"Iakhovas," Huaanton called out.

The wizard turned at last, drawing his gaze from the kraken, but Laaqueel knew the observance of the command had been too slow. Huaanton wouldn't let that go.

"Exalted One," Iakhovas called back. "At your behest, I have returned to your august presence that I might serve you."

Laaqueel grew more afraid as the kraken continued closing the distance. Iakhovas didn't seem to care. The net stretched tight before them, the kelp laced with bone shards to prevent anyone from easily cutting through. Until it was lowered or removed, it trapped them with the kraken.

"You find yourself on the wrong side of the net," Huaanton stated with the hint of a threat. "One of my predecessors found that creature and captured it while it was young, then it was walled in here until it grew too large to escape. Now the beast is deliberately kept hungry. Only the fact that it knows we'd starve it to death if it attacked you unbidden keeps it from eating you now."

"Perhaps, Exalted One," Iakhovas said, "and perhaps there is more to this creature's behavior than you know."

He sprang from the flier, cleaving the water and streaking upward. He moved like a born swimmer, instinctively knowing how best to move his body.

The kraken's tentacles rippled in response to Iakhovas swimming closer. For a moment, it looked like the gargantuan creature was actually going on the defensive.

Laaqueel watched, hypnotized by the sight of the man looking so diminutive against the kraken's huge mass. She forced herself to stand in the flier, but she had a spell at the ready, willing to strike the creature with a scalding jet of heated water. If Iakhovas died, her ambitions and privileges died with him, and so did her ability to better serve Sekolah.

The kraken floated upside down, its arrowhead-shaped body pointed down toward the cavern floor so its tentacles splayed out around it. Iakhovas floated near one of the eyes, looking like he was locked in some kind of conversation with the giant squid.

Without warning, the kraken started glowing, outlined by a soft purple-blue light that shifted and moved like fiery flames. Iakhovas reached out and placed a hand next to the kraken's huge eye. The wizard grinned as he turned to face Huaanton.

"Just as I perceived," Iakhovas said confidently. "I, and my mission, have been given Sekolah's blessings.

Laaqueel has brought me the message and kept me in line with the Great Shark's desires."

Laaqueel believed the wizard was magically controlling the kraken. She didn't want to believe that he had some kind of bond with them that had existed before he'd been turned into stone and left for dead, or that Sekolah had offered the wizard protection. She wished she didn't have her doubts.

With a lightning quick flick, the kraken reached out a tentacle and stripped one of the sahuagin warriors from the flier. The warrior never had a chance, although he succeeded in burying his trident in the creature's flesh. While the warrior still struggled, the kraken brought him to its mouth and bit down, shredding the sahuagin's legs. Blood clouded the water, running in black swirls against the white limestone background.

The royal guard surged forward, hooking their webbed hands in the net separating them from the kraken and the dying sahuagin. They shouted out at the giant squid in anger and fear while the men in the back instantly surrounded Huaanton, urging him back into the tunnel.

The king shook them off, chasing them back from him with warnings. The guards pulled back reluctantly, caught between the need to do their job and their responsibility to obey the king.

The kraken chomped again, biting the dying sahuagin in two at the waist. Hunks of meat and entrails spilled out into the water. Slowly, the kraken raised Iakhovas toward its mouth.

Laaqueel shifted, getting ready to loose the magic she had awaiting her command.

As you were, little malenti. Do not try to take any part in this upon pain of death. Iakhovas's voice spoke into her mind. Huaanton has grown over bold these past few years and must be reminded of his true place in the events that are unfolding. I will not suffer him threatening me and undermining my authority while I go off to fight his wars.

Laaqueel forced water through her gills, flushing her body. She didn't act, but her spine became as tight as a bowstring. The wizard's insubordination was going to be the death of them both.

The kraken stopped moving the tentacle holding Iakhovas within a few feet of its maw. The wizard slashed out with a hand that resembled a hard ridge of bone for a moment. The bone ridge sliced through one of the chunks of meat from the sahuagin warrior.

Laaqueel knew the illusion of being a sahuagin that Iakhovas maintained on himself probably translated to using his claws.

Iakhovas opened his mouth wide and ate the gobbet of flesh he'd hacked off. "Meat is meat," he declared.

The royal guard stared at him in awe. The story, the malenti knew, would spread throughout the kingdom, then into the other villages. In the telling, as with all stories, it would grow, making the wizard a creature of myth. The truth itself was incredible, a tale that sahuagin everywhere would enjoy: a warrior prince of their own, held in the embrace of a half-starved kraken, and eating choice bits of a meal almost out of its mouth. She glanced at Huaanton.

The sahuagin king's features gave nothing away even to her practiced eye, but Huaanton had to have known the position the showdown had pushed Iakhovas into.

Iakhovas grabbed an arm that had been torn free of the dead sahuagin's torso and was floating nearby. He offered it to the kraken, feeding it the arm out of his hand. Carefully, the kraken took the gift of food, not even grazing the wizard's skin with its fangs. Once the rest of the sahuagin had been eaten, the kraken brought Iakhovas down to eye level again. A brief communication took place, then the kraken stretched forth its tentacle and replaced Iakhovas on the flier.

Laaqueel stepped back from the white tentacle, barely able to control the fight or flight instinct that filled her. She prayed to Sekolah to grant her the strength she needed and to not let any of her emotions show.

The kraken withdrew its tentacle but remained close, rippling in the currents that filled the huge chamber, Iakhovas turned to face Huaanton, and Laaqueel recognized the challenge the wizard had engineered. Huaanton had used the threat of the kraken against Iakhovas, hoping to show the power he had over him. Instead, Iakhovas had stripped that threat away and converted it into a threat of his own. Everyone in the chamber knew he was protected by Sekolah's blessing, and they knew he had some degree of control over the kraken.

Now it remained to be seen if Huaanton had the courage to drop the net that held the kraken back.

Facing Iakhovas, Huaanton lifted an arm and gave the order. Immediately, the net separated down the middle, drawn in two opposing directions by pulley systems that looked like they'd been salvaged from the ships of surface dwellers. The shrill of the support lines being taken up on the pulley drums echoed through the water with piercing harshness.

Iakhovas deliberately waited until the opening was larger than he needed. Although the royal guard shifted nervously around him, their tails twisting through the water, Huaanton let the net be drawn back even further. He stood, solid as stone, a sahuagin who exemplified the core of all that his people were taught to revere. There was a ferocity that clung to him in defiance of his own mortality.

Another moment passed, then Iakhovas gave the order to the flier's tiller. The flier surged forward and joined Huaanton and his group on the rocky ledge. Even the flier's crew quickly spread out, some of them swimming up to fill in the space in the water above the ledge. All of them held their weapons tightly and faced the kraken.