Sleeping Nightmare

Chapter 26: the sea dragon | Tyler & Georgina

Varielie had become a battleground. Its back wall had caved inwards, and remnants of bricks and furniture alike pooled into the grass. From under a pile of debris, I spotted the carpet that had been in Arya's room.

Princess Georgina's eel-like body slid over the wreckage, uncaring when shards dug into her skin and dropped to the ground stained with blood. I watched the monster's head rear up and then dive, her face smashing into the sand, sending it spraying in all directions like a fountain of gold.

I heard Kye-Ann shriek, and breathed out a sigh of relief. Georgina hadn't killed her - yet.

"Exactly how are we stopping this battle, again?" Sreya queried, her voice thin and exhausted from our climb up the hill to Varielie. Despite her and Harley's lengthy period on land, their land-dweller legs were still weak.

Sreya, Arya and I were currently crouching behind a ruined pile of bricks, freckled with porcelain fragments from the teacups in the kitchen. Sarah and Nam had gone to get the blackcurrant eyed siren's machete, and hopefully find any other weapon that we could potentially use to defend ourselves. Harley had gone to Bob's cave, where the merman Prince and Walter were likely to be, to warn them.

We were all currently unarmed, except for Arya, who had found her sword Katana wedged under the remains of a broken cabinet. It was a miracle that it had not been wrecked earlier during Georgina's and Kye's fight.

"The Princess is the biggest threat," I said. "I'm going to talk to her."

"Kye-Ann won't just sit there while you two have a tea party," Sreya responded doubtfully.

"Yes, which is why I need you two to stop her from killing the Princess. We're going to try to end this peacefully, alright? No deaths." I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt.

I half-expected Arya to disagree with my plan, but she didn't, to my astonishment. "We can do our best, but I can't guarantee much when she can simply tell us to move aside and we will obey."

I had anticipated that. I spread my palms, revealing tight green balls that I'd formed from the leaves of nearby flowers, and securing it with blades of grass. "Put these in your ears. They are a little unsanitary, but they should be enough to protect you."

The mermaids took them eagerly. "You don't need them?" Arya sasked, after noting that I'd only made two pairs.

"I can fight it. I've been around Kye for so long, I'm almost immune." I was being reckless, I knew that. But I had to have my wits about me. I had to make sure Georgina heard me. If we didn't manage to stop her here, at Varielie, she would slink to the town and perhaps in the midst of her rampage, accidentally harm another innocent siren. Too much was riding on this one chance I had.

I couldn't let Kye kill the Princess, and I couldn't let Georgina kill Kye. If Georgina killed Kye, it would be difficult to convince the people of Delmitii that there had indeed been another story - that Isabelle's murder hadn't been out of pure revenge. She would be further shunned by her people, and their rejection of her would drive Princess Georgina mad. If Kye killed the ancient Princess, she could potentially be revered as a hero, but the life that would have been lost would stay with me for life.

"Good luck," Sreya murmured to me as we split, heading around either side of the ruined building. "Don't die."

I jumped over the fallen bricks, eyeing the sheer length of the monster's body and trying to gauge the best place to be so that the Princess could see me. Gritting my teeth, I started to climb the rubble, my goal being to reach the roof of Varielie. Most of it had caved into the building's interior, but its stunted height made it easier for me.