Rodyne grunted, biting down hard on the salty seaweed rope that was tied through her mouth. It had all happened so fast; the idyllic morning she’d spent fishing seemed impossibly long ago now. That peaceful facade had been broken in a flurry of panic and water as her boat was flipped and she was taken. They were savage and unnatural beasts that attacked her, but she’d only gotten a proper look at them when they hauled her, half-drowning, to a strange beach. It was inside a cave, which had walls covered in strange glittering crystals that reflected the light from a hole in the ceiling high above them.
Her mind was brought back to her captors as one sidled up behind her. She couldn’t tell if they were descended from men or fish, being a strange amalgamation of the two physically. Their long limbs ended in webbed hands and feet, covered all over in silver-black scales. Their heads were almost entirely fishlike though; tiny midnight-black eyes staring beadily out over thin lips that barely concealed mouthfuls of razor teeth. One was inches from her face, rank breath heavy in her nose as it held her arms still. The others, several dozen of them, were scattered around the chamber of the cave, staring statue-still and deathly silent as the one behind her lined itself up.