Shattered by the Sea Lord - Starla Night Page 0,94
to still summon the kraken? This position was perfect to make eye contact with Itime and Konomelu.
“You claim that your city is the only one besides Lusca who has the will to stand against the All-Council.”
Nuno hunched, groaning. Konomelu would have to push his and Nuno’s rocks at once, then explain on the dive. Was he strong enough?
“So it will be a pity when they come to rescue you and are wiped out. It has been too long since Lusca destroyed an army. Lieutenant Orike, go to the city’s echo point and transmit that we are holding this Ciran.”
Lieutenant Orike made the slashing salute, gathered his warriors, and flew from the ceremony.
“When we have wiped out the army, I will give you the privilege of being sacrificed to the kraken with what remains of your best warriors. Perhaps, if your city is as arrogant and stupid as you, they will even send their king.”
How could Ciran save this? Think.
“Now, witness what happens to those who defy me.” The king returned to the dais and pulled the lever.
Cranks turned with clicking and clanking. Below, the mirror stones rotated away from the trench.
The kraken howls changed tone. Tentacles writhed like a nest of blood-red worms in the shadows within the trench. They slithered out, not eight or ten, but fifty, a hundred and probed the coral forest, invading and crushing the prison cell he had just vacated. Longer tendrils pushed on the bell and the very longest wrapped around the stalk of the Life Tree.
Too late.
Too late, too late, too late.
Visceral fear stabbed Ciran. Ancestral dread of the kraken flowed in the darkest tunnels of his blood.
The king pushed the lever past its starting point. The mirror stones rotated back toward the trench.
Tentacles shied away from the Life Tree and retreated into the trench.
How could Ciran possibly release that?
The king pulled the lever into the middle, its starting position, and the mirror stones stopped rotating. The kraken writhed at the lip of the trench, its tentacles just emerging like a questing mouth.
“No one defies Lusca,” the king intoned to his horror-stricken audience of warriors and recruits. “I control the kraken, the mightiest beast to ever roam the seas. No one will stop me. Whoever tries will die.”
Any moment now, the king would order his warriors to drag the rocks out to the middle of the trench and drop them.
He needed another plan. One that protected the young fry.
But how?
He needed…
Doot-doot-doot.
A small reef squid jetted past, its skin flickering with multi-colored sparks, signaling in a code only another squid could understand.
That was odd. They rarely left their surface reefs. For the length of his imprisonment, Ciran hadn’t seen a reef squid. Why would one dive this deep?
Another reef squid motored over his shoulder, and a third one torpedoed down over his head.
Ah.
Relief flooded his bones. He rotated his shoulders. His chest lifted, buoyed with squid-shaped threads of hope.
And a new plan snapped into place.
He tried to catch the eye of Itime or Konomelu, but they fixed on the kraken with horror, just like everyone else.
He tried to vibrate a message just to them. “Hey. Hey.”
The king looked up. “Atlantean, are you trying to beg for your life? Or the future lives of your unfortunate city? Do not bother. Surface humans stole Lusca’s mercy along with our sacred brides.”
“I do not need mercy.” Ciran needed time. He straightened, stretched, and rolled his neck, loosening into a ready stance. “No Atlantis warriors will ever be thrown into this trench.”
“What a pity. Lieutenant Orike assured me you thought they would try to rescue you.”
“I do not need rescue. But you do.”
The king’s eyes narrowed. He had not reached this age by underestimating his enemies. He glanced at Itime and Konomelu, who still focused on the kraken tentacles as though unable to tear their mesmerized gazes away, and then to the young fry. But Ciran was a lone warrior, unarmed—again—surrounded by a city larger than Atlantis, and facing down a mythical beast that the king controlled. All these calculations played out across the king’s face and he finally allowed himself a small smile.
“I am in danger? Now?”
“Very much so.”
The king’s eyes narrowed again. “How mysterious, Undine exile. You have a plan, then?”
Ciran nodded. How funny that the terror of the kraken had momentarily blinded him to the deep inner knowledge. Just like Dannika’s terror at thinking she’d lost him had momentarily blinded her. But now that he was focusing again, the soul-deep knowledge grew.