Page 79 of Secrets of the Void
The moment his arms relaxed even slightly, she was ripped away from him. More bubbles exploded out of her, and he swore he heard her scream. It enraged him.
Fire burned in his chest with a fury that his attackers could never have anticipated. Screaming a feral roar, he wrenched an arm out of the grip of one and reached for whatever had pierced through his tail.
His hand came away with a harpoon coated in some kind of venom. The shimmering liquid glimmered in the meager light of the sea. A crack of thunder rumbled overhead, lightning illuminating the entire scene before him.
The blood that bloomed around him had hidden the undine that surrounded him. In the stark white light, he could see their forms. Massive males, each of them. Scarred from years of battle, one with a metallic arm that was still holding onto Proteus's.
And in the distance, another undine had an arm wrapped around Ellie's waist as she struggled to get free of them.
Again he roared, but the poison worked fast. Suddenly he wasn't here. He was back in time when the undine had imprisoned him, and when he had been so certain that they would never betray him.
He would get them to work with the humans. Their future wouldn't be one of ruination and despair.
But then the undine had attacked. They'd used the same poison, he remembered. The cold sensation of death crept up his tail the same way it had then. The whispering words of the ancients in his ear, screaming at him to struggle, to fight, to not let them destroy all that he had worked on for so many years.
His free arm was grabbed again. A purple and white face, one with markings of black tears down his cheeks, appeared through the blood.
Calmly, the depthstrider grabbed onto the harpoon in his hand and plunged it back into his tail. "Only for a while," the depthstrider said. "Not forever this time."
But he was already sinking. Sinking deeper and deeper into the cold sea that always welcomed him with her embrace. She whispered in his ear that she would keep him safe, but he burned with hate. The undine had betrayed him again.
"Don't you know?" he said through numb lips. "Killing your gods never lasts long."
"We're not killing you," the one missing an arm snarled. "We're just getting you out of the way until we get the truth."
What truth? He'd told them everything. He'd given them every single thing they could hope for, and yet they were still betraying him. Still killing him. Still stripping away all that made him who he was.
"Here is good," the depthstrider said. "It'll take him a while to wake up, and by then, we'll be gone."
The one missing an arm looked down at him, and the others released their hold. He was drifting, floating above an abyss, glaring into the eyes of this male who held him by one arm.
The red undine allowed him to dangle for a while, and then said, "He'll hunt us to the ends of the sea to get her back. It's what I would do, after all."
Then he dropped Proteus into the void.
Thirty-Two
Ellie
Ellie fought as hard as she could, but there was no point in doing so. The undine who had his arm around her waist wasn't going to let her get away, and she knew damn well it wasn't possible for her to fight him. Still, it made her feel a little better to struggle against his grip. She kicked out at him, trying to catch him in the sensitive parts of his tail. And when that didn't work, she jammed her elbows back toward his gills.
Unfortunately, all that did was get a grunt out of him.
She stared helplessly back at Proteus, seeing the others dragging him away from her. These were undine she recognized. The red one had been at the facility. She remembered him so well because he had been missing an arm at the time.
No longer. That metal arm was stronger than any flesh could be. He dragged Proteus through the water with an ease that shouldn't have been possible.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked, her eyes locked on the group that was still swimming far away from her.
"Back where we are from," the undine finally said. And that was the last thing he said for the rest of the journey.
Halfway through it, he paused. It was then that she realized he had a pouch over his shoulder. He rummaged through it, holding her by the back of her wetsuit as though she weighed absolutely nothing. She hung limp over the abyss, praying to any god that would listen that he wouldn't drop her and assume she could swim.
Thankfully, he did not do that. But he did pull a fistful of what looked like eels out of the bag and started rubbing them all up and down her body. Ellie shrieked, struggling once more as he mashed the eels against her suit and essentially turned them into pulverized meat.
"What are you doing?" she yelled, twisting and turning because at least that felt like she was trying to get away from him.
He didn't reply. Instead, the big blue beast flipped her over in his grip so he was holding her by the ankle. Upside down now, she was glad to have the face mask to breathe because she was certain she would have gotten saltwater all up her nose, and that certainly would have made her drown.
