By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2023 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
Student of the Unforgiving Sea
__________As the infernal core of a world pulses against the bedrock and warms the sea above it, Kimio felt heated from his heels to his scalp. His empty stomach churned from hunger and wrath, like ocean waves that beat against the hulls of sailing ships. Kimio was angry to be alive and yet deprived. Some time ago, Glaiven revived Kimio with a serum containing powdered unicorn horn, and then left him to rot under the tyranny of his cellmate. Each time the prisoners were fed, the siren snatched Kimio’s portion. Her fattening fishtail had started to look as delectable as it was shiny.
__________Meanwhile, Kimio’s body ate itself. Soon, he would not have enough muscle left to keep himself afloat. Why should one of the purest creatures in nature die for him to live, only for one of the vilest to starve him? Why should nature’s selector be strength without merit? Why live only to die?
__________Kimio’s weary gaze drifted from the plump siren to the fishbowl’s ceiling of spikes. Fruyr would do it, Kimio smirked. He’d wonder what took me so long.
__________Glaiven stepped in. He pushed the untriggered spike trap aside, just enough to pour the daily feed into the fishbowl. He glimpsed the darkening expression on Kimio’s face, smiled without showing his gleaming teeth, and tossed the emptied feed sack over his shoulder. Then he pulled the trap back over the bowl, and watched the siren, as she surged to the surface of the water. She knocked withered Kimio back by the currents her powerful tail stirred, and she greedily shoved fistfuls of kelp past her lips. Her cheeks puffed like a chipmunk’s, as she harbored more than she could munch, just to prevent Kimio from snatching a single frond.
__________“That’s it, Angelfish,” Glaiven praised. “You show him who’s the monarch of the sea!”
__________Betray me, Nature, Kimio cursed, and I’ll betray your laws!
__________With a surge of adrenaline, his heart beating fast and loud enough to drum against his inner ears, Kimio kicked the glass wall of the fishbowl with both of his feet and propelled towards the siren. With the weightlessness of water assisting him, he spun the siren onto her back, placed his hands underneath, and shoved her out of the water.
__________She gasped, as she cut the water too swiftly to close her gills and adjust her lungs for air. In those few seconds, as she hovered breathlessly above the water, gravity gripped her, and she began to fall, Kimio dove to the bottom of the bowl. Bubbles pushed up behind him and suspended the siren above the water for a minute longer, as he pushed himself down. At the bottom of the bowl, Kimio gripped the handle of the spike trap’s triggering lever. Though the squeals of the piglet he and Fruyr branded echoed in the back of his mind, like an old proverb, he yanked the lever down. Instantaneously, the spikes burst from their concealing holes and speared the siren. Unemotionally, the spikes then retreated, the lever flipped back to its middle slot, and the once beautiful siren sank to the bottom of her watery prison, as if she were no more valuable than the stale slice of Swiss cheese she now resembled. Like red-silk ribbons carelessly washed with a bright, white garment, her blood swirled in streams and stained the water pink.
__________Kimio sat down, hugged his knees, and stared.
__________Glaiven chuckled. “Welcome to the shade, Little Selkie.”
__________Kimio rested his chin on his knees and frowned. “My name is Kimio,” he mumbled to muffle his sniffles, even though he knew Glaiven could not hear him crying underwater.
__________She was an evil creature, Kimio asserted. She wouldn’t have shed tears for me. Why can’t I hold mine back? She’s dead… I… killed her… I had to!
__________Glaiven stroked his chin. “What was that? I can’t hear you; you know?” he reminded. “Now, onto next steps…”
__________The door unlocked from the outside and swung open. Glaiven casually turned his head, as Uuinora entered the room. She glanced from Kimio to the slain siren and scowled. “What sort of courage has an elf-child do your work for you, Commander?” she remarked.
__________“Nay,” Glaiven dismissed. “It’s strategy. The kind that gets results.”
__________Uuinora laughed. “Results in red aren’t bragging rights,” she said. “Add it up: We’re minus a siren.”
__________“And plus one convert,” Glaiven explained, as he turned away from her to watch Kimio. The water in the fishbowl sloshed back and forth, as if disturbed. Kimio repositioned; sat on his knees and cupped his palms over his kneecaps. His fingertips squeezed the skin around his kneecaps, and his knuckles whitened from the strain, but he was otherwise motionless. His expression was morbid and stagnant. His eyes fixated on the siren’s corpse.
__________I’m no better than them, Kimio decided. I want out of here, so I’m going to use you.
__________Uuinora clapped a hand to Glaiven’s back. “So, you broke even?” she teased.
__________Cerulean flakes of light bespeckled the fishbowl, as stars brighten and bespeckle the nightscapes of major realms. Larger concentrations of these underwater stars showered from the siren’s many piercings. The flakes swirled, as if caught in a whirlpool, and funneled into Kimio through his eyes, ears, and gills.
__________“Typical hack-and-slasher,” Glaiven muttered. “Can’t discern the differing values among the catch.”
__________Uuinora did not hear him. Slack-jawed, she stared at the mesmerizing dance of light that pruned the siren’s corpse and empowered Kimio. Glaiven watched with her, but with his chin held high; a satisfied grin stretched across his face. When the last of the bright, cerulean flakes disappeared inside Kimio, Kimio stood, like a performer readying to take a bow, but instead of dipping his head, he raised a hand and curled his fingers into claws.
__________Lifeblood is the miasma of the soul, Kimio acknowledged. I’ve looted yours to bolster mine. You don’t need it anymore, so I’m not sorry…
__________Kimio stabbed his fingernails into the palm of his raised hand. A ribbony stream of water slithered out from his closed hand and wrapped his arm in liquid coils. The stream appeared as a legless sea serpent. It raised its head above Kimio’s shoulder and hissed for instruction.
__________“Burrow through the glass,” Kimio commanded in Elvish.
__________The serpent sprung from Kimio’s arm, its tail gathering currents like streamers attached to a pole. The currents wrapped around the serpent’s coils. The serpent spiraled through the glass wall of the fishbowl and punched a child-sized hole through it, like a cannonball. The waterborne creature landed in a puddle on the other side. It flopped like a fish, until it splashed itself into oblivion and melted into the puddle. As the water in the fishbowl drained through the serpent’s hole, tiny cracks spread from the circumference of the hole, edging ever nearer to the ceiling of retracted spikes.
__________Kimio leapt through the hole and rolled across the floor. Uuinora grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. The giant fishbowl caved and shattered under its heavy ceiling. Uuinora turned and ran, dragging Kimio towards the exit, as an indoor tidal wave rushed towards them.
__________Glaiven caught up to them. He scooped them both up, wrapped a muscled arm snuggly around each of their rumps, and charged through the exit, ahead of the tidal wave. As they fled together, Uuinora and Kimio’s chins bounced against Glaiven’s shoulders.
__________The chamber drained through its door; the tidal wave soaked into the already moist soil of Zaliradai. Once Glaiven was certain the earth drank the danger, he dropped his reluctant passengers against the roots of a fungal tree, simply to add to their discomfort and convey his own.
__________Kimio sat up and hugged his knees. “I didn’t know you were that strong,” he muttered, “because you don’t look it.”
__________Uuinora rubbed the back of her head, where it slammed into the roots of the fungal tree, and then tossed back her long, dark hair. “We elves never do,” she replied vainly.
__________Then she turned to Glaiven, sporting a flirtatious, pouty face. “Which is why I could have carried him out myself,” she asserted.
__________Glaiven ruffled her bangs. “You think that,” he condescended.
__________She shoved away his hand, stood, and struck a hunter’s pose. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed.
__________Glaiven mimicked the pouty face she made before, then rolled his eyes, straightened his face, and addressed Kimio. “You owe me a siren,” he said matter-of-factually, “and I owe you a meal.”
__________Kimio unfurled his arms and leaned his head against the fungal tree. The disturbed tree coughed a small cloud of spores. When Kimio opened his mouth to detest Glaiven’s claim that a captive would owe his captor anything at all, Kimio sneezed instead. So, he crossed both his legs and his arms and groaned. Everything hurts, he admitted to himself. Sneezing made it worse.
__________Glaiven whistled a pretty tune, and somewhere—some distance in the blackness—the wheels of a carriage turned, while Kimio’s eyelids drooped. He soon fell asleep to the rhythm of trotting hooves. Later, he would awaken to a warm hearth, and the enticing smell of Elvish cuisine.
Endlesslore 