What the Tide Brings

Chapter 38 - Kaelin - Stand Together

Arlen circled back around to strike at them again, his first attack having gone astray when Calder blasted him aside with a surge of water. Calder grabbed Kaelin around the waist and kicked off with his long silver tail, careening through the dark water, trying to elude Arlen.

Kaelin was little more use than a rag doll in her brother's arms. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck. They were moving too fast for her human legs to do much more than dangle limply in the wake left by Calder's tail.

When Calder finally came to a stop, to cast out a blast of magic that created icy shards in the water, which he used to blast the Southern mers, Kaelin pulled away from him, taking the opportunity to change her form, now that she had recovered a bit of her energy, and now that she had someone to watch her back.

It didn't take long before she was just another mermaid in the crowd.

Back in her true form, magic surged throughout her body, buzzing in her veins like electricity. As a human, it took more focus and energy to use magic, but as a mermaid it was instinctual, as simple as flexing a limb. It was as much a part of her as her tail or her arms.

Meanwhile, Calder swam ahead of her, straight toward Arlen. Kaelin was about to follow when her eyes caught on the sight of her sister, trying to fend off six mermen singlehandedly. Even with magic that was too much.

Kaelin knew she had to help, so she pushed herself to reach Amaya before she was overpowered.

Out of nowhere, something hard barreled into Kaelin's side, driving her down to the ocean floor. Someone tossed her bodily against the sand with such force that the water wasn't cushion enough to slow her progress. She crashed hard, sending up a plume of displaced sand that blocked her view of her surroundings.

Through the cloud of debris, an angry mermaid appeared. It was the very same mermaid who'd attacked her before, looking angrier than before as she struck out with her sword and pierced Kaelin's left shoulder, too close to her heart for comfort. The mermaid was going for a killing blow. She swung the blade around again, leaving a thin bloody line on Kaelin's torso, when Kaelin wasn't fast enough to get out of the way.

Kaelin held her hand to her shoulder wound, to slow the flow of blood, until she could focus enough to heal it. She slipped away from the next blow and took off swimming toward a rock outcropping. She needed a moment's reprieve to stop this bleeding before it made her pass out.

She pressed her back to the rough surface of the rock and used her camouflaging ability to blend into the background. Now, she needed to stop the bleeding before she was discovered again. She knew she couldn't wait for it to heal on its own, which could take several minutes that she didn't know if she had, so Kaelin supercharged the water between her palm and her shoulder until it was so hot that it burned her skin to cauterize her wound and stop the bleeding. If she could have cried she would've been bawling. She had never felt so much pain in her life. It left her shaky and strangely cold. Plus, there was now an ugly scar on her shoulder that she might not be able to fix later, but at least she wouldn't bleed to death.

However, with the good only came more bad, as she soon came to realize when the mermaid found her again, what had been the perfect hiding spot, had become the perfect trap for herself, blocked in against the rocks with no means of escape.

If the golden tailed mermaid's hard face weren't enough to prove her disdain against Kaelin, the emotions that rolled off of her showed just how much hatred she harbored. Images started to flash before Kaelin's eyes as the mermaid closed in, lifting her blade to point straight at Kaelin's throat.

Kaelin saw the mermaid's memory through her eyes: She reached her hand out to take hold of a merman's wrist. He did the same to her just before a thin silver chain was wrapped around their hands by a third person. The chain was twisted around their linked arms several times, crossed this way and that. It was the hand-fasting at a bonding ceremony, Kaelin realized.