A mermaid and a corsair. Natalie Yacobson

some reason, Desmond felt an unbearable hatred at the sight of the handsome Triton. If it weren’t for the shackles, he would have killed him. If only a newt could be killed. He thought sea creatures were immortal. Anyway, morgens are long-lived. Merediana herself has admitted to being well into her late teens. Laor must be her age. They both look about eighteen years old, and they both have eternity under their belts.

      “What a pair they’d make!” Dor sighed as he watched Merediana and the newt swim away. “It is too bad the princess has already been promised to marry the ocean prince.”

      “What do you say?” Desmond was so excited that he could have broken out of his magical shackles. The octopuses barely held him back. One overseer whipped him with a seaweed scourge. It hurt more than the whip.

      Merediana, meanwhile, swam up to the temple and stroked the tentacles of a large kraken that wrapped around all the columns of the structure. Laor followed her. What a lucky fellow! Merediana had not driven him away. She’d just gotten rid of Desmond.

      Underwater plantations

      The work on the plantations was hard and deadly. The ink-colored algae burned your fingers. He could see why the morgens were reluctant to pick it themselves. Desmond’s palms were burned and abraded after half an hour’s work. The algae were still moving, alive and trying to nibble his fingers. They wrapped themselves around the hands, rubbed against the skin as if they were blades, and could even tear off the hand.

      One slave, who had had both arms torn off at the elbow by the seaweed, was seized by the overseers and thrown into the sacrificial well near the temple. There, apparently, the poor man died. Other maimed slaves were attacked by swarms of piranhas and eaten alive.

      Desmond recognized an old pirate friend he had met in a tavern on Pion Island. The pirate was a tall, burly man who was nicknamed Black Pike. Even he had been enslaved by the morgens. Wow!

      Pike noticed Desmond too, recognized him, and for a moment distracted himself from his work. The naughty algae did not miss the moment. They immediately dug into the wrist of Pike, wrapped a network around his legs, stomach, shoulders, twisted a bundle neck. In a minute only bloody pieces of Pike were left. He was literally crushed and torn apart.

      “And so will you if you get distracted again!” The slippery tentacles of the octopus slid down Desmond’s body. They were sticky and nasty. The octopus was groping the pirate as if it was going to eat him alive.

      “Leave him alone!” Dor arrived just in time for the octopus to almost crush Desmond. “The princesses will probably want him as their servant. He looks a lot like the pirate their sister ran away with. He is also blue-eyed, also blond. All in all it is a royal type. He’s for royalty.”

      “They’ll tear him apart in the first game. Such a full-blooded slave will be wasted,” grumbled the octopus, but he reluctantly let Desmond go.

      What kind of games are sea queens playing? Desmond noticed that the octopuses were frightened and no longer looked in his direction. How can you frighten such big guys?

      The seaweed, on the other hand, was not to be deterred. They were still trying to bite off Desmond’s fingers or at least tear out his nails.

      “Why do sea people need so much seaweed?” Desmond hissed under his breath.

      “They use it to weave nets at the ocean’s edge,” whispered a slave nearby. He was gathering seaweed on the same stubble as Desmond.

      “Are you here for piracy and kidnapping mermaids, too?”

      “No, I’m here for breaking a treaty with the king of the sea. I’m a merchant, trying to keep some of my profits from Seal. It didn’t work out. Now I’m working my ass off.”

      “Do you have a name?”

      “On land, I was called Tiel. At sea, they don’t remember my name. Everyone here is an equal slave.”

      “My name is Desmond.”

      “You’re a pirate in disgrace to the king of the sea?”

      “I am a corsair.”

      “Well, corsairs are sea robbers with noble blood. They’re supposed to honor the treaty.”

      “We all get into trouble.”

      “That’s right,” Tiel looked at the overseers, who were distracted by the punishment of the other slaves. We can talk a little more, maybe even confer about escape.”

      “So did you run into greed?”

      “It not exactly,” Til blushed. “I withheld not only the profit from the sea king, but also the girl who was to be sacrificed to the sea. I just couldn’t drown her.”

      “I see,” Desmond decided to move on to the hot topic. “Can you escape from here?”

      “Are you a wizard?”

      “Suppose so,” Desmond was glad Cassandra’s amulet hadn’t been taken from him. The amulet gave him a small amount of magical power. Maybe it would be enough to escape.

      “We need to remove the shackles, which are magical, deceive the guards, and then convince the Nephilims to let us go.”

      “What are Nephilims?

      “That’s what I call the winged heads on the gates of the Underworld, but the mermaids themselves call them something else. Mevellines, I think. Mermaids have exquisite speech and terms of their own. Mermaids and newts are the nobility of the underwater world, and monsters like these,” Tiel nodded at the octopuses, “are common people.”

      “We’re the villains, because we have to work,” Desmond felt a painful whiplash on his back. It was one of the overseers who had swum close to him and noticed that he was slacking off.

      “Get to work, Earthman! Be quickly!” The octopus’ many eyes flashed with such anger that Desmond thought it best to work hard.

      The algae had to be plucked up by the roots and then tied into fancy sheaves. In a fraction of a minute a new algae would grow in place of the plucked ones. The work on the plantations never stopped. You could labor here forever and the land would remain uncultivated.

      “I’ll be damned for messing with a mermaid!” Desmond swore through his teeth as the insolent algae pinched his fingers.

      The cursing made Desmond a desirable target for punishment. He received whips and whiplashes that caused wounds and burns to blossom on his skin.

      “The pirate captain had become a slave. Oh, my!”

      Desmond looked back at the voice and spotted his longtime foe. The one-eyed captain of “The Mockingbird” was giving him an unkind look. What a meeting! Spike had become his nemesis when they’d shared the proceeds on Pion. And now the enemy was here. They were both slaves on the same plantation. The black patch from Spike’s eye was gone, and a scorpion had taken up residence in the empty eye socket. It had gnawed so deeply into his eyelid that it seemed like a second eye.

      How many more enemies from land could one meet in the sea kingdom! Desmond had a bad feeling. Spike had definitely spotted him and recognized him. For now they both labor under the whips of the overseers. But if the octopuses let their guard down, there would be a fight.

      Cassandra’s amulet vibrated on Desmond’s chest like a second heart. The magical thing was sensitive to approaching danger.

      Merediana had come to see the work. She behaved with the utmost arrogance. It would seem from the outside that she didn’t know Desmond at all.

      “I’ll get out of here, get to land, and get a love elixir so strong she won’t be able to live without me. Cassandra can make such elixirs,” Desmond muttered to himself. He had to have something to comfort himself with.

      Cassandra could make a magic elixir, but Cassandra was far away. He needed the potion right here, right