The dark waters| ✓

9.A KINGDOM BY THE SEA

I don't know how long I stand there in silence, too shocked to speak. I don't know how to react to what Dylan just said. As soon as he said it, my mind started racing and I remembered every single weird thing that had happened to me before. Like getting all the visions, hearing voices and hurting Dylan. I feel many emotions at once: shock, anger, fear but most of all curiosity.

"Even if I believe what you are saying, which I don't, how can you explain the fact that I have never come across people like you before?" I say.

"We mers have existed before your human race. We are smart and have found out ways of hiding ourselves. We can-" Nerida says.

"But don't you guys have a tail? How did you get rid of it?" I say.

"There are different kinds of merfolk. The goddess we came from somehow gave us the ability to evolve tremendously, giving us the ability of growing tails at will."Nerida says. I don't say anything, but I nod at her to tell her to go on.

"We come from a kingdom under the sea. A beautiful one called Marinus. We have a king, a queen and a court. We don't have a democracy you see, something that would have saved Marinus from its fate. We blindly put our faith in the king. The king is chosen by ritual combat. Whoever wins becomes the king. We always found this stupid, since a kingdom can't be ruled by someone who is just strong in body and not of the mind. But our suggestion and protests were considered to be worthless since we were too immature to understand politics. Yeah totally. See what their mature minds  have got us into." Nerida says.

"Can you just cut to the chase Nerd? More of the grumbling later."Dylan says.

Nerida shoots him a look but doesn't stop.
"So until two years back, we had a really good king called king Llyr. He was strong, wise, kind and we couldn't have asked for a better king. But even he had his enemies. Kai of Valdis challenged Llyr and defeated him. The place where Kai came from is a dark one. They are called the evil seas, the dark waters"

"The council, of course, didn't accept him and threatened him and his kingdom. But Kai had his own methods. He fed the council lies about Llyr and they believe him like fools. Llyr-"

"What did he tell them?"I ask cutting Nerida, unable to control myself. Nerida sighs but she doesn't refuse to answer my question.

"King Llyr was wise, but he was young. He was hardly twenty when his father had died and he had been crowned as the king. Being young, he wasn't ready for ruling an entire kingdom and taking up so much of responsibility. I mean imagine the amount of stress he must be under. So he appointed one of the members of the court as the in-charge till he returned from the weekly fight training and instead, he actually fled to the Laterum. We suspected he ended up in Lucerne. We were right." Nerida says grinning.

"We have a code of honour and loyalty. We can't reveal ourselves or any information about the seven seas to a human. It's for our own well-being: to protect our race from human greed. Of course, we can tell psychics cause we can't really hide anything from them. They used to be our allies until Llyr was the king. Once Kai defeated him, he tricked the psychics associated with the court into helping him convince the court that Llyr had exposed them to humans using their psychic powers, then murdered them all. Marinus is on the verge of a war with the ones with the sight. The only one who can stop Kai is Llyr."

"Okay, so where is he?" I ask.

"He is dead," Nerida explains. "So basically we are in deep-" but before she can say anything, we hear loud thumping and the sound of something breaking.

From Lee's room.

I run towards his room and I feel my heart contract when I reach the door.

I see Lee lying in a pool of blood.

And beside him, a man standing, his sword glinting in the sunlight.