Sitkra cursed as the coral wand she’d been using crumbled in her grasp, becoming a fine powder that the rain quickly reduced to a wet sludge.
Inherited by Sitkra when she’d devoured her predecessor, the wand’s ability to allow those it touched to breathe above the waves was one that she had used intermittently over the last several years. Although she had known that it would someday be expended, learning how to create another one hadn’t been very high on her list of priorities. After all, the air-breathing spell was one that she could use on her own, so why bother with making another wand?
But now, with it gone and her already having expended her single prepared air-breathing spell on Lirtkra several hours before, she regretted not learning how to create a replacement, since she’d only been able to enchant a fraction of their total forces. She briefly considered ordering the other Holy Ones she’d brought with her to cast the air-breathing spell in hopes of making up at least some of the shortfall, but quickly discarded that notion. That would tip them off that her wand had finally failed, and they’d refuse to help in hopes that her inability to follow through on the Great Lord of the Deep’s orders would get her in trouble. For a sahuagin, especially a Holy One, opportunity always came in the form of someone else’s misfortune.
Still, she had been able to enchant several dozen of their numbers before the wand had run out. The vast majority of those had been sahuagin, of course. That she’d had to commit sacrilege by enchanting any of those other creatures had been bad enough, but even for the Great Lord of the Deep’s sake she couldn’t bring herself to use the Shark God’s holy energies on more of the lesser races than her own people!
Of course, now she had to go and tell him that the majority of his retinue would need to remain very close to the water or risk asphyxiating. Even so, there’s opportunity here, she assured herself as she dived back into the water and swam closer to where the Great Lord was finishing with the poh-nee ship, a mere spear’s throw away from the water’s edge. After all, now we’ll be able to show him that the sahuagin are far more capable than those disgusting freaks he insists on keeping!
“What is it, Sitkra?”
“G-Great Lord,” Sitkra began, unable to suppress a gulp. The prospect of presenting her master with bad news was suddenly far more intimidating when in his presence. “We have…” she paused, trying to figure out how to best phrase what she was about to say, “…reached the limits of how many we can enable to breathe above the water.”
The Great Lord of the Deep was silent for a moment before he spoke again. “And how many is that?” The low rumble of his voice made his displeasure clear, and Sitkra refused to admit that she felt afraid in that moment.
“Over forty sahuagin, Great Lord, including myself! With our might, we will bring this maa-jik poh-nees to you, so that you may personally devour them whole!” Of that she felt absolutely confident, if for no other reason than failure would assuredly mean all of their deaths, one way or another. Although it galled her to admit it, anything that could kill Lirtkra would be a difficult opponent. That thought, she knew, should have stoked her bloodlust. But at the moment, all she felt was a growing sense of wrongness, as if nothing was proceeding as it should.
For a moment she wondered if they had lost the Shark God’s favor, and to her horror she couldn’t refute the possibility outright. Their service to the Great Lord of the Deep had entailed numerous violations of lesser tenets, she knew. But even so they were still receiving spells, and there hadn’t been any signs or omens of their god’s displeasure that she was aware of.
Unless what’s happened with those maa-jik poh-nees is a sign, she realized, and the thought made her entire body tense. It made perfect sense. How else would majestic creatures such as themselves lose to mere poh-nees? Until these new poh-nees had arrived, their race had been the weakest that Sitkra had ever encountered. But if she was right, and the Shark God was angry with them, then…was that why her wand had failed when it did?
“And what others?”
Torn from her thoughts, Sitkra cocked her head. “Others, Great Lord?”
“What others have you used your air-breathing spell on?”
“Two of the aboleths and five icks-, ickits-…the manta ray creatures. But we brought our euryptids and reefclaws as well!” Those creatures, little more than domesticated animals among the sahuagin, were amphibious, and so made excellent additions to a land-bound assault.
This time the Great Lord of the Deep was silent for much longer before speaking. “So you’ve restricted almost all of my strongest slaves to the water, while you, your weakling kin, and your pets will try to succeed at a task you’ve failed at before?”
“WE ARE NOT WEAK!” screamed Sitkra, surprising herself as her rage suddenly boiled up out of nowhere. All of a sudden the myriad humiliations and indignities she and her community had suffered came back to her, and she couldn’t hold herself back. “We are a mighty people, the ones who devour the weak! We are chosen by the Shark God to prey upon everything beneath the waves! We do not need any of your misshapen creatures to go on a hunt, because we can bring our prey down ALL BY OURSELVES!”
Her words hung in the air as she finished her outburst, and as her ire finally cooled, Sitkra realized that the only sounds she could hear were the rain and the occasional thunderclap. Looking around, she realized that all eyes – both above and below the water – were on her, and it began to dawn on her just what she had done. “That…that’s why you don’t need anything else to go onto the land,” she continued lamely. “We’ll defeat those maa-jik poh-nees for you.”
“Like your raiding party did before?” The Great Lord’s voice was even colder now.
“That was a fluke! We didn’t know our enemies' strength then!”
“And do you now that Lirtkra has been defeated?” The question made Sitkra gape, reeling backwards as though a spear had been shoved through her chest, and the Great Lord of the Deep laughed cruelly, causing the water around him to churn. “Yes, I knew that you dispatched him, along with Monitor and the Cripple. Did you really think that I’d be so ignorant of my own slaves’ activities?”
Sitkra couldn’t answer, still struggling to cope with the fact that her secrets weren’t so secret after all. How?! How does he know?! Lirtkra’s absence was too recent for word to have gotten around to anyone except the other Holy Ones, and she couldn’t imagine that any of them would have told the Great Lord of the Deep about it. All of them resented the creature that had taken over their great society; to have revealed her failings to it would have required an overwhelming degree of hatred for her, but who would-
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one sahuagin on the shore that was displaying her teeth in a vicious grin. For a moment, Sitkra didn’t recognize her, but then saw the line of cuts on her face and realized that it was the junior priestess whom she’d berated barely more an hour ago, and she knew in that moment just who had tipped the Great Lord off. Silently swearing that she’d devour that miserable wretch slowly and painfully once they got back, Sitkra turned her attention back toward her master. “Great Lord, Lirtkra’s failures are of no consequence! Where he and the others failed, we will succeed!”
“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK TO ME OF SUCCESS!”
The Great Lord of the Deep’s roar was louder than thunder, and the force of his anger made the blood drain from Sitkra’s face. “Grea-”
“SILENCE!” This time his words were punctuated by a mammoth tentacle slamming into the water, causing massive waves that sent the surrounding creatures scurrying. “You have brought me nothing but failure where these ponies are concerned, Sitkra! Your raiders couldn’t take this ship! Your greatest warrior and two of my servitors fared no better! And now your incompetence has crippled my invasion force!” Another tentacle flung the rear of the ship onto the shore, where it collided with a nearby building with a terrific crash. “I will have no more of your bungling!”
“Great Lord, I-”
But Sitkra’s words were cut off as a third tentacle coiled around her. With a diameter greater than she was tall, it had no problem squeezing her until she couldn’t keep any air in her lungs, unable to do anything but thrash weakly in its grip. “I told you to be silent.” The Great Lord’s voice had returned to its icy calmness, though it was no less terrifying for it.
Waiting until her struggling had stopped, the Great Lord brought her closer, until she was right in front of one of its eyes. Uncaring of how her face was turning blue, he kept speaking. “Under other circumstances, I would give you the same treatment as the last one of your kind that challenged me, and leave you here to bake in the sun.” Sitkra’s eyes widened at that, and the Great Lord felt her struggling begin anew. A quick squeeze was all it took to crush her resistance, as well as several bones based on the sharp cracks he felt from her. “You are fortunate, however, that such a punishment takes more time than I currently have at my disposal. As such, I will show you mercy that you don’t deserve.”
The grip surrounding her eased just slightly, and Sitkra gasped for breath, the air made breathable thanks to her wand’s magic. “Th-thank you…Great Lord…” Her words were croaked hoarsely, trying not to choke on her own blood. She could feel that she had been badly injured, but it was nothing that some of the healing spells she’d prepared wouldn’t be able to fix.
The Great Lord of the Deep chuckled darkly. “You’re right to thank me, Sitkra. After all, I remember that your kind put a premium on devouring and being devoured, isn’t that correct? As such, you may consider this my gratitude for all that you’ve done until now.” Sitkra was about to ask what he meant when his tentacle suddenly squeezed her again. Unable to speak once again, she could only scream silently as he brought her towards his mouth, realizing what was about to happen. She tried to thrash, tried to cast a spell, tried to do anything that would save her, but there was nothing she could do.
In her last moments, Sitkra tried to pray to the Shark God to take her and let her hunt by his side for eternity in the endless ocean of blood. But as the large beak that was the Great Lord of the Deep’s mouth closed on her, terror filled her heart, and she tried to scream. She died with none of the bravery or dignity befitting a sahuagin Holy One.
Her last prayer would not be answered.
Silence reigned in the wake of Sitkra’s death.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Tlerekithres, the Great Lord of the Deep, directed his gaze at the rest of his slaves as he spoke. “There are ponies somewhere in this city. Those of you able to breathe air will bring one of them to me, dead or alive. If you don’t, you will suffer the same price for failure that Sitkra did. Now go.”
As one, the assembled horde turned and rushed toward Vanhoover.
The attack had begun.