Emily is there in the abyss. The whole weight of the ocean presses on her, tons upon tons of seawater elbow each other aside to lean against her skin. No sunlight has ever seen this place, and the only warmth is the heat of the earth herself, rising off the seafloor. Almost nothing lives this deep, mostly thick-shelled crabs, and the few hardy fish whose warped and grotesque shapes make the most of the terrible depth. There are roly-polies that snuffle around in the silt for food; there is a roly-poly where her tongue should be. She swallows, because of the terror that numbs her, and she can feel the articulations of its carapace scrape the roof of her mouth, and the prickles of its feet, limp and vestigial, against her gums.
All around her, falling from heaven like fresh white snow, is the accumulated death and decay of the upper ocean. The crabs and roly-polies feast on it. They’d feast on her, given half the chance. Even Leviathan fears this place; no submarine or remote camera will survive to see these sights. She takes a step forward, and the ocean floor is not soft and sandy, but greasy with whale fat and long-dead fish. Her arms shake with her revulsion, she knows that when she is out of the abyss she will cry in the shower because no amount of scrubbing will ever make her skin feel clean, but still she walks forward, for her god is there.
Looking directly at Him makes her eyes hurt, so she instead stares at the toothy fish that hover vertical with their mouths pointed up. They look like trumpets from hell, a skinny body with a horrible gaping maw, lazily treading water and waiting to catch the devil's manna. One catches her eye and bows, spending precious calories to show her respect.
Far away she can hear Leviathan leading its choir to sing, but here He has been waiting for her. Emily doesn’t know His name; He speaks in a language older than words, and when He talks of Leviathan or Kraken she hears their English names, but when He speaks of Himself he speaks no name; He is the sound that submarine crews hear in the deep dark and cannot fathom, He is the paddle that stirs the ocean gyres, He is the serpent who carved the Mariana Trench.