Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 302: Episode 300: Do anything for her!

The crushing, freezing currents of the Deep Spires felt heavier than they ever had before.

Caspian had managed to slip back into the upper echelons of the royal palace undetected, bypassing the heavily guarded vault corridors to seek refuge in his sister’s private chambers.

The room was a sweeping sanctuary of glowing pink coral and soft, bioluminescent pearl, but the atmosphere inside was thick with profound, suffocating despair.

Caspian floated near the center of the chamber, his broad, muscular chest heaving as if he couldn’t pull enough oxygen from the water. His silver tail was still, the magnificent, shining scales looking dull in the dim light.

He had just finished recounting the catastrophic encounter in the Outer Wastes to Nimue. He told her about the blinding rage, and the devastating, murderous agony in Keenan’s eyes.

"He actually threatened to kill you?" Nimue whispered, her voice trembling, and cracking with heartbreak. She sank down onto a carved bone settee, burying her face in her delicate, webbed hands.

"He didn’t just threaten it, Nimue," Caspian replied, his voice a hollow, rattling sound. "He meant it. The throne isn’t a crown to him anymore; The brother you remember... the one who brought you glowing anemones from the deep trenches... he is gone. Our plan is dead."

Nimue let out a soft sigh. She had risked the matriarch’s wrath to sneak Caspian out, clinging to the desperate, childhood hope that her exiled older brother could come home and fix their fractured family. But the reality was a brutal pill to swallow. Keenan was lost to the dark.

"What are we going to do?" Nimue cried, looking up at Caspian with wide, frightened eyes. "If Keenan won’t take the throne, Mother will never let you leave. The guards will drag you back to the vaults, and she will lock the Spires down permanently. You are the only King we have left. Caspian, how are you going to get to the Surface now?"

Caspian clenched his massive fists, his silver-blue eyes burning with a desperate, manic fire. He looked down at the small pearl crib nestled in the corner of the room, where Zale was sleeping peacefully, completely unaware of the political and biological nightmares tearing his family apart.

"I don’t know," Caspian admitted, the admission tasting like ash in his mouth. "I will tear the coral walls down with my bare hands if I have to. I will fight every guard in this palace. I will swim through the boiling thermal vents until the flesh melts from my bones. I don’t care what it takes, Nimue. I am not staying here."

"Then you will die an agonizing, pointless death before you even breach the sunlight."

The cold, ancient, and impeccably smooth voice sliced through the water like a trench-glass blade.

Caspian and Nimue whipped around simultaneously.

Nerissa glided into the chamber. The heavy pearl doors hadn’t made a single sound as they opened for the matriarch. She didn’t have her elite guards flanking her this time. The terrifying, imposing aura of the Queen Mother was entirely suppressed, leaving only an ancient, deeply exhausted woman looking at her children.

"Mother," Caspian ground out, his jaw locking as he flared his silver tail, instinctively moving to place his massive body between Nerissa and the sleeping infant. He fully expected her to scold him from leaving the vaults.

Nerissa didn’t raise a hand. She slowly swam forward, her dark, bottomless eyes sweeping over Caspian’s battered, emotionally shattered posture.

"I did not lock you in the vaults out of malice, Caspian," Nerissa spoke, her telepathic voice dropping its usual sharp authority, replaced by a profound, maternal sorrow. "I did it for your own good. I was trying to protect you from the madness of your own decision I knew exactly what you would find if you went looking for your brother. I knew Keenan was broken beyond repair."

Caspian’s glare didn’t soften. "You locked me in a cage. Just as I locked her in one. Do not dress your tyranny up as maternal love, Mother."

Nerissa flinched slightly, the brutal honesty of her son’s accusation striking a deep nerve. She drifted closer, stopping just an arm’s length away from him.

"Perhaps," Nerissa conceded quietly, bowing her head. "But watching you stand in my throne room, willing to hand the kingdom over to a murderer just so you could suffocate on dry land... it terrified me. You are my son. I could not bear to watch you destroy yourself for a Surface-dweller."

Nerissa reached out, her slender, dark fingers gently brushing against the thick, silver scales of Caspian’s arm.

"But seeing you now," Nerissa whispered, looking up into his hollow, desperately resolute eyes. "Seeing that you are entirely willing to rip the ocean apart, to fight your own blood, and to throw yourself blindly into the sun... I realize that keeping you here is killing you faster than the Surface ever could."

Caspian went perfectly still, his breath catching in his throat. "Mother?"

What did she mean?

Nerissa let out a long, heavy, world-weary sigh. The ancient matriarch straightened her spine, the terrifying, bottomless depths of abyssal magic swirling to life in her dark eyes.

"There is a way, Caspian," Nerissa revealed, her voice dropping into a hushed, reverent whisper of forbidden lore. "An ancient, archaic blood-magic, woven into the very foundations of the Beastworld by the gods themselves. A way to trade your scales for skin. To permanently convert your abyssal gills into lungs that can breathe the dry air of the Iron-Wood."

Nimue gasped loudly, and Caspian’s heart hammered against his ribs. A blinding, impossible spark of hope ignited in the crushing dark of his despair.

"Tell me," Caspian demanded, his voice trembling with raw, unfiltered desperation. "Tell me how to do it. I will do whatever it takes."

"It is not a simple spell, my son," Nerissa warned, her expression turning incredibly grave. The magic in the water around her grew heavy and oppressive. "The laws of the Beastworld demand an absolute, equivalent exchange. To gain a human body, you must sacrifice something overwhelmingly precious to you."

"Take my crown," Caspian offered instantly, without a microsecond of hesitation. "Take the Spires. Take my royal core."

"The magic does not want your politics, Caspian," Nerissa corrected sharply, her dark eyes piercing straight through his soul. "It demands your biology. If you undergo the Transmutation, you will lose your abyssal soul. You will sacrifice your absolute inability to ever return to the sea."

Caspian blinked.

"If you do this," Nerissa explained, her voice echoing with devastating finality, "the ocean will reject you. The saltwater will burn your skin like acid. The pressure of the Spires will crush your bones into dust. You will never be able to swim in the deep currents again. You will be entirely, permanently bound to the dirt."

"I accept," Caspian stated immediately. The sea meant nothing if Roxy wasn’t in it.

"That is not all," Nerissa continued, raising a hand to stall his eager acceptance. The true, horrifying cost of the magic hung heavily on her tongue. "We are sea creatures, Caspian. We live for centuries. We are virtually immortal in the dark. But humans... humans are fleeting, fragile sparks."

"If you trade your abyssal biology for a human vessel, you will gain a mortal lifespan," Nerissa revealed, her voice cracking with a mother’s ultimate grief. "Your centuries will be stripped away. You will age. You will grow weak, your bones will turn brittle, and in a few short decades, you will wither and die like a human."

The silence in the pearl chamber was absolute.

"No!" Nimue shrieked, launching herself off the settee. She grabbed Caspian’s muscular arm, pulling at him frantically. "No, Caspian, you cannot do that! A few decades is nothing! It is a blink of an eye! You will die, brother! You will age and die while the rest of us live on! You cannot throw away your immortality!"

Caspian looked down at his frantic, sobbing sister. He gently placed his large hand over hers, stilling her desperate pulling.

He didn’t look horrified. He didn’t look conflicted, and he didn’t look scared.

Caspian turned his silver-blue eyes toward the crib where his son slept. Then, he looked up, his gaze piercing through the heavy pearl ceiling, through miles of crushing, freezing, pitch-black water, envisioning the warm, radiant, green-eyed Queen waiting for him under the sun.

He thought of her smile. He thought of the fierce, unyielding way she loved her family. He thought of growing old beside her, watching her hair turn silver, holding her hand as the years passed them by in the Iron-Wood. Immortality in the dark was a cold, miserable cage compared to a single, beautiful mortal lifetime in her arms.

Caspian looked back at his mother, his expression one of absolute, unbreakable peace. He had already made his choice.

"Anything," Caspian whispered, his voice vibrating with the sheer, world-altering power of a King’s ultimate vow. "Anything I can do to be with her."

A/N: Cheers to 300 Chapters!