Fools believe that underwater they are safe from fire but that is far from true. The hottest flame in the world lives under the sea. It does not look like fire for it has no tongues. It bears only the faintest flash of light, so fleeting that it’s invisible to most creatures. But it does not lack in heat - it burns almost as fiercely as the surface of the sun. This flame is wielded by only one type of creature - what is called alpheus in the West and umanath in the East.
Umanath are paragons of unsymmetry. Their bodies split into unaligned halves. The ridges do not match up, the eyes are at separate heights, the antenna differ in length, and while one claw is nondescript, the other is giant. This giant claw, much too big for the umanath’s body, is the source of its flame. Its two pincers snap shut so fast that the water itself makes way, burned away by the sheer force of the event. Air rushes in and a bubble is formed, a bubble of pure heat. The bubble shoots out, its torrid centre so unstable that it can barely last a few milliseconds before exploding in an ear-shattering explosion of sound. The shockwaves can leave you stunned. The heat can burn your skin off, leaving you a homunculus of flesh collapsed on the ocean floor. The umanath will not rush to pull you into its lopsided jaws. It will take its time.
Umanath are solitary creatures barring one major exception. Usually, the are found surrounded by shoals of gabi. The gabi are sharp-sighted unlike the umanath and keep watch. When they see prey, the shoal’s dance becomes disturbed and the umanath’s antennae perk up. Quickly, the gabi disperse, coming back only when the scraps of flesh from the umanath’s jaws start floating away.
The one exception to umanath solitude is the city of Umapuram (also known as High Alpheus). The caverns of Umapuram are undulating tunnels and huge caverns speckled with pillars. Umanath crawl along the walls and the pillars, coming and going as they please. In Umapuram, conversation is deadly. Umanath speak a language of sound and fury, each sentence a bubble bursting from the crunching of their claws. In a language like this, nothing is casual. No issue can be quotidian, no matter banal. The season, the currents, the gossip - each brims with passion. Every statement is an argument, every response a barb of pain. Talking is violence for umanath and it is those who are weary of this speech that leave the halls of their great city and find place elsewhere. That is why speaking to lonely umanath might not always be well-received, they have traveled to escape the constant harshness of conversation, a choice that scars as much as it soothes. Even the most sibilant words of another tongue remind them of what they have given up and the trauma of that forced choice.
Inspired by the Pistol Shrimp and the physics of cavitation.