Cold basalt bit into her wrists. Heavy iron cuffs anchored her arms to the altar's slick surface, carved deep with spiral gutters designed to funnel every drop of red down into the cistern below. "You always had atrocious taste in decor, Surien," Sariyah grated out, her voice raspy against the damp, brine-soaked air of the cavern. "Chains? Really? A plush velvet divan would show far more hospitality." Rajah Surien did not laugh. Stripped of his grand velvet doublet, he wore linen robes stained yellow at the hem from sulfur water. Behind him, resting in a shallow pool of black brine, lay the thing he had hidden from the world. Once a girl of twelve, his daughter was now an agonizing knot of swollen gray hide, barnacles crusting her sunken temples, her chest heaving with gills that clicked like dry beetles. "Mock me all you wish, girl," Surien murmured, lifting a curved bronze chalice. His hands shook with frantic paternal rot. "Your blood sings with the tide. Hers is turning to curdled silt. You will empty, and she will breathe. A fair exchange for a runaway chattel." "I was never yours to balance on a ledger." She rattled the bindings, wincing as raw metal chafed open yesterday's scars. "Though if you wanted my blood so badly, you could have just offered dinner first. I prefer crab." Surien pressed a jagged stone dagger against the palm of his own hand, letting his offering drip into the carved channel. He began the incantation. The words were an ancient, guttural dialect of the deep trenches, churning through the vault like grinding millstones. The floor responded. The runes carved into the black rock flared an ugly, bruised violet. Pain pierced her core. It was not a physical blade, but an agonizing pull that seized her pulse, dragging the resonance in her marrow toward the cistern. Her vision blurred into crimson static. The cursed child in the brine pool arched its spine, a wretched hiss tearing past needle-sharp teeth as Sariyah's vital heat began leaping the gap between them through violet arcs of raw sorcery. Sariyah bared her teeth, refusing him a scream. "Is that... all? My grandmother pinched harder... when I stole mangos." "Quiet, wretch," Surien hissed, sweat plastering graying hair to his forehead as he widened the channel. A wet *splat* echoed from above. Surien paused, knife hovering. From the stalactites sixty feet overhead, a heavy, armored ball tumbled downward. Kratip unfolded mid-plummet, his webbed, scaly wings snapping out with an indignant screech. The beast did not aim for Surien. He aimed straight for the glowing runic tether connecting the altar to the pool. Kratip landed with all four claws dug into the braided kelp-rope conduit, his triangular snout opening wide to chomp down on the enchanted weave with the ferocity of a creature denied supper for three straight days. "What is that vermin?!" Surien bellowed. Kratip severed the central thread with a spiteful crunch. The magical current snapped like an overdrawn bowstring. Violet fire rebounded into the altar, exploding outward in a blinding concussive flash. The backlash struck Surien square in the ribs, launching the governor across the stone floor. The cavern's reinforced iron portcullis blew inward with an ear-splitting roar. Water surged through the opening first, waist-deep and frothing. Riding the crest of the breach was a juvenile six-finned trench-beast, its mottled green hide slick under the torchlight, snapping its jaws to shatter the shields of Surien’s elite guard. Atop the creature’s harness sat Kenan, howling a battle cry that cracked mid-pitch, his twin daggers whirling. And marching beside the beast, soaking wet and utterly merciless, came Jaran. He moved without wasting an ounce of breath. His keris caught the first guard under the chin, twisting once before ripping clear in an arc of spray. He pivoted, parrying a halberd, sliding beneath the reach of two armored sentries to sever their hamstrings with chilling, practiced efficiency. His gaze cut through the sulfur steam, locking onto Sariyah chained against the rock. The knot at the corner of his jaw slipped, his wet mouth flattening into a line as cold as dead coral. "Kenan! The boy guards the pool!" Jaran roared, driving his elbow into a soldier's windpipe. "I'm not a boy, Commander, I'm a terror!" Kenan shrieked back, clinging desperately as his leviathan pup swallowed a guard's spear whole and slammed the man through a wooden supply rack. The magical backlash had shattered the brittle stone around Sariyah’s left shackle. Snarling, she threw her entire weight sideways. The iron ring tore free of the cracked rock, taking a patch of skin with it. Freeing her right arm with a sharp kick against the loosened anchor pin, she swung the three feet of heavy chain still locked around her left wrist like a flail. Surien was already scrambling up, his bronze dagger abandoned for a long, serrated naval blade. Veins netted red across the whites of his eyes. "You ruined her! You ruined my daughter's chance!" "You ruined yourself the day you put a collar on me, Surien!" Sariyah launched herself off the altar. The governor swung a vicious downward arc meant to cleave her collarbone. Sariyah ducked, shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet as the brine swept past. She whipped the heavy iron chain upward, wrapping the links around his forearm, twisting hard to torque his joint until bone snapped beneath the leather vambrace. Surien shrieked, dropping his sword into the sloshing water. Sariyah didn't give him room to breathe. She drove her heel into his gut, spun on the wet stone, and brought the trailing iron links crashing across his temple. The tyrant crumpled to his knees in the rising muck, spitting dark bile, pinned beneath the sharp toe of her boot. "Look at me," she panted, her knuckles bruised and bleeding, ribs aching under each ragged draw of air. "Not a concubine. Not a sacrifice. Just the street dog that bit your throat out." Jaran reached them in three strides, kicking Surien’s dropped blade into the depths, his free hand immediately clamping onto Sariyah's upper arm—checking her pulse, checking for wounds, his touch frantic despite the rigid set of his mouth. "You are intact," Jaran breathed, his knuckles white where they bit through her soaked sleeve. "Told you I'd be the shield, handsome," she wheezed, managing a bloody smirk. "Though you took your sweet time. Kratip had to do the heavy lifting." The pangolin chirped from atop the unconscious altar girl's head, proudly chewing on a piece of ceremonial ribbon. Beneath Sariyah's boot, Surien began to gurgle. It was a wet, wretched sound that bubbled into a laugh. "You think... the Brotherhood shields you?" Surien choked, his blood mixing with the seawater swirling around their knees. His uninjured hand, hidden beneath the gray tide, gripped an iron ring set flush into the floor. Jaran’s focus snapped downward. "Move!" Surien yanked the ring with the last ounce of his strength. "Drown with her, then." Deep beneath their boots, massive counterweights dropped with a groaning shudder. The seaward sluice gates—massive grates holding back the subterranean ocean pressure—slammed open into the cavern walls. A deafening roar swallowed the chamber as a solid wall of black water smashed through the grates, surging up to their chests in a heartbeat, dragging them toward the abyssal trench below.

Black Blood