Their tails coiled together, twining and tugging, digging long spines into each other and trying to find the soft places beneath scales where they could draw blood. That was always the game when fighting one of his own kind. Who would give up first due to blood loss? None of his people would stop fighting, no matter what limbs they lost or how death called to them.

A fight was a fight. And they would not give in.

They crashed into one of the old buildings, tearing right through the wall and spilling into the interior. Arges barely had a moment to notice that some of the pieces in here were still intact. An old table, a few floating pieces of driftwood, and countless barnacles attached to every surface before Maketes slipped out of his arms.

His yellow finned brother flared out, both fluke and side fins standing straight to make him look even larger than he already was. “Stop running, Arges.”

He would not. Not until they were farther away from her. “You know I can’t do that.”

“You can.” Maketes looked like he had been struck in the belly. Disgust turned his body a sickly yellow, not glimmering with his usual brightness.

Arges turned his attention to the holes in the walls, waiting for Daios to join them. “I was given this job for a purpose. I am going to fulfill what our own Mitéra has given me.”

“That didn’t look like a job to me.” Maketes let all the stiff fins drop until it was just his friend hovering in the water before him. The dust and debris made it difficult to see his expression, but he knew the color of sadness on his closest friend well enough. Maketes had never been able to hide his emotions like the rest of them. “You cannot truly believe I cannot see it. You have gone too far, Arges. Too deep into this. You need to be released from whatever poison she’s injected into your veins.”

“Is that what he told you? That she is some poisonous sea creature who has turned my will into her own?” He sliced his fluke through the water, forcing his brother back. “Idiot. You have seen her for yourself. Do you really believe a creature like that could harm me?”

“I think there are many tiny creatures in the sea who can do more damage than we think.” He batted away a small clown fish that was trying to dart past him. “You are blind to her wiles. I see that now. But Daios is right. You need our help.”

“I don’t need your help!” Arges thundered. “The person who needs your help is stuck in a bubble of air halfway underneath the ocean with one of our own kind terrorizing her. I have not lost my ability to count. How long do you think it takes before our brother cracks that glass bubble? Before he drowns an innocent?”

Maketes had never been a killer. He was the brother who mourned any creatures they had to kill, even the ones they killed for food. He was the brother who took the time to value life. This must have been eating him up inside because he was going to be the reason someone died. Arges could use that to his advantage.

His brother wavered for just a second, and it was enough.

Arges coasted a little closer, still with enough distance that he could flick his tail and disappear if he had to. “She’s scared, Maketes. I moved her here because I knew Daios would want to hunt her down. I tried to get her to a place where she could be comfortable. I can understand her language now. She can give you the same device. You can talk to her. Ask all the questions that you’ve wanted to ask for ages.”

“How?”

Arges turned his head and pointed to the small pinprick of metal beside his hearing holes. “It’s so simple. A small bit of pain, nothing worse than what we’ve felt before.”

He had him. Maketes had ever been curious, and he wasn’t the brother to be so serious. Fighting wasn’t in his blood and surely he would let go. He would turn away from Daios.

But then a blast of darkness erupted through the hole in the wall and Arges knew he had lost his chance. With a grunt, he was caught around the waist and thrown through the nearest wall.

“Maketes!” he shouted. “Get out of there!”

He didn’t have time to see if his yellow finned brother made it out of the collapsing building. Daios had a thick arm around his waist and he couldn’t wriggle free from his brother’s grip. He hated how deep he had to claw through Daios’s forearm, even knowing that it was the only one left. Surely his brother was not strong enough to fight like this. He’d only just lost his other arm.

The currents blasted them far away from the human homes, closer to the shore. Daios slapped his tail against his, coiling them together until they were locked. Impossible to get out of, and even more infuriating.

He hated grappling with his brother like this. Even when they were little brood mates, just out of the eggs, Daios had been bigger. He would wrap himself around Arges and they would fight until they were both struggling for breath. This wasn’t a fair fight. Not when they were so close together.

Locked in, he wriggled until his upper body was above his brothers. And then he used the sharp spines at the base of his elbows and brought them down upon Daios’s shoulders. Over and over again, he fought against the thick water and didn’t stop, even when black blood plumed around them. He would not, could not, stop.

Mira needed him. Every moment he was away from her was another moment when she was alone. Alone and scared, and it tore at him worse than his brother’s claws.

Daios picked up speed. And for a moment, he didn’t have the faintest idea why. Was his brother going to slam him into the rocks? Was that the plan? Would he scrape Arges’s spine against the sharp ground until he had ripped all the flesh from his back?

He realized too late what the plan really was. With one more burst of his powerful tail, Daios thrust them both out of the water. But his strong arm continued the movement and with a terrible snarl, he launched Arges out of the water and out onto the sharp ground. Stones cut into his tail, ripping through the gills of his side and tearing through his hip fin.

The sound that came out of Arges was unlike anything he had ever made before. His hip fin was nearly ripped off his body. He didn’t know if he could ever reattach it, and if he could, he’d never use it like before. His arm was bleeding from where he had skidded, and it hurt to breathe through the right side of his gills. Going back into the water would be painful. Though the salt would cleanse his wounds, it would also make them infinitely worse.

Gritting his teeth, he braced himself on the ground and leveraged himself upright. He wasn’t far from the water, but dragging himself back into it would tear many scales from his tail.

Daios lifted his head above the water just as a crackle echoed through the air. Light flashed and then the sky itself cried out in anger, rumbling its rage that a creature of water was so far from its home.

“I saw you with it,” Daios said, his voice mimicking the rumble that still rocked through the skies. “I saw the look on your face.”

“She is the mission I was given by Mitéra.”

“You have feelings for her. Abominable feelings that will tear you and the rest of us down. You will die if they see what you have become, Arges. Our people will never accept her. It is unnatural, and the sea will destroy you both for how you feel.”

“How would you know?” Arges spat, his fingers curling so hard on the rocks that the webbing between his fingers split. “You have no right to speak for the gods. I have seen my future with the ancients. I know the path that I will choose, and the path I wish to choose.”

For a brief moment, there was a flash of sadness across Daios’s face. “The future you saw must be one of loneliness and hardship, then, brother. I have no interest in seeing you rip apart the very legacy you have built after years of fighting and proof that you are worth following. Your only future is one of pain.”