I dive through the flooding corridor, using my new swimming strength to fight against the current. The palace groans around me, structural coral beginning to fail. Through windows I see Aylth recovering, launching himself at thecreature's eyes. His claws find purchase, tearing, but those barbed tentacles wrap around him, and I see him convulse as poison hits his system.
The weapons room. I remember it from Aylth's tour. If I can reach it...
Swimming through a palace that's actively breaking apart requires every enhancement the tonic gave me. I hold my breath for the entire journey, forty minutes of navigating flooding passages and collapsing walls. When I surface in the weapons room, half of it is already destroyed.
But the spears are still there. Not just spears, I realize, examining them closer. The coral has been shaped into hollow tubes, the insides coated with something that glows angry red. Poison. Aylth's own toxins, concentrated and weaponized.
I grab three of them and one of the nets, then dive back out through a hole in the wall. The open water hits me like a physical force. Without the palace's protection, the currents from the battle toss me like a leaf.
Aylth and the creature are locked together now, tentacles versus tentacles. But Aylth is losing. The poison makes him sluggish, and the creature's barbs tear through his scales. Blue blood clouds the water around them.
I swim above them, using the chaos as cover. The creature is focused entirely on Aylth, probably thinking I'm still cowering in the palace. When I'm directly over its head, I dive.
The first spear enters through its eye. The coral pierces the soft tissue easily, and whatever poison Aylth coated it with works immediately. The eye clouds over, goes dark. The creature's roar vibrates through the water, a sound that makes my bones ache.
But now it knows I'm here.
One of those barbed tentacles whips toward me faster than thought. I barely twist away, feeling barbs tear through the waterwhere I was. Another comes from the other direction. I can't dodge this one.
Aylth's tentacle intercepts it, wrapping around the barbed appendage before it reaches me. The poison floods his system again, and I watch his eyes roll back. But he doesn't let go.
“The mouth!” he manages to scream through the water. “When it opens, the mouth!”
The creature turns toward me, jaws opening. Inside is worse than outside. Not just teeth but a forest of them, spiraling back into a throat that seems to go forever. The blue glow is stronger here, and I realize these teeth are venomous too. One bite would liquefy me.
I throw the second spear.
My aim is perfect, or lucky, or both. The spear goes straight down its throat. The creature convulses, its whole body spasming. The barbed tentacles release Aylth, who sinks toward the reef. But it's not dead. It's angry.
It comes at me with everything. Jaws wide, tentacles spread, moving faster than something that size should move. I have one spear left and nowhere to dodge.
So I don't dodge.
I swim straight at it.
The move surprises it for a crucial second. Instead of swimming into its mouth, I go under, then up, using its own bulk against it. The third spear goes into its other eye from below.
Blind now, poisoned from inside and out, the creature thrashes. Its tentacles whip randomly, destroying more coral, creating underwater avalanches. One catches me across the back, and the barbs inject their poison before I can pull away.
Fire races through my bloodstream. My vision starts to tunnel. My lungs forget how to process oxygen.
But the creature is dying too. The internal poisoning from the spear in its throat is working. Its movements become lesscoordinated, then sluggish, then stop. The massive body sinks, two hundred feet of predator defeated by cleverness and coral spears.
I try to swim to Aylth but my body won't respond properly. The poison makes every movement feel like swimming through glass. He's floating near the destroyed section of palace, blue blood still seeping from dozens of tears in his scales.
“Aylth...” My voice doesn't work right either.
He stirs, tentacles moving weakly. When he sees me, his eyes widen in horror. “Poisoned. Female is poisoned.”
“So are you.”
We're both dying. The irony that we defeated the creature only to die from its toxins feels cosmic in its cruelty.
But Aylth moves, using the last of his strength to pull me against him. His mouth covers mine, not in a breathing kiss but something else. He's pushing something into me, a secretion that tastes different from all the others. Medicine. Antivenom. Something his body produces to counter toxins.
The fire in my blood cools. My vision clears. My lungs remember their modified function.
“Now you,” I say, but he shakes his head.
