And with a hiss of breath, he released his unnatural grip on the current. Drifting back. Away.
Gasping, lungs burning as she coughed, Kore felt her fins spread wide. Like tiny little fingers growing from her skin that reached for the current, putting distance between them.
But his smirk only widened. Growing sharp with a predatory edge.
For a moment, Thalos lingered, eyes raking over her with a deliberate slowness. Laced with something she couldn’t name.
Gills fluttering, her breath coming hard, Kore watched his fins unfurl in a lazy sweep. Vast, opalescent membranes that caught the glow of the reef below and threw it back in fractured rainbows.
Perfect.
Dripping elegance.
Everything she wasn't.
He circled her slowly, each movement a declaration of his superiority. And then, “I won't enjoy this," Thalos said, his voicea low, cultured hum. “Rutting a creature born of desperation and venom.”
Something flinched behind her ribs, then.
Something aching and small.
“Alas,” Thalos sighed, “duty demands I claim you. Demands I take what he made, and break it with my own hands. A shame,” he whispered, then grinned. Cold and cruel.
And with a flick of his tail, he turned. Vanishing into the current above.
With a gasp, Kore lunged for freedom. Trying to flee the instant Thalos was out of sight.
She slammed into something unseen.
An unnatural bubble of current that bound her on all sides. Fighting her every attempt to flee.
Trapped.
Held immobile in the middle of the abyss.
“H-help,” she called out, hands reaching for something—anything—that might anchor her. Too terrified to bother marvelling at the return of her voice, to note the changes in pitch… in tone. There was only… this.
Current she couldn’t see, sound beyond hearing.
She tried again, saying, “Please!” in a voice that cracked. Splintering into dulcet tones she’d never heard before. Layered. Alive. A tone that sent water shivering as the syllables danced inside her invisible cage. “Please… Nyxarion… help me…”
The abyss yawned around her. Below and above. An inescapable sphere that resisted her every pathetic attempt.
“N-Nerissa… a-anyone. Please…”
But there was no one.
Nothing.
Only the hum of distant sound she couldn’t identify.
Twisting in place, her fins flared to their limit, Kore tried to break through it. Clawing at water that wouldn’t yield.
“Help me!” It was a desperate plea, one that burst from her throat in a voice she didn’t know. That wasn’t hers.
But the abyss swallowed it whole.
No one came.
