Princess Araxa's Arc

Chapter 6 of 14

Araxa keeps swimming into the unmarked waters, Tide a nervous flicker at her side. The boundary markers are still visible when she looks back, a line of stone towers fading into the dark. She tells herself she can turn around anytime. She tells herself she's just exploring. Then she sees the blood. Dark wisps of it trailing up from below, catching what little light filters through the water. Something breaks the surface ahead, thrashing. A creature with smooth gray skin and wide fins pulls itself toward a cave entrance carved into reddish stone. Its side is torn open, flesh hanging in strips. The blood cloud spreads behind it like ink. Araxa freezes. The creature drags itself into the cave mouth and disappears into the darkness. The blood keeps rising. Tide goes rigid beside her, his light cutting off completely. Araxa feels it before she sees it. A shift in the current. A pressure that makes her skin crawl. She looks down into the water below and sees teeth. Rows and rows of them, glowing blue-white in a mouth that could swallow her whole. The shark rises through the blood trail, massive and sleek, its skin lit with stripes of cold light. It moves like something that has never lost. Its eyes fix on the cave entrance where the wounded creature hid. Araxa pulls the bone blade from her belt without thinking. The shark is three times her size. The blade is barely longer than her forearm. But the creature in the cave is dying and this thing is going to finish it. She swims forward and slashes the blade across the shark's flank as it passes. The cut is shallow but bright blue blood wells up, mixing with the gray creature's darker trail. The shark wheels around, fast, and Araxa sees its eyes lock on her instead. Tide flashes once, sharp and desperate. The shark surges forward. Araxa dives toward the cave entrance and the shark follows, pulling away from the wounded creature's hiding place deep inside. She leads it past the broken coral scattered across the seafloor, the pieces glowing where the creatures smashed through them. The shark is right behind her. But the wounded creature is still alive. And Araxa knows now what it costs to choose someone else's survival over her own safety.