World of Aluvia 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

much more to say,” Phoebe said, still caught up in the scene around her, no doubt as Tristan had planned. Fear was distant in a place as magical as this. She went on to describe the experience. The red eyes made her shudder during her retelling. They asked a few questions, but it had all happened so fast, there wasn’t much more she could add.
    “I don’t know what it could be,” Mina said, frowning thoughtfully. She was reclining against a bed of sea flowers, spinning one bloom lazily in her hand.
    “Me either, but I suspect it was just a wandering deep sea creature too far from home. I don’t think we need to fear it any longer. It swam away, in any case.”
    True. Okay, so the sea had some mysterious dangers in it she hadn’t known about. But her mer-friends had not yet explained about
their
safety. Her concern for them outweighed fears for herself. “What did you learn about the poor merfolk who died?”
    Mina sat up and swam to them. Tristan’s face grew serious again. Phoebe hated to cast a shadow on the moment, but she needed to know.
    “The elders say this skeleton was a merman from many moons ago, a hermit who lived outside of our community after we were set free. He could have been dead for some time. The body must have gotten dislodged from wherever it had been… trapped.” He gulped slightly and then continued, “The elders don’t know what did the damage that obviously killed him. They think maybe he got caught in a riptide and was dashed against the rocks, breaking the parts of the skull, and the black mark might just be a birth mark of some kind, or even part of his mer-tattoo. They swore it meant nothing.”
    “But Mother told us differently.”
    Tristan shoved Mina’s shoulder, but she held her chin high as Phoebe asked, “Your mother knew something?”
    A thin red eel slid by, but Phoebe didn’t even flinch. Her focus was on Tristan and Mina.
    “She’s the historian of our people, a mermaid of great learning,” Mina explained, weaving her fingers through her long hair and pushing it out of the way. “She studies ancient myths and the golden age of the merfolk. She knows things others have forgotten and says there was once a creature that could have done it, but no one has seen or heard from such a thing in centuries. The others scoffed at her for even bringing it up.”
    “The elders scoff at everything not under their noses, but this time, I can’t blame them.” Tristan shook his head.
    “What did she say?” Phoebe asked.
    Mina explained, “She said there was an ancient sea beast called Baleros that lived in the deepest part of the ocean, in the midnight realm.”
    Tristan added, rolling his eyes, “Baleros is the story that parents tell naughty little seawees who disobey, Phoebe. He’s the embodiment of evil, a very powerful, very greedy sea monster, often known as just ‘the beast.’ He’s supposedly the reason our ancient civilization collapsed. They say he could steal the magic from within a merfolk, through touch. He physically burned the magic out of them, leaving them nothing but a husk.”
    It didn’t sound like a myth to Phoebe. It sounded far too much like the skeleton. “Oh no! It sounds like you
are
in danger!”
    Phoebe had often wanted to curse Sierra’s silly rule forbidding swimming in the ocean, but maybe Sierra knew something Phoebe did not. The frightening thing that grabbed her was bad enough, though Tristan clearly dismissed it as any kind of danger. Now some evil beast could be killing merfolk by siphoning out their magic? That sounded far worse.
    “You don’t have to be concerned for us,” Tristan assured her. “Baleros has nothing to do with it. He’s just a myth. And our limited magic is hardly something Baleros would crave anyway. Mother often makes a whale out of a minnow. She tends to be dramatic.”
    The two merfolk quirked their lips at each other.
    “But―”
    “Don’t worry. We won’t be going off alone anywhere, and our village