"Your precious Taker," Flyys said, the certainty of his own doom freeing him from the fear that had filled him, "will turn on you in the end. He is only after those things that matter to him. You and the other kraknyth are only a means to an end."
Murderous rage gleamed in the morkoth mage's eyes. "You lie."
"You yourself said that no one undersea race knows all about the Taker's past or his future," Flyys went on, "but we know this. You will pay for your greed and for your mistakes.
Myth Nantar shall never reopen."
"Enough prattle," Vurgrom declared. "We've got leagues to go if we're to get where we need to be." He gestured at his men. 'Take the triton belowdecks and stow him."
Flyys waited until they untied him, then tried to break free. He preferred death now to birthing the morkoth young, but everything he'd been through had left him drained. One of the pirates slammed the flat of his heavy cutlass against his head and consciousness abandoned the young triton.
I
Claarteeros Sea (Trackless Sea)
17 Tarsakh, the Year of the Gauntlet
"Meat is meat!"
The roar of sahuagin thumps, ticks, pings and whistles that served as their communication filled the walls of the open amphitheater, almost deafening Laaqueel as she stood in the sahuagin king's retinue. It was pure bloodlust, fired from their king's promise of the coming deaths in the amphitheater.
As a malenti, an accident of birth among the sahuagin caused from being born too close to a community of sea elves, she immediately stood out from the hulking sahuagin around her. Even though she was only a few inches under six feet in height, all of the sahuagin nearby were at least a foot or more taller.
She looked supple and slender, and knew from past experience that she turned the male heads of surface dwellers as well as sea elves. It was cruel injustice that the form she wore was so hideous to her, yet so pleasing to the enemies of her people. She wore only the simple sahuagin harness, making even more evident the curvaceous form that set her apart from the other priestesses allowed at the king's side.