Proving to be more intuitive than she’d originally thought, Aegaeon’s brittle smile faded. “Have a seat then. How badly is this going to ruin my day?”
“A fair bit.”
“Ah. This calls for a drink then.” He opened a desk drawer and removed a dark green bottle, two large round glasses following. He poured generously, nudged one of them toward Kai, and then leaned back in his seat to study her. “The betrothal is broken.”
The cool liquid in the glass resembled melted silver and reflected a million iridescent colors, smelling like honey and blossoms with an underlying savory hint that coated her tongue when she sipped it. Kai drank half before she found her voice. “Cosmas told you?”
Aegaeon topped her glass off. His was already empty. “No. You told me.”
She blinked a few times. “I don’t understand.”
“Your behavior, dear one. And his behavior.” He sipped and gazed out the window. “I may be a noble, but I’m not blind. It’s none of my business, so I won’t ask how long you’ve been sleeping with Commander Manu, and I also won’t ask why Cosmas has stepped aside. It’s never pleasant to be a merwoman’s second choice.”
He knew everything. Suppressing the urge to grab the wastebasket and puke into it, Kai swallowed a few times, trying to banish the sour taste creeping into her mouth. “Please don’t punish him.” All her hopes of confidently strutting into Aegaeon’s office and declaring her intentions to change the underwater kingdom died, shriveling smaller than a dying anemone.
“Punish him?” Aegaeon swirled the contents of his glass, studying the reflective surface with bleary eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it. There would be no point. I do, however, want you to know the can of worms you’ll be opening if your hopes are to change our laws and abolish the gap between the classes.”
36
Checkmate
A dark sense of foreboding tightened Manu’s gut as he piloted the coral glider from the western dock. The plan was simple. Lago wanted them to descend upon the fields in force to recover the King’s Treasure, refusing to underestimate their enemy when Calypso’s army had been fattened by a few thousand Helicians and Farers as shock troops.
Manu led a battery of five hundred gliders, half of them ordered to continue west beyond the fields to rendezvous with the three skiffs of gliders sent by Port Bermuda and the additional three sent from the northern colonies of the Labrador Sea. Their brothers to the south had long ago fallen to the Gloom, its vile darkness ever advancing from below the equator.
There were three whale thumpers in their company, each populated by two hundred infantrymen armed to the teeth with harpoon blasters and swords. One of those three would continue onward to join the patrol seeking the source of the recent invasion. They had to have come from somewhere.
Lago hoped to outnumber the potential ambush awaiting them, while also moving his mers into position.
Since Cosmas needed another two to three days to recuperate from his internal injuries and concussion, he assigned Captain Adelpha to lead the charge of three hundred riders in his stead. He devised their strategy from his sickbed and gave her orders via a comm channel when they set forth from the port.
Some of their Myrmidons rode armored battle sharks equipped with harpoons, others on fierce laomedons reserved for only the best in the cavalry. Those needed no ranged weapon, deadly enough without them, but often equipped with missile launchers just the same. Manu had been one of a small number trained to master the beasts prior to his lateral shift to the artillery forces. They’d needed him there more.
Manu didn’t think his father ever forgave Aegaeon for that decision. He wanted his son’s progression up the career ladder to be identical to his own down to the last rung, ending in acquiring the esteemed role of general when Lago retired in a few decades. The man rode at the forefront of their formation, a proud figure on a dragonfin shark. The beast shone vibrant red, scaled pectoral fins sharp enough to slice a Gloombeast in two.
Still, Manu couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, no matter how soundly his father had devised their plan. The plan gave them the numbers and strategy they needed but seemed to be lacking something he couldn’t discern.
And it was fucking with him.
Manu grunted, still irritated after the scene in the Chamber of Heroes. While he agreed with the decision to decline Kai’s offer to accompany them, the impudent remarks had been inexcusable. As far as he was concerned, Kai had earned not only their respect, but their loyalty as well. And if it came down to it, he wondered how many Myrmidons would choose her over Lago. If any would at all.
It won’t come down to that, he thought, although it was more of a prayer and a wish.
“Ten minutes until we reach destination,” Lago said over the comm.
On Manu’s word, his gliders moved into formation, three skiffs of their battery breaking off into eighteen squads each. They drove past a bloated megalodon corpse, half-gutted but not taken by the Gloom.
Thank the gods.
As they were so large, their skin remarkably thick and difficult to penetrate, rarely did Calypso get her hands on one of those. He hadn’t seen a meg so close to Atlantis in years, unusual sight that it was. Uncommon, but not impossible.
Most mers dwelling in the rural sand beds developed the skill to steer away the greater predators. But once the Gloom took them, all bets were off, and even the wisest farmer or algae sharecropper found themselves trapped underground until Myrmidon forces arrived from the nearest outpost or city. If they survived the encounter at all.
Manu shuddered, still unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Minutes later, they came upon the decimated expanse of ocean terrain once green with algae and glittering with starfish. Sickness permeated the eastern hill face, turning it slimy and brown with rot. Riders arrived, infantrymen deployed from the whale thumpers, and the search for the treasure began.
Coasting over the ruined fields, Manu spotted only the occasional gold star among the decay and refuse. Most of the surviving fauna had fallen into the sink holes, which their infantrymen searched with gloved hands, wearing filtration masks in addition to their helms. No one wanted to inhale essence of decaying Gloombeast or taste the foulness. It couldn’t kill or corrupt, but it certainly made their kind ill and could take a mer out of commission for days.
The peace unnerved him, the lack of opposition raising the hairs on his nape. Their forces should have been up to their fins in monsters, vile creatures swarming everywhere.
“It was here that Princess Kailani believes she dropped the King’s Treasure,” Manu reported, marking the area with a light beam. Mers converged on the spot and began picking through the sand. “Be wary of the sandworm tunnels. There could be more abominations lying in wait.”
“Copy that, Commander.”
It didn’t take long for reports to spill in over the comms of their mers finding action to the west and south, picking off opposition along the way, all easy targets with no direction.
It isn’t like them to split off from the horde like this when they lack prey to hunt. What are they doing?
Cold prickles danced up and down his arms. A few of their swimmers entered battle, scarcely a fraction of the threat that slaughtered his squad.
Unable to bear any more, he patched into his father’s direct communication channel. “General, we need to retreat. Something is wrong. It may be an ambush—”
“I’m well aware, Commander. We have the numbers to handle anything Calypso throws at us. This was the reason for the additional units coming from the north and west.”
“General, what if we’ve been outplayed? What if the golden pearl was there for Kai to find? So we would return to do this maneuver? It’s too convenient. It’s too quiet.”
His father barked out a sharp laugh. “Calypso doesn’t have the wit to—”
At that moment, the hill split like a canker and the ocean bottom cracked open, an enormous, terrifying fissure forming benea
th them. The truest horror of the deep emerged from the hollowed swell.
In lieu of the horde they sought, Calypso rose above them, barnacles forming her armor, sea serpents a belt around her waist, her lower body a tangle of barbed cephalopod tentacles tapering to razor-thin points. Manu had never seen her, hearing only the occasional tale from a petrified survivor. None of those stories held up to the ghastly reality of the Gloom’s progenitor.
“It’s Calypso!” Leander cried over the communication channel. “Alert to all Atlantian channels. Calypso has been sighted. I repeat, Calypso has been sighted ten leagues west of Atlantis. Additional units needed.”
Volleys of energy bolts and harpoons sliced through the water, though they did little good against her. Tentacles grasped their vessels and used them as shields, deflecting bolts off their own coral gliders. A salvo of harpoons pierced sharkriders and tore fist-sized holes through infantrymen. What few slipped past her defenses struck aberrant barnacles the color of night.
Something golden winked from among the tentacled mass, unmarred and shining against the black.
One of her slimy limbs held the King’s Treasure.
“She has the pearl. It is vital we get it away from her no matter the cost,” Lago barked.
Tentacles skewered sharks and lanced through laomedon flesh easier than a sharp knife through salmon roe. As she felled their mer, more moved into position. The numbers brought to battle the horde proved insufficient for taking on the corrupted nymph.
His father hadn’t planned for that. Despite all his bluster and preparations, the one thing they hadn’t foreseen was an appearance from Calypso herself so close to Atlantis. She’d last been sighted over a month ago near the coast of Georgetown, over 2000 miles away to the south, her whereabouts afterward a mystery.
It became a slaughter, and they were no closer to claiming the pearl.
General Lago rode in with the sharkriders, pulling off evasive maneuvers that reminded Manu of why his father had once served as the Commander of the Cavalry himself. When he hurled his trident, Manu followed through with a tight line of focused energy from the coral glider’s blaster. Together, they burned a hole through her bloated trunk. The weapon flew back into Lago’s hand.
“Fuck, yes!” Manu pumped a fist and cheered before returning both hands to the controls, thumbs on the triggers. They had this. They had numbers unlike anything they’d ever had before.
They could take her.
Others followed them, a combination of misses and precise shots, the next volley of spears from the infantry peppering her flank.
“Defense!” Lago shouted. “Locking shield formation.”
A ripple of movement swept over the infantrymen in the front line, five hundred shields weaving together in rows and columns. When her tentacles bashed against them, they weathered the storm of her assault without a loss. The tide turned in their favor.
The man was a shitty father, but he knew how to lead, how to transform hopeless battle into guaranteed victory like alchemy performed with a trident. His orders came clear over the waves, executed flawlessly. They penned her, flanking from two sides with gliders, a third with sharkriders, from the fourth with laomedons. The pulse of battle sent adrenaline pounding through his veins. He piloted the glider like he never had before, weaving in and out and under, evasive maneuvers always beyond her reach.
And then the horde came.
“Shields out!” Lago roared above the din of battle.
Her behemoth size made her strong, but it also made her vulnerable to attack, giving them a larger target to focus their assault. Unfortunately, her skin was thick as steel, the rounds from their largest harpoon no better than stabbing a great white with a sewing needle. They needed every unit focused on her, though that was an impossibility once her monsters swarmed over their ranks.
“We have movement behind us on our six!” Leander shouted, his sharp cry tearing Manu’s attention to his rear.
“Team Delta, fall back and cover our rear,” Manu ordered a portion of his glider patrol.
“Urgent assistance needed approximately thirteen leagues south by southwest of the Fields of Gold!” a desperate cry came over the communication channel. “We are outnumbered and surrounded.”
Similar cries came in from others, and a slow understanding dawned over Manu when he looked at the situation. Looked at what was happening, at the numbers spilling over the field.
Thank fuck they’d had a backup plan.
“Now!” Lago cried.
The largest type of spear in their armory hurtled through the water, launched from the approaching whale thumper in the distance, its aim no longer obstructed by the hill Calypso had demolished. Thirty feet of steel plunged into her chest but didn’t reach her heart. She ripped it out, polluting the water around her further.
Manu swore, as did his father.
When another whale thumper fired, their vile opponent batted it aside, each spear thereafter equally useless once her attention fixed on them.
“We need to distract her and give them the chance for a clear shot,” Manu said.
“Any ideas, Commander?” Leander asked.
“Follow my lead. I’ll go in from the front. Focus your assault on her flank where the barnacles have been removed. I’m going to distract her.”
Gods, I’m sorry, Kai. So fucking sorry, he thought, flipping one switch then another, diverting every ounce of power to his thrusters. He couldn’t ask one of his men to do what he himself wouldn’t do.
Most of them had families. He didn’t.
Leander had a wife. Most of his men had families.
And all Manu had was a father who wasn’t a father. Bitterly, he gripped the accelerator and rolled it forward, praying Kai forgave him for not returning to the city.
His glider zipped through the blood-tinted water, a mechanical knife slicing toward her torso. The collision tossed him into the console, bounced him in the seat, and sent pain slamming into his forehead. Calypso shrieked her fury and her pain not once, but twice.
Through the network of cracks in his glider’s viewscreen, Manu saw an enormous spear protruding from her chest. It had to have hit her heart.
Instead of flailing in death throes, a wicked grin split her mouth open wide, revealing rows upon rows of shark teeth. A tentacle wrapped around his craft and squeezed until the seals cracked and water flooded inside.
Calypso must have had more than one heart, which meant his risky maneuver had been in vain, all for nothing. Closing his eyes, he waited for death.
Sharply, without warning, the glider jerked again and popped free, falling to the ocean floor among their Atlantian dead, where it stirred flotsam and bits of Gloombeast. Above them, he saw his father’s battleshark fiercely biting the same tentacle, its rider thrusting his trident into Calypso’s rubbery flesh.
He also saw the moment his father died.
Calypso’s barb rent Lago’s cuirass like tissue paper and burrowed through him, emerging from his back in a red cloud. Helpless to do anything but shout, Manu’s fingers froze over the controls, body rigid and unmoving. Reflexes failed him.
There was nothing he could do.
As the hundred remaining gliders converged on the scene, Calypso rocketed away into the darkness, carrying with her the prize to top all prizes.
Her goal had never been to further weaken their army or storm Atlantis.
She had what she came for.
In the hours following their crushing failure, Kai listened to debates from the Council of Lords regarding the promotion of a new general. In an unanticipated display of empathy, her uncle dismissed Manu from duty for the evening.
Then he arranged for a memorial to honor Lago’s sacrifice.
“Have you seen Commander Manu?”
The sentry skated his teeth against his lower lip. “I have, Princess. Saw him only a moment ago heading up the stairs toward General Lago’s quarters. He will probably be gathering his father’s personal effects for the
memorial.”
“Oh.”
Kai hung back and reconsidered traipsing upstairs. Manu deserved a quiet moment.
But he also deserved someone there alongside him.
Torn between potentially sticking her nose where it didn’t belong and leaving a friend—more than a friend, considering their last moments together—to suffer alone, she took the stairs and reached the general’s personal chambers soon after. Each member of great importance to the monarchy, excluding High Priest Hipponax, who preferred his personal rooms in the Temple of Thalassa, received a suite on the uppermost floors.
At first, she didn’t see him in the dimmed suite, the room cast in shadow. Manu sat on a bench positioned beside a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city below, his silhouette highlighted by the colors of a thousand lights.
She saw nothing but his stiff spine and downward tilted head, damp hair concealing his face. He’d already lost a mother. Now Calypso’s viciousness had stolen his father. No platitudes from the mortal world seemed sufficient. And as no words could convey what was on her mind, Kai stepped closer and slipped her arms around him.
Manu said nothing, and time stood still. She waited for his rejection or for him to rebuke her, and when none came, she relaxed into him. His arms slid around her waist, and he tilted his brow against her middle.
Sometimes silence was better than words.
If you loved the hell out of this and want to read another romance with fantasy elements, check out my new release, All That Glitters.
Manu and Kai will return this winter. Check out my newsletter to keep up to date at http://www.dominotaylor.com/newsletter
All That Glitters
About the Author
Domino Taylor is one-half of the pen name Vivienne Savage. This is her debut as a solo author and her first complete, unassisted work. A video gamer by nature, she considers herself a horror movie aficionado and spends her evenings reading historical romance. She also enjoys the outdoors, jogging with her dog, riding horses, and going to renaissance fairs. Domino is a former correctional officer, registered nurse, and the mother of a brilliant son and daughter.
Return to Atlantis: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 1) Page 26
