Agony followed the barbs where they tore through his meat. His chromatic display hemorrhaging color violently, in wild, nauseating pulses.
Thalos couldn't so much as scream as his blood—dark red, almost black—pulsed from his wounds in thick, ominous plumes.
Thrumming deep in the barrel of his chest, Nyxarion roared.
A raw primal sound that belonged to the volcanic rifts in the deepest trenches. It was a sound that rolled through the mid-ground. A violent declaration.
A summons for the Abyssari to indulge in their victory.
And Nyxarion. He hung in the current, spines flared. Not unscathed, wounds wretched, ribboned with lacerations that helped to turn the black waters red.
Grinning.
Spines tucked flat, Thalos was immobilized. Body locked. Abyssari venom searing his veins.
Nyxarion didn't spare him another moment of attention. Not a glance.
The trench king whirled, moving his massive, serpentine body, displacing the wall of Pelagorn who'd come to watch the Hollow Court dominate, he moved to claim his bride.
Nerissa was curled around the Siren. A protective twist that spoke volumes.
But Nyxarion would not be denied access to his prize. The prey he'd slithered through death itself to claim. Extending his functional arm, silver eyes burning through the haze of gore poisoning the mid-ground, he spoke a single word. "Kore."
Her name trembled through the water with a sub-audible hum.
A summoning.
A mistake.
Thalos saw it.
Even through the haze of venom sending him into spasm.
Kore gasped, gills flaring wide. Flushed crimson. Grey-gold eyes rimmed in white, shot through with shock.
Fear.
The primal instinct of prey.
Her scales rippled.
Just once.
But it was enough. Her edges softened. Dissolved into a teasing pulse of that Abyssari biolume, before it dimmed. Ink dispersing through the tide.
Flickering once.
Twice more.
And then she vanished.
Nyxarion lunged, just an instant too slow.
She was gone.
Silence crashed through the mid-ground.
And Thalos, frozen and hemorrhaging, laughed. Because he'd given her the power to escape the Abyssari king, if she chose.
