The hydration valve's drip had become a torture device. Click. Clack. Mynta counted each droplet to stay sane. Forty-seven since the last tremor. Forty-eight. The station groaned again, its coral bones creaking under the weight of Pyrestone's war machines.
"They're accelerating the burn," Myrith whispered, her gills flaring as sulfur-laced air stung her throat. She pressed a palm to the wall, feeling the vibrations. "Two decks below—plasma forges. They're arming drop pods."
Mynta strained against her golden chains, the containment runes flaring hot. "For Xiaxo's jungles. Or the Grove-Spires."
"Does it matter?" Myrith's laugh was a broken thing. "Ash is ash."
Myrith's claws brushed the faint scar along Mynta's wrist—a relic from their failed coup. "Remember the siege of Kelp's End? We floated for days in the undertow."
"You kept singing," Mynta said, her gills fluttering with the memory. "Drove the patrols mad."
"And you blinded them with ink." Myrith's smile faded. "Now we're the ones trapped in the dark."
A flicker of bioluminescence danced in Mynta's palm—a weak echo of their hydromantic gifts. She shaped it into a miniature Yellow-Fin, its glowing form darting between their shackles. "We're Seafoam. We are the undertow."
A shadow flickered beyond the energy bars. The twins froze as a Pyrestone engineer shuffled past, her scaled shoulders hunched. She paused, her glowing orange eyes darting to the twins' cell. For a heartbeat, her gaze lingered on Myrith's shackles—then she spat a glob of black resin onto the floor and scurried away.
"That one reeks of guilt," Myrith muttered.
"Or bait." Mynta nodded to the resin. It bubbled softly, releasing a faint melody—three notes from the Seafoam dirge of uprising.
Myrith's chains chimed as she leaned forward. "A traitor's trick."
"Or a spark." Mynta stretched her foot, nudging the resin. It dissolved, leaving a phosphorescent smear: Anchor Spire. Third tide.
Admiral Vyr'kess floated before the hologram of Xiaxo, her serpentine tail coiling in anticipation. The planet's jungles pulsed green, mocking her.
"The Scorchfang's cores are primed, Admiral," hissed Commander Krax, his crimson scales rattling with each breath. He tapped a data slate, projecting troop deployments over the continents. "First wave: incendiary pods to clear the canopy. Second wave: hunter-knights to flush out Dryad nests."
A merlin-crested strategist, Officer Vyn, snorted. "Dryads won't nest. Their Groves are symbiotic neural networks. Burn one, and the rest retaliate."
"Let them." Vyr'kess traced a claw over the hologram, igniting pixels. "Their wrath will lead us to the priest. He is the key to Sinlung's core."
Officer Vyn's crest flushed crimson. "The priest's resonance could destabilize our cores. This gamble reeks of desperation."
Krax slammed a magma-fist onto the table, melting a data slate. "Says the merlin who lost five ships to Seafoam's tide-singers!"
"Enough." Vyr'kess's tail snapped like a whip. "The Dryads' roots strangle this planet's heart. Uproot them, and Sinlung's core will bleed for us all." She floated closer to the hologram, her reflection warping in Xiaxo's oceans. "Or do you fear primitives who worship dirt?"
Technomancer Ghrell buzzed through his gill-amplifiers, adjusting the projection. "The Seafoam prisoners remain… uncooperative."
"Then escalate." Vyr'kess turned to Krax. "Take the scarred twin to the magma vents. Let her sister hear her gills boil."
Krax grinned, fire orbs flaring. "With pleasure."
Myrith pressed her forehead to the coral wall, murmuring to the barnacles. Their bioluminescence dimmed as her song resonated through their organic circuitry—a Seafoam distress pulse, muted but persistent.
"They'll trace the signal," Mynta warned.
"Let them." Myrith's voice wavered. "Better a quick death than this… drip."
Boots echoed—heavy, assured. Krax loomed outside their cell, flanked by two soldiers wielding crackling magma-whips.
"Scarred fish first," he growled.
The energy bars deactivated. Myrith lunged before the chains could reactivate, her webbed hand slashing at Krax's throat. He caught her wrist, magma-whip searing her scales.
"Feisty bait." He dragged her into the hall. "Scream loud. Your priest might hear."
Mynta thrashed, her chains burning raw circles into her wrists. "Myrith!"
The engineer—Lysra—crouched in a service duct, her orange scales smeared with biogel to mask her scent. Admiral Vyr'kess's voice crackled through the comms: "All units, final checks before descent."
She clenched a stolen Seafoam bio-chip, its edges biting her palm. Anchor Spire. Third tide. The twins' only chance.
"Lysra?" A Pyrestone guard peered into the duct. "Commander Krax wants the magma vents at 120%."
"Y-yes, sir." She bowed, slipping the bio-chip into her tool belt.
The guard lingered. "You've been… distracted. Loyalty questioned."
Lysra's gills flared. "My brother died securing this station. My loyalty is unquestionable."
"Prove it. Incinerate the Seafoam cell's hydration system."
Lysra's brother's face surfaced in her mind—his scales blue as midnight reefs, his laugh lost to the purge. She'd scrubbed his insignia from her tools, but his voice lingered in the station's tides: "We rise together."
"Well?" The guard's magma-blade hissed near her gills.
She bowed, claws trembling. "It will be done."
As she crawled into the ducts, she pried a barnacle from the wall. Its bioluminescent mucus formed a Seafoam rune on her palm: Traitor. Redeemer. Sister.
Her claws trembled. "As ordered."
Myrith hung over a bubbling magma vent, Krax's magma-whip coiled around her tail.
"Where is the priest?" he snarled.
"Swimming in your nightmares," she spat.
The whip tightened. Scales blistered.
"Enough." Vyr'kess's voice slithered through the chamber. "The Scorchfang departs in three tides. Ready the hunter-knights."
Krax yanked Myrith upward. "Shall I finish her?"
"No. Let her sister watch the first strike."
Mynta's chains suddenly cooled. The containment runes flickered—died. She stumbled forward as the cell's energy bars fizzed out.
Lysra stood in the hall, clutching a sparking control rod. "Third tide. Go."
"Why?" Mynta hissed.
"Your Yellow-Fin dirge… My brother hummed it before your purge." Lysra tossed her a bio-chip. "Anchor Spire's core. Overload it—the station will destabilize."
Mynta hesitated.
"Go!" Lysra shoved her toward the ducts. "Before the Scorchfang—"
A magma-whip snapped, severing Lysra's tail. Krax loomed, grinning. "Tsk-tsk, little traitor."
Mynta ran.
The core pulsed like a diseased heart, its blue bioluminescence choked by Pyrestone's orange tech. Mynta jammed the bio-chip into an access port, her webbed fingers dancing across Seafoam runes.
Warning: Gravitational destabilization imminent.
"Mother's mercy," she prayed, inputting the final code.
The core shrieked. Coral walls cracked. Alarms blared as artificial gravity faltered.
Hunter-knights marched into drop pods, their magma-blades glowing. Vyr'kess watched from the command platform, her tail lashing.
"Admiral!" Ghrell buzzed. "Anchor Spire's core is—"
"Silence." She raised her dagger. "First strike: Grove-Spire Delta. Burn the roots, and the Dryads will bleed."
The Scorchfang's engines roared.
Mynta crawled toward the hangar, gravity shifting. She found Myrith slumped in a junction, her tail charred.
"Core's overloaded… Station's tearing itself apart," Mynta gasped.
Myrith grinned. "Good."
"The Scorchfang—it's still launching!"
"Then we'll hitch a ride." Myrith pointed to a ruptured pipe spewing hydromantic coolant. "Flood the hangar. Short their ignitions."
The coolant burned Myrith's gills—a Pyrestone cocktail designed to suffocate Seafoam biology. She gagged, her scales blistering. "Human air would kill us faster than magma."
"Then we drown together," Mynta hissed. She pressed their foreheads together, their gills syncing in a survival rhythm taught by Seafoam's elders. Their webbed hands glowed as they channeled hydromancy, bending the toxic flood into a weapon.
The twins erupted from a vent in a torrent of blue mana. Mynta sang, her voice bending the liquid into icy shards that pierced hunter-knight armor. Myrith lunged at Vyr'kess, claws bared.
"Insects!" Vyr'kess's dagger flared, magma meeting hydromancy in a steam explosion.
Myrith flew back, crashing into a drop pod.
"Myrith!" Mynta screamed.
The Scorchfang detached, its thrusters igniting.
Vyr'kess laughed. "Your Grove-Spires will be cinders by dawn."
Vyr'kess's thermal pits flared as she circled Mynta. "Your house once floated above us all. Look at you now—mudskippers gasping in Pyrestone's wake." She flicked a claw toward the Scorchfang. "Your priest will watch Xiaxo burn before I carve Sinlung's core from his chest."
Mynta bared her serrated teeth. "Your fire dies in the deep."
"The deep," Vyr'kess laughed, "is where I buried your mother."
Mynta sang again—a final, desperate note. The core's destabilization wave hit, shearing the Scorchfang's hull. The ship listed, half its drop pods jettisoning prematurely into Xiaxo's atmosphere.
"No!" Vyr'kess lunged, but the station collapsed around them.
The twins floated in wreckage, the station's corpse drifting toward Xiaxo. Myrith pressed a shard of bioluminescent coral to Mynta's palm—a fractured message from Lysra's bio-chip.
Priest's location: Tlangthar, Xiaxo, their capital city.
Mynta stared at the burning Scorchfang streaking across the sky. "They'll still strike."
Myrith gripped her hand. "Then we warn the Dryads."
The ocean below churned—not with Pyrestone fire, but with something older. Something awakes.
Far below, the waves coiled into a massive spiral. Bioluminescent tendrils breached the surface—not Seafoam, nor Pyrestone. These were older, thicker, pulsing with the same rhythm as the Grove-Spires' roots. Mynta's hydromantic scars tingled.
"The planet…" Myrith whispered.
"No." Mynta watched the tendrils submerge. "The guardian."