Eryshae

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Durnan

The storm outside Eberflame Manor hadn't broken. It waited; low, gray, and heavy with promise. Durnan sat alone in his private study, a quill balanced between his knuckles as he read the latest dispatch. The courier's wax seal cracked with a satisfying snap, and beneath it, Mira's neat script coiled like a serpent:

"The guards performed as expected. Vael stepped in precisely when anticipated. Sam responded exactly as projected. I have been welcomed into their household. I serve as the Princess's personal handmaiden. No suspicion. No resistance."

Durnan leaned back, the leather of his high-backed chair creaking beneath him. A slow, approving smile spread across his face. "She played her part well," he murmured.

The room was dim; lit only by the glow of an emberstone lamp. All around him were shelves of carefully curated records, arcane tomes, political maps, and blood-bound ledgers. The wine on his desk had long gone warm, but he didn't reach for it.

Instead, he folded the parchment and tapped it twice against his chin. Mira had done what he needed. The guards had done what he expected. The corruption of Emberhold was not just useful; it was predictable. And predictability was a weapon. One more step toward ensuring the Eryshae tribe fractured from within to make way for the True Eryshae.

He stood, straightened his coat, and turned toward the far wall. The bookcase there was old; oak, engraved with faint curling vines. He pressed three fingers to a hidden sigil along its top edge. The wood clicked, then shifted.

A narrow spiral stair descended into the dark. He lit no torch. The glyphs carved into the steps themselves pulsed faintly with dull, reddish light, reacting to his presence. As he descended, the air thickened, warm and metallic, like the breath of something slumbering.

At the bottom lay the chamber: round, sealed with warded stone and marked with old sigils cut into the floor. In its center rested a low basin carved of volcanic rock, veins of crystal etched through its surface.

He stripped off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves. Around him, the chamber pulsed in slow, rhythmic light; breathing. He reached for the dagger beside the basin. The blade was obsidian, etched with markings not found in any common script. Durnan held it to his forearm.

"My blood for your fire," he murmured. "My will for your witness." The glyphs lit, brighter now. A heartbeat rhythm. The basin began to churn. "Flame that sleeps beneath the world… wake. I offer you breath and blood. Let the fire consume the locks. Let the deep reveal the flame."

He drew the blade across his skin. Three times. The first drop struck the runes with a hiss. The second curled smoke from the stone. The third;

The world changed.

Air folded in on itself. The room twisted at the edges. Shadows collapsed into impossible geometries. The basin was no longer filled with water or stone; but with something else. Something deeper. Something darker.

A fluid surface shimmered in the impossible shape of liquid night, and from it; She rose. Nimireth.

The Great Elder of the Depths.

The Lady of the Green Mirror.

The Mermaid of Molten Grief.

Her form slithered upward from the basin like a song meant to drown. Scales shimmered from emerald to violet, glistening with bioluminescence that flickered like memory. Her long crimson hair floated as if suspended in unseen tides. Bone jewelry hung from her throat and wrists; tokens of drowned kings, whispered sins.

Her eyes were not simply green; they were a deep, drowning forest, rimmed in gold and older than language. Her mouth was full of delicate, gleaming fangs. And she smiled.

"Durnan," she said, her voice liquid and curling. "You spill blood. You call my name. Are you ready to pay the cost of awakening?"

"I am," Durnan said, his voice low but steady. She coiled forward, tail gliding along the rim of the basin. Her scales cut faint grooves into the stone. "Then speak your desire mortal."

He met her gaze without flinching. "I want soldiers, beings of water to do my bidding." Nimireth tilted her head, her expression somewhere between seduction and menace. Her voice dropped to a purr.

"Then let us begin with a bargain… Durnan of Ash and Ambition." He knelt before her, the edges of the glyphs burning brighter now; etching heat into the air.

He would bargain with the deep. And reshape the world for the good of the true Eryshae Tribe.

The chamber pulsed as Nimireth's form leaned forward, her serpentine tail coiling with effortless grace across the rim of the basin. Her gaze burned green-gold and ancient. Durnan, still kneeling before her, did not lower his eyes.

"You seek power," she said slowly, voice like the slosh of blood in deep water. "And for that… you ask for soldiers."

"I need an army," Durnan answered. "Not thugs. Not mercenaries. I need weapons born of nightmare. Creatures of loyalty and terror. I need your daughters."

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Nimireth's lips curved. A smirk carved from myth. "My daughters are not given freely. Each is born of transformation. Blood for blood. Flesh for change." Her long fingers trailed across the air. "I will grant you one mermaid soldier… for each offering you give. The sacrifices will not die. They will become mine. Mine to shape. Mine to mold. Mine to command."

Her smile widened, and with it, her fangs gleamed. "They will serve your war… but they will sing my song. Even as they drown kingdoms." Durnan inhaled slowly. "And they will obey?"

"They will obey you, while you remain useful," she said. "But betray me, and I will reclaim them. And you." A heavy silence fell between them. The glyphs throbbed around the chamber like the pulse of a massive heart.

Then Durnan stood. "I accept the bargain," he said, voice hard. "I can give you one hundred."

Nimireth's head tilted. "One hundred souls… for one hundred daughters of the deep." She let out a low, echoing purr of amusement. "That is a bold promise."

"It's already in motion," Durnan said. "The prisons of Ni and San overflow. Forgotten thieves. Rebels. Drifters. I've already begun collecting the unwanted."

The Mermaid of Molten Grief smiled.

"Then bring them to me. One by one, or in chains. Bathe them in the basin. And I will reshape them." Her tail flicked once; an enormous, sinuous movement; and water splashed up, licking the edge of the glyphs.

"Serve me well," she whispered, "and the power will be yours. Betray me…" She leaned close enough that Durnan could smell the salt and rot of the abyss clinging to her lips. "…and I will drown your bloodline in song."

Durnan did not flinch. Instead, he bowed his head once. "Then we are bound." And in the flickering light of the summoning glyphs, the first steps of his nightmare army began to form.

The torches hissed along the narrow stairwell as Durnan descended deeper into the earth, his robes whispering over stone worn smooth by generations of secrets. Behind him, two masked attendants dragged the prisoner by chain and collar. The man's feet were raw, blood marking every fourth step.

The chamber was darker now; quiet in a way that made the air itself feel afraid. Nimireth was waiting. She hovered in the basin, only her torso visible, reclining like a queen in bloodied wine. Her hair spread in lazy coils around her, floating despite the stillness of the room. Her gaze lit the gloom.

"This one," Durnan said, voice devoid of care. "A smuggler. Convicted. Forgotten. No name worth remembering." Nimireth purred. "Then let him be reborn."

The man thrashed, suddenly aware that whatever ceremony this was, it was not one that ended with mercy. "Please; what is this? I was told this was just questioning. I didn't do anything; "

"Silence," Durnan said, and the masked attendants forced him forward. The moment his skin touched the waters of the basin, the glyphs on the floor exploded with green light. The shadows on the walls stretched inward, like mouths swallowing screams.

Nimireth's song began; not a melody, but a resonance that pierced bone. It was pain and euphoria, drowning and birth. The prisoner's scream cut the air, but already his voice was changing, deepening, cracking.

His limbs twisted unnaturally. Fingers stretched into webbed claws. Legs writhed and fused, bones snapping like reeds beneath ice. His flesh shimmered, scales erupting in waves across his skin. His eyes turned black. His throat gurgled, choked; then opened to a second set of gills. He shrieked once more; until his voice was no longer human. The basin churned violently as his transformation was completed.

Then… stillness.

A mer-soldier, taller and broader than before, now hovered beside Nimireth in the crimson water. His eyes glowed faint green. Silent. Waiting.

Nimireth smiled. "One of one hundred." Durnan stepped forward and examined the creature. Its jaw held serrated teeth. Coral armor grew naturally over its chest. Barnacles clung like medals. Yet it knelt in the basin, still half-man, as if awaiting command.

"He will follow orders?" Durnan asked. "He will follow yours," Nimireth replied. "But he is mine." Durnan's smile was thin. "Then I'll gather the rest."

Nimireth's head tilted, red hair swirling. "The more you bring," she said, "the more swiftly your empire will rise." Durnan turned toward the exit, his silhouette sharp against the sea-green glow. Behind him, the mer-soldier sank into the basin like a shadow returning to the deep.

The first of one hundred had fallen. And the tides of war had begun to stir.

Durnan ascended the stairs slowly, the echo of his boots on stone swallowed by the weight of candlelit silence. Behind him, the water still rippled, the scream of the woman already forgotten by the walls. The green shimmer of Nimireth's power had taken her. She was no longer a deserter. No longer even human.

She was useful now.

At the threshold of the sanctum, Durnan paused. His gaze swept over the ledger he'd left open on a side table, pages marked with names, initials, locations. A quiet inventory of the expendable.

Not just criminals. Not just the forgotten. The unwanted. The inconvenient. The desperate. These were the ones he chose.

People who had already slipped beneath the notice of society. Deserters, vagrants, prisoners slated for execution. Scavengers. Street girls. The addicted. Those who broke into homes not for conquest, but because they had nowhere else to go.

"Ni doesn't mourn ghosts," he murmured. "And the world forgets them too easily." His finger traced a row of names written in precise ink. Half of them were already marked with a green sigil. Claimed. Gone.

He didn't sacrifice innocents; at least not in his own mind. He sacrificed the wasted. He offered them to Nimireth, and she gave them a new purpose.

In his hands, they were more than rats in an alley or soldiers gone rogue. They became warriors. Obedient. Tireless. Beautiful in their lethality. Durnan shut the ledger softly and turned back toward the stairs. He extinguished the candle as he left, letting the green glow from the basin light the room.

Durnan stood once more in the upper sanctum of his estate, his expression unreadable as stormlight filtered through narrow glass slats. The sea breeze carried salt and omen, curling through the open arches like a whisper of the depths.

Below, in the tide-carved coves hidden beneath the city, a ship waited; sleek, black-hulled, and nameless. No banners. No allegiance. Only the old glyphs etched along its sides, now glowing faintly green.

The mer-soldiers stood within the ship's hull; fifty in total. More would come.

Each of them glistened with seawater and purpose. Their armor, bone-grown and coral-plated, bore no sigils but bore menace enough in the way it flexed with their breathing. Fanged jaws closed in silence. Their eyes reflected no soul, only a deep obedience.

Durnan addressed the ship's captain; a gaunt-eyed man whose silence had long ago been bought. "You'll sail by moonlight. No harbors. No records. You'll approach Ocean City by its channel and deploy the first wave."

The captain gave a single nod, sweat shining along his brow. Durnan's voice dropped. "Your orders are simple. Secure the docks. Corrupt the guard posts. Infiltrate the merchant halls. And prepare the city to receive new leadership."

He turned to the mer-soldiers, his voice now tinged with command. "You will not be seen. You are shadow. Current. You are the quiet before the storm."

The tallest of them hissed; acknowledgement… or hunger.

Durnan watched them descend into the ship, webbed feet slapping wood like wet knives. When the last of them vanished below deck, he stepped back, allowing his attendants to close the hatch. The dock master gave a quiet signal. A push from the tide. And the ship slid into the gray mist like a ghost returning to memory.

Durnan remained still, fingers steepled. Ocean City would fall without a cry. Just as Emberhold would bend. Just as Ichi would kneel.

He turned, robes billowing in the wind. Behind him, the waters rippled once more; green light pulsing from the hidden basin below. The next sacrifice would be tonight. And the sea… would have its army.