by Noah Layton
Sitting up and groaning, I examined my surroundings. I was on soft sand in a small cave lit by several flaming torches sitting in holsters grafted into the rough rock walls.
There was only one way in or out of the cave that I could see – a small gap in the rock up ahead that was large enough to crawl through.
The cave had all the signs that somebody was living here. There was a small patch of rags and leather that served as a bed, a firepit cooking two fish on a stick that was surrounded by fish bones, and a small collection of random objects on a slab of wood.
Rocks, sharpened pieces of metal, spare clothes – and the scimitar that Ariadne had leant me.
Without hesitation I pushed up from the ground. The right side of my head felt like it had been hit with a rock the moment I did. Raising my hand to it, I felt the touch of something that wasn’t my skin.
Examining my hand, I saw a crude bandage wrapped around my index finger where my fingernail had snapped off.
I searched the room again. There was no sign of the occupant.
I crossed to the shelf where the scimitar was. My hand was a foot away from it when the voice called out to me.
‘No.’
I turned sharply to look in the direction of the soft voice. In the corner of the room, barely lit by the flames of a nearby torch, I had missed a section of rock holding in a patch of water around the same size as the well back at my tribal land.
Sitting within it was a woman. She was shrouded in shadows, but as I registered her appearance and recalled how I had ended up here, I reached forward quickly and grabbed for the scimitar.
‘Back the fuck off,’ I called out. There was no way that I was going to get caught out by another siren, no matter how hot she was.
But this didn’t make any sense. If she was a siren, why wasn’t I dead yet? And why was the place filled with firelight? Surely she would want to get as far away from it as possible.
Either way, she looked undisturbed by my movement. She simply remained in her pool, studying me for a moment while I kept the sword raised.
Finally, she stirred in the water and emerged from it. She stepped gracefully onto the rocky edge of her small pool and into the light as I drank in the image of her for the first time.
Despite her astonishing beauty, I wasn’t drawn to her by some unseen supernatural force the way the sirens had pulled me in; this attraction was all my own. She was a slender girl in her early twenties, standing around 5”3. She was completely naked save for a loose piece of leather wrapped around her waist, covering the spot between her legs, and her perfect body drew me in instantly; her round, firm breasts led perfectly down to her toned stomach and below to her slim legs.
All of that was nothing in comparison to the two most distinct features of her appearance; her skin was the lightest shade of blue, including that upon her large, pointed ears that protruded behind her raven-colored hair.
She crossed to her makeshift bed and lifted up a large sheet that she wrapped over her body. She surveyed me ambiguously for a moment, looking my body up and down as I couldn’t help but return the favour.
‘No sword,’ she finally said, then nodded to the fire that was cooking the fish nearby. ‘Hungry?’
I looked between the girl and the fire, and lowered my sword a little.
‘Sure… I mean, yes.’
She nodded and headed to the firepit, securing the sheet around her as she moved. Still on edge, I watched her move to the fire and kneel next to it. She tended to the fish, then turned back to look at me.
‘Come,’ she said softly. ‘Eat.’
I lowered my sword to my side but still kept a tight grasp on it. I crossed to the fire and stood on the other side of it, letting my guard down slightly but still intent on keeping the fire between me and her.
The blue-skinned girl wasn’t intent on drying herself down. Her face and hair was still beaded with moisture that made her skin shine in the firelight.
She removed the fish from the rack above the fire and placed one each onto a pair of small stone slabs, then handed one to me.
I had never been much of a fisherman, or an expert on animals in general, but this thing looked like a pretty well-fed salmon. The girl skinned it quickly and began to pick the meat from its bones before snacking on them.
I pulled my canteen from my inventory and took a long drink of water, then turned my attention to the fish. It was a messier job on my end but I eventually got to the meat. It tasted delicious.
One of my many old mantras rang in my head. I had thought the same thing when I first met Ariadne.
If she wanted me dead I’d be dead already.
‘Good?’ The girl asked, smiling at me through the fire.
‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘Very good.’
Everything she did had been unbelievably graceful – even eating a freaking fish.
I finished it quickly, thinking it best not to piss of my host. Once finished, I set the slab aside and returned to look at her.
‘Who are you?’ I finally asked. ‘How did I get down here?’
‘Come,’ she said simply. ‘Come sit.’
I had let my guard down a little, but I still brought my sword with me.
I kneeled down in the sand next to the girl, putting a little distance between me and her. She quickly closed it, shuffling in the sand and pressing one of her bare legs up against mine. Even through the leather of my pants I could tell how smooth her skin was.
‘Elera,’ she said placing a hand on her chest, then pointing to me.
‘Jack,’ I answered, placing a hand on my chest.
‘Jack,’ she smiled. She licked her lips lightly, looking between my eyes and my own lips before leaning forward and kissing me.
Maybe I should have pulled away, but everything about her felt right, especially the soft perfection of her lips. Her blue skin illuminated in the firelight and only made her exoticism hotter somehow.
‘Tall-man,’ she smiled.
She pulled away, biting her lip and smiling at me. She turned to the patch of sand before us and wiped her hand across it like she was cleaning a chalkboard.
‘Elera,’ she said, drawing a stick-figure of herself. ‘Sister’ – another stick figure. ‘Sister’ – a final stick figure.
Around the figures she drew a number of trees, and flowing lines beneath them.
‘Before,’ she said, pointing to the lines. ‘Happiness.’
She dwelled on the drawn images for a moment, then scrubbed her hand through the sand, destroying everything but the figure in the centre – herself.
‘Storm… Alone. Then…’
Before she could draw what she was going to draw next, we both looked up in response to the sounds of shrieks echoing through the small tunnel that led into the cave networks beneath the Black Patch.
‘The sirens…’ I muttered. ‘They came up out of the ground, and you were trapped down here. I’m so sorry…’
I looked up at Elera. She smiled back at me, then laughed hysterically,
‘I am sorry. I will stop speaking like a fool now.’
I leaped back and eyed her in shock.
‘What…?’
‘I am sorry for the act, Tall-man. I did not know whether or not I could trust you. I thought it best to, umm, how you say… Pretend?’
Her accent was still exotic as ever, and the words flowing from her mouth were like the sweetest honey.
‘What are you?’ I said, standing and stepping back.
‘You need not be alarmed, Tall-man. I am a nymph. I have no interest in umm… Killing you?’
‘That’s good to know. I don’t have any interest in killing you either.’
‘Of course you do not.’ She smiled knowingly. ‘But I am sorry for misleading you. It has never been the task of a nymph to mislead, only to entice men into thinking that their greatest desires can be realized by our bodies before shirking away from them.’
‘So… Misleading, then? That’s literally the defini
tion of misleading.’
‘It is in my nature to behave in such a way. I have never lied with a man before, only tempted them, as did my sisters before… Before…’
She sat back and stared into the depths of the fire, sighing deeply.
‘I am sorry… I have been down here for so long that I have forgotten what it means to see the sky, to feel the grass against my feet and the waters of the river over my body…’
She wiped away a tear from the shimmering blue skin beneath her eyes.
Elera was one of the strangest women, no, the strangest people I had ever met. But I pinned it down to being down here for so long. It would send anybody crazy.
‘So you’ve been down here all this time?’
‘How long has it been since the storm?’
‘Months.’
‘Then, yes. I have been surviving on the fish that come through occasionally, and the fresh water that trickles through. The sensation of it against my skin has been one of the only things that has kept my mind sound. It moves through that pool then flows back into the ground.’
‘And you’ve never had any trouble from the sirens?’
‘I have come close to being caught by them on several occasions. Make no mistake, they would rip a nymph like me to pieces if they found me. But I am nimble and quiet, and I have managed to avoid them… Until you arrived.
‘That old ship was clogging up the main exit into the swamp. The sirens have no interest in straying beyond their borders, only preying on those who come too close to their home, but when the ship crashed down I had to investigate. I could not leave you there… You were the first being beyond fish and sirens that I have seen since the storm. I managed to make it out of here with you only by chance and luck.’
‘You carried me?’
‘More like… Dragged you. I know the passages to quick safety, and I am stronger than I look, but it was still a struggle. You fell through a small tunnel in the wall of the descending section that the ship fell through. It is blocked now. Your actions caused something of a landslide… It is a miracle that you fell through there in the first place, and an even greater miracle that you did not find yourself crushed by rocks.’
‘Shit… So it’s my fault? Do they know where you are now?’
‘They… May. And no, it is not your fault… Well, it is somewhat your fault for straying onto that ship in the first place, but it was my decision to save you.’
‘We can’t stay down here,’ I said resolutely. ‘You can’t stay down here. It’s a miracle that you’ve managed to survive this long.’
‘I fear that you may be right, but where else is there for me to go? Even if I can return to the surface and make it to the river, I am alone. I have no family. I have spent my life in the rivers, and without them I am just a lone creature.’
‘No, you’re not. You can come and live with me.’
‘… With you? I have known you for only a few minutes.’
‘So? If there’s one thing I’ve learned out here it’s that surrounding yourself with people you can trust is the most successful method for staying alive. I have land. I have friends. A plentiful supply of water and food. Safety.’
Elera looked me up and down from the fire.
‘You are a man. I have seduced enough men and left them hungry to know that they only desire one thing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Me. My body. How do I know that you are not taking me with you simply because you want to have sex with me?’
I let out a long sigh. How’s that for a first-date question?
‘Look,’ I said, crossing to Elera. The nymph stood and faced me, her eyes lighting up in the firelight intensely. ‘I’ll be real with you, because… I really see no point in not telling the truth. Yes, I find you incredibly attractive. Alongside my wives you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. But I’m trying to do a good thing here. Sex isn’t something that I’m struggling for right now.’
‘Wives?’ she said, emphasising the s. ‘You have many?’
‘I have three, and I love them all, and they love me. We all take care of each other.’
‘Gods… You must be a very productive man.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Anyway, you have two options right now. You can stay down here and risk getting yourself killed by those monsters, or you can come with me and have a better life, or at least a shot at one. And you don’t really have an option, because if you say no I’m throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you out of here.’
‘You will?’ Elera said, lowering her head and widening her eyes at me. ‘How forceful. I should tell you that I possess rather formidable abilities for deterring those who I deem… Unpleasant.’
‘Oh, yeah? Why haven’t you been using those abilities against the sirens?’
‘There are too many of them down here for me to try and fight them off. You have heard the cackle they give off, no? That is their call for assistance. If one makes the sound, a hundred more come running to help them.’
‘Good to know… So what’s this ability of yours?’
‘Would you like any more fish?’
‘I’m good thanks… No, don’t tell me you have the power to multiply fish infinitely? Because there used to be a story about a guy who could do that in my world, and he was… Well, pretty popular, going by the stories…’
I don’t know what the hell I imagined her doing – making a pile of thousands of fish appear overhead to land on her enemies or something?
It turned out that I was as far off as I could be. Elera cast her hand out the same way that I would do when casting a spell, and from her hand burst a plume of blue frost. It channelled into the fire that had been simmering below the fish.
The flames fought it for a moment, but it was too strong. After a few seconds it was reduced to a smouldering pile of ashes surrounded by seeping water that soaked into the sand below.
‘That’s an interesting trick. Can you promise not to use it on me?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Great. So how do we get out of here?’
A few minutes later Elera had completed a detailed map of the tunnels that led through the underground caverns using her finger to carve through the sand.
‘The pit below the ship is the only way in or out of these caves. It is not far from here, but fortunately the sirens should be distracted at present. They will be in the eastern section of the caves, which is far away from the power stone…’
‘Wait, the what?’
‘The power stone. It is held in a cave close to the exit.’
‘There’s a power stone down here? An actual power stone?’
‘That is what I said.’
‘Is it easy to get to it?’
‘Yes, although we will need to be silent in approaching it. Sirens are sometimes assigned to protect it.’
‘How are we supposed to get close to this thing if they guard it?’
‘They fear the light, but they fear magic more. The sirens are savage, shape-shifting creatures, but they cannot command the ways of magic. They guard from a distance, and if we are careful we should be able to bypass them, assuming we are careful enough.’
‘So they worship what they’re afraid of?’
‘Do we not all worship what we fear? Gods, leaders, masters…’
The nymph had a point. The expression god-fearing man came to mind.
We all submit ourselves to some higher power, and the nature of power is that it has a better chance to kill us than we have to kill it.
And then I realized something.
‘My wives are going to think that I’m dead. They’re probably up there mourning for me right now. I’m not spending any more time here than I need to. I’m getting out of here now, and you’re coming with me.’
‘What if I don’t want to? Are you still planning on throwing me over your shoulder, Tall-man?’
‘Initially I was, but after that little show I really don’t feel like b
eing turned into a block of ice. So it’s up to you.’
Elera looked down at the plan of the caves in the sand and nodded.
‘I have been down here so long that I have forgotten what the water above feels like. That is a tragedy in and of itself.’ She turned to me in the fire light and smiled slightly. ‘Let us leave.’
Elera proceeded to give me a crash course on the layout of the tunnels. She would lead the way but I would be right by her side.
The problem was the sheer scale of this god-forsaken place.
The more Elera spoke and the more she dragged her fingers through the sand, the more I began to realize just how big the tunnel complex was. We were at least sixty feet underground, and her hidden cave was just one in a network of passages, collapsed areas and linked rooms.
It reminded me of the Paris Catacombs – the network of tunnels beneath the French city that ran for hundreds of miles, housing the skeletal remains of millions of bodies.
Some of the bodies weren’t so old, though. Tales had existed for decades of urban explorers who had ventured into the catacombs unprepared, only to lose their way and never be seen again.
There were a lot of ways to die, but lost and alone in the darkness before eventually dying of thirst had to be pretty high up on the list of worst ways to go.
Down here I wasn’t alone; Elera’s company and knowledge would keep us on the right track, but we had the added misfortune of being hunted by a group of shapeshifting creatures who could transform from supermodel-hot to vicious fish-monster in a matter of seconds.
Not that they would be able to trick me any longer seeing as I had witnessed their true nature.
Elera wrapped a long strip of cloth around her breasts as we prepared to leave. She took only one item into her inventory from the nearby shelf where my weapon had resided.
‘What is that?’ I asked.
‘It belonged to Marisa, my sister.’ She turned to me and opened her hand to reveal a necklace composed of various precious stones of all colors.
‘Where did she get something like that?’
‘She made it herself from the things that she found in the river. Our days were not only spent enticing lost fishermen and traders who came across us.’
