They waited until the fall of night of the following day in order to enact their plan since it would allow for more chaos on the opposing end and thus more discretion for them. As much as Linias disliked the idea of using fire let alone smoking people out of a building, he did acknowledge that it was their safest bet.
He waited off in a tree by the lake and when smoke began to rise over the horizon he knew that Revi successfully performed her part. Not too long after the surrounding ferns signaled to him, They’re coming. The Siren.
Seeing through the trees was an option but he knew it wasn’t all that necessary as not long after did the sound of hasty footsteps approach.
Before the siren could get a proper drink of water from the lake, Linias’s vines grew into a narcotic flower that released its pollen in a flash, putting them fast asleep. Linias only used a small amount, just enough to transport them without a struggle.
Now that he was up close he could tell that they were a male which was fairly uncommon for sirens, at least those that interacted with others on land. Usually the males stayed in the sea and kept watch over their families or treasures while the females were the ship wreckers and sailor seducers. It did pique his curiosity but he had other more pressing questions to ask first.
As expected Revi already returned before him and she relayed that as predicted the soldiers were too busy running amok to even notice one of them missing. With his roots he bound the siren against a tree at their camp and waited.
In slow and steadily quickening blinks his consciousness returned after only a few minutes.
Since he lacked hydration, his skin tone was a light slate gray as opposed to a siren’s usual shades of blue or green. His shoulder length sapphire blue hair contained streaks of pale yellow and bright oranges, matching his light citrus eyes in color. All sorts of scales, fins, gills, and red algae adorned his very revealing body, with his clothes seeming more like a royal dancer than anything else especially when considering all the jewels. Then again, he is a siren.
Only momentarily did he seem upset which quickly changed to an expression of annoyance as he sighed and groaned.
“I hope you have a good reason for going through all of this effort.”
The siren looked around at the unsightly group that had captured him: a…man or mage of sorts, a fire elemental, and…some pale woman-man thing.
He scoffed and coughed simultaneously, “Actually, maybe I am interested. You’re one funny looking school. That and the fact that you’re the group that they’re after, so I’m sure you’ll tell me something good.”
Revi, completely ignoring him, turns to Linias and asks, “Wait, shouldn’t we gag him or something so he can’t sing?”
“He can’t sing in this state. They use water from their bodies to add enchanting properties to their songs.” Linias, who thought that was common knowledge, responds regardless before focusing on the task at hand. “You’re working with that group of soldiers, correct? We wanted to ask you some questions.”
The siren’s annoyance fades in exchange for an arrogant smirk, “Gee I would’ve thought that you made sure of your facts before risking your necks.”
Instantly taking the bait strands of Revi’s hair ignites and her voice rises to a shout, “You’re in no position to be–”
Almost getting vexed himself, Linias waves his hand and stops her, “Revi, he’s trying to get you upset because you could accidentally burn my roots or attract attention if a search party gets sent out.”
“Oh.” Embarrassed, her streaks of flames disperse to let Linias take over and cover her humiliation before the siren’s laughter could boil over.
Sighing, Linias continues, “So?”
“Well, Mr. Smart-Guy, I’m sure you know the rules. No shiny, no talky.”
Once prompted, the retainer shifts through the inside of his coat and reveals a broad, brilliant gold choker necklace adorned with a shimmering sapphire in the center and small teardrop earrings to match.
All of the eyes present immediately cemented onto the plush and scintillating jewelry, and out of the blue his Master spouted in retaliation, “WHAT!! Where did you get that from?!!! Why didn’t you offer it to me!”
“From one of the clients I had when working in Bevolia. I would have under normal circumstances, but I thought it’d be more useful in the future.”
Before his Master could bleat any further, Linias dangled the choker and accompanying earrings in front of the siren, whose eyes bounced as they followed the motion.
“Deal.”
“I didn’t say the terms yet.”
“You heard me. Whatever it is, deal. You want me to change teams? I’m all yours.”
Linias looked back to the others for their input.
Revi was still trying to recollect the pieces of her pride after falling for such an obvious trap, so her expression twitched in a thousand ways until her voice came to her albeit much lower than usual. “I don’t know…I guess his supposed smarts could be helpful…Or whatever else sirens can do.”
“NO!” Haetia interjected. “Absolutely not! We barely have much for food as it is! He’d just be another mouth to feed!!”
“Sire, having a siren with us could make a lot of things easier.”
“He seems like a prick so my answer is no and you have to listen to me.”
Linias sighs, already knowing his words were going to upset his Prince even more. “It would improve our survivability to have more allies, especially a siren that could solve a lot of problems without much need for violence, therefore–”
“Ah–Stop! I don’t want to hear it with your for your safety bullshit excuses all the time. Why even ask me then!?”
“The illusion of choice.” The siren adds fuel to the fire and laughs all the while. “Sorry, I just had to hah!”
Rage reaching its peak, Haetia’s mouth snaps open and forces Linias to interrupt before things get out of hand.
“You’ll help us then? For clarity, you’ll help us and answer any questions we have until someone else wins you over.” Already sensing Revi’s imposing question from her curious gaze, he answers in advance, “You can’t buy a siren’s loyalty for life unless you wanted to marry them.”
With another Oh, Revi remains silent.
The steadily impatient siren nods rapidly, “Yes yes I’ll do all that can I have the necklace now?”
Linias removes his roots and tosses the jewelry into the siren’s semi-webbed hands and instantly he replaces his current necklace and clips on the earrings. Satisfied, he crosses his legs with a wide grin and relaxes against the bark.
“Oh right, names. You guys are?”
“Linias.” The retainer answers. “The fire elemental is Revi and he’s Haetia.”
Haetia sticks his nose in the air and Revi reluctantly nods.
“I’m Myrin–”
“Myrin?” The corner of Revi’s lips quiver. “Like–Myrin…the Siren? Pfft–HAHAHAHA MYRIN THE SIREN–YOUR NAME IS MYRIN THE SIREN!!!”
Suddenly Revi bursts into a fit of uncontrollable laughter to the point that she was holding her sides and wiping the tears from eyes just from repeating the phrase alone. Disgusted by the unsightly display Haetia distances himself from her while Linias and Myrin ignore her completely.
“So, those questions you needed answering? I’ll just warn you in advance that I won’t know as much as you think I do, since you know, sirens and their flimsy allegiances as you said yourself, so they didn’t let me in on too much.”
“Then that makes you useless doesn’t it? The whole reason we kidnapped you was for information!” Haetia starts to protest.
“We have a siren now and they don’t, that makes our lives easier and theirs harder.” Linias sighs and tries to move on before his Master notices his miniscule frustration. “Can you at least give us a name and motivation for those soldiers you were with?”
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“Name, sure. Motivation, ehhhh. They call themselves Seronites, and as far as I can gather they’re comprised of humans and mages or human-like races, like minotaurs or–eugh–mermaids. You know, the half-n-halfs.”
For once Haetia feels something other than irritation or arrogance as his eyes squint in confusion. “But aren’t you a mermaid?”
“AbsoLUTELY not! In fact, I take that as an insult!”
Though, Haetia clearly didn’t care whether he was offended by the statement or not.
“Mermaids are all man-loving and care more about the dry land that they can’t live on more than their own birth home. Now, us sirens are much more self-respecting than that! We’re more marine and would prefer the sea over dry land any day! We only go on land if we get a sweet enough deal, like me. They offered me these fancy glittery clothes and I said sure why not I’ll take you up on it. Then I kind of regretted it since it turned out to be more work than I wanted.”
“Their motivations?” Linias redirects to the more important topic.
“Right, right. Like I said I don’t know. They want your pale boy over there dead, why? Who knows!” The siren playfully shrugs.
“Then what did they ask you to do? Revi’s clan was abducted by them and I assumed that they would’ve used you to get and keep them, but they were nowhere to be seen at the encampment.”
“Oh I THOUGHT she looked familiar! Yes, I did do that–well, helped them do that, past tense. But then they kind of weren’t my problem anymore. Maybe they talked to them, maybe they just keep them in chains now or something. Who knows.”
“So you have absolutely no clue where they went or why they wanted them?” Revi, having finally collected herself asks.
“Hey I don’t have all the answers and I’m sorry but that’s life.”
“Then Haetia’s fucking right and this WAS a waste of our time!-”
The retainer steps in the middle before the two could spark a full blown argument, “Myrin. What did they ask you to do then after getting Revi’s clan? They would’ve kept you around for a reason.”
“Help them kidnap King Arthur’s dryad.”
At the sudden statement Revi’s fury fades and her amber eyes drop and Linias nearly chokes on his saliva while Haetia is continuously left in the dark when it comes to matters relating to other races.
“His dryad?!” Linias exclaims.
“He HAS a dryad!!!???” Revi doubts.
“Hold your scales I’m getting there.” Myrin clears his throat in an attempt to signal them to calm down to no avail as they still stared with mesmerized eyes. “The Seronites are trying to get a dryad, so they commissioned me to help them do it since obviously King Arthur the–what is it? I think 63rd or something it’s not important–isn’t gonna hand them over all nicely. I think my job in that regard is pretty obvious. Distract him and his guards, the Seronites go in and get the dryad. Nice and dandy yeah?”
“Backtrack a second,” Linias shakes his head trying to wrap his head around the sudden bombshell, “they want a dryad why exactly, aside from the obvious reasons? The Seronites I mean.”
“That my friend I have no idea! Hah!”
“Wait wait wait, one second.” Haetia motions for a pause. “Can everyone explain this dryad thing or am I gonna have to figure out why everyone’s so shocked?”
Now all of the shocked stares turn to him.
“You–? How do you not know–?” Revi begins to say until Linias cuts her off.
“My Master learned about some of the other races and species but his studies were never…in depth.” Which was his retainer’s way of saying that he didn’t bother to learn much about the outside world. “Sire, dryads are nearly extinct beings that are able to commune with the nature around them and heal anything. They’re immune to all diseases as well, minor or major. As you can imagine, they were mainly sought after for their healing capabilities.”
“And by ‘sought after' he means hunted to the end and back.” A nauseous curdle brews in Revi’s visage the more she recalls. “That’s why they’re nearly extinct. Honestly, they could actually be extinct by now or maybe they finally found a safe place for no one to bother them for all anyone knows. They had no qualms healing people but obviously if you’re asked to heal someone who say massacred tens or even hundreds you’d say no. So, they get forced to and threatened and…yeah. Hunted and enslaved in most cases.”
“Which brings us back to King Arthur the I-don’t-really-care-what-number-he-is!” Myrin continues to explain, “The King Arthur’s have really fallen off after THE King Arthur–obviously there were some decent ones sprinkled in there but who cares–point being, most of them have sucked. They moved away from Camelot-turned-Bevolia so their own people wouldn’t bother them and they didn’t really have to do their kingly duties since no one wanted to go all the way over to where he moved just for him to say ‘Fuck off’ anyway. So yeah, Camelot became Bevolia and ended up basically a democratic republic and the rest of the kingdom just rules itself–”
“The dryad.” Linias tries to remind him.
“I’m getting there! At some point the King Arthurs started getting dryads to keep themselves alive longer but the dryads usually end up trying to escape or they die trying. Then dryads got scarce so not all of them have had one, so exactly how many dryads the King Arthurs had, who knows. All that’s important now is that this one’s got one and the Seronites want them for some reason–other than the obvious reasons your associate so pointed out.”
“Then let me guess, our next stop is gonna be getting the dryad before them, right?” Slowly understanding the situation Haetia already hitches off a next course of action, although the rest of the group didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the idea as all of their gazes remained contemplative.
“You see…” Revi begins, “With how everyone is fiending for their own dryad, us going around with a known dryad is essentially putting a target on our back, aside from you that is. The thing is just these so-called Seronites are after you, but everybody would be after a dryad, not just the Seronites.”
“In other words it’d be dangerous to bring the dryad along, so what? We can’t let the soldier guys have the dryad and we can’t take them ourselves, which leaves setting them free or killing them and I’d rather kill them. If we set them free that’s just letting the Seronites have them anyways since I’m sure they wouldn’t have trouble hunting them down if their race has already been hunted to near extinction.”
“NO!!” The instantaneous roar jolts everyone including Summer and Oliver, with the source unexpectedly coming from Linias who promptly tries to regain his composure, “I mean–It’s not…the best plan. They’d have more use alive than dead.”
“They’d be more dangerous to us alive than dead! Aren’t you the one that’s all about safety?!”
“Yes Sire, but it wouldn’t make much difference between an entire unknown legion of soldiers or other passersby. We already can’t trust people we happen upon.”
“The Linias I know does not sound like that at all ‘one or a hundred people hunting us is the same thing’. No it’s not!!”
“That’s not what I–”
“That’s what you’re implying! We’re killing her and that’s the end of the story. For once I think about the danger of something and you don’t? Hah! What a fucking joke.”
“Master–”
“I said enough!”
Myrin and Revi watch the master-servant pair dispute their sides until ultimately Linias is left with a faintly downtrodden and trepid gaze. The siren watched both of their expressions intently as they paired with their words and thoughts, keeping note of every shift for later.
He finally stands from the tree trunk and regrets it nearly immediately as every member of the posse was taller than him, even the reprehensive Haetia as much as he tried not to make his irritation obvious.
“What it sounds like you guys need is a plan! Luckily for all of you I happened to be there when they made one since I was their key component. The hardest part is obviously the dryad. She, which her name is Nevenia apparently, wouldn’t be too happy about going from one captive to another, especially if you guys want to kill her apparently but obviously she doesn’t know that yet. So! Linias and I can go get the dryad while Haetia and Revi distract the old kingly guy. Since if we run into trouble I take it that we’d be a lot more stealthy at handling it, and nor do I think his royal highness over here wants to get his hands dirty.”
A shimmer of hope shines in the silver to the retainer’s eyes and Myrin inconspicuously passes a slight smile his way and continues concocting his plan.
“If the Seronites are all shaken up about your stunt today and rush over to get the dryad we probably would be playing a game of chase since I don’t think we’ll beat them on that front, unless you guys have pegasi of course, which…”
Summer and Oliver scowl at him.
“Yeah. Then, the idea changes because we’ll have to get the dryad off of the Seronites but that’s more of a play-it-by-ear scenario.”
“And how are we supposed to trust that this isn’t all some ruse to backstab us?” Ever skeptical, Haetia glowers at the siren.
“Unless the Seronites have a nicer necklace than this on hand I think you guys will be fine.” Myrin smirks, making the ivory prince roll his lavender eyes.
“We’re keeping you free on top of that?”
In a voice a tad quieter than usual, Linias clarifies, “If we want him to trust us, we have to trust him, which means upholding our end of the deal as well.”
This time Haetia clicked his tongue and groaned, crossing his arms and begrudgingly leaving it at that.
“You alright letting your Master come with us, Mr. Servant?” The siren clearly tried to get a rise out of Linias but he didn’t bite.
“It’s better than leaving him on his own in this case. There’ll probably be a lot of Seronites, so I would rather him be in close proximity.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind getting splinters in your hands, if you–”
Before he could finish the taunt Myrin is met with a petrifying sharp, silver glare that forces him to swallow the rest of his sentence.
“A-Alright, alright.”
With an unusual, fierce snap in his stride Linias distanced himself from the rest of the group and left for the forest, leaving Revi with concern, Haetia with indifference, and Myrin with his curiosity fully piqued.
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/786923185768497222/1166429184067899453/MyrinSketch.png?ex=654a74d4&is=6537ffd4&hm=49292620409e561975ae8fd76c0a76d8f078a6b06d8cb9d9ea41334da3b86272&]
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/786923185768497222/1166429183388426250/Chapter_14_Map.png?ex=654a74d4&is=6537ffd4&hm=8e2d67ca4b7f5e999541ef5133fbc403aa2602e09b4e6d97d242fb9954c455a5&]