[Warning: Structural Integrity at 1%.]
The sound was sickening. It was the sound of the ocean finally winning. The water wall bowed inward, a massive, pressurized bubble of death ready to burst.
"Brother!"
Nimue scread.
The scream tore through the noise of the collapsing cave.
It was Nimue. The rmaid princess was clinging to a jagged piece of rock, her body battered, her mana exhausted.
For so reason she had woken up.
"Caspian!" Nimue wailed, her voice breaking. "Get up! Please, get up!"
Roxy froze.
"Dammit," Roxy whispered, her voice trembling.
She looked at her legs one last ti. They were good legs. They had carried her far.
"Fuck it," Roxy snarled, wiping the saltwater from her eyes. "Do it! Take them!"
[Confirmation Accepted.]
[Paynt: 500,000 LP deducted.]
[Initiating Protocol: Siren’s Grace.]
The pain hit her instantly.
Roxy scread as her legs fused together. It felt like her bones were lting and reforming in a single, agonizing second.
Her hips widened. Her knees vanished, replaced by a powerful, flexible column of muscle. Her skin burned as scales erupted from her pores, overriding the soft human flesh.
Her lungs seized, expelling the last of the air, and then... they opened.
The water rushed in.
all of this was all going to make Roxy Crazy
But it didn’t drown her. It fueled her.
The cold vanished. The crushing pressure beca a comforting blanket. The darkness wasn’t blind anymore; her eyes adjusted, shifting spectrums, seeing the heat signatures of the ocean.
Roxy looked down.
Her legs were gone.
In their place was a magnificent, powerful tail. It wasn’t dark and predatory like Caspian’s indigo scales, nor was it aggressive red like Vespera’s.
It was pink.
It was a shimring, iridescent rose. The scales were smooth as pearls, overlapping in a perfect, armored sh. Her fins were translucent ribbons of silk that drifted in the current like flower petals.
She looked like the softest, most harmless thing in the ocean.
But beneath the pretty pink scales, Roxy felt the power. One twitch of her new muscles sent a shockwave through the water around her.
The cave finally collapsed.
The water wall shattered. The ocean rushed in with the force of a tsunami.
Nimue was swept away, tumbling into the dark.
Roxy flicked her tail.
She shot forward like a torpedo. She wasn’t fighting the water; she was part of it. She cut through the turbulence, her body streamlining perfectly.
As she shot out of the ruins of the cave, her hand instinctively grabbed the only weapon she had left.
The cast-iron skillet.
It was heavy. It was ridiculous. But it was hers.
"Caspian!" Roxy shrieked—or she tried to. But underwater, it ca out as a high-frequency pulse.
She burst into the open ocean, her pink tail glowing like a flare in the void. She raised the frying pan, ready to batter a Kraken, ready to crack a beak, ready to die fighting.
She stopped.
She hovered in the water, her new fins waving gently, the skillet raised high.
There was no fight.
The Kraken was there. It was floating fifty yards away.
But it wasn’t moving.
The massive, SS-Tier monstrosity, the mountain of flesh that had terrified the entire Trench, was dead.
Its massive head was caved in. One of its eyes was a ruin of yellow jelly. And protruding from the soft flesh under its beak was a broken piece of bone spear, driven upward with such force that it must have pierced the brain.
Caspian had done it.
"He... he won," Roxy whispered, bubbles escaping her lips.
But where was he?
How did he kill the monster when he was practically unconscious???
She scanned the dark water, her heart hamring against her ribs.
Then, she saw a glint of silver.
Below her. Sinking.
Caspian was drifting down toward the thermal vents. He was limp. His body was a wreck. His indigo tail was shredded, his chest was a mass of dark bruises, and a trail of silver blood followed him like a ribbon.
He wasn’t moving. Roxy didn’t think. She tore through the water, diving faster than gravity could pull him down.
The pressure built in her ears, but her new body ignored it. The cold tried to bite, but her scales held.
She reached him.
She grabbed his arm. It was cold. Colder than usual.
"Gotcha," Roxy grunted, wrapping her arms around his broad chest.
He was heavy. Dense muscle and bone, dead weight in the deep.
But Roxy was Apex now.
She thrashed her tail, fighting the downward montum. Her muscles burned. Her spine scread. But she pushed.
She dragged him out of the freefall. She pulled him close, pressing her cheek against his cold shoulder.
She had never done this before, and thought she felt a thousand eyes on her.
She knew one thing.
They couldn’t get close to her because she was finally one of them.
"Wake up," she commanded, shaking him. "Wake up, you stupid, arrogant fish! You don’t get to die after making a rmaid!"
Caspian didn’t stir. His golden eyes were half-open, glazed and unseeing.
Roxy looked around. The cave was gone. The bubble was gone. They were exposed in the open ocean, with the scent of blood filling the water. The sharks would be coming. The scavengers would be waking up.
She needed a safe place. She needed to hide him.
She rembered the thermal pools. The shelf on the cliff. It was miles away, but it was warm. It was safe.
"Hold on, Caspian," Roxy whispered into the water.
She shifted her grip, hooking her arms under his shoulders, letting his head rest on her chest.
She looked at her pink tail. It shimred in the dark, a beacon of defiance.
"Let’s go," she told herself.
With a powerful thrust of her hips, Roxy propelled them both forward, towing the broken King through the dark water, her frying pan still clutched tightly in one hand, dragging him toward the only warmth left in the world.
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