by Lani Lenore
“De Pleasure Chamber,” she started, “do jou know what is inside?”
Innominata tensed at the mention of that. She thought of all she knew, of all she had seen and heard. She thought of the sentence she had handed down to exchange that fate.
“I’ve heard it is a creature,” she said. “They say that it is meant for pleasure, but I don’t believe it. If it were, why would they only put slaves inside there? I’ve never seen one come back. They shuffle us around and think we won’t notice. I do.”
Bliss smiled, pleased with her observation.
“It’s a kraken,” Bliss revealed. “Legends say dere are only two of its kind in de whole sea. It was brought here centuries ago, and dey treat it as some god. De priestesses watch over it and feed it. Dey sacrifice to it. Our sisters dat are taken? Live bait.”
Innominata shuttered, but she had suspected as much. Finally after so long, she knew that the choice she had made had been based on truth, even though it had led to doom.
“I’m going inside dere to send a message, and den I will flee dese waters. But jou will remain. Jou must watch—”
“No,” Innominata insisted strongly. “I cannot continue like this. I must get away.”
“Jou haven’t thought dis through. I have. I know what I’m prepared for. Jou only have jour eye on a dream in de distance. One dat jou cannot have. Stay here and wait.”
Innominata shook her head, resolute. “I’m going with you. If you’re going to seek freedom, I must have it as well.”
“Jou insufferable—”
“Bliss,” she interrupted, her voice firm, knowing that the idea of Nathan had given her strength. “I have waited. I cannot stay here.”
This seemed to anger the dark one. “Jou would spend years of jour life following dat human around, even witout ever speaking to him?”
The girl did not have to think it through.
“I would be happy to live that life,” she admitted. “It would be better than this one.”
Bliss closed her silver eyes in contemplation, shaking her head.
“Alright,” she said finally. “But fall behind and I will leave jou here.”
The girl nodded, understanding.
“Let’s go den. We have much to do.”
3
It was said that the Mistress had been a great warrior long before she had taken the throne. The ruler was too young to have seen the Sea King, but she had sought conflict in the waters, slaying beasts and making her name known among her kind. Her claim was that she had once defeated a kraken single-handedly, though now it seemed she had not killed it at all. She had wounded it perhaps, brought it to the kingdom as a token—as a replacement for their fallen god.
“Do you really know what’s in there?” Innominata asked.
Bliss did not waste her power making them invisible, but they were careful as they slipped along to the chamber. It was deep beneath the catacombs below the palace, near the lowest point, where the waters were as dark and crushing as heavy stones.
“Jes,” Bliss was quick to respond. “I killed a priestess and took on her form. I saw it for myself.”
The girl couldn’t question that further. Bliss was once again full of so many wonders. Since the Mistress had been unable to kill the creature, Innominata wondered what Bliss’s odds were, but yet she had to see it for herself. She had to know that there was truth behind what she had believed all these years.
“What will you do?” Innominata asked. “You intend to kill it?”
“More or less.”
“What does that mean?”
“I intend to make it angry. I intend to free it, and I intend for it to kill as many of dem as possible.”
“That’s not what you sa—”
“Jou object?” Bliss asked, whirling. “Do jou not tink it would be just desserts for de Mistress to be killed by her own pet? To scar dis society dey have built and fashioned against us?”
Innominata could not argue with that, though she would rather have just fled from it all, and yet if this would bring about the end, how could she turn away?
“What can I do to help?” she relented.
Bliss closed her eyes once more, clearly put off.
“Jou really ought to wait…”
“If I do, I will lose you, and then you will flee without me.”
Bliss smiled a little. “Steer clear den. Jou may be able to use jour voice against it if it proves too much for me. I have my aim. A need a bit of its blood to draw power from it, and I will be able to use its own energy against it.”
“And when we flee?”
“When it is time, a way will be opened.”
Cryptic, always. Could she not just say what would happen? Perhaps Bliss did not know. Instead, she merely had faith.
“Why now?” Innominata asked, feeding off her own urge to know all. “What has made you wait?”
“De time is close.”
“For what?”
“Enough,” Bliss said, halting her. “If jou and I survive dis, perhaps dere will be time to tell jou. Not now.”
Strong stone doors blocked the way to the Pleasure Chamber. It would normally take the strength of several guards to open the door, but Bliss was able to pull it forward with the will of her mind. The sound of stone rubbing against stone disturbed the silence, but all was quiet down in the dark. Innominata considered the silent priestesses and where they might have been lurking, but still, they seemed to be alone. Bliss did not look at her as she swam forward, but before she passed the doors, the girl stopped her.
“Wait,” Innominata insisted, “You don’t intend to use me, do you? This is not some trick…”
“I wanted jou to stay where jou were,” Bliss reminded her. “Jou are de one who wanted to be involved. Do jou want to turn back?”
“No.”
“Den come.”
It took several moments for the thick dark to dissipate in her vision. When she was able to see, she witnessed the horror that awaited her there. The chamber was littered with bones of her kind—skeletal remains in the wake of a monster’s meal. She saw many of them, their bodies almost human; could see the twin bones which curved downward and made up their tails, arching like they might have been legs trapped inside there, but the flesh had been eaten away—every last bit.
Innominata kept her eyes opened, thinking that at any moment a stray tendril might creep up to snare her. Her head jerked about to see what might have been lurking in the shadows at the edges of the chamber, but each time she looked, there was nothing. She stayed near to Bliss, as if the silver one would not simply leave her behind for the sake of her mission.
This chamber of pleasures was certainly not what was promised, however. Innominata had never been fooled.
They were several moments into the space, and the girl grew more confused over their purpose. She saw nothing at all, as if the chamber were empty. Where was the monstrous creature that she had been promised? She began to fear the lie that she had been handed—by Bliss, by them all. Was her idea of this place and this punishment anything more than a ruse? She wanted to demand the truth from Bliss, but dared not speak. Then the truth was clear to her and her eyes widened. The chamber was not empty. The creature was built into the chamber.
Heavy stones were laid across its face in the floor, but there was rust-colored flesh between them. The stones shifted as the kraken breathed. There were openings in places—an eye here and there, and in the center of the room was an open circle of arranged stones which surrounded the creature’s great maw. That beak was closed, but Innominata could easily imagine it open, awaiting any feast it might snare.
She searched the walls of the chamber as the darkness parted for her eyes, and she could see the massive tentacles resting along the edges. A few of them were attached to the walls like vines, feeling, knowing, tasting. She wondered if it could taste her fear. Was it awake? Did it know they were there? It might soon.
Bliss moved down to the floor of the chamber,
and Innominata was not sure she wanted to follow. She lingered further away, leaving the silver-eyed nymph to her work.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked quietly, hoping that her voice did not make the water stir.
“Blood,” Bliss said simply. She selected a spot where flesh was revealed between the stones, drawing a dagger with a bone handle. This place was safe, away from the mouth and the walls. Bliss did not waste time or give a warning. She stabbed into the face of the kraken, releasing a cloud of blood into the water, and then a rumble made the chamber quake, and Innominata knew the beast had awoken.
Breaking away was always terrifying. She reminded herself of that. Beyond one horror was another, and only to face them all could she be free. She held onto that, but it did not make her feel better.
She could not watch what Bliss was doing, only look all around her as she felt the water stir. From the sides, tentacles reached in, searching for the pain. She drifted clear of them, trying to keep her wits. Bliss was quick to get what she needed and move from the site, so that when the waving tendrils reached in, they grasped nothing.
Bliss raised herself up in the chamber, looming in the waters at the center, a silver goddess. She began to raise her hands, and Innominata felt a pulse in the water as she saw what the dark one intended to do. The stones in the floor were beginning to lift, rising off the kraken’s face. It was an amazing feat, truly, but what of the result? Without that weight, would it be free? Would it manage the energy to burst out of its prison and take revenge on its captors? That was just what Bliss was trying to do, and also like Bliss, the kraken would not care who got hurt in the process.
Not even me.
Innominata watched the powerful nymph before her, raising the heavy stones in unison, marveling. Bliss was not always of high moral standing, but if anyone could deliver them, she was the one who could do it. Innominata recognized it then. After all this time, she believed.
Absorbed as she was, she did not realize that one of the tentacles was close until it looped around the end of her tail, and then it was too late.
Her awe and admiration turned to panic. She tried to swim but the tendril only tightened, and she was not strong enough to pry it away. As with hands, the kraken knew it had snared something—a helpless nymph in its clutches. Another tentacle tucked around her waist, and then the fear was real.
There was nothing pleasurable about it, as the lie had been. The suckers clung to her, bruising her skin, damaging her scales. It hurt as much as anything she’d ever felt, and she imagined her skin being pulled off in chunks until she was nothing but bones on the chamber floor. She struggled, but the weight nearly crushed her. The tentacles tightened, and she thought they might twist her apart.
“Use jour voice!” Bliss shouted at her, aware enough to notice what had happened.
Innominata was not sure what Bliss intended for her to do, whether to use a song to soothe the creature or to hurt it with a burst of noise. The girl did what she felt with urgency. She screeched, letting her voice ring out long and high. The creature would either snap her in half or let her go. She twisted to make the task easier, and then Bliss was at her side, slicing at the tentacles wrapped around her. Swiftly, they began to retreat.
“Don’t die,” Bliss scolded. “Stay close. Just a bit more.”
The golden one kept near to Bliss, massaging her aching skin. When a tentacle came close, she shrieked at it, her voice leaving an echoing tunnel in the water, and the appendage shied away.
Bliss began to raise the blocks again. They had lost a bit of altitude when she’d stopped to help Innominata, but she lifted them high once more, and then began to propel the blocks into the far wall, weakening it, making it break apart.
The kraken was coming alive as Bliss had wanted.
The chamber ruptured and the palace above it rang with instability. Would it crumble? Innominata guessed that Bliss might be happy if it did. She was not sure if she would feel anything at all.
The creature’s disturbance had alerted the nymphs and priestesses now. They may not have been able to stop the way the beast was tearing the chamber apart, but they would come in droves to discover what had happened.
The golden mermaid was too busy looking up at the column of the palace above her to realize that Bliss was already fleeing through the open wall. She’d saved her life from the kraken, but she’d not bothered to pull her along as she’d fled.
“Wait!” the girl cried, starting off, but a grip on her arm stopped her. Immediately, she began to struggle, but when she turned back, she saw that a palace guard had snared her. Innominata wondered if the nymph would simply think she was leftovers from the chamber, and she was not sure if she was lucky or not when the guard seemed to recognize her.
“What are you doing out of your cell again?” The nymph questioned, and the blood drained from the golden one’s face. “This is no place for you.”
As the kraken was claiming its own space in the water, the priestesses trying to soothe it while the nymphs attempted to force it back down with spears, the guard took control over Innominata. It was too much to hope for that she could be lost in the chaos, and Bliss was already gone from sight. Her only friend had abandoned her.
The guard took her out of the fray—as she was the Mistress’s favorite. She could have struggled further, but she did not. The nymph put her directly back in the brig, exactly where she had come from, and this time, despite the chaos below, the guard stayed to watch.
Chapter Ten
Sea Witch
1
Two centuries ago, a pair of hatchlings were born, among so many others. One was of the perfect sort, and grew to be mighty and strong among her kind. The other was imperfect, more like a human with the tail of a shark, but what she lacked in physical strength, she made up for in mental acuity.
From an early time, the two were savage toward one another. Even as the imperfects were still trying to find their place and use in the society, there was animosity. It was no different between these two. Every action was done in spite toward the other. Perhaps each secretly believed they might be the best fit for the Sea King’s throne, but that was a subject unspoken. In all that they did, from songs to battle, they sought to outwit each other.
Thus it was no surprise that when the Mistress came to power, Bliss was the first that she took as a slave. Death was too good for that one. The Mistress wanted her to suffer for a lifetime. Bliss wanted the same for her.
But Bliss had learned so much more. She was able to create an illusion of her captivity and suffering, and lived much of her life free of the palace and the Mistress, but the ruler always had a sharp eye out for her. When she was feeling particularly unhappy, Bliss was her favorite to torture.
The silver-eyed nymph always endured, distancing herself from it, building a nest of her hatred, waiting until it was time to strike back.
Bliss would never forget—never forgive. The Mistress would never stop.
They were two of a set, with as much resolve in their grudge as hatred in their hearts. They would continue to despise each other until one of them fell.
2
It was days before the Mistress and her warriors were able to drive the kraken away. The impromptu battle had turned into a small war. Still, they were not able to kill the legendary creature, and their only hope had been to encourage a retreat from their waters. With destruction that had ruined the upper levels of the palace, it was with deep anger and exhaustion that the Mistress returned to her throne.
Innominata and others like her had suffered for this. The warriors had needed to regain their strength after the fight. The girl had hoped that this would cause her recent capture to be overlooked, but she had hoped in vain. For a time, there was silence on the matter, but the Mistress was only to gaze at her from the throne before she had snatched the girl up by her bonds.
“Don’t think I have forgotten,” she said. “You were out of your cell again. Why?”
“Tell
dem I tried to steal jou.” Bliss’s voice came into her head, instructing her what to do.
“It was that sea witch,” Innominata claimed. “She tried to kidnap me, but I resisted, Mistress.”
She pleaded with her eyes, half wondering if she might have power of influence over the other. Perhaps she did. The girl had to believe in the fact that she might cheat death, just as Bliss had believed in magic, and she might encourage her own fate.
“Sea witch?” the Mistress asked. “Who do you mean?”
“The silver-tailed one.” The ruler’s face fell. “She’s been whispering to me. She wanted me to watch you, but I would take no part. She tried to steal me to get back at you, but I managed to get away.”
The Mistress eyed her, searching her expression, and finally a sly smile seemed to fade the anger as it came over her lips.
“Don’t worry, my pet,” she said—more of her false tenderness. “I will never let that happen to you again. For now—” She reached down to collect some brackets, then bound Innominata’s neck to a chain that was attached to the throne. “You will stay here.”
3
The girl was silent, defeated, betrayed. She sat in the shadow of the throne, irons clamped about her neck, and kept her eyes on the floor. The nymphs were slowly picking up the pieces of the ruin, but it was not as if they would rebuild. They would leave it as it had fallen and blame another for the loss.
The guards had described the dark-skinned nymph who’d fled the chamber, yet even without that, the Mistress seemed to know who was responsible. There was, apparently, a history of bad blood with Bliss from long ago. The Mistress regretted not simply killing her.
Innominata had done her part as a witness, spreading the word of Bliss’s power, and exactly what she’d been able to do in the chamber. Her original assessment of sea witch had struck as a title that the nymphs hated and likewise feared.
“She says you’ve been banished,” Innominata sent to Bliss.
Her tone was emotionless. She guessed she may have been talking to herself. To her surprise, the dark one responded.
