Well, he could try.
Noctis draped a tattered blanket across my shoulders, and I focused on the azure shade of the waves crashing into the ship. But I couldn’t admit to him that my body shook in fear, not coolness. I breathed it in—the salty spritz of the ocean and the citrus twang of the clean fabric working to calm me. Noctis returned to my side, eyes trailing my shaking body.
“Music has always pulled you in. Calmed your nerves. Do you remember that?” he asked quietly. His breath grazed my ear.
In the far depths of my mind, something stirred—some buried memory struggling to resurface. My eyes rattled with rhythmic beats, drums echoing in the void. Opera singers in a chromatic spectrum materialized, overtaking a damp, dust-choked market square, my feet tapping in unison to the instrumentation. I saw myself swaying to the music, a beam gleaming across my full face, the women’s cheeks choral colored as they belted the magical tunes.
“I could sing to you if it would help,” he offered nervously.
“I have a feeling that wouldn’t sound very great,” I chuckled awkwardly.
Noctis’s shoulders shook with a raspy laugh, a tune on its own. “That’s actually pretty accurate.”
The waves surged forward, beating along the ship like a broken metronome. We looked across its vastness, its unknown.
“Did you hear me as I prayed for death during the sacrifice?”
The god swallowed, his only indication that he, in fact, did hear the prayers as I desperately sought reprieve, as I swayed back and forth between begging for death and breath.
“Do you hear all of my prayers?”
Noctis’s head dipped in answer. “Yes, and I remember every word.”
I slowly turned and looked at him, his piercing gaze full of loss, brows scrunched in emotional turmoil. “Then make sure you’re listening now.”
And I plunged into the ocean without allowing a response.
A dark, endless abyss enveloped me until my merfolk eyes adjusted to the void. Prickling sensations ran down my legs, melting into a scaly, glistening tail like polished pearl against the rays of sunlight working to pierce the void. I pushed myself to move, knowing there was nowhere intended to go with the makeshift plan. Circling the ship from below, I relished in the coolness of the water, the familiarity of the way my hair flowed through it, the pressure it applied to my body.
Towering coral spires rose from the depths, and I advanced toward them, entranced in their beauty. The purple and salmon colored masses twisted in rhythmic pillars that schools of fish darted around. A soft, sallow glimmer illuminated the area as far as my eyes could see within the deep. The reef expanded for so long, and I propelled myself along it, attention alert as I waited for anything to pounce. My fingers skimmed the living rock, slick with algae growth.
I twisted my body so the gills along my ribcage flowed water quietly through as I listened to the depths. Me in proximity to the sea seemed to be a magnet to monstrous creatures.
Airy sighs swished through the water from swimming fish fins like delicate fabric billowing in a breeze on land. Eerie silence otherwise.
Until it wasn't.
Coral shattered around me, shaking the sea along with it, massive gusts of water surging into my front. I flipped uncontrollably, my body unable to stabilize. Fish darted in all directions, startled into a frenzy, many thrown out of balance alongside me, flailing to swim upright. Large fissures tore into theliving rock until the pillars crumbled, one by one, dropping into the black void below.
An eye snapped open inches from my face, unblinking, ancient, impossibly still, and the size of my head. My fists reared to fight, but I turned and bolted, slicing through the water away from the ship, the weight of that gaze still clinging to my spine.
Not the plan. Not the plan.My previous confidence waned quickly as I fled from the beast.
Water erupted as the creature moved to gain on me, a tidal wave crashing into my backside, yet it only propelled me away from it.An eerie blessing.The sharp, jagged coral that continued fracturing and drifting downward to the depths nearly snagged me as I swerved through it, careful not to slice myself on the protrusions.
The creature blocked the view behind me as it approached, reaching out its webbed, serrated arms in my direction. A ghostly blue mask of a fleshless visage scowled venomously, peeling skin that covered its sunken eyes, yet no mouth etched into its skull. Two large, toothed masses stuck out of its head like a bladed antenna, flickering in the water as it charged for me.
A Nethergill.
I remembered their stories as they swelled within my mind, only leaving memories of the creature. I remembered their loyalty to the Ocean Mother—how they would hunt down whoever the goddess ordered.
Don’t run from me, sacrifice. The Ocean Mother will be thrilled I found you… finally.
The gravely, deep words rang through my head, yet none spoke aloud. My eyes shot open, wildly looking back at the creature. I forgot about that part. They forced their words into the mind of their prey.
It squinted as it took me in, but I pushed myself to deliver the beast far from Zahara’s ship. Even as shadow loomedover my own body, I would rather bear the creature’s wrath myself than let harm touch the crew that awaited my return above. The debt I owed to them was far too large. The welcoming I felt was a feeling I never wanted to lose. The realms deservedthem. Even Noctis.
I zipped around the tumbling coral, sharply cutting the corners in an attempt to lose the Nethergill, but it crashed through the protrusions, sending living rock chunks careening against the water’s resistance.
