Page 22 of Brine and Bone
The eldest of the three—old enough to remember the wars, to have listened when the Accord of Nisyros was drafted—his scales had long since faded from their Thalassari brilliance. Now a dull, flaking pewter. A lattice of calcified growths crusted his jaw and temple, the slow mineralization that claimed all Pelagorn who outlived their era.
Elongated body coiled against the riptide's drag, Syrathis fought to maintain a shred of dignity in a current that outmatched his aged body. Whittled away by centuries spent lounging in shallow, temperate waters, Syrathis was slender to Pelagius' girth. Stretched long, ribs pressing against translucent skin.
But his eyes.
They'd grown milky. The fogged amber of a creature whose sight had turned in, blinded by the eons. His great age was plainly visible in the thin barbles dangling from his lower jaw, in the growths that trembled with every tiny shift in the current.
"A poison," Syrathis agreed, his tone reedy and precise. "This sea is stratified. Below two hundred meters, the black waters are intolerable. We are swimming into a dead zone."
"Lovely." This from Vorthane, the youngest of the three—though young meant little to Pelagorn who measured their lives in centuries. Vorthane's build retained the power of his youth. His tail was thick, though scarred, but his dorsal fin had been clipped. A punishment for some ancient transgression that lent him a lopsided, listing gait as he swam. Deep grooves bracketed his mouth. His scales held their color better than the others. A frigid, polar blue, but the pattern had grown irregular, patches of bare skin showing where they'd shed and never regrown. "The cold alone will kill us before the gas does," Vorthane added.
Thalos' lips twitched.
Three of the Hollow Court's most venerated minds, reduced to grumbling elders sulking in the dark because they couldn't command a current.
Because their sovereign had ordered them to dive, when all they wanted was to bask in the shallows.
Slowing, despite the dark amusement coiled tight in his chest, Thalos' fins flared. Letting the riptide bring the scholars to him. Level. Stifling the urge to cloak himself with his camouflage, Thalos flexed his scales. Bringing them up.
Flashing silver.
A beacon that demanded their attention.
"You will survive the descent," Thalos said, voice a low rasp of absolute authority. "Vorynthar produces its own oxygen."
Pelagius's calcified jaw ground audibly. "The heretical reef. Not recognized by Caelith Mare. It is an affront to your power, Sovereign."
"Heretical indeed," Thalos returned without heat, faintly amused by the wheedling.
“It should be razed,” Vorthane said, always the first to leap to bloodshed. “Exterminated in the name of the Accord. To uphold your authority.”
Thalos raised one brow. Eyes slitted as he hooked the ancient with a slitted glare. Ending the discussion of war before it had begun. And then, in a tone that held no mirth, "If Nyxarion permits you to examine the Siren, you will observe. Measure. Inspect her and the spawn for flaws or risks.”
He paused.
A weighted silence lingered beneath the riptide’s howl. And then, "You will not explain your findings to the creatureorNyxarion Korrides. You will not translate your observations into language he might use. Every conclusion, every implication of what you discover in that creature's womb—it comes to me first."
Syrathis's milky eyes narrowed, sightless and shrewd. "And if Korrides demands answers?"
Shrugging, Thalos' gaze drifted… down. Helplessly drawn back into the Deep. Scanning the endless black, where Vorynthar belched oxygen into a poisoned tide and something from ancient myth was breeding in the gloom. "Give him nothing he might weaponize. Speak in complications. Dress her in terrifying unknowns. But do not hand him certainty."
It wasn't long before the dark grew weak.
Before the glow of Nyxarion's heretical kingdom pulsed beneath them, and Vorynthar's outermost wall rose from the seabed in defiance of every natural law the Black Sea enforced.
Raskoril tendrils swayed in the sleepy, ancient current of the deepest dark.
Pulsing with an explosion of color, the fledgling reef thrived in the abyss. Arched gateways knit with the end of the riptide, ushering them through the threshold of Vorynthar's limit. Where oxygen hung heavy in the water, rich in minerals that had no business existing below two hundred meters.
The scholars felt it too.
Pelagius' laboring gills flared wide around a shocked breath. Filaments that had grown thin and pale bloomed, flushing with color as he tasted the labor of Nyxarion's toil. A sound escaped him—involuntary, almost reverent—before he clamped his jaw shut with a click Thalos could feel in the jelly behind his eyes.
Vorthane said nothing, but his listing gait evened out. Finding balance in the gentle current, and for the first time since they'd penetrated the thermocline, his strokes came easy. True.
"Describe it," Syrathis said, tilting his head, the barbels along his jaw extended fully, trembling, trying to read the water.
Drifting forward, his calcified jaw working as his eyes swept the interior, Pelagius slipped through the first arch.
