Chapter 1 #2
“Stay back!” the sea-maiden warns, thrusting a clawed hand forward.
The movement is strangely jerky and hindered, as if tethered by some unseen force. Lady Leviathan draws up short. Little blooms of blood diffuse into the water, and that’s when she notices the thousands of cuts slashing the mermaid’s arms, torso, and tail.
Everything in her screams to ignore the warning and intercede.
To end this suffering as soon as possible.
Protecting the sea and all its inhabitants is her greatest duty, and this mermaid has suffered enough.
But there’s a reason why this is a place of death.
Why this mermaid can’t move and hasn’t already swum far, far away from this cursed place.
That’s when she finally sees it.
A net. The mermaid is inextricably entangled in the ghostly threads of a net.
It’s unlike any Lady Leviathan has ever seen before.
In fact, the point seems to be that it couldn’t be seen.
These translucent threads are small, thin, almost invisible.
It’s only because she knows to stop and look that it’s perceptible at all with tiny glints of sunlight reflecting off the strands.
If it weren’t for the mermaid’s warning, she would’ve ascended straight into it and found herself ensnared too.
Never in her history had she encountered a net large enough to contain her.
A humbling, unwelcome change, and a horrible way to die.
Surrounded by death, the gray unseeing eyes of those that came before, rotted, waterlogged flesh peeling away from bone and cartilage.
Ever knowing that in just a few days’ time, you will join their ranks.
One of many caught in this massive web of destruction.
“I see it.” Lady Leviathan drifts slowly forward, pushing floating netting away.
It’s a tangled mess that takes careful precision to sift through.
By the time she clears a path, she’s used eighteen of her twenty arms to hold it at bay, creating a dome.
This bubble of safety is tenuous; the extraction will have to be quick.
Shifting currents could carry the netting and trap them both inside.
The mermaid stares at her with large, round white eyes.
Blue bioluminescent nodes speckling her body flash sharp and erratic as her gaze darts between Lady Leviathan’s array of arms, her eyes, and the netting that surrounds them.
Fear spikes the water, a sour addition to the decay.
The mermaid knows this rescue attempt could fail at any time too.
Lady Leviathan curls two tentacles around opposing sections of the netting and gives it a hardy tug.
It’s stronger than the fibrous rope of old, less giving.
The cruel threads dig into her flesh, and a sharp sting puts an abrupt stop to any additional pulling.
While the cursed thing didn’t break skin, it will if she applies any more force.
She flexes her tentacles, shaking out the sting.
Brute strength usually solves most of her problems. Not this time. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, the sudden realization she no longer knows where she sits on the food chain.
The surface dwellers have refined their thieving craft with deadly precision. Even the mermaid’s claws aren’t sharp enough to cut through the surface dwellers’ new, elusive netting. At least, not while her arms and wrists are ensnared.
Anger simmers deep within Lady Leviathan.
For the lives already lost and the ones sure to follow.
For taking and wasting so greedily from her domain.
A net this massive must be intended to ensnare an equally massive creature, all these poor seafolk but bycatch.
Why else construct something so big, only to leave it, and the creatures entangled in it, behind?
They dare challenge me?
An itch to wreck steals over her many arms, but Lady Leviathan shoves her rage beneath the surface before it can consume all thought.
There will be plenty of time for a rampage later.
Emotions will only cloud her judgment, and this rescue requires her entire focus.
The mermaid’s life depends on her getting this right.
“Hold still.” Lady Leviathan extends razor-sharp spikes from her limbs.
The mermaid flinches, glaring at the spikes. If that isn’t indication enough of her distress, there’s also the frantic, panicked sparkling of her bioluminescence. The poor creature has been cut all over, but there’s more to this fear.
Trust doesn’t come easily in the ocean. The harsh reality of their world is bigger creatures eat smaller creatures, and right now, she’s trapped, unable to fight or flee. That makes her an easy snack to carve up and devour, especially for a giant kraken who hasn’t eaten in centuries.
“I just want to free you,” Lady Leviathan soothes, gently cupping the mermaid’s cheek with a spike-less tentacle.
And she means it. There’s no trickery here.
A consequence of being one of the largest creatures in the ocean is a constant awareness of how others perceive her size.
They see her and assume death and destruction follow closely in her wake.
It can. It has. But only when she chooses to. “I promise to be very careful.”
The mermaid’s alarmed sparkling settles to a dim, slow pulsing. “You promise?” Her voice is quiet and unsure, barely above a whisper.
“With all that I am.”
Her light stutters. Promises are not given lightly in the abyss, because in the daily fight for survival, to eat or be eaten, promises are hard to keep.
Pledging on one’s life is even rarer. It’s the seafolk way to say what they mean.
Anxiety whooshes out of the mermaid in a heavy, relieved sigh that bubbles between them. “Go ahead.”
That’s all the permission Lady Leviathan needs.
She starts by cutting a perimeter around the mermaid, arms moving swiftly and surely to free the mermaid from the wider net.
The precision work can come later. The faster Lady Leviathan gets her away from the mass grave and its despair-polluted water, the better.
She curls a tentacle around the mermaid’s waist and draws her away, her great limbs propelling them backward with a mighty thrust. Without her arms holding up the netting, it descends back into place, filling the gap they just vacated.
They are free of the floating death trap, but Lady Leviathan keeps swimming. Neither of them need be anywhere near this atrocity or its ongoing dangers.
Only when the water no longer smells like death does she stop to untangle the mermaid from the remnants of netting that still constricts her body.