Chapter 10
It floated at the center.
Limp.
Asleep.
Thalos' head tilted as he looked upon it.
A mockery of Pelagorn beauty.
Short human limbs that were frail and almost smooth, all but absent proper fins. A creature that looked too feeble for the deep, and yet… delicate gills fluttered at her throat. Her every breath a defiance to the order he’d dedicated his life to upholding, while her skin shimmered with scales.
Kissed by the sun.
Nyxarion's precious living flame.
Lip curled, Thalos circled. Tail flicking in a slow arc, he let his claws drag through the current holding her aloft. Inches from her skin. Watching the water swirl as he moved.
Fingers twitching, he watched the way her throat worked around a breath. Sluggish. Struggling to pull enough oxygen from the water to simply breathe.
A living Siren.
The creature was a poison.
A relic of their darkest chapter, one his forefathers had gone to war to exterminate.
And yet…
… there it was.
Sleeping.
In the heart of the Gauntlet.
Still alive, despite his efforts.
Sending a torrent of water through his gills, Thalos hissed. A sharp, controlled sound. He'd have to conquer the Gauntlet of Tides after all—and all that went with a victory.
The scent hit him, then. Not the cloying flavor of a pureblooded Virelii, but something… deeper.
Alien.
Fins flaring, Thalos reached. Letting the back of one claw drag through the current swirling around her.
His fist itched to wrap around Cymareth's pearl hilt. One easy slice from the Waveblade and she'd scatter to the currents.
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.
A no.
"Speak again," he commanded, gesturing with one elegant hand. "Let me hear that fabled Siren voice, before it goes silent once more."
It recoiled, fins fluttering as it tried to snag a current that wasn't there.
Reacting to his threat.
"I… I didn't ask for this," the Siren whispered, each word delicate, musical.
The sound slid through him, unbidden, unwelcome, and yet... fascinating. Utterly so. Irritation lifted his scales, making him bristle and shiver as the sound rippled through the current.
Mastering himself, Thalos forced his scales flat, and said, “Few ask for corruption. But that is what you are. A catastrophe waiting to happen."
The Siren's eyes widened, anger replacing fear. Her body trembled, scales catching light that shouldn't exist in these depths.
"I am a prisoner," she breathed, each word sending ripples through the current between them. And then, keening high at the back of her throat, "W-what's happening? Why can't I move?"
Thalos circled her again, admiring the strange form, how the water bent and twisted to keep her suspended.
At his disposal.
Even incomplete, her transformation carried a terrible, wretched beauty.
"The first trial begins soon," he replied at length, voice cool and measured.
"The Gauntlet of Tides." Lifting his fingers, he gestured at the current swirling all around them—invisible walls of water and pressure that would soon become their battlefield.
"A race. The first to reach you—to touch you—wins this trial. "
Her gills fluttered faster, panic evident in those unsettling eyes. "A-and what does the winner gain?"
Absent any whisper of warmth, Thalos smiled. "When I touch you," he said, letting his claws pierce the wall of liquid swirling next to her body. "It will become my chore to breed you. To fit as much seed as may fit inside that monstrous little body."
Her throat worked. A shudder ran through her, answered in the flicker of her biolume shining with a weak pulse that spelled out the exact nature of her horror. “N-no—”
“Oh, yes," Thalos said, voice soft with false compassion. "Repugnant, isn't it? I assure you, breeding a half-formed creature holds no appeal for me either."
His fingers drifted closer, not quite touching her trembling form. A muscle ticked in his jaw as her scent drifted between them—intoxicating, despite his disgust.
"But… then… duty rarely concerns itself with desire. This... chore serves a greater purpose."
He circled behind her, letting his tail brush the edge of her current.
The Siren flinched, a delicious ripple of fear that made his scales lift with anticipation.
Again.
"Nyxarion will watch," Thalos hummed, voice dropping to a velvet murmur. "The exile will be forced to witness as I fill you with my seed. As I claim what he believes to be his."
Her eyes widened, pupils dilating in horror.
"The Spiral demands it," Thalos added simply, spreading his hands in a gesture of elegant resignation. "And I am nothing if not obedient to the law."
His gaze drifted over her altered form, taking in the awkward hybridity, the scales that shimmered with Abyssari light. Whatever she had been before, she was Nyxarion's doom now.
The creature's fear perfumed the water around them, turning Thalos' disgust into something more complex, more primal. Her refusal came as soft bubbles from those delicate gills—a sound that shouldn't have pleased him so deeply.
Yet it did.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "I… I won't let you—"
"You misunderstand, my little abomination." Thalos drifted closer, letting the current caress her skin without quite touching her himself. "Your permission is irrelevant. Your body belongs to the victor. For the sweep of one full tide.”
He savored how she tried to track his movements, too slow, too clumsy to be anything but a vessel.
A hole for Nyx’s cock.
"After I fill you with my seed," Thalos whispered, his voice soft, his cock growing thick and painful where it was imprisoned inside his vent, "the second trial will begin—the Chain of Breath.
" His lips curved into a cold smile as her eyes widened.
"We'll drag you to the surface, where the beast from the trench will suffocate while I breathe the air with ease. "
He let one claw trace her silhouette through the current, never quite making contact. "The law favors those born of the shallows here, too. Your precious Nyxarion will gasp and writhe while you are made mine by Pelagorn law. And then,” he breathed, twisting through the current, “it will be over.”
For a long moment, the creature only turned in place, using the webbing between her fingers to help her rotate. Thalos watched with clinical detachment, cataloging her clumsy movements, the graceless way she fought the current.
And then she laughed.
It startled him.
A broken, breathless sound, but a laugh all the same. It was a ripple of pure, cynical amusement that perfumed the current with a tangy, sour note.
“It doesn’t matter which of you wins,” she returned in a voice that foamed and danced between them. Delicate. Dissolving between one breath and the next. “You or him, the outcome is the same.”
Going still, Thalos’ flawless composure cracked. Disturbed by the curious reaction.
One he hadn’t been expecting, for it wasn’t fear or pleading.
It was…
She laughed again, teetering on the edge of hysteria.
“Nyx will come for me,” she whispered, and then her eyes met his, and Thalos felt the interest bubbling behind his ribs boil over.
“Like he did on the surface, when everything tried to stop him.” Fins flaring, she spun in an elegant spiral, webbing between her fingers stretched wide as they might go.
“Win this trial. Touch me first. It doesn’t matter.
Nothing you do can stop him. Not the sun.
The tides, or the gods themselves.” Lips curling, her voice dropped, intimate and haunted as those beguiling eyes gleamed with something approaching fanatical belief.
“I’ve prayed to old gods and new, Thalos.
But nothing…” she shook her head. Hair drifting around her in a cloud.
Her gaze grew hardened, then. And despite his disgust… Thalos found himself transfixed.
By the certainty.
The devotion Nyxarion had earned with his cock.
“Nothing will stop Nyxarion from coming for me,” she said again. “Not even you.”
It was a challenge.
A gauntlet thrown.
And then it was Thalos’ turn to laugh, head thrown back, delighted by the challenge. The refreshing scent of a battle to be won with skill and cunning.
“Oh, little Siren,” he crooned, leaning in. Close enough that his breath touched the fine hairs along her arms. “You think he is the only monster in the deep?”
The color along her edges fluttered—her biolume pulsing with her alarm.
Cymareth sang to life in his grip, and he ordered the currents to bind her. Tight enough that her pupils bled into the gold, dilating with something raw.
Terror.
“You will be mine,” he murmured. “For a brief moment, before you belong to the sea.”
Gills fluttering, her breath hitched.
He could feel it. The sound something that made the water shimmer beneath his scales.
“Nyxarion will come for you,” Thalos whispered, flicking his tail to coil around her without touching. Never touching. “And I’ll make him watch. Make him listen when you scream for me, little Siren. Not him.”