Convulsing, Thalos couldn't draw a breath.
Chromatic scales flickered wildly, trying to shift. Brilliant crimson bled to sickly yellow. A pulse of violet that betrayed the true nature of the distress flooding his system.
It was a display meant to communicate surrender. Danger. Alarm.
Involuntary.
The shade of a desperate, mortal blow.
"You talk too much, Asterion," the trench king snarled, scarcely audible through the damage marking his gills. Eyes chips of molten, seething silver. His biolume dim and flickering with the evidence of his own grievous injuries.
One palm pressed flat to savaged gills, his other arm hanging limp. Body etched with the dozens of brutal lacerations.
But his tail.
That endless, serpentine length.
And then, with the sort of clarity that came with blistering hindsight, Thalos realized his fatal mistake.
The chime hadn't sounded.
He hadn't won.
And then the venom hit his blood.
Spine twisting, impaled, Thalos' teeth flashed. Pressed flat to the bulk of Nyxarion's tail as the trench king dragged him through the black waters. He felt the molten flood of fire pumping through his veins. Absent any whisper of modulation, his body was flooded with Abyssari venom.
Raw, uncontrolled savagery.
It was a taboo.
One that forced his scales to ripple in desperate submission. Chromatic camouflage strobing in a wild effort to process the heat when he'd been born for the cold.
Crimson, cerulean, veridianamberyellowblueblackblackblackblack?—
Vision blurring, he clawed at the scales. Raking the dense muscle, forcing him down.
Nyxarion dragged him closer, grinning. "Sloppy, Asterion," he rumbled, voice a deep hiss of tectonic plates grinding through the Deep. "But you were right," he said, a plume of ichor spilling over his fingers. "My Siren deserves far better thanthis."
Glacial eyes rimmed in white, Thalos' throat tightened. Constricting as Abyssari venom ignited in his veins. A clenched fist forcing his respiratory system into vicious spasm.
Bewildered.
Utterly.
Because he'dseenit. Watched Nyxarion's biolume gutter into darkness.
But the chime hadn't sounded.
He was a fool. A stupid, doomed fool.
As if to mock him, to confirm that his injuries weremortal, the chime rang through the current.
A single haunting tone that sang in the gaps between the heartbeats of everyone watching the spectacle.
It said one thing—Nyxarion Korrides. Victor.
The trench king grinned, tearing thalos off his spines.
