Sonia, a mermaid and a chimera, who used human bones to give herself legs. His lungs strained, begging for breath. The void closed in on him on all sides. When Gele looked up, there was nothing. Same when he looked down. Or was it to the right or left? He was more lost than ever in the endless water. Emptiness encroached on him. But Gele did not have to endure it long. His mind slowly sank into a quiet sleep. The final moment was already upon him. Since the night he ran away, drowning had plagued his thoughts. It was here, and he did not have to worry anymore. On the precipice of death, Gele dove into Sawyer’s memories one last time.
Returning to the desecrated Mir’s Town, the mooseman towered over Sawyer Jean. To make a beastman, you need far less than you do to be reborn as a harpy. Part of the trade means you lose your mind, but witches never transform themselves. They build armies and thralls. Gele melted into the beastman as it fell over dead. Surging deeper, he went to the Salt Wench’s rituals.
The runes screamed at him this time. He no longer saw the people stripped and spaced out inside the circle of brass rods. They could not save him now. Words scribed in sulfur were all that mattered. It was the only thing that could save him. There was only going forward. No, there is only drowning. I will die if I stop. Gele saw images flash through his head. In three rituals, over a hundred bodies folded into Sawyer’s wings and gills. How did it work? Gele drank from all the books Sawyer had ever opened. He remembered everything about magic, even the things she had forgotten. All of it came at once, nearly shattering his hazy thoughts over a few desperate seconds. A glass vessel, he himself could only hold so much. I will not drown. But all he could see from the past was that he did not have enough. There was no copper, not enough brass, and he had only one soul to tamper with.
There was nothing he could do, he simply did not have enough. As the current pulled him under, he remembered the first time. Everything had fallen away, just as it had before. His skirt and scarf were torn from him. Shuran’s gifts vanished amongst the majestic horror of the deep ocean. The same must have happened to her when she and my father died. Would he join them? He already asked that question. The answer did not matter. He was going to die. His wound did not hurt anymore. There was no more struggling. But the ocean was not done with him yet. Something had already claimed him as a prize. Gele watched as a hundred eyes climbed from the darkness. A fish made of bony plates swam at him with its jaws wide open. The Anima had followed the other creatures and had made its way to Vall.
Eat me whole, do not make me endure the insanity she did.
“Gele!” Sawyer was at his side, descending as the Anima rose to swallow him. Was she there the whole time? The light enshrouding her had dimmed. If she had not spoken, Gele would have seen a ripple of water amongst millions. Her hope spread to him, and he saw her plan. “Chimeras are malleable creatures. An average man with some mermaid's bones may not find success, but alchemy has shortcuts. It is easier to perform the ritual when a chimera uses another chimera as the ritual’s foundation!” The one truth Sawyer Jean understood over any other magician. “And for fuel? Use the Anima, they’re souls still in there, digested and dead, but the power remains. They’ve haunted me all this time. They live forever using that power. Take it, Gele. Put them to peace. Dancer, chimera, mermaid, Anima, and warrior, take those titles and rise to the surface.” Sawyer’s words were delivered to him in an instant, never spoken, the shared thought their thinning lifeline before the ancient beast. Below the Sea of Shrouds, they dwelled in a perilous togetherness available nowhere else. The plan would work.
Clutching the rib in his hand, Gele noticed how sharp the end was. One day, a child will be born on Galu that’s just like me. They’ll perform the Beckoning, and they’ll dream of exploring the world. They need to find something better than this. Let me be the only one to endure this path. The bone cut through his skin like a dull knife. Gele had to resist the urge to claw at his throat or swim toward the surface. On the precipice of drowning, there was no time left. The brass bangles began to burn as he carved the runes into his chest. One stark line was already there, courtesy of the swordsman. I will make it to the Second Sea, to Allecros, to whatever lies beyond! Gele clung to that single thought as his blood mixed with the water. The Anima’s jaws cracked open. The Siren’s remains were used in Sawyer’s rituals. Gele grit his teeth. It was either oblivion or monstrosity. All other choices had led to this. Sawyer grabbed Gele’s wrists and helped him finish the rune. “Save me,” it said in the mermaids’ words. His arms were so weak now. Seawater poured down his throat as the Anima’s mouth enclosed around him. Rows upon rows of crushing teeth came for him. And Gele, as his final act, slammed the rib bone and the brass into the beast.
And after, the ritual was complete.
The water turned feverishly cold as if he was suspended in a realm of ice. Frozen, Gele could no longer feel his arms or legs. Trapped in a still current, the darkness cuddled him as it trapped him at depths he could not understand. Nowhere was up. Nowhere was down. He was only lost in the void. Yet, he could breathe. Water flowed through him like air. He could think. He could cry. It was so dark. Sawyer was gone. How long had it been since Gele knew true darkness? The phantom was always there to provide at least a shimmer.
The continuum stretched, disrupting the reasoning of a man. The longer he dwelled here, the smaller he became. In the absence of light, ripples told Gele of the world around him. But his skin prickled. Trying to hear their warnings invited shockwaves of cold agony. A punishment from where? All Gele knew was that they were not for him. There were things far larger than him here, in the shallows of the dark. If he could learn to see, would it be enough to sense what dwelled beyond a leviathan? No. Leviathans in the Second Sea were common. They would blot out the sun and the moon. Perhaps those were monsters too. But what he felt, they must have been larger. What do you call a monster that monsters fear? The ripples told him that there were two, then three. Things that diminished Galu to a pebble surrounded him. The collective souls of humanity could not rival the small swarm. How easy was it to smother humanity?
More ripples came from farther out. The ebb and flow tore Gele apart. Something even bigger was out there, and beyond it, something of a scale he refused to understand. Madness would ensnare him if he even tried to look upon the beings that made him equal to polyps and larvae. Oblivion. The Second Sea held things that could swallow the earth. Annihilation. Gele’s mind snapped when the truth grasped him. Erasure.
The ripples imparted on Gele a sinister fact. Wherever its origin, it spoke in a soothing voice, in a language Gele had never heard but somehow knew by heart. “You are only a denizen of the spawning grounds.”
“Hey!” A voice threw him to his feet. Peeled away, the void of leering darkness twisted to stone streets and tall towers. A memory, Gele gulped. The Second Sea, did Sawyer see that years ago, or was that my own experience? Tombstones grew below his feet, giving him somewhere to stand, freeing him from the Second Sea. The graveyard basked in moonlight. The sound of waves brushing the cliffside echoed. Wilkin’s Port waited just down a trodden dirt path. Home. No, this place was plagued by ghosts. One of them sat on a tombstone, playing with a pocket knife. The little girl waved to Gele when she saw him. “Gele, get over here!”
Cautious, Gele approached looking over his shoulder at every step. Maybe a little too careful, he reached for his sword. The waves had taken it. The Anima . . . is this his hell? “Where am I?” He asked, but his voice sounded strange. Looking at his hands, at himself, he seemed to have stepped back in time, back to the days when Shuran was still with him when he was a child. “Where am I?” He asked again, frantic and horror-struck.
“I don’t know,” the girl shrugged. “This is just where we’ve been waiting.”
“We?”
The girl pointed to all of the graves. She spoke in a hazy tone, words droning on. “I’ve been here a while, but I haven’t gotten one yet, but this is where the chimeras go. We leave a part of ourselves here for when the time comes. I was told that when I first came here, decades ago.” Shaking her head, a cheery tone took over. “Hey, do you want to play a game?”
Gele gulped. There was no other answer. “Yes.” A playfulness swelled where fear had injected itself.
Guided by the girl, Gele looked at the headstones. Someone had engraved strange markings into them. A woman with a wolf's head, a whale with trees for fins, and even a jellyfish with a creature growing inside—the Siren. Hundreds lay sleeping, waiting for the end. The spawning grounds. The words split his head, nearly throwing him to his knees. But the pain was in another place. Here, in the graveyard, there was an insurmountable peace. Though, it was not paradise. Some tombstones were unfathomable, hidden in tall grass, distorted by twisted shapes, guarded by wandering figures that the girl dragged Gele away from at first sight. “Monsters, those who have been here even longer than me,” she explained. Her teeth chattered. And she curled, arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. “Do not go near them.”
“Will they hurt us?”
“I don’t know,” the girl whispered. “But even I have heard them scream. Dark things are waiting, just as we are.” Then her voice lightened. “All we can do is play games while we wait.”
“Okay,” Gele followed aimlessly through the cemetery. Where was I before this? He could not remember.
The girl led him to a circle of seven coffins built from tarnished brass. The one in the center was of rusted iron. “I’ll pretend to be Deneve, and you can be one of my companions.” The girl said, but someone was already there.
Crawling from one of the caskets, webbed fingers stretched for the sky. Pushing the top, an arm adorned with lilac scales freed itself. A woman in bronze chainmail rose from the dead. Fins grew from her head in the place of hair, drooping down like a veil of transparent silk. Eyes like embers glared at the two children. “Sonia the mermaid?” The girl guarded Gele as the figure stood on trembling legs, the pink flesh tattooed with a thousand runes. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
“Deneve?” The mermaid muttered. “Is it time yet? No. Something else is about to awaken.” A mouth of sharp pointed teeth hissed at the children. “Go! The Merrow is being summoned!”
Gele could breathe. Floating in the depths of the ocean, the current still dragged him deeper. Sawyer held onto his wrist as he descended. “Where am I now?” He asked. “Did the Anima eat us?”
“No,” Sawyer nearly laughed. “The fish is long gone, taken to the nothingness. You annihilated the Anima. No, more like absorbed. Whatever the case, you survived, Gele. Look at yourself.”
The spirit was holding onto a chimera. Gele touched his stomach. What have I done? Gills grew from his ribs, fluttering as he took in another breath. The water was so cold as if he was taking in ice instead of air. Jet-black scales replaced the vicious wound, running from his stomach to his face. More disgusting than a scar. It looked more akin to charred flesh than anything worn by a fish. It looked diseased, the scales unlovable blemishes clinging to his skin. But he was alive, he was healed. Gele would never drown again. The runes across his chest had ensured that. "Save me," they still read, right above the gills.
Without that fear, the ocean became tranquil. His toes were webbed, dotted with sparse patches of scales. Swimming was like dancing in the water. How long could I perform the Beckoning down here? He broke from the current, exhausting himself but venturing to the still waters. Then he shot himself upwards, aiming right for the surface. Where did Coan, Kipper, and Nimereen go? Would they gawk at me? Gele looked at himself once more. His scarf and skirt were taken by the water, and his brass bangles dissolved in the ritual. Naked and now disfigured, he had nothing left. Only the spirit at his side, holding on to him as he swam, and now, the scales that polluted his skin. Could a monster like me ever return to Galu? A chimera, a mermaid man, would King Peal use him as a spectacle for visiting traders? Gele had heard stories from Emned that the King collected all sorts of magic. He only let me perform the trial because I had spoken of my Anima, he remembered. An obscene pile of gold would be all he could give Galu before Allecrean ships arrived. Or maybe those sailors would pay to see him too.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I never wanted to return home anyways. What was the point of trying to prove myself? Look at what I have lived through. Look at what I will survive.
Breaching the surface, Gele spat out the water that had pooled in his lungs. Tears welled up when he sucked in a breath of fresh air. The storm persisted, high waves blocking his search for his companions. But the rain and wind had calmed considerably. The squall lessened to a drizzle, and the wind was back in the phantom’s control.
“The sloop!” Sawyer pointed as she floated inches above the water.
The mast missing, having slipped into the sea, the ship looked more like a battered box than anything worthy of braving the ocean’s wrath. But it was the only sanctuary on the open water.
Sawyer reached the hull first. “Rope ladder!” She said, overcome more by surprise than by relief. “Someone is on the ship!”
“Help me up,” Gele said as he swam. Even with gills and webbed feet, the ocean was exhausting him. Not a fish yet, I suppose.
Climbing the rope ladder proved easier than scampering up the net. Even so, Gele was panting by the time he reached the top. Spilling onto the deck, he had not noticed how sore his muscles were. The current had sapped his stamina, and the swimming only tired him further. But that did not matter now, he was safe. Arnold was on the island, and he was not. Gritting his teeth, Gele looked to the spirit. “Help me find a rowboat. There might be one left.”
“Aye, captain,” Sawyer waved to him with a playful smirk as she sent the breeze with her to search.
“Sawyer,” Gele said, halting her.
The phantom glanced back.
“Thank you,” he said when all he wanted to do was lay down and sleep. His eyes were heavy. His gills moved, still trying to suck in water. The scales itched. He hated it so much he wanted to scream. But he was alive. “I’m scared,” he admitted.
“So am I. Even with a crew of hundreds and ships three times the size of this one, I would be as worried as I am now.”
Gele nodded and went to the cargo hold. The rain felt good on his skin, but the soothing feeling had become moot as the cold came in. Naked and shivering, he escaped below the ship, where cracks in the floor above sent water trickling down in little waterfalls. No escape, Gele thought as he walked under one. “Coan? Kipper?” He called out. “Nimereen?”
“Gele?” A cutlass was pointed at his back. Kipper lowered it when their eyes met, but the pirate was still stunned. Kipper surveyed him from head to toe. In the darkness, Gele wondered if he saw his nakedness or his scales first. Doesn’t matter. No use in hiding any of it. For once, no shame clung to Gele, and when he realized it, he felt farther from home than ever. The Second Sea will fall or Allecros will come. It is the same no matter what I am.
“Yes, it’s me,” Gele declared. “This,” his hand touched his gills, and he nearly gagged. “I had to do this to survive. I would have drowned if I didn’t.”
Kipper sighed. He did not look at the gills. “Damnable magic, a chimera?” He paused, weighing his thoughts silently. “At least you’re alive.” He concluded abruptly. “Come, there’s a rowboat, only one left. In the cargo hold, there’s an extra mast stowed away, with enough spare wood to possibly repair this butchered boat.”
“What about Coan, what about–” Gele spotted Nimereen before the fisherman saw him. The young man sulked in the shadows, staring at a steel sword on his lap, and his mask was by his feet. “Nimereen?” Gele asked.
“The ocean has never been this bad, even when the Second Sea was lit like a bonfire.” The man had taken the pirates’ clothes for his own. Dressed in baggy pants and a big brown coat. Shivering, Nimereen dried his hair with an old towel. He had a boy’s face. Pimples coated his cheeks, and the beginning of a beard grew in scraggly hairs. “Maybe I’ve wasted my life. I thought the sea could only get so frightening that a person could only be so brave. I was stupid to think it could only get so bad. When I was a boy, I survived the famines, and I believed that was enough. Nothing could be worse than hunger. The ocean, Gele, the ocean nearly swallowed me. I have harvested from these waters since I was a baby, but never have I seen so many fish. They kept spinning around my boat, trying to pull it under. And then a manta ray, it must have been that, brought me Coan. She was half-drowned, but I brought her back. And the manta ray, it sank below the water, to join fish bigger than Vall itself.” He shivered. “I think I wasted my life. If I were to go back to being a boy, I would tell myself to prepare, so I would be ready. I would practice and pray, and would it even be enough? I wasted my life being a fisherman, but even then all the soldiers were dead.”
“You saved Coan’s life,” Gele said, half in surprise. “You saved me, you may have saved Vall. You might still do that tonight.” He placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Do not waste your life, it’s long from over.”
It was then that Nimereen noticed the scales. “What happened to you, Gele?”
“The ocean took me and I survived.” I survived twice, he nearly added. “Nimereen, we need to go back to the House, the pirates, we may have spent too much time here already.”
The boy lifted his sword, looking upon the blade as if it was made of diamonds. Polished to the point it acted as a mirror, he stared into the steel. “My father will be looking over me, every man who ever lived.” He donned his mask, the painted circles forming links in a curtain of chains. “I’m ready.”
“What about Coan?” Gele asked.
The fisherman pointed towards the stairs, “deep in the cargo hold, where the pirate gave us clothes. You should get dressed too, Gele. Your body, it’s–”
“Gross?”
“I wasn’t . . . yes.” Nimereen shook his head, “sorry.”
“I could be vile and disgusting, or I could be dead,” Gele said as he descended to the cargo hold. “It’s more a scar than anything.”
Rain dripped down into the cargo hold from a breach in the ceiling. For a moment, it was identical to snowfall on Chorllow. The chill bit Gele the same way it had gnawed at Sawyer all those years ago. But even so, Gele saw the dried puddles of his blood from where he fought Kipper. “Coan!” Gele shouted. “Coan?”
A gasp, someone flinching, echoed over the murmurs of waves brushing against the splintered hull. A woman sat on their knees, holding a mask. Drenched in shadows and wet shaggy hair, her face was hidden still. “I thought you were Mysk,” she sighed. “I don’t know why, but I did.” She put on the warlord’s face and glanced at Gele. Even behind the wooden mask, the surprise was obvious. “Gele, you–”
“Sawyer and I performed a ritual underwater, using an Anima and a mermaid's bone. Does that help explain it? I feel like soon I will have to give everyone at the House a reason why I’m a chimera. Do you think they’d believe me if I lied?”
“They would know. Mashur is a crafty old woman.” Coan tried to force a laugh. “But Kiqat? He still thinks the ashfields are on fire. He probably thinks we’re all ghosts.” Standing up, Coan wrapped herself in a towel. “We’ll all soon be. Even if we kill the pirates, more will come, won’t they? You learned that from your ghost from the start. That’s why you’re still here. That’s why you never ran away. There are more enemies out there. How many?” Her voice tense, as if all the rage a human could hold was restrained in her throat, so only meek sadness streamed out. “When it was falling underwater, I thought I saw them, my people. The spirits of our ancestors, our parents, were watching me. I know it was fish or maybe that drink’s madness. But for a moment, I was home. Did Nimereen tell you how he found me? I had drowned, and a fish helped me to the surface. Why?” She squeaked. “I thought Nimereen was my brother, Gele. I thought I was finally home. I’m tired, I want to be done. I’m tired of seeing Mysk’s face everywhere I go, I thought you were him too, again. Every time I look away and look back, I see my family. When will this haunting stop?
“I heard you talking to Nimereen, and still, I wish I was never born too. I wish I had died drowning, died fighting against the pirates, or died in my mother’s arms. I wish I was born feeble, I wish I was born a year sooner or a year later. I wish I never took this name. I wish I had starved to death, or to the point I was so stunted I could never truly fight. But no, I am here as I am now, and because of that I must stand between my people and extinction. That is my role. My name is my responsibility. Even if I hate myself, I do hate myself, I need to protect everyone. I love them, I love the House. But how far do I need to go before it is safe? A hundred years of this? A dozen more famines? I begged my mother for the answer so many times, but she can’t help me anymore!” She was crying. The words rattled, a frenzy that never seemed to end as she kept pouring all her fears out. Could the Second Sea or Vall hear? Or was it only Gele? “More ships will come, more wars, more deaths. The last child to live on Vall is alive today and may die tomorrow. I will either be the one who guards them all or the one who buries them. I have to be. I should have killed that fish, somehow, and never climbed onto this boat. I chose this, chose to keep going because of this responsibility. I just wish I was born different, so I never have had to stand here today.”
“Then I would be standing here alone,” Gele said. Holding his gills, he stepped forward. “Or maybe I would have already died. It can’t be the end of us, Coan. We will not be erased just yet.” Gele went to one of the open crates, where a stash of clothes had been opened. I am not you. A sickness bubbled in him, one that tugged on his heart. “Here,” Gele said, offering the clothes to Coan first. Both of them had nothing, no weapons nor anything to hide themselves. Their bodies were equally ugly. Coan’s skin looked more like scratched and chiseled stone, with all the cuts made into the lean muscle, including the tiny shards of shrapnel embedded in her skin. All there seemed to be was muscle. She was skinny and tired, a skeleton forced to continue on. No more blood or paint dressed her now, only shivers and tears. And then there was whatever she had behind her mask.
“I’m not taking the pelts of the people who killed my brother,” Coan scoffed.
Gele tried to tug at his scarf, but the ocean had stolen it. Instead, he reached for a small mirror in the cache of clothes. The reflection was smudged, by Gele could see himself just barely, even in the dark. His hair was even worse now. Wet and tousled, the lengths were uneven in every spot, especially the sections where the hair had been pulled out altogether. Shave it all. His broken nose looked more unshapely, crooked to the point where it would have been preferable if the thing simply fell off. Dark circles wrapped around his eyes as if they were splashed with soot and ash. And then the scales. Gele was close to ripping them off with his own fingers. It would have been useless. Sawyer had seen all of this. I should never have thought of her as ugly. She’d accept me if I was a worm and still pledge to follow me to the ends of the earth. Loyalty I don’t deserve.
Setting the mirror down, Gele rifled through the clothes, picking a pair of trousers and a black coat adorned with wood buttons. Nearby, a box of steel swords called for him. Handing two to Coan and taking one for himself, he sheathed it, letting it hang from a belt that barely fit. He took a tattered red scarf and let it replace the one he loved. But he never chose a shirt, only the jacket. I am done. Everyone, even the Second Sea, can look upon the gills and scales. There is no point in hiding it. I will not let the shame take me again. I do not care if they all see an ugly pirate. What does it matter to me? These are scars I’ve earned and chosen when facing the odds of everything being taken away.
Holding the scarf, Gele closed his eyes. He could see a boy playing on a beach with his sister and her partner, twirling until the sunset. There was the sunrise during the last day of the Beckoning—he was more exhausted now than he was then, after consecutive days of dancing. A girl got into fistfights in the stone-paved streets of Wilkin’s Port and enlisted to become a sailor, cutting her hair and changing her name. Ships spat at each other with cannon fire over the backdrop of an ash-soaked dawn. Sacrifices revisited him, souls spilling from people as their mouths foamed. Wizards hung from trees dangling at the end of a rope. And a chimera held herself tight, scared of others seeing the disfigurement. And Gele saw himself sitting on the silver beaches of Galu with Sawyer at his side. But then it shifted to two children sitting in a graveyard, listening to a mermaid speak of a creature from the Second Sea. The Merrow will bring the sky down.
“We will not be erased,” Gele said, staring at the sword. The blade was chipped, but it would have to do. “Coan, we have died, you, me, and Sawyer too. We have died, confronted the edge of death, and have come back from it. We still have the chance to press on, to move forward. Allecrea, the Second Sea, the Merrow, it will come. They’ll come for us, for our souls, with strength tenfold what we can muster. We shouldn’t have to live like this. Allecrea is coming. Their reach only widens. Things in the Second Sea threaten to smother us all. Galu, Vall, and everyone else on this earth deserves peace. And for that, I’ll be here, charging forward against the storm. Me, Gele, I did not run away. I’m not strong enough to fight against just a tiny ship alone, but I am here nonetheless. I am a chimera, a dancer from Galu who has completed the Beckoning, a survivor of the Anima. That cannot be taken away by the fog of annihilation. I have seen Allecrea, the magic I refuse to fear. I am what makes me strong in the face of what makes me weak. I chose to live, to fight until I reach the Second Sea. What about you?”
“I am Coan,” her voice swelled, understanding the game. “The warlord, the next one in a line of hundreds who bore the same name as me. But I am the daughter of my mother, the sister to my brother. I have died once, twice, a dozen times, but I will persist until peace is granted to my people! The House is still counting on me, waiting for me. I am the warlord, I have to just carry on for a little longer, and when there is peace I will rest and find who I am after that. After that, I will make the name Coan my own. I will build a bountiful era for Vall. Generations from now, the children of Vall will see me inside the temple walls. My body will be the last to have such scars.” She went and hugged Gele, holding him tight. “Thank you, my friend,” she said hesitantly. “Give me rags for bandages and clothes to brave the cold. Give me swords to arm my people. We will take everything we could use from these thieves and make it our own. I won’t wear the pirates’ clothes with pride, but what other choice were we given? We have been away from the House too long, and I need to rally my soldiers.”