The Pearl Garden slled amazing, and that made Roxy very happy because it didn’t sll like fish anymore.
But that was the problem.
In the crushing, lightless depths of the Abyssal Trench, sll was the primary language. It was how predators found prey, how mates found partners, and how territories were marked.
The ocean usually contains a lot of things, but not Earth.
But for the last three days, Caspian’s cave had been pumping out a cocktail of fragrances that had never existed in this ecosystem before.
Garlic. Butter. Caralized sugar. Vanilla conditioner. Rose oil. Sandalwood.
It was a sensory overlord.
Roxy, blissfully unaware of the olfactory lighthouse she had created, was currently sitting cross-legged on the coral chair, counting her earnings.
"Fifty pearls," she murmured, dropping a luminous pearl into a black pouch. "Three jars of Sturgeon eggs. And a promise from Vespera to stab anyone who looks at wrong. Not a bad week’s work."
She looked up. The cave was quiet. The fire crackled rrily, roasting a skewer of spiced kelp.
Caspian was lying on the sand near the fire, sharpening his bone spear. He looked less like a brooding King and more like a bored guard dog. His scales were shiny and his hair was tied back with a strip of green silk Nimue had discarded.
"Don’t you think it’s a bit too much?" Caspian noted, not looking up from his spear. "Why do you need so many pearls? You cannot eat them."
"It’s called savings, Caspian," Roxy said, tying the pouch. "One day, I might need to buy a house. or a boat. Or a very large bribe."
"You have a house," Caspian grunted, tapping the floor with his tail. "You are sitting in it."
Roxy smiled, but she didn’t argue. She had learned that arguing with a Trencher about real estate was futile. To him, the sea was the entire world.
She stood up and walked to the water wall. She loved looking out into the deep now. Since eating the seaweed and swimming to the thermal pools, the darkness didn’t terrify her as much. She felt a strange kinship with the void.
It always still feels like sothing is watching deep inside the darkness.
[Might be a sexy stalker.]
Roxy rolled her eyes. No one likes a stalker in real life, you box brain.
[...]
But today, the void looked... different. Roxy had a bad feeling.
Usually, small lights were drifting in the distance, bioluminescent jellies, lantern-fish, the occasional flash of a predator.
Today, it was pitch black.
"Caspian," Roxy asked, pressing her hand against the invisible barrier. "Where are the fish? The glowing ones?"
Caspian paused. His sharpening stone stopped scraping against the bone.
He lifted his head. His gills flared, fluttering rapidly as he tasted the water circulating inside the bubble.
"I don’t know, perhaps they are hiding from sothing," Caspian whispered.
He stood up, his movents fluid and silent. He moved to Roxy’s side, placing a protective hand on her shoulder. His golden eyes narrowed into vertical slits as he scanned the darkness.
"They bury themselves in the silt. They do so only when the water trembles."
"Trembles?" Roxy asked, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. "Like an earthquake?"
"No," Caspian said. "Like a heartbeat."
Then all of a sudden there was a pressure wave.
Roxy felt it in her teeth. The air inside the bubble compressed for a fraction of a second, making her ears pop. The water wall rippled violently, as if sothing massive had displaced the ocean miles away.
Caspian stiffened. His fins erected instantly, the spines locking into place.
"Sothing is awake," Caspian growled.
Then, a shape exploded out of the darkness.
It wasn’t the monster. It was Nimue. And she looked terrified, as if she was running from sothing.
She shot through the water wall so fast she tumbled onto the sand, scraping her elbow. She scrambled up, her beautiful hair wild and floating in the static air, her violet eyes blown wide with panic.
"Brother!" Nimue scread, her voice filled with fear. "Brother, seal the wall! Seal it now!"
"Nimue?" Roxy stepped forward. "What’s wrong? Why are you—"
"Shut up, Landwalker!" Nimue snapped, baring her teeth in genuine aggression. She turned to Caspian, grabbing his arm with frantic strength. "It slled it!"
Ouch, that was a look of pure rage.
Roxy could understand, that was why she imdiately backed away. Caspian grabbed Nimue’s shoulders, shaking her. "Speak! What slled it?"
Nimue looked at him, her face pale as bone.
"The Kraken," she whispered.
Caspian went still.
Roxy blinked. "The... what?"
"A Sea Monster," Caspian breathed, the color draining from his own face. He released Nimue and spun toward the water wall. "It sleeps in the Abyssal Rift. It has slept for a hundred cycles."
"It is awake," Nimue choked out.
The second wave hit them. This ti, the cave shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. The fire flickered and almost went out.
The water wall bulged inward, bowing under a sudden spike in pressure.
"How big is it?" Roxy asked, her voice trembling. "Is it... like a whale?"
Nimue looked at her with pity. "A whale is a snack to the Kraken. It is a mountain that swims. Its tentacles can crush the Spires."
Caspian roared.
"BLOCK THE SCENT!"
He moved into action. He grabbed the chest of "goodies" and kicked it toward the back of the cave.
Nimue didn’t argue. She grabbed the chest, dragging her precious conditioners and silks, and hurled them into the crack in the floor where the heat vented up.
"It is too late," Nimue cried, watching the chest fall. "It is already tracking us. It is closing the distance."
"Roxy!" Caspian barked.
He was in front of her in an instant. He grabbed her face in his hands. His palms were clammy.
"You must hide," he ordered, his golden eyes burning with rage, mirroring her panic filled one.
She knew this was coming for her; it was going to eat her, and not in a chewing way, she would be devoured by the acids in its stomach.
Just the thought made her shiver.
"Don’t be scared, you will be fine," Caspian assured her as his finger caressed her bottom lip.
How am I going to be fine?!
He dragged her to the far back wall of the cave, behind the massive pile of leviathan bones he kept as trophies. There was a small, hollow natural crawlspace.
"Get in," Caspian shoved her toward it. "Curl into a ball. Do not move. Do not speak. And do not... do not release your scent."
How the fuck am I to do that?
[I will help you.]
"Caspian," Roxy gasped, crawling into the dark hole. It slled of old bone dust. "What are you going to do?"
Caspian stood up. He grabbed his bone spear. He grabbed a second spear from the wall, this one tipped with a jagged, glowing crystal.
He turned to look at her with a smug smile.
"This is my Garden," Caspian noted. "I am the king of the rpeople, a Kraken isn’t an enemy I should be scared of..."
He turned to Nimue.
"Reinforce the bubble," he commanded. "Pour your mana into the mbrane. If the wall breaks, she dies instantly."
"Brother," Nimue whispered, clutching her own trident. "You cannot fight a Kraken alone. It is SS-Tier."
"I do not need to kill it," Caspian said, walking toward the wavering water wall. "I just need to hurt it enough that it decides we are not worth the al."
A sound like a gunshot echoed through the ocean.
Outside the bubble, the black water shifted.
Two lights appeared in the distance. They were yellow. They were slit-pupiled. And they were the size of houses.
The Kraken had arrived.
The sheer scale of it broke Roxy’s brain. She couldn’t see the body; it blended with the dark—but she saw the eyes, and she saw the shadow of a tentacle that seed to stretch on forever, blocking out the bioluminescence of the trench.
Silently, it moved, gliding toward the glowing pearl of their air bubble.
"Protect her!" Caspian roared to Nimue.
Then, without looking back at Roxy, the rman King dove through the mbrane and charged straight into the maw of the abyss to fight a god.
Roxy just wanted to go ho, but her heart was beating for Caspian.
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