The Cursed Mermaid

Chapter 16: guard's decadence | Arya

As it turned out, Kristian's tolerance for chilli was nowhere near as high as mine. The instant he brought the potion to his lips, his face turned red, and he began to cough uncontrollably. "How can you enjoy this?" he demanded, while taking heaving breaths to cool down his supposedly burning tongue.

Bob had done an amazing job with replicating the flavour. I'd gone to his room to check on his progress, and although he hadn't yet figured out a suitable cure for Nam and the others, he'd managed to make a chilli potion for Kristian.

Sreya had doubled over, chortling. "You are such a moron!"

His face red and his forehead beading with sweat, Kristian glared at the caramel skinned mermaid. Disgruntled, he muttered, "Let's just swap and continue on with the lesson."

Her grin wider than ever, Sreya slapped him playfully on the back. "You got it, boss." I clapped a hand over my mouth to smother my laughter, but it did little to hide my amusement from the redhead, whose glare deepened.

However, his mood had improved by the time he was well into teaching Brendan, Penny and Nam the proper way to swim. He taught them about the small fins protruding from the back of our different coloured tails, which were what enabled us to possess a more refined form of agility. Combine this with our strength, and we would achieve maximum speed through the water.

Penny, despite her aloofness, was surprisingly meticulous, and was the quickest out of the three of us to become used to the new, faster way of swimming. She zipped by, just narrowly missing a brazier, which made Brendan visibly flinch (and Nam laugh at him).

"She's going to get herself killed, that idiot," he muttered, glaring at the dyed light brown haired mermaid as she swam past various obstacles Kristian threw at her. The merman bellowed his applause, grinning widely.

"Why don't we have a race?" he challenged Penny.

Her jaw dropped. "You cannot be serious." She turned to Brendan, as if expecting her boyfriend to defend her, but the blue eyed merman said nothing. There was a hint of a smirk on his face, as if he was looking forward to seeing Penny get beaten.

According to himself, Kristian was currently the fastest merman in the kingdom. He'd been boasting about it ever since he'd given me my first lesson. I wasn't feeling inclined to believe him (I mean, it wasn't like he went under strenuous hours of training every day), but I had yet met another mermaid or merman who could beat him.

Nam apparently felt bad for Penny, because he then made a compromise with Kristian - Penny, Brendan and he would team up and race against the redhead. The aim was to complete a lap around the length of the training room. For the three land dwellers, Nam was stationed at the start. He would then swim a certain length of the room before passing on to Brendan, and the process would be repeated to Penny, who would complete the lap for them. Kristian, however, was required to swim the race by himself, and he had to give his opponent a ten second headstart, but he didn't look fazed.

Since I was the only one around who wasn't occupied, I was made the umpire of the race. "Ready, set, swim!" I chanted, and Nam shot off, his movements jerky and awkward. Kristian began counting down the seconds with his fingers.

Nam had only just reached Brendan when Kristian sped towards them, his tail moving so powerfully that a thick trail of bubbles were left in his wake.

"Interesting." The sudden appearance of Harley beside me was enough to make me let out a small shriek of surprise. I whipped around, accidentally smacking the guard in the face with my ginger hair.

"Don't scare me like that!" I scolded him, before returning my attention to the race. Well, almost all my attention. "Did you pass on my message to the barracks?"