The cold blue water snuggled up close and nearly drowned my ass.

God I hated this wet-drenchy-suffocating feeling. I wanted to breathe and I wanted to breathe badly but I knew I’d just be gobbling up water because my scale gills weren’t fully working. I suppose they needed more time before they could open up completely.

Anyway, to distract myself, I paid attention to shit around me. Dark blue with little to no fish. Surprisingly clear water though.

I expected there to be an underwater colony of sirens in the pond but that wasn’t the case. Rather, the pond was deep and was apparently connected to the ocean via an extensive tunnel.

Alustur seemed fine just swimming around like a seal. The siren was helping me swim and together we ventured within the dark tunnel. There wasn’t much light here so I produced a bit of light on my palm and both of them gave me approving nods.

I thought I’d take ten, maybe fifteen minutes of swimming.

It took thirty.

Thirty fucking minutes. And Alustur had held his breath the entire time! At one point I thought the Siren was just messing with us and was going to kill us and stuff but no, we arrived at the end of the tunnel and straight into the open wide ocean. Familiar reefs. I probably hadn’t been here but I had seen structures like these before. The siren motioned for us to go a bit further and I could see small homes in the reefs. Some of the sirens were just sunbathing while others were hunting fish. One siren almost came at us with her spear drawn, ready to skewer us. Although she kind of frowned when she saw Armania and me and then just left. Some were still eying Alustur but wasn’t stupid enough to approach him. Even in this blue as hell state, Alustur was still a monster.

Couple of minutes later I saw the safe zone. Not as big as the one in the mermaid kingdom or even the goblin village but it was pretty decent in size. Probably a type three?

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I went in and nope, definitely type 2.

I breathed haphazardly. Phew. It was so much better here and-

And Alustur couldn’t breathe in this place.

Oh boy.

“Chew this,” the siren offered some sea grass and Alustur reluctantly chewed on some, passing out a second later. “Relax, he’s fine. Look, he’s breathing fine now.”

“Very clever,” I said.

She smirked and we continued onwards. Sirens gave me and Alustur quite the look but most were just looking at me with pity. I got similar reception before but I didn’t quite care.

Their houses were somewhat similar to Mermaids’ but not as sophisticated and Sirens in general didn’t wear much clothing.

Apparently, they liked to show off the vigor of their skin and it was a sure-fire way to mesmerize prey easily.

Being here reminded me of the times I spent back in the mermaid kingdom and particularly in the goblin village. My time there was short but I really enjoyed everything.

“When is he going to wake up?” I said.

“When we leave this place,” she said.

“So, he won’t be able to participate in the negotiations.”

“Of course. He would have just forced his way,” the mermaid said.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t have. I asked him not to.”

She rolled her eyes and led on.

“Do you not have any currency here?” I asked.

“We don’t have any need to. Most of us are independent and do not require currency,” she said.

I suppose?

I didn’t know much about them. Heck, I didn’t know much about any of the ocean dwelling species. I’d never looked them up. No, that wasn’t true. I did want to but there wasn’t much information about them. Partly because the church had set restrictions but also because most people just didn’t know about mermaids and what went down in the ocean. After all, the deep ocean was a scary place. Some texts did exist in sea tongue but they were hard to decipher. I still used to try I think. At this point, those were just distant memories.

“We’re here,” she said, pointing at one of the bigger houses. “That’s where the elder lives. Word of caution, with your bodyguard out cold, it is best to avoid stirring up trouble.”

“Do you ever wonder how he got these scars?” I said, lifting up a bit of Alustur’s shirt to show his leftover burn scars.

Her eyes opened a bit wide and the smirk sort of vanished as she traced her vision to my hand which didn’t have a glove on. “You…”

“Exactly. But don’t worry. As I said, we don’t plan on threatening you.”

Huh… I’d become a great bluffer… heh.