Triton's smile fades and turns into confusion, then anger as his brother slithers between them and the doorway. "Ursul, what is the meaning of this?" Triton scowls and moves his wife behind him."Is it not obvious? I'm dethroning you, you fool," Ursul snaps. "I'm taking what rightfully belongs to me, and that's the throne alongside the trident."
"You're not foolish enough to attempt treason?" his brother growls.
"Attempt is the wrong word to pin to me, Triton. My patience with your naivety has worn thin. Your death is inevitable; I will take the trident away from you whether you're alive or a pathetic corpse writhing on the ground. Take your pick. By the time I'm through with you, there will be no witnesses."
The King audibly seethes, his knuckles whitening around the trident. The muscles in his arm strain as though to raise the weapon—shooting his brother is his only choice, he realizes, but Ursul is obviously hiding something sinister to be bold enough to approach them unarmed—he has to time it right, make the motion too quick for him to counter to and perhaps this will end with one blow.
"You're trying my patience," Ursul groans irately. "Give me the tri—"
Before he can finish, a fiery bolt shoots out from the trident and nearly hits him in the shoulder. The bolt fires out the confinement and into the wall across from you in an array of rubble that's almost loud enough for the guards to hear, but an immediate cloud of black, poisonous ink audibly explodes inside the grotto.
"Urs—!" you almost call. No sounds come from the cave, and you can't see within the ominous cloud. He actually did it.
But then another bolt darts from the blackness just to the right of you, then one up to your left, and a third one that hits you straight in the breastplate. You make a panicked, shallow gasp as you're thrown back into the wall, your metal protection melting from the bolt.
"(Y/n)!" you clearly distinguish Ursul's voice yelling in alarm, but he makes a strained grunt as if someone gripped his throat. Frantic to help, to do something, you shed the sweltering plate above your (b/c) clam bra, and yet glass clinking stops you dead. You look down and notice the vial of antidote is rolling into the darkness.
"No!" you shout and dive for it only to submerge your empty hand into something thick within the ink. Jolting back, you watch a figure stumble out from the darkness. "Ursul!" you whisper sharply and grab his shoulders.
He leans against the stone frame with heaving breaths. "God blasted!" he seethes.
"What happened? Why aren't they dead? I thought the poison was supposed to kill them!"
Ursul shakes his head along another curse. "The poison... I hadn't made it concentrated enough. It's only acting as a mild sedative," he growls, his sharpened claws plunging into the wall.
He wasn't right? But... The inclination of what this means—a failure that could cost the both of you your lives—moves you to cup his heated face to look at you. "We need to stop now while we still have the chance," you say.
And yet he doesn't hear you. He stares with confused, enraged eyes at the scarred and reddened plane of your chest. His cold fingers touch the burn and you wince. "Did he do this to you...?" he asks. You open your mouth in denial only to close it at the sight of his drawn upper lip.
"Ursul, you coward! Where are you?!" Triton bellows.
Ursul lunges towards the voice with a resounding, horrendous hiss and yet you pull him back. "Listen to me: the plan didn't work, and you can't kill them without it being blatantly stupid. If we leave now, we can work on another plan and come back," you insist.
