I stab blindly into the dark with my tiny ceremonial dagger.
The short blade strikes something hard. It hits bone or dense cartilage and skitters uselessly off the target. I strike again. Desperate, sobbing uncontrollably into the freezing water. The sharp blade finally hits the soft tissue of his torso. The Great White jerks backward, surprised by the sudden sting.
He releases his crushing grip on my shoulder.
But he doesn't let me go because I hurt him. He lets me go because it wants to reposition his jaws for a fatal bite.
I swim backward, tumbling helplessly through the turbulent water. My left arm hangs uselessly at my side, paralyzed by the devastating nerve damage. A billowing cloud of dark red blooms in the water around me. Bright and horrifying.
My blood. A blank thought forms, staring in morbid fascination at the expanding cloud. I'm bleeding to death.
The grim realization is slow and distant. Medical shock sets in rapidly. It wraps my panicked mind in a numbing layer of heavy cotton.
I look down into the abyss.
Kael is there.
He finally spots me.
His heavy head is snapped back, looking upward. His dark eyes are wide with a pure, unadulterated horror breaking his stoic, monstrous mask. He spots the cloud of blood. He spots the towering Great White turning its heavy body for a second, fatal pass.
Kael moves.
He does not swim. He explodes.
His body launches upward, abandoning his position with the terrifying force of a thing that has nothing left to lose. He hits the Great White exactly as the larger shark opens his bloody mouth to finish me.
The physical impact is terrifying to witness.
Kael is significantly smaller than the Great White, but he hits the beast with the devastating force of a falling meteor. He slams his heavily scarred shoulder directly into the shark-mer's sensitive gills, right at his ribcage, driving the predator off its attack course with a sickening crunch of displaced cartilage.
The Great White snaps wildly in the water. His bloody teeth click shut mere inches from my face, the sound a dull vibration through the water that rattles my broken ribs.
Kael roars. A silent, furious vibration of displaced air that I feel in my very bones. He grabs the Great White's towering dorsal fin and twists his entire body. He uses his own weight and the ocean's gravity to drag the flailing shark down toward the abyss.
They tumble away from me. A chaotic, churning tangle of gray bodies and thrashing tails that creates a vortex of silt and blood.
I am alone in the open water. I'm bleeding. I'm sinking.
I look up toward the high Ridge.
My assigned squad is up there. But the celebrated Reef Guard is not watching me. They are engaged in a brutal, desperate slaughter.
The gray swarm did not stop when the Great White broke formation to claim his bright red prize. The rest of the horde crashed into the glittering shield wall. The freezing water above me is a chaotic, churning nightmare of thrusting iron pikes, screams, broken crab-chitin, and snapping jaws.
I fulfilled my horrific duty. I distracted their most powerful, terrifying leader. I gave the Vanguard a tactical opening to hold the ridge.
But they are still outnumbered.
Through the cloudy, blood-stained water, the Vanguard Commander comes into focus. He hovers near the bright woven banner, his face pale behind his iron helm as he surveys his collapsing line. He registers the overwhelming size of the gray swarm tearing through his betta soldiers. He spots the terrifying bulk of the Great White thrashing in the open water. He registers the grinding Shell rising from the deep trenches behind Kael.
He looks down at me.
Our eyes meet across the freezing, bloody distance.
I lift my good right arm. A pathetic, trembling gesture. A desperate plea for my life.
Please help me.
