The Triton

Chapter 4: Vivien

The last of the blue-scaled men limped away, pain contorting his face. He held a viced grip of his leg, the other uninjured leg discovering how to swim without the aid of its partner. Fading into the darkness of the sea beyond, his fear-widened, gently glowing eyes looking over his shoulder constantly, until they were gone.

I heaved air into my lungs, letting them fill over and over again, heart thudding as it desperately delved to remind my body what it meant to function. A warmth, the heart of a stirred fire, shoved out a cold I didn't know had taken me, pushing it from my heart, then my chest, then my head and legs and everything else. With each beat, the fire in my chest blazed brighter, banishing the numbing cold that had threatened to consume me.

With oxygen, with normality, the understanding of everything sunk in, bit by bit.

Me. The shell. The creatures. Their glowing eyes, their weapons, their scales, how they could talk under the water without impediment. Images of their faces flashed through my mind, revealing the telltale signs of gills that marked them as...something else. Something inhuman. I turned to the black-scaled man, which confirmed it. On his neck and cheeks sat perfect lines of black and silver, the only thing that caught the light. Piece by piece, the puzzle of my surreal circumstances began to click into place, each revelation strong enough to send a shiver of intense disbelief down my spine.

Then fear stole me again. I processed the efficiency in which this...beast eviscerated the men who'd taken me, who'd nearly drowned me. He'd pulled his trident from the lifeless corpse of the leader of those creatures and pushed from the ocean floor, stopping almost a foot from my face, eyes locking onto mine.

Beast might not be the right word--he looked human in most senses of the word. Two legs, two arms, a muscled, toned form, two eyes, and where the other creatures had worn masks, his face looked almost the same as mine, save for the black scales that covered every inch of him. His ears, though, were long and pointed at the peaks, like a diamond's edge. Black, short hair the color of raven's feathers further stole the light that trickled down into this place, so far below the surface.

His eyes shone, literally. A dark purple light radiated into my eyes with an intensity and a raw, unadulterated cold.

"We need to go," is all he said.

Whatever mask he'd given me, it had given me air, air enough to breathe, and cautiously, I tested its ability to let me speak, as if nothing was wrong, as if I wasn't at least a hundred feet underwater, as if there wasn't a black-scaled beast standing before me, a trident of ichorous black in his palm, as if there weren't four other creatures he'd either murdered or maimed.

"How?" It came easy, as easily as though I was in class, or any other place with breathable air. What was this thing?

He drew closer to me. "We need To. Go." Harsher, darker, his voice cut into my ears.

I blinked, hard. Disbelief reigned. "What?"

He extended his hand to me. I eyed it, sizing it up. This singular focus was all my brain could do to cope with...everything that was going on.

"Are we in danger?" I asked.

He shook his head, once. As quiet as an unseen dagger, he uttered a simple, "No. There may be more. I don't feel like killing anyone else today."

His hand still floated in the space between us. The hand that had snapped another trident in two, that had guided his own weapon of war to end the existence of my four would-be captors. I didn't have much of a choice.

"Let me get you someplace safe. Where they won't find you," he offered, eyes locked onto mine as I stared at his outstretched hand.

I exhaled, and nodded, taking it.

I don't know what I was expecting, but in the next moment, I forced my eyes shut instinctively. He'd pressed me against his scaled chest and hurled us deeper into the water, deeper into the darkness below, his powerful legs kicking behind us.

But it didn't hurt, not like it should have. When you pull yourself through the water, especially at high speeds, it pulls back at you, almost like wind whips your face when you ride your bike or stick your head out the window of a fast-moving car.

But I didn't feel any of those things, and curiosity slowly pulled at the lid-tight close of my eyelids, begging them to look around.

And so I did.

The ocean's floor, varied, colorful, and dramatic, flew past us, rocks and corals and fish, there were so many of them. Schools of thousands of blue and yellow and silver and gray fish circled and spun about, all of which parted ahead of us as we dove deeper, forming tunnels of empty ocean for us to pour through.

The pace at which he carried me––the ocean itself bent around us as we went and yet no water pulled at me, so I could open my eyes wide and take it all in.

I noted his eyes that constantly scanned about us as his powerful form took us through the ocean's depths, always alert, always focused.

I'm not sure how long he swam for, but the longer it was, the more I began to worry. How far did we need to go to get safe? The further we went, the further I was from my house, from my mother, from the beach, from the surfer. The surfer. Who I swore I saw swimming away as the blue-scaled creatures pulled me away. Or was that a figure of my imagination? Was all this?

Suddenly, we lurched downwards, as if falling from a plane my stomach caught in my throat as we plummeted. It felt like gravity was real, our pace that intense as we dove nearly vertically into an oceanic ravine, the rockface no less than a few feet from either side of us.

We slowed, his arm holding me against him as he tucked us gently into a recess in the rock, forming a temporary refuge.

I could hardly see in the inky blackness of the room, feeling for a place to rest my shaky feet as I heaved to catch my breath.

"What...was that?" I asked.

He pulled from his pocket a small, floating stone, no bigger than a marble, and whispered something to it, and it began to pulsate a small violet light, the same violet light of his eyes, illuminating the near-10 foot cave around us.

I watched it come to life, and blinked hard. "What, okay, okay umm––you."

"One second," he muttered. He'd closed his eyes, pressing his right hand against his chest, the left cupping the light of the orb in its palm.

"Hello?" I asked.

There was no response as he maintained his concentration.

"Okay, okay, umm, can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?"

His eyes opened for a moment, and nodded, before he said darkly once more, "One. Second."

A few moments later, the violets of his eyes flashed behind his eyelids, and they opened. "We have a minute," he said.

"A minute?"

"They're not here, yet."

"Who?"

"People who you don't want to find you."

"What? What do you mean, who are these people, what in the actual––"

He raised his hand to shush me, but I kept going.

"No, absolutely not, do not quiet me right now. I'm currently miles underwater, breathing through a shell, talking like it's completely FREAKIN normal to a creature who looks like a man, breathes through gills, and just murdered three people with a TRIDENT, and then grabbed me, taking me away to who knows where––"

"Quiet, girl. Do you realize just how you irk me?"

I shuddered in my speech, slamming to a halt, the icy cold in his voice cutting through my mania.

"This is challenging. I understand that," he continued, quietly. "But you must listen to me, because your life and the lives of countless others hang in the balance."

I squinted, his face indecipherable and calm. "Which...others?" I asked. Somehow, I already knew the answer.

"Merpeople."