Zoran Neptunus XII swam to the top of the Flying Dutchess, the submersible ship of the Seablood Pirates. He planted his webbed feet in a bracing stance on top of the ship as he scanned the Atlantean slaver ship’s heat signatures with his inherited Royal Eye. Taking the form of a bulbous mantis shrimp eye on the end of a stalk growing from his left eye socket, it let him see into both the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum, along with a few interesting interactions with polarized light. With this, he saw that the crew had liberated the innocent from the lower decks, and were bringing them on board.

Zoran filtered a deep breath through his gills, and started to activate his innate magic. He started with his Verdantis (growth/decay) Glyphs, leeching away destruction energy with its glyph of the pair, which glowed on his left calf, as the left over creation energy mutated his left arm, where he had the corresponding creation glyph. He stifled a cry of pain as the skin on his arm turned into chiton, and everything inside of his arm dissolved before reforming into the musculature of a mantis shrimp.

Zoran exhaled his held breath as he aimed his newly reformed arm at the slaver ship’s hull, knowing that the recoil of what he was about to do would pop his lungs if he didn’t release the air. As he did so, he engaged his Neptunus (pressure) glyphs, this time making the creation glyph glow with bled energy as destructive pressure energy built up.

Then Zoran used a Caelmar (time/space) resonant glyph pair modification written in the air with his coral stele to create a time delay in the effect of the Neptunus destruction energy, allowing him to amplify the force of his strike.

A stream of instantly cavitating bubbles shot from his rapidly extended arm. The sheer energy of the cavitation heats the created air pockets to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun. Zoran closed his non mantis shrimp eye, which barely shielded it from the intense light as the concussive blast ripped a hole straight through his target. The force of the blast nearly knocked him off the top of the ship, singed holes in his clothes, and, despite the chiton armor, essentially obliterated his arm.

Sucking in a sharp breath through his gills, Zoran activated his destruction Verdantis glyph again to build up the creation energy required to regrow his arm as he made his way back to the airlock. The seawater stung the wound as it healed. He didn’t care. Despite being the rightful ruler of Atlantis, his exile meant that this brutal method was the only way he could currently bring the worst of his people to justice.

Lost in brooding as the airlock purged, he almost didn’t notice his captain, Victoria Seaborne, the love of his life, watching him through the porthole. As he turned to her, she quickly hid her worry behind a mask of a confident smile, but he caught it in the subtle shades of her cephalopod skin. He returned her confident smile anyway, and asked, “how many of our people did we free this time love?”