"If I'm dreaming, this is the sharpest dream I've ever bled in."
Cold water pressed in from every angle as Sirena jerked against the boy's grip, testing the boundaries of what felt increasingly like captivity rather than rescue. His fingers were like iron bands around her wrist—not bruising, but immovable, holding her steady against the churning current that seemed to emanate from the very walls of this impossible underwater realm.
The pressure should have crushed her, should have sent nitrogen bubbling through her bloodstream in fatal cascades. Instead, she felt more alive than she ever had on the surface, every nerve ending singing with electric awareness of the water flowing around them.
"Let go!" she snapped, twisting hard against his grip. The movement sent a sharp sting of pain through her shoulder where she'd wrenched against his hold—sharp, real, undeniably physical. Whatever this was, wherever she was, it wasn't some oxygen-deprived hallucination brought on by near-drowning. This wasn't a dream.
The boy's storm-gray eyes narrowed, and she caught a flicker of something that might have been admiration beneath the concern. "You'll drown without me, surface dweller. These waters don't forgive the unprepared."
"I'm breathing just fine," she shot back, her words bubbling out into the water with perfect clarity. Only after they'd left her lips did she realize how absolutely insane that sounded. But it was true—her lungs pulled in the luminescent water as easily as they had ever drawn air, converting it to oxygen through some process that defied every biology textbook she'd ever studied.
His mouth parted slightly, shock flickering across features that seemed carved from some ancient statue brought to life. "That's... impossible. Humans don't possess the deep-lung adaptation. You should be—"
"Dead?" Sirena wrenched her wrist again, putting her full strength behind the motion. His grip didn't budge, but she felt the muscles in his arm tense, as if her resistance surprised him. "Yeah, well, apparently I didn't get that memo."
For the first time since their encounter began, she allowed herself to really look at him—to take in details her mind had been too shocked to process. What she'd mistaken for legs in the chaotic first moments of their meeting was actually something far more extraordinary. From the waist down, his body transformed into a powerful tail that seemed to capture and reflect every source of light in the water around them.
The scales weren't uniform like those of ordinary fish, but varied in size and luminescence—larger plates along the powerful muscle groups that spoke of swift propulsion, smaller ones that caught the ambient glow and scattered it in mesmerizing patterns. The coloration shifted from deep sea-green at the base to silver-gray at the flukes, with darker stripes that seemed to pulse with their own rhythm.
His torso remained distinctly humanoid, but even there, differences marked him as something other than human. Subtle ridges along his ribs suggested internal modifications for deep-water pressure, and when he moved, she caught glimpses of gill slits along the sides of his neck—not mere decoration, but functional organs that fluttered almost imperceptibly with each intake of water.
He wasn't a boy wearing an elaborate costume. He was something else entirely—a creature from the deepest folklore made flesh and blood and impossible reality.
Movement flickered at the edges of her vision, drawing her attention away from her captor's otherworldly anatomy. Shapes circled them in the phosphorescent gloom, barely visible except when distant lightning penetrated the water from the surface far above. The electrical discharges revealed glimpses of forms both familiar and alien—humanoid torsos giving way to powerful tails, faces that might have been beautiful if not for the predatory intensity in their expressions.
Eyes—dozens of them—glowed with faint bioluminescence in the darkness, creating a constellation of watching intelligence that made Sirena's skin crawl. They moved with the coordinated patience of pack hunters, maintaining perfect distance while never quite revealing their full forms.
The boy—Caspian, her mind supplied without conscious thought, as if the water itself had whispered his name directly into her consciousness—tensed visibly. His free hand moved to her shoulder, not gently but with clear intent, shoving her behind him so that his body formed a living shield between her and the circling watchers.
"Stay quiet," he murmured, his mental voice dropping to barely above a whisper despite the fact that it bypassed her ears entirely. "They smell fear like blood in the water, and you reek of surface-world terror."
Her pulse thundered in her ears, a rhythm that seemed to sync with the storm raging somewhere far above them. The thunder that rolled through the depths felt different here—not just sound, but vibration that resonated in her bones and seemed to carry meaning she couldn't quite grasp.
"What are they?" she breathed, trying to keep her voice as low as his.
"Patrol scouts," Caspian replied without taking his eyes off the circling shapes. "They guard the outer boundaries of our territory. Humans aren't supposed to be able to reach this depth, and they're... curious about how you managed it."
"Curious?" The word carried implications that made her stomach clench. "What happens when mer-folk get curious about trespassers?"
His jaw tightened, and she saw muscles cord along his neck as he prepared for something unpleasant. "That depends entirely on whether they decide you're a threat to be eliminated or a mystery worth taking back to the Council alive."
One of the shapes broke from the circling formation, moving with liquid grace that made even Caspian's fluid movements seem clumsy by comparison. As it drew closer, details resolved themselves into something out of nightmare and legend combined.
The creature was massive—easily twice Caspian's size, with a tail that could have powered a small submarine. But it was the modifications that made Sirena's breath catch in her throat. Tattoos covered its chest and arms in intricate patterns that looked carved rather than inked, and as she watched in fascination and growing horror, those markings began to glow.
Lightning bolts. The tattoos were shaped like lightning bolts, and they were crackling with actual electricity, blue-white energy dancing along the creature's skin like captive storms. The water around it shimmered with electromagnetic distortion, and she could feel the hair on her arms standing up despite being submerged.
Traditional folklore had spoken of mer-folk who could command the storms, who drew power from the tempests that raged above the surface. She'd always assumed those were metaphors, poetic descriptions of particularly skilled swimmers. Apparently, she'd been catastrophically wrong.
The electric mer-warrior's eyes fixed on her with predatory intensity, and its mouth opened to reveal rows of teeth that belonged more on a shark than anything remotely humanoid. When it spoke, its voice didn't slide into her mind like Caspian's—it vibrated through the water itself, a sound felt as much as heard.
"Surface crawler," it growled, the words distorted by the electrical field surrounding it. "You carry no scent of the deep courts. How do you breathe our sacred waters?"
Caspian's grip on her wrist tightened protectively, and she felt the water around them shift as he positioned himself for rapid movement. "She's under my protection, Thane. The Depth Laws—"
"The Depth Laws were written when surface dwellers knew their place," the creature—Thane—interrupted, electricity arcing between its fingers. "This one breaks the natural order simply by being here. The Council will want to examine her... thoroughly."
The way it said 'thoroughly' made Sirena's blood run cold. She'd read enough mythology to know that mer-folk examinations of humans rarely ended well for the humans involved.
"She hasn't violated territorial boundaries intentionally," Caspian argued, but there was tension in his mental voice that suggested he wasn't entirely confident in his position. "The portal opened beneath her—she didn't seek passage to our realm."
Thane's electric tattoos flared brighter, and the water around them began to taste of copper and ozone. "Portals don't open for just anyone, young prince. If the barriers parted for her, there's a reason. The Council will determine what that reason is."
Prince? Sirena filed that particular revelation away for later consideration, assuming she lived long enough to have a 'later.'
The electric warrior began to advance, and as it did, the other shapes in the darkness moved closer as well. Sirena could see more details now—some carried weapons that seemed to be made of coral and metal fused together, others bore the same electromagnetic tattoos as their leader, and all of them moved with the fluid confidence of apex predators in their natural element.
Caspian's muscles coiled like springs, and she felt the water around them begin to swirl in preparation for rapid movement. But even with his supernatural speed, she could see they were vastly outnumbered.
As Thane lunged forward with lightning crackling between its claws, Caspian spun to flee with Sirena—but the patrol had anticipated this, and the water above them suddenly filled with a net of living electricity that would turn any escape attempt into certain death.