evil of that magnitude, but even to repel it and undo some of the harm it caused. She still wasn't at Their ancient power level. Incredible.
A chill settled in, before Izena spoke up.
"What even are the symbionts? Where do the monsters obtain them?" She wondered.
"Competitor scavengers, on the bottom?" Menelyn speculated. "They must share food, so the symbionts must be able to survive on the rot fluids. They must be scavengers, too, to survive on that. They may use their blue magic for something other than a shell, normally, or in addition to it, maybe propulsion."
That was all academic. The Goddess of Empathy shook her head in contempt.
"This is all I need to see. Every single one of these abominations enslaves such a mind. Every single one feels that despair, unattenuated, for its entire life cycle, and nestles in it. They are entirely devoid of compassion. To attempt to teach them empathy would be futile naïveté. 'Help those who need help, with no expectation of reward. Bring to Justice those who lack compassion, cause harm, destroy livelihoods, spread corruption, or exploit the vulnerable.' Anything but extermination is hypocrisy. The entirety of Our Creed demands it."
She resummoned the rubies that She had temporarily released in order to maximize Her strength. She had never killed anyone Herself.
"I am the Goddess of Empathy. My sacred purpose is incompatible with their survival. They will know what it is like to be paralyzed for millennia, as soon as it is within My power."
Compassion and Retribution let Empathy speak for Them.
Izenakee was frustrated that She was not yet strong enough to release this particular shell-maker from its suffering. She could just barely detect it, and nothing else. She knew that Menelyn had already extensively confirmed that these victims were beyond saving, but they could at least be spared further torment.
Izena understood Her thoughts.
"I would like to obliterate it from here," She said, "but I feel like that would be an unacceptable risk to Kanenn, and I can't be sure it would even work. Blasting through 30 leagues of ocean is not gentle."
Izenakee and Menelyn could only agree.
Regretfully, They returned to Kanenn.
Maybe in a century, Izenakee thought. She was close.
They would need to tell the project managers to wait. The seas were not yet safe.
