A/N: THE SUSPENSE WAS KILLING ME I JUST HAD TO UPDATE.
BTW, just want to clear something up: with Cronus and with the new character, their text is in bold because to normal humans they sound like dolphin chirps, but I made it bold to distinguish it from normal human characters talking. :)
Also, song lyrics are from the song Fantasy by Alina Baraz and Galamatias!
Prologue - Nerida's P.O.V
Nerida flapped her tail onto the dark grey seafoam covered rock in disgust, as her sister Cayra looked on angrily, "We get it, you're hungry." Nerida nodded impatiently, and her youngest sister Danae stated, "I think I see lunch." A large trading ship approached the three mermaids and Danae grinned as all of her teeth sharpened into pointy fangs; lunch had indeed arrived.
The ship stopped next to the rock, and the crew simultaneously looked over the railing, and infatuation danced across their faces. One particularly drunk sailor yelled out, "Ey lads, look! Mermaids!" Danae dived underneath the rough waves and propelled herself up onto the railing of the ship, grabbing the hair of one of the sailors. She began to sing, looking like a sultry vixen as she wooed the sailors:
So you say you wanna get away
We don't need a plane
I could be your escape
Take you to a place
Where there's no time, no space
I could be your private island
On a different planet
Anything could happen
Listen to the waves
Let them wash away your pain
One sailor leaned over the railing, and Danae grabbed his chin with her silver webbed hand as she continued to sing:
I could be your fantasy
I could be your fantasy
Underneath the palm trees
You could leave your worries
Listen to the waves
Say you want to get so high?
Breathe me in like air tonight
Listen to the waves
I could be your fantasy
The sailor stared intently at Danae as he leaned even further down from the ship, and with one swift movement, Danae snapped his neck and jumped off, pulling him down into the water. Nerida and Cayra dove in after her, listening to the frantic screams of the rest of the crew. Nerida turned around to her sister, noticing the blood spilling into the water from Danae already tearing into his flesh. Nerida was oddly sickened by the sight, and felt her stomach churn and pressed on it to relieve some pressure. Cayra stopped, "Nerida, are you alright?" Cayra went to comfort her sister, placing an arm around the back of her neck and dragging her down to the bottom towards Danae. Danae looked at Nerida with a blood covered mouth, causing Nerida to turn away almost instantly. Danae growled, "What's wrong with her?" Cayra became instantly worried, "She must be getting a stomachache from a bad clam or something." Nerida wriggled free from her sister and swam into the cave, shutting the seaweed over the door.
Nerida placed a purple and pink webbed hand on her face, looking into a reflective surface on the side of the cave; she had become very pale and had no idea what was wrong with her. Cayra stormed in, "Why'd you run off?" Nerida whispers, "I think I got sick by seeing Danae rip that man to shreds...people don't deserve to be eaten..." Cayra laughs, "Oh Neptune, don't tell me you're going to be a vegetarian now." Nerida glares, "No, but I'm not going to eat people!"
Cayra laughs and starts to swim out, when Nerida notices a pointy object suddenly pierce through Cayra's abdomen. She falls to the ground limp as golden blood spills onto the cave floor, "Cayra! Danae, get help!" Cayra puts a golden webbed hand on Nerida's face, "Let me go, Nerida." Pink tears spill out of Nerida's eyes, "No, Cayra! It's not your time! You can't go!" Cayra's hand falls from Nerida's face onto the cold rock below, and her eyes gently flutter shut. "No no no no no!" Nerida screams, "Cayra! Don't leave me!" Nerida rushes out of the cave to find Danae brutally slaughtered as well; her throat was slit, revealing silver blood, and a sharp spear sticks out of her bosom. Tears pour out of Nerida's eyes, and she's unable to control them. She hugs her dead sister's body and cries into her chest; she's the youngest out of all of her siblings, and she just lost the two oldest and the two that were the closest to her. Her brothers were too busy taking care of her sick father to care about her. The only siblings that cared about Nerida were Cayra and Danae, and now they're gone.
And Nerida's last words were yells to Cayra. The thought of that made Nerida cry even harder.
With a small sniffle, Nerida grabbed Danae and dragged her to one of the deepest parts of the ocean, burying her now pale body in sand, and placing a colorful underwater flower on top of her face. She remembered this flower, it was Danae's favorite. Her father would get her bouquets of this flower every year for her birthday, and the flower was known to be poisonous to tropical mermaids like them, but Danae was immune to the poison, so it never affected her. Nerida would only sneeze when she came in contact with the flower, and she was in fact, interrupted from her thoughts by a sneeze. "Guess that's how I'll remember you." Nerida croaked out a small chirp.
She swam back to her cave and grabbed ahold of Cayra's body, covered in golden blood, and dragged her to the same part of the ocean where she buried Danae. She buried Cayra as well, and placed some sea kelp on top of her face. Cayra used to eat sea kelp every day at noon; she claimed it helped keep her scales shiny, but Nerida and Danae never believed her and thought it was a load of bull-shark.
Nerida then kissed the two faces of her dead sisters and was then interrupted by a net strangling her. She tried to break free, but the net only tightened. A scuba diver approached Nerida with a harpoon gun, and looked up, pointing to the surface. The net began to rise, and Nerida screamed, piercing the scuba diver's ears. Nerida tried to rip the net, but to no avail.
The net reached the surface and she was placed on a large yet dirty boat, and Nerida almost gagged as she began to struggle to breathe. Something sharp stuck onto her tail and she groaned when she found the culprit to be a large tag. The harsh sunlight began to slowly dry out her scales as she was fading in and out of consciousness.
A small scientist, about five feet tall, approached Nerida, and she gasped and tried to break free, chirping, "HELP ME! HELP!" But nobody came to her aid. Instead, the tiny human knelt down next to her, "Don't worry, we're going to take you to a nice home. We can try and save your sisters." The scientist makes some kind of notion to the captain of the boat: a heavy-set man with a long gray beard, to lower the net and capture Cayra and Danae. The net lowers into the water and comes back up, with Cayra and Danae in its grasp.
"We had just accidentally hurt another mer-troll. Seriously, why do we keep hurting other mermaids?!" The scientist yells out, clearly exasperated. She tells the captain, "To the aquarium!"
When Nerida awoke again, she noticed that she was in a large tank, with a small cave and different varieties of colorful tropical fish swimming around. She felt at peace as she began to talk to the tropical fish, "Do any of you know where we are?" The tropical fish all hummed in unison, "The aquarium, where the humans feed us pellets!" "Pellets?" Nerida yells out exasperatedly, "That's cruel!" The tropical fish sang again, "Not cruel, the pellets taste very nice."
The small scientist appears again in front of the tank and smiles, placing her hand on the tank. Nerida matches the handprint, her fingers and nails longer than the scientist's, and pink fins in between the spaces of her fingers. The scientist giggles, and attaches a piece of paper to the tank that says, "Tavros will feed you in 1 hour. -Latula"
Nerida swam around her new tank for a while and then looked across from her. She noticed a large tank, darker than hers, with a tall mer-troll curled up on a large rock in the center of the tank. His tail was tucked up to his stomach, and he was fast asleep. Nerida stared at the mer-troll, and started frantically tapping on the glass; she then screamed, and the mer-troll was awake almost instantly, his purple eyes shining in the clear water.
The mer-troll's teeth instantly sharpened into barracuda-like fangs, and he began to snarl through his tank. Nerida got instantly scared, and hid behind one of the many kelp plants. The mer-troll slammed on the glass with his fists, and the sound echoed throughout the room, causing Nerida to cry.
Another scientist, this time a boy with one red eye and one blue eye ran into the room to find out what the commotion was. When he saw the frantic mer-troll, he used a walkie-talkie to call the coast guard. Soon enough, he ran in and placed his hand on the glass. The mer-troll saw the coast-guard's hand and calmed down, purple tears streaking his face. The scientist then walked over to Nerida, and said, "Did you scare him?" Nerida slowly swam out from behind the kelp and came up close to the glass, examining the strange eyed scientist. He sighed and walked away, as Nerida swam into her cave slowly.
She just wanted to go back home.
A/N: Sorry, that was a REALLY short chapter, but I'm on February break now, so I'll probably (hopefully) update more!
Goodnight all! Hope you enjoyed!
~~Four's Cake
Xx