Slipping her fingers free of Nerice’s passion-moistened depths, Ruby licked her fingers with a little murmur and tried to make a deal. “Then start calling me Ruby, perhaps that will keep my mouth shut.”

  “Never going to happen, it's a stupid name…TANYA.” Nerice giggled and kissed the small curly mound of sexually charged hair between Ruby’s legs before sitting up. “While I do enjoy sex pretty much any time, especially after we’ve had frog legs, We still have a wee bit of an issue outside these walls.” Nerice groaned as she stood up then dragged the remaining carcass of the frog they’d killed and dumped it into the water for the sharks to feed on. Nerice grabbed the two satchels the mage had worn and strapped them over her shoulders then offered her hand to Ruby. “Get up you zy sex monster.”

  Using the leverage from Nerice’s hand to pull her tall frame from the floor, Ruby snickered. “You have a way with words bck heart.” Ruby slipped her arm around Nerice’s bare waist. “We can’t just blindly go out there and face that darn thing.”

  “Let’s just get a few cannons and blow it up. I can get some dolphins to drag them out of the wreckage.” Nerice nibbled on her lip and stared out into the blue water where the huge squid had settled for the moment. “I mean look, I think it’s asleep.”

  Rubbing her hand across her own face, Ruby shook her head making the shells in her cornrows ctter. “No, the cannons are a bad idea and would get your dolphins killed. There is a maddening amount of them underwater and we heard them being fired when we arrived. The shot did nothing.” Ruby pinched Nerice’s arm and watched her jump then rub her arm. “We need something to penetrate that hide.” Ruby refuted with a light ugh. “Made you jump.”

  With a little pyful gre, Nerice rolled herself in front of Ruby. “Yes, I jumped because my lover pinched me on the arm unexpectedly.” Pcing one of her slender kyanite-stained hands on Ruby’s cheek, Nerice sighed. “We need something, assuming that you still wish to use this pce to get onto another pirate crew.” She kissed Ruby hungrily, “Which means we help these people.”

  Admiring how the two satchels pushed Nerice’s breasts out past her long blue hair, Ruby fought the urge to dance her fingers over both taut nipples. “What?” Ruby blinked away from Nerice’s ample chest and looked up when her dymate touched her cheek. “I, um…hummm..” Ruby scratched her head thinking about the giant squid. “It’s got two openings that I know of. It’s eyes and its mouth.” She shuttered with the idea of getting close to the razor-sharp teeth the beast possessed.

  Clearly reading Ruby’s mind, Nerice echoed aloud what Ruby had thought. “Yeah, not thrilled about the mouth idea. I would rather not end up as food like our frog out there.” Nerice pulled herself into a hug with her pirate. “You can do whatever you’d like to my body ter, so stop looking at me like a meal.” Nerice ughed and turned Ruby’s head to the blue water once again. “Eyes…agreed?”

  “It’s about the only option we have. Maybe it will swim back to where it came from if its eye is missing.” Ruby leapt into the water and changed into her mermaid form. “Or we can hope for that.” Flipping over, Ruby dove to the depths of the harbor and motioned for Nerice to stay back while she got closer to see if the beast was truly asleep.

  {“I would prefer that you gather the sharks and be ready in case we need them. I wonder, would killer whales work?”}

  Nerice did a turn in the water and used her sonar to figure out where she was and then watched as Ruby approached the huge creature.

  {“I’ll get as many as will answer my call, but they don’t really have the crushing power that great whites do, love. I prefer to use them.”}

  Ruby pumped her tail one good time and spiraled herself towards the kraken. With every swish of her tail, the creature got more and more rge in her vision until she couldn’t make out its entire giant frame. She tried to occupy herself as she tried to think about how big the creature was, and couldn’t come up with any comparison.

  {“Shit.”}

  Ruby commented between the dyad and focused her memory for Nerice to see.

  {“This could go horribly wrong, Ner-Ner. I don’t know how I am going to get close enough to do anything.”}

  A passing thought occurred to Ruby as she was hurling herself towards the squid. It was a quick back swish that stopped her forward momentum and she turned in the water, heading for the remains of the frog they’d killed.

  {“Let’s see how good that armor really was. I mean it took me a bit to crack the turtle shell, maybe the rest was enchanted?”}

  Swimming to the sea floor, It took Ruby a few minutes to traverse the area where the sharks had pulled the frog apart and left the bare minimum behind. Scrounging around, Ruby found the lobster ptes that once adorned the frogmages arms and legs.

  {“Here goes nothing. This stuff is kinda heavy, but it doesn’t hinder my movement. Like a variation of my leathers.”}

  It was the reminder of her bck leather armor that shook the pirate to her core, and recalled a promise she made.

  {“I can’t believe it’s been this long. I promised her that I would go back for her.”}

  A gentle kiss in her mind soothed the guilt that started to build out of nowhere.

  {“Tanya, we’ll get her, don’t worry. Right now Delzie is safe, we’ll get her back…along with that egg.”}

  With the help of Nerice’s warm mind kiss, Ruby let the guilt she had somehow summoned, fade and melt away. Shortly after finishing with the armor ptes, Ruby internally ughed and started for the kraken once more.

  {“Pirate. You think of treasure more than I do Ner-Ner.”}

  {“Murderer, you kill more than I do, Tanya. Call it even?”}

  Unsure if the st statement were honestly true, Ruby reluctantly agreed and focused solely on the kraken. If not for its huge body and lightly shifting tentacles, the gray, bck and green that covered the monster's exterior would have made it blend seamlessly into the background like a chameleon. Taking note of where all of the tentacles y unmoving, Ruby found and memorized where all ten were as she passed them and towards the center of the squid's jelly-like form.

  Pleased that she’d made it close enough to stab the creature in the eye, Ruby lifted her trident dagger to strike when she watched as the giant eye opened and the nightmare began. Missing her opportunity to strike a blow to the monster, Ruby tried to dart below and hide in the shipwrecks. Faster than she ever anticipated she was struck by one of the huge tentacles and sent rocketing through the water without any true resistance. Breaking the water’s surface like a whale clearing its blowhole, Ruby in her fish form tumbled and twisted in the air until she came back down, smashing into the water. Her head spun and she lost her bearings as she floated helplessly in the soft current within the harbor. A sudden heart-piercing screech permeated her mind to the point where she heard Nerice scream in the same pain. Suddenly aware that she was about to drop the one weapon that made her personality, Ruby grasped her dagger firmly before it slipped from her grip.

  -Oh no you don't, my dear friend. Like with Nerice…it’s you and I until death.-