This was a skeleton, half buried in stone, and looking like it was fighting to get out.

But not the skeleton of a man. A mer-creature stared out at me, over a distance of who knew how many years. The limbs were frozen in place, and yet looked like they were still thrashing against the enveloping waves of rock that had engulfed him. There was no flesh on the bones anymore, but their thickness, and the breadth of the shoulder blades, showed that this had once been a powerful individual.

And yet the rock had won.

The rib cage was mostly filled with sediment, with just a few bones erupting from the surface. The great tail was visible near the bottom, with a delicate, skeletonized fin fanned out in motion, as if trying to churn up the water to escape. But it wasn’t water that menaced him. One arm was likewise almost completely visible, as if grasping for safety, and the skull…

Was screaming.

I swallowed, and tried to tell myself that it was just the way the jaw had fallen open after death. But that wasn’t what it looked like. It looked like he had died fighting the stone, which had crushed and then filled in his ribcage, like liquid magma. Or, I realized sickly, like the stone I’d just seen in the “elevator”, running free and then solidifying back up in an instant.

I’d met some living merpeople once, in a secret coven trading post, and they had been beautiful. As this one was, even in death, with elegant lines and indentions in the rock where long locks of hair had once spread out around the skull, adding to the impression of movement. But I didn’t think his beauty was why he was displayed here.

And then I knew it wasn’t, when we rounded another bend and came face to face with a massacre.

The fey, who had already slowed his steps to a crawl, now stopped them altogether. As if the sight hit him, too, like a punch to the gut, although he must have seen it before. But I didn’t think it mattered in this case.

Some things you didn’t get used to.

Dozens of skeletons, half buried in rock, surrounded us on all sides. That was even true overhead, where the stone “wave” that had killed them broke over our heads, creating a tunnel of pain, an open graveyard. Even worse, the light made the bodies seem to move, with desperate, pleading gestures and silent cries, that had a shiver going up even the fey’s spine. As if he could hear them, too.