Mercy.
It was a mercy to relieve her of this… monstrous burden Nyxarion had forced upon her, the brute.
The blade hummed to life between them, a shimmering slash of his fury. Cymareth’s edge caught the shifting light, refracting it into a dozen jagged rainbows across the creature's face.
It would be fast.
One strike.
Painless.
Lashes fluttered, then opened on a blink.
Grey-gold irises locked onto the Waveblade first—then snapped to his with a gasp.
There was the mindless terror of prey, fist. And then… something sharper.
“Please.”
The word bubbled over delicate gills.
Startled, Thalos' grip faltered—his grasp on Cymareth’s power slipped, extinguishing the blade.
It could speak.
In a soft, alluring tone that made his scales ripple and lift.
The creature's fingers flew to its throat, just as shocked by the sound as he was.
It was an action that drew up a breath of slick, perfuming the current between them with the scent of that leaking slit.
Thalos’s fins flared wide, the muscles locking against the sudden, traitorous heat pooling in his gut.
Appalled by his own reaction. Shocked that the creature could speak.
And yet…
"Please," it whispered again. "Don't… don't hurt me."
Knuckles going white, Thalos flexed his control over Cymareth and summoned the blade in the dark. Halfway between the deep and the surface, in the Gauntlet’s heart, where a Siren was suspended.
Swimming against the current, he watched the terror shimmer in beguiling eyes.
And then, Thalos laughed, low and velvet. The sound rippled outward, distorting the current just enough to make her flinch. "Speech," Thalos murmured, voice an icy lash, "from a monstrous thing that should not exist."
He slipped closer, curiosity warring with disgust as he circled, watching it struggle to turn. To follow his easy grace as he slipped through the current. Drinking in the flavor of fear as it danced across those strange features.
How human it still looked. And yet…
…other.
"Tell me, little abomination—did he explain what he’s done? What he’s made you? Did he whisper pretty lies about your purpose while he violated your humanity?"
Something shifted in the Siren's eyes. Not just terror now, but wounded awareness.
The corner of Thalos's mouth curved upward.
An answer, then.
