Fins Above:HOPE

CH.10

Brizo held onto her side as she swam downwards. The sea was bloody with strife as her hip strained to heal under the influence of the gemstone in her blood. A loud hiss came from her right as she turned, feeling the movement of the waves alter her mental map. As the waves crashed above her, and the bubbles fizzed from her lips, a soaring merman zoomed towards her with a long blade. The darkness of the ocean camouflaged him, but Brizo felt the ocean swirl around her. The water in her body warmed as she felt her joints ease and her body simmer with focus. She needed to focus. As the merfish came at her, she parted her lips to reveal the large rows of teeth in her mouth, rippling a hiss from them.

The black eel thrashed their tail to the side, pivoting so they could take another hit at Brizo's side. Brizo dove away to the right, clutching her side protectively. Just missing the jabbing blade that would have ripped into her gill bags. The sea tasted like malice, but with this unknown foe before her, she thought that the sea was a milky way of stars. Her first real fight outside of the war where she was alone. A true battle of the fins. She urged herself to flick her sea glass blade from its golden dyed sheath, wiping it out as her fins gripped the gray cord tied around it.

The merman let a smile strip their wrinkled face, skin shivering as they dropped into the deep darkness. They looked at her face, and then saw her eyes puffed with the infliction of blindness. Their lips curled with ambition and their body went silent. Brizo knew her skin crawled at this silence, but she kept to the sea floor, breathing in slowly so that her heartbeat did not ring in her ears. The wind of the sea howled against her blade with each slither the cord performed up to her fingers. She could taste the scent of their presence on her tongue, but every which way had begun to dampen with that smell until she no longer could tell.

Then, it stopped. She heard nothing, felt nothing and tasted nothing. A soft sigh came from the siren, but as she was ready to depart, a loud whoosh came from above her just when she couldn't have caught the change in the movement of the sea. Brizo felt her spine crinkle a bit underneath the weight that slammed her into the ground. Her stunned body flailed for a moment, yet she still grabbed a hold of her blades and managed to slip underneath the merman. His tail whipped her on the way out, hitting the back of her head as the mermaid twisted to her legs and hissed weakly back at them. Her spine tingled a bit, leaving a headache in the back of her cranium as she crouched and flung her blade at their tail.

The eel yowled as the ribbed sea glass slit into their slimy skin. Brizo kicked up dust as she noticed their inching pace towards her. This chasing game had to end in some way, and from afar, Brizo saw an out. The siren dipped between a rock structure, watching the eel swim past and attempt to barge through the other side. A soft trill left her lips as she spoke up.

"I can smell it on you. I can sense that you have been waiting for something here." She shuffled around a bit, ears twitching.

The eel did not respond, only coming to stop before pushing harder. Both of their scars were open with newly bruised pains, and while their breaths matched, the two on each side of the boundary hissed.

"Whaletooth's foolish second hand was buried here. If Gutear lays here as he should, I could locate what drove my shoal out of their land." The eel snarled.

Brizo stopped, gripping onto the sand as she kept her body to the ground, blood pooling into the mist. The salt was burning her. She needed to patch the wound. So her fins slowly grazed over her bag and wiped a bit of seagrass paste into the slash mark. Her tail laid flat, thinking about the eel's grievance. Gutear?

The siren widened her palm on the ground, using the other one to wrap the cut in ripped fabric. Her father was being hunted by this mystery eel. He seemed like a regular old fin with brain fog. But to her surprise, the words from their mouth revealed their passion.