Attacked

In the slightly hushed tones of a party far fancier than any, she had yet attended the cry sounded more like a yell. She would probably be terribly embarrassed about it when she got the chance to think about it later, but at the moment she couldn't have had fewer shits to give.

Without asking Marino if it was okay or even giving him a second glance she took off across the room in a dead sprint. When she reached her target, she launched herself through the air, wrapping her arms around her friend so tightly it was a wonder one of the two of them didn't crack a rib.

"Woah, Juri, calm down. I'm pretty well stuffed at the moment, and if you squeeze too hard, I might puke on you," Selene laughed, holding Juri out at arm's length.

Without thinking about whether it was weird or not, Juri reached out and touched her face with the fingertips of both hands. Selene let her do it, not blinking or flinching or anything. When Juri was reasonably convinced that what she was seeing was not a hallucination she threw herself into Selene's arms again gladly.

After a stiff moment, Selene returned the embrace heartily, then dropped her head on Juri's shoulder and started to cry. It was soft crying, the kind almost nobody would notice, but Juri whispered for her to stop all the same.

"Don't, Selene. Please, don't cry. It might not be a good idea here. I don't know what your ..."

"What my slave master is like?" Selene asked coldly.

Her voice didn't sound as dead as it had in the dungeon but it didn't sound anything like the friend Juri remembered, either. She supposed it never would again.

It was very likely that none of the survivors of the Solstice of the Seas would ever be the people they had been once upon a time. The part of Juri that had been coming to the surface in her strange new world, blossoming even, thought that might not be the worst thing in the world.

"Yes, I guess that's what I'm trying to get at, but I wouldn't say that so loudly if I were you," Juri cautioned.

"Don't worry, he's not a beast or anything like that," Selene said, doing her best to lighten her tone.

"Really? I won't lie, I'm surprised. He didn't exactly look friendly," Juri said, remembering the beastly thing that had dragged Selene off of the auction platform. To her surprise, Selene started laughing.

"Oh, that guy. He didn't last very long. He sold me off to Blake, the guy I'm living with now. Except not really living with, right? That makes it sound like it's a choice and we both know that's not true."

"Sure, I guess so," Juri said, trying not to let her discomfort show on her face. Something told her that Selene wouldn't understand if she knew of Juri's steadily softening feelings for Marino. She didn't think Selene would be impressed at all if she knew that even thinking about her master was, at this point, enough to make her upper thighs tremble.

"Blake's really harmless, Juri. I think I could wrap him around my little finger if I decided to. He's nothing as formidable as the one you got stuck with."

"Wait, what do you mean?" Juri asked, her face hot now for an entirely different reason.

She knew nothing more of Marino than what Eileen had told her, which was to say only one step above nothing at all. Selene opened her mouth while Juri held her breath.

She steeled herself, attempting to prepare herself for whatever information Selene was about to give her. Instead of a rush of gossipy half-truths, what she heard was the sound of shattering glass.

It was so loud it might as well have been breaking in her head, and for a moment she thought something inside of her was breaking. When she saw the floor to ceiling windows all around her begin to shatter she knew that wasn't so.

"Oh God, oh no," Selene shrieked beside her, clutching the part of Juri's arm so recently bruised by Marino in a death grip, "it's happening again. How can it be happening again, Juri? They've already got us! They've already got everything!"

There was no time to think, only to do. Juri whirled around, shielding Selene's body with her own. She backed up slowly until they were as close to the wall as they could get without actually becoming a part of it.

Selene was weeping freely and babbling in a way that made Juri sure what remained of her friend's sanity was taking another terrible hit. For the third time, Juri was vaguely shocked by her own response.

She felt so little fear there might as well have been none at all. She watched, eyes wide, as some of the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen came pouring in through the holes created by the shattered glass.

What she was seeing couldn't be true. There was no way it could be true, and yet there was no other explanation. In a world gone mad, things had gone and gotten themselves even stranger.

"Stand back! If you have any love for your miserable life, step away from her. You won't like what happens to you if you harm a single hair on her head."

Everything was happening far too quickly for Juri to hope to keep up. It was the kind of fast that made it feel like life was moving in slow motion. She felt like she was seeing everything at once and at the same time was sure she wasn't seeing nearly enough.

There were the merfolk, all men, slinking through the pockmarked windows, their tales almost as long as Juri's standing on her tiptoes. She had always thought of mermaids as having tales the colors of neon-bright crayons, but now she saw how wrong she had been.

Instead, they were muddy blues, greens, and browns, the perfect hues to camouflage with the ocean's bottom. Their faces were as fierce and sharp as they were beautiful, their long, thick hair bound with rugged looking twine. They carried no weapons, but something told Juri they didn't need to.

Even from her current vantage point, she could see how impossibly strong they were. Strong enough to break her in half if they wanted to. Certainly strong enough to carry her off into the deep, dark waters if they got it into her head to do so.

Not that they had any interest in her. It was clear what they were there for; they were there for ambush, another battle in some kind of war Juri knew nothing about. She didn't need to know the history to feel the hate radiating off of the merfolk. It was hate returned by Marino and his kind twice over.

"Holy shit," she whispered to herself, "mermaids. We're being attacked by honest to God mermaids."