His golden eyes are familiar in more ways than one.
A memory surfaces, murky as deep water. Childhood glimpses in the upper spires, a face I'd seen but never truly looked at. A grumpy Elder who had seen too much, spoken too loudly, and eventually disappeared from the Reef entirely.
"Thalos?" The name escapes me, a bubble of pure shock.
Kael bristles behind me, the water charged with his protective energy.
He surges forward, placing his body between me and the copper cage. The protective instinct takes over his entire frame, muscles tensing as he bares his jagged teeth at the old mer.
"Who are you?" Kael demands, his voice a dangerous, vibrating threat. "Where is Bolt? What did you do to the eel?"
Thalos rolls his eyes dramatically, the tired gesture now somehow familiar. He lets out a loud, scratchy sigh that sounds remarkably like rustling seaweed.
"Iam Bolt, you hot-headed predator," Thalos grumbles. His voice holds the exact snarky cadence of the electric fish. "Or I was. Until I was saved by a rather brilliant old Witch of the Deep."
Kael freezes. His head tilts, dark eyes scanning the copper bars, then returning to the old mer. I watch as comprehension dawns slowly on his scarred face.
I turn to Mira, my tail stirring the sand. "Mira. What did you do?"
Mira's smile widens, fragile but triumphant. She points a trembling, pale finger toward the floor near the cage.
A rusted human syringe lies in the sand. The glass is empty, the swirling purple liquid gone.
"I recognized the unique color of the brew," Mira says. Her voice is a rough scrape, but it carries deep pride. "Oona kept her most potent reversal draughts on the highest shelf. It was a transmutation antidote. I knew it could never cure the Abyssal rot in my own veins. But I knew it could at least break a beast-binding spell."
She looks at the old mer in the cage, her eyes shining with fierce satisfaction.
"I injected the large eel," Mira reveals. "The strange eel with familiar, golden eyes. The one who speaks like a grumpy old Elder. The curse is shattered. He is free."
Thalos rubs his mossy beard thoughtfully, his golden eyes studying us with unnerving intelligence.
"Injected, you say?" Thalos complains, though the gratitude shines bright in his ancient eyes. "That rusted human contraption went straight into the tip of my tail, stung like a swarm of jellyfish.”
Mira's smile widens, fragile but triumphant. Her attention remains fixed on the bone chimes, the clicking sound a gentle rhythm in the quiet shell.
“But the curse shattered,” Thalos continues. “My mind and body belong to me again. Now, get me out of this copper contraption before my ancient joints fuse together. There's no electric bite left to fry your hands. The door's weakened."
Kael swims toward the cage without hesitation, his frame blocking my view. I follow, positioning myself at his side, my fingers finding purchase on the copper bars near the rusted latch.
Together, we pull.
Our combined strength strains against the heavy metal. The rusted latch groans under our pressure before snapping with a sharp crack. The door swings inward with a metallic shriek.
Thalos swims free, his long, thin arms stretching high above his head. His joints pop like breaking coral, a series of loud cracks that make me wince in sympathy.
"By the abyssal depths," Thalos groans, rubbing his lower back with a grimace. "Ten years cramped inside that beastly form. I need proper sustenance. Shark, find me some food."
A hundred questions burn like hot coals in my throat.
I want the truth of the lost prophecies, the full measure of the Council's betrayal, the exact horrors they inflicted to forge this curse on him. I want to know how he escaped, and how he found himself stuck inside the giant shell—
The rumble of my own stomach reminds me of our priority.
Kael swims to the storage nets, his movements economical and precise. He pulls out a cluster of raw clams and a large slab of scavenged deep-sea crab meat. With his strong fingers, he shucks the clams efficiently, dividing the portions on a flat piece of slate.
We huddle together on the sand floor, a strange assembly of broken pieces.
A disgraced Red Prince, an exiled Trench Monster, a Vanguard Witch who saved an Elder, and the ancient mer himself—reborn from an electric eel.
