Amzuth was a lonely, cold, bitter plane. It was a place that, according to magicians and scientists, had long ago sunk a bit deeper than normal into the void between worlds, where Outer Gods drew breath and where ancient things slumbered. As such, it had a dark reputation known for its cults, its summoning of eldritch horrors, where even the everyday and mundane was, at times, incomprehensible. Government officials were said to be descendants of dark gods. Cities were powered on the corpses of star-spawned abominations. Even the very name – Amzuth – was culled from some old being that had wandered through the plane, forever warping its landscape, dividing the continents, poisoning the waters and painting the sky a harsh, ugly green.

To say that Urash adored the plane was an understatement. He had taken up Phineas's offer to accompany him with his usual gruff and annoyed huff, but inwardly he was jumping up and down like an over-excited rock squirrel. He had prepared his spellstones carefully for the trip – four warping spells to take him and Phineas to the proper Traveling Point and back, four spells to combat the influence of Outer Gods, and a couple specialized hexes for research of his own purpose.

If he could just get eldritch blood, he could make a killing...

“You are drooling again,” Phineas said as they walked out of Castle Belenus.

“Watch yourself, lad,” Urash said, “I'm your transportation, remember?”

Phineas nodded. He was still bone-white, the deep, murky colors still having not returned to his scales. His waddle was uncertain and stilted as the two of them walked down the steps leading from the guildhall to the streets.

Urash didn't ask questions for why the Deep One needed to return. Frankly, he didn't care. Something about pacts, perhaps. Deep Ones, and others of Phineas’s ilk, didn't wander away from Amzuth often. When they did, they always had tomes and always had deals with the gods back home.

“Alright, lad,” Urash said, “Stick close. First charge going off.”

He used up one of the spellstones, space warping around them as they teleported to the first Traveling Point on Darkheld Landmass. They walked through, into the urban sprawl of the City, the Concrete Jungle.

“Next charge, coming up,” Urash said.

He concentrated again, his iron rod shimmering with energy. Urash's magic rod was an heirloom, once wielded by Seshuandis Belgone IV in the Days of Shattering, some four thousand years ago. As such, it was used to wielding and holding spellstones within its form, one such gem now losing its luster as Urash tapped into the power within. They went from one Traveling Point in the City to another, walking through without a word. Urash liked Phineas, primarily because he didn't talk much, unlike others in the guild like Rosemary. No, the Deep One only became annoying when he began talking about those damn cards of his, that's when he became a motor.

But no cards here, fortunately. Phineas only carried his tome. To be honest, Urash liked Phineas with the white scales more, but Wakeling had yelled at him when he had mentioned that.

They finished their planeshifting on the island of Massachusetts, just outside the city limits of Boston. The sky overhead was overcast, tinged with the green of godhood. Dead, brown grass tufted out of either side of the old, asphalt road. The air stank a bit of rotting sea life and moss.

A taxi was waiting for them. The driver was in a nice, crisp uniform. He was wearing gloves, and a brass monocle was politely positioned over one eye as he gave a stiff nod to the two arrivals.

“Not every day we see guildfolk here,” he said.

“And I'm paying you to drive, not jabber,” Urash said. He walked over to the driver, who took the rude stab with aplomb, opening the door for the dwarf and the Deep One to clamber in.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Lad?” Urash asked.

“Edge of the island, please,” Phineas rasped, “Allerton Bay.”

“You got it,” the driver took off. The road was clear of any other drivers, though it was a bumpy ride, the asphalt being in obvious disrepair with cracks spider-webbing outwards, bumps and jitters cropping up here and there, enough to bounce and rattle the taxi as they went. Phineas looked sick, each bump making whatever was ailing him worse. Urash just let out an annoyed growl.

Not many people went to Allerton Bay nowadays. Perhaps for good reason. Never mind the dark whispers that came from its beach. The trip to get there was abysmal.

The dock was almost laughably pathetic, a simple half-plank of wood that reached out half-hardheartedly towards the open ocean, black waves, cracked through with white, pounding against the gravel beaches. The road itself came to an abrupt stop, as though it was supposed to have continued paving to the very waterfront itself, but the working crew had stopped, turned, and fled.

Or just went home, lazy arses.

Phineas and Urash stepped out of the taxi. Their driver came out with them. He was quite the professional, giving a rehearsed cough and an expectant hand to Urash. The dwarf rolled his eyes and reached into one of the inner pockets sewed into his robes, pulling out a small diamond and tapping it into the driver's palm.

“For your trouble,” he growled.

“Of course,” the driver said. He gave a nod in thanks, before driving off. The taxi was soon far away, a yellow blip on the green and gray horizon, a trail of dust billow behind it.

“I leave you here,” Phineas said.

“What?” Urash said.

“I must swim,” Phineas began waddling into the beach, the waters reaching up to his ankles, “Glub glub, I go.”

“Hang on, lad,” Urash followed, wincing at the sheer cold of the waves, as though a thousand icicles were stabbing through him at once, shivering up his legs, up his spine, into his perfectly sculpted beard and icing its tips.

“You cannot swim,” Phineas said.

“I've got magic,” Urash said.

“There are dark things down there.”

“I can handle them,” Urash said.

The Deep One cast a great, globe-like eye at the dwarf.

“Can you?” he asked.

“Of course,” Urash said.

“You cannot. I have seen stronger than you drown in the depths, and not from water.”

“I'm a merchant prince, lad,” Urash said, “You need a deal made, down there. I can help-”

“They do not care for money, or land, or material things,” Phineas said, “Please, I do not wish to lose you.”

Urash clenched his teeth. Another wave washed through, caking his boots in water and freezing his toes to ice.

“Fine,” he said, “But I'm here for a goal, lad. Get me eldritch blood.”

“We had a deal,” Phineas said, “You bring me here, I get you eldritch... blood, yes.”

He gave a smile to Urash, and Urash had a feeling he was the butt of a joke he did not quite understand. Nonetheless, he gave a huff, a nod in defeat, and stepped back. Phineas took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and walked into the water to his waist, after which he dove down and began to swim into the deep.

***

The reefs had been blasted white long ago, contrasting with the sunless darkness as Phineas went deeper and deeper down. He was glad with how weak he had become – with his scales bleached like the reef, he was camouflaged from above from the larger predators in the water. Those that swam here were paradoxical apexes. Sapient yet not, just barely on the verge of mortal intelligence yet far exceeding it. There were few, here and there, smaller fish. But most of them had left for the rivers long ago, and the only schools that swam here were not long for this world, their fate sealed as prey, victims of the hunting of the flesh.

For the hunting of the mind, the god-sharks of Amzuth hunted for things like Phineas. A Deep One caught in the open was an unexpected prize.

Intelligence was food here.

So Phineas kept quiet. Silent. Thought as little as possible, pretended to be like the fish here, acting more on instinct than thought, his physical form hidden by the ivory, dead coral. The reef's corpse extended outwards towards the drop-off.

Memory for Phineas – especially on Amzuth – was warped. Different from how others in the guild remembered. Part of his mind was always on the Outside. Part of himself was always on the Outside. As such, it was hard to concentrate on individual memories the farther back he got – they peeled away from his physical form after a while, and he could only visit them when he left the mortal worlds entirely.

Even then, eventually those memories faded into the aether. He could not understand why that made some of his guildmates sad.

That was who he was, wasn't it? Everything was food. Those memories fueled the multiverse, food for thought.

As such, the edge of the reef had only the barest hint of familiarity to it. He knew he had been an egg, once, looking through red jelly to the darkness beyond. He had been a fish, once, jaw-less, sucking in the barest remains of dead castaways floating in the dark waters, both their flesh and what little knowledge remained. The only true, concrete memories of that time were of Mother, for she forced herself to stay in his mind. Always.

Always, until recently.

The expedition had stripped away most of his memory of her. And with it, her power. Their deals. Deals that would need to be re-made. Re-written, re-oathed in the depths.

Deeper into the deep, where the water became even colder. There was no light here, but Phineas was adapted to this, reaching out with his other senses to detect the world around him. His physical form only did so much.

This required the part of him on the Outside, and he used that part liberally. He was relatively safer here, in the realm of his Mother. Indeed, as he went further down towards the ocean's bottom, towards the trench far below, he passed through the veil of mortality altogether, becoming more conceptual and abstract.

He was no longer Phineas, the Deep One of the Amber Foundation. He was now a series of ideas and definitions, without form and almost without thought.

And it was here that he beheld his Mother's palace. Built from Imagination, a foundation of creation, with pillars of knowledge and forbearance, a roof carved from emotion. So he was told, so he could detect, but he knew his Mother's temple had far more ancient meanings, from before the mind had formed intelligence and the multiverse was young and egg-like.

No other Deep Ones greeted him. His people were nearer to the shore, in cities that drifted near human settlements. Deals had been made between the Deep Ones and the humans, a respect between the two. Deep Ones herded fish into human trawlers. Humans tossed their dead into the sea. Food for thought, quite literally. As such, the palace was empty as the bundle of ideas that formed Phineas drifted into the throne room.

Mother sat roiling, a mosaic of scales and meaning, seventeen jaws opening and closing, teeth like diamonds dripping acid, even in the conceptual goo of reality. It was rare for her to leave her home nowadays, fully breaching into physicality, a giant to rival Elzan Chi on Redenia, and Phineas was glad she had chosen to remain on the Outside. For when she chose to appear, when her great, sinewy forms rose out into the surface of the dark waters of Amzuth, the weather changed, the clouds swirling around her bloated, shimmering form, a barge of godhood that drove all minds mad just by being in her presence.

“Hello, Mom,” Phineas said.

There was a festering of communication, for Mother did not speak with words as Phineas did. His was an odd habit, picked up by the mortal realm.

“I know,” Phineas said, and it was true. He didn't write home all too often.

Mother was able to convey something resembling love. Not parental, nor familial, but Phineas had learned to accept that was all she could bring forth. She saw his weakness, the hampering of his oaths to the Outside. Admonishment replaced love.

“I know,” Phineas said.

There would be a cost to renew them, to make Phineas whole again.

“I know,” Phineas said.

Why?

“Because I had to protect my friends.”

And Mother was confused. Was not sure how to respond, how to reply, how to admonish, how to comprehend. There was nothing in whatever she was that held friends. Only self and spawn. All else was prey or rival.

Why, then?

“Because they are my friends,” Phineas said, “Joseph and Rosemary.”

They appeared before him, apparitions that Mother pulled from memory. Rosemary's was older, Joseph's younger.

“They are my friends,” Phineas said, but he knew that Mother would not understand. COULD not understand. So he thought for a moment...

“They are myself,” he said, “They are me.”

He had only known Joseph for a few months, and had hardly spoken to Rosemary before Joseph's arrival to the guild. But to Phineas, with a full half of his lifetime sealed in the Outside, that was everything.

His mother only barely acknowledged the statement. Accepted it halfway. But it was enough. The admonishment abated.

The way opened below, deeper into the trench. Phineas began to swim, his Mother not far behind him. Indeed, she enveloped him, questioned him.

“I know what to do,” Phineas said, and he meant it. He had only come down to the deepest parts once before, when he had first sworn his pacts. His first had been to Mother, his second to the Eternal Engine, his third to Gron Themul, the Flesh-Bound Bible. He rarely used the Eternal Engine's voice, which was why he had held out on Chliofrond and not dissolved completely. Yet he had exhausted Mother's power. He could sense her disapproval from that.

To be a Deep One in the multiverse was a message that one was self-sufficient. And Phineas had relied on his Mother's strength, and not his own.

But still, there was that thing of love in her. She would renew her pact. Gron Themul would, too, for IT was always hungry for new covenants.

***

What was at the bottom of the sea could not be described by words or emotions. All he knew was that it was dark, so very dark. Very few beings dwelt here, none of them mortal, all of them with minds fully bathed in the Outside and on the layers below even that. Godhood was an enigma to them, for they were beyond such things. The nature of the place nearly blasted Phineas to pieces, yet Mother was holding him in an embrace, like a mother bringing her child to the altar.

A second baptism. The mortal – screaming – portions of Phineas's mind chuckled at the blasphemous thought.

Gron Themul rose upwards. As did the Eternal Engine. Phineas had to avert his eyes as communication passed between them and Mother.

Speak, they said.

Not to Mother.

To her spawn.

And the grasping fins of Mother released Phineas. He stood (Sat? Swam? Knelt?) before his patrons.

Words passed through him, suffusing him. The Eternal Engine was disappointed at the lack of power Phineas had used from them.

“I will-” Phineas was surprised he could speak, even here, “I will use them more.”

Recognition of the act of trying. That was enough for the Engine. It sank away.

Gron Themul was more pressing of Phineas. IT asked what he had used ITS power on.

“To protect,” Phineas said, “To detect.”

That was not the proper way to use ITS power! ITS strength!

“But it is what I used,” Phineas said, “What would you have me use it for?”

And Gron Themul flashed images in the concept that was Phineas. Of the mortal planes, the multiverse, the full might of Gron Themul unleashed. An avatar, if one could call it that, the barest extension of the being that was Gron Themul able to walk and speak in the multiverse, for IT cared about such things.

And such things frightened Phineas. He felt himself quake a bit. To this, Gron Themul questioned.

“I don't...” he said, “That is harsh.”

The Deep One thought on this.

“But you want to exist,” he said, “Like me.”

This delighted the Flesh-Bound Bible.

“It does not need to be a place populated,” Phineas supposed, “You just want to exist. Be like me. Leave this place entirely.”

If but for a moment.

“Very well,” Phineas said, “I will... try.”

Recognition of the act of trying. It was enough for IT. Gron Themul receded.

This left only Mother.

“I am sorry,” Phineas said, “I will write more.”

Why hadn't he visited?

“I do not like it here,” Phineas said, a bit bluntly, “It is too cold.”

Mother was quiet. She considered the array of ideas that was her spawn for what felt like both an eternity and a microsecond. There was a frankness to Phineas’s answer. A truth, that he was removed from her by choice and action, and not by circumstance and coercion.

He was not like other Deep Ones, and that fact was plain to see in the mesh of concepts that made up Mother’s opinion of him. She was not sure whether to be insulted (if that were possible) or proud (an alien emotion, to her.)

But whatever the case, she was satisfied with the answer.

Thus, were the pacts made. The power in the deeps was quiet at first, a mere ripple in the water.

And then, in a dark embrace, they began to swirl around Phineas. Words made power, contracts breaking into that old thing known as magic, carrying Phineas with it, suffusing into his scales. Memories of the three began breaking into his mind, cracking it like an eggshell, pouring into the yolk all of their experiences, their abilities, their influences, their wants. Their needs. All of them, into one being.

If he were not Phineas, he would have broken from the sheer pressure, as though a thousand oceans had washed over him and dragged them to their myriad bottoms.

But he was Phineas, and made of sterner, more stubborn ideas. Another oddity. He blinked after it was over. Mother towered over him, watching to see if he would break. But he had not, and felt her wash over him and begin taking him back up to the surface. Already, he could feel the ice-cold water around him more sharply than he had before. His scales were returning back to their usual color and mode. He could hear things that he could not before – the chirps and whispers of the Outside.

Mother carried him, nonetheless. As she had carried him when he had first come down here, coddling him as though he were still just a small, jawless fish. A child.

But then, mothers always saw their children in such ways. They could not help it. And so they went, riding the currents back to the palace. And from there, the surface. Back towards the greater multiverse once more, in all of its smallness.

“Oh, Mama?” Phineas asked.

Question?

“I need some eldritch blood, for a friend.”

Humor was rare in the trenches, but Mother laughed with Phineas.

Urash truly was a fool!

***

A bench was just by the pier, thank the lord, for Urash hated standing. So he sat, wishing he had brought a book, grumbling and shivering from the cold. His boots had soaked through from standing in the water, and his feet were near numb. He had to use a spellstone to warm himself up again – thank the ancestors he had brought a fire charm! He praised his forward thinking.

Phineas was gone for several hours, but Urash was not surprised. The Deep One was probably still swimming, deeper and deeper into the waters, where all light left and darkness reigned. It made him oddly nostalgic for the towers of Krenstone.

He knew Phineas was right, that he wasn't a swimmer. But the damn Deep One needed to get him the blood, dammit!

And right on cue, Phineas emerged out of the sea, stumbling to land. His book was held under his arm, and the dark jade hue of his scales had returned.

“Phineas!” Urash leaped off of the bench, running over to his companion, “Good show, lad! Good show.”

“I am not acting in anything, though,” Phineas rasped.

“Whatever,” Urash said, “The blood, Phineas, the blood! Did you get it?”

“Yes,” Phineas said, “Eldritch blood.”

“Yes!”

Phineas began to laugh, a harsh, annoying little chuckle that set Urash on edge. He reached down and pulled out a vial, handing it to Urash. The merchant prince took it in hand, studying it closely.

“Phin,” he said, “This is seawater.”

“It is,” Phineas said, “We do not have blood.”

“What?” Urash said.

“We have oils. Flesh, scales, and eyes. But not blood. That is what is funny.”

“You should have-” a vein popped on Urash's temple, “You coulda told me!”

“You did not ask,” Phineas said, “Come, let us go home. I will treat you to food, as payment.”

Urash glared at Phineas as the Deep One stepped out of the brine.

“That was a rude trick, Phineas,” he said.

“I did not trick,” Phineas said, “You were merely misinformed. Get better contacts next time, hmm?”

The dwarf gritted his teeth. He would take Phineas up on his deal, and make the Deep One take him to the most expensive restaurant in Scuttleway. He took a moment to re-compose himself, then followed Phineas back to the road and the way home.