Asceia, a powerful mermaid, was sent to land to investigate what happened to her kind and to bring them home.
••°°••
After the telepathic connection between the mermaids in the sea and on the land was severed, the Order found this to be very alarmin...
THE NEXT DAY, Troy woke up on his bed again with the sun rays penetrating through the window and warming up his face. He dropped his feet to the floor, he stood and noticed Asceia was not around. He carefully walked out of the room to avoid disturbing Frejean from her sleep. He left the squeaky door open and from the hallway, he saw Asceia on the balcony. She was looking at the woods surrounding them and leaning on the handrail. He didn't bother to say a greeting, instead, he made his way to the bathroom at the end of the hallway to relieve himself and freshen up. On his way back, Asceia was still standing there, but he heard her speak.
"We need to start working now."
"Yeah...sure. I'll go get my laptop and I'll wake Frejean to cook us something. By the way, how's your sleep?"
"I didn't sleep all night. I'm not used to the gravity and the air around."
"Oh..."
He went back inside his room. He shook Frejean's shoulders lightly until she finally woke up. He took his backpack under his bed and carried a wooden chair on his way back to the balcony. On the other hand, Frejean groggily went to the corner of their room where a small wooden table was placed. She lifted the butane gas stove placed on top of it and carried it to the terrace.
"You're cooking here?" Troy asked while he was busy setting up his laptop on a circular table.
"Yep, butane gas stove is not good inside the house or room. It should be used outdoors," she said as she put it on the vacant table in the corner of the balcony.
"What are you going to cook?"
"Noodles." She yawned and turned her attention to Asceia and asked, "Do you eat noodles?"
Asceia looked at her and their eyes met. "I don't know. But I'll try."
Frejean realized it was honestly weird for them to talk like this, where she only got to speak and Asceia would only look at her. For sure, when they are in public, people will be freaked out listening to her talking casually to a silent woman. She just smiled and nodded, and went back inside for their small pot and the noodles.
While Troy was fixated on his laptop, his fingers were busy tapping the keys. Behind, Asceia stood and watched him do his work. Before he started digging up something for the mystery they wanted to unravel, first, he hacked his way through the security cameras of the Flores' Apartment to see what happened yesterday.
His brows furrowed. "Everything's wiped clean!"
Frejean came in carrying a pot filled with water. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"Footages from the surveillance cameras of the third floor are now gone. They wiped it clean again to hide something," he shared while his eyes were locked on the screen. He turned back to his head to glance at Asceia. "What happened there yesterday that they really covered this whole thing up?"
"You will not like it," her voice spoke in both Frejean and Troy's minds.
"Tell us."
"I used my voice. I'm still learning to control it and sometimes, things just get out of hand. I made a series of sounds I know are destructive for the human body."
"You killed them?"
"Yes, including the inhabitants of that floor."
Troy and Frejean were dumbfounded. They did not expect to hear that early in the morning. They just looked at each other and found no words to utter. He took a deep breath and massaged his temple.
"I'm going out to look for a space to train. I need to learn how to fight on land and get used to this environment. You two wanted to help, right? I trust you two will give me something when I get back." Asceia didn't bother to give them a look. She just climbed the railings and jumped down to the ground full of grasses.
••°°••
ASCEIA FOUND A field of bananas not far from the house. In her seclusion, she drew out and extended her barbed stinger on both of her wrists and started attacking the bodies of bananas she imagined to be the military. She practiced moving, trying to get used to the gravity and air surrounding her. With her strength, she threw some kicks, stabbed and slit the bananas' pseudostem and let its sap drip like blood. She also retracted her stinger and threw some heavy punches. Her series of attacks instantly put down bananas to the ground. And after a few minutes, she was panting on top of the pile of pseudostems.
She turned around, took a deep breath, and let out a very loud scream. All of the birds inside the thirty-meter radius fell from their nests and branches and dropped to the ground --- dead. Cracks appeared on the trunk of the trees and crawled around its body up to its branches that snapped and fell off. Many leaves were blown away. And the trees swayed like they were swept by a raging wind. As she closed her mouth, she watched what her voice caused.
"It's hard to use your voice with the air as your medium. The damage you create is lessened unless you're in a very enclosed space."
She looked to her left and there she saw her mother, in her sercean form, floating in the air. In the Order of serceans, the bond between a mother and her child allows not just telepathic communication but also to tap into each other's senses once granted by both sides. And at this moment, Asceia allowed her Mother to visit her telepathically to oversee her training.
"I still can't control it. I just wanted to destroy that tree alone and not affect the others." She sighed in frustration.
"As I said, it's hard to direct your sound waves on a specific target with the air as your medium. Using your voice means destroying everything around you. That's why you need to get stronger so your damage will remain critical just as in the water. And only use your voice under the right circumstances."
"This is not how I want to use the Voice of the Ocean, Mother. Our ancestors didn't use theirs to destroy, they used it to help build civilizations."
"I know...But our voice today is far different from our ancestors. The chosen Sirenceans before can sway human and sercean minds. But one of them used the Voice of the Ocean to take over a village of humans. Our Goddess punished her and gave our Family a destructive voice."
She sat on one of the pseudostems and wiped off the sweat on her forehead. "If only I have the Voice of the Ocean. I could find our people as quickly as possible."
"The Voice of the Ocean is long gone, Asceia. All we have is this. So now, go back to your training. Make use of this place and time."
°°••°°
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