Serafina sat back in her chair, silently shaking her head.
“You don’t believe me, child?” Vr?ja asked.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she replied. “How could Abbadon shake the earth? How could it churn the seas? How could anything be that powerful?”
Vr?ja took a deep breath. She touched her fingers to her chest and drew a bloodsong, groaning in pain as she did, for it wasn’t a skein of blood that came from her heart, but a torrent. It whirled through the room with malevolent force, tearing conchs off the shelves, smashing stone jars, turning the waters as dark as night.
Sound and color spun together violently and then the mermaids saw it—the ruin of Atlantis. People ran shrieking through the streets of Elysia, the capital, as the ground trembled and buildings fell all around them. Bodies were everywhere. Smoke and ash filled the air. Lava flowed down a flight of stone steps. A child, too small to walk, sat at the bottom of them, screaming in terror, her mother dead beside her. A man ran to the girl and snatched her up. Seconds later, the cobblestones upon which she’d sat were submerged by molten rock.
“Run!” a woman’s voice shouted. “Get into the water! Hurry! It’s coming this way.” Scores of people ran toward the sea. “Help them, please…oh, great Neria, stop this bloodshed!”
Serafina couldn’t see the woman who’d shouted, but she knew who she was—Merrow, her ancestor. This was Merrow’s memory.
Serafina heard the monster first. Its voice was that of a thousand voices, all shrieking at once. The sound was so harrowing, it flattened her against her chair. Then she saw the creature.
It was a living darkness, glazed in dusky red. Shaped like a man, it had two legs, and many arms. Powerful muscles gave it strength and speed. Its sightless horned head whipped around, drawn by the sound of running feet, of cries and screams. Hideous hands with eyes sunk into their palms guided the creature. It slashed at the helpless people trying to escape. When it killed, it threw its head back, opened its lipless pit of a mouth, and roared.
“Merrow!” a voice called out.
A man appeared, stumbling through the devastated streets. He was slender and dark-skinned, with blind eyes. He wore a linen tunic, sandals, and a large ruby ring. He had Ava’s high cheekbones and her long black braids.
“Nyx!” Merrow said, rushing to him. “Thank gods you’re all right! Where is he?”
“He’s barricaded himself inside the Temple of Morsa.”
“We have to get his talisman. And everyone else’s. If we can get them all, we can open the Carceron and force the monster inside.”
“He’ll never surrender it. We’d have to kill him to get it.”
“Then we will.”
“Merrow, no. This is Orfeo.”
“There’s no other way, Nyx! He’ll kill us. Find Navi. I’ll get Sycorax and Pyrrha. Meet us at the temple.”
And then the bloodsong faded and the waters cleared and the six mermaids sat in their chairs, shaken and silent.
Vr?ja was the first to speak. “Nyx was killed by Abbadon before he could get to the temple, but he’d found Navi. She was badly injured, but she made it to the temple with Nyx’s talisman and her own. Merrow managed to corner Orfeo, kill him, and take his talisman. The surviving mages succeeded in driving Abbadon into the Carceron, but Navi and Pyrrha were killed in the struggle. As soon as the monster was locked away, Merrow took the talismans out of the lock, then led her people into the water. Sycorax, with the help of a thousand whales, dragged the Carceron to the Southern Sea and sank it under the ice. She died there. The whales sang her to her grave. And ever since, Abbadon has slept buried under the ice. Forgotten. Lost to time. But now it stirs. Now someone is trying to free it. And already it makes its evil presence felt. Realms wage war. Mer die. The waters turn red with blood. And now you must destroy it. You must gather the six talismans, use them to open the Carceron, then go inside and kill it.”
“Baba Vr?ja, why us?” Serafina asked. “Why have you summoned us, six teenage merls, to kill Abbadon? Why not emperors or admirals or commanders with their soldiers? Why not the waters’ most powerful mages?”
Vr?ja looked at them each in turn, then said, “You are the most powerful mages. There have been none as powerful in four thousand years. Not since the Six Who Ruled.”
“Oooooo-kay. I thought you were nuts. Now I know you are,” Astrid said.
“One of you knows this to be true. One of you sees it,” said Vr?ja.
The mermaids looked at each other. They all wore confused expressions except for Ava, who was nodding.
“Do you see something, Ava?” Serafina asked. “What is it?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,” Ava said.
“See what?” Astrid said. “No one here’s a canta magus. This is crazy!”
“No, it’s not,” Ava said. “It makes perfect sense. There were six. There are six. Six of them, six of us.”