Once a God drowned here

Part 6

"Hey you!" A hushed voice enters my hearing. The voice belongs to a young girl.

"You, I can help you out of here!" The voice is coming from my left. I look left to the building walls. No one on the ground level. I look up into the windows. No one there. Confused I look fast from left to right. There is no one.

"Down here mister!" The voice is coming from the ground. Not the ground exactly but a thin drain back down into the tunnel. Through the small window a face of a young woman looks up to me. Guess there are still some people left in the town.

"Miss, what are you doing down there?"

"I will help you escape the Levians!"

"You know a way out?" I need to know what she is planning on doing. In the worst case I hope to be able to outrun the fish people because of their feet unpractical for running on stone ground.

"Get down here first. Than we can discus further." She got the high ground on that argument. The sound of the waddling feet of the fish come closer. Either I slide down the shaft or keep on running until I reach safety. She is no woman. Basically still a girl.

"What are you doing down here, young woman?"

"I am a mermaid." She comes open with the truth right away. Accompanied to her voice she raises her fin out of the water to prove her saying. This fact is very well good to know but it does not explain why she is down there and what she is doing there either. I never encountered a mermaid before. Against common believe the existence of mermaids is far better documented than the fish people. Mermaids have shown themselves to humans and interacted with them on many occasions. From pirates who found them on the shores of foreign island or fishermen who occasionally encountered them by catching them on accident. Mermaids are mostly friendly but when it comes to travellers on the high sea reports tell of singing mermaids who seduce the woman-starved men which then jumped into the water to find their end by getting dragged down into the waters. Can I really trust her? She also dwells in the ocean and may very well be allied with the fish people. Mermaids are also fish people. But I guess I have no other choice. I slide down to fit through the drain back into the underground sewers.

The first few moments I am unable to see anything. My eyes have to adjust to the new lighting. I was expecting that something would lash at me right at the moment I re-enter the sewers. For once I got a small window of peace without constant attacks. The young mermaid shows me to remain quiet by holding one finger over her lips. We wait for my pursuing followers to pass right by us. Only as the steps of feet on the ground have become unhearable we return back to speaking.

"Why have you come here? You all will find your end here!" The young mermaid is upset.

"OK, first of all: what is your name?"

"My name is Marissa. You have to get out of the town. No one is safe here!"

"We are aware of that." I do not know what a mermaid knows about human customs and regulations.

"I am part of a military force to safe humankind from monsters and alike. We received the order to free the town from the fish folk."

"But look at what happened! No one is alive any more."

"Yes. We hoped on ward that off." By now I am convinced that the young mermaid is not aligned with the fish people. We move through the sewers again. My clothes are again soaked to the brim.

"Where are we going?" I ask Marissa.

"We will leave the town. You will leave the town."

"But there are still people in the town!" At least I hope that my soldiers are still well and alive somewhere in the town.

"I will not leave a single soldier to be slaughtered by these fish people!"

The young woman is clearly conflicted between two tenets.

"Fine. I can get you to the rest of the humans."

"How do you know where they are?"

"I followed you since you entered the town. I was to shy at first to speak up to you and then all the chaos began." Good to know we have at least one ally in this mess. For a while we walk, I mean swim by each other.

"You are calling them Levians." It is a blank statement but it implies a question. I do not know what the word 'Levian' means.

"It is what they call themselves. Your people call them fish or sea monsters, but above the ocean tides their name translates to that."

So the fish people are capable of language and can refer to themselves as a common group. That would explain their coordination in attacking the town.

"Do you know what the fish people are planning?"

"They only come to land in religious ceremonies or sometimes to hunt. Once in a while they like to eat something from above the waves."

"Are they eating humans?"

"Yes, not that often but when they do they can enter a kind of frenzy. Once they tasted blood they crave more." This is no good revelation. From above us I hear the sound of fins on the ground once in a while.