The Little Water Elf

6- Siren

「 Like the hidden sad story of the ocean,
my heart floats on the waves,
waiting for you—
who will return through the sea. 」

Viren watched the elf be carried into the castle, his palm resting on his pocket, where a small voice was clutched tightly in a clawed hand.

The die had been set, now all he had to do was wait for the right opportunity. He was good at waiting.

Besides, in the meantime he had her voice to work with. He had to find a way to extract the magic from it. Perhaps it could be taken and stored some place — like a primal stone — for later use.

An Ocean Elf's voice was powerful, he'd been unlucky enough to witness it firsthand.

Sirens were what they became known as. Sirens were the ones that had caused tragedy that one night. Their ship had sailed too close to the border during a storm, and Queen Sarai...

Yes indeed, he could do wondrous things with the voice of a siren.

•  •  •

Rayla looked at herself in the mirror, still too stunned to really react. That was her. It was really her. It was what she would look like if she had been born a human.

The dress she wore was extravagant, and extremely heavy. The silk skirt hung down her legs, pooling on the floor around her as a servant silently pinned the gown to her figure. There was what she learned to be a corset crushing her ribs, and the light coral color brought out the glimmer of her eyes. Pearls were beaded along the hem, and traces of blue and silver string criss-crossed along the skirt, creating intricate patterns that resembled the ocean. How the colors ended up going together, Rayla had no clue.

It was gorgeous — though extremely uncomfortable.

The corset was needlessly tight, crushing the air out of her already too-small lungs. Viren hadn't thought to expand them — ocean elves had lungs already, just get rid of the gills and trade the tail for legs and they'd be fine on land. She wished there was a way to have mentioned that to him. The fabric along the outside wasn't that bad, it was what went underneath that hurt. They'd added several layers of some kind of mesh to make the skirt bigger, and it rubbed uncomfortably against her dry skin.

Another thing Viren seemed to have conveniently forgotten, mermaids were meant to spend their entire lives in water. She'd been dry for maybe an hour and already her skin had become painfully dry. Thankfully, from what she could see, there were no scales. It appeared as if her scales had been completely replaced with soft human skin. It was weird looking at herself and not seeing the soft light-blue glow that was caused by her scales.

Everything was much heavier on land, and she was hoping she didn't have to wear the gown for long, and that it could be easily replaced with a simpler one.

Maybe that girl, Claudia, had something she could wear.

A pair of slippers were placed in front of the elf, and she carefully stepped into them. White filled her vision in a flash as the pain raced through her. She sucked in a breath, biting her lip as the soles of her feet felt as if a million tiny knives were shredding into her skin.

She pushed the image to the back of her mind.

The servant stood, stepping away after finishing the needed alterations. Earlier a nurse had been sent in to examine her for any possible injuries, only to find that she was completely healthy.

She heard two servants talking about her, they thought she was a victim of a shipwreck from the night before. Apparently there had been a storm, though Rayla hadn't been awake to witness it.

The servants left and Rayla was left alone in the room, which appeared to be a bedroom? There was a large plush object at one side of the room, and she was currently standing by what she assumed was a closet — though it was currently mostly empty.

She heard the door open, and Rayla looked in the mirror to see who it was.

Her eyes widened, and she quickly turned to face the man despite the pain that erupted in her feet.

She tried to speak, only to remember that she couldn't. He'd stolen her voice.

Viren approached the elf at a casual pace, hands folded behind his back. He stopped in front of the girl, studying her.

"It's nice to see the spell was a success," he finally said, "I've never attempted a full transformation before, so the drawbacks are quite surprising at the moment."

The was a small silence, since Rayla couldn't reply.

"Oh, that's right, you no longer have your voice," Viren abruptly continued, "I am here to bring you to dinner, and to prepare you. You will be in the presence of the royal family of Katolis. We should hurry, it would be rude to keep them waiting."

Rayla nodded, bunching up her skirt and stepping down from the platform that the maids had her stand on while they tailored the dress.

She thought she had been prepared for the pain, but when the feeling of fire entered her veins once more, she found her vision going white. It was different this time. Rayla found her legs unable to support her own weight, and she crumpled to the ground as she tried to think of anything, anything but the feeling of agony that filled her being.

She shut her eyes. The elf was no longer moving, so why was the pain refusing to fade?

Then it hit her.

This was the drawback. It was the side effect of black magic stealing the essence of a primal source. It was the spell stealing the magic from within her.

Another thought crossed her mind, this was the first time Viren had said he'd done any magic like this, and that it would draw from her very being. What would happen when all of the magic was gone? Would she become just a plain human?

She had a feeling it was a lot worse.

When it finally diminished — what felt like an eternity later — she found that her body had grown surprisingly weak.

Viren simply stood there.

Heaving in an unsteady breath, Rayla pulled herself to her feet, the ache still there and quite potent, but not nearly as bad as it had been moments before.

She followed Viren out of the room and into the unknown.

[small note as i'm re-reading this after starting to study historical fashion— the description about the corset is inaccurate. corsets aren't meant to be worn like that, and i was only copying what i saw every other book describe them as. historically speaking, corsets were never meant to be tight-laced, and were more often used to help create the illusion of a more pronounced figure, and oftentimes they were only ever used for back support. i know it shouldn't really matter considering this is fanfic, but i've seen so many cosplayers lace corsets incorrectly and harm themselves in doing so because that's how they've always been told corsets are meant to be worn.]