He needed to cast a spell. Any spell. Some distraction, so he could get his bearings and find a way to leave this place.

He had no idea if he could move, but he would it if it meant escape.

“We’ve decided to wait,” she shared. “You foolishly notified everyone up there that he has roused, annoying him with your ‘rituals.’ They must come to think this idiotic prophecy has been fulfilled and it will keep them safe. So we will wait.”

He felt her get nearer to him before she spoke on.

“I had wanted to take their vengeance. Those women you violated. Those women you slaughtered. Giving him use of your flesh as many times as your people took their flesh. But we can’t wait that long. Violating you thirty-two thousand times would take years. It might take centuries.”

He released a hand to start to draw in the dirt, the beginnings of a spell.

“Don’t be stupid,” she murmured, and he could tell she was drifting away from him. “Do you think your magic works here? The merfolk have bound him and bound his magic. I can sink to his lair, and I can rise to the surface, and take him with me, or the girls, but we don’t know how. He’s been powerless for millennia. Until me.”

“We were only doing what—”

All of a sudden, her hand snaked out and caught him by the jaw.

She forced his neck into a painful twist so he would look at her.

She was crouching behind him.

“Don’t,” she snapped. “There is no excuse for what you’ve done. There are no words you can speak. Do you think its these rituals that roused him? How bloody man of you. They had nothing to do with it.”

“Wh-what did?”

She pushed him off and his cheek struck stone.

“It was time. He wakes, he sleeps. He wakes, he sleeps. It’s just that he sleeps for over a thousand years. And he needs someone, that someone being me, to bring him to the surface. We’ve had a few forays, just for him to get the lay of the land and for us to recruit some helpers. But our base will remain down here. At least for a spell.”

He carefully began to drag himself away from her, but when her eyes narrowed, he stopped.

“If you can get to the surface, then I have great power up there,” he informed her. “I’m sure I can rise too. I can help you up there. I know people. And you know I know people who serve the Beast. I have connec—”