He Lies Within the Sea (eremika)

Chapter Eighteen

Mikasa made sure not to stand by the edge of the lighthouse with Eren in fear of her father spotting them. He'd grab a hold of her and stop her from doing as she planned, so she and Eren stood at the edge of a cliff and stared down. There was no time to waste in finding a lower place to enter the raging waters of the sea. It turned her stomach to merely think about leaping from a cliff and landing it perfectly, but she didn't feel there was any time.

So, Mikasa watched as Eren leapt in, his head first down and his body prepared to slip inside and transform into what it needed to be. His body sliced gracefully through the windy stormy airs, the dark clouds spiraling overhead.

After he disappeared in the mess of wavy waters that looked as dark as the night, like the sea had turned black, Mikasa held her breath and stood at the edge of the cliff. Her legs were trembling with the fear, but she thought of her mother fighting the King, of her mother trapped as Varan's unwilling partner.

She leapt, mimicking how Eren had sliced through the water. The violent winds slammed against her as she cut through them, and the slip into the sea still felt like she ran straight into stone. Her legs tingled as she was swallowed by the water around her, and suddenly she gasped and opened her eyes to see Eren nervously watching her, his green tail stretched out beneath him as he floated there.

"I'm not very strong," Eren remarked, "but I am fast."

"So am I," Mikasa remarked.

"Don't need to brag," he muttered, turning away almost shyly. She wasn't bragging though, but there was no time to waste. She reached forward and grabbed his hand without a thought, feeling a beat in her heart as she continued to race forward. Eren matched her speed as they rushed through, moving faster than a car on the highway.

By the time they were greeted with the tall, shimmering structures of the underwater city, something to rival Atlantis in beauty, Mikasa stiffened a bit. Everything seemed calm, quiet, but that was the problem. She heard nothing, like they were in a vacuum and all sound had been taken from them.

"Why is it so quiet?" she asked, turning to Eren as if he would have answers. His face looked pale with concern, and she knew that he was wondering the same exact thing. "We should go forward... we don't know what to expect in there."

Eren nodded, and then he burst forward, leaving no time to waste. Mikasa hurried after him, pumping her tail behind her as she eased through the water like she'd been raised as a mermaid her entire life. It was only days ago that she saw this tail, its bursting colors of beautiful red and such, yet it felt like it'd been there her entire life, waiting.

As they neared the castle, the silence was evident. She didn't see a single other mermaid- not those with black tails or even Varan's kind with the silver tails. Silence took over the bottom of the sea, and it turned her stomach with uneasiness. Something was wrong.

Just as they were moving forward, however, something shifted in the shadows by the door until a figure emerged. Mikasa gulped as those glowing blue eyes met with hers, that blonde hair kept tied back as the rest floated around her head. Silver tail shifting easily through the water, the figure was none other than Annie, having absolutely no expression on her face.

"You shouldn't have come back," she said. "You got lucky that you were let go, so why are you here again?"

"I can't abandon my mother," Mikasa declared.

"You should have." Annie frowned.

There was a question that had been bugging Mikasa ever since she learned that everything with Annie was a lie, so she swallowed her fear and asked, "Was any of our friendship real?"