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Mara still couldn’t believe it.
She had been loyal to the Guild ever since she was a girl, loyal to the crew- even despite everything- ever since she joined. She never missed even the slightest hint of a merfolk in their waters, and maybe she didn’t always catch them, but she never missed her shot either (until today). The industry was practically reliant on her at this point.
And yet she presents them with not only another sighting of a white merfolk, the second known sighting in existence, but the fact that it had taken her harpoon gun, meaning it was either smarter than most merfolk, or merfolk in general were smarter than they thought… and they reject her.
They used kind words and empty promises, sure. But it didn’t matter. All they really wanted to do was letting her down easy. ‘Males attract enough unwanted attention with their bright colours, a pure white one with iridescent scales would be maladaptive’ her fucking ass. Just because it would be maladaptive didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
And their other ‘counterargument’. Merfolk were more animals than people, sure, and all evidence suggested they weren’t much smarter than a raven or an ape. But what if the evidence was wrong? Nobody knew what merfolk did in their native habitats, and very little was actually known about their ecology.
And she knew what she experienced that morning. That white merfolk wanted to take her harpoon, she was sure of it. It saw what it had fired at her, saw that the bolt was stuck, saw the rope connecting it and the gun, reasoned that whatever was on the other side of the rope was what was making it shoot, reasoned that if it could separate the weapon from what was making it shoot before it could get unstuck then it wouldn’t be a threat anymore, and pulled at it until it she let go. That kind of observation wasn’t something an ape was capable of, especially under pressure.
Worse still, even if she had little idea how intelligent they actually are, she knew what they were capable of. They would drown anyone they found in the water- they knew that for a fact, and she’d seen for herself the kinds of states bodies ended up in after contact with any merfolk, even ones unrelated to the drowning.
If they could figure out how to use human weapons- or, god forbid, somehow start making their own, the industry, Erdenos, and maybe even Luxport itself could be in very real danger. She didn’t think merfolk were as intelligent as them, but they were still intelligent enough to be threats- and if they were capable of holding grudges, well, that certainly didn’t help.
There was a reason why merfolk intelligence was such a hotly debated topic. They didn’t have the same access to resources that humans did, so it was no wonder why no evidence of merfolk inventing things was ever recorded. Personally, she had always been sceptical of the idea of them being that smart… but this changed things. It really changed things.
Sure, she didn’t know how merfolk could fashion weapons that could rival a human’s without things like wood or fire- that was one argument the Guild had a point with- but she did know that they all had dormant magic inside of their bodies, hence why they were classified as monsters in the first place. It may be dormant, yes, but they wouldn’t have it if there was no way for them to channel it.
And that white one… it had iridescent scales. Iridescence implied magic. Magic that had to have been so strong that, even if it was dormant, it showed through its scales. So perhaps… it wasn’t maladaptive. Perhaps that one was, for some reason, born with stronger magic than most, and its white scales were just a side-effect.
And it was male. Its fins were too big and too bright for it to be female. And females judge attractiveness based off of brightness, and that thing was probably the brightest one she’d ever seen, which meant it was almost certainly going to reproduce and spread whatever gene resulted in its mutation to all its offspring, and probably with multiple females!
And the law of survival of the fittest decreed that the individuals with the more advantageous traits would be more likely to outlive the rest and reproduce, so if nothing was done about this white merfolk, in just a couple of generations this more magical, potentially smarter, and most of all more dangerous subspecies could be the more prevalent one.
For all anyone knew, they could be on the brink of a new, far deadlier age of merfolk hunting, and the Guild… was refusing to listen to her about it. Her, who had been loyal to them for nearly a decade, who never let them down, who was the most dedicated person she knew to hunting those monsters.
To be fair, the more she thought about it, the more understandable it was. The Guild was concerned with much bigger threats than simple merfolk, after all, and they couldn’t afford any distractions, especially claims without evidence. But she’d come too far, and done too much, to stop here when disaster could be right around the corner.
So… fine. If they wanted evidence, she could find evidence. If she could get ahold of it, or even just one of its scales, its existence- and more importantly, what that meant for its species- would be proven, even if that alone wasn’t proof that it was smarter than the rest.
The only problem was actually finding the damn thing. Even with its colours making it stand out, it was unlikely it would ever come that close to a ship again, at least for now… unless the grasp it had on her harpoon made it a little bolder… no, that was ridiculous. She couldn’t assume it had figured out how to properly operate one after just 12 hours, it wasn’t that smart… she hoped.
The Guild definitely weren’t going to let her go on (what they perceived to be) a wild goose chase looking for a white merfolk they didn’t even seem to believe in, and even if they did, her chances of success would be low, and they definitely wouldn’t continue to give her the benefit of the doubt for long.
So, at the moment, it seemed to her that she had nothing to do but just… lay low for a while, and do her job. She’d sound much more plausible after time passed and more evidence started showing up, and if the whole “rise of a new subspecies of merfolk and the potential upheaval of merfolk hunting as an industry, or perhaps even worse” theory was right, it would show up eventually.
And at the moment, while the world was still wrapped in darkness and everyone but her felt safe enough to sleep, she was retreating into the woods to collect her thoughts. She needed some time to think about a better way to approach the situation. Even if laying low was the safest, she still wasn’t content with just gritting her teeth and doing nothing when who-knew-what could be happening out there.
She found surrounding herself with nature helped when things from civilisation were getting on her nerves. It was more predictable than people. They could grow and change, but nature always stayed the same. It never betrayed her. The lake would never betray her.
In many ways, that lake was a fairly unimpressive one. It was rather small and not much actually lived there, and it didn’t serve much purpose to humans other than just being a convenient landmark when lost in the woods. Many people knew about it, but nobody but her visited that often.
Still, despite its normalcy, she enjoyed it. It served as a nice, fixed place of peace where she could get away from the chaos of human life when she needed to the most. She was usually very fixated on her work, and she liked it that way, but sometimes even someone like her needed to gather her thoughts, and tonight she really needed to gather her thoughts.
She pushed through the brush to arrive at her destination, silently walking to and sitting down at the edge of the lake. Normally she would sigh or mutter something, but she was rendered practically mute by her years of training still telling her to keep as quiet as possible, even despite the circumstances.
Still, she didn’t think she was in any actual danger at the moment- people knew about this place, yes, but it was fairly quiet most of the time. Nobody came there and nothing really lived there, and she certainly didn’t think it being the middle of the night would change that. Besides, even if something dangerous were to appear, she could handle it.
But of course, none of that was what Mara was focusing on. No, she had bigger fish to fry at the moment- literally. Anything could happen within the next couple of years, and she needed the time and space she needed to think about a better solution than just laying low, if one did exist.
She looked down at the water, rendered dark, inky and almost indiscernible by the night sky above it, a stark contrast to the calm blue it had on even a cloudy day. The only things keeping it from becoming pitch-black were the stars and the moon, which she could almost see the reflections of.
The huntress tapped her foot against the grass, frowning as she stared at it. Goddammit, she needed a way out of this. She knew this was only the second claimed sighting in existence… and that the first claimed sighting was also made by her, but she knew what she saw. And she was loyal, wasn’t she? She was a valuable asset to them, an expert, and they still didn’t believe her.
And honestly, she might’ve even gotten off easy. A less professional person might’ve dared to call it lies. Unconsciously, her hand reached towards the hair sweeping down over her face, sweeping it aside to trace the scar left over her stitched-shut eyelid. One of the only reasons why anybody believed her the first time she saw the thing nearly 10 years ago.
In a way, she was almost happy its father showed up when it did, and did what it did. Even if she hadn’t managed to kill it, nobody would dare to accuse a little girl- even an urchin- of lying for attention after the state her eye had been left in… and even if they did, she almost wouldn’t blame them. They didn’t know what she saw. But she did.
Mara didn’t pray. Only gullible fools, powerless fools or desperate fools bothered to pray to gods that didn’t exist and wouldn’t listen even if they did. But she did close her eye and desperately wish, even in her silence, that fate would at least spare her the pain of having to figure it all out herself. That somehow, things would resolve themselves without anyone having to go to metaphorical (or literal) war with anyone else.
She desperately wished that, just as it had twice before, that white merfolk would find its way to her once again.
…And then she opened her eye, and stopped.
Something caught her eye from beneath the water, even with how dark the lake was. A… glimmer, down in the water. At first, she thought it was just the reflection of a particularly bright star, but then she realised it was too big. It wasn’t big, but it was too big to be a star.
All things considered, her vision wasn’t the best. It never had been, since she lost her eye. But if there was one thing she was skilled at, it was spotting merfolk in the water. And there was only one thing she’d ever seen that glimmered so brightly like that.
For a second, her huntress’ instincts told her to take out her crossbow, but- no. Sure, she brought it, but she brought it with her everywhere, just in case. And there was no way any merfolk would go to a random lake in the middle of the night- that would require crawling out of the water just to get there, and sure, it wasn’t too far from the coast, but it would still leave them far more vulnerable than any merfolk would be comfortable with!
And in the middle of the night, too? She was about 99% sure merfolk were diurnal, as all experts agreed on, and what would the lake offer one that they wouldn’t be able to find in the ocean? The idea that it could be any merfolk, let alone the white one, was crazy, so much so that she rolled her eyes and scoffed a little at her own stupidity, because-
…why was it coming towards her?
She stopped. Why was the glimmer moving? Why was it coming towards her? Unless- no. If it really was a merfolk, it would have no reason to swim in her direction unless it didn’t see her. Merfolk were skittish, they knew they couldn’t take a human in a fight on land and otherwise fought only to protect themselves or their young. On that note, she’d only heard of one case where a merfolk… swam towards… her.
…That was when she really paused. Involuntarily, and then voluntarily, she reached towards her crossbow, pulling it out and loading it silently. She had to be quick and quiet. She didn’t know how long she had before it either noticed her or did… whatever it was planning on doing. She couldn’t know for sure if it really was what she feared it was… but if it was, she only had one shot.
It was more than just unlikely, she reminded herself, even as she aimed her crossbow at the shimmer approaching her. There was no way the same one-of-a-kind(?) white merman she spotted in the water that morning was in this lake for no reason other than to just… haunt her, apparently. It was statistically improbable, practically impossible.
But with how ruthless she’d been taught to be in order to survive, how much of a threat she considered merfolk knowing what happened last time she let one approach her, and how important killing this thing was to her… it was a risk she had to take.
The shimmer got closer and closer, both to her and the surface of the water. Eventually, the surface of the lake parted just a little, revealing a red sail, with white scales now visible from below. She put her finger on the trigger, and just after she did, it noticed her and turned around with a panicked gurgle, attempting to get away as fast as it can-
-before she squeezed the trigger, and the bolt fired.
T’ozhul still couldn’t believe he was doing this.
Dry land, famously, was not a very good place for merfolk. Contrary to what some humans may have thought, they could indeed breathe on land, just only through their mouths since they didn’t have noses.
But breathing through your mouth was much less efficient than using gills, so it was very exhausting, as he was finding out right now and had been for the past… 10 minutes, maybe. It certainly wasn’t helped by the fact that he was completely reliant on his hands to drag himself through the forest, his tail rendered practically useless as it flopped behind him.
Gods, Arabalth couldn’t cry into a tidepool, or a river? Or anywhere that was easy for a merfolk to get to? One of the nicest gods in the whole pantheon and the one who bloody decided to enchant her tears with a magic spell only Okwan speech could activate, and she chose to cry into a lake on dry land?! (He was very careful to only say that in his head, not out-loud. Even despite his… complicated relationship with the gods, he took curses from them very seriously.)
Slowly and painstakingly, silently wallowing in his hatred of fate (and also kind of himself for even thinking of doing something so idiotic), he crawled to his destination, grass and mud collecting on the underside of his tail as it dragged through the dirt, sucking at the air through his mouth while his gills attempted to do the same.
Gods, this was so exhausting, to say nothing of how dangerous it was. Any second now a hunter or whatever else crawled about on land could find him, and nobody would ever even find what was left of him, let alone find out where he went! And even if he got there alive, who knew what would happen if he actually succeeded in the first step of his plan?
Yes, he could speak their language, but he knew next to nothing about human culture or what overall life on the surface was even like- and sure, for all their technical knowledge they didn’t seem to be magically advanced at all, nor did they see his people as anything more than animals, so maybe their first thoughts wouldn’t be ‘magically transformed merfolk’, but still, one inexplicable slip-up could spell more than just trouble for him.
Either way, there was only one thing his thoughts kept coming back to: what he was doing posed so much risk and, if he really knew what was best for his kingdom and his family and his own damn life, he’d turn around now.
And yet… goddamn it, he was in too deep to turn around now. If he was going to start this, he had to finish it.
It wasn’t long before, finally, he found his target. After dragging himself up a particularly steep hill (which to humans would have just been a small elevation in the ground level, but to him made no difference), he flopped onto the ground, desperately breathing in and out, completely spent.
After about 10 seconds of collecting himself, his eyes slowly opened, then widened as he caught sight of a black abyss, littered with the light of the stars, no more than 20 feet away from him. He snapped back to attention at that, suddenly gaining the second wind he needed to crawl what little distance was left.
He still didn’t reach it quickly by any means: it was roughly another two minutes before he actually got to the Lake of Tears. Knowing how little distance he had left, however, definitely helped his motivation, especially considering how worried he was about it all beforehand. Finally, after all the time and effort spent to get there, he reached the edge of the water, stopping only to stare at his reflection for a second before entering.
The feeling of cool water surrounding him once again immediately began to soothe the physical and mental agitation he’d felt. Air returned to T’ozhul’s gills as he took one last sigh through his mouth, his tail beyond aching from all the flopping it just had to do. He swam a couple of feet below the surface, taking a moment to collect himself before it was time to do what he’d come there to do.
When he caught his breath, he ran his hands down his underbelly, all the way from his chest to his tail tip, trying to clean all the remaining grass and muck off of it. The uncomfortableness of the feeling of it sticking to him aside, if he was going to make for a good human, he needed to look presentable.
While it was a bit too late to double-check everything now, he still ran through everything he needed to handle just in case. He had still definitely written and left that message for Mother, and if she could find it in her heart to listen to him for once in her life, she’d trust that he was going to be fine and not send anyone looking for him. Of course, even if she did, it wasn’t as if they’d find him, but… he still worried about how she’d react.
In terms of doing a good job at appearing human… well, he wasn’t going to do that. He considered himself a very quick learner, but he was still sure to slip up here and there, attempting to insert himself into a completely different society, and in a completely unfamiliar body to boot.
But… dammit, it was the only way forward for his people. The world was getting increasingly more and more dangerous for them to live in, with them being stuck in an ocean full of predators and with nothing to fight back against them while humans only get more insistent on hunting as many of them as possible.
He didn’t know what resources they had that gave them the technology they needed to get themselves out of their position in the food chain, especially without magic or help from the gods. But whatever they were, if underwater equivalents didn’t exist, they’d need the technology itself if they wanted to stand a chance against the things that were out there.
That was how he came up with the idea to use the Lake of Tears in the first place. The mythical, magical lake in a seemingly normal forest that would grant the wishes of anyone who spoke it in Okwan into its surface. His mother and tutors had told him the tale multiple times as a child, and every time, they would ask what he would wish for if he found the lake.
His answer never changed: for his people and his kingdom to flourish, and for them to never be bothered by the world of man-folk again. If there was an easier way to see that wish come true, he’d do it, but powerful as Arabalth’s magic was, it didn’t allow them to wish for things that would fundamentally alter reality itself. So, other than a little bit of help from the lake using a smaller wish, he’d have to do it all by himself.
And god, he knew he was going to do terribly at it. But if it was the only real hope his people had left… he was going to have to turn himself human.
T’ohzul thought to himself for just a bit longer, breathing in and out as he continued to mentally prepare himself. No matter how exhausting crawling there was, it was really the easy part of all this. He didn’t want to be ready for what would have to happen next, but… he would kind of have to be, if he was going to move forward.
Alright. The last and final order of business: getting back out of the water. He only got into it so he could collect himself, after all, and while he had gills now, that was soon going to change, and humans were really bad at swimming due to their lack of fins or a tail. So he needed to get out first before he could truly call himself ready…
He slowly swam towards the right side of the lake, trying to keep a balance between prolonging the process so he had even more time to prepare himself, and not feeling like he was wasting any time. To say he was nervous would be… an understatement. But maybe, just maybe, it would work.
In all his worry, however, he only looked out of the water as he prepared to leave it, his sail poking out the top and the rest of his body not far behind… before something stopped him. It was difficult to see out the top of the water, especially at this time at night, but he could make out a black shape with an odd, white blob at its centre.
He blinked, trying to clear his vision to get a better look at it, but only then realised… he knows that shape. He knows it well.
And not just that, but below it and aimed directly at him… was an intricate, dark brown machine.
And for just a second, the world was still… before chaos erupted.
“(…Shit!)“ T’ozhul exclaimed, immediately u-turning away from the hunter- but he was just a second too late. Soon enough, he screamed in pain as a bolt whirred past him, nicking him in the shoulder and just barely missing his head.
From above the water, the sound rang out, making Mara give a predatory snarl not entirely unlike a panther bearing its teeth as she rose to her feet, prepared to do whatever it took to finally hunt it down. “Not today, you bastard.”
Sure, she didn’t kill it- yet- and it was down in its territory and fully capable of dodging her bolts, but it was injured, and not to mention trapped. However it got down there or whatever it was doing was irrelevant- all that mattered was that it was even less likely that it would leave than it was that it would live.
So, with luck apparently on her side, and with sheer, pure determination keeping her fuelled, she began the hunt.
Meanwhile, the white merfolk began hyperventilating from the fact that by the gods if that hit me I would have died instantly, before remembering- they were still up there, and still had… whatever kind of weapon that was! He needed to get the hell out before- but how?! The only way out was up, right into its territory!
He looked up at the direction the shot came from, past the pink blood beginning to diffuse into the water. There was no time to fret about what might've been. If he was going to survive this, he’d need to act fast.
Mara immediately began reloading her crossbow, the only thing her eyes ever even slightly flickered towards while she kept her gaze on the water. Just from the tiny ripples on its surface, she could see that it was swimming to the centre of the lake to get away from her. If it was smart as she thought it was, it would know she’d be around the edges and stay there, but thankfully the lake wasn’t that big, so she still had a decent chance anyways.
When it was loaded, she got up and walked swiftly yet silently around the lake, trying to find the point where she’d have the best shot. As she travelled, she still didn’t keep her eyes off where she thought it was for long. Eventually, she reached a more elevated section of ground around the edge, giving her a better vantage point, and aimed her crossbow out into the water.
T’ozhul waited with bated breath for their next move. He couldn’t see them from this far and deep in the water, so he had no way of even knowing where they were going to strike, let alone when. His only saving grace was that they likely couldn’t see him either, which at least gave him a bit of a chance. He didn’t have much of a plan besides “try to stay alive”, but he could try and be clever about this when his life wasn’t going to end any second now.
The hunter fired once again, lacking the patience to wait until she was sure she had a good shot. As she was half expecting, everything was dead quiet after the bolt entered the blackness, with no blood or body in sight. She sighed, and began loading again. Sometimes, even she could be off-target.
Under the surface, the merman had managed to do a better job at dodging that one, which wasn’t nearly as much of a near miss as the last. Taking several near-hyperventilating breaths in a desperate attempt to keep himself calm and therefore quiet, his gaze never strayed from the sharpened wooden projectile stuck in the mud.
It was then, however, that he realised something. Whatever weapon the hunter was using, it wasn’t like the one he’d taken that morning. There was nothing connecting the projectile to its source, meaning they had no way of getting it back after firing it, meaning the weapon could only function properly if they kept multiple copies of its ammunition on their person.
And from what little he’d seen of it just earlier, it didn’t look like something that could hold multiple of them at once, so… that was why it was taking them so long in-between shots. They had to manually load them into the weapon each time after firing, which meant…
…Which meant he had an opportunity.
Mara didn’t move an inch as she tried to calculate her next move. She certainly wasn’t going to fire in the same spot: no, it’d be expecting that. Instead, she just looked out where she’d just fired, looking for signs of it. After a little bit, she considered moving, before a glimmer of light closer in her direction caught her eye again and, without hesitation, she fired.
From what she could tell, that should’ve been a perfect shot, but once again nothing happened. She could see the ripples from something other than the bolt travelling through the water, so she definitely nearly hit it, but apparently she missed it again, which… god, what this one lacked in stealth, it made up for in reflexes- that was a fact.
Snarling from frustration, she began to reload, rushing the process as much as she could afford to because it was right there, it was so close, and if she didn’t get it when she had the chance then who knows what it would-
SPLASH!
With a startling suddenness, she was ripped out of the haze of reloading when the very same white merfolk she’d been after all day tore out of the water, lunging at her with a monstrous croak. She fell back as it grabbed her crossbow and wrenched it out of her hands without much effort, with the huntress having been left too startled to focus on keeping hold of it.
It threw the weapon away as though it were trash, giving her the time to react and kick back at the piscine monster, desperately trying to get it away as fear consumed her. And it was in that moment that all of Mara’s allegiances were discarded: the Guild, Luxport, Erdenos, it all meant nothing to her anymore. Right now, she was fighting specifically and solely to keep herself alive.
One, two, the kicks connected with its body as it snarled in pain, recoiling and lowering itself back into the depths- and this, really, should have been the end of it. A wise hunter, finding themselves relieved of the only weapon they had, would simply back down, knowing there was nothing they could do and nowhere their target could really go anyways.
But when the mind is clouded, the body makes rash decisions- and as skilled as Mara was, she wasn’t really wise anyways.
So she did the only thing that came to mind- grabbed one of the bolts she still had on her, and lunged into the water after it.
Diving into the murky depths, she quickly lunged it in its direction, but the merman dodged that strike just as well as it had the others, showing off its speed and reflexes once again. In the process, it swam a few feet under her, staring up as it watched intently for her next move and forcing her to swim down after it, which wasn’t exactly ideal for striking swiftly and suddenly, especially while you were holding a crossbow bolt.
It swam up again, past her right, prompting her to quickly take the opportunity to attempt to stab into it again- once again, a clear miss, but one she didn’t have the time to focus on as she felt a set of claws slash across the left side of her neck, making her let out a grunt of pain as water found its way into her lungs and she brought her unarmed hand to the scars.
Soon after, she felt a strong tug at her only weapon as the creature wrapped its claws around it, once again attempting to disarm her. She pulled back, staring at it with murderous intent as it did the same, but the longer it continued, the more it seemed to be overpowering her.
At first, her resolve hardened- no, she wasn’t letting it do this again, it wasn’t going to beat her, she was going to live- but then… then she remembered. She didn’t have the time to keep doing this, not when she was still in the water and had already breathed some of it in.
If she backed down now, it would get the bolt and, even if it didn’t use it as a weapon the same way she had, would still go after her. And without something to fight back with, she could easily die… but if she didn’t leave while she still could, she would die.
So within just a few seconds, her resolve and her grip both began to wane, before she let go of the bolt, turning around and beginning to try and escape as best she could.
That, once more, was where it would have ended. Where it should have ended. But as much as T’ozhul typically considered himself a pacifist- or as much of a pacifist as you could afford to be in the ocean… all he could think about at the moment was that he and his people had suffered too much because of humans, because of hunters like this one.
If he let her get away, not only would she likely come after him again once she had the chance- and perhaps even somehow figure out that he’d turned himself human after his business here was done but above all else, the one thing she was absolutely sure to do was kill more merfolk. If she lived, all that would result in was more unnecessary death.
…So, fixated on the violence that he finally had an opportunity to prevent, and without thinking clearly or even thinking at all, he grabbed the edge of her cloak, turned around to face the depths of the lake, and pulled, bringing the huntress down with him.
Just when she thought she might have a chance to get away, Mara felt a similar strong tugging coming up to her back from her cloak, and she was pulled down, suddenly finding herself rapidly sinking towards the bottom. Realising what was happening, she struggled against it momentarily, then began to try and take her cloak off so she’d have a chance to break free.
It wasn’t long before the merman turned around near the bottom of the lake’s floor, realised what she was doing, and let go, swimming back up to his target to deal with her himself. At the same time, Mara finally pulled her cloak off from around her neck, letting it sink uselessly behind her as she moved to swim back to the fresh air-
-leaving her neck perfectly unguarded for it to lay its hands around and begin to choke her, taking the opportunity to expedite the process it needed to see come to fruition so badly.
She let out a gurgled attempt at a grunt of pain, despite knowing she was practically sealing her fate by doing so. As a last resort, she did the only thing she could- put her hands on its arms and attempt to push back against it. She’d lost the last tests of strength, yes, but those were by choice. She could still lose, sure, but she wasn’t sure to lose, and she was surely not going to lose this time.
She couldn’t lose to that thing. She wouldn’t let herself. It was just a fish, it was just some stupid fucking overgrown fish with its head so far up its own ass that it genuinely thought it could stand a chance against the one true apex predator of any and all food chains- not just a human, but her, of all the world’s humans.
She had worked so hard to make sure a merfolk would never harm her or anyone else again, and she was not going to let some reckless little mutant stop her. So, even as her strength began to fade and her consciousness trailed not far behind, she kept pushing.
And on the other side of things, what just a few minutes ago was a helpless merman trapped at the mercy of a ruthless huntress hiding in the shadows, had become a highly intelligent piscine monster dragging a defenceless woman down into the depths, killing her the same way she and her kind had killed so many of his people, and calling it justice.
And as T’ozhul snarled at her, dragging the unlucky mercenary to her death, the corners of his snout curled up slightly as he growled out, “Exactly, (human). Not today.”
Mara’s eye widened in surprise at that. Was she running out of oxygen even quicker than she thought she was, or did it just speak?… No. No, what the hell was she thinking?! Of course it couldn’t speak- but what it was doing was fucking killing her, and if she… if she didn’t so something about it, then… then she’d never…
The vision in her one remaining eye began to turn blurry, then dark. No… no, her life wasn’t ending like this, it couldn’t… she’d spent too much time trying to… she…
…And then, for the second time in the last five minutes, her allegiances were discarded. The Guild, Luxport, Erdenos, her vendetta against the merfolk, even her life- none of it meant anything anymore.
All she had the strength to want for… was to rest.
T’ohzul watched at the light in her eye faded, before eventually, it closed. He released his grip on her neck, and smiled- for while he knew the war was not over, the battle had been won. He had won- not just against a human, but against a huntress. For the first time in his life, he could not only genuinely say he and his people had a chance, but mean it.
He smiled… until it began to fade.
His relieved, almost vicious expression fell to a look of disbelief and horror as once more he put his hands to his neck- not to choke it or claw at it, but to check for breathing, or at the very least, a pulse. She… she couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t have actually killed her, right?! She wanted to do the same to him, but he only wanted to get her out of his way- he never wanted to kill her, he… he…
…Oh, gods. Gods, he did want to kill her for a second just now, didn’t he? He wanted her dead, and now he’d gotten what he wanted. Sure, there was hope for himself and his people and his people had one less hunter to worry about, but gods, how he’d paid the price. He was the same kind of monster they were now, nothing set him apart from them, and there was nothing he could…
…Wait.
When he pressed his fingers to a specific part of her neck, just to the left, he felt it. A soft, albeit dwindling, thumping. The thumping of a heart. She lived. She- she was still alive! He wasn’t a murderer! Even despite his hatred of humans, he found himself sighing in relief, hyperventilating just a bit from the scare he’d given himself.
…He wasn’t given much time to recover, though, before he remembered. She wasn’t dead yet. She was still unconscious under the water with a damaged throat, all factors that greatly decreased her chances of survival, and she was too heavy for him to drag up unaided in time.
Someone less noble would say she did it to herself. She was the one who had the crazy idea to jump into water after a merfolk thinking she could kill it and get out in time. The rest was just self-defence- it wasn’t his fault, really. Mother would certainly say that: she’d get beyond angry at him for coming up with the whole ‘infiltrating the human world using the Lake’ plot, but she’d never hold a huntress’ actions against her dear son.
But he couldn’t have this woman’s death on his conscience, self-defence or not. So he continued to try and think. He didn’t care how hopeless it seemed, or how little she deserved it- he was a Prince of the Sea, for fuck’s sake, and he would find a way to save her, but gods, if only there was a way…
…And then it hit him.
…Of course, he’d been so focused on trying to keep himself from getting shot that he forgot why he was here! This wasn’t just a lake, it was a wish-granting lake! He could use his wish to save her, and then he’d go home like nothing had ever happened and return once its magic was prepared to be used again!…
…Wait. But she’d probably still try to kill him after she was safe again, and the fact that he needed to crawl back through the land to get to the sea would make him an even easier target than he was just now. And even then, that was if she lived, and she was still under the water and losing oxygen fast. How could he save her in a way that was sure to actually work?
…Oh.
Oh, that was… that was a terrible idea. Terrible, but… the more he thought about it, the more apparent it became that it was also brilliant. In a way, it killed both birds: saving her life and getting her to stop attacking him and even merfolk in general, if he could convince her to. But… god, it wouldn’t be easy. Then again, of course, neither was his original plan… and in a sense, this one was actually significantly less risky.
So as he stared at her, trying to decide whether he should follow through or not before remembering that time was of the essence, he took a deep breath, attempting to prepare himself, and began to speak in the only tongue the Lake of Tears would respond to.
“(I wish… she was a merfolk.)”
And for a few seconds, nothing happened… before the world exploded into light and colour.
Mara stirred as she came back to consciousness. It took her a second to even realise that she was conscious, and another to realise that that meant she wasn’t dead. Somehow, she’d lived, even despite the improbable odds, and if she didn’t know any better then she would be celebrating.
But something felt off, very off. There was a general, lingering sense of unusualness with her body itself that was a little more subtle around her upper half, but became very apparent near her legs. It was like she could only vaguely feel them, as if they were there but… weren’t. Her back hurt, too, for reasons she couldn’t yet fathom.
Not only that, but she felt colder than usual and couldn’t feel her clothes, though for some reason neither of those facts bothered her as much as they should have. Maybe she was still groggy from being choked into unconsciousness, who knew. She took a deep, soft breath through her sides and…
…sides?!
Her eyes snapped open, and the first thing she did was look down at herself, and in just a second flat she went from simple, albeit uneasy, obliviousness to her condition to being able to see the full horror in what had been done to her in a clear and vicious display.
Her chest, legs and whole body had been completely remade, every inch of her covered in pitch-black scales that became white around her belly, and not far from that spot around her sides was three pairs of flaps where air entered and exited her body. Her chest, as it was no longer a human’s or a mammal’s at all, had become not just smaller, but almost completely flat with only muscle remaining to give it any size.
Moving downwards, her legs had been unmade entirely, replaced with a long, black tail almost the same size as her upper body. The closest things she had to legs left were two small flippers, almost like a whale’s, near her pelvis area that twitched and flapped as she willed them to. Further down the abomination that she now sported were two even smaller fins, a dark pale red with lighter stripes. Finally, her much larger fins at the tail’s tip had a similar colouration.
She stared in horror at what had become of her, panic starting to set in once more for a completely different reason. She felt her ear fins pin themselves back before realising that she had ear fins and her hands immediately reached towards them, feeling the things she now sported that she could also somehow hear out of despite that defying all basic laws of both sound and otology.
That development was what lead her to her searching up, soon finding she had no hair now either. Instead, starting up at her head and running down her body all the way to her tail was a sail, presumably the same colour as her fins, large and sleek and- oh, that’s why her back hurt so much, wasn’t it?
Her hands began to shake, violently refusing the reality she’d been trapped in even before she had the words to express it. She eventually placed one in front of her eye, seeing the scales and webs and long claws it now had, while the other felt her face and confirmed that she no longer had a nose or nostrils, and that her mouth had been extended into a triangular snout.
Her tongue reached to the roof of her mouth, feeling the sharp fangs primed by evolution for tearing into flesh that now resided within. Then, as she was given the opportunity to wonder how the fuck had this been done to her… just as quickly, she found her answer.
A familiar white merman floating just a few feet before her, staring at her intently with an expression of something akin to worry on its face. Wrapped around its shoulder was a poorly-applied bandage covering its wound that looked like one of the ones she always had on her just in case.
She looked to the right, her vision settling on the pile of her clothes and everything else she had on her person strewn to the side of the lake by guess-fucking-who. And when her vision returned to it, it shrunk back a little at the expression beyond simple stress on her face, before raising a hand in greeting and awkwardly smiling. “Evening!”
She didn’t know why it could talk. Maybe she still didn’t have enough oxygen and this was all a hallucination (thank god). Maybe it was because she was a merfolk now, so she could understand it, if that was somehow how bullshit magical transformations worked. Or maybe it had been talking the whole time and it was just a demon, which is how it had done this.
But either way, she snapped. “What the fuck did you DO TO ME?!”
When she said that, it became apparent that she hadn’t entirely healed from being strangled by that fucking monster. It still hurt to speak, and it especially hurt for her to scream that loudly- though honestly, part of her was still relieved she could speak at all. Instinctively, she brought a hand (not hers) to her throat (not hers) as she finished speaking, only to find that it was also bandaged, despite having no open wounds other than the claw marks.
“Well… you may consider my methods of medicine rather unorthodox, but it was all I had the ability and know-how to do,” the fish sheepishly continued, making her gaze snap up towards it. “Both the transmutation and the wraps, I mean.”
She spent a few seconds thinking through the implications of its words, yet again acknowledging and subsequently choosing to ignore the fact that it was actually speaking in fluent Vangamish. Then, a snarl returned to her face as she spoke up again, this time quieter as to not agitate her wounds. “You tried to kill me, and then you tried to save me?”
“No-no, not trying to kill!“ it corrected, before stopping and adding, “Not intentionally, anyways. You know how difficult it is to think straight when you’re in such a stressful situation, I’m sure… and if there were another way to both save you and ensure my safety, believe me, I’d have taken it.”
She silently debated replying verbally, before deciding that it was best not to put pressure on herself for now. Still reeling from the transformation and overall stress, she opted to snarl and nothing else, but her message was clear: not fucking likely.
“Oh, don’t you growl at me for doing the best I could do for you,” it scolded, folding its arms (…it was actually a little surprising the grasp it seemed to have on both human speech and body language, but she had bigger things to worry about). “Besides, a learning experience like this won’t do you any harm, and…” it trailed off. “Well, once it’s done, I was hoping we’ll both agree that you won’t do us any more harm?”
She blinked, her grimace fading only slightly as she waited for an explanation. “You know, once you learn what it’s like in our society and all the trouble you hunters cause us, perhaps you’ll stop killing us and stealing our bodies away from their natural resting places to do gods-know-what with them? Maybe even establish total peace between our societies?”
Bullshit. Merfolk didn’t have societies, they weren’t civilised, they were just glorified animals… well… except for this one- no. A merman was a merman, and she knew what it had just done to her! Maybe it was intelligent, but it was still a monster, and a crafty one at that- so in response, she just coldly strained out “Turn me back. Right. Now.”
It blinked at that response, before reluctantly replying with some sort of attempt at seeming empathic on its face. “…Mmm. Several problems with that, you see. Firstly, you’re still under the water, so you’d need to get out quickly or you’d drown. Secondly, I took the liberty of taking off those body fabrics you were wearing so you could feel more comfortable in this form, and I believe it’s some sort of cultural taboo on land to be seen without them-“
“Give me my clothes, then turn me back.”
“Let a man finish,” it muttered in annoyance, before taking a deep breath and resuming. “Thirdly, even if I did, you’d probably just go right back to trying to kill me, and obviously I can’t have that. Finally… you see, the Lake of Tears can only grant one wish every week, so… even if I had proper reasoning to, I’m afraid you’re stuck like this for the time being.”
After it said that, her rage began to flare up once more, both at the idea that she genuinely might be stuck like this, or the fact that the reasoning it had cited as to why she might be stuck like this was complete nonsense. Beginning to simmer, she bared her teeth like the predatory monster she was stuck as, knowing it would get the message.
“You know? The Lake of Tears?” It prompted, as if it were expecting an answer. “The Lake of-“ rasp “-‘s Tears? You…” it stopped, before sighing and pinching the place where the bridge of its nose would be. “Oh forget it, you’re human, of course you don’t know.”
That sentence made her realise that it might actually have a point with whatever it was saying, so her curiosity held her rage back just a bit as it continued, placing its palms together as it did so. “…Look. This lake has a powerful spell cast upon it. It will grant the wishes of anyone who states them in-“ croak, “but can only grant one every week or so. That was what I used to transform you, and the only means I have of turning you back. So for the next week, you’re stuck.”
The logic itself seemed sound, sure, but the specific details were highly improbable. What, this random lake out in the middle of nowhere just happened to be magic, and it had went in despite it being five minutes away from the shore, which would be about fifteen for a merfolk? They never left the ocean for anything unless it was for one hell of a good reason (though a wish-granting lake seemed like a pretty good incentive to- no. No, she was not actually believing this thing).
Instead of replying, she looked down at her tail, at what she was now stuck trying to move with in, and let out a half-growl, half-sigh as she attempted to push herself up, figuring that even if it was telling the truth, she should at least try and work out how to move. Or specifically, she attempted to push up her upper half, which worked as well as it usually did due to the skeletal structure of that half being largely unaffected.
Then, she moved on to the lower half, and it was then that it began to dawn on her that maybe she should’ve spent her life studying a little more about merfolk than just corpses and books, because apparently she knew next to nothing about how their locomotion actually worked besides ‘they swim’. Hell, for the first few seconds, she found herself uselessly stretching her flippers in a predictably idiotic-looking attempt to push herself up using legs that no longer existed.
The merman bore witness to the laughable display with a blank expression- one that didn’t seem antagonistic by itself, but still felt mocking to her. Eventually, she accepted the futility of her efforts and rolled around, giving her new sail room to breathe and instantly helping the agitation she felt, though not ridding her of it.
The next time she tried to push herself up, it worked a lot better now that she wasn’t sat upright, or trying to move like she was still human for that matter. Her upper half rose, and the rest of her rose easily along with it, staying perfectly level in the water despite the fact that she wasn’t really focused on it. How she was doing that was a question for later.
Finally, she turned around to look at her… companion. After the uncomfortably long, somewhat embarrassing distraction that was her pitiful attempt at getting up, she got the one-and-a-half-sided conversation back on topic. “Why should I believe you?“
It tilted its head a little at that, before replying “Well… I saved your life despite having every reason to let you die. And regardless of how it happened, you have been transformed through magic of some sort, magic so powerful I doubt you thought merfolk had access to it… not to mention, I can speak your language, something else you likely didn’t think was possible.”
She stopped at that. Honestly, those three points were fairly solid, though she really didn’t want to actually trust this thing or the story it was telling her. So much so, in fact, that she spent a few seconds trying to come up with another reason not to trust it, before it spoke up again.
“…Look. We clearly didn’t have the best first impressions of one another, so if we’re going to work through this together, we’ll have to start over.” He reached out a hand for her to shake, and then made yet another unintelligible series of those raspy croak-gurgles merfolk apparently communicated in.
She narrowed her eyes, beyond unimpressed. “In Vangamish.”
It went quiet for a second, staring at her in confusion, before elaborating, “(T’ozhul). My name.”
…Oh. That was its name, not some random… “word”, apparently, in its language (even now, she hesitated to call it a language, but there was really no other word for it). In response, she sighed and reluctantly shook its webbed hand with hers. “Mara. I’ll call you Tozu.”
There was a part of the young prince that had a bit of a problem with the huntress oversimplifying his name to make it sound more human, but… at the same time, he knew that his Blessing of omnilingualism made vocal mimicry much easier for him than it was for other merfolk, and that making noises that sounded even close to Okwan was probably as hard for humans as it was for regular merfolk to make noises akin to land-speak.
So either way, he just smiled. “Very well, then.” After the fact, he began to slowly swim back through the lake, giving the turned human a chance to follow. “Now come along, Mara. We’ve only got a few hours before sunlight, and then it’ll become far more dangerous for us than it is now.”
She blinked at that, shrinking back semi-involuntary at the idea of doing what a merman was telling her to. After a few more seconds, he stopped and turned back towards her, noticing she wasn’t following, and gesturing to do so. “Well, come on! Surely, you don’t intend on staying here out in the open all week?”
“…Leaving means going to the surface like this,” she simply explained, still eyeing him with scrutiny. “And then I’ll be even more vulnerable.”
“Well, exactly, which is why we need to leave now, before more humans come,” he explained. “It’s not a very long distance for a merfolk to cover, really, even on land. Besides, so long as you stay close to me, you’ll be perfectly safe in my kingdom.”
…She hated to admit it, but he was right. Not many people went to this lake often, but the chances of both her and the particularly attention-grabbing Tozu staying unnoticed there for a whole week were very slim… plus, they still needed to eat, and it wasn’t as if anything actually lived in this lake- not even the usual things merfolk preyed on. (God, merfolk prey… would she actually have to live on those things for the next week?)
So all things considered… she might as well cooperate. “…Fine,” she eventually responded, beginning to slowly swim in the same direction, mimicking his movements as she did so to try and figure out exactly how to in this body.
God, she hated this turn of events so much. Just 24 hours ago, everything was fine- there had been no signs of that white merman in years since that fateful day, she was living comfortably and securely for once in her life, there were no threats of merfolk posing serious threats to anyone or being any smarter than people generally thought they were.
And now, she was stuck being lead to who-knows-where by the very creature she hated more than anything else, having to put her safety in the slimy claws of the one being in existence she felt the least safe around. Not only that, but because either of some bizarre coincidence or a truly masterful plot, she was one of them, trapped in a body that didn’t want to cooperate with her, indistinguishable from the things she hated most.
And the worst part? His logic was completely sound. There actually was, as far as she was aware, no other option she had- no other safe option, anyways. She wouldn’t be able to overpower him on her own- not when she had only just begun to figure out how to move like this.
And sure, she could still talk, so maybe she’d be able to convince the next human who found her of what happened… but what she’d been through that morning and how her claims were since ignored had taught her one thing: People are stupid, and even moreso, lazy. They’ll turn a blind eye to even the clearest answers if it means making their lives easier for themselves. For all she knew, the average hunter wouldn’t hesitate to kill a talking merfolk if it meant being able to ignore the idea that a human could become one of them.
So, she kept following him, staying quiet. In particular, she made sure to keep quiet about what he had done with her harpoon gun- she suspected asking would only put her in danger, and depending on how long he was planning on keeping up this facade, it wasn’t out of the question that he might tell her eventually. Still, if he didn’t, she would probably try going looking for it anyways.
…And something else she especially wanted to keep close to her chest was, if her assumption was correct, their first encounter, all those years ago. The story of the real first time they met, what his father(?) took from her, and what she took from him. Mentioning all of that would definitely put her in danger.
…God, she really didn’t want to do this. Leaving the water when she was trapped in the body of a mermaid was one thing- especially since merfolk could only breathe on land through their mouths, which would make the trip even more exhausting- but having to both enter and somehow blend in in a society full of them for a week, living almost like an animal the whole time?
One upside, she supposed, is that it would give her more information about merfolk and their territories to report back to the Guilds if he kept her word and let her change back. She’d have to be very careful about how she relayed this information, though, since- again- they weren’t likely to believe her without proof.
Still… the fact that this one could speak Vangamish- and the fact that merfolk had their own language entirely- was concerning. Very concerning. If they had a whole language, how smart really were they? She definitely didn’t expect Tozu’s “kingdom” to look anything like a human kingdom, of course, but she supposed even the smartest creatures could only get so far technologically when they lived underwater.
So once again, she followed, still filled with stress and bitterness, but with a slight twist of morbid curiosity. As for T’ozhul… well… to say tonight didn’t go how he planned was definitely an understatement, but if the gods were on his side, maybe it wouldn’t be a total loss. Mara was definitely aggressive, but for now she was cooperative enough, and if anything bad happened he’d be able to do a much better job at outspeeding her now she had the disadvantage of an unfamiliar body.
…Outspeeding and overpowering, honestly, but he didn’t want to think about that. He’d seen those scars down the left side of her face where one of her eyes used to be- the size of the cuts, the number of them, those were merfolk claws. He didn’t really notice them when they were fighting, and after she woke up he didn’t say anything about it so she wouldn’t get any more stressed. But still, he understood now.
The reason why she hated merfolk so much… was because she was hurt by one in the past, wasn’t it? Now and again, his subjects would brag about finding humans in the water and dragging them down into the depths so that the water would take their spirits the way it couldn’t take all the people the man-folk stole from it. Other merfolk, when they weren’t being wary of humans, were pretty big on taking revenge on them wherever possible- and honestly, he couldn’t blame them.
Nobody knew exactly what the humans did with their kind when they caught them, but that hardly mattered when, at the end of the day, even the ones who hadn’t been harmed by their weapons when they were caught were almost certainly still dead. No merfolk had ever been caught by a human and lived to tell the tale, after all. If they were going to kill innocents, then it was only fair to kill them back. Almost all the people he knew, including his own mother, would call it justice.
Not him, though. If killing was wrong when hunters did it, it was wrong when merfolk did it too. Maybe he was a hypocrite to react so strongly to him almost killing a human when he would usually hold his tongue when others boasted of it, but it was still true- and getting back to the point, Mara was just more evidence of that. Deep down he probably always knew it, but tonight’s events had cemented it- hate did nothing but breed more hate.
The only way to truly stop this war was peace, and now- even if she still (rightfully) despised merfolk, he was one step closer to achieving it. Sure, it was still very, very far from a reality, but it was an idea he honestly hadn’t even been considering just a few hours ago.
And if he wanted to see it come to fruition, he’d need to be the best guide he could possibly be. Kind, and insightful, and patient, and all the things Mara needed him to be in order to learn how to survive in this world and get past her grudges.
It was going to be a big day tomorrow, and she was completely unprepared for all the things that would happen next. And to be honest… so was he.