“What’s wrong? Having some performance issues?” Constantine growled, a tired grin on his face. The latest of his torturers’ methods—a flesh-burrowing parasite, specially bought from a warlock known for his ‘jar bugs’—had failed.

  Even he was scared for a moment when he saw the thing’s many rows of teeth. But as expected, with the artifact his father had given him amplifying his own techniques, he was practically unkillable… to these people at least.

  It paid to have the Primus as his father. Though thinking back to what he’d been through, he wasn’t sure if he could still say that the benefits outweighed the cons.

  Still, it did keep him alive. That was more than he could say for the men who’d followed him.

  Hate filled him at the thought.

  They were a small but elite force. Very few knew of their movements. Obviously, one, or maybe multiple among those few had betrayed them.

  His three sadistic fish-friends talked among themselves. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the language. The only thing he could understand were their expressions that looked… pleasantly troubled.

  Eventually, they stopped and exited the notably dreary chamber. It was even more dreary than any prison in the empire, at least the ones that he’d personally seen. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the saltwater, or they just didn’t do any maintenance at all. Either way, it was utterly barbaric treatment for what he assumed were for prisoners of war.

  So much for diplomacy, Constantine sighed.

  After several dull minutes of nothing, the door to his chamber opened again. This time, someone else accompanied his tormentors.

  It, or he, looked a bit different from what he’d grown used to with the Mer. Everyone he’d come across, from the ones who ambushed him, to the ones that held him captive, had all been fairly buff for merfolk.

  This one looked smaller. Sleeker. His fish-head looked a bit more normally placed—for human standards—compared to the usual slight upward angle of his kin. His fingers also lacked the sharp claws he’d grown used to feeling trying to tear through his skin.

  Oddly, the gills looked the same, except for the extra slit. Which he thought was an odd difference.

  “Constantine Vitram, yes?” the new arrival surprisingly said in fluent Cratisian. “I’m here to grant you an opportunity to get out of here.”

  That was odd. Far as he knew from the books, the mer didn’t ‘grant’ anything to captives. Which meant only one thing in his head.

  And he couldn’t help but cackle in their faces.

  “My father’s coming, isn’t he?” Constantine laughed and laughed. His chains clinging and clanging as he held his stomach. “Did all of you seriously think I would be fooled?”

  The four fish went silent. The original three looked especially enraged, their gills flaring about like they were struggling to breathe.

  “Sir Vitram, please—”

  “So it’s sir now, is it?” Constantine sneered. “Why don’t you ask your friends here what they were calling me just an hour ago? Worm? Tongue-biter? There was one they struggled to even say. What was it again?”

  The small mer turned to ask his kin. But they appeared to have had a bit of amnesia.

  “Bastard, is what. Your friends here seem to need to retire, or be retired,” he chuckled at his own joke. “Or whatever it is you fish do with your old and senile.”

  “I understand your frustration, sir, but—”

  Suddenly, the chamber, the earth beneath their feet, even the salty air, shuddered.

  “Count your seconds, my friends, and pray it’ll be quick,” Constantine said, his smile falling away.

  He knew what was about to happen. He’d hoped for it just a moment ago. But now that it was here, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to see that side of his father again.

  ***

  Elias Ganakis arrived to the sight of Marisabel’s supposed ‘indestructible dome’ shattered into pieces. The water around them was still abuzz by the sheer amount of mana his old friend had used. Even the temperature still made him recoil.

  Talin had only thrown a fireball.

  A simple fireball.

  Underwater.

  Ridiculous, Elias thought, closing his eyes as a mental bridge brushed against his mind.

  “What are you doing here, Elias?” the Primus’ voice echoed in his mind. Cold, sending a shiver down his spine. Then, the water churned violently—vents even reversing their flow or outright scattering—as the armored man started gathering his mana once again. “You read the message, did you not? I explicitly said not to interfere.”

  The water that had just started cooling down heated up once more.

  Countless bubbles started rising up, while some collapsed instantly. Each one flashed like lightning had struck them. Shockwaves spread out, layered atop each other, widening the dome’s new cavity a hundred meters at a time.

  “I…” Elias hesitated. Then, taking a deep breath, he calmed himself as he’d learned to long ago. “Damage control, Primus.”

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  He wanted to stop at that, to not interfere anymore than he had to, to just be a good subordinate to the emperor, but he couldn’t.

  As they spoke, water was already rushing into Marisabel—surely killing all directly under the rapidly widening column of water, soon drowning every being not of the mer. He couldn’t just stand by and watch as the innocents were swept away.

  “Talin, old friend, we’re old. Are you not also tired of all this?” Elias asked, almost pleading.

  He waited for a response, hoping that maybe… the man his sister had fallen in love with was still there.

  “There are millions of peasants down there. Innocents. Normal people, like we once were all those years ago. Oblivious AND helpless to the machinations of their rulers,” he continued. “Do you not care that they are now dying because of you?”

  Elias waited a while more. But the response didn’t come.

  “What if this is just what they wanted? To lure the great Primus here, the weight of the ocean baring down on him. Or maybe they want to trigger a war. Wouldn’t you be playing right into their hands?”

  This time, a scoff came out of Talin.

  But nothing more.

  “Answer me!” Elias lifted his staff and banished the water surrounding them, creating a pocket of air, then shouted. “You owe me that much! She would not have wanted any of this!

  The air grew still, as did the water and even the dome. The intensifying mana had come to a complete stop, but did not dissipate.

  Talin brought his hands up to his head and slowly removed his helmet. His eyes were serene. His brows relaxed. The long, ashy beard, all the paintings of the Primus had immortalized, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, what he saw was short and neatly trimmed, giving him an air of calm and sophistication—completely different from the image in his head.

  Then, the Primus sighed, sounding disappointed. “We haven’t seen each other since your sister’s—my wife’s—death, so I understand. But I have changed, Elias.”

  The man smirked. “And, I sense something more is afoot here, old friend. I’m here to… blow it all out of the water, so to speak.”

  “…what?”

  ***

  With the confirmation by the Spectre that there was someone behind this… movement or whatever his enemies called it, Talin had wondered why eactly the Mer had done all this. They’d always been known as an aggressive people, but never ones that would do anything quite like this.

  The same went for the nobles.

  Yes, they were power hungry, didn’t care for their charges, or even cared about the empire in general. But they would never organize into a rebellion. They just didn’t have the foresight to do any of it.

  Not unless there was a good reason. A good benefit.

  “I had my tower golem compile all available information I had on the nobles,” he said. “Want to guess what it is I found?”

  Elias’ brows furrowed in thought. He mumbled to himself a few times, Talin barely hearing the words, “It would have to be a connection of some kind.”

  The royal mage’s theories went from simple resource movement like crops and various supplies, to him remembering that there’d been an odd case of land disputes near their beaches. There was even something Talin hadn’t known—a few of his colleagues had gone missing near an anomaly in some desert.

  He shook his head and stopped his friend’s ramblings. “It’s none of those—though that last one will need further investigation—what I discovered was a rumor.”

  “A rumor?”

  Talin nodded, then waved his hand to stop what little of the water was still flowing inside the dome. He put his helmet back on and said. “Come. We’ll move as we talk.”

  Receiving a nod of confirmation, they descended into the chaotic city.

  “So, the rumor…?” Elias said.

  “Right,” Talin closed the hole with several meters thick ice. “The rumor was of an elf. From what little I know of him—or her, depending on who told the story—the nobles started moving the moment that elf arrived on the continent.”

  He gave Elias a look.

  “The rumors are fairly ridiculous, if I’m honest. Tales of the mysterious elf appearing and disappearing without a single mana particle displaced. Of the man, granting power on par with a full-fledged knight.”

  “That can’t be possible,” Elias stopped his shaking head. “…can it?”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  “It’s a ‘we’ now, is it?”

  “You’re already here, might as well put you to work,” Talin shrugged.

  Snapping his fingers, a subtle pulse of mana rapidly spread out. A look came over Elias. His head whipped left, right, and back, realizing something that put his heart and consciousness at rest.

  “You planned this all out, huh? How’d you even move everyone when you arrived just a bit before I did?” he asked.

  “Of course, I sent someone ahead. Remember Bobdrin?” Talin replied. “You need to keep up, Eli. We’re going to be busy if my suspicions are right.”

  Elias was about to speak once more, when a mind bridge connected to both of them and transmitted images of civilians storming the royal palace.

  “Looks like he succeeded. Let’s go,” Talin said, accelerating his flight, Elias right behind him.

  They flew through wrecked buildings—most having the notable design of domes with opulent windows filled with water, while some had the more human standard of upright rectangles. However, one thing they all shared… were signs of deliberate hits.

  Bobdrin had instigated a riot. And because of the merfolk’s awareness of the power of many, they didn’t waste much time and went to storm the rich.

  “Sardine flood,” Elias’ voice softly said in his head. “Never thought I’d see it again.”

  “The mer are anything but passive in their society. It’s admirable, really. Bobdrin only needed to spread their king’s penchant for overly luxurious trips to the brothels on land. He didn’t even need to raise more havoc.”

  “Indeed.”

  As they neared the northern half of the capital, the palace’s features became clear.

  Sealed towers on all eight corners, forming a spell formation emitting a modifiable force field. Bubbles made up several sections of the entire palace, with a massive, ostentatious, tentacled sphere right in the middle.

  “What a waste of a piece of the Depthstrider’s legacy,” Talin mumbled under hi breath.

  “You could just not destroy it,” Elias replied, sending an image of rolling eyes.

  “I mean, I could just fix it,” Talin said matter-of-factly. He was heartened to see that his old friend had calmed down now. Worry had almost taken over earlier when he remembered what kind of man this brother-in-law of his was.

  Despite ascending to the likes of the Empire of Cratis’ only royal mage, he was very much a lover of peace. Though that also went in his favor, as he absolutely abhorred warmongers.

  When they arrived at one of the towers, Talin gathered his mana, but this time, every rune on his armor lit up in unison—circulating, accelerating, then amplifying his mana to heights he’d only ever be able to achieve after hours of channeling.

  At the very peak of what he could comfortably control, he willed every drop into a pre-etched spell circle on his armor. “Correction,” he chuckled under his breath as he remembered its name.

  Instantly, the spell morphed the mana into a viscous slime that clung to every inch of the force field exterior of the tower. Sizzling rang out as the two mages waited patiently. Watching as the slime ate at everything in its way—attacking only the foreign mana inside the tower’s etchings.

  It didn’t take even two minutes for the whole force field dissolved. Them entering right after and making short work of whatever defense was still intact.

  A moment more later, and they arrived at the main sphere.

  Quickly entering, they immediately found the mer king, giving Talin a weird feeling. He’d expected more. A hint of excitement had even reached his heart when he’d heard of someone as powerful as the elf. Excitement that had been dragged through the wrecked homes of both the common and the rich.

  He didn’t even waste any time (and didn’t give Elias any chance to say anything) before he cast the mindflaying spell on the king.

  But fortunately, and unexpectedly, the man just keeled over as his heart stopped without any warning.

  “Interesting.”

  Then the kingly corpse twitched.

  And Talin smiled.