She didn’t utter any words and teleported behind Yrevia. Before she could even turn around or attack her, she immediately reached out her hands and pressed her temple. Instantly, she felt a powerful force drawing her in, like a current pulling her body. She just let herself be carried by it. Darkness flashed right in front of her eyes for a second and then she found herself in her human form, standing on the beach.

The waves were wild but the weather was nice. The sun was directly overhead her and she can feel it burning her skin, including the sand that seemed like she was standing on burning embers. As her sense of hearing kicked in, she realized she was not alone. She turned around and witnessed something she never heard and seen before. She can’t explain the mixture of emotions swirling in her when she saw Yrevia and other women, probably serceans, being dragged by the pirate men through the beach.

“This is a memory,” she concluded.

Yrevia and the three other women were beaten by men with their fists until they dropped to the sand drained of energy, crying, and helpless. They were chained and connected, preventing them from escaping. They were calling for help, desperately hoping for someone to come and help them. She also noticed that their wrists were bleeding, they already lost their barbed stinger.

“No! Not her! Please, no!” Yrevia cried, trying to stop the man from dragging her sister by pulling her long and straight hair. But she was kicked in the face and chest repeatedly.

“Shut up! You will get your chance!”
the man shouted and spat on her cheeks.

“Sister! Help!”

He dragged her and put her in the metal cage. One of the men helped him close the door and locked it. The woman kept banging the cage, begging for mercy, and crying out loud. The men watching her didn’t show any remorse, instead, they enjoyed it that they can’t remove the smile on their faces. Yrevia attempted to break free, even if there was the slightest chance, but then, she was tortured again.

On the other hand, two pirate men picked up the chain connected to the cage and pulled it, dragging the cage to the water. Before long, the cage was submerged fully in the seawater and they can hear Yrevia’s sister screaming inside it. The water reacted with her skin and she started changing. She turned into her sercean form, regained her strength, and healed her wounds instantly. But before she could even break out, the two pulled out a pistol and shot the serceana on her head. She stopped struggling and blood just erupted, mixing with the water.

“This is a beautiful catch!” the man said in delight, “the people will be fighting over a piece of this flesh.”

“My suspicions are correct, Ben. They didn’t go to the deep to hide from us, they went to our land! Now, the hunt will be very interesting!”

Yrevia, witnessing the death of her sister, felt empty. She stopped screaming. She was in shock and her tears just kept on flowing. She clenched her fist and closed her eyes instead. She didn’t resist when the men cut off her chain and dragged her through the sand for she was the next in line to the slaughter. The cage was removed from the water, and the fresh corpse of her sister that was still in sercean form was taken out and dropped to the sand. This piqued Asceia’s interest, she was curious about how this will unfold. Unexpectedly, she heard Yrevia’s thoughts in her mind. She was wishing, desperately calling for the help of their Goddess Aesercean.

Her mind went silent for a minute. When she opened her eyes before she was pushed inside the cage, she spoke, “let go of me.” The men stopped for a second and with a blank expressions on their faces, they freed her off the chains on her hands and legs. “Free the others and kill the all men here.”

Then everything just happened so fast. Asceia witnessed how Yrevia used her voice to bend everything around to her will. She used the pirates to take over a village where she had all men killed and women and children enslaved. Her rage and grief made her desperate for power, to fight and find a space for her kind on land. She searched for the Song. But that desperation got her killed. Goddess Aesercean sent an Order to stop her, together, they trapped her in the memory chamber and had her consciousness consumed by the memraes.

Asceia felt a strong pull again and she gasped for air when she got out of Yrevia’s memories. Before she could even react, she lost touch with her temple and was swept by her strong punch. She rolled over the surface of the ocean and it created this rippling effect. She regained control of herself and noticed Yrevia conjured a spear and threw it at her. Asceia quickly manipulated the water and created a barrier that trapped the spear. She took down the barrier only to find out that Yrevia was gone.

She was about to turn around when all of the sudden, Yrevia’s fingers wrapped around her head, and her eyes were clouded by darkness. She resisted and fought the darkness trying to swallow her. She closed her eyes and screamed out loud. And when she forcibly opened her eyes, Asceia found herself in the chamber and breathing heavily. She felt her head aching, but she endured it. Yrevia was inside her mind, poking around her thoughts. As she kept triggering the strings of her mind, she also saw flashes of her distant memories.

“Goddess Aesercean!” she called.

The goddess instantly appeared right in front of her and saw her struggling. She swam closer, reached out her hands, and gently touched her forehead. And that brought warmth and peace to her mind. Another force pulled her in and she found herself in one of her memories. Inside, she was aware that she was re-enacting that day. She stopped playing her part and saw Yrevia on her left, watching and manipulating her memories. She successfully turned the serceans in her memory as puppets. But Asceia snapped her fingers and the memory faded away, leaving her and Yrevia in the depths of the ocean.

“It’s a mistake letting me in your mind, Asceia. Now that I grew tired of your mother’s body, I wanted to inhabit yours.”

“Oh, no, and yes. Letting you in was the plan...and now, you will live in my mind forever, Yrevia.”

In one gesture of her hand, kelps crawled out of the deep and reached for Yrevia. She was entangled and wrapped by them. With the combined powers of Goddess Aesercean and Asceia, she didn’t stand a chance when the kelps dragged her to the depths — to the darkest part of her mind where she will never have a chance of breaking out, where she will be then forgotten.

“Goodbye, Yrevia.”