Chapter Text
Moving was never fun. It was boring, tiring, and took forever - even more so when it wasn’t just from one city to another but instead to another nation entirely. Belongings had to be packed and housing had to be found. Employment also needed to be secured before the move, meaning a lot of commuting unless those making the move were lucky.
The twins, Lumine and Aether, just happened to be those lucky ones, though it would be more apt to say that it was through hard work and perseverance instead of luck.
They had saved up money all throughout their lives, starting when they had just been small children in the foster system that failed them miserably, forcing them to grow up before they’d even left primary school.
They’d learned at that young age to hoard all of the meager money they received on their birthday, at Christmas, and even the small sums they’d received while working odd jobs around the various neighborhoods they’d lived in. Sometimes it was moving the neighbors’ lawn or washing their cars. Other times it was working under the table for local fast food restaurants for small tips that wouldn’t appear on the companies’ tax documents.
They did everything they could think of.
A few times, one of the many other foster children they lived with would find their savings and steal them. Each time, the twins would double down on their earnings and find a new hiding spot for their Mora stash until they were finally old enough to get a proper bank account without the need of a guardian to co-sign for them.
By the time they both graduated high school, they had somehow amassed enough money for their dream: to move to a new country and start their life anew.
It was a dream they had shared together for the longest time: a completely fresh start to their life. No one would be able to hold their troubled past against them.
Had they still possibly managed to jump the gun on that decision? Yes. Yes, they had. The costs ended up being higher than they’d anticipated even with all of their planning, and they ended up having to discard many of their less important items to afford the moving truck for the belongings that were precious to them - and the essential furniture they’d need such as their beds and a few kitchen appliances.
Still, that first day when they stepped into their new apartment in Fontaine for the first time, not having even done a walk-through beforehand due to travel expenses, Lumine and Aether were excited beyond belief. It was a proper apartment, with actual bedrooms instead of just a studio with only a common room instead of bedrooms that the twins had to squeeze into.
Their college life started right after their move, able to pay for the expensive tuition thanks to the numerous scholarships that Aether and Lumien had been able to complete and be accepted as recipients for, and each of them were ready to start their adult education in their own fields of study. Aether, ever the people person, chose to pursue the first part of the long process to become a teacher, aiming for his Bachelor’s Degree first, where he would then go on to get his teaching certification.
Lumine, however, went into a wildly different area of study: marine biology. Her love for the ocean and its inhabitants had begun at a very young age, when one of the primary schools she and Aether had attended had a field trip to the aquarium for those who had excellent grades at the end of the school year. She’d tried her hardest to get onto that list, spending many nights going over her handouts from class and past quizzes, and when she finally saw her name written on the whiteboard in the classroom, Lumine had almost cried.
There had been many varieties of fish on display that she’d never even heard of before, though she had been filled with a sense of melancholy at the thought of so many magnificent creatures trapped in small cages of glass to be gawked at every day by hoards of screaming children or ignored by their uninterested guardians. It was then that she’d set her eyes upon a certain future, one where she would spend her days seeing everything in its natural habitat, working to save all manner of fish and underwater mammals as a marine biologist.
She’d even managed to buy a small stuffed shark that day in the gift shop, and it was one of the few objects that Lumine had taken with her every time she moved foster homes, even taking it as a good luck charm when she and Aether finally left Mondstadt. It was worn with age and missing one of its eyes, replaced by a plain button.
Fontaine was their new beginning.
Lumine was walking through Fontaine City on a small day trip with a couple of her classmates, Navia and Clorinde, when she was stopped by a store clerk that stood outside one of the many shops along the large city’s main boulevard.
“Miss, hello!” The man waved the trio down and held a pamphlet out to Lumine, the one who happened to be closest to him on the sidewalk. “You should take a look at this! For every 250 Mora spent here today, we’re offering a spin on our prize wheel for amazing prizes! Every spin is a winner!”
Navia and Clorinde didn’t seem interested, but if there was one thing that could attract Lumine’s attention, it was a chance to get something for free. She’d learned to be extremely frugal growing up, slaving hours every week scouring sales and rationing coupons to get by while spending as little as possible.
As soon as the man mentioned that every spin was a win, she broke off from her friends and walked over to the shopfront to see what they specialized in.
It was a small shop that seemed to carry various imported food items from the other neighboring nations, offering anything from the mushrooms in Sumeru that sprouted from a shroom-boar’s back that could be used to make a variety of decadent and flavorful dishes, to the exotic Chenyu Adeptea that was grown only in Liyue’s Chenyu Vale. There were also ingredients from Inazuma as well as from Lumine’s homeland of Mondstadt.
She only spent a small time looking over the prizes on the wheel in question. Even some of the smaller items had attracted her attention, though she didn’t bother looking at the grand prizes. Lumine had never had very good luck in such things, and she was convinced that she’d never win one of those, content instead with some of the smaller prizes.
The wheel was divided into several sections, each one with a colored number on it designating what prize belonged to it. There were different tiers of prizes, ranging from a small handful of coupons for the shop’s items, to a decently-sized set of tea dishes to be used with a large supply of Chenyu Adeptea. The “grand” prizes were on extremely small slivers of the wheel and consisted of two free tickets to the Opera Epiclese, a relaxing weekend stay in the small and picturesque town of Petrichor, and finally, two passes to go diving in the Elton Trench.
As soon as Lumine saw that last prize, she was immediately determined to try and win it, silently arguing with herself to justify a couple of small purchases for a chance to see her dreams come true. It would have been the perfect chance to truly immerse herself in the local underwater flora and fauna.
Since she loved to cook - another hobby she’d picked up - it wasn’t hard to convince her to enter the shop and browse for something she could make her and Aether for dinner that night. After whispering an apology to Navia and Clorinde, Lumine spent several minutes perusing the selections and ended up spending a neat sum of 1340 Mora, enough for 5 prize-wheel spins.
She’d bought enough ingredients to make a Liyuen dish that night: black-back perch stew, one of Aether’s favorite meals.
After Lumine finished shopping, she was handed five small tickets to give to the clerk outside, and she met back up with Navia and Clorinde, tickets clutched tightly in her fingers, her tote bag full of groceries.
“Wow, look at you,” Navia grinned at her, shaking her head. “Your brother wasn’t kidding when he said you would jump at a sale, huh.”
Lumine stuck her tongue out at her, placing her ticket-laden hand on her hip in a very sassy manner. “Oh, hush. You’re gonna be jealous when I win an awesome prize!”
The girls were the first people she’d become friends with after moving to Fontaine, thanks to the fact that they all had a couple of classes together at the university. They also happened to sit near each other on the first day and had become fast friends thanks to their compatible natures. They’d also gotten to know Aether - by extension - as well.
The clerk waited patiently for Lumine to approach him, a large smile on his face. When she presented the tickets to him, he took the wheel and gave it the first spin. Lumine held her breath, overcome with the desperate desire to win the diving trip. For the first four spins, all she won were three identical coupon sets and a small package of pre-made tricolor dango.
She mouthed a silent prayer to the Archons - all of them - in an attempt to increase her chances of winning. Lumine wanted it so badly, to swim deep in the ocean and to watch the wildlife swim around her… time seemed to almost slow to a crawl as she watched the wheel spin. It passed the diving trip’s small wedge several times, until finally…
It landed on that sliver, and her fervent prayers were granted.
Lumine couldn’t believe it, unconsciously pinching herself on the arm hard enough to bruise in an attempt to see if she was dreaming or not. She wasn’t.
“Congratulations!” The store clerk grinned at her, seemingly as excited as he assumed she would be.
It took her an embarrassingly long time to respond, looking at Navia and Clorinde and then back at the wheel once more. “...I won?”
“You did!”
She was handed an envelope that contained all of the information she would need to call and register for the trip as well as a small set of coupons to join the several she already had along with the small package of tricolor dango.
Lumine was in a state of shock as Navia and Clorinde led her away from the shop and back towards their cars. She’d never been so lucky in her life, and there was only one thing left to do before she could go on this trip: convince Aether to come with her. For reasons she couldn’t father, her twin wasn’t fond of the ocean - despite willingly move to Fontaine, the country of Hydro - with her. Every time they had to ride an aquabus, he sat rigidly still, hands gripping the handrails for dear life.
Navia had to repeat whatever she’d said several times while Lumine was deep in thought.
“Huh?” Lumine blinked, frowning.
“I asked if you were going to be okay diving. You haven’t gone before, right?”
Oh, right. There was that angle, too.
The twins had been more concerned with getting settled into their new lives: attending their classes and going to work. They hadn’t really had time to go sightseeing or to enjoy all of the activities Fontaine had to offer. There was a lot to plan before they would be able to take their trip, like making sure it was during a week where they both didn’t have classes or work shifts. She brainstormed the schedule for the next few weeks the whole way back to their apartment after she bid Navia and Clorinde goodbye.
Luckily, Aether didn’t take too much pushing and prodding before he’d agreed to go diving with Lumine, and before long, the twins arrived at the orientation class they had to pass before they could dive. It was meant to show them the ropes so that they didn’t panic underwater and accidentally drown.
Lumine took to the water like a fish, easily swimming around even with the heavy air tanks and was extremely calm while practicing, with Aether… required a bit more guidance before he was confident enough to even go into the water without someone literally holding his hand.
Finally, though, they both completed their class and were scheduled to dive with a small group of people the next day. That night, they went back to the small motel where they’d gotten a cheap room for their stay in the small town on the coast where they would board the boat to go to the Trench. It wasn’t a very glamorous hotel, but it would work just fine for the twins.
After a quick dinner of fast food had been devoured, they were left with nothing to do until the next morning, and Lumine could scarcely contain her excitement. Aether had gone to bed early, entirely exhausted by all of the swimming he’d done that day. It took until almost two in the morning for Lumine to finally fall asleep, only a couple of hours before they needed to wake up and prepare for the long and exciting day ahead of them.
—
The loud blaring of Lumine’s cellphone alarm woke them up bright and early, before the first rays of light could brighten the room through the windows.
“Lu, you get it,” Aether mumbled, rolling over to pull the blanket up closer against his chin, snuggling back down further against the mattress.
All he got in response was a low groan from the other bed and the sound of blankets being shuffled as Lumine slowly sat up and groped around blindly for her phone, eyes still closed. In her sleep-ridden mind, she must have forgotten where they were, but as soon as she finally opened her eyes and saw the message on her alarm that read “get the f*ck up! Diving today!!” she shot up out of bed, fighting to untangle herself from the blankets.
“Ae, wake up! It’s time!”
That didn’t seem to mean anything to him. “Time for what?” His words were mumbled, muffled beneath the blanket he’d just tucked even higher around himself.
Lumine sighed in exasperation, rolling her eyes - not that he could see since his own were still closed as he rolled over to get comfortable and fall back asleep again.
“Time to go diving!” Her words were accompanied by a pillow she’d aimed right at his head that hit him directly in the face, making him sputter and flail to knock it off of him.
“The sun hasn’t even risen,” Aether grumbled as he finally sat up in bed, stretching as his back popped loudly several times. “I thought our time to dive wasn’t for a couple of hours at least.”
Lumine had just finished brushing her teeth, going as fast as possible, and she glared at him. “Yeah, but we need to get dressed, eat breakfast, and get ready to dive! That will all take time, and the sooner we head out, the sooner we’ll be able to go!”
It was clear that she was beyond excited, hardly able to stay in one place as she finished getting ready. First she grabbed what she needed to shower, taking advantage of Aether’s drowsiness to get in first and use a lot of the hot water. He’d wake up quicker if he was forced to use lukewarm - or even a bit chilly - water.
She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d fallen back asleep in the time it took her to finish her shower. Luckily though, he was still awake, taking the time to braid his hair and pin it up so it wouldn’t get in his way while they were underwater. He looked up when she walked back into the main area of their hotel room where their two beds were located.
“Did you really just take a shower before we’re going diving? You’re going to be in the water!”
Lumine made a face at him while she started to comb her hair. “We’ll be meeting the diving instructors before then, and I don’t want to be gross for that! The fish are gonna stay away from you,” she teased, wrinkling her nose like she could smell him from all the way across the room.
“Don’t you know that it’s impossible to smell underwater? I thought you were the marine biologist here, not me,” Aether shot back, sticking his tongue out.
She stared at him. “...Aether, if fish can’t smell, then why do they have nostrils?”
Aether frowned, realizing his mistake. “...Shut up.”
Lumine teased him about it the whole time they were out getting breakfast and while they made their way to the harbor where their small boat would depart and head out into the open ocean of Fontaine.
Since the twins had spent some time the previous day learning the basics of diving, they were some of the first in their small group to finish getting their wet suits and other equipment ready. While everyone else struggled with their tasks, Lumine and Aether took the time to look at the scenery and talk quietly to one another until it was time for the boat to leave.
Aether was clearly nervous, his hands gripping his knees so tightly that his knuckles were white as the boat pulled away from the docks and headed out towards open water.
“It’ll be alright, Ae! You did fine yesterday!” Lumine tried to soothe his worries though it didn’t appear to help too much.
He took in deep breaths to force his body to relax, and by the time he was breathing normally again, they’d reached their destination: right at one edge of the Elton Trench. They all looked down at the deep, dark ocean below them.
Their diving coach that day wasn’t the same one they’d been taught by, but the twins assumed that he was just as skilled as the other one. He was a slightly older man, his wind-tossed hair streaked with silver here and there, with a tattoo of an anchor on his right bicep. There wasn’t anything else noticeable about his appearance, and there was no doubt that if Lumine had to pick him out of a lineup, she’d be unable to. He was that plain-looking. He seemed to navigate the boat and his diving equipment with ease, and that filled Aether with the hope that this dive would be mostly uneventful.
He would swim a little, Lumine would get her fill of the ocean for a while, and the pair would be back in their own beds that night.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
After everyone had all of their wet suits situated and their equipment attached, the instructor’s assistant - someone whose job was to ferry the group out over the trench and then to keep the boat in position while waiting for everyone to return - put the boat in neutral and gave the instructor a thumbs up before he addressed the inexperienced group of fledgling divers.
“I hope you all have a great trip! I’ll be here the whole time if anyone decides they’re done early and want to get back on the boat! There’s no shame in coming back!” He let the diving instructor take it from there.
He’d be the last one to enter the water, and one by one, each person took their turn at the back of the boat, rolling backwards until they went back-first and legs-up into the water. Lumine was one of the first to volunteer to do so, fearless in the face of the unknown deep below. She was only under the water for a couple of seconds before her head popped up through the surface, and she gave a thumbs up to everyone on the boat.
Inspired by her confidence, several of the other rookie divers entered the water as well, until only Aether and the dive instructor remained on the boat.
“Come on, son. Just sit on the edge there and lean back until you go over. It’ll be over in a second, and then you can join your twin,” the dive instructor encouraged, clapping his hand hard against Aether’s shoulder.
Sending up a silent prayer to any Archon that would listen, Aether gathered his courage and fell backwards into the water, instinctively holding his breath and closing his eyes tightly even though he had a regulator in his mouth and a pair of goggles covering his nose and eyes. He expected the water to be freezing when he hit it, but thanks to the temperate climate as well as the fact that he was wearing an insulated wet suit, he didn’t feel cold at all. It was actually quite pleasant.
Aether felt the water ripple as someone swam over to him, and he carefully opened his eyes to see Lumine treading water in front of him. He knew her well enough to know that if she didn’t have the regulator in her mouth, she’d be grinning from ear to ear. She gave him a thumbs up, though, and grabbed the marker and slate that she had attached to her wet suit.
It was a piece of equipment that each diver had attached to them, meant to be used to communicate underwater when hand signals couldn’t be used to convey their messages accurately. The markers were able to be used underwater, and the slates could be easily swiped clean and reused.
Lumine scribbled a short message on her slate and then turned it around so Aether could read it.
“Good job! :D Are you ready to go under?” She looked at him expectantly, co*cking her head slightly while waiting for him to reply.
He didn’t have to write anything down to roll his eyes to convey how he thought about that, nodding after a moment’s hesitation.
Their diving instructor entered the water next with a small splash, popping up through the surface a moment later, in the middle of the small group. During their ride over to the Elton Trench, everyone had been given their instructions and the rules they were all supposed to follow. The most important one was that they would be operating on the “buddy system,” meaning that under no circ*mstances, no one was to go anywhere alone.
Naturally, Lumine and Aether paired up with each other.
Everyone had enough oxygen to last them for a couple of hours, though the mix of gasses in their tanks would only support shallow dives. Anything too deep and they’d run the risk of becoming ill thanks to the immense pressure that’d be placed on their bodies at greater depths. It also meant that they wouldn’t need to take very much time for decompression stops when coming back to the surface.
Just a short, shallow, and easy dive.
Once they were cleared to go off on their own, Lumine took the lead and slipped below the surface of the water to examine some coral formations not too far down from the surface. Aether followed closely behind her, and he even accidentally bumped into her when she suddenly stopped to watch a small crab crawl into a gap in the coral. She turned around to look at him and pushed him away slightly.
Aether knew that she was probably annoyed with how clingy he was being, but there wasn’t much more he could do when he was so nervous. He wanted to be brave and explore with her, but it was a bit too soon for him to have that confidence. She seemed to realize this and scribbled something on her slate again before she turned it towards him.
“Stay here while I explore the reef?”
That wasn’t a good idea, and he knew that, but she would only be a few feet away, and it wasn’t like they were supposed to stay within arms’ length of each other… right?”
He wrote his response on his own slate. “Don’t go far.”
Lumine gave him a thumbs up before holding up her hands, all her fingers splayed out.
Ten minutes?
Thinking that that was what she meant, Aether nodded and gave a thumbs up back to his twin. He watched as she swam away and around a small bend in the natural reef, obscuring her from his view. Alarmed, he swam upwards just enough so that he could see her again, and upon noticing that she did indeed seem to be staying close, he busied himself with obsessively watching the dive computer attached to his wrist and carefully counted his breaths to make sure he wasn’t using up too much air too quickly.
He took his eyes off of Lumine, then.
—
What Lumine had tried to communicate really was that she would only be gone ten minutes, but she had no intention of just looking around the small coral reef along the surface. Instead, she wanted to go back to an interesting-looking crevice she’d seen as they were swimming closer to the reef.
It took her a good minute to backtrack and locate it. That was how small and unassuming the crevice had been, halfway hidden by a large cluster of kelp swaying in the water and blocking the entrance from view.
When she was finally close enough to peer into the opening, Lumine was surprised by what she found.
The crevice was an entrance to a much larger chamber, one she was surprised to see look so undisturbed, even if the entrance had been partially hidden. There was a small current that seemed to pull her inwards, and against her better judgment, she tried to move closer and get a better look inside. Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately - the air tanks on her back made her too big to easily fit inside.
But if Lumine was anything, it wasn’t a quitter.
She pulled off her air tank, the small reserve tank, and a couple of other items attached to her wetsuit and used the rock surrounding the crevice to gently wedge them in place. Once Lumine was sure that they wouldn’t go anywhere, she slid into the crevice sideways, still barely able to fit despite her small size. After she successfully cleared the entrance, she reached through it and pulled her tanks in, reattaching everything to her wet suit.
If she had looked at her dive computer, she’d have noticed that nearly seven minutes had already passed in the time she struggled to complete her preliminary objective to get into the cavern chamber.
But she didn’t.
Only a very small amount of light was able to filter through the crevice opening, a sliver of brightness that extended a short length into the darkness. Lumine had a flashlight attached to her wet suit for just such an occasion, and she pulled it out and turned it on. Instantly visibility had increased though it was only for about a meter in front of her. The sediment that had been kicked up when she squeezed her way into the chamber obscured her vision any farther than that, the silt acting like a thick fog that the beam of light just bounced back on.
A small school of fish darted out towards her, startled by the sudden light - and they startled her in turn as she started to flail, trying to swim backwards away from them, only to succeed in smacking the air tank on her back against one wall of the chamber, dislodging even more silt from it.
The shock from the collision almost made her lose the regulator she breathed through, something that could have had devastating results: drowning her.
Her heart pounded in her chest, and Lumine closed her eyes, willing herself to calm down. An elevated heart rate meant she was breathing too heavily and too quickly, using up the air in her tanks at a much quicker rate than she would if calm. There was no way she was going to waste the chance of a lifetime with such a stupid mistake.
Instead, she made another stupid mistake.
She turned around to try and locate the entrance to the crevice out into the open ocean… while the silt was still stirred up, completely disorienting her. Lumine didn’t even know what was up or down, let alone what direction she was facing.
Panic had begun to set in despite her best efforts to stay calm.
Suddenly, Lumine felt the small current from before, gently swirling around her body, and she remembered that she’d felt it coming into the crevice. Using her last shred of critical thinking capacity, she realized that all she had to do was follow the flow in the reverse direction to backtrack and successfully get herself out of this citation. So that’s what she did.
There was only one problem that Lumine wasn’t aware of: There were two currents in the chamber, and only one of them would have led her back into the open sea.
She just so happened to pick the wrong current and swam deeper into the cavern.
Blindly following the current with her hand outstretched to one wall, her gloved fingers tracing over the rough rock to make sure she kept moving forward, Lumine made tiny progress as she kept inching along, going further and further into the chamber. If she had checked her dive computer then, she would have noticed that the ten minutes were up as well as that over half of the oxygen in her tank had been used up.
What she couldn’t have known was the degree that Aether was panicking.
He stared at his dive computer, watching as the seconds ticked by until it showed that nine minutes had passed. Aether began to get anxious because there was still no sign of Lumine anywhere. There wasn’t anyone around him, only small fish that flitted in and out of the coral and clumps of kelp waving through the water. Leaving the spot where he’d been floating next to an outcropping of rock where she’d left him was a horrible idea, knowing that it would only make it harder for them to reunite, so he stayed put.
…Until then minutes had gone by.
With no sign of Lumine emerging from the coal, Aether knew that he needed to act. Mentally cursing his twin’s adventurous spirit, he began to swim in the direction Lumine had gone in, but he completely missed the small crevice in the rock and swam right past it.
If he’d slowed down, he might have noticed the cloudy water where the silt was still settling from where Lumine had churned it up in her panic.
Lumine swam for what seemed like forever as she tried to get through the massive cloud of silt and out into clearer waters. Logically she knew that she should have found the crevice by then, and when her fingers finally slipped into an opening that she instantly assumed was the entrance, she didn’t hesitate. Without waiting for visible confirmation, she slipped into the opening, completely forgetting that she’d had to remove her tank and some of her equipment when she’d entered it before.
This time, the hole was wide enough to fit through without having to do any of that.
When Lumine pushed herself through the new opening, it was like she’d been teleported into a completely different place. Gone were the silt and cloudy water, replaced instead with near-complete darkness. Even the flashlight beam no longer bounced off of the churn up sediment, could only reach a foot in front of her.
It was then that she realized that she was in another place entirely.
Lumine turned around to go back the way she had come, only to be faced with a wall, no entrance or opening in sight. It didn’t make sense. There should have been the hole she’d just come through, but no matter where she swam and and forth trying to find it, she was unsuccessful.
She was panicking again. One look at her dive computer let her know that she’d somehow ended up tens of meters deeper than she’d been the last time she’d checked it… which meant that she was in that much more peril.
The mixture of oxygen and other gasses in the tank she was breathing from wasn’t meant for that depth, and she could already feel the adverse effects, her head swimming and her limbs starting to tremble.
There was a real danger that she’d pass out and drown to death - alone in the darkness.
Luckily - or unluckily - it didn’t come to that. Instead, Lumine was suddenly slammed back into the wall by something so strong that it felt like she weighed little more than a feather. The impact knocked Lumine’s goggles off, and saltwater immediately flooded her nose and got into her eyes, making her clamp her hand over them. She was turned head over heels in the water, floundering to try and right herself, not knowing what was up or what was down.
Whatever it was that attacked her did it again, and she felt a blinding pain in her side as something tore through her wet suit and then into her flesh.
The shock of the cold water coming through the wet suit’s broken seal - so different from the warm, temperate waters she’d been in before - was what shook her from her pained stupor more than the actual wound aching itself.
Lumine kicked out instinctively, and her foot collided with something solid, though it wasn’t what attacked her. Instead, it was what wall of whatever cavern she was in, sending shooting pain up through her foot and into her leg. She’d likely broken at least a couple of bones there. Panic bloomed in her chest once more, and with the last ounce of strength she had left, she opened her eyes to try and see what was attacking her.
What she saw didn’t make any sense to her.
Barely visible through the cloud of red - of her blood that flowed freely from the gash in her side and from scrapes on her arms and legs through her torn wet suit - was a man? Or at least half of a man… and half of a fish.
A merman watched her warily as he twisted around, gnashing sharp and crooked teeth in her direction before he suddenly attacked her again. His fins were bright yellow, with stripes racing down his sides into the bloom of his tail fin.
Lumine felt blinding pain in her arm as the creature bit down on it. She could feel the bone splinter under the force of that bite, and her head swam as the blood loss began to make her feel weak as well as becoming disoriented from the gas mixture in her nearly-empty air tanks.
She knew she was going to die.
All Lumine could do was think about he she’d be leaving Aether all alone, that they probably wouldn’t even find her body… Tears leaked from her burning eyes, mingling with the mixture of ocean water and her blood.
The last thing she saw before the regulator slipped from her mouth and she blacked out, was the shadow of something else approaching.
—
If she had remained conscious, she would have seen a much larger, more intimidating mer-creature approach them, attracted by the smell of blood.
Wriothesley was minding his own business swimming from his home towards a small hideout he’d built years before as a much younger mer. The other merfolk avoided him and gave him a wide berth, and he couldn’t really blame them. Compared to most other species, the fact that he was a mershark made him much larger than everyone else. It didn’t help that he’d also conditioned his body to stay fit, made of muscle and power.
His tail thrashed in the water, signaling his agitation while he swam. When he approached the dark cavern that would lead him out of the mer-kingdom and into the open seas of the human realm of Fontaine, he paused.
Wriothesley could smell the unmistakable scent of blood, largely thanks in part to his keen sense of smell.
Unconsciously attracted to it, his stomach growling instinctively, he followed the scent until he realized it led into the cavern on the border of his kingdom. Not only that, but the blood didn’t smell anything like any fish species he’d encountered before, and with a start, he realized why: it belonged to a human.
An injured one.
His curiosity peaked, Wriothesley increased his swim speed and darted into the cavern to see what was going on. That was when he saw the human diver getting attacked by a lone merman. From the patterns on the merman’s fins, he instantly knew that he needed to do something.
The large stripe on the man’s tail indicated that he belonged to one of the small gangs of bandits that liked to roam the kingdom, terrorizing innocent families and preying on whatever they could get their webbed hands on.
Being a shark species of merman, Wriothesley was prone to being just a bit territorial. So when he saw the intruder in his territory, he acted without thinking. It only took one precise strike as well as a strong grip on his victim’s throat, crushing it like it was nothing.
Then he turned to the human that was sinking deeper into the cavern. Right before her eyes closed, he saw her almost… reach out to him?
Filled with a sudden curiosity, Wriothesley acted without thinking, swimming down to her level while watching her carefully. With her blonde hair framing her face, flowing elegantly around her, she seemed almost like an angel.
I can’t just leave her here…
