#A CRUMB OF SIREN LOOREEEEEEE

[aphroditesacolyte]

Meryl and Diosia P22

Ch 22. // When We Were Young (P2) // Read on AO3

Masterpost

Summary: Terrible are the accidents of the past.

Content warnings: character death/murder, not just themes of fear and anxiety/horror just downright terror, please read at your own discretion, thank you!

~Approx word count: 1,621 words

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Seven years ago

It felt as if the world might’ve congealed around him, thick and slow to trudge through despite how vigorously Bondi moved, unable to keep up with the distant crowd of merfolk. Luckily, however, the one that he was after trailed much further behind, much closer in reach. He could tell that Meryl was getting tired with each stroke that brought them closer to Naigale’s cave. If all went well, Meryl would stay at the back of the group, and he could easily tug him out of harm’s way.

What Bondi knew now, however, was that nothing went well that day.

The sky and waves were unobjectionable to their hunt, a starkly casual presence looming over the depths of the water. It was an unnatural tone when contrasted to the day’s events—off-putting. To compliment this off-putting tone, everyone at once stopped, beginning to swirl around. Here the party swarmed, and he watched as they turned to sharks—Meryl a meek figure curled in amongst the group’s edge. As much as he loved his friend, it was a slightly humorous talent that he could make even the metallic spear he held look friendly, holding it akin to how someone would shyly hold a bouquet of flowers.

Bondi crawled across the ocean’s floor and peered amongst the stray jagged rocks and kelp, gauging his opportunity to tear his friend away from the crowd. Whatever they were saying, he couldn’t hear, and nor did he need to hear it to understand. From an odd blur of recent memory and what he saw before him, he realized exactly where they were. They were at the entrance of Naigale’s cave.

The group pushed back, moving around the entrance. From their movement, Meryl was pushed even farther away from him, and they all formed a wide circle around the hole sunken into the floor.

His body became tense as a familiar merman pushed out from the crowd, hovering over the cave. Conleth’s stance was composed—confident—and Bondi could barely register what that composed mer had done just a second later. All at once Conleth’s head dipped down and his tail pointed to the surface, and the next moment he was gone. No one gestured to rescue him.

It was a part of the plan.

They had set their hooks, their butchering knives, and casted out their lines; and, to his horror, Bondi now realized his very own kind was to be used as bait.

Some power froze him there, turning him to nothing more than witness to everything as a pit opened up in his stomach, a sinkhole to all his bravery. He couldn’t move. The hole became greater and greater, until his body trembled and his fingers twitched in a wretched bile of anticipation, waiting—hoping—for Conleth to reappear.

A mer peered over the edge, an impatience that suggested questioning. Everyone looked as if they were questioning, as if they weren’t so sure Conleth still breathed. He flinched as kelp brushed up against him, and still they sat in wait.

It was so sudden—a moment before the world could’ve almost been called peaceful.

Conleth bursted up from the cave, and instantly the water held a red tint. Adrenaline sapped all else from his body, and so all he could do was watch as a blurry figure burst up after him. They grappled, filling the water with violent crimson splotches as Conleth tried to scramble away. The group curved up like a wave and crashed down on Naigale, and in the new frenzy all Bondi could do was stare.

His mind begged him to move—move even just one muscle towards Meryl, but he couldn’t.

He was trapped.

In the mess he saw that Conleth had gotten away, only partially. While he was no longer Naigale’s focus, the brief time they had shared together showed all over Conleth’s body. He might’ve been missing an eye, for his face was so horrifyingly torn apart, and his body was similar. Marks as abundant as the wrinkling of skin covered Conleth all over, and his fins had been shredded apart.

Bondi surged forward by some force of instinct—maybe pushed by how appalled or frightened he was—headed right for Meryl. “MERYL!”

He realized his mistake far too late as a dozen eyes set upon him, although no pairs lingered on him—save for one, slitted and predatory. He froze, staring back at Naigale for a moment, his heartbeat suddenly untraceable. Then, to his relief, someone made a strike for Naigale’s face, and quickly Bondi wriggled out of their gaze.

As he stroked towards Meryl, their eyes burned themselves into his skull, an image repeating again and again. Danger tingled along his spine. Much like Meryl, his gaze shifted between the siren and his friend, until both seemed to blur into one. Just before he was in reach, however, someone slammed against him.

He cried out in agony as the pain split his body in half, the kind of pain that would’ve crushed him if he hadn’t tried to swim away. From the merfolk that has been thrown into him, a gap had opened in the formation, a catalyst to the tragedy that was to occur.

He swam up, away from the merman he had collided with, and Meryl swam towards him, wielding his spear to the side so that it wouldn’t pierce Bondi. At this same time, Naigale seized their opportunity to escape, slinging themself towards the surface. What not one of the three of them had expected, however, was for Meryl’s father to plunge after the siren, yanking Naigale downwards.

The water turned purely, truly crimson red around his friend, and he cried out again in panic and fear that he had lost Meryl. Meryl cried out, too, albeit for a much different reason. He watched as Meryl struggled and writhed, and quickly rushed over to help, pulling him away from what he thought was an assailant. His body jolted in disgust as even he felt the spear slide out of something—something that wasn’t him, and something wasn’t Meryl, either.

In the clouded water he saw Meryl’s father pull away, almost unscathed, and the truth of the situation hit him. Naigale no longer swam. Their being floated in the water, the very last of their tension siphoned from their body as the spear’s head made its way out of their chest. Their limbs had gone limp, and life had drained from their face.

The world became silent as they sunk along with the spear Meryl had dropped. They sunk further and further, and all anyone could do was watch. Meryl jolted in his grasp, trying to follow after Naigale, but somehow, Bondi was strong enough to forbade it.

He watched, terrified, as Naigale only sunk and sunk, their wings drifting after them in a graceful, bidding poise. A feeling of dread lingered inside of him as he stared at those wings, now laminated with the strangest of blues, until finally Naigale hit the ocean floor. The sand parted for them and seemed to swallow them up, until finally the siren was well and truly gone.

“Good job,” Poseider spoke, pulling everyone back from their disarrayed trance. “I wasn’t expecting you to get the killing blow, Meryl, but I’m proud.”

Meryl curled into him, influencing Bondi to hug him back tightly.

“Bondi,” Conleth spoke, suddenly. He looked over to the mer—perhaps one of the worst looking beings still here and alive—and his heart skipped a beat in an ongoing rhythm of dread. “I’m not sure why you came, but I’d like for you to come back with me. Sirens often come in pairs—we were lucky this one wasn’t with its partner. It’d be safer for you in case the other shows up.”

Conleth looked over to Meryl, gently. “Meryl, you may also come with me, unless Poseider wishes otherwise.”

Meryl’s father questioned, gruffly, “You don’t want to celebrate, Meryl?”

How could you rejoice for death? Bondi allowed a venomous disdain to flow in through the glare in his eyes.

“I-I-I’ll celebrate with Bondi first.” Meryl murmured, somehow concealing most of his emotion. Luckily the triton he abhorred so greatly came to settle for this just fine, and they trailed back to safety with Conleth.

Looking over what had happened that day, Bondi understood very well how it felt for Meryl. However, despite its terribleness, it only solidified something in Bondi. He understood what he knew of sirens to be true—they enchanted merfolk based on their sexuality, they were violent, powerful creatures made to kill, and if from hell they came, then it was to hell that they naturally returned.

They sunk and were taken by the ground because that’s where they belonged; however, sometimes he recalled Naigale’s sympathetic eyes and pondered what was so true about sirens, and what was such a myth. Were sirens demons?

And then, seven years later, someone was able to prove much more to be true. Yes, sirens were vicious hunters—killers that played by no rules but their own, and all he had to be thankful for was that Naigale’s rules—unlike Diosia’s—had been a much more ethical way of going about things.

Yes, Diosia confirmed all the rest of his suspicions. They were creatures of the night by heart, they were clever and obsessive, they were hell-bound on culling whatever life they could, and yes, they certainly came in pairs, for whenever Bondi saw Diosia he knew so very well that there it was—something so clear to him, a simple and yet vivid connection.

When he looked at Diosia he saw it—the other half of Naigale’s severed pair.

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