The Final Nail in Our Coffins

Precisely three hours after the incident, Astra’s eyes fluttered open to the sound of Cera snoring. A deep, grating rumble issued from Cera's side of the tent, a noise so abrasive that Astra found it miraculous anyone could find slumber through its rhythm. A frown etched itself onto her brow; she resolved to speak with Hana about relocating to a different tent.

The memory of the preceding hours washed over her, and with it came a chilling dread that settled deep in her bones. Her gaze fell upon Cera’s sleeping form, a new wariness coloring her thoughts. They had made an agreement to depart at the break of dawn, which meant the reckoning for her failure was rapidly approaching.

At that moment, Cy stumbled toward their tent, his silhouette framed by the flap as he called out, "Hey, wake up, you two." A grimace twisted Astra’s lips. The frantic younger brother, as was his custom, was in hot pursuit of his elder sister.

As if summoned by his voice, Cera stirred, waking with a low groan. Astra watched her, every muscle in her own body coiled with tension.

"Either of you seen Jiro or Hana?" Cy asked, his voice strained with an anxiety that was palpable.

Before she could censor herself, the words spilled from Astra’s mouth. "I tried to get them to stay, but they set fire to the woods."

"And you failed to sound the alarm?" Cera’s voice, though still thick with the fog of sleep, was sharpened by an unmistakable edge of fury.

"I… I was convinced I could manage them on my own," Astra confessed, a wave of shame sending heat rushing to her cheeks.

The rage Astra had been anticipating contorted Cera's face, morphing her features into a mask far more menacing than she had dared to imagine. Her nose wrinkled with revulsion. "Leave us," Cera ordered, her voice like the sharp crack of a whip.

Astra trembled as she waited just outside the tent, listening to the urgent, hushed exchange between Cera and her second-in-command.

"What's the problem?" Ventus inquired, a broad smirk dancing on his lips. He had been loitering nearby, having been roused earlier when Cy had sought refuge in his tent.

"Shut your mouth," Astra snapped. The words were sharp, a stark contrast to the traitorous thought that Ventus had always been the more striking of the twins. The fear of Cera’s imminent retribution made her stomach churn violently.

With a theatrical flair, Ventus held up both hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "So-rry to have offended the lady."

"Oh, she is no lady," Ignis interjected, his face set in its usual severe frown.

Astra’s glare fixed on the turquoise-haired twin as she silently stoked the embers of her profound hatred for the Chengs. They were perpetually abrasive, their words always calculated to provoke. Worse still, they possessed an uncomfortable amount of knowledge about her past. It was a bitter irony that she had been raised alongside these boys, yet the only thing they truly shared was the insatiable thirst for blood that coursed through the veins of every member of her clan.

Argent jabbed the motionless body of the man he called Red with the tip of his boot. "Get up, you idiot." When the man failed to respond, Argent sucked in a sharp breath and brought his heel down hard on his back.

"Ooh," Red rumbled, his voice still heavy with sleep. "That feels good."

"I bet it does," Argent snarled, looming over him. He bent down, his lips close to Red’s ear, and unleashed a piercing scream. "Wake up!"

Red flinched violently, pushing himself with agonizing slowness to his feet.

Moments later, Cera strode from the tent. Her glare struck Astra with the force of a physical blow. Her voice, however, was deceptively placid, a calm surface masking a tempestuous current beneath. "Do you have any comprehension of what you have done?"

Astra bowed her head, the crushing weight of her shame making it impossible to meet her leader’s gaze.

"Come here," Cera commanded, her expression as dark as a thunderhead. "You will kneel in this spot and fix your eyes on the sky. You will pray that you haven't just hammered the final nail into all of our coffins. After that, you will run to catch up with them, just as you should have done last night."

Astra nodded, too petrified to look her leader in the eye.

"Look at me!" Cera roared. "What did you see? Recount every detail you can remember, no matter how trivial or insignificant it seems."

"They… they rendezvoused with the third soldier," Astra stammered, her eyes darting frantically between Cera’s face and the dirt at her feet. The sheer force of Cera’s presence was suffocating; Astra felt as if her very skin might scorch if Cera took a single step closer. "The one Jiro swore he never saw."

"So, they are traitors," Cera murmured, the words meant more for herself than for anyone else.

A sliver of pride managed to pierce through Astra’s fear. "I fought Jiro—he attempted to choke me, but I slashed Hana's face," she reported, her voice gaining a fraction of its strength. "He turned and ran when he saw the extent of her bleeding."

A flicker of something—perhaps intrigue—momentarily tempered the inferno of Cera’s fury. The girl's bluntness was striking. There was no apology offered, no trace of guilt for her actions. She felt no shame for nearly killing Hana, for undoubtedly leaving a permanent scar upon her beautiful face.

Cera gnawed at her lower lip, a thoughtful expression replacing her anger. "Forget the prayer. We are all leaving. Now."

Astra could only stare at her leader, her mind reeling in disbelief. She knew she had failed spectacularly, yet why was she being granted such clemency? It was a strange and unexpected mercy from a woman who, only moments before, had seemed ready to unleash her wrath on anything that moved.

"So, what’s the strategy, boss?" Red asked, his voice still thick with sleep as he stretched his limbs and bounced lightly on the balls of his feet.

"We are taking a shortcut."

"That way?" Ignis’s tone was incredulous. "That path leads to the river. Crossing it is impossible."

"And why is that?" Cera challenged. "We have your wind to help carry us across. We have fire to ensure a softer landing. Nothing is impossible."

A nervous murmur rippled through the assembled group.

"Look," Cy cut in, his voice choked with emotion. "We don’t have the luxury of time to argue. Perla has been taken. We must get her back."

"The river provides the only route to reach the north within a week on foot," Cera added, her voice now harsher than it had been in days. "Our sole option is to have the Zephyr Clan twins instruct us in some of their levitation techniques."

Ignis offered no further protest.

Their small company advanced slowly, each member encumbered by a heavy knapsack and the suffocating weight of their leader’s grim disposition. The journey felt interminable, punctuated only by Cera's sharp commands that sliced through the air whenever they paused, banishing any hope of rest. She cast venomous glances in Ignis’s direction, pointedly refusing to meet his gaze. Only Cy, who walked at her side, saw that she was biting her lip with enough force to draw blood. He remained silent.

With each step, the grass grew higher, and the solid earth beneath their feet gave way to wet, clinging mud. Trees were a rarity in this terrain, but Cera could discern colossal oaks in the distance, larger than any she had ever witnessed on Terra. They loomed over the landscape, casting an immense shadow that draped over the river and concealed whatever lay on the other side.

A dense mist clung to their limbs, effectively erasing their tracks the moment they were made. The fog swirled and thickened around them, blinding them to their surroundings until, without any warning, the ground simply vanished. The river plummeted into a thundering cascade hundreds of feet below, rushing past with a velocity that would outpace any train or automobile. Now that they were within arm's reach, the deafening roar of the water was infinitely more terrifying than it had been from a distance.

"What is this place?" Cera asked, the breath catching in her throat.

"The Lorelei River," Cy answered grimly, his eyes fixed on the spectacle before them.

A colossal female figure emerged from the churning waters to greet them. She might have possessed a certain beauty, Cera mused, were it not for the golden fangs that curled menacingly over her bottom lip and her wild, unnerving eyes. Upon closer inspection, her legs were revealed to be a single, massive fin, the same murky gray as the river itself. What was most unsettling, however, was her perfect stillness; she scowled at them, completely unaffected by the violent current that surged around her.

"When she speaks—" Cy started to warn.

"Greetings, summoners," the siren interrupted, her head cocked at an unnatural angle. She regarded the men as if they were a delectable meal to be savored. "How very kind of you to join us for dinner."

Her hands were gnarled talons, more bone and sinew than flesh. She reached out, cupping Cy’s cheek in her grasp. In a flash, Ignis reacted. A violent gust of wind ripped Cy from her hold an instant before she could have snapped his neck. The blast sent him hurtling into a nearby rock, where Astra, having already used her own wind to cushion his impact, was perched.

Astra launched herself from the rock, twisting in mid-air before landing with a powerful splash in the torrent. She propelled herself through the water, straight toward the siren.

"You idiot!" Ignis shouted, momentarily forgetting to cover his ears.

"You are all idiots," the siren spat, just as Astra’s blade sliced cleanly through her neck.

A cry of pure anguish, "Riza!", pierced the roar of the waterfall. A human-like figure stepped out from behind the veil of the towering branches. "What have you done to her?"

"She's dead," Astra stated bluntly, "and if you don't retreat now, you will be next." She braced herself against the powerful current with a counter-force of wind, holding her ground just as the siren had. Panting heavily, she released the wind but kept both arms raised in a combat-ready stance.

The woman paid no heed to Astra’s warning, her approach casting a spell over the heavy-lidded men. As Astra surged forward to deliver another blow, Cera’s hand on her arm stopped her.

"She would have mesmerized our entire force had Astra not intervened. We must press onward and destroy Krysta; she has Perla—"

"Perla, did you say?" The woman paused, seeming to mull over the name. "I knew a Perla once. I wonder if she was yours."

"Long, black hair, eyes the color of earth, and the ability to launch a fireball with deadly precision?" Cera asked, the faintest hint of a smile touching her lips.

"Ah. Fire." The woman's eyes, the same wild eyes as the siren Astra had just slain, filled with a strange affection. "That is a rarity in these parts. But yes, I loved Perla—and Riza, rare as she was."

"Did she pass this way?"

"She did. We were sisters, in a manner of speaking. Little girls together, not so very long ago."

"What were you, long ago?" Cera inquired, knowing with certainty that they were no longer human.

"A siren," the woman explained, her voice like the soft whisper of the current, "is the lingering spirit of a woman who has been wronged. The one you just killed was Riza. I was once a human girl named Elessa. We were friends in the Aqua Clan village."

"You lie," Astra declared. "The Aqua Clan does not exist. They have been extinct for centuries."

"The one you call Perla is but a shadow of her own spirit," the woman-shape said sharply. "She has lived a thousand lifetimes, as have we all. But what do we truly remember? Only the now."

"You do not seem overly distraught that your friend was just killed," Cera observed cautiously.

"It was her time," the creature stated simply. "It has been her time for a very long while. Perhaps I allowed myself to believe this day would never arrive."

"So she was an annoying one, then?" Astra translated.

"We were sisters," the woman-shape reiterated. "I owed her my loyalty. But sirenhood transformed her into a monster." She gestured toward the corpse. "And that was the form she chose to inhabit."

"What was it that turned you into sirens?" Cera questioned.

"Anguish," the woman-form replied. "It is a thing that young women find with such ease. And we always played too close to the river." She glanced at the other siren’s body, then leaned into the water to retrieve it. "But enough of that. I will depart now and permit you to pass."

"You'll permit us to pass? I could crush—"

Astra was abruptly silenced by a flash of flame that erupted from Cera’s hand.

"Farewell," the woman-form murmured, vanishing with the body into the blood-stained river.

Cera shot Astra a withering glare. "From this moment forward, I will be handling all diplomatic interactions." Not even a thank you for saving your asses? Astra thought, but she wisely held her tongue.

A few sharp slaps brought the men back to their senses, though Cy's shoulder was now badly dislocated. Cera assessed him with a clinical gaze. "We do not have a medic," she stated flatly.

"I am not going back to the village!" he cried out, correctly interpreting her expression.

"Then you would prefer to continue in agony?"

"I can fight with one arm."

Red produced a numbing potion and offered it to him. Cy accepted it with a silent, grateful nod.

"We move forward," Cera announced to the group.

"Just a moment," Ventus called out, pressing a hand to his ear. "I have a message for you. It's from the Seeress."

"The Seeress?" Cera repeated. "What could she possibly want with me?"

For a brief instant, Ventus’s playful demeanor evaporated. His face went slack, his eyes lost their focus, and when he spoke again, it was with a high, clear voice that was distinctly not his own: "I commend you on your success thus far. Do not enter the lion's den. No matter how prepared you believe you are. Do not."

Ventus blinked, and his own personality came flooding back into his features. "So, did you get all that?"

Cera gritted her teeth and pushed past him, resuming her determined march. Where did the Seeress, that enigmatic, all-seeing entity, get off issuing her orders? Why should Cera heed her words when the woman wouldn't deign to share any truly useful foresight? The lion's den? She had no time for such poetic nonsense.

"We go on," Cera repeated, her voice flat and hard as stone.

And so they marched onward, a grim procession of miniature soldiers winding their way toward an unknown catastrophe, swallowed whole by the swirling mist and the thunderous roar of the river.