Rhodoreef

17. The Land Lair

The more she stared, the more she was convinced that a divine entity was playing a cruel joke on her. Relief buoyed her up, but crashed down in the face of the new danger. Of all the people who could have come to her rescue, it had to be the one guy she wanted to avoid at all costs. From feral human prey to debt slavery.

Her eyes flitted to the two long limbs that supported his weight. A battle akin to an Empire Ocean skirmish raged in her brain while she struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. On top of that, how he teleported here in the blink of an eye eluded her wildest imagination.

Dea clamped her eyes shut and drooped back in the Cypod—the closest she could manage to a fetal position. Footsteps approached her—the muffled thuds of shoes hitting asphalt.

"Go away, go away, go away," she chanted under her breath.

"Are you trying to banish me?" his resonant voice inquired, too close for comfort.

She gulped and cracked open an eye. He bent down to peer at her. Without warning, she mustered up the last dregs of her strength and swiped at him. He dodged sideways with lightning fast reflexes.

A bird hoot pierced the beat drop of a silence—as if to mock her sad attempt at fighting. He straightened up, muttering a few human words that Merlingo couldn't translate. Now that she had exhausted her defensive maneuvers, her body reverted to its jelly-like slump.

After watching her for a moment, he smacked a hand to the back of the Cypod and wheeled it towards his vehicle, cloaked in the night like a deep-sea blackdragon.

Dea's panicky mind jumped from one idea to the next to figure out a way to incapacitate him. Wait just a minute, you silly gull. First of all, you're not a tank—don't randomly aggro him. Even if you manage to whack him unconscious, you'd be stranded on land. In fact, both of you would be sitting puffins if the feral humans return!

It made sense that he would transport her to his land lair. She decided that the best course of action was to act on the way and ask help from a random human.

Anuk positioned the Cypod next to the passenger door and pulled it open. Then he scooped her up.

Dea was too surprised to react. A nanosecond later, she clawed at his shirt and screamed her lungs out. He winced.

"Let me go, you jerk!" She thumped a fist on his shoulder, fingers twisting the fabric—though a glance at the ground below stopped her from head-butting him, in case he dropped her.

The double assault on his shirt and eardrums drove him to hurriedly stow her inside and shut the door.

He stood there for a long moment and swept a hand through his mop of black curls. Then he pushed the Cypod to the back. A low whir informed her that he folded it up to deposit in the vehicle's cargo compartment.

Her heavy breathing punctuated the silence in the vehicle's interior. She emitted a squeak to test her strained vocal chords just when the driver's door clunked open, making her jump. Anuk climbed in.

As he revved up the engine, the unreality of the situation bore down on her. She goggled down at his legs, encased in a thick, dry fabric.

"It's rude to stare," he murmured. "I feel shy."

She blinked at him. "You've got legs..."

"Yep, all natural."

Dea struggled to process it while her shock slowly wore down. Random details aligned to form a new picture—his peculiar accent and the beams in the lair that were so wide in places that they were practically walkways. She realized her mouth was hanging open.