Kai only realized that he was breathing heavily when the stranger turned around and started swimming away, finally breaking the gaze that had pinned him in place. It was a good thing he was underwater or he would have started sweating.

The stranger looked disturbingly unbothered, as if he hadn't just waged a fierce battle and emerged the victor. As if he did this kind of thing often and was so used to it that it barely phased him. In fact, there was not a hair out of order on his handsome head, and he showed no sign of fatigue whatsoever.

What a beast, the thought flashed in his mind.

The ankle chain tugged. Kai reluctantly followed.

He pretended not to see the floating head.

Another thing that Kai begrudgingly realized -if a little late- was that he was afraid of the stranger, and rightfully so. A sense of doom and dread hung over him like a cape, shrouding him in perpetual darkness.

The Astrians -he was going to assume that they were indeed Astrians until he found out otherwise- had sent soldiers after him, but none of them had held a candle to the awesome power and superior strength that the stranger possessed.

He could see no way out of this mess. At least, not yet.

His only consolation was that the stranger did not seem to have any intention of killing him. From what he'd gathered, he was sent to capture him. Whoever wanted Kai most likely wanted his mysterious power. So he assumed -prayed- that, for the time being, they wouldn't kill him.

As he drifted through a body of kelp, he found himself looking up at the surface. They were at the bottom of the Black Sea, so the light barely filtered to where they were. He could just barely make out the setting sun. He rarely swam this deep or this far from home.

The thought of home -and his mother- and the uncertainty of his situation depressed him further.

When he emerged out of the body of kelp, he saw that the stranger was headed straight for a school of sharks. The blood drained from Kai's face. He'd read somewhere that the a breed of the sharks that called the Black Sea home descended from the Megalodon shark.

"Wait! You can't go near them! They're dangerous."

But his warning went unheard. The stranger swam straight for the circling sharks, dragging Kai behind him.

The image of him being ripped into pieces by a group of sharks, spewing bloody entrails and blood into the sea, flashed before his eyes, eliciting a gasp out of him.

Terrified, Kai called to the stranger, "Are you seriously going to swim through a bunch of freaking sharks instead of going around them?!"

Again, the stranger ignored him completely.

Kai wasn't about to be turned into shark bait because of an obstinate, arrogant merman. In an effort to halt the stranger, he dug his feet in the sea floor. Unfortunately, he didn't have nearly half the strength he believed himself to possess. His feet dragged in the sand, leaving behind a trail, and he didn't even manage to slow the stranger down. Deeply frustrated, he turned around, swam to the edges of his leash and tried dragging him instead. Once again, this attempt proved futile; it was like trying to budge one of the many underwater cliffs surrounding them.

Suddenly, the stranger tugged the chain forcefully, pulling Kai to his grasp just as he'd done before the soldiers attacked. Kai traversed the distance in a second and found himself in the stranger's hold yet again.

Heart racing, Kai growled in annoyance, "Would you stop doing that!"

The stranger ignored him and, in one quick move, tucked Kai under the crook of his arm as if he were a sack of potatoes.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?! What, are you deaf? You're gonna get us killed! Hey-!"

Kai's cries of protest quieted down abruptly when he saw that they were upon the sharks. The breath hitched in his throat and his heart seized as a considerably large shark turned to look at them with the hint of predatory interest in his gaze.

Out of the million ways he'd randomly imagined himself dying, this was not one of them.

But the unthinkable happened. The school of sharks parted for the stranger like the red sea, scattering far away from him as if he were the black plague.

Kai's jaw dropped.

Great. Even the sharks knew that he was dangerous. Freakin' sharks, for crying out loud!

Nevertheless, he kept his mouth shut, afraid that any noise he made would alarm the sharks and agitate them. The stranger glided past them without the smallest hint of fear. From where he was, Kai tried to look at the stranger's face to spy some sort of reaction on his face. Instead, he saw that he looked supremely bored.

Did nothing faze him?

Even once they were past the sharks, the stranger continued to carry him under the crook of his arm as if he weigh nothing. Sure, in water one was not as heavy as out of it, but still. He imagined his arm would have tired by now.

Kai opened his mouth to protest something along the lines that he could swim by himself, but then closed it when he realized that it would be a waste of breath. The stranger had yet to obey any of his demands or requests.

He focused on the path ahead, while trying not to focus on the feel of the stranger's strong arms around his torso.

In the distance, he spotted a large, dark silhouette midst the rolling underwater cliffs. After a few minutes, it became evident that the object was in fact their destination. As they got closer and closer, Kai finally realized what the object was.

It was a sunken pirate ship.

By some miracle, the white tattered sails still clung to the mast and danced and fluttered in the currents like ghosts. The mast was mostly intact except for its foremost part. The condition of the deck was also fantastically well preserved, though Kai had no way of knowing how long the ship had remained at the bottom of sea. When they were close enough, he spotted the countless barnacles stuck to the side of the ship. The only telltale sign of why the ship sunk lay at its end. The ship's rear end was shattered, probably by a canon, exposing its insides to the open sea.

The stranger along with Kai swam to the opening and entered the ship.

As soon as Kai laid his eyes on the horrors inside, he let out a bloodcurdling scream.