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“Prayers? Are you the praying type, woman?” he questioned back, keeping up the ruse of whatever it is they were currently playing. Questions upon questions with no clear answers; this was merely the beginning, though Nathanael knew it was probably just as close to the end. “Perhaps Ammut will swallow your heart anyway,” he mused, always one who favored the scale metaphor. Nathanael shrugged his shoulders, his interest in the woman getting the better of him as usual. He liked listening to her speak, no matter the tone or words that left her mouth – he would always listen. That irked him to no other, since who was she to command his attention? Nathanael didn’t bend towards anyone’s will. Not the gods, and definitely not the creature tied up in his cabin.

“Tell me your merits, then. Tell me whatever it is you wish for me to know. You as well speak as though you hold all the power in simple word. If I am to make a believer out of you, perhaps you should make one out of me as well. Believing in existence is one thing, but I can’t say that anything else comes out of it,” he drawled, tapping his fingers on his forearm as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Perhaps I don’t trust your word. You’re a captive; a pawn in a game I’m certain you wanted nothing to do with. Those in your position would say anything to make someone believe they had the upper hand,” Nathanael shrugged, his blue eyes meeting her own green ones, “I take your word with a grain of salt – much like you’ve taken mine. Until we exchange names, you have told me nothing worth of listening to. What else have you done but mock me? Should I take my wounded pride and leave? Perish the thought,” he grinned slightly at his words, because, naturally, he thought he was quite clever. “Ah, woman,” he groaned, rubbing his hand over his eyes for a brief moment before he leaned back against his desk once more. “I have forever dreamed of you. In all your glory – swimming around the icy depths of the oceans; Minerva as your deity that you give all the praise to. No. Until today, I had rejected the thought of such things swimming around with nothing better to do but attack those who live on their ships. Seems such a desolate lifestyle, though your lack of excitement seems to reinforce the ideas.”

“Do not read me for some mortal below my station,” Andromeda warned, but the only punishment she could force the man to endure was the sting of her words. “But perhaps there is a time and a place for prayer. My worship skills are not what they used to be, unpracticed and largely left behind. But I am not beyond attempts at hymn for the right cause,” she breathed in an airy tone, one nonplussed enough to let him know she didn’t take him seriously as anything more than a wicked little man. “The insecure god with an inferiority complex,” she listed for example. “Or a merciful and swift audience with Hades.”

For the first time a confusion showed plainly on Andromeda’s face when he made reference to Ammut’s scale. Her eyes looked blank for one moment, no traces of the spite working the wheels of her mind behind them. Andromeda’s lips rest slightly parted for a moment before she looked at him in wonderment. “What is a heart?” she asked.

“Even if that’s so,” Andromeda said, her words slow as she chose them carefully and as she pushed them out past her fatigure, “I have already bested you. I needn’t prove anything to you—you saw me and I was revelation. I proved my kinds existence. I saw you, and you were nothing more than the men I’ve seen before. I owe you nothing.”

Andromeda’s body sagged slightly against the pillar she was bound to, and she drew her tail in closer to her. The air was dry and bothered her skin. It was cold as well, to her at least, and she missed her shoreline already. She wouldn’t be back soon, she was sure of that much. If she died she wasn’t sure she would every be consciously back in that place. And if she lived… If she lived there were those she could no longer permit to live to take care of first.

“Is that what you want of me?” Andromeda questioned, letting her head fall to the side and lay against the arc of her pale, delicate shoulder. Her hair cascaded down her front, but she seemed far from distracted by her own beauty, though much of her glimmer and shine had faded in the dim cabin light. “My name?” Her eyes and air when dark again, and she thundered at him the greater portion of what small energy she had left. “I am no woman!” And she was calmer again immediately after the outburst, her hand slackening in her lap and her eyes settling on him once more, watchful, defensive. “Of all the gods’ mistakes, why us?”

Andromeda’s eyes slid closed, though she listened to the headstrong captain prattle at her still. She sighed quietly to herself, a tired and tiresome noise all the same. “Certainly this hell,” she reported back.

Before she had any opportunity to expand upon what she meant the cabin door opened. She opened her eyes and lifted her head slightly, but couldn’t make the figure out right away. The bulk of the doorframe was blocked by his large frame, only offering a hazy outline of him from the sunlight streaming in. It exacerbated the dull ache she was already in, but she refused to show it. When Elias caught sight of her his instinct immediately alerted him that something was wrong. He didn’t allow himself the time necessary to wonder if Nathanael would take him seriously, he knew how to approach maladies well, before interjecting immediately, “Have you done anything else to her? She looks like she’s a moment away from death.”  

The captain examined the wood with interest, raising an eyebrow at Andromeda, “Feel better?” he asked, pouring himself some rum from one of the many bottles he had sitting on his desk. He seemed unbothered by the fact that the waves hitting the ship were causing more of a sway, standing against his desk and not taking his eyes off of his captured bait.

He didn’t expect her to agree with him, or even humor him with his claim to be more immortal than not. Nathanael’s own smile graced his face, “The world is whatever I wish it to be, don’t you think? Your world is the depths around the island of Minerva, though you sit there in your false mockery of the word. You have not been in the clutches of anyone, mortal or god alike, and your only defense is to deflect. I can see right through you, woman. Tell me, do you claim your lineage to be that of Atargatis? Perhaps, Aphrodite, if you cannot connect back that far. None of this is hidden, though I’m sure you wish to have cornered us in the very place we call home. Home is not here; it is not this ship. There are many things you have yet to understand, yet baiting you with meager facts is enough to make you attempt to redecorate,” he gave a half smile, examining the crack in the fine wood of the ship. “Have you the gall to take a step onto the land of men? I hadn’t thought so.”

The sea maiden didn’t feel even fractionally better, though she was sure her counterpart must have known this. Chagrined, she watched him pour from one large vessel into a smaller one and drink from it as he monitored her. She stared back for lack of ability or option of anything better to do, and out of a stubborn unwillingness to back down—the same orneriness that had granted her an audience with him in the first place.

“Then what would you have me know, oh great and formidable god?” Andromeda questioned, her voice both lofty and mocking all at once. “And toward what great gift of life should I dedicate my prayers to you? What idol are you, as man or god, to my bone spliced directly of goddess? If I am not more than you as a simple man, then I am certainly no less than your equal as god. No arrangement places your weight on the scale favorable toward mine.” She paused, feeling ill and weak in the dry setting of the captain’s cabin. “But you seem to think I view our merits all wrong. Tell me then, oh great god,” she implored, voice dripping with contempt, “what it is I ought to know, what oversight flaws my logic. Make a believer out of me.”

The shoreline green of her eyes narrowed when he challenged her experience with the working world of man. Inexperienced though she was, it wasn’t exactly for lack of trying. These attempts to get to know man, to see it up close, smell it and taste it, to at least see it in some real way before dragging it down with her to the darkest depths of the ocean always stood in the way of accomplishment or meaningful interaction. Until now. Livid and miserable as she may be, and feeling sicker and fainter by the moment, she was learning about man.

“And what of my word?” Andromeda challenged. “Do you trust it? Certainly you don’t question it—you’ve heard little more than what I choose to tell you.” The reflection of light in his cabin caught her eyes, glinting off of them with a more brilliant glimmer than that of the light’s reflection on the crafted blade. “I can only assume that this must be an occurrence against your nature,” Andromeda smiled, but it looked like the curling of the lips of an angry dog, purely for the sake of bearing teeth, “on the basis of my emergence striking you like some sudden revelation. Tell me, have you long awaited this day? Have you hoped and hunted? Have you reveled in whiled dreams and fantasy?” She asked the questions as if his suspicion of her species existence was little more than the flight of fancy of some juvenile. “Did you pray that this day might come?”

Nathanael wasn’t sure how much torment he wanted to even give the woman, if that was what he could call her. He was far more interested in her background, and the life they lived drowning men that came too close to the island. He knew she’d never reveal what was on there, even if there was nothing, the false allure of the “temple” wouldn’t fade through time. He was thinking too much about the possibilities that he nearly drowned out the mermaid’s next words. 

The resolve that went along with her words just made the captain grin, slowly clapping his hands, “Bravo, creature. Bravo. There is no higher entity than I,” he pushed himself off the desk, making his way towards the windows. The sun was nearly below the horizon, casting an orange glow through the cabin. Nathanael worked his way around his quarters, lighting the different candles to allow light to remain. “I am what they call, a god, am I not? Untouchable, richer than a certain king that claims to rule the world. Though you probably have no idea about all that. Locked in the sea; woe is the mermaid. However else it goes.” Nathanael simply perceived his invincibility by the acts of his own will. He did things the way that no one else had, and even though he would not claim to be an Achilles, he knew he had his own name that would be remembered, even if it wasn’t known yet. 

“Tell me, is this normal?” He waved his hand towards her and her tail, gaze lingering on the different colors he had seen glinting beneath the waves just an hour before. “Bleeding. Pain, with the possibility of death? Was there ever one of you that was caught? Or are you the one who will bring shame to your fellow creatures of the sea?” Nathanael’s grin became sinister, one that would rather see death and humiliation than any kind of pain the woman in front of him thought she could unleash upon the captain. 

As a man who brought unbelievable destruction to the places he visited, Nathanael’s purpose was still unclear. He had yet to find his immortality, in name alone, naturally, yet he wondered if the mermaid was significant enough to inadvertently help with that. The man had no doubt she was powerful, but to him, that power was obviously limited. Her claims fell on deaf ears, yet he could still feel the allure she gave off from a couple meters away. Simply looking at her was probably enough to send plenty of sailors overboard in hopes of greeting such a creature, but to Nathanael, men and women were equally insignificant. When he looted, he didn’t feel the need to bring a woman with him, much unlike the other sailors aboard his vessel. Present company excluded, none had ever become interesting enough to listen to for more than a moment’s time.

Perhaps it might have been to Andromeda’s benefit not to present herself as a formidable challenge to the captain. In fact, she was almost certain it would have been to her benefit to pretend she was weak and harmless: the headstrong, display of power was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place. However, it wasn’t her style. She refused to give up a single square inch of the higher standing she might still posses, but it only made his mockery of her wounded pride sting more. When he pointed out her failure to drag a single sailor back down into the depths she had come from it seemed the one slight too many. With incredible strength the sea woman lurched forward. Andromeda was unable to break the chains that bound her to the thick wooden pole, but a loud, cracking noise filled Nathanael’s private captain. A large, dark splice appeared in the woodwork and disappeared when her little show of force was complete and she was pulled back securely in her bondages.

For a fleeting moment, Andromeda’s grin nearly rivaled Nathanael’s own. However, it wasn’t much longer than a split second before the sarcastic laughter erupted at the very notion he was anything more than a mere mortal, let alone a god. “You are not,” she replied suddenly, an anger lingering in her tone. “Indeed, if you rule the world, where is this world you speak of? Folly and absorption are your domain.” She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly displaying that from her perspective he was not only the lesser being, but the prey. “Woe are men with boastful hearts hidden away at sea but too gutless to take the first step onto land.”

Andromeda’s icy gaze dropped along with Nathanael’s gesture. For a moment she was unsure of what he was alluding to. Since the wood had split as a result of her sheet force, a considerably larger pool of blood had formed to one side of her. The blood slowly crept along the floor of the dark room. Andromeda watched it, disinterested. When she had sustained whatever wound was the source of the pool maturing the floor boards she hadn’t so much as flinched. “Everything bleeds but gods,” she answered, grim but unafraid.

Andromeda glanced away coolly, her silken locks cascading in response to her the shift in her vantage point. “You play a dangerous game of self flattery to assume that I am the first of my species to be taken captive,” she responded matter-of-factly. The woman kept her face poised away from the man, but her penetrating eyes reflected some of the candlelight as they settled upon him again. “Tell me, oh wise and powerful god,” Andromeda challenged, “why you think it is that no one has heard that man’s tale? And what of you? How will you safeguard your legendary reputation of godly proportion?”  

When his gaze met with Andromeda’s, the only thing that gave away his surprise was the smile that slowly appeared on the captain’s face. Nathanael crossed his arms over his chest, watching as the woman lunged and fought against her chains and bound position. It was somewhat amusing to him, how furious she was with the whole situation. He figured this was something that never happened. After all, their part was to drag men to the underworld, not for men to bring them up top. “I think if you keep pulling, you’ll get there. Maybe try sawing your arm off, it’ll probably help.” Nathanael tapped his fingers on his arm, “On second thought, you should probably stay in one piece. Otherwise it’ll look like it was my fault. Gods forbid.”

“You look a little angry. Is that because of me, or…?” he let the stupid question trail off, before just smiling and sitting on the edge of his desk instead. “Great, now that we have that all covered, do you even understand what I’m saying? It’s Greek, everyone speaks Greek.” Nathanael waited, though he didn’t expect an answer. “No? How about….Egyptian? Latin? Or…what is it those northern fools use…right, English? I’m a little rusty on that one, but I could try it.” He said each word in its respective language, simply studying her face to see if there was any recollection of any of the languages he had offered up. 

His audacity vexed her, and she pulled her shoulders forward slightly more, wishing for nothing more than the small mercy of just one strike. Surely that would answer the question he couldn’t be bothered to finish formulating. His words, in their various dialects and languages, fell upon her ears as a singular, cohesive speech. Had the captain not explained in the very speech itself that he was transitioning from one language to the next she never would have known, each word he said equally distinguishable from the last. However, there was an additional communication that the man may not have intended include by the virtue of his multiple modalities of language. Each, according to the way he carried himself, was its own specialized, geographical linguistic method, which meant to her that the places he had been and could very well take her were numerous and the territory expansive.

Patience, as previously evidenced through the vehicle of her capture, was certainly not Andromeda’s virtue. Her chest rose and fell with a building fury, further irritated by her lack of mobility. This man was no fool, but she vowed to herself then that he would be no different than any other mortal imprudent enough to test the wrath of a creature closer in nature to the gods than his own.

“It takes but one arm to drown a man,” Andromeda answered, her voice, while still soft and delicate, dripped with a venomous contempt. “Have you a favorite I ought to spare and with which deliver you to your makers?” Her eyes cut through the man, perhaps not daring him to exhibit any sort of signal whether or not he feared her, but rather displaying the insignificance to her whether he did or not.

Andromeda ignore the aching feeling she felt throughout her body, far more concerned with displaying any sort of power she could over the human before her. To keep her bound the way she was indefinitely was an impossibility. There would come some reason or another to move her, and even the smallest mistake or degree of false security would present exactly the opportunity she would need. It was just a matter of waiting patiently, through pain and present company, for opportunity to strike. 

Nathanael stood up, his muscles burning after straining them against the mermaids. He glanced at his arm, though those wounds were only a small sting of memory compared to what he had accomplished. There were too many possibilities, now. He could give her as a gift to Agamemnon, though he hated that king, and the man knew better than to mess with Nathanael, so he was out of the picture. The captain kept his ideas to himself, thinking whether or not giving her away would even be beneficial. 

Elias’ voice cut through Nathanael’s thought process, and he held his hand up towards the deck of his larger ship to tell them to hold. The pulling up of the row boat had ceased, and Nathanael drew his sword and held it out towards Elias, placing the tip underneath the other man’s chin and keeping it there, “You are lucky I don’t cut out your fucking tongue,” he glared at Elias, feeling like he was giving him the small mercy of having this privately and not on the deck in front of everyone else. “Next time you make a mistake like that, you’ll never get the chance to find your brother. I’ll make sure of that,” he pulled his sword back, tugging the rope to give them the signal to continue with pulling them back onboard. “When I figure that out, you’ll be the last to know. She would’ve killed you, you fucking idiot, and yet you sit there acting like I didn’t just save your sorry life. You’d belong to the ocean, though with your stupidity, maybe Poseidon would’ve had mercy on you,” Nathanael simply smiled, hopping out of the boat and standing to the side of it upon reaching the main deck.

Most of the men had crowded around the row boat when they caught the sun gleaming off of Andromeda’s scales. Nathanael let out an irritated sigh, pulling out his sword for a second time and holding it out to stop everyone’s advancement. “Gentleman,” he drawled, “We have a guest. And if any of you think you’ll get a chance to see her up close, well, you’ll just have to wait and find out what will happen to you.” 

“But it’a woman! They’s a bad omen f’r ships,” one poor soul had whispered a bit too loud, and most of the men turned in his direction, giving away the source of the comment.

Nathanael turned his gaze onto the man, who looked altogether sheepish and scared. “You know what they say to do in that situation? They say…’throw the woman overboard to calm ye mighty gods o’ the ocean’. Well, we’ll give them someone, won’t we, Elias?” He turned his gaze onto Elias, offering him a smile since this was most likely the last part of whatever kind of punishment he felt his brother deserved. “Throw him overboard, Elias. Poseidon will bless you later,” it was obviously a mockery, and Nathanael motioned towards the sky in a fake blessing. Nathanael knew what would greet the man as he swam towards the shore, and he considered it an offering. One of theirs for one of his. He turned towards the boat, picking up Andromeda bridal style as he made his way towards his cabin. “We sail towards Hispania. Get going.” 

He kicked the door shut to his quarters, making his way over towards one of the larger pillars that were in his cabin. Nathanael set Andromeda down on the ground, propping her up against the pillar and letting her tail drape out in front of her. He took a moment to look at her scales, noting the small amount of blood that had remained from when she had splintered the ship. He knew rope wouldn’t hold her, so he went for chains, and if he was morally correct, he would’ve felt guilty about keeping her as a prisoner, yet he had no guilt, and he had not an ounce of fear. 

The man said nothing in response to Nathanael's suggested potential punishment, fully convinced that  doing so would be taken as a challenge to the captain to do exactly that. Aside from a hard swallow and the hard flexing of his jaw as he kept his chin tilted upward in the position that Nathanael's blade forced him into, Elias gave no other reaction than signaling to the captain he was listening by locking eyes with Nathanael for the course of the tense interaction. Elias only looked away when Nathanael made a comment on his lost brother and withdrew his blade from the flesh of Elias' throat. He tried not to resent Nathanael for only remembering his plight to rescue his brother when it was a convenient weapon against him.  

Elias remained in the smaller vessel, towering over Andromeda's much smaller figure while Nathanael made his display of power to the crew. He steeled his expression against the threatening joke Nathanael made of forcing crew members overboard, simply maintaining his position as an extension of his superior's power assertion that the mermaid's presence wasn't for them to see, question, or touch her. He was half convinced that given one free arm the sweet looking little sea monster would lure them a single inch too close and make sure for herself there was little left of any man for Nathanael to punish himself. But better to let any fool unwise enough to try meet that untimely fate on their own, otherwise he might presently meet his own for talking over his captain. He mad no move to fulfill the captain's orders until Nathanael bad broken away, assuredly to self-gloat and fixate over his new treasure.

Andromeda was infinitely more easy to control in her current, unconscious weight. Though sleek and small in comparison the bulky, muscled captain, her body was lean and her deadweight was heavy. Still, without the thrashing and scratching and pulling, positioning her just as he pleased was no difficult feat.

Even as the man positioned and chained the mermaid, she showed no signs of rousing. The contusions on her neck grew darker, like a violent violet and blue collar, and the reddened skin on her wrists looks more raw and irritated against the chains binding her to the tall pillar. Even when Nathanael doused her with water she still didn't move an inch. It was several minutes after Nathanael had begun to pace the cabin floor that it became apparent she was in a woken state. She hadn't moved a muscle, so much as twitched her great, glistening tail that caught every slight illumination from the candle light in the sleeping quarters. The only change was that her fierce, pale green eyes had opened. She was watching his every movement, tracking him with only the slightest shift of her gaze through the sheets of her golden hair, now dried from the sea and falling about her like rippling waves of silk.  

The very second she noted Nathanael's gaze locking with hers she tried to lunge at him, despite the fact she was strategically bound to the thick, stable pillar. She did little but provoke the chains to grate at her skin, but she was too angry to note the way some scratched at her soft skin and how others came together and pinched at her. The first attempt, obviously botched, didn’t deter her. She tried again, this time given the small encouragement of a buckling, splintering sound coming from the wood. She wanted nothing more than to tear the man before her apart, piece by piece, and obviously he must have anticipated it.  

The whole thing escalated quite quickly, though that was to be assumed seeing how he basically manhandled the mermaid into the boat beside him. Nathanael would usually glare at Elias for the use of his first name in front of such a creature, especially since he only allowed his brother of a sorts to ever use his actual name. To him, that name meant a power over a person, and that was the last thing he needed in his oh so difficult life. The struggle of the mermaid was something Nathanael expected, though he didn’t want to crush her windpipe or hurt her too much with his arm locked around her neck. He didn’t care for her comfort, he just simply cared about how she looked when he managed to get her back onto his ship. He could feel the sharp pain of when she dug into his arm, though it didn’t do much to phase him. He tried sitting up a bit straighter, using his overall body weight and size compared to that of the mermaid’s to limit her movements.

The slam of her tail against the ship sent him and his possession off balance once more, and he could hear the splintering wood of the rowboat. “For fuck’s sake, Elias, do you want to drown here?” he yelled at the other man, more furious that they had paused in their little escape. Though when Andromeda leaned forward, Nathanael felt himself yanked towards the water by the force of the two new mermaids that had suddenly appeared from the icy depths of the water. He would’ve focused more on them, but he had already decided that neither would be up to par with what he – literally – had in his grasp. When Elias slammed the dagger into one of the new sea woman’s wrists, Nathanael’s look mirrored the one that Andromeda was currently sporting when he looked at his friend.

Mercy, however, seemed to be a completely foreign concept to the volatile third passenger in their small boat. Nathanael’s vice grip on her only seemed to grow stronger, and he restrained her more strategically than before. Andromeda pushed and pulled at the offending arm with a new level of desperation, only one hand free now to try and release his choke hold on her. Then, suddenly, the grip her sister had on her was released. Andromeda had been glancing around to try and discover what had happened to her second sister when she noticed the dagger held out in offering—obviously not to her, but she managed to take it more quickly than the barbarian who had twined himself around her neck.

Before she had a chance to bury the blade into his flesh, she felt the burn of his rough grip on the tender skin of her wrist, raw from where her counterpart’s firmly locked holds had tried to free her. With every ounce of force Andromeda had left within her she attempted to rip her arm free of his hold, a small yell of gruff force departing from her—though even that sounded feminine and soft and nearly melodic. Andromeda could feel herself weakening. The brute had cut off her hair supply, and the sea, only inches away, was too far to effectively provide her oxygen either. Her vision began to blur around the edges and the sound of her own ragged, desperate attempts for breath sounded far away. The only things she felt was the intense pressure in her head and chest, the beat of her heart in her ears, and that forceful arm pressed hard against the base of her throat.

Perhaps in the same moment that the passengers in the retreating row boats became aware that with the plan of robbing the island temple having been abandoned the sirens abandoned their own task of defending it against the unwelcome intruders, so was  so too did Andromeda. No one was coming for her who didn’t already have her firmly within their grasp. In one last ditch attempt to liberate herself, Andromeda reached out for the dagger with her other hand, the oxygen depletion making ti so that she saw her arm as little more than a shadowy blur. And then nothing but black.

The dagger clattered against the bottom of the small boat that Elias was fiercely rowing back toward the ship, and every movement of the golden haired mermaid, from the most intense thrashing to the minutest twitch, stilled. The arm that Nathanael had had to grapple with to keep both it and the blade far from his person slacked in his grip, her tail sagged, and her head drew back gently from his ensnaring arm and ultimately rested against his chest.

Elias secured the smaller boat by the considerably larger side of the ship, keeping a steadfast grip to keep the two close enough. He wasn’t sure if it was really necessary to say anything, or if Nathanael would know better than to ask for Elias’ further assistant to bring the unconscious creature aboard. He had a strict rule of not removing anything from the sea that didn’t want to leave it—and this situation certainly applied. He had already compromised his stance against violence with injustice intentions behind it, and the guilt began to tear at him as he observed how small the half human creature looked in Nathanael’s possession. Despite the violent display she had just put on, she looked young and as she slept, if that’s what one could call it, she looked unquestionably innocent. Had the bruises on her neck and arms, already deep shades of violet and blue, not been there even superstitious Elias wouldn’t have suspected her capable of putting up any sort of a fight, and despite them he found himself pitying whatever unfortunate fate Nathanael would deliver for her.

He finally looked down at Elias once he realized his friend had stopped rowing. The captain refrained from making a joke about him finally coming to his senses in favor of watching the water. “Did I tell you to fucking stop?” he grumbled, though he didn’t say anything once he finally got a glimpse of what was in the water. At first he wondered if it was simply some crude kind of waking dream; seeing a woman anywhere near the water was simply unheard of in these days. It took him a few moments to realize it was a motherfucking mermaid, and the barest hint of a feral smile appeared on Nathanael’s face. 

The pirate didn’t want to believe it at first, until he realized Elias was staring at the same thing he was. She looked innocent, though he knew better. It would surprise him if his sidekick even reacted, and by the way Elias was staring, he figured nothing would be happening for the next few moments. Nathanael was practically giddy with excitement. It was something straight out of the stories. He’d heard Homer and his nonsense every now and then, but it was different to see one standing – or in this case, floating – in front of someone. Let alone live to tell the tale. That was exactly what Nathanael planned on doing, surviving this semi-altercation. Island be damned, he wanted the woman. The sea-witch was there for the taking, and gods knew what he could do with her when he dragged her back to the ship. 

Nathanael didn’t move much when she glanced at him, and he was enthralled with the colors that meshed together and gleamed from her long tail. Obviously the woman could breathe out of water, and that’s all that counted, right? He debated on simply taking a scale or ten and then hightailing it out of there, by why only take a piece when he could take the whole package. As beautiful as she was enchanting, there was only so much time they had if those old stories were even remotely true. He whispered something in Greek the same moment he drew his dagger. She was hesitating, and he figured it was because Elias didn’t even look dangerous despite the fact that the man was a giant. Hesitation was always his chance, and he definitely wasn’t going to miss out on this one.

"Nathanael," Elias cut in. His tone wasn't scolding but it held the watered down authority of someone, perhaps the role of an older brother, concerned that some grand event was about to be overlooked. "Do you see it?" His eyes skimmed the water's uneven surface, following the distorted dark figure lurking beneath. It drew closer, and without earnestly realizing it, it was drawing both he and his attention in. The boat tilted heavily to one side along with Elias' body weight as he stared straight back at this creature ascended from the deep. Her beauty was otherworldly, and though he knew better than to be lured into false security and complacency by beautiful things, he was far too captivated to think about anything.  

The mermaid tilted her head slightly, her penetrating gaze suddenly shifting into a perplexed expression. Slowly, her eyes shifted to Nathanael at the same pace in which his wolfish, hungry smile warped his features. There was no questioning the moral value of this man. Andromeda felt a cold, heavy weight upon her chest the moment she met his eyes. No, not a band soul, but one that was corrupted, infected, corroded... Again, her ambition had gotten the best of her. He would have been the chosen mark of anyone even fractionally wiser than herself. His sudden shift in intentions, unclear but somehow palpable to Andromeda, painted the scene in her head much darker than before. Should she strike first? Or should she quickly break away from the boat and wait for her sisters? By the time she even began to feel either instinct, the captain had made up his mind.

There was a suddenly frenzied, chain reaction of movement the moment that Nathanael lunged for the siren. In the very same moment she saw him begin to spring toward her, she pushed off the edge of the boat to propel herself away. The force of her shove sent Elias, already precariously balanced as he studied her in awe, off kilter as he fell flat on his back onto the bottom of the rowing boat, which rocked violently this way and then the other. The boat nearly capsized once Nathanael felt backwards into it, much more forcefully than Elias' fall, and with the added weight of the mermaid as well. She was small, but every slim part of her lean.  

Andromeda shoved hard against his chest, thrashing her tail violently, but managed little progress aside from turning herself around. In front of her spanned the fog and mixed grays and blues of the sea, slowly fading into the slate, charcoal coastline where the mist didn't distort the coastline entirely. She was not meant to be in this boat with this man, and she fought against him so hard it was sure that that point was being made clearly to he as well. Her nails, hard as that of any sea monster, dug at the arms that snared her easily cutting through both fabric and flesh. She tried to rise off of him, the effort straining her muscles and bruising her neck where she pushed against the collar of his arms. She brought her tail down with immense force against the side of the boat. Like small plates of armor, the scales of her tail acted as reinforcements, splintering the side of the ship. Damage to her tail and fins were minimal, though a stream of blood began to settle in the plating of her scales where fragments of wood had penetrated between the scales and wounded her.

Sharp, spiny structures raised from her torso, tail and arms when she noticed Elias desperately attempting to follow Nathanael's orders and take hold of the oars to row back in spite of all the chaos. One of the spines of her tail caught Elias across the forehead, another she shoulder and yet another just grazed his hands. Far too shallow of lacerations for Andromeda's satisfaction, they did begin to slowly ooze blood. She dug her claws deeper into her capture's arms, hoping the pain and shock of the puncture wounds would cause him to release her. Just as soon as Elias managed to begin sculling again and get the boat moving, Andromeda suddenly released her digging grip, outstretching her arms before her. Almost within the same instant, two other sea women burst above the surface, grasping Andromeda's arms and pulling her back with incredible force. She felt her arms were burning as if they were fire, and taking breath was impossible, pulled crudely against the sailor's strong-armed grip around her neck.  

What happens on top of the ocean is what goes down in history, and what lies beneath simply remains a mythological happening that gets written off as a work of the gods. Those were the only words Nathanael ever really thought about every now and then, and the rest of the “advice” people had tried to give him when he was a young boy was simply pushed to the side. He was a pirate; never in anyone’s debt and always in someone’s way. He had managed to piss off a kingdom in the far country of Spain one too many times, enough to send a large fleet of ships after him, in the hopes of killing him and bringing all his wealth back to the king. Nathanael wasn’t an idiot, and as far as he was concerned, he might as well be a myth among half of the kingdom’s throughout the Mediterranean. He was definitely one to brag, but most of the time he didn’t need to. Pirates had their strange curses and myths, including the usual ones about the man-eating women of the sea, never sailing on the day of the god’s, and how those with auburn hair would doom others. Nathanael took pride in the fact that his sun-bleached hair already looked red with the sun beating down on them daily. Needless to say, they feared him, and it wasn’t for nothing or lack of stories, that was for certain.

He liked to think of himself as the king of the sea anyway (the humble man he was). He “ruled” with fear, and he always like to start the new month by cutting off the left hand of some poor soul that they had captured simply to torture and kick off the ship during the calmest ocean tides. Nathanael hardly let anyone on the ship now and days, only if they were to be killed and kicked off immediately. He was on a new kind of mission, only barely reminding himself that he had promised Elias, his one and only trusted companion, which was probably too much to give him anyway, to help him search for whatever that thing was he had been looking for. Nathanael figured if he thought long and hard he’d remember what Elias wanted, but now, he wasn’t in the mood to even care. 

Nathanael didn’t care if the others were worried about the curse of the new “island” they were approaching, it was just one of the many things that made the man roll his eyes. The gods were dead, in his opinion. The last time he had mentioned his opinion on their ever watching deities, an oracle had attempted to convince him that there was more to his life and “destiny” than he cared to know. When the island came into view, he could basically hear the hush that fell over his crew and the ship. Nathanael of course took this as his cue, making his way down from the quarter deck to the main deck, slapping Elias on the back as he did so. “What are you standing around for? We have shit to do, Elias,” he smiled, glancing at the few men that were attempting to say some kind of prayer to the gods. Nathanael looked at Elias, or the “quartermaster”, as most of the crew liked to think of him as, “Watch the ship, won’t you?” he smirked, walking away and towards one of smaller row boats. He knew Elias would follow him anyway, he had simply said that to act all high and mighty, though that was a normal thing among him and Elias. 

The island was said to have held one of the many temples to one of the many goddesses within the Greek religion, and Nathanael couldn’t bring himself to have paid attention enough to remember which goddess specifically the island supposedly held an altar for. All he had heard was “temple”, and that led him to believe that the island would’ve held onto some kind of myth or aura that would’ve drawn the correct people to it to leave some valuable things there. Ever the patient one, Nathanael snapped at one of the men to hurry the fuck up, as if they didn’t have any daylight left. He picked up his sword, tossing another to Elias and leaving the other men to fend for themselves as they eventually got onto the smaller boat. Nathanael stood with his arms crossed, staying silent instead of snapping orders like he normally did. 

It had been several years since Elias first met Nathanael. At first he had found the captain’s general attitude too cocky, audacious, reckless, inhumane, and egocentric to support any sort of valuable personae behind it. Nathanael was a man only interested in consumption, whether that be of riches, women, liquor, or lives. Nathanael had been the less than obvious choice for Elias to enlist with, and he had second-guessed the choice for the better part of the first year on his crew, but he provided the most freedom for Elias to work toward his own ends from the start. Elias would not be mistaken, he still recognized every fault and weakness in Nathanael’s character, but in the passing several years he had also become privy to the man’s merits as well. Clever as he was conniving, valiant as he was brash, and dedicated as he was impulsive, the captain was certainly never boring.Though he had acquired the safeguard of Nathanael’s second in command, friendship might have been too generous of a word to describe their cooperative attitudes toward each other. Nathanael remained abrasive, threatening, and perpetually forgetful of the deal he had made with Elias, but as subordinate Elias fought to accept all of these things and maintain his steadfast alliance.

Nathanael’s smile provided no reassurance to Elias. It was a smile he saw too often, a wide grin made of greedy teeth, bared not out of happiness but as a threat to anything that dared stand in the captain’s way. Elias second guessed his desire to question his captain, worried about the way the snarl of a smile would bite back at him. Besides, they had always come out on the other side alive thus far, hadn’t they?

___

Life in the warbling, underwater silence was growing tedious to the fledgling mermaid. It had been far too long in her opinion since any irrational, foolish captain had been misguided enough to direct his unfortunate crew through this pass. Although her sisters were a mix of anger, defensiveness, and fear, Andromeda welcomed their presence. Her hunger for another chance to prove herself to her sisters, to raise herself to the status of one of their peers rather than maintain her standing as an underling, wouldn’t cloud her judgement this time. No more instances of over zealous curiosity—Andromeda had seen humans up close in more than enough instances now. This time it would end in blood shed, securing her status as fully fledged amongst her kin.

The loud slapping sound of the row boats descending from the ship caught the attention of Andromeda and her sister’s from below the surface. A small collection of them, including herself, had been tasked with the first strike. Any one of them able to reap the life of a seaman before the legitimized sirens engaged in defending the island was legitimized herself. It was Andromeda’s fourth chance, and she was embarrassed and shamed by taking the longest in her faction to earn the privilege. There was something so interesting about humans, they fascinated her, made her hesitate, provided an unshakable feeling that it wasn’t yet time to strike—there was something she was meant to be waiting for. Today, she had decided, no feeling of intuition or reluctance would keep her from executing the task at hand.

The rhythmic sound of the oars cutting into the surface spurred Andromeda into action earlier than what the elder’s of the sect would admit. Before being given the signal to attack, before there was truly a chance to address the real threat of the intruders to their holy island was, or even to have a number of how many thieves they were up against, she was jetting up to the surface, the dark outline of the boat growing closer and closer.  She slowed only before she broke the surface, but her resolved was fully in tact. Listening to the muted sounds through the water she could well enough surmise that the boat contained only two passengers. Propelling herself backward slightly, she could register through the choppy surface one was a great deal larger in size than the other—the obvious target to seal her victory and status.

Andromeda used the cover of the fog curling and churning over the surface of the water to her advantage. She was nearly silent as she broke the surface, but was purposeful in making slightly more noise as she circled the defenseless little row boat. These humans, she noted, were different from the ones she had seen before. They didn’t look as crude or worn, but the voice in the back of her head warned her not to allow herself to become caught up in any sort of details. The larger was glancing around, his baited caution mimicking the state in which her sister’s must be nervously waiting in depths to see how the situation would play out. The larger brute must have registered where her movement was coming from, because he halted in his oar work, glancing in her general direction. She descended below the surface again, slipping under the boat gracefully, and just surpassing the surface’s edge on the other side.

It was of little matter to Andromeda whether they sensed her presence right away, or if it took them a few moments. She had the upper hand, and worked to judge where she would have the easiest time extracting the man from the boat and dragging him far down to the ocean floor to watch as the pressure and oxygen deprivation crush the light in his eyes. The color of her own eyes matched the tides in which she had positioned herself.

By now the larger man was staring at her in a silent awe. Slowly, she drew closer to the edge of the boat, doe eyed and delicate looking, she made sure her features looked soft. Slowly, as if she were demonstrating great effort not to spook the pair in the boat she placed one slim hand and then the other on the edge of the boat. She allowed herself the briefest opportunity to glance at the second man, knowing it would be a long time before she would have the chance to see a human again after this—a live one at least. She flicked her tail slightly behind her, an iridescent and graceful, shifting between foamy green, sky blue and glimmering gold depending how both the light and water hit it. It was a stand of, whether the men knew it or not, as she took the two of them in.