But most importantly, I know where I need to go. Instinct guides me like a compass, pulling me toward the eastern trenches. Toward whatever Carrick is doing in the depths where no human should be able to reach.
Water welcomes me. My selkie form cuts through the ocean with effortless grace, powerful muscles propelling me deeper with each stroke. Pressure that would crush a human diver barely registers. My body was made for this.
Darkness thickens as I descend. Surface light fades to twilight, then to black. But my eyes adjust, seeing in ways human vision never could. I navigate by feel as much as sight, sensing currents and temperature shifts, reading the ocean like a language I suddenly remember.
The ocean floor drops away beneath me, plunging into trenches that human submarines have barely mapped. This is the place scientists know exists but can't explain—where the geology defies logic, where sonar readings show impossiblestructures, where fish are found that shouldn't survive these depths.
This is where the old one sleeps.
And Carrick is trying to wake it.
I see the lights first. Artificial illumination cuts through the darkness like violence, harsh and wrong in this ancient place. Diving equipment, industrial and military-grade. Submersibles hovering at depths that shouldn't be accessible. And in the center of it all, a massive drilling rig suspended by cables, boring into the trench floor.
They're drilling directly into the seal.
The barrier my ancestors helped create pulses weakly against my senses—the magical ward that keeps the ancient evil contained. It's old, so old the magic feels like stone, weathered and worn by centuries of ocean currents. And Carrick's drill is punching holes in it.
Fear turns my blood to ice. If he breaches the seal completely, if he wakes what sleeps below...
Grayson's words echo in my memory: "Something ancient sleeps in the deepest parts, and waking it would be catastrophic."
I have to stop him, but how? One selkie against industrial equipment and whatever magical protections Carrick has surely put in place. The odds are impossible.
But the ocean disagrees.
The ocean is mine. These waters are my domain. And I am not alone.
Other presences move in the deep, drawn by the disturbance. Seals, real ones, not the selkie-kind but cousins nonetheless. They circle at a distance, uneasy but curious. Further out, larger shapes glide through the darkness. Whales, perhaps. The ocean's guardians, recognizing one of their own.
Carrick's drill punches another meter into the seal. Cracks spiderweb across the magical barrier, visible to my selkie sight as fractures in reality itself. The imprisoned evil strains against containment, sensing freedom.
I arrow toward the drill rig, faster than anything human-built can track. Alarms must be sounding in the submersibles, warnings that a large object is approaching at speed. But I'm already there, using every ounce of momentum and strength my selkie body possesses.
My body slams into the drill assembly. Metal shrieks and tears. I rake my sharpened teeth across cables and connections, severing power lines and hydraulic systems. Machinery sparks and dies, drilling stopping as emergency systems kick in.
Submersible lights swivel toward me. Through thick glass, I see Carrick's face. Shock gives way to rage, then transforms into hunger and understanding combined.
He knows. Not just that I'm supernatural—he recognizes the selkie form, understands what I'm capable of. And worse, he knows I'm here to stop him.
Cables detach from the submersible. Metal arms unfold, nets or magical restraints deploying. The equipment moves with precision, designed to capture rather than kill.
A living selkie would be worth more than whatever he can steal from the sealed trench. A living selkie could access places his equipment never could, could break wards his magic can't touch, could be the key to everything he wants.
I bare my teeth and swim straight at his submersible with all the force my selkie form can generate. Glass cracks under the impact. Alarms shriek inside the vessel. Carrick's face disappears as he scrambles to stabilize.
The other seals move closer now, emboldened by my attack. The larger presences draw nearer, curious about this conflict intheir domain. And deep below, beyond the damaged seal, the ancient presence stirs in its sleep.
Power rises from the trench floor. Ancient, wild, barely contained. The thing that lives down there senses the breach, senses opportunity, senses prey above.
Terror tries to take hold, but there's no time for fear. This is my ocean. This is my duty. This is what I was born to do.
I open myself to the power of the deep, to the magic that runs through selkie blood, to the connection every one of my ancestors has had with these waters. And I call the ocean to me.
Current answers. Pressure builds. Water itself becomes a weapon.
Carrick's equipment groans under the sudden force. Cables snap. The drill rig tears free and tumbles into darkness. Submersibles scramble to retreat as the ocean turns hostile, currents pulling and pushing with deliberate intent.
Magic courses wild and intoxicating and terrifying through every fiber of my being. This is what Grayson meant about selkie abilities. This is why Maritime wanted me. This is what I am.
