Two
The Drowned OneYeri's footsteps fell lightly on the floor that she traveled, and yet they sounded booming to her ears. It likely had more to do with the fact that her pulse was racing in her ears as she thought of what she had done. It was one thing to talk about how humans were wicked and evil, and quite another to drag one down to their world. She still wasn't sure that she wouldn't be punished for her actions, but this was a chance to make someone face judgement for the crimes against her people. Crimes that had been happening for centuries and would never stop, and this human could finally be the key to making her people retaliate. If this meeting went as she hoped, anyway.
She pushed her long red hair over her shoulder, the tresses still dripping from her dive out of the depths of the ocean. She had been swimming peacefully in the waters above when the group of humans came through. And really, it was this one's own fault for her anger. The bright light from the device in his hand had been startling the fish and creatures, and Yeri's always simmering anger had risen into full force. Maybe she shouldn't have dragged him down with her, but she couldn't go back now. He was here in their world, and she was at her destination.
Pausing at the ornate golden door, she took a deep breath for courage and lifted her hand to knock. A call to enter was heard, she heaved a breath once again, and then she pushed the door inward to face her own judgement. "Mother," she greeted softly, though she could hear the edge to her own voice. It was always there, she thought, always an underlying tension when she spoke with the woman who had birthed and raised her.
Sungryung's eyes were calculating as she looked at her only daughter. "So who is he?" were the first words out of , even as she turned back to look at the large golden globe before her.
Yeri tore her own gaze away from the glowing orb to look back at her mother's form. "Just a human. I thought that we might be able to prove how humans are if I brought him here." In truth, that was the reason that she had come up with after she had already dragged him down. She hadn't been thinking clearly in her anger, but as she had reached the edge of the dome and pulled the human inside after her, falling to the platform below, she had discovered that his mask had kept him alive. As she stood on her newly reformed feet, looking down at the unconscious form crumpled there on the balcony, she had made her decision. "Let him show those who say we can have peace with humans that they're wrong," she told the older woman now.
Sungryung gave her daughter an amused look, one that said she knew all too well that Yeri hadn't had that idea in mind, but she said nothing to that. Instead she merely turned back to the globe and reached out to trace a finger over it. "A new crack appeared about an hour ago," was what she instead said, and Yeris heart leapt into .
The city of Elbalin was the last of the ancient homes of the once powerful sea folk, the only one that had remained intact when the world flooded with torrential rains and water from the foundations under their feet. It was only the magic of the Triumvirate at the time that kept them alove, and allowed them to adapt to survive in their newly underwater home. The globe was a representative of the dome that kept her city safe, that allowed them to walk on two feet and breathe the thin air, and the cracks were the beginning of the end for them all.
Anger rose within her and she took a step closer, reaching out as if to touch the globe, too, though her hand stopped shy of it. "Why can't they see? War is our only answer! We must crush the humans so they will leave us alone!" She really couldn't understand the Triumvirate's actions. Their people had lived under the surface of the water for centuries, but they still longed to see
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