Because he had a new bride.
One he’d shape for this poisoned tide.
And from her womb, he would spawn a new breed ofPelagorn.One equal to the harshest conditions known to any of the seas.
He would not fail again.
This time, he would take his time. Obsess over every possible precaution and shape her pathetic, fragile body into something truly divine, no matter the cost to himself.
The trench pressed at him from every angle until his bones ached and his muscles strained against the weight.
Lips pulling into a vicious grin, he swept through the trench.
Let those dying fools reject him. This hollow pit, this crushing abyss would incubate his kingdom.
And she would crown it.
Tail lashing, he broke the currents and disturbed the silt, blending the layers of poisonous water for the first time in eons.
Chest aching with the sour burn, he cut through the gloom and unclipped the pouch lashed to his waist. Fingers working the knot until it came loose, and the polyps inside churned. Fed their first taste of the waters that would become their home.
The Raskoril.
A parasitic strain of coral, engineered to thrive in the choking cold. Meant to thrive without sunlight or warm, fertile currents.
This species was bred for the trench.
Colonized from parasites and fed from the veins of the lastAbyssariking.
He’d stolen it. Cultivated the larva, starved the polyps of sunlight, and now? He’d feed the colony a steady diet of venom and blood.
Corrupting it. Coaxing it into something new. Until every outcropping of the budding colony bore his mark.
It was to be the seeds of his kingdom. The roots of his reef, upon which he would craft an empire enslaved to him alone.
Dipping his claws, he began the arduous task ahead and went to work. Seeding the trench.
Preparing the seabed, he used the trident to raise the tide, to wash away the silt cloaking the seabed in aeons of sediment.
With a snap of his tail, he drove upward once more, scattering the polyps into the open throat of the trench. Letting them drift in the wake of his passing, where they would settle against the seabed. Setting little anchors that would pierce deep into the basalt, filtering the fetid waters one tiny breath at a time.
And thus, the Raskoril Coral would oxygenate the deep.
His hand plunged into the pouch, again and again, each fling of his wrist cast a net that would bind the primitive shadows and allow life to breathe here, where no other had been able to endure.
With each pass, the water grew thicker. Pulsing with a slow hum as they set down roots, their glow fanning across sheer rock walls.
A reef, born in exile.
One that would endure. Grow where he commanded, and feast directly from his veins. Nurse at his spines and fill their tiny bellies with venom.
He could sense it already—the looming specter of a ghostly structure, a skeleton of what would rise. A cradle for his bride, it would house their brood when her body no longer belonged to the surface.
The thought was invasive. An urge he hadn’t expected, but one that dragged a snarl from his chest and sent him back through the layers as the first threads of blue shimmered across the basalt.
Gills flaring, his chest expanded, lungs filling with the poisoned current.
It wasn’t enough.
