So, when you think about diving into the sea, you think a few things. One of them was the worry of breathing. Another, how you would get up or when rather. And then there was the fear of something dragging you down.

But what if, what if all those things were turned upside down all of a sudden by a group of very scary looking fishpeople?

Not only did they not supply me with anything to breathe, they just dived into the fucking ocean with me still attached.

Hard to breathe- no, impossible to breathe. Chest tightening, like there was a car on top of me!

“ARGHHH!!!” I screamed as my voice formed gargles and I even drank some salty water. Great stuff for my lungs and kidneys. The world went a bit colder and the sounds muffled, as the vision of the hull moved further and further.

Very blue, very dark, constantly getting even darker.

Yup, you’re dying.

Chest burning, fingers utterly cold… my mind was slowing down.

I always thought I would die from poison or maybe be murdered by a monster… heck, even a train sounded better. But not from fucking drowning!

“Don’t worry,” a voice. Somewhat reassuring. I’d heard it before? “I won’t let them kill you.”

Oh… it was the mermaid.

It went dark as my lungs finally gave up.

***

Classical music. Bach?

Sounded like Bach’s fourth concerto.

Played by dancing seagrass, polka dotted sea horse and mini sharks? Still dreaming?

My eyes fluttered as I stared at the ceiling. Or rather the ocean floor above me. Fish floating, people swimming, things just moving and waving and…I was underwater? Pinching my cheek resulted in quite the pain, so I probably wasn’t dreaming. Probably.

How the hell am I breathing?

Not only was I breathing, I was breathing fine at that too!

I checked my body and I seemed human enough but I had some gill like things on my neck. No, they weren’t mine. They were just attached to my neck, chest, and wait, scales? They weren’t gills. They were just specialized scales acting as gills. Quite white at that too.

Rexen’s handy work, I see.

But where the hell was Rexy?

Actually, where the hell was I?

I was in the literal middle of what looked to be a fish city. People were talking, walking, doing stuff. But their voices just felt like distant chatter. I could hear them, at least somewhat, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Almost as though they were speaking a different language, which they were. It wasn’t necessarily that different from Sea tongue though, perhaps just another variant?

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Regardless, I tried to understand and I tried to just look around.

Building like things stood on the ocean floor. Crude, stone-coral like, somewhat attached to the floor. And the floor was also mostly made of coral. Very dangerous to walk on top of. And no, no one else was walking. I tried to see if I could float or swim and although I could… I couldn’t really do much on the ‘moving’ department.

I met eyes with some of the people in the distance. They stared at me, pretended I didn’t exist and just swum away. No disgusted glares, not even any sign of acknowledgement. I suppose it was their way of showing their hatred for my kind?

So fishpeople hate humans.

These particular fishpeople weren’t as big as the Hermons that attacked the ship, and they weren’t necessarily scary looking either. I mean they still kind of looked like Predators and well…

“Seems alive enough,” a voice came. From above?

I found about a dozen or so fishpeople… those scary predator lookalikes. They were just staring down at me, kind of curious, kind of…

They were always there, huh? I might or might not have been ignoring them as just random passersby but yeah, I was kind of screwed.

“Yau wast right.” One of them sighed. “Suo munch far ur feaset.”

The hell is he even saying? “Go-good evening,” I said. I had no idea if it was even evening though.

And there was a good reason. That being, the coral was actually glowing. Green, violet, brown, pink. Various colors.

And the fishpeople? Well, they were pointing their good old spears at me and smiling. I was smiling too.

“Let’s go kid,” one of them said. Probably the biggest one, and with random scars on his forehead. He was also the one who caught me and dived in.

Why the hell would any sane fishman drag a human child into the ocean? To eat him….

“What happened to the mermaid?”

“She dead,” some other one said.

Sounded like a lie. But still… I stared at the big fish- “I know you didn’t kill her. She was like a friend to me, what happened?”

I got a sigh. “You should worry about yourself first, kid.”

And with that, we started flyin- er, Floating!

Since everyone could float, there wasn’t much need for traffic control. At least that’s what I thought. But nope, there definitely was. Every three minutes, we’d run into what I could only describe as a traffic police lady (hot sea horse lady) who stopped us and let the fish flow. The whole area was like a giant intersection between oceanic highways, driven by torrents of water.

Apparently, there were far too many fish in the ocean.

“Don’t you eat other fish?” I asked.

The fishmen, stared, as though they were beyond disgusted.

The big man answered. “No. We only eat humans.”

Uh-huh.

Gulping hard, I proceeded to keep my mouth shut.

We weren’t necessarily wandering around aimlessly. We were steadily moving closer to the center of the whole damn city like coral. The big somewhat round thing in the middle. Probably a castle?

The closer we got, the denser the buildings got, and the quality of the coral improved.

The castle-like thing was just sitting in the middle: It looked like green coral and although I had no real expectations of surviving… I kept hoping some big bad fish lady would show up and show me mercy or something. But I knew damn well that wasn’t happening. I mean… If you could never eat the meat around you and suddenly you found a round little sack of meat (that you could eat), why wouldn’t you eat it?

Slowly but surely, we descended, I passed through the dark yet lit corridors and arrived at what seemed like a big fat double door. I expected the building to be crude but it wasn’t. it looked to be made out of black marble, finely carved at that too.

Yeah, we were about to meet some badass hotshot mermaid lady or something.

The fishpeople knocked on the door, spoke to someone on the other side and the door opened. Oddly similar to the stuff I’d read in light novels. I mean, technically the woman just might be a fish queen or something. Actually, why was I keep thinking the ruler of this place would be a woman?

Because they certainly weren’t.

And yes, they.

Two fucking heads were stuck in a body the size of an elephant’s. The color was somewhat maroon and the texture was that of a Rhino’s. The moment they saw me, they instinctively licked their lips. And yes, it was that moment when I knew….

Yeah, guess I’m going to be eaten alive today, huh?

And probably for real this time.