Arms of the Ocean Ch. 11

The events of earlier slowly washed back over Ronav. Funny that such peace and serenity could be shattered by something so tranquil as a sleep spell. Funnier still that he didn't feel all that bothered by the present circumstances. In reality, things didn't seem too different. They were all together, he was relatively comfortable, save the pounding headache.

Why do I feel so calm? Ronav wondered. More importantly. "Why haven't you escaped yet?"

"Would that I could, sye," Vyla replied. Then she slouched behind her bars and offered a more productive response. "Since it's too dim to see my prison clearly, let me explain. Our captor, no fool, has her Siren prizes bound in a mesh of razor-steel bars. The gaps are too small for my heart to fit through. But I can still do this at least."

Ronav didn't have to wonder what 'this' might be for long. Vyla flowed through the bars and began walking across the room towards him. Only the first few steps looked normal. Then she started to shrink as she grew closer and closer until she stopped upon reaching a stature of three feet. Vyla then turned to one side to reveal a long rope of flesh extending from her back to the cage where a little, skin-colored ball sat behind the bars.

"Too bad I can't cut you out in this state..." the miniature Vyla shrugged before flowing back to her cage.

"You can't?"

"If I stretched my utmost I might manage to get your legs free but your wrists are too high to reach when this thinly spread."

Ronav held his tongue for a few seconds as he took everything in. "Any ideas on what our attacker wants?" he asked. His eyes wandered again as he said this. Their prison looked marginally smaller than the sewer room back in Shadetree Fold. Both were similarly dank but this one had little more than their cages. There were some chains hanging from the left wall and a sturdy metal door, the only visible escape, on the right. No implements of torture in sight, so long as you didn't count the strap holding his head still.

"Only grim things, I would guess."

"Could you try cutting yourself out of the cage? Cut through the bars, I mean."

"You're still clueless about the limitations of Sirens, I see." The eye-rolling was nearly audible in Vyla's voice. "It would take hours to cut through a single bar and I would need to sever at least four. I doubt even our personal Shasteless would be able to hold together through something so taxing."

"So we're perfectly trapped." Had any movement been possible, Ronav might have sagged against his bindings. "I don't think this is bothering me as much as it should."

"Residual calmness... of the... sleep spell." Zeerae's voice came slow and tired. Too tired. "I feel it... also."

"You've been awake this whole time?" asked Vyla, her harsh tone carrying across the room.

"Gathering... my faculties, yes."

It sounded strange to hear the Siren Shasteless so exhausted and out of sorts. Yet the professionalism somehow managed to shine through.

"Any signs of our... captor?" Zeerae asked.

"Not yet," said Ronav.

"You sound far weaker than I did waking up," Vyla sneered.

"You weren't up all night... exerting yourself." A soft laugh followed Zeerae's words. "That's why Nimith and... Yis aren't awake yet... I suspect. Though I don't know why Yis would be... lacking sleep."

At that moment the metal door screeched open and a hooded woman walked in. A Ralta, as they had guessed. She didn't wear the robes that her race usually preferred. Instead she had a set of black, thigh-high leather boots and a black mid-sleeved top that started just above her stomach and ended with the Ralta-standard hood. Again, unlike so many others of this woman's kind, there were no markings on her hood as it reached down to her cheeks. The only contrast offered in her outfit came from her remarkably pale skin and her brown hair that flowed down her chest. But what really caught Ronav's eye was what she had on between her top and bottom. Barely more than a triangle of dark fabric kept the Ralta from being exposed.

"Who are you and why did you attack us?!" Ronav shouted.

At first it seemed as though she had ignored his question. The Ralta swept across the damp floor to stand in front of her prisoners. When she finally spoke, her voice had a curious softness to it that sounded almost polite, despite its owner's actions. "Your second question I will answer later. For now I will only say that I am Malicious. For intruding on my land—"

"Wait, stop," said Zeerae. "Do you mean your name is Malicious or you're... a malicious individual?"

The Ralta turned her head to the Siren's cage. "My name is Malicious."

"Oh, that makes more sense. I was going to say, attacking travelers and all, you don't need to tell... us how malicious you are."

"Rich words coming from a Siren."

"My actions don't make... my words less true."

"No, but they do make them more amusing."

The two woman faced off for several seconds. All Ronav could hear was the sound of Zeerae's breathing, still heavy as her body recovered from the magical sleep.

Eventually Malicious began again. "As I was— ugh, this is why I hate being interrupted. Two of you are still asleep, Oks!" The Ralta waved a hand towards the sleepers as she spoke her spellword.

Ronav couldn't see but he heard the faint clench of bindings as Nimtith and Yis both awoke. They gasped and spluttered before the latter began panicking in Siren while the former did so in common.

"And now they rattle on. Ora ah!" This time Malicious swept her left hand over her prisoners while her right balled into a fist.

A rush of air fell down Ronav's throat as the spell washed over him. He opened his mouth to shout something but not even the smallest whisper escaped.

"Now then, you disturbed the peace of my haven and for that you will serve as the next in a long line of subjects for my experiments."

Ka damn it, Ronav thought. Why does the universe hate me?

Malicious pointed to Vyla. "You, Siren, shall be the first."

The Ralta woman muttered a spellword under her breath and Vyla's cage swung open with a screech along the floor. The Siren stepped out immediately and stretched her arms.

Ronav spied a flicker of movement from Zeerae who had flowed out of her cage to watch. She was shaking her head back and forth.

The warning went unseen and unheeded as Vyla threw herself from across the room. Her arms and legs changed to spears and blades mid flight.

Malicious didn't flinch in the slightest at the sight of the ocean predator baring down on her. "Yava," she said with one hand pointing to the floor.

What had been an accurate and on-point trajectory, on Vyla's part, changed when the spell took her and slapped her against the floor. A thick, sickening splat echoed around the room.

"Disobedience will be punished severely," said Malicious. She then intoned another spellword as she spiraled one hand at the sprawled body of Vyla. A rippling torrent of sound crept from the Ralta's lips, flowed down her arm and snaked through the air to envelop the Siren.

Vyla twisted and warped her body in countless shapes, bulging and defacing her features but the parcel of sound that had developed held fast.

"Save your strength for the tests, please." Malicious turned around and strode from the room, dragging the magical net behind her at a distance. "Aro ah!" she commanded as she left.

From deep in Ronav's throat, the rushing of air resumed. This time it flowed backwards and climbed out until he knew that he could speak again. Then the door slammed shut.

"What in the void is going on?!" Nimtith shouted before anyone else had a chance to speak. "Why are we suddenly locked up?!"

Yis, meanwhile, opted to chatter away in her Siren tongue with shrill and fearful words.

"Xa svis!" Zeerae hissed across the room. Her voice had a cold echo to it as it bounced around the walls.

Yis yelped softly then went silent.

"Nimtith, our situation is thus..." Zeerae proceeded to explain, to the Chayli, everything that had unfolded while he had been asleep and what it all meant. Then she looked at Yis and did the same in Siren.

"Perfect," Nimtith muttered. "I should have seen this coming. The second I agree to help a couple of Sirens, Ka sees fit to punish me. No less than a fool deserves, I suppose."

Zeerae groaned. "You really think your precious Empress has a hand in this?"

"Not a direct one, of course. The scales of good and evil work themselves in her stead. Not that a water b— Gah!" Nimtith cried in shock rather than pain.

A dull, vibrating thunk filled the air. Ronav swore that a single blink would have blinded him to the knife that Zeerae had sprouted and thrown across the room.

"That is what I think of your precious virtues and that is all they are good for in this place," Zeerae snarled.

"What if you missed and hit me instead?"

"I did miss."

Ronav couldn't help but smile at the back and forth. A night in the forest together but now they were quarreling like age-old nemesis. Then his thoughts turned back to more important things, such as the knife. "Wait, why didn't you throw one at Malicious?"

"Ugh. Because, dear, my cage is locked by her magic and there is no guarantee that it will dissipate with her death. I'd prefer not to spend a day carving through bars of steel."

"But now she has Vyla."

"Your love will be fine for now."

"She's not—"

"No, of course she isn't..."

Ronav shut his mouth as he and Zeerae stared one another down. With so much distance and immobility between them, the outcome hardly mattered. "Alright then, throw one of those knives to me."

Zeerae cocked her head. "I didn't think you would seek escape in such a way. Very well, where would you like it, the throat? In through the eye?"

Ronav flinched. "What? No, not at me, to me! Throw it next to my hand so I can grab it and cut myself free."

"Huh, clever boy." Zeerae's right hand emerged from her cage and flicked forwards.

A flash of movement shot across the room before the knife thunked into the wood next to Ronav's hand.

"Be swift, if you please. I'll need that back," said Zeerae.

Ronav curled his left hand around in search of the blade and soon found it just beside his thumb. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt and worked it free of the wood. "What's this made of?" He asked. It definitely didn't feel like any sort of metal.

"Myself. Our hostess took the liberty of rummaging through my body while I slept so my bag of tricks is quite bare."

"Huh." It felt a little odd to be using a part of the Siren's body as a knife, even if it had been formed into a near-perfect replica of one. Then again, Ronav had few doubts that this constituted as mild on the strangeness scale for her.

"Not like that," said Nimtith. "Work the blade under your cuffs, then press it up with your wrist. Really drive it in."

"He's right, dear. We'll sooner starve if you go on slapping away at the leather," Zeerae added.

"Fine, I just didn't— Hang on, how come you can see what I'm doing?" Ronav ceased his cutting to ask.

Zeerae's face went blank. "Because I'm right here looking at you."

"Not you, Nimtith." Ronav tried to jab his eyes to his left where the Chayli man was bound. Failing that, he pointed with the knife instead.

"My head isn't tied down the way yours is," Nimtith answered.

"Why not? Because I'm a Taigin? What am I going to do, bite my way out?"

"Kssh," Zeerae hissed. "We can argue about our captor's racial prejudices once we're free. Void, we can even take it up with her if you really feel like it."

Despite the Siren's logic, Ronav continued to grumble to himself as he worked the knife between the leather cuff and the skin of his wrist, nearly cutting himself open in the process. He then began the arduous task of dragging the blade back and forth, unable to tell if his efforts were having any kind of effect. "Am I even making a scratch?" he asked.

"A small one, I think," said Nimtith.

Zeerae slipped out of her cage, the same way that Vyla had, and crossed half the room. Barely three feet tall, she peered up at the knife. "Yes, you've definitely made a mark. Unless the binding was always worn in that spot. Be patient like the tide."

"Easy for you to say. This is killing my hand," Ronav complained.

"Freedom comes with a price." Zeerae shrugged and sat upon the floor rather than returning to her prison.

"Quol'u sye kevis?" Yis asked in the silence.

Zeerae looked at her. "Pyorvis av. Let's just hope Vyla can stall Malicious long enough."

===

"It occurs to me that a spy in the ranks of Sirens may not be altogether trustworthy..." said Captain Havello to nobody in particular.

Trym ignored the man's questioning tone and instead prodded the unnaturally-red fire that he had lit in the garrison's courtyard. A signal for Yis, though she was considerably overdue. After sundown, he had told her, when she can fly in relative secrecy and her absence won't be noticed straight away. The time now closed on midnight.

"If Trym trusts her still, I do too," said Glade. She folded her arms and stared stoically across the flames at the captain.

"And, captain," Trym added. "Without her we've naught but air to follow."

"Right you might be, but what if those sea witches figure out she's working against them? She'd be a pile of bones in seconds."

"If you have a better plan, I'm all ears."

Captain Havello closed his mouth and went back to staring absently into the flames, lost in thought.

Trym sighed. "You're correct, of course. Our lead is frail at best but it's the only one we have. My spy says they travel to the south sea but that still leaves hundreds of leagues to search between here and there, even if we knew exactly where along the shore they mean to reach. Not to mention we'd be storming them blind, if we're not ambushed ourselves."

Blondie let out a nervous laugh that almost lost itself beneath the fire's crackles. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you want to give me second thoughts."

Trym turned his head skywards, not that he needed to. His voice scanned the darkness no matter which way he faced his mouth. Still nothing and still so much to do. They hadn't bothered to start rallying the troops. The plan was to do that mere hours before setting out so as not to give any Sirens the chance to slip in. "If there's still no sign this time tomorrow we should ready the force regardless."

===

Struggling, as Vyla had quickly realized, was futile. The sound that rippled and hummed around her felt closer to an impenetrable membrane rather than a voice. A strange thought to find sound so solid. She had thrashed and clawed her mightiest against it yet an opening never presented itself and Malicious continued to drag her along without a care.

"If you mean to torture me, you'll find it a waste of time," said Vyla, now locked by similar principles to the cage before. She lay on a table with a spherical series of bars in the center which now encompassed her heart and brain. The barrier remained around her or she would have loosed a hundred slivers of bone into her captor.

"I caren't for what you have to say," Malicious mumbled with her back turned. Her attention fell instead upon a shelf of glasses and vials. Next to it stood another table with an array of metal objects and even more glass. Vyla knew enough about Shasling things to recognize an alchemical setup when she saw one.

"Then why capture us?"

"Your thoughts would be better spent on your surroundings. Find satisfaction in finding the answer yourself."

Vyla held back a snarl. Another woman who thinks herself superior. Regardless, she did as Malicious suggested and allowed her eyes to roam. This room was far smaller than the one she had awoken in. So much so that, were she not bound by the Ralta's voice, she could touch any wall despite the immobility of her vitals.

The cages, Vyla realized. The one around her heart marked the first cage designed purely for shackling a Siren. The ones back with Ronav and the others could have held any race but this little ball of steel left no doubt. Malicious had captured her kind before, but how many and to what end? What sort of experiments required a Siren?

As if awaiting such a cue, Malicious turned around with a vial held high. A pink liquid swirled inside as she approached her prisoner. "Your kind are sharp-minded so you've likely figured at least some of it out by now."

"Why are you capturing Sirens?"

"You don't want to know what happened to the ones before you?"

Vyla stared at the Ralta's ebony hood. She had mimicked one of the eyeless race before but having to face the real thing felt a tad more intimidating.

Malicious smiled. "No? I released them after I finished. Not from life, before you jump to conclusions. Some have even returned, and I've entertained them, but this is generally a once-per-customer service."

Vyla narrowed her eyes then looked at the vial. "If you mean to poison me, you'll find it difficult."

"It is a poison of sorts. But you'll like this one." With that, Malicious upended the vial above Vyla's chest. The bright fluid splashed against the sound barrier and slowly oozed down the sides. Once the last drop had left its home, Malicious flicked one hand back and forth, causing the barrier to part and seal before Vyla could react.

The liquid felt oddly warm as it touched Vyla's skin. Reflexively she channeled the invasion to a single point in preparation for sealing away. But she faltered as it gathered and flowed through her body. Poisons, or any unwelcome substance, usually set off alarms. Pain in her flesh or an unpleasant taste. Malicious' concoction brought neither. Instead it had a strange sweetness, a flavor so uncommon in Siren cuisine.

The warmth that the liquid brought had spread throughout Vyla's body and she welcomed it. The sensations felt pleasant, like a swim in a tropical lagoon, though not so much as to be overwhelming. It took nearly a minute before Vyla realized that she had closed her eyes but still the liquid worked its magic.

Something new began then. The effect began to move, or so it seemed. Whereas until now it had spread slowly throughout Vyla's body, it instead slid downwards from her chest and upwards from her legs. The warmth grew quickly from a mild relaxation to a sweltering heat that culminated between her legs and set her off like the flipping of a switch.

"Mmh!" Vyla gasped. Her hands reflexively flew towards her nethers as the illusion of clothing dissolved.

"You'll find no relief that way," said Malicious.

The warning fell on deaf ears. Vyla's fingers found her swift-flooding folds and she went to work. One hand began to stroke her clit while the other drove inside to tease the roof of her chasm. "W—what is, mm, this?" Vyla stammered.

"A concoction of my own design. The name is still in the works but I'm sure you can guess half of its effects. The second part you'll soon see." Malicious dragged over a chair and sat down to watch.

Again Malicious' words went largely unheard. Vyla had her eyes clamped closed and her face twisted halfway between frustration and release. Never had she needed to be fucked so badly. Even as she fingered herself with abandon it felt like little more than throwing a teaspoon of water into a volcano. But she could feel her climax on the horizon. Just a little longer...

No. Vyla's eyes snapped open as she lost her tempo momentarily. Her fingers had almost brought release to her pussy but now she seemed to have a long way to go. It wasn't that the buildup had suddenly vanished, she felt no less hot or switched on than before. The goal had simply moved forwards where it continued to taunt her on the horizon.