Death and Duty - Fantasy Smackdown Round 1

Part 5

I read the words that I had recounted to my students in the depths many times. My memories were fiercer than the words I had written.

I remembered the acrid scent of the cannons and gunpowder, the snap of the sails and the crack of wood splintering as a cannonball found its mark. I heard Da-Xia’s screams as she laboured to bring forth her child.

I shooed the sharks toward the ships, away from my mother, my sister and their patient. I kept to the outer reefs, with the other younger girls, fewer in number than the girls I taught now.

I saw the human dive from his vessel and sent a wave toward him, to push him back toward his ship and keep him from my family.

“Mother, help me! I am hit!” I heard Healer Duyong scream.

Mother did her duty, as always, but I saw her turn to help Duyong, despite duty or any other consideration, before she resolved to do what she had to. She dragged the human down deep and I watched him die, the boom of cannons barely background noise to the sound of my sister screaming.

I saw the blood blossom from Mother’s arm, but her call was as strong as the voice she gave to me. No shark approached her as she swam to my sister and her charge, only to find she was too late.

To my shame, it was my voice that I raised, to sing to the ships over the fire fight on the surface. My anger was so great that I would have killed every human aboard, shattering their skulls with my song.

I watched with bitter satisfaction as the closer ship’s captain responded. He ran his vessel aground on the reef, the keel splintering and shattering as the waves ground it flat. Smoke rose from the deck and I shaped the waves to skirt the vessel, letting the fire burn without cease. The sound of the mast snapping split the air and it landed with a splash in the water, ripping the bottom out of the vessel. It sank deeper into the water.

The second ship’s captain found a different focus for his siren-induced recklessness. He spotted another ship and moved out of range of Mother to attack more humans instead.

I turned to assist my mother in healing my sister, but Sephira was gone to the depths, dragging two bodies with her. Heartsick, I headed for the beach.

Lit by the fires aboard the vessel I had wrecked, I shifted to human form and let tears flow as I sobbed on the sand. No eight-year-old child should witness the death of her own sister. The memory is shrouded in sadness even today.