Page 21 of Drown Me Gently (Flipped Fairytales)

The guards weren’t ready for it. For the storm that descended the stairs, filled the halls with black smoke, and silenced them without ever drawing a blade. Ulric didn’t give them time to react.

Three now lay in broken heaps behind the corridor walls, limp and unconscious. One might not wake again. Ulric stepped over them without pause, boots silent on the stone floor. The deeper into the dungeon labs he moved, the worse the smell became.

Formaldehyde. Blood. Brine. And something far worse.

Pain.

Ulric lived long enough to know that pain carried a scent. It was acidic, like spoiled milk and rusted metal. It stung the nostrils and settled heavy on the tongue. The air in Elias’s lab reeked of it—pain layered upon pain, caked into the walls and soaked into the floorboards.

It was everywhere.

Yet underneath it all was the fading trace of Auren’s scent. Sea salt and coral. The sweetness of crushed pearls and the purity of spring.

It was faint.

Ulric stopped at the final door, pressing an ear to the small iron-barred opening at its center. At first he heard nothing, only the steady drip of water echoing through the dank halls. Then a small shuffle. Of movement. Of struggle. And a whimper.

It slipped beneath the doorframe. Not a scream, not even a cry, just a wet hitch of air, like something trying not to choke.

Ice sliced through Ulric’s veins.

Auren.

Then came a second sound. The human, Elias. His voice was smooth, as if he were proud of his cruelty.

“You’re doing so well, sweetheart. There now, look how the muscle twitches when I peel it back. It’s like you’re performing for me. I’ll admit, I was hoping to save this for later and give you more time to heal. But your body begs to be explored.”

Another faint sound of a struggle, but weak… so weak.

“Now, now, love… don’t wriggle so much. You’ll ruin the stitching.” A pause. A quiet chuckle. “Though with legs like yours, perhaps you’d look better ruined.”

Ulric’s fist shattered the door. It didn’t swing open—it cracked clean off the hinges. And for a moment, Ulric questioned whether he’d stepped into the vilest pit of the underworld.

Auren lay spread across a heavy wood table, his skin pale as bone, a patchwork of stitches carved along his chest, his arms, his sides.

Some fresh, some crusted in blood. One leg twitched reflexively—nerves misfiring.

His lips were a ghostly shade of blue. His crimson hair was plastered to the surface with rust-colored clots.

His eyes were open, but dull. Dry. Like he’d stopped blinking regularly.

Ulric’s sweet, wild prince looked hollow. Wounded and emptied of life.

Elias didn’t even flinch. He adjusted the magnifying lenses strapped across his eyes and continued digging into the exposed muscle in Auren’s bicep. Surgical hooks held the skin apart as he inspected the sinew and flexor tendons beneath.

“Oh,” Elias said mildly, as if commenting on a guest’s unexpected arrival. “I expected someone to come and collect.”

Ulric didn’t speak, just blinked in stunned shock. At the human’s words. At the scene before him. In all his centuries…

Elias gave a light, pleased chuckle. “I should’ve guessed. A face like his?” He gestured toward Auren’s motionless form. “Of course, he’d be the whore of the sea. Probably expensive too.”

Ulric’s eyes darkened, but his voice, when it came, was calm. Calm as the sky with a hurricane on the horizon. Calm as the waves before the tsunami brings destruction.

“Do you even know what you’ve done?”

Elias tilted his head, as though puzzled by the question. “I preserved him. Studied him. If anything, he should thank me.”

“You…you…” Ulric could hardly speak through the rage smashing the inside of his skull. “You broke him.”

“I’ve studied him,” Elias said coolly, wiping blood from his fingers with a cloth.

“And I think you’ve arrived just in time to strike a deal.

That’s what you sea monsters do, isn’t it?

Trade, bargain, barter.” He smiled like a man holding all the cards.

“So name your price. I know how this works. The sea demands tribute. Coin. Flesh. Secrets. Name it, and I’ll pay.

Or the royal court will. I can assure you, they’ll be generous. ”

Ulric stared at the human for a long, terrible moment. Then he smiled. Not the smile of a man. The smile of something long past morality. Past reason. A smile carved from rage and grief. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t a creature. It was a weapon. And it was awake.

“You think there exists compensation for what you’ve done?”

Elias’s fingers twitched, and he removed the magnifying lenses from his eyes. He looked confused. “Well, of course. Everything has a price.”

“I have lived through the birth and drowning of kingdoms. I’ve bartered with storms and wrestled gods. You think you have something I want?”

A rumble of thunder shook the walls as he moved closer, a cloud of black mist seeping in, covering the floors and climbing the walls. And when the Kraken spoke, it was as if the abyss had found voice.

“I want your silence. I want your screams. I want to peel back every layer of that twisted mind and see how you whimper when you’re laid bare.”

Elias finally stepped back, and Ulric’s lips curled, revealing his serrated shark’s teeth.

“Good,” he whispered. “Now you understand.”

He bit down. The capsule cracked between his molars like glass.

Pain bloomed under his tongue as the potion spilled down his throat, and in seconds, the magic took him.

Power flooded his body like a black tide breaking free.

Bones twisted. Muscles surged. Flesh rippled and tore as obsidian skin replaced legs.

Nine monstrous limbs erupted from beneath his cloak, curling with liquid fury.

Elias screamed.

Too late.

Ulric moved like a wave as his mass flooded the small space.

Tentacles crashed through glass and steel, sweeping aside tables, smashing jars, sending vials shattering against stone.

Blood and formaldehyde painted the walls.

Every sample, every artifact Elias had ripped from Auren’s body, was lost in the maelstrom.

Ulric didn’t stop.

He lunged—one slick tendril curling around Elias’s arm, another locking around his torso, hoisting him into the air like a doll.

“You wanted to see how things work?” Ulric growled, snatching a jagged scalpel off the floor. “Let me give you a lesson in anatomy.”

Then he gutted him.

The blade sank in deep, through the belly and beneath the ribs, carving upward.

Elias’s scream broke into a gurgle as his intestines spilled in warm, wet ropes down the front of his legs.

Blood sprayed. Ulric didn’t flinch. He seized a long, rust-speckled autopsy hook from the surgical tray—a grotesque thing with a curve like a butcher’s smile.

It sank into Elias’s side with a wet crunch, punched between bone and muscle, and drove deep into the stone wall.

Ulric twisted the hook just to hear his cry.

“Rot, you filth.”

He finished pinning Elias like a specimen on display. His mouth bubbled with blood the color of wine as his body sagged and spasmed, still very much alive. But he wasn’t long for this world; let his final minutes be spent in agony.

The world went still, save for the steady stream of human insides hitting stone floors.

Then, the potion’s effect faded.

Ulric stumbled back a step, his breath ragged as the monstrous limbs retracted into flesh and bone.

He gasped, sucking in air with lungs newly reformed.

The transformation was short, a small dose of potion intended to give him an advantage in case of a fight.

Long enough to overpower his opponent. But with the addition of his Kraken form came gills that stuttered uselessly in the air.

He stumbled, light-headed from breath held too long.

His tunic hung loose, barely covering him, and his cloak hung awkwardly over his shoulders.

But modesty was the farthest thing from his mind.

Ulric stumbled to the table, bare feet slick on blood-soaked stone. His throat burned raw from the transformation, lungs still struggling. He braced himself on the edge and stared at the fragile, ruined form before him.

“Auren…” he rasped.

No response.

Auren’s eyes were half open, dull and unfocused. His lips had gone a bluish-gray, cracked, and still. He wasn’t blinking.

He wasn’t breathing.

“No, no—come on, my sweet sea-sprite. Please.” Ulric’s voice broke as he knelt beside the table, brushing blood-matted hair from Auren’s clammy forehead. “I’m here. I’m here, Auren. You’re safe now. Just… open your eyes. Gods, please, say something.”

But there was nothing.

Panic hit fast and hard, shattering through Ulric’s composure. He ripped his satchel open, fingers fumbling past bandages and vials until he found the slender bottle—glowing a soft, sea-glass green. A healing draught. He unstoppered it with his teeth and tilted it into Auren’s mouth.

It dribbled down his chin.

“Dammit—breathe, love. Please. Don’t you dare give up. Don’t leave me.”

Ulric brought the bottle to his lips and drank—the potion burned in his mouth, leaving frost in its wake.

Cradling Auren’s broken face in both hands, he pressed their mouths together, funneling the magic between their lips.

He repeated the process two more times, each time carefully pressing his mouth to Auren’s, each time passing him more of the potion.

When the bottle was empty, Ulric leaned back, mouth tingling.

For a long, terrible moment, nothing happened.

Auren lay still, cold, untouched by the miracle Ulric had poured into him. The room was too quiet. No breath. No twitch. No life.

And then?—

A sharp inhale.

Auren’s chest rose the slightest fraction, and his eyes fluttered.

Ulric nearly collapsed with the force of his relief, forehead pressing to Auren’s as he held him close.

“There you are,” he whispered, voice cracking under the weight of it all.

“There you are, my sweet prince. My beautiful, foolish heart.” He kissed Auren’s temple, his brow, his bloodied knuckles.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve come sooner. I should’ve known. I’ve got you now. I swear it.”

Ulric wrapped Auren’s limp body in his cloak, holding him close, shielding him from the nightmare surrounding them. Elias hung from the wall like some macabre portrait, blood trailing in thin, glistening streams—Ulric turned away.

He carried the prince of the sea out of that place of ruin and rot, out of death’s waiting hands, and into the dark embrace of his arms.