Lucy was leaning with her back on the console chatting to the group of students with Kyra that had been in the mirage chamber complex. The amount of attention they were getting was flattering, both boys and girls were trying to get their attention and to hear more stories of adventures beyond the academy annex. Lucky was being insufferably cute and had a whole group of students just giving him non-stop belly rubs.

“And so by re-constructing the way the energy diffuses through the concentrations I was able to re-shape the ritual into a focussed healing spell with him still trapped in the wall.” Lucy was telling a particularly geeky boy and girl in front of her.

“Well this collection was from Vitesse.” Kyra said, showing her diamond ring set. “When you get there go down The Lanes and there’s a teeny little shop called Kullerwood. They do the most beautiful pieces.” She had a group of common-born local girls enamoured with her more expensive pieces.

“Oh shit!!” One of the instructors exclaimed from where he was standing viewing the fight on the screen behind them all.

The girls whirled, taking in the scene, most of the screen was covered in the explosion of water from the pool.

………

A giant mermaid-type creature burst from the centre of the water, taking up most of the pool. It was beautiful but alien, with sunken cheeks and sharp pointed teeth. It’s hair was matted and ribboned like seaweed. It had three arms on either side of its body which was twice the size of a normal person. At the waist the grey greenish skin gave way to scales which formed the long sinuous tail that curled and looped over itself, it disappeared into the water, not showing it’s full length. The monster towered over the scene hissing and dripping with water. It screeched and all fighting stopped, a psychic attack; the rats cowered, the dogs pressed their heads against the floor as if they were trying to scrub off the pain, the margols could only stand and quiver and the Minotaurs dropped their weapons and covered their huge ears with meaty hands. The boys took a moment to adjust themselves to the noise but it was a moment too long.

The mermaid swept its long tail out of the water, somehow having enough of it below water to stay upright and scooped everyone around the edge of the water and dragged them in and dived.

The boys were trying to make sense of it all, the bubbles around them were disorientating, they were all pressed together in the loop of its tail with the two boys and Koda with a few margols, a sand dog and even a Minotaur. The pool had only been shallow when they first got to the mirage chamber scenario and now they were being dragged deeper and deeper, the water starting to lose light and colour.

[James we need to get free!]

[Hang on, I’ll absorb Koda, use that moment to wiggle free. Ready? GO!]

The moment he absorbed the big bear the mermaid started to tighten the tail, in that fleeting moment when they had the space they ducked the coils and were free.

The monster realised that it had lost some of its prey and turned about. They could still just about see it clearly through the slight gloom of the deep water. The body was around twice the size of a regular person but in proportion, the tail of the mermaid was enormous, even with the coil that was still holding the other monsters it was close to twenty feet long.

The boys hung in the water, having enough air in their lungs to stay neutrally buoyant. Having outworlder bodies they no longer had the need to breathe and they had been taught in the academy annex how to get over the drowning reflex as it was such a useful skill not needing to breathe in battle.

The mermaid turned and released the other monsters which were slowly drowning. It sinuously twisted and swam back to them, it crushed the sand dog between three of its arms while pulling in the margol to savagely bite through its neck with barely any resistance. Blood and bubbles leaked from the monster as the mermaid released it to float back through the water lifelessly. The Minotaur tried to fight when it came near but it wasn’t intelligent enough to know how to swim and its swings were useless. The grace of the mermaid underwater was terrifying and it grew ten inch long nails to punch into the monsters chest with all six hands.

[Wow, just wow]

[Well this is a mess. Any thoughts?]

[Anything I can transform into this thing is going to be better in the water than me. What consumables have you got for underwater fighting?]

[I’ve got those fancy scrolls that give you a few seconds of air, just enough space and time to get out an incantation but I’m not sure how to use it in here just yet.]

[What about your dimension blade? Is that going to work underwater?]

Teddy made the blade appear in his hand, the distortion of the water made it appear like a wavy blade.

[It works but at a cost, its sending all the water through to another dimension that it comes in contact with.]

[Well thats got to suck for anyone on the other side I guess.]

[You know what? I hadn’t really thought of that, are people in another dimension getting showered with random chunks of monster? And there’s all that rock I cut through in the deser… Watch out!]

Both boys managed to backpedal in the water quick enough to make the mermaid blast through the middle of them, not picking either as a target. The main body missed them but as the were focussed on the rush the tail clipped James and sent him spinning. Teddy got a new notification on his interface.

Theodore Mitchell

Family Blessings: 3 (+1)

James hadn’t taken much damage from the hit, automatically using one of his own blessings from the Ursa Family power to absorb the damage. They both had two instances from everyone being grabbed and pulled underwater, James had an extra one from when Teddy had tried to jump on the back of the flying monster and been hurt from the surprise spikes. The Family Bounty was already giving a small amount of healing on James from the hit.

Stolen story; please report.

[Dude, thats fast. It’s going to have to be a moment of opportunity, there’s no way we’re chasing that thing down.]

[Just as well it’s happy to keep trying to come and kill us then!]

As he put it on the interface the mermaid went for James. It barrelled into him and tried to grab him. James knew that being grabbed would probably be his end, trying to fight of six arms while trying to concentrate fighting underwater wasn’t going to happen. He activated his tail power to power him sideways, just out of reach of the mermaid who manage to grab the tail on the way past, James dismissed it while firing snakes into the path of the monster. They had mixed results of either bouncing off, striking and disappearing into oily rainbow sludge or in very few instances latched on to poison the monster.

“Black hole be quick.”

Teddy threw a pair of black hole hand grenades which pretty effectively ignored the physics of water until it bounced off the mermaid’s tail. There was a cartoonish comical moment of panic as the monsters eyes went wide before it was dragged backwards towards them, its tail wrapping around and around the black holes in the water and the body being bent around the gravitational fields. It screamed, the cry damaging James and Teddy through the water, they clamped their hands to their ears but the sonic power seemed to reverberate through the water and their bodies.

The mermaid was firmly pinned between the gravitational pull of the two black holes when they exploded. The concussive effect of being underwater near an explosion was terrifying, the boys were far enough away but the monster was trapped between the bombs. The explosion rushed outwards in a giant bubble, battering the big monster. The weight of the water surrounding the bubble when it reached its max crushed the explosions back inwards, hitting the monster again, when the bubbles were shrunk all the way back down they exploded outwards again. Teddy remembered reading sometime about underwater explosions destroying submarines and had a detached academic interest in the bubble explosion.

The mermaid looked stunned after the explosion, its back had an unnaturally large kink in it that wasn’t there before.

[I think you broke its back.] James said looking on from opposite the opposite side of the monster from Teddy.

The mermaid could still move around, but wasn’t nearly as fast or agile. As a bronze rank monster it would take more than a broken back to finish it.

[If this was on land this fight would be over already.] Teddy said.

[I think It pretty much is over you know. I’m going to get in close, we’ve got what, five minutes? Until your grenades power comes off cooldown, when it does the fight is properly over. Until then…]

James twisted in the water, bubbles swishing around him masking what he was doing. The swirling sped up until there was a cavitation and a corkscrew of force smashed into the recovering mermaid. The force of the blow knocked it to the side and it screamed its strange underwater attack again, all rage but no force to it. When James stopped in the water he had a segmented tail from the waist down, it wasn’t fish-like as the mermaids was or how Teddy would expect it to be. It was a wide flat tail made up of black segments, it was around six feet long and ended in a scorpion barb. it looked like a mix of a lobster tail and a scorpions. He could flex it up and down and the wide flat nature would be excellent for propelling him through the water and he could curl it side to side to cut it quickly through the water.

Teddy experimented with his hurling bolts of darkness and found to his delight that they also ignored the fact they were travelling through the watery medium and hit with their normal strength. His two lanterns had made their way down through the water and were now barraging the monster.

James boosted himself forward on the long tail and took advantage of a moment when the monster was temporarily blinded by Teddy’s familiar powers. He rushed at its head, punching it on the way past to further disorientate it and whipped the black tail sideways as hard as he could. The bulbous stinger buried itself in the mermaids neck as far as it would go.

You have inflicted [Nightmare Siren of the Deep] with [Venom of the Merciless Desert]

Poison damage will exponentially increase until healed. Targets inflicted with poison remain toxic after death.

[Venom of the Merciless Desert] has affected [Nightmare Siren of the Deep] with [Milk of the Cacti]

Contact with [Venom of the Merciless Desert] has inflicted [Greyscale] on [Nightmare Siren of the Deep]

[Milk of the Cacti] will cause hallucinations and a chance for the target to damage themselves. Effect is temporary but resistant to healing powers and items.

[Greyscale] causes an affliction which impairs agility and mobility. Disease spreads over skin and penetrates to joints causes them to seize. Will continue until target is completely covered. Disease is spread by contact to other enemies with skin.

As he swam powerfully away the mermaid monster clapped a hand to its neck where the stinger had gone in, Teddy noted the savage puncture wound and the greyish tinge around the site before the hand clamped on.

James spun in the water and saw another shape coming towards him out of the gloom, a dolphin-like creature with extra dorsal fins carrying a large spear in its mouth.

[Why would a dolphin have a spear?! Also, we need to get some tridents in your inventory incase this happens again, that would be badass!] Teddy exclaimed while dodging the tail attack from the monster.

James didn’t reply but took the spear from the creature and it sped off. He rushed in to attack the monster, slashing with the long blade of the spear along lengths of its tail. When he had the opportunity he thrust the spear through the tail when it was curling and managed to puncture through two parts, pinning them together.

The Mitchells had noticed with monsters that they operated in a system not unlike hit points in a game sometimes. When at full health and full strength they were more protected from attacks, as they lost hit points they were easier to attack. The shimmering scales on the mermaid tail had been tough at the start of the fight, it had taken all of James’ prodigious strength to punch through but he had managed.

The monster was suffering badly now. The broken back was giving it a lot of trouble, it could barely move to attack and when it did it caused itself pain. The spear through its tail caused it pain to move, only able to motor itself around with the last section and even that pulled at the wound. The puncture mark on its neck was tinged with yellow and green, thick veins of darkness radiated under the skin away from the wound. The skin on top had gone thick and grey, it spread from the neck to the shoulder and up the chin of the monster, it no longer turned its head and had to turn its whole body to track both the boys, one on either side of it. The Greyscale effect had spread to the hand that clamped onto the wound and that arm hung useless in the water, a stone sculpture compared to the other five arms that were in constant motion to keep the monster stable in the water.

Teddy’s black hole hand grenade power had come off cooldown and he judged that now was a good time to use it, he wanted it to be the definitive killing blow to the monster as neither of their execute powers would work underwater.

The monster screamed in recognition at the sight of the grenades and in its haste to get away tore its tail where the spear was puncturing it. The grenades bounced off the monsters back as it tried to swim away and separated either side. The force of the gravitational pull was devastating. The tail ripped in two at the damaged section. The stone arm was ripped off at the shoulder into one black hole while the upper body fought against the other. Both boys started swimming upwards as the explosion annihilated the monster and they rode the force upwards.

On dry land they rested on their backs on the beach next to each other, the area around them clear of the monsters that had been there before they got pulled into the water. If they had still needed to breathe then this would be the moment they would be catching their breath.

A few moments after they started resting Teddy summoned his dimension blade and swung it down on James’ resting body.