I swam along, searching for shells in the sand. I discarded any that looked like they might be useful for hermit crabs to live in, for instance, trying to limit myself to ones that were broken and useless for any sealife. I had already searched along the reef and found quite a few, but the sand here, west of Port Fylin, was a prime spot for shells to wash up, and I was trying to locate any before they reached the surface.
I was fairly heavily invested in my task, so I didn’t notice at first when another creature started swimming in my direction. I jumped a little when I realized there was a walrus just a few feet away from me.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh, hmm, walrus areas are….” I tried to think about where walrus hunting grounds were and whether I could shoo this one in that direction. Sea creatures rarely tried to harm oceanids, so I wasn’t worried for my safety, but this wasn’t where a walrus normally was, so that could potentially be an issue.
My brain started to remind me that if this was an unusual place for a walrus, maybe this wasn’t really a walrus, and then it spoke.
“Can you help me?” He asked, using magic to speak. “I was traveling with my nymph friend, and she got hit by a boat. I’ve hidden her on a bit of beach but I don’t know how to help her.”
A merfolk shifter, of course. And he needed help – which I was happy to provide.
I dug around in my bag, thankful I’d remembered to bring some sarong-type wraps just in case, and moved to follow him. “Lead the way,” I told him.
As we swam, I tried to allay some of his fears. “We have a nurse in our community, they can help with any injuries. I can help get her there.” Since I had hands, I could help move his friend while he couldn’t as easily with flippers.
Merfolk communities were a little different than most supernatural communities because we did tend to have our own medical people on a fairly regular basis. The reason was pretty simple – we almost never saw non-merfolk medical providers, and only other supernaturals on a rare basis. Merfolk healed much faster in our native habitat – aka the ocean – than on land, so we generally tried to get into the water to heal. A nurse who had some training, like the one in my community, could help provide assistance on the occasions someone got a laceration from a boat propeller or the like, but mostly, just staying in the ocean helped a lot.
This water nymph must be pretty damaged if she’d ended up on shore instead of the water and hadn’t tried to crawl back in. Maybe her shifter friend didn’t realize that he could have shifted back to human form to get her into the water – it sounded like he wasn’t even aware that she would heal better in the water. Probably pretty young, then, or from a small town where they didn’t have to deal with injuries much? We didn’t actually have many injuries in our community, either, but at least I did know that the water helped. Always get back to the water if injured.
“Thanks for coming,” he told me as he crawled up on a thin bit of beach at the base of a steep cliff. There were a few large boulders on the beach, but surprisingly, no sign of his nymph friend.
“Where is she?” I asked as I shifted into land form, suitably covered, and looked around.
He nodded towards one of the rocks. “Behind there.”
I headed in that direction, concerned about his friend, when, to my surprise, I found nothing behind the rock at all. I turned around, confused and worried that the nymph might have wandered off while he went to find help, only to discover that there was another person on the beach now – and it was not a nymph.
“Thanks for help,” Kate smiled darkly, her eyes fixed on me as she jerked her head at the walrus. “The money’s been transferred. Now get out of here.”
He didn’t even glance back at me as he scuttled back into the ocean, leaving me frozen in place for just a second before I attempted to dash to the ocean myself.
Kate, now in her centaur form, was faster. I felt one of her hooves dig itself into the back of my thigh, her weight knocking me over and a muffled scream coming from my mouth as I hit the ground, hard.
I’d been afraid of coming to the surface for years and years, afraid of violence – in large part, because of this exact centaur. And now I was trapped, unable to get to the ocean as the violence I was so scared of began to rain down upon me.
I didn’t know how long she went, how many kicks and punches she gave me. I did know that I was in pain – a whole lot of it. I was fairly certain she’d broken my jaw with one of her earliest kicks, and she might have dislocated my shoulder when she dragged my arms backwards to tie my hands behind my back. She tied my feet, too, for good measure, and made sure to add a gag so even if anyone happened to go by the beach, they wouldn’t hear my screams. They wouldn’t see her beating me to death behind the large boulders, blocked from the view of the ocean.
And with my hands tied the way they were, I couldn’t really use my magic. I tried, but our hands were generally essential for use of magic, and I wasn’t a particularly powerful oceanid – just average – so I’d never mastered using magic without being able to see what I was doing. Not to mention I was distracted with every kick, every hit, and the focus I needed to do magic was simply…not there.
I felt tears fill my eyes and fall down my bruised face, but she must not have noticed or she’d have mocked me. This hurt so much, and I knew she wasn’t going to stop. She wanted to see me dead, for whatever reason – because she’d bullied me back in elementary school and I hadn’t let her carry out her threat then? Because she was sadistic and just wanted to hurt someone? I had no idea, but all I did know was that no one would find me in time. Sidney knew I was out looking for shells, but that could be anywhere, and by the time anyone realized I was missing, I’d probably be dead.
As a kick brought a sharp pain to my chest, I briefly realized that the kid who’d been murdered in front of me back then had probably felt like this, too – the pain, the helplessness to escape. I wondered what his last thoughts were, and what mine would be.
Kate paused, breathing heavily. “I’d have thought you’d be dead by now, but looks like this might be more fun.” She smiled wickedly. “Gotta make a call, don’t go anywhere!” She laughed at her own joke as she went off down the beach to find cell service.
This was it. My chance to try to escape. I could barely move anything, though, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get free the way I was now – I at least needed my hands free.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus, summoning up my magic. Not magic I used as often, but magic that I needed in this moment.
Fire. Fire to eat at the bonds until they broke. Sure, it made my skin a little red, but merfolk had natural resistance to elemental fire, and besides, a little fire damage would be worth it if I could just get away.
I didn’t bother untying my legs. Too much time, and I wasn’t sure they would work anyway. Instead, the moment my hands were free, I started trying to drag myself to the ocean. I just needed to get into the water. I could heal there, but also I could swim away, and Kate couldn’t come after me in the ocean. I just needed to reach the ocean.
Just a little bit further. My hands were in the shallowest water now. Just a little bit more, just a little bit –
I didn’t hear her, so when I felt her hoof stomp hard on my lower back, it scared me enough I didn’t even notice the pain at first. I sobbed, realizing my last chance had run out.
“Trying to escape, are we?” She sneered. “Too bad you didn’t make it – for you. But I think I’ll enjoy this.”
She started putting more and more pressure on my lower back and the pain started to make black spots dance before my eyes. I gasped into the water, then instinctively threw water at her.
I made a bubble of water around her head. I didn’t even think through what I was doing, I just did it. She seemed as surprised as I was, but when she started clawing at the water and realized she couldn’t break the bubble, she started to get more concerned and actually took her hoof off me while she was focusing on trying to get free.
I took advantage of that to pull myself further into the water. A little bit more – just enough to transform now. The water was shallow, but enough to get me into my aquatic form, and I only needed a bit of propelling from my battered tail to get into deeper water. Almost safe.
But I couldn’t bring myself to kill her, even if she wanted to kill me, so as I pulled myself a foot closer to the deeper water, just before I knew she’d reach the point of drowning, I released my magic on her.
Which, obviously, was a terrible idea.
The next moment, before I could get my body to cooperate enough to get into the deeper waters, she was back on me, this time in human form so she wasn’t put at a disadvantage by her hooves sinking into the sand. She reached down and grabbed my braid, yanking me upright into the air in a painful grip.
I squirmed, trying to free myself, trying to use my lengthened fingernails to swipe at her feebly, but my strength was ebbing low and the magic I’d used already had drained most of my reserves. Even if I got into the deeper water now, I’d probably lose consciousness soon.
“You stupid fish!” She shouted at me, apparently extra pissed off at my water bubble trick – and not at all grateful that I hadn’t killed her with it. “You’ll pay for that!”
I heard her knife whip out and waited to feel the sharp sting of metal, but I didn’t. Instead I dropped unexpectedly into the water face-down, struggling for a moment to figure out what had happened – until I saw strands of hair falling around my face.
She had cut my braid off. Maybe a small thing, in the grand scale of things, but it made tears fill my eyes anyway. Merfolk wore their hair long, and mine grew slowly – I had grown that over most of my life, and now my hair was short, shoulder-length, it felt like, and it just felt like added cruelty to the pain she was already inflicting.
“Come here,” she hissed, grabbing at my tail. She wasn’t gentle, and I let out a muffled scream when I felt the delicate tail fins start to rip under her rough grasp. She ignored that – or maybe enjoyed it – as she started dragging me back towards the beach, no doubt planning to finish what she’d started.
I sank my fingers into the ground, struggled to pull myself free, tried to pull enough magic together to create the bubble again – anything to prevent her getting me out of the water. No, I was so close – I just needed something to get free. My fingers closed on a rock and I hesitated for just a second, still hating the idea of violence, but – I would die if I didn’t, right?
I flung the rock at her – not a great aim, but it hit her shoulder and surprised her enough she cursed and released my tail. That ought to be enough – I just needed to force myself to get just a few feet further out. Just a bit –
I bit back another scream as the pain in my tail told me I wasn’t going to be able to use it for swimming right now. I was so reliant on my fins, it never dawned on me that having one ripped like that – plus all the damage she’d done trying to pull me by it – would make it difficult to swim.
I wasn’t about to give up, though, so instead I tried to drag myself deeper into the water. She would come at me again any second and I just needed a few more feet to be free. Just a few more feet!
And then I had more feet. Sort of. Technically no feet, but tentacles. From out of nowhere – or at least, nowhere that I’d noticed since I was too wrapped up in just trying to crawl forward – one of Jett’s arms circled me and pulled me deeper into the water, cradling me ever so gently against him while his attention seemed focused on the beach. I could feel rather than see Sidney there, too, because now that my body realized I was safe and would be okay, it was inclined to just crash.
I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing they’d make sure I was safe, and then closed my eyes and let my consciousness fade.
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