Fic trade with marylynetteluveswriting. A quick EriAra thing, I hope you enjoy!
….
The prince froze, the softest red lips like a poisoned dream hovering just a breath from his own. The angel before him, shimmering with hues of gleaming scarlet and deeper rust (reds that should have been, had to have been blue but when had she ever given any regard to the rules?). Fleshy tendrils drifted from her scalp to her breasts, just like the ones that flared from her hips and the bottom of her tail, and she smiled ever so sweetly, opaque pink eyes narrowing in dangerous amusement. The Man O' War's delicate mantle had slipped down his shoulders, his poisonous tendrils rendered useless. For all his power, all his planning and experience and boisterous words never had Eridan prepared for a situation quite like this.
The sea slug who by all rights should have been blue but wasn't had, true to the pattern of setting herself apart from the rest of her kind, had apparently been hunting him for some time now. She had lay in wait, patient and silent. She was a predator, one of the best. And he was the prey.
Aradia, she was called. Yes, the Megido clan was quite the odd one, and very well known, very well feared. Thick russet horns curled from their temples where glassy, needle-thin ones should have been. Their matriarch was an ancient creature who had once served a terror now in pieces in the ocean floor, and she had never forgiven the royal families for her imprisonment. The eldest of her children was a lewd, sultry enchantress who would lure in her victims with promises of the deepest carnal desires sated. But this one, the youngest…
She had appeared quite from nowhere, no older than he. One day, reports had piled in of missing royals. Their bodies turned up twisted, mangled, eaten. The Amporas had thought themselves safe near the influence of her Majesty Condesce, but given Eridan's current predicament, that was not so. A glimmer had caught his attention, a voice drew him away. It was not with filthy words that she brought him to her but with gentle promises of what could be. Whispered words alight with hidden knowledge curled through his insides, telling him, assuring him that he could command all the respect he had ever desired and all the love he ever needed. If only he came to her.
Like a fool, he believed her. Like a fool, he followed. Entranced, he had drifted from his group, wanting desperately to have what she told him he could.
But when long, delicate fingertips alighted on his jaw, the trance broke, and all he could do was regret.
"Eridan..." the angel sighed, her voice a quiet, melodic tune. It snapped him out of the haze of fear wrought memories. The grin still played on her lips. "Eridan... Are you afraid, Eridan?"
Her thick body curled around his hips and torso and he was very, very afraid. His flesh burned from stolen poison everywhere their skin made contact.
"Oh Eridan. I'm glad you're afraid." She laughed then, bubbles tickling his cheek, each one swirling with her bell song. Her fingers drifted across his jaw, over his ear fins and through his hair. An indescribable expression twisted her lovely features into an ugly rage and burning hunger for just a moment as she roughly grabbed one smooth horn and snapped his head back, but she soon schooled it into it's previous serenity. Another finger traced the curve of his bare throat and flicked at his nervously fluttering gills. Suddenly her thick eyebrows pulled together and she moved away.
"You aren't going to fight?" She hissed, tone laced with confusion. But even with his newfound freedom Eridan's muscles remained locked in place, and he couldn't command his jaws to part long enough to answer. "Well?" She was flicking around him, inspecting from all angles, searching for a flaw that only lay in his blasted brain. A stinging hand pushed his chest viciously, confusion turned to rage. "I should have known," she spat, "you're no fun. The Amporas are just as much a joke as my mother told me. Hunting you wasn't worth it."
A slap, leaving a burning welt across his cheek.
"All this time, and you're not even fun to play with."
A frilly tendril was yanked, and he finally moved but only enough to recoil in pain and shock.
"Disgusting."
The fog in his mind, the damned needles that held him in place finally cleared and he swam, his only thought to escape the pain, the humiliation.
The blood red angel only watched in disdain.
Moons passed and he worked his hardest to put the encounter out of his mind. Plans were made, battles were fought and blood was spilled into inky depths. His dreams swam still with iridescent red tendrils and a poison more potent than his own, but no longer could he remember their source.
He was a child then, just past his twelfth tide. Now though, now he was an adult, with actions to back up his haughty words. And he had forgotten.
It was during his daily swim through the manor's coral gardens and kelp forests that he saw her again. And this time, it was he who found her first.
She hadn't even been hunting him. He watched warily from a leafy cover, filled with a terror he couldn't put his finger on. She was in the open, body draped in an innocent caricature of a slain corpse over a flat piece of sandy ocean floor. Her color was no longer vibrant, she was washed out and her skin seemed to just barely cling to her flesh. The thick tendrils of her hair and fanned out fins were the only parts of her that moved, twitching slightly in reaction to the small curious fishes who came to inspect their prospective meal. Something told Eridan that they shouldn't have been able to.
He drifted cautiously closer, leaving the safety of the kelp. He slowly made his way to the spot on which the other lay, making sure the stinging threads hanging from his shoulders in a billowing cloak wrapped around him in protection. He reached out to touch her.
The angel's eyes snapped open, and he recoiled.
Her eyes were filmed over and hazy in pain, almost a transparent pink. Her mouth gaped silently, sharp teeth not seeming nearly as menacing as they probably should have.
"You…" She coughed, painfully curling her body in a defensive position, and Eridan felt as though he should have been able to place that voice.
"Who are you?" He asked carefully. She didn't answer. "What happened to you?" He tried. At first, nothing. Then, an odd sort of rattling noise echoed deep in her chest, escaping through her gills in a stream of bloody bubbles.
"You don't… remember… me?"
"No… Should I?"
She laughed raspily.
"Ampora, Ampora… Oh how you've grown. I'm so hungry, dear Eridan…" He flinched back and prepared to race back into the kelp before the same cracking laugh stopped him. "Do I… Do I look like I can do anything… Now? No… Let me die in peace, Ampora. Or stay… I'm okay with that. I'm okay… With a lot of things, now. You'd like to watch my die… Wouldn't you?"
A hard mix of fear and sympathy churned under the prince's collar. He couldn't bring himself to mourn for this strangely hued sea angel, nursing a seemingly displaced seed of hatred that chilled his stomach. And yet, she seemed so old, so fragile, and despite her low color she still had the body of one favored by the Queen, stalling hatred's frost with it's heat of pity. It kept him rooted in place, watching, waiting for the inevitable.
"What happened to you?" The prince asked again. The odd angel hummed.
"Cast out… Abandoned… Lost a hunt, child, lost you.."
"Me?"
She ignored him and muttered on.
"Mother was angry. So, so angry… Dam just laughed… I lost a hunt, lost a hunt…" A heavy shudder tore through her prone body. "Disgrace, disgrace… I am a disgrace… Eridan." Suddenly, her voice was strong and clear, and her gaze cleared of pain and was soaked in vicious intelligence. "Eridan. Don't forgive me."
"What?"
"Don't forgive me, Prince of Jellyfish. If you ever remember, if you can find it somewhere in the empty nub of your brain, never forgive me. Do you understand?"
"I- Okay. I won't forgive you."
The angel nodded, seemingly satisfied.
"Good… Good."
Her body seemed to sink into the sand, deflating. Her skin turned greyer, and her fins ceased their movement.
Silly, boring Ampora. You could have been so great…
And he watched, with a detached sense of sadness overrun by a curious feeling of relief and apathy, as a hoard of hungry fish descended upon the still corpse. The moment certainly seemed sad. The odd merwoman would have nobody to pay her respects, nobody but him.
He frowned, digging deep into his memories. Where had he seen her before…?
The name hit him, and in his shock it fell from his lips like a drowning sailor tied to a stone.
"Aradia Megido."
…
Aaaand there you go. If it's not clear, Eridan is a Man O'War and Aradia is a Blue Sea Angel… But red. I may have taken some creative liberties. Generally, in this universe, the bluebloods- like the Zahaks- are the Sea Angels, which is what sets the Megido clan apart from the rest. I hope you enjoyed!