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If you were to ask the merfolk of Kremnos who is the strongest mer in the reef, you’d get one unified answer.
“Definitely His Highness.”
“Crown Prince Mydeimos, who else?”
“Are you trying to be funny? That’s not a matter of question. His Highness, the Crown Prince is the strongest mer in all the seven seas period.”
It’s very much an understandable sentiment shared among everyone with how Mydeimos swims as though he’s cutting through the ocean currents like a blade, with scales that ripple red and gold like an undying flame trapped beneath the water’s surface. His formidable lance is an extension of his body that guards the reef from the evildoing of landwalkers who seek to poach merpeople for the price of their scales.
And yet, when a brave soul—a merling of only twelve migrations—asks the strongest mer the same question, the ocean itself seems to pause out of bewilderment.
“It’s Phainon,” Mydei answers without a lick of hesitation.
Phainon, a forager of no particular lineage. Not one heart still swimming has ever seen that mer hold a weapon sharper than blunted shell sickles to harvest kelp with. He sings along with the manatees with a voice as warm as the upper currents, knows every mer in the kingdom by name, and brings food to the elderly who can no longer swim in search of sustenance.
A very unusual response from the Crown Prince indeed. But then again, everyone knows that His Highness and Phainon stick together like barnacles, so perhaps it’s only Mydei saying something nice about his friend.
“You never say nice things about me to my face, Mydei,” Phainon tells Mydei one day, amusement in his tone as he floats upside down, pale scales catching the sunlight that filters through the grotto, his fins flicking lazily while examining a particularly iridescent abalone shell with an unusual shape. “If you keep singing my praises to other merpeople, I might get the wrong idea, you know.”
Mydei huffs beside him, seated upon a rock as he sharpens the tip of his lance, tail curled beneath him. “Complimenting you directly has consequences,” he retorts. “And you already get all the wrong ideas on your own without encouragement.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’ve got the actual strongest mer in the reef to handle me, isn't it?”
“Strength shouldn’t only apply in battle,” Mydei replies instead. “You have far more strengths than I do, Phainon.”
Phainon goes quiet, because what can he even say to that? The sincerity in Mydei’s voice catches him more off-guard than any sly riptide ever could. And it can’t be a lie or merely a way to placate him, for Mydei is known to always say what he means; the mer is absolutely atrocious when it comes to feigning niceties with others.
“Someone woke up on the right side of the clam today,” Phainon says with a habitual smile, ignoring the way his heart hammers against his ribs from Mydei’s sudden show of sincerity. Really, this man. No consideration for Phainon’s well-being whatsoever.
He’s already thinking of ways to chase away the awkwardness that he alone seems to be aware of, given how Mydei doesn’t look the slightest bit perturbed.
“I was only joking when I said you never say nice things to my face,” Phainon continues, a sheepish lilt to his voice this time. “I know you're fond of me deep down.”
The only response is the soft scrape of stone against metal as Mydei resumes sharpening his lance.
“The chattering silversides have brought dreadful news to me upon waking,” he says eventually after a while, intending to divert their conversation elsewhere, to something more serious. “Landwalker boats were spotted twelve currents out. Father is planning to convene with the other reefs on how to deal with them, if they’ve returned to take and destroy.”
Phainon’s heart feels as if it’s dropped to his throat. He rights himself immediately. “But haven’t they learned their lesson? You destroyed a dozen of their vessels several moons ago, yet they still come back?”
“I’m going to see if they’re hostile when I go to scout the borders later,” Mydei says with a sigh, sending bubbles spiraling upward before discarding his whetstone.
“Can I come with?” Phainon asks.
Mydei shakes his head. “It is my duty to defend our reef. I don’t want to have to bring you into this.”
“And who would defend you if something happens to you?”
Mydei goes quiet. The hair that drifts beside his face makes it impossible for Phainon to see his expression. But Phainon can deduce that he must’ve offended Mydei with his words when the latter pushes off the rock with his chin tilted downward, his hold on his lance so tight Phainon can see the webbing in between his fingers stretched uncomfortably taut.
“That’s not something you have to worry about,” Mydei says tersely, not meeting Phainon’s gaze. “I’ll see you at the daily gathering.”
With a strong flick of his tail, Mydei swims to the narrow opening that leads out of the grotto, sending pressure waves with no regard to the mer behind him. Typical, Phainon thinks to himself. Though he finds this particular habit of Mydei’s to be endearing on a regular day, now it’s nothing but the contrary.
The sand upon the seafloor puffs up in small clouds where the tip of Mydei’s flukes had swept too low, fine particles hanging suspended in the water for a brief moment before drifting back down to settle once more. The sound of his movement fades quickly the moment that he’s out of sight, the whisper of his scales against the current swallowed almost immediately by the sea.
Phainon doesn’t swim after him, his lips pressed into a thin line as he stares at the abalone shell laid softly atop his palm.
“I guess I’ll give this to him another time, then.”
•
Mydei didn’t mean to leave Phainon so abruptly, but he also knows how insistent Phainon can be if he really wants to. It would’ve been harder to say no if Mydei had stayed and let himself be talked into letting Phainon come with him. Phainon is too pure to engage in bloodshed, and Mydei won’t let mere landwalkers sully his hands.
He’ll just have to find something nice to bring back to the daily gathering to appease the other somehow. It’s rather fortunate that Phainon doesn’t sulk for too long. There’s a good possibility an apology will be slipping past Phainon’s lips for attempting to go against a royal before Mydei can so much as show him the intricately-shaped sea glass he knows Phainon loves to collect.
As for where he can find those, perhaps he should ask the generous sand crab who helped him gather a bunch of cuttlefish bone shards many tide cycles ago (also a gift for Phainon).
Considering he’s alone on his patrol towards the area where the silversides had initially said the landwalkers’ boats were last seen, Mydei can’t be bothered to suppress the smile that graces his lips upon imagining the reaction Phainon will have to Mydei’s gift later during the daily gathering. He’s always been so easy to please, like a seal pup being offered fish. The thought carries him forward, his tail undulating in an easy rhythm behind him.
His ease is short-lived, however, when he hears a sound that cuts through the depths, one that makes his gills flare instinctively: a call from a sea creature resonating through the surrounding waters, its distress apparent.
Mydei wastes no time and propels himself forward, tail swishing in swift strokes behind him as he follows the echoes of the sound amidst the currents. It leads him further out of his reef’s borders and towards the shelf where deep waters meet the shallows. There, he spots something large and dark—a sea turtle, by the looks of things. He nears the pained creature—pinned beneath what appears to be a collapsed coral.
Its front flipper and a section of its shell are trapped by the weight of the coral, trails of red clouding the water and blanketing the area in the dreadful scent of thick blood. The predators of the deep must’ve already smelled it judging by the stillness of the water for there were no other sea creatures in sight—a sign that the vicious hunters of the ocean are fast approaching. Right now, it was just the injured sea turtle alone in its suffering.
It blinks sluggishly upon noticing Mydei’s approach, almost as if it’s struggling to stay awake. It lets out another quiet sound, settling heavy in Mydei’s heart. It makes him feel helpless enough for even his fins to droop.
Crown Prince… if this is the end, thank you for not letting me face it alone.
Mydei stabs his lance firmly into the sand before hauling the heavy chunk of coral off of the pitiful creature. “It is not your time yet, my friend,” he says, grunting beneath the weight of the heavy mass.
Even as the coral’s serrated edge manages to carve deep gashes into his palm, Mydei pays it no mind, intent on toppling the chunk over to the other side. It strikes the sand heavily, the disturbance rippling through the water with a muted tremor.
Mydei then leans down, reaching out for the sea turtle so he can bring it back with him and have the healers nurse it to health—maybe even find its bale. Though its shell is cracked and its flippers too broken to be able to flap freely, there is hope for recovery. There should be.
But the moment that Mydei picks the creature up and cradles it in his arms, a loud snap! resounds from below the sand and suddenly, a heavy net encloses all around him causing him to topple over. The material is unusual, very unlike the usual fibers Mydei has dealt with countless times before. This, however, was metal.
The sea turtle in his arms breathes shallowly. My apologies, Crown Prince. I didn’t know this would happen.
Mydei would rather die than blame an innocent child of the sea for the doings of the landwalkers. He grits his teeth. The net is too heavy; his tail can barely move with the water’s pressure bearing down on him. His lance remains where he left it, just an arms-length away yet frustratingly out of reach.
If he had his lance, even if it was nigh impossible to free himself and the sea turtle, he would at least have something to defend himself with, just in case the landwalkers attempt to cause them harm. Mydei regrets not ever finishing the rest of them off.
It doesn’t take long before a huge shadow looms overhead. Mydei can barely make out the dark silhouette of a hull cutting across the water’s surface from above. The landwalkers have come.
Mydei spots three bodies diving into the ocean and maps out several ways to take them all out one by one. Landwalkers cannot breathe underwater so he technically has the advantage despite being trapped beneath a metal net and with no weapon to speak of.
The landwalkers take a significant amount of time to reach the seabed, with their pitiful limbs that Mydei has come to know are called ‘legs’ kicking inefficiently through the water. A rather humorous term for something far inferior to the power of a mer’s tail. Even a newly-born merling could create so much more propulsion than these idiots.
Mydei stays still as the landwalkers descend. He can’t see their faces, for they wear strange contraptions to hide their heads that help store a bit of surface air inside for them to breathe significantly longer underwater. And yet, even though their eyes aren’t visible, it would seem that they still manage to realize their trap had caught something.
One of the landwalkers bravely swims closer, arms flailing like a merling during its first swim. They reach out a scarred, finless hand to poke at Mydei’s arm through the metal net’s hole. If Mydei hadn’t been so preoccupied holding the injured sea turtle in his arms, that finger would’ve been snapped clean off in between his teeth.
No words are exchanged between the landwalkers, only peculiar hand gestures that seem to do the trick for them. Mydei finds all landwalkers very strange and abhorrent. Before long, all three of them begin to use their fumbling legs and arms to swim upward.
Shortly after their silhouettes disappear from the surface, a thick chain is released from the boat and a lone landwalker swims back down to the seabed to attach the chain to the net.
Only then does it fully dawn on Mydei that he’s being captured, and he can’t do anything about it. Holding the sea turtle tight, he uses his tail to thrash around, the tips of his flukes slipping past the holes of the net and hitting the landwalker in the process.
The landwalker doesn’t hide his rage at this offense. He spots Mydei’s lance standing still nearby and uses the blunt head to jab it straight through the net and into the side of Mydei’s head—hard.
His vision immediately blurs amidst the white-hot agony that explodes all across his temple. There’s a high-pitched ringing in his ears, drowning out the comforting sounds of the ocean, replaced only by the muffled rattle of the metal net encompassing him.
The last things Mydei recalls before the world goes dark are the sensations of being lifted up from the seabed, and the faint heartbeat of the sea turtle in his arms going still.
•
The grand hall of the palace of Kremnos is known famously amongst the seven seas to be carved from living reef and adorned with coral that pulses with bioluminescent light in shades of blue and green, with veins of pure gold running through the structure like the bloodstream of some slumbering god.
Mer of all stations swim and idle in casual clusters throughout the space for the daily gathering: warriors sharing exaggerated tales of their patrols, artisans beckoning passing mer to inspect and purchase their fine goods of shells and woven kelp, and merlings darting around chasing and being chased by schools of fish.
Phainon is teaching a group of fry how to coax the sea anemones’ favor, pale tail with a scattering of silver and blue scales coiled beneath him as he rests upon the sand by the hall’s edge. His hands move in distinct waves as he explains the specific vibrations one has to make while the fry watch with rapt attention.
“Even if you gain their favor, you still must be careful,” Phainon warns. “Only the clownfish are allowed to touch them, so you have to be nice to our orange friends, too.”
But the orange friends rarely pay us any attention, said one of the fry, its gray fins flicking impatiently.
“Relations don’t happen overnight, buddy,” Phainon explains gently, suddenly reminded of a certain stubborn man. The idea of Mydei as a clownfish is amusing in and of itself, but perhaps it would be best to keep that thought within the confines of his own mind and let his tongue speak nothing of it. “It’s all about trust and consistency. About showing them you understan—”
A flash of green tail bolts in front of Phainon, scattering the group of fry and causing them to spin uncontrollably, their disgruntlement overlapping in Phainon’s ears. He rights some of them before turning into the hall where the owner of said disrespectful tail is headed.
Leonnius, Phainon remembers. He’s seen the man with Mydei many times. He’s known to be the fastest swimmer in the reef. Curiosity tugs at Phainon when he sees Leonnius rush straight to the middle of the hall.
“The Crown Prince!” Leonnius yells, voice breaking as he catches his breath, gills flaring at the sides of his neck. He catches the attention of everyone in the vicinity immediately. “Northern boundary. I saw—ship. Landwalker equipment, nets made of metal— They took him—! They took Prince Mydeimos!”
The hall falls terribly silent in shock, processing the sheer absurdity of it, before erupting into pure, unbridled chaos.
“How many ships?!”
“We need to mobilize the guards immediately—”
“Ready the lances! Prepare the—”
“We must evacuate!”
Amidst the bedlam, a billowing voice that rattles the currents commands, “Settle down!”
King Eurypon rose from his throne of carved, staghorn coral, his scales dark as the obsidian found in the deepest of trenches. Beside him, the lines upon Queen Gorgo’s face depict controlled fury, her fists clenched tightly beside her.
“We ought not to be reckless,” Eurypon tells the crowd of distressed merpeople. “Leonnius, how many vessels were there? And what of their weapons? Are they headed this way?”
Gorgo makes an affronted sound. “Eurypon, your only son was taken—!”
“And we’ll get him back!” Eurypon argues, gold eyes flashing. “Now, Leonnius.”
Phainon can barely hear what Leonnius is saying through the roaring of blood in his ears. Even the fry that flit around him sense that something is amiss.
Are you alright, Phainon?
Are you worried about His Highness?
Phainon feels like a stranger in his own body. For the first time, the ocean feels as if it’s out to suffocate him. These waters no longer embrace Mydei within them, and with that, Phainon’s existence has lost all meaning.
Before Eurypon can summon the royal troops to ready for battle, Phainon is already gone, leaving a group of baffled fry in his wake.
•
He remembers that day as if it were yesterday—the day when the shadows of the landwalkers’ vessels loomed over Aedes Elysiae and dropped barrels filled with black powder.
The explosions had been catastrophic, tearing through the waters like a world ending. And perhaps it did, when the ancient corals and sea creatures like family had all been reduced to lifeless, floating masses that drifted along the disturbed currents.
The water had been dyed with the blood of everyone Phainon had ever known, torn apart by greedy landwalkers who sought to make riches out of the death of his loved ones. And he wonders, even to this day, whether going home earlier instead of straying further away to hunt would have allowed him to help.
Or whether he would have died alongside everyone else and spared himself the burden of having to carry such grief for several migrations now.
He met Mydei while drifting across the vast expanse of the ocean with nowhere in particular to go. Mydei had run away from his reef as an act of petty rebellion against his father. Phainon saw a friend in Mydei when he’d offered Phainon more than half of the pressed seaweed cakes he’d packed. In return, Phainon had taught Mydei how to coax the oysters into willingly giving him their pearls.
“Do you not have a pod?” Mydei asked him during their third sundown together, lounging over a protruding rock by the shallows. “Or are you also a runaway like me?”
Phainon’s smile faltered and his shoulders tensed. In his head, a voice screamed, deafening: blood for blood. Blood for blood. Blood for blood.
“Runaway,” Phainon replied softly. “I don’t plan to go back.”
Mydei tilted his head, a wordless question that didn’t pressure Phainon into answering. Not then. Perhaps that’s why Mydei’s company comforted him after many moons of drifting by his lonesome—Mydei didn’t ask, and by extension, didn’t remind Phainon that he no longer had any home to return to.
“Then,” Mydei began, his fluke curling against Phainon’s softly, fiery red a stark contrast against pale blue. Phainon is acutely aware of how the fins upon their forearms barely brush against each other. “Would you like to return with me to my reef?”
Since then, Phainon has seen Kremnos—Mydei—as his new home. And he’s long since put aside the wicked matter in his heart that screams ‘blood for blood.’
Until now.
With only an unfinished sword he’d stolen from Chartonus, Phainon swims—his tail lashing behind him in violent, graceless strokes—with the single-minded purpose of bringing every landwalker upon that boat to the depths.
He finds the hull in no time. It’s only a single vessel in deep waters; Phainon can’t hide the feral grin that graces his lips. He’ll take them all and it won’t even be enough to balance the scales of how much they’ve taken from him.
Only his eyes are above the waterline when he surfaces a good distance away, eyeing the boat as the sun nears its full descent into the horizon. From the sky, the soft rumble of thunder can be heard. Rain should follow, and it will wash away the sins Phainon commits today.
The vessel is of a substantial size, bigger than the ones that had destroyed Aedes Elysiae, all weathered wood and patched sails with masts that rise against the darkening sky. Nets are piled upon the railings—no signs of their metallic counterparts that Leonnius had mentioned—and there are landwalkers on deck.
Phainon counts at least a dozen in his head before he comes to terms with himself that the number doesn’t really matter. A hundred of them on that boat wouldn’t even be enough to quench his thirst if they managed to lay their wicked little landwalker hands on Mydei.
He can hear them laughing as he drifts closer, the waters around him staying still and soundless like he’s not even there.
“—biggest catch yet,” one voice floats from atop the deck. “You saw those scales? That color? That’s prince-blood, I tell you. Royal mer fetch triple on the black market, maybe more if he’s got all his parts intact.”
“Captain says we’ll make port by dawn if the wind holds. Split’s going to set us up all proper, and I’m buying a new boat with my cut.”
“But the thing’s barely breathing last I checked. That silver net wore him out real good.”
“Should’ve brought more water.”
A scoff. “More water means more weight, and more weight means slower sailing. Besides, dead scales are just the same as live ones. And dead means it can’t fight back when we’re plucking them off.”
Phainon sinks below the surface once again, unable to listen to the thrice-damned bastards talk about Mydei like he’s less of a living being and more of an object to barter with.
Then again, since when do the landwalkers pay any respect to their home and the beings that live in it? Taking an abundance of their fish along with their young, destroying their reefs, and poaching merpeople for their scales are just among the many evils the landwalkers find amusement in doing. It leads Phainon to wonder what his kind has done to deserve such treatment, or if the world beyond the embrace of the ocean is simply a godless land of greed and conflict.
Clutching the hilt of his sword, Phainon circles the vessel a few more times, lips pressed in a tight line. The landwalkers are spread across the deck in loose groups: some are working the sails and rigging, while the others are already celebrating their catch with bottles and terrible singing.
No signs of Mydei anywhere—most likely they’ve hidden him below, bound and dry.
Phainon grits his teeth, lowering his gaze to eye the rudder by the rear. With a forceful swish of his tail, Phainon propels himself forward, sword in hand, driving it directly into the rudder’s blade. The wood cracks and splinters as Phainon hacks repeatedly into it before attacking the metal hinges that connect the rudder to the sternpost.
With its unfinished composition, the sword breaks into half—but it’s more than enough damage to cause the vessel to lurch sideways in the current, no longer able to maintain its heading.
Shouts erupt from the deck, sudden and confused, followed by the heavy thuds of landwalker feet moving swiftly over creaking, old planks.
“What was that?”
“Have we hit the shallows?”
“Check the rudder! Stern side, now!”
Three men rush to the stern, their boots urgently thundering on the deck. But the moment one of them leans over the railing to check where the rudder should have been below, a broken sword shoots up from the water—whistling as it spins—before striking the landwalker right on the face.
Bone caves inward with a sickening crunch as the serrated points dig into the eye socket and nasal cavity simultaneously, jagged edges punching through the left eye while another tears into the right.
The force snaps the landwalker’s head backward, blood erupting from the ruined center of his face in a dark spray and painting both of his horrified companions red. Only once the body hits the deck do the two men beside him react.
“S-S-Sound the alarm!”
“We’re under attack!”
Phainon can hear more panicked screams on board, asking what happened and who’s behind it. But Phainon leaves them no time to mull it over as he bursts from the water’s surface, tail driving him upward with a hand outstretched, grabbing the nearest leg he sees with a shackle-like grip.
“What the—?!”
Phainon pulls at the limb hard before diving quickly back into the waters. The landwalker attempts to wrestle free from his hold, but the pressure from the waters as Phainon drags him deeper renders the man breathless.
He then pulls the weakened man back by the throat before sinking his teeth into the man’s pulse point. The landwalker’s scream cuts off into a wet gurgle as the artery gives way with a hot rush of copper spilling against Phainon’s tongue and flooding his mouth in pulsing waves that match the hammering of the dying man’s heart.
The men on the deck watch in tense silence as blood dyes the waters murky red, spreading out morbidly beneath the boat. Only the sound of creaking wood and the slap of waves against the hull, followed by the increasingly frequent rumble of thunder behind the clouds, is heard.
“Is Thomas—?”
“Shut up,” another hisses. “Just—stay back from the railing and keep your weapons ready.”
The water remains deathly still until, a relative distance off the port side, something breaks the surface: Phainon eyeing the landwalkers on board, hair sticking to his forehead. Then, from beneath the waters, he raises a hand to show them what he’s holding.
Webbed fingers tightly gripping short brown hair, Phainon exposes Thomas’ severed head for everyone to see. The neck ends in a ragged stump with seawater and blood dripping steadily into the ocean. The man’s eyes are still open, glassy and frozen wide with terror.
Blood stains Phainon’s mouth and chin as he smiles, close-lipped, barely even reaching the corners of his eyes, before throwing the head back to its companions—who will soon meet the same end, if not more dreadful.
Retching and curses immediately fill the air as the head lands heavily at their feet. But when they whip their heads to look back into the water, Phainon is already gone.
“The sails… Get the sails up! We need to leave now!”
The men scatter across the deck without much coordination, panic coursing through them as they haul lines with shaky hands. The wind is picking up, dark clouds that promise rain rolling slowly overhead. The vessel begins to move forward aimlessly the moment that the canvas fully unfurls, shuddering against the waves that grow ever stronger by the moment.
“Is it just the one?” one asks.
“Not sure, I’m not sticking my head out like Lucio!”
“Shit, these creatures are a fucking pain—”
A net hanging idly by the railing suddenly goes taut with a snap as it’s pulled into the water, the ship listing slightly to port as whatever is beneath the surface yanks hard.
Cries of alarm immediately resonate across the deck. “Cut it! Cut it loose!”
“Hard to starboard!”
“We can’t steer, you idiot! The rudder’s gone!”
One of the landwalkers lunges forward with a dagger, frantically sawing off the point where the nets are hooked upon the railings, until the fibers split and finally snap free. The boat recoils in the opposite direction and the sudden shift in weight sends the vessel rocking violently, dipping low on the starboard side.
With the men too busy staggering upon the deck for balance, they fail to notice pale fins breaking the water’s surface at terrible speed, Phainon’s tail lashing behind him violently as he swims back towards the boat while dragging the severed net along with him.
The landwalker who had managed to cut the net loose uses the railings for support to get back on his feet after stumbling, unable to notice Phainon’s fast approach in the meantime. He doesn’t even have the time to make a sound when Phainon breaches the surface of the water behind him, using the severed net in his grasp to trap the nearest landwalker within it before diving back down with the sole intention of taking the man with him.
Everyone sees him topple forward, half of his body already dragged off the edge as his nails dug into the wooden planks for purchase. “Help!” he chokes, blood dripping from his broken nose, terrified tears welling from his eyes. “Help me!”
“Ruben!”
Three men rush forward, pulling at whatever they can to prevent another one of their own from falling victim to the dangerous mer seeking to hunt them.
One of them hastily unsheathes his dagger from his waist to free Ruben from the net while the other two focus on keeping Ruben on the deck—hauling backward with their feet braced and straining against the pull.
Beneath the waves, Phainon swoops into the depths, allowing the currents to aid him in this feeble tug-of-war. The net jerks, rendering the landwalkers’ efforts moot as Ruben slides another half a foot towards the edge—barely a quarter of his body still upon the deck as his distressed screams beckon more people to help.
“He’s pulling harder—!”
One of the men helping loses his footing, stumbling into the others, and it escalates from there as they all lurch forward—five or six of them, all unable to hold their own against a lone mer. Failure is inevitable at that point; a stronger tug that comes from below the depths is the last straw that sends the group over the edge and plunges them straight into the red-stained waters in a series of splashes.
They all surface immediately, choking on seawater while their limbs flail to keep them afloat.
“Rope!” Ruben yells to the men still above the deck, who are looking down with terror on their faces. He’s still stuck within the net and barely able to keep his head above the water as he gasps, “Rope—quickly, before he comes—!”
Ruben is yanked down without much preamble, leaving bubbles and seafoam in his wake.
“Oh gods…” one of the remaining men mutters as dread lurches in their throats.
Even if a rope is quickly thrown to aid them in their return to the boat, no relief comes. Shortly after, a body resurfaces in what ought to have been a face down position if only the head wasn’t so twisted in such a cruel angle.
“Shit!” one man yells, hands reaching out for the rope as his legs kick futilely against the water. “Hurry and swim!”
Everyone in the water follows his lead as the ones on the deck urge them to go faster. But it’s all for naught. The closest one to the rope gets pulled under the water with nary a splash, resurfacing mere moments later with his face ripped off.
Webbed hands grab them by the ankles one by one with the single-minded purpose of sinking them into the murky depths, the darkened crimson waters the last thing they see before an indecipherable force sniffs out their life quicker than they can shout.
It’s quiet upon the deck as the rest of the landwalkers, far fewer than they had been before, all anticipate at least one of their own to resurface alive. And perhaps their prayers have been answered, for a bloody head pops out from within the slow-growing waves, flailing without much grace just to keep himself afloat.
“It’s Josep!” one of the men yells, relieved and perhaps a little too celebratory, for they only see Josep’s injury a moment later. All whoops immediately quiet down.
At the side of Josep’s neck, a significant amount of meat has been torn off—the edges of the wound where skin meets flesh a stark contrast against the darkness of exposed muscles and severed vessels, spewing out blood relentlessly.
“S-Swim!” someone on the deck shouts, followed by many others.
Their voices crack with desperation as they try to extend the reach of the rope as far as possible. Josep reaches with his right hand, choking on seawater and blood. He can almost imagine the feel of the rough fibers against the skin of his palm as his fingers stretch, just enough for the tips to be able to touch—
Something cold makes its way to the back of his neck and he freezes as a hush befalls the deck of the boat. Even though his legs have stopped flailing below, Josep continues to keep his head above the waters.
Behind him, Phainon keeps his grip on Josep’s nape firm, as if Josep still has a chance to escape despite everything. There’s landwalker blood spilling over his knuckles from the injury he had bitten clean just moments prior, but Phainon pays it no mind, gaze set straight ahead and making sure that every single man on that boat’s deck is watching.
Josep sputters, “P-Please…”
In a single swift movement, Phainon uses his other hand to dig into the injury, webbed fingers catching into the wound as his palm presses against Josep’s ear. Josep starts to convulse in his hold, losing too much blood. But before he dies, Phainon uses the wound as leverage to rip the head off in a swift pull, the sickening crack of joints separating echoing across the now turbulent waters as the wind picks up.
Rain begins to heavily pelt down from the sky, a loud rumble of thunder coming from the distance. Amidst the uproar that erupts upon the deck from the show of utter barbarism, there’s a single man who stands still amongst the chaos—wearing an elaborate headdress and a cutlass that hangs from the hip.
This is the first time that Phainon has seen him amongst the crowd. Perhaps he’d been below deck this whole time, and only decided to come out upon hearing the commotion.
The strange man meets Phainon’s gaze without a hint of fear in those dark eyes, lips twitching into a sadistic smile with light reflecting from the gold that lines his teeth. “You damned monster.”
“Shoot him!” someone yells. “Get your bloody pistols out and shoot him!”
Bullets begin to fly towards Phainon, who immediately dives back down into the waters. With how murky red the sea around the boat has gotten, it’s become rather hard to spot the mer with the pale tail and even paler hair.
“Captain,” someone calls, his voice almost drowned out by the gunfire of men frantically shooting bullets all around the boat.
The captain keeps his gaze where the mer had been. The mer’s blue eyes seemed to have pierced him through the soul with a vengeful gaze. If looks were enough to kill, the mer would’ve already had his head skewered on a pike. The thought is morbidly entertaining in a way.
“Captain.”
The captain turns to his side, aggrieved. “What?”
“Just a suggestion, sir… But I think a surrender is overdue—give the creature a sign or something, or even return that prince—”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” the captain spits. “You’ve seen that beast’s scales. On top of the royal mer we have, his could also fetch us a pretty penny!”
“But, sir. He’s already killed more than half of our men…”
The captain cocks his pistol. “And I’m about to put a bullet in between those pretty blue eyes of his. So what?”
Ignoring the sailor’s protests, the captain parades himself by the railing, gun ready to shoot at the moment the mer so much as breaches the surface.
The rain grows ever stronger, blowing cold gusts of wind against the canvas as the boat rocks along the waves. Without the rudder, they’re stuck without much hope of a heading. And with the rate they’re shooting into the waters without so much as a yield, bullets are running out fast.
Just as everyone thinks the situation can’t get any more dire, a loud thud resonates from beneath the boat, strong enough for everyone to feel the vibrations even from the deck.
“What’s going on?”
Below, Phainon drills holes into the hull using a dagger he’d stolen from one of the landwalkers—pulling at the loosened planks until a vacuum forms, suctioning in the seawater and flooding the bilge.
Sensing that the boat is tilting towards the bow, the captain grits his teeth and says, “Two men with me!” He then marches towards the hatch that leads below deck. “The other useless wallops staying here, throw in the barrels of black powder and keep that runt away from the hull!”
Lightning crackles across the dim sky as the storm howls all across the ocean. From the pile, they begin to inspect which of the barrels haven’t been damaged by the rainwater, growing frantic when most of them reveal damp and clumping powder from within that’s no use at all.
“These are gone,” one of them says, voice cracking in desperation. “All of them.”
“Get the ones from below.”
“But these are defects,” refutes another. “Captain made us hide them beneath the canvas to discard for later, remember?”
“Well, we don’t got no bloody choice now, do we? We have to light something or we sink and wait for that thing in the water to kill us all!”
No one argues.
They light four barrels in quick succession, not a single soul caring what the hell their defects had been, as long as they work. Two fall from each side of the boat, exploding beneath the waters with a splash big enough to flood the deck. The rest of the barrels follow, shaky hands gripping at matchsticks, trying to get the barrels to ignite despite the pouring rain.
Near the hull, the first sound of an explosion sends Phainon’s ears ringing. The disturbance causes immense shockwaves rippling through the waters that slam into him from multiple directions. His vision begins to blur, the pressure in his ears becoming unbearable to the point that he can barely even think.
The landwalkers don’t let up, dropping barrel after barrel of black powder. The sounds are muffled by his deafened ears. The idea of swimming away seems far too synonymous with fleeing, and Phainon can’t find it within himself to do it.
He wonders if this was how the last moments of everyone he’d ever loved back in Aedes Elysiae went. If all they felt as life slipped away was the disruption of the currents, and explosions loud enough to drown the pained cries of every living being in their vicinity before they were cruelly ripped apart, pieces of flesh and bone all that remained.
Blood surges hot throughout Phainon’s veins as he makes up his mind in a brief moment of clarity: everyone on that ship dies today. It’s a meager price the landwalkers have to pay for the destruction of his once home, and now they’ve taken Mydei with them. Who is Phainon to show them mercy?
With renewed rage, Phainon uses the window of time when the landwalkers are busy igniting the next batch of barrels to breach through the surface and grab the nearest man he can find. The man is on the verge of dropping the barrel into the water when Phainon yanks him by the ankle, taking the ignited barrel down into the water with him.
Before the landwalker can even attempt to swim away to avoid the explosion, Phainon pushes him straight to the hull with the barrel in between his body and the boat, reducing the man into mere bits of floating meat and bone when the barrel finally explodes.
There’s now a significantly sized hole that leads to the bilge from where the barrel had made contact, bigger than the ones Phainon had manually created near the bow. The amount of water further spilling into the boat causes the vessel to tilt sharply towards the starboard’s side, the remaining three men upon the deck losing their balance and falling off the edge alongside several barrels of lit black powder.
They’re blasted to bits before they even hit the water.
Two of the men who had gone below deck with the captain rush back to the top to see the chaos, grappling at the mast and railing to keep themselves from sliding off into the waters. But the rain makes the planks too slippery, their grips for support moot.
When the boat sinks deep enough into the waterline for the seawater to partially reach the deck, Phainon is able to creep across the boat—using the barrels of black powder littered everywhere and the sound of the storm as a cover—to sneak towards the two landwalkers who had their pistols out and ready to shoot, eyes darting for any signs of pale scales.
The moment that Phainon is near enough, he manages to grab one of each of their ankles, causing them to fall flat on their backs.
One of them loses hold of his pistol—the weapon skidding away due to the vessel’s tilt. Phainon grabs the disarmed landwalker by the neck with one hand and rips out his throat with the other before there can even be a chance for a struggle. Blood oozes out in rivulets, pulsing erratically with some making its way to Phainon’s chin.
As one man dies, the other stumbles back to his feet while Phainon is preoccupied, lunging at Phainon from behind, pressing his face onto the deck with his arms folded behind him.
Phainon thrashes violently in the man’s hold, hands trying to pull upon any flesh he can grab while his tail lashes to beat the landwalker off of him. When the man’s hold loosens even just for a little bit, Phainon doesn’t waste the opportunity to rip his arms away and grab the man by the face, the other restraining both hands.
A pistol fires, the sound sharp amidst the howl of the storm. It goes through the webbing of Phainon’s right hand, and only then, with an irritated growl bubbling from his throat, does he realize that the landwalker still has a weapon with him.
Sensing his pain, the man once again fires the gun from behind him. Phainon recoils the moment he feels the cursed sensation of cold metal against his skin. But the moment he does, the landwalker is quick enough to point the gun just below his chin, finger curved ready upon the trigger.
“This is the end for you now, you damned monster.”
Before he can fire it, however, Phainon ignores the searing pain in his hand and clutches the landwalker’s wrist, applying enough pressure to break it from the joint and bend the hand backward. The gun fires, the bullet shooting straight into the area beside the landwalker’s nose and exiting with a messy blow through the back of his skull.
Just as the man collapses against him, Phainon feels a searing pain erupt from his shoulder just as he hears another pistol fire from a distance. A choked groan escapes him, bloodied hand clutching the gunshot wound on his shoulder to keep it from bleeding further as he uses his tail to get the landwalker off of him.
Coming from the hatch that leads below deck, the captain walks slowly toward Phainon, smoke still rising from the tip of his gun barrel. His headdress droops, wet and low from the rain, but Phainon can still see those dark eyes glinting with something inherently evil.
Captain, Phainon recalls the other landwalkers calling him. A leader of some sort, it seems. Phainon’s mouth itches to get a taste of this captain’s flesh when he finally gets to rip out the man’s jugular and watch him bleed to death.
“So,” the man starts. “You killed all of my sailors.”
Before Phainon can respond, the landwalker shoots his pistol again—this time aiming for Phainon’s other shoulder. The shot has Phainon howling in pain as he curls in on himself upon the deck, pale scales stained red.
“But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You had to go ahead and sink my ship, too.”
Phainon makes a low, guttural sound. It utterly frustrates him how the simple movement of his arms spikes immense pain all the way down to his flukes. He’s defenseless as the captain draws near with slow, measured steps that are loud against the pouring rain and the groaning of the collapsing vessel as it’s gradually swallowed by the sea.
“All this for that princeling mer already at death’s door.”
Phainon grits his teeth but chooses to say nothing. From the corner of his eye, he catches something glinting when thunder illuminates the vicinity for a brief moment. The sight of Mydei’s lance—the symbol of the sea’s protection—in the hands of a landwalker feels disgustingly blasphemous, so much so that Phainon can feel bile rising up from his gut.
“You,” Phainon hisses, spitting blood. “That weapon is not yours to wield.”
“And who are you to tell me what to do?” the captain shoots back, chuckling darkly to himself as he looms over Phainon’s body. “You’re nothing but merchandise to me, boy. And I don’t like my products talking back to me. Either you keep your mouth shut, or you pathetically scream in pain until you die.”
At that, he stabs the tip of Mydei’s lance straight into Phainon’s tail, blade punching through scale and flesh, right in between his pelvic fins and pinning him to the deck.
Phainon screams, agony and vitriol tearing his throat as white-hot pain consumes him from the inside out, his back arching violently and every muscle seizing at once. It puts even the loud rumbles of thunder to shame with how the oceans seem to echo his cries.
The captain merely smiles in satisfaction, crouching down so he can level himself with Phainon’s unsteady gaze. “You have a nice scream,” he notes tauntingly. “I’ll be taking your scales now.”
Phainon pants against the deck, lightheaded, his vision darkening. All he can feel is pain all over, and he doubts whether he can move. Absent-mindedly, his gaze drifts downward to where his tail is skewered by Mydei’s lance.
Mydei.
Mydei is still on the ship somewhere, dying alive. Waiting for Phainon to bring them both home.
At the thought, Phainon’s vision clears just as the captain turns his back on him and walks towards the hatch that leads below—perhaps to get equipment that would subject Phainon to even more torment, to the point where all that’s left to do is die.
Biting down on his tongue to stifle any sounds, Phainon leans forward—despite the agony blooming from his shoulders and blood pulsing from the open wounds—and wrenches the lance free. The sound of muscle and tissue tearing against the friction brought on by the lance’s serrated edge is fortunately muffled by the rain.
Phainon rights his grip on the weapon, mirroring the way he’s seen Mydei wield it gracefully countless times as he defended their reef from various threats.
The captain is just about to open the hatch, back still turned to Phainon, when suddenly, there’s the sound of cartilage and vertebrae shattering as he’s pierced by the lance’s sharp tip. The captain staggers, choking in his own blood as his fingers find his ruined neck, where the lance had cleanly gone straight through.
He drops to his knees, blood pouring over his shaking hands and down the flooded deck in thick streams as his mouth gapes wordlessly. Behind him, the relieving sensation of shallow seawater brushing against Phainon’s tail balances out the ache as he drags himself across the deck, trailing blood everywhere until he can reach out and pull the lance back from where it’s lodged into the captain’s throat.
The captain turns to him, immediately collapsing to his side as blood gushes out from both the entry and exit wounds of his neck, mixing in with the water beneath him in an expanding, darkening pool.
His eyes remain open, tracking movement with enough awareness to register the way Phainon is looming over him. There’s a certain defiance in his dark gaze that suggests he hasn’t quite accepted the reality of his own mortality just yet, still clutching at his wound as if it will help.
Phainon flicks the vulgar headdress away and grabs the landwalker by the chin, supporting himself with his other arm as he sits beside the dying man and leans forward to get one final look at his face.
“I ought to skin you alive, sell it to the merfolk,” Phainon muses softly, blood staining his teeth as he grins. “I’m sure it would also fetch a pretty penny, just like our scales do among your kind. See how you like it.”
The captain gurgles, gasping as he struggles to breathe his last. Just before his eyes turn dull, he mutters, “Curse you… demon.”
Phainon watches as the captain’s hold upon his still-bleeding wound loses every bit of tension, body finally growing limp. He releases his hold of the man's chin, letting the back of the man's head thunk emptily against the deck.
With nary a landwalker left living, Phainon opens the hatch and falls over the edge, landing below the deck in a heap of bloodied tail and muttered curses. He scours the dark room, water spilling in from all sides; it won’t take long before the entire thing is submerged, and by then, the vessel should sink quicker into the depths.
He frantically scans the dark surroundings for any signs of Mydei—finding him a mere moment later with the help of the ancient, crimson markings that adorn his torso, faintly glowing and lacking their usual luster.
The pain from his wounds can’t compare to how his heart feels as if it’s been wrenched away from his ribcage when he sees how cruelly Mydei has been discarded in the far corner—laying on top of a heavy-looking metal net, skin sickly pale and gills barely fluttering.
The landwalkers didn’t even afford Mydei the mercy of a small basin.
Phainon grapples at planks to quickly get beside Mydei, immediately cradling Mydei’s cold body against his own.
“No…” Phainon pleads. “Mydei, I’m here now.”
He leans down, ignoring the awkward angle so he can press his ear against Mydei’s chest in search of a heartbeat. Within, Phainon can hear a faint thumping sound, and he allows himself to let out a small sigh of relief upon confirming that Mydei is still alive.
Grabbing a discarded rope nearby, Phainon ties Mydei’s arms around him—making sure the tie isn’t so tight that it scrapes against skin, but confirming that it’s firm enough that it won’t come loose—before hauling them both out and back to the top of the deck.
Taking Mydei’s lance with him, Phainon allows the seawater lapping upon the wooden planks of the deck to aid his return to the sea, leaving the sinking ship and the evidence of Phainon’s unraveling behind.
•
If you were to ask the merfolk of Kremnos who is the strongest mer in the reef, you’d get one unified answer.
“Definitely His Highness.”
“Crown Prince Mydeimos, who else?”
“Are you trying to be funny? That’s not a matter of question. His Highness, the Crown Prince is the only one who could slay more than a dozen landwalkers all on his own!”
Mydei would like to beg the contrary.
It’s been a whole lunar cycle since he was taken by the landwalkers. All he remembers is waking up upon the seabed with his hands bound around Phainon’s unconscious body. Seeing the blood continuously spilling into the water, Mydei had deduced immediately that Phainon was—in a worst case scenario turned true— gravely injured.
Everything was a blur after that.
He’d rushed to his reef with Phainon in his arms only to find every merperson celebrating his ‘victory’ against the landwalkers—thinking that it was by Mydei’s hand they were felled. The royal troops had seen the shipwreck, the bodies (or what’s left of them), as well as the blood that had tainted the waters.
His father proclaimed his pride to every neighboring reef, and his mother was overjoyed to see her son return safely, even bringing back glory with him.
Phainon plays into the narrative seamlessly the moment he regains consciousness, body smeared in eel mucus liniment and swathed in kelp. He answers happily when asked what had transpired with the landwalkers and why he’d returned with His Highness severely injured.
“Mydei saved me.”
Mydei stares intently at Phainon. “Did I?”
Phainon merely smiles—and he never answers Mydei’s question either, almost as if he assumes that Mydei doesn’t expect him to.
Even now, endless questions swirl within Mydei’s mind as he watches Phainon string up the blue-hued sea glass he had gotten him to make a necklace. His melodious humming echoes throughout the grotto, beautiful and enchanting enough that even the resident stonefish had left its disguise just to perch itself on the rock beside Phainon and sway along with the song.
A moment later, Phainon is done with his craft. He looks up with a smile, eyes crinkling endearingly at the corners. “Mydei, come here,” he says. “I made this for you.”
Mydei wastes no time leaving his spot, wading towards Phainon’s direction and letting their tails curl around each other as if they’re meant to exist as a single entity entirely.
Phainon’s hands are gentle when they place the necklace around Mydei’s neck, fingers lingering against the exposed skin. Mydei relaxes at the touch before leaning in ever so slightly closer as Phainon noses at his neck like a nuzzling seal pup.
Tilting his head, Mydei allows Phainon more room, relishing in the needy sound that escapes Phainon’s lips as his hands wander all over Mydei’s torso before settling firmly around the waist. Mydei reciprocates the hug, fingers threading through soft pale locks, and it is then that he makes up his mind.
He’ll wait for Phainon to be ready to talk. But for now, this is enough.