COMPLETED
Nereida has always been shackled to her royal duties as princess of Triteria, and when her kingdom becomes involved in a series of mysterious vanishings and deaths she begins to seek answers. Rebels soon shatter her world, and she finds he...
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The world had been split in two for as long as I could remember, 'the above and the below', always aware of one another but never intermingling. I belonged to the below, beneath the waves where the sun's rays could not reach. We lived amongst the sea creatures from grandiose to small within the depths. In the above, I existed only in the stories the people would tell their children, the ones that began with "Once upon a time..."
For we were used for entertainment; seen as a 'mythical creature' or 'monster' depending on the storyteller. But in my world, the monsters that haunted those stories have always been humans.
Long before I was born, there was a treaty created that saved us but required my people to remain hidden. We turned our backs on humans after they tried to enslave and subjugate us, and so for thousands of years, we remained separated. But things were changing and war was looming, despite what others and my father believed. I could feel it. It was an unnerving knowing. I've always had that gift, that ability to 'know' without understanding, and as I stared out of the window looking up into the endless blue haze, I knew it.
We were no longer safe.
I gently floated over towards the table made from coral, reading over the stone tablets that held our history, at least what was left of it. Most of them had been taken or destroyed by humans, and what remained gave us little information about the old days. But I had become possessed in the last couple of months, trying my best to piece together clues, anything that would bring forth an answer. Better yet, a solution. We were being wiped out, and there was no time to waste.
Over the last year, a plague had come upon us.
It started slowly, with a few passing in unexplainable ways– one minute they were healthy and the next they were gone. Their pearls, that adorned about their necks as all of us have, had blackened and at the slightest touch crumbled in your hand. We had never seen anything like this, and there was no stopping it. King Arran was burying his head to the problems, denying their existence, for he had grown preoccupied with the recent vanishings. He could not see that both of these were related to one another, instead was too busy sending out my brothers along with the other soldiers to fight back.
But who was the enemy?
"Nereida, shouldn't you be in bed?" My mother, Queen Gaylene, asked as she glided effortlessly through the water into my bedchamber.
"I will, soon. I just, I know that there's something here that can help us." I didn't look up, but I felt her presence beside me as she came closer, slightly examining the mess of stones on the table.
"You shouldn't be touching the stone tablets, you know better than that. They are the only things that remain of the origins of us, and they are fragile," she reprimanded.
"I know Mother, but I keep having these dreams and they feel like a warning. These tablets could help!" My dreams terrified me. I saw people screaming, dying, and the destruction of our kingdom but I couldn't let her know just how afraid I was for another fear of mine was being seen as mad.
