Melusine Ch. 02

Melusine awoke to the sound of her cell door clanging open. She slowly blinked her eyes in the dim silty water, trying to focus them. Before she was even fully aware of her surroundings, she was hauled upright and drug through the door. She was cold, so very cold that her tail was stiff and numb. Her mind was in a fog, and pain lanced from her flukes, up her tail, and into her human hip and back. She didn't need use of her tail however, because the castle guard swiftly hauled her limp body through the water and out into the main corridors of the city.

The city of Kerling was a massive structure carved into the dark basalt rock of an underwater volcano in the frigid waters of the far north. The vents from the volcano heated the city and made the surrounding waters survivable. Meridian's had settled here in these northern waters hundreds of years ago and made their homes in the natural caverns of the volcano. As the city grew on top of itself, the volcano became an amazing feat of Meridian engineering. Masons carved deeper and deeper into the rock and channeled heat from the vents through the city, which kept most of the city at a constant temperature. Over time however, the heat from the vents was diverted to the richest areas of the city that were closer to the surface waters and the royal palace. The old parts of the city, down deep at the base of the volcano became deadly cold. Those ancient parts of the old city had become slums packed full of the insane, sick, and generally unsavory. The dungeons were also situated in those very lowest levels of the city, and the cells were torture in themselves. The lowest cells where Melusine had resided for nearly a month were frigid, cruel things meant to drive meridians to madness, or a confession.

Melusine was still quaking with cold as she was pulled through the slums. Crowds tore at her clothing as she and her guard spiralled up the main routes of the city toward the top, where her method of punishment would be decided and most likely met out. People swarmed her and her guard, groping her and scratching her skin and scales till she was covered in a red quilt of painful weals. Meredian men screamed obscenities at her and tried to molest her past the protection of her guard. Her guard laughed and repeatedly shoved her into the fray, only dragging her back before she was truly violated.

She was bedraggled and bleeding by the time she reached the summit where she would be convicted in front of the populus. When she reached the atrium where the hearing would be held, she saw her father. She could not meet his eyes for long. There was too much pain and disappointment in them for her to bear. She choked back a sob. Her stepmother sat on her throne beside him and looked quite pleased with herself.

As was her right as Queen, she acted as judge. In Kerling, the king was lawmaker with absolute authority over the law and the Queen was judge with absolute authority over the determination of one's guilt in breaking those laws.

Melusine's trial was fast and to the point. Queen Neria spoke. "Were you found in possession of banned documents?" Melusine opened her mouth to speak, but she was weak and terrified. She spoke to defend herself but only managed to squeak out a "yes". The Queen spoke again before Melusine could gather herself and get the rest of her words out. "Guard, did you find Princess Melusine in possession of a banned text?" He nodded an affirmative, and handed over the scroll. The queen declared it to be the stolen scroll and deemed Melusine guilty. Her father wept silently, she only knew because of the redness in his eyes and the hard set of his mouth. He stood, voice cracking he spoke. " I sentence Princess Melusine to death by the ice". The crowd gasped. The punishment was an old one that had not been used in a century. It was meant to be a mercy, and would save my father the pain of watching me die. At least her father would be spared the horror of watching his only daughter die. The pain his eyes had shaken Melusine from her stupor, and realization set in. Her mind reeled, I will be hauled north, stripped of my clothing, tied to an iceberg in the middle of the great ice flows, and left to succumb to the cold waters. I will drift off to sleep and never wake.

Melusine raised her head and look around at her home for the last time. "My stepmother could not suppress her smile", she thought and watched in horror as her step brother stared at her and licked his lips greedily. She almost choked when he stepped forward and offered to spare her father the pain of witnessing her execution, and offered to be the one to enact the punishment.

Melusine's father was inconsolable, wracked with grief, and so her stepmother accepted on the king's behalf as she steered him off the dias.

Atrius and two guards shoved her roughly into a waiting coach, towed by two white beaked dolphins. Atrius slid in beside her, cracked the reins, and they sped away. She wept, and he said nothing until they were well away from Kerling. Then, before they were anywhere near the ice floes, he stopped the coach. "You will die slowly" he said and yanked her out of the coach by her hair. There was a cruel light in Atrius' eyes that she had never seen before and his lips curled into a feral snarl. He jerked Melusine to him with a fist full of her long red-gold hair and began to laugh. It was a bitter, evil laugh that chilled her more than the icy water.

He smiled wickedly, his laughter cut off, and he began to speak.

"You stupid girl. You could have married me and had everything! But you managed to ruin yourself before mother could even have you assassinated! The ice flows are too good for you! Death there is too quick, not nearly painful enough for you, SWEET sister! My gods! How I have spent my life hating you! And Now, look how the tables have turned. You have shamed yourself so thoroughly, sister, that your people and protectors have abandoned you, and now I will bring you your ultimate shame!"

His hand shot forward and ripped her clothing from her body. He wrenched her manacled hands behind her back and hooked the chain between them on the point of a nearby shelf of ice. His eyes glowed red like the scales of his tail and he continued to rip at her clothing, exposing her breasts to the cold water. He unsheathed a dagger and prodded her with it, tracing the curves of her body with its keen edge. "I have wanted to do this for so long, and look... now there is no one to save you." He said darkly as he dragged the blade across the plate of scales that covered her sex. "Did you know, that if you hurt someone badly enough, that little trap door will open?" He said with murderous intent, biting at her shoulder.

The knife traveled over her navel and jabbed at the undersides of her breasts, drawing little pinpricks of blood as they bobbed against it in the salt water. She stifled a scream, and tried to think. "I have to get out of this, I cannot die like this!" she thought desperately as she watched his organ grow, stretching and pushing the scales around it out of the way. He shoved his dick hard against her tail, sheathed his dagger, and grabbed her breasts. "Now is likely my only chance" she thought. "Brother, how could you do this to me!" she cried, glancing at the dagger in his belt.

"OH Melusine, I have dreamed of doing just this for YEARS" he said as he roughly squeezed her breasts together and floated higher up her body. "I DREAM of your screams at night" he said as he rolled her nipple with the pad of his thumb. Just as he thrust his cock between her breast, she jerked against the ice. The point of ice the manacles were hooked on snapped. Luckily, he didn't notice. She curled her arms up discreetly, and watched at the dagger bobbed at his waist. He moaned loudly and she got ready. When his spend clouded the water, she reached for it. He spun away, confused. "I got it!" she nearly screamed with relief. She adjusted her grip on the dagger's hilt, and swiftly stabbed him in the neck. Blood gushed into a swirl of water and the dolphins pulling the coach bolted in fear. She raced after them. If she didn't get to warmer water soon, she knew that she would die. Without the coach or the clothing in it, she was doomed. She soon lost sight of them, but she kept heading south desperately. She was weak from a month of starvation and the cold was sapping her strength. "I am dying" rattle in her brain. It was nearly spring, but the ice had not cleared and the water was still unsurvivable without some kind of protection.

Far away, she saw something strange in the water and swam toward it. It was a great hull of a ship near the surface. Brilliant light leapt around it, oranges, reds, and flickering yellows. The water was warmer there as well. As she swam closer, huge chunks of debris fell into the water around it. Barrels, wooden beams, and yards upon yards of fabric sank into the depths around her.

She pulled at the fabric, cutting it with the dagger, hoping to clothe herself in it and warm up. That's when she saw him. He was beautiful, but totally unlike a merman. There was a short dusting of dusky hair on his jaw, and his hair was long and as black as squid ink. He was beautiful in a strange way. He was harder, and more angular than meredian people. He had to be human, he was just like the humans that I had read about. He had the two legs and rough features that all the books had described. He seemed to be dead, but she had to try and save him. She grabbed him by his belt, tied the fabric to him, and used it to pull him to the surface as fast as she could.

Melusine was terrified of the surface. According to meridian legend, if a merman or mermaid broke the surface of the sea, the sun would burn them to ash, and the surf would churn their ashes to seafoam. Without allowing herself to even pause, her head broke the surface with a pop, and she waited on the agony. It did not come. She opened my eyes and felt sunlight on her face for the first time, and saw her first blue sky.

He surfaced next to her, but he did not start to breathe when his head met the air as she thought that he would. She shook him, but he still did not revive. She panicked. Why won't he BREATHE! Then she got an idea. When Melusine was a girl, her nanny had almost died trying to cook an electric eel. The doctor had used the air from her gills and blown air into her mouth. Melusine drew a big breath in through her gills, pressed her lips to his, and blew as hard as she could. He coughed, and his eyes flew open. They were blue eyes, but they were a blue unlike anything she had ever seen before. The same color as the vast alien sky floating above their heads. He choked and wretched, and lost consciousness again but continued breathing.

Melusine looked around, shore was not far away! She slowly pulled him toward that huge green island, struggling with the push and pull of the sea around it, but she managed to drag him onto the beach. She struggled getting him onto the sand, floundering helplessly and watching the surf beat at him as his head oozed a trickle of bright red blood. She was too weak, and the current washed her further and further away from him along the beach.

She was so tired and bone cold. Her mind wouldnt let her think about anything but sleep. She gave up fighting it and waited for death to claim her, hoping that she had at least been able to save him. Her last thoughts before the black claimed her were of his black hair and those strange beautiful blue eyes.