36

Tamru's face scrunches. "Maybe it was up to something," he says. "But maybe we should have found out first." He shakes his head. "It wasn't attacking us, and I don't like the idea of killing something preemptively like that."

Flynn swims past, dragging along a severed tentacular arm longer than he is. "Normally, we don't get to see these kinds of things until they're washed up to the surface and depressurized like an overstuffed sausage," he says. "These arm suckers are just amazing. It's easy to see how these squid are regarded as the the terrors of the sea."

Tamru shakes his head. "Sometimes," he says, "there are bigger things to be afraid of."

From out the gloom, you can finally recognize the approaching figure as Arraia. She pauses when she notices your glow and adjusts course to meet up with you, but stops some distance away when she notices the squid. Her eyes dart back and forth between you and the corpse. "Kavitha. I see you've made a new, er, friend. Or something." She pokes at the dead body. "Looks like you handled yourself, though."

She levels her eyes at Flynn. "I was sent out here to be your messenger," she says. "Tephra wants to talk to you. I don't know much about it." Her tail twitches in impatience.