Is this the dungeon? she wondered, glancing around. It didn’t look like one. Where were the guards? Where was the executioner?
She looked down at her body and saw that she wasn’t actually shackled. Instead, she was encased in what looked like a cocoon. A fine metal filament had been wound around her body all the way from her tail fins to her neck. Another length of filament ran from the cocoon to the cave’s ceiling, suspending her over a pile of bones and skulls, some yellowed with age, others fresh and bloody.
“No!” Sera uttered in a choked voice. Suddenly it all made sense…the cave, the scraping sound—metal on stone.
I want you to suffer, Lucia had said.
And Sera knew that she would. Her death would be agonizing. Her executioner’s venom would paralyze her, just like the sea scorpion’s had, but this creature had more than a barb in its tail. It had fangs, and they were twelve inches long.
The scraping sound grew louder. The thing making it drew closer.
As Sera watched, a nightmare loomed out of the darkness: Alítheia, the murderous bronze sea spider.
THE SPIDER’S CURVED fangs were only inches from Sera’s face. She cocked her head, examining Sera with her eight black eyes.
“Finally awake! But only ssskin and bonesss!” she hissed unhappily, prodding Sera with a hooked claw. “No meat for Alítheia!”
“Alítheia, please listen to me—”
“No! You mussst lisssten. Alítheia isss not ready to eat yet, but sssoon, sssoon,” the spider said, rubbing her front claws together. “Alítheia will bring food. You will eat it. Moon jelliesss, yesss. To make you plump!”
The spider turned and scuttled off.
“Wait!” Sera begged. “You can’t kill me! I’m Serafina, the rightful heiress to Miromara’s throne!
The spider waved a leg at Sera. “Everyone sssaysss thisss,” she hissed, without even turning around.
“Alítheia, please,” Sera said, her voice breaking. “It’s the truth! Taste my blood!”
“I will, mermaid, I will.”
And then she was gone, moving off toward the far end of the cave. Light shone down there from an iron grille that covered the outside entrance to the spider’s den, which was in the center of the kolisseo, an outdoor arena. Alítheia scuttled up the craggy walls toward it, and stuck a leg out through the bars.
She’s fishing for moon jellies, Sera thought.
As Sera desperately tried to figure out how to convince the spider not to eat her, Alítheia suddenly shrieked. The next thing Sera knew, the spider was frantically clambering back down the wall.
A burst of bright light followed her, nearly hitting her, then exploded like a bomb on the floor of the cave, hissing and bubbling. It forced her to take cover in a hollow on the other side of the cave’s entrance.
More bombs came hurting through the grille.
“Lava globes,” Sera whispered.
The lava was followed by laughter and taunts. Sera recognized the voices—they belonged to Feuerkumpel goblins.
“Help!” she shouted. “Is anyone there? Somebody please help me!”
The goblins only laughed harder. They imitated her pleas for help, then chucked more lava bombs.
I can’t die here, I can’t! she thought wildly. Miromara needs me; my friends need me to help defeat Abbadon.
She remembered the vision Vr?ja had shown to her and her friends of the monster destroying Atlantis. She remembered the fire, the screaming, the blood. So many had suffered and died then. So many more would now, if Orfeo managed to free his creature.
Sera’s fear turned into fury. She struggled and thrashed, trying to break out of the cocoon. But all she succeeded in doing was tiring herself. She lowered her head, spent.
The cruel goblin voices were in her ears, in her head. Their taunts, telling her she was going to die slowly and painfully, were all she could hear. Then, tiring of their sport, they moved off, and Sera become aware of another voice.
“Principessa Serafina? Can it be?”
Sera’s breath caught. She thought she recognized the voice, but she was afraid to hope. “Fossegrim?” she called out.
“Yes, it is I!” he shouted back.
Her old friend, the liber magus! “Where are you?” Sera shouted.
“Below you,” Fossegrim replied.
Serafina twisted and strained, trying to see him. She spotted him to her left. “Are you in a cocoon, too?” she asked him.
“Indeed I am.”
“How did you get here?”
“I and my fellow Black Fins were found in the Ostrokon on the same day Vallerio returned to Cerulea. Death riders have been interrogating me ever since, for months and months, but I’ve given them nothing. They must’ve finally realized it was hopeless, for they threw me into the spider’s lair six days ago.”
Sera knew all too well how Traho interrogated his prisoners. She could only imagine what the brave old merman had gone through.
“Fossegrim, are you…are you…”
“Still in once piece?” he asked. There was a short silence, then, “Let’s just say I shall find it difficult to shelve conchs again.”