Kingdom of the Merpeople. The Coral Court.
1014.
The Fourteenth Year of the Golden Age.
Asura.
Asura trailed behind the group as they moved through the vibrant streets of the merfolk city.
The night's dream still lingered, clouding her thoughts, and she found herself avoiding Peter's gaze. Every time she looked at him, she felt the fluttering in her stomach, a reminder of the dream, and she couldn't make herself face it.
So, she kept her gaze trained on the moving world around her, pretending to absorb the beauty of the merfolk kingdom, though her mind was elsewhere.
The group was led by Princess Rainsong, who was practically clinging to Peter's arm.
Asura couldn't help but notice the way she looked at him – an almost predatory glint in her sea-blue eyes, the way her fingers lingered on his skin like a claim, an offering.
"They forage in the kelp forests, you know," Rainsong said as she glanced back at the group, her voice soft and melodic, the accent of the merfolk turning each word into something almost hypnotic. She smiled up at Peter, her lips curling in a way that made Asura's stomach tighten. "The selkies are quite… elusive, it's quite the hunt."
Asura felt her stomach churn at the thought of it.
Selkies were a peaceful, sentient people, and the idea of them being trapped and used for sport made her blood run cold. She couldn't understand how any people – merfolk, or otherwise – could treat living beings like that.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Rainsong's voice again. "It will be fascinating for you to see. You've never seen our hunting techniques, I'm sure." She gave Peter a playful smile, her eyes narrowing as she gazed at Asura for a moment, then looked back at him, as if confirming her presence didn't matter.
"Indeed," Peter said, his voice polite but distant, clearly uncomfortable under Rainsong's attention.
Asura couldn't help but feel a pang of something – guilt, maybe.
Or jealousy? She pushed it aside, unwilling to confront what it was.
She would focus on the mission.
A peace treaty.
She could not risk angering them.
The kelp forests came into view, their twisting tendrils reaching upward like the dark fingers of the ocean. The water grew colder as they neared the hunting grounds, the air thick with brine.
"Look there," Rainsong called, pointing to a series of cages tucked beneath the swaying kelp. Asura's stomach dropped. She could see the dark shapes moving inside, the selkies trapped in the unnatural confines. Their eyes were wide, the desperation clear in their gaze as they swam in tight circles, unable to escape.
Forced to stay in the seal-forms.
"This is where we keep them," Rainsong continued with a shrug, her voice light as she turned back to Peter.
Asura had to bite back a bitter laugh, though it was hardly a humorous situation. Sport. She couldn't find the words to reply, her anger growing at the treatment of the selkies, her hands curling into fists at her sides.
The only thing she could focus on were the cages, each one containing a selkie. Their large, dark eyes were full of fear and despair, their freedom stolen.
She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, but her thoughts kept spiralling back to the cruelty of the situation. It wasn't sport.
"It was torture."
Behind her, she heard Arianna's voice – low, thoughtful, and cold. "If they're going to hunt them, is it not better to hunt these caged selkies than the mothers and children in the pods?"
Asura froze at the words. Her heart ached, but she didn't turn to face Arianna. She wasn't speaking out of empathy or disgust, but cold reason.
"Do not think that you can change the nature of the mer," Arianna continued, her voice carrying a sharper edge. "They will always hunt and kill."
The words cut through Asura like a blade.
She felt a rush of anger, not at Arianna, but at the dark, twisted truth in what she was saying. But hearing it so plainly, so matter-of-factly, made Asura's chest tighten. The idea that this – this hunting – was an acceptable reality… it felt like a betrayal of everything she had hoped the merfolk could be.
"Practical," Asura repeated under her breath, the word bitter on her tongue. Her eyes wandered back to the caged selkies. Each one seemed like a broken mirror of the next, trapped in an endless cycle of fear.
"Practical," she muttered again, louder this time, her voice trembling with barely contained emotion. She could feel the weight of Arianna's words, but it didn't make them easier to bear. "I don't care what's practical. This isn't right."
Rainsong turned, catching the edge of Asura's words. Her eyes narrowed, a soft smile playing on her lips. "Oh? And what would you have us do, naiad?" she asked, the tone of her voice teasing, like she was playing some game with the naiad. "Would you try to stop us? Fight against our ways?"
Asura's gaze flickered to Rainsong, but she said nothing. What could she say? Could she truly change this? Could she change a culture so deep-rooted in violence and bloodshed? The idea felt impossible.
Asura followed silently as they continued the tour, her thoughts tangled with the disquiet that had settled deep within her chest.
The cold grip of unease tightened as she swam deeper into their world, trying to remain composed, though every instinct in her screamed to leave.
When King Tidequest appeared, his presence felt like a storm surging through the water. His sea-blue eyes locked onto Peter's with an intensity that could have been friendly or threatening – Asura wasn't sure which.
"The Queen is at the temples, she apologises," King Tidequest said, his voice a deep, resonating boom that vibrated through the water. His eyes flicked to Peter, then back to the group. "But you will find much to explore here in the heart of our city."
Asura didn't trust the king. There was a sharpness to his gaze, a hunger she couldn't quite place, and it made her want to shrink back.
Rainsong, still clinging to Peter's arm, smiled brightly, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the air. "Come, we'll show you more of our home. We are proud of what we've built here."
They swam on, leaving the cages behind, and Asura found herself distracted by the merfolk surrounding them. The city stretched outward, strange and magnificent, built from broken ships, twisted coral, and glimmering shells. The water was teeming with life – bright fish darted in schools around them, and bioluminescent sea creatures drifted lazily in the distance, casting an eerie glow on the surrounding stone.
Eventually, they arrived at the edge of the city, where the buildings gave way to a jagged cliffside. The waters here were darker, colder, and the very air felt heavy with the weight of something unseen.
She stared into the Deep.
Below them, the water darkened quickly, turning from the iridescent aquamarine of the Coral Court to the ink-black shadow of the abyss. No light reached those depths. It wasn't the comforting dark of nighttime pools or the murky swirls of silt in a river's underbelly – it was older, stiller.
Hungrier.
The Deep looked back.
Beside her, Rainsong hovered with a smile too wide, too serene. "Few from above ever see this place," she murmured. "Fewer still return from its call."
There was a reverence in her tone. And something else, something too close to devotion.
Asura's gaze sharpened.
Arianna drifted closer, the faint shimmer of her latent magic pulsing subtly around her skin like a warning. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Asura could feel the tension radiating from her like heat.
The naiad's own instincts flared – old ones, deep ones. The parts of her that remembered the first rivers carving their paths through stone. The parts of her that knew where not to swim.
It wasn't just deep water.
It was a wound in the world.
She glanced at Arianna, her voice low, shaped by current and will. "You feel it too."
Arianna's head inclined ever so slightly. "A threat."
Asura's fingers flexed, forming ripple-like patterns through the water. Her body remained fluid and composed, but her essence coiled like a wave preparing to crash.
Something waited down there.
Something not even the mer would name.
Rainsong's smile remained plastered on her face as she motioned to the drop-off. "You're welcome to take a look, if you'd like. The waters here have more to offer than just the view."
Asura shuddered inwardly, still unsure whether she should trust what Rainsong was saying. It felt like more than just a casual invitation.
Peter, who had remained silent for the past few moments, spoke, his tone steady but tense. "What exactly lies beyond the drop-off?"
The question hung in the water like a weight, but King Tidequest answered before Rainsong could. "The unknown," he said simply, his voice carrying a strange finality. "Our people have explored it for generations."
Asura's water-form rippled faintly at the king's words, her instincts curling tighter like a spring under pressure. The unknown. It was the sort of answer meant to placate surface-dwellers – or to warn them.
She watched the king closely, trying to read more in his tone, in the way his eyes lingered on the dark chasm below. But Tidequest was inscrutable. Warrior's stoicism. Ruler's calm. Only the faintest flick of his powerful tail betrayed any tension at all.
And yet, Rainsong's smile didn't waver. If anything, it widened, a glint of teeth flashing faintly.
"The Deep is… sacred to us," she added smoothly, too smoothly. "The cradle of our oldest magics. The resting place of the gods, some say."
Asura's unease grew.
Gods.
Plural.
Arianna shifted again beside her. Not visibly, not enough for the mer to notice – but Asura could feel it in the water, the way the queen's magic stirred like a pulse beneath the surface. She, too, had caught something in Rainsong's words.
A shadow between syllables.
A hunger veiled in reverence.
Asura looked back toward the drop-off. The abyss did not move. It did not breathe. And yet it felt alive. Waiting.
Peter crossed his arms, still hovering just behind them, his eyes narrowed as he glanced from Rainsong to the king. "And what exactly do your explorers bring back from it?"
This time, there was a pause.
King Tidequest's gaze didn't waver. "Sometimes knowledge. Sometimes power." His voice turned quiet. "Sometimes... nothing."
That word rang louder in Asura's mind than all the rest.
She drifted back half a pace, unconsciously placing herself between the abyss and Arianna – though she knew, if it truly came to it, there would be no protecting anyone from what might rise from those depths.
Rainsong tilted her head, as if sensing the naiad's discomfort. "You're part of the water," she said softly, eyes glowing like kelp lit from within. "Surely you can feel it calling."
Asura did not respond.
She could feel something, yes.
But it was not a call.
It was a warning.
King Tidequest turned, his powerful tail stirring the water behind him with slow, deliberate strokes. His expression shifted – less hospitable monarch, more the hardened general of old songs and lost wars. His voice deepened, resonating in the stillness like a drumbeat through the bones of the sea.
"There are things in the Deep," he said, "older than the mer, older than the sea-singers and their songs. Creatures that do not answer to crown or current."
The water around them seemed to grow colder.
Tidequest raised a hand, fingers splayed as if conjuring the memory from the water itself. "The Serpent. So vast it is mistaken for a ridge of mountains when it sleeps. Scales like pearl, a mouth that could swallow fleets. It slumbers still… we think."
Arianna's expression hardened. Asura could see the queen's fingers twitch slightly – as though resisting the urge to reach for a blade, even underwater.
"The Squid," the king continued, "not like your surface squids. This one has eyes the size of palace doors, limbs that wrap whole ships and crush them like driftwood. It fears no flame, no blade. We drove it from our borders once… but it will return."
"And the Kraken?" Peter asked quietly, his tone unreadable.
Tidequest's mouth set in a grim line. "The Kraken is not a beast. It is a force. A storm given form. When it wakes, the tides rage and the sea becomes madness. No Sea-singer has ever tamed it. No mer who have seen it have returned with minds intact."
Silence followed, thick and pressing.
Even Rainsong's ever-present smile faltered.
"We do not speak its name lightly," Tidequest added, his eyes finding Peter's. "And we do not go beyond the drop-off unprepared."
Asura could feel the pull of the abyss behind her, the quiet menace of water gone too deep, too dark.
Even she, born of river and rain, felt it in her bones.
…
Kingdom of the Merpeople. The Coral Court.
Arianna.
The water shimmered faintly with magic, thick with salt and the distant hum of whale-song, as Arianna moved into the wide-open plaza carved into the coral heart of the mer-city. She slowed to a stop, the others' footsteps fading from her awareness as her gaze lifted – drawn, captivated.
The statue loomed above them, rising like a god from the ocean floor. It was enormous, carved from smooth black stone that gleamed like obsidian, though veins of iridescent pearl webbed through it in serpentine patterns.
Arianna blinked, half-expecting it to move.
The creature was neither man nor beast, neither fish nor bird, but something between – a harpy, or perhaps a siren, if such a thing had once taken the shape of divinity.
It was beautiful, terrifying.
Its wings stretched high above its head, curling like unfurled waves. Its face was sharp, eyes hollowed sockets that had been inlaid with shimmering nacre. Its mouth was open, teeth too many and too sharp, as though forever caught in a song or a scream. Hair – or something like it – swept down its back like flowing strands of kelp.
Arianna's breath caught.
She had thought it would be Aslan. Some remembrance of him, a carving, a symbol – an echo of the Lion beneath the sea.
But no. This... this was something far different.
At its feet, the base of the statue was heaped with offerings: polished shells and clusters of pearls, flowering kelp wrapped with golden strands, sea-glass and tiny bones tied with ribbon-weed. Something glowed faintly there – bioluminescent petals placed with care and reverence. The sheer volume of them spoke of devotion, fear, or both.
She could not tear her gaze away.
It reminded her of something.
A memory, hazy and ancient, dredged up from her time in Charn. There had been carvings like this there, in the deep halls beneath the old palace. Gods with wings and claws and unknowable eyes. Deities worshipped before time had shape. The kind one did not kneel to in love, but in trembling submission.
She felt a chill run down her spine.
Only when a hand touched her arm did she snap out of it.
"Arianna?" Edmund's voice. Close. Gentle, but edged with concern.
She blinked again and turned to him, her throat dry. "Yes. I—" She glanced back at the statue, its gaze still fixed somewhere far above. "I didn't realise it wasn't Aslan they worshipped."
Edmund followed her gaze and let out a low breath. "I'm not sure they even know of Aslan. This god... whatever it is, it feels... hungry."
Arianna nodded slowly. "Yes. And old. It reminds me of the sea itself – vast, beautiful, but not made for kindness." She turned back to the offerings, trying to understand. "They leave gifts."
"Tributes," Edmund said, quietly. "Or sacrifices."
Arianna did not speak for a long moment. Then: "We need to tread carefully here, Ed."
She turned away at last, but even as she walked from the statue, she could feel it behind her, watching.
Waiting.