Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Bad Fish, No Worm

Itek circled lower. The lights of the lantern-bearers got smaller and smaller beneath the churning surface.

Orrmis didn't come back either.

He better hope I wasn't his lost princess or I was going to kick his fishy ass... tail... whatever.

Itek flung up his head in dismay. We were helpless to do anything: he couldn't swim in this form, and we couldn't chase horseyfish into the depths.

I was not going to just watch while Ormiss made off with my dragons.

I lept off Itek's back and dove towards the water. He screeched, and his claws grabbed at me, but we were already so low he couldn't dive.

The water was really cold.

Rough.

Dark.

Within a second I was in total darkness, and sinking deeper. I opened my eyes. They stung with salt, but I could just barely make out the watery lights of the lantern-bearers far below me.

I screamed under water and swam after them.

Ormiss better double down on those hopes I wasn't the lost hippocamp princess.

Unfortunatly, the cold, water, wet, waves, and stress didn't prompt a miraculous shift into a princess hippocamp, and after thirty seconds, my lungs were burning and I wasn't gaining on those lights.

I was not letting them make off with my dragons without a fight.

Out of the darkness, Orrmis appeared, small lights wrapped around his horns, giving him an eerie glow, not that I could see much of anything in the water. His arm-like forelegs with webbed hooves extended towards me and bubbles obscured everything, and wetness moved over me. Which is a strange thing to say, because I was in the ocean, but this was a different kind of wetness. More wet than wet. Then rough grass rope bound my wrists.

Oh, this asshole. He was tying me up with my own rope!!

He plunked a bubble over my head.

Now I could see, and I could breathe, but I was going to kill him.

The beautiful horse-head—which would have made any high-bred actual horse look like a degenerate farm jade—seemed to grin at me, and the static charges quivering over his horns were light lightening snaking between clouds. His upper body, with the exception of the forelegs that naturally folded like a rampant horse, thickened and smoothed into an elegant, coiling fish tail that ended in a massive flared tail that danced like silk veils in the water. His mane of fins ran all the way down his back, swirling and dancing, almost hypnotic

The water-bubble ropes he'd conjured snaked my rope around one foreleg and tugged hard enough they got my attention. He looked up towards the surface, and more bubbles formed above us.

The frothy bubbles intensified.

"Whatever you're doing, knock it off!" I shouted, trying to kick him and flailing around uselessly.

The water foamed like I was on the wrong side of a boiling pot of water.

PLOOSH!

I screamed in terror as something huge and dark yanked down by the bubles.

"Itek!" I screamed as the bubble-froth pulled him down. He tumbled and tumbled, flailing, but his wings quickly soaked through and he struggled uselessly against Orrmis' magic. "No! No! Don't you dare drown him, you horse-fish!"

Orrmis cocked his head and inclined one sparkling horn at me. The bubbles pulled Itek closer. Itek lunged as he came close and snapped his beak at Orrmis.