Hey YALL, this is the prologue to the first draft of my fantasy book, The Mage’s Artifice. It is still a work in progress, so please be kind and don’t hate on me <3 thanks. If anyone wants me to post chapter 1, I’ll be happy to continue.
Prologue: Valerine
When the rains fell in Pavilion, they fell hard. Above the sea, the droplets plummeted and collided with the icy water, salt swirling with the mist in the air. The waves crashed, burned, thundered as the wind howled like a wolf in the night, searching for its captor between the trees and the sandy shores residing on footed land. Despite the rumbling clouds and sharp currents, the water was all the same below, and those below were braver than any mortal man.
Among the rocks and creatures of the night, a moonlit figure could be discerned against the gray water, although it shouldn’t have been possible in a storm such as this. It sat perched among the highest rock, it’s gray-black surface a blight in the blue night. The creature hoisted it’s body up where her skin seemed to twinkle and glimmer like the scales of a fish caught between worlds.
“Vallyn, come down here already,” a voice called from beneath the depths. The sound was a rasp, a shrill that shouldn’t have accompanied the beautiful face of the girl encompassed in the treacherous waters. The luminous moonlight shone high in the sky, and any pirate faithful to the Drunk Goddess (a sorry few these days) would know that she was a Ravine, a dark siren of the seas, born from the sable seed.
Valerine knew of the trouble that would accompany tonight. She heard whispers among the sea-folk about the Great Storm brewing for days past, and she reluctantly agreed as her sister urged her to come from her confines of the Misty Kingdom and go above into the two-folk world, a sinister place that Valerine had never ventured before. It was where humans and elves and other creatures walked among the sandy earths, roaming about in lust and hunger, yearning thirstily to explore the waters below. Her fear was not unwarranted; after all, she was a siren, mythical mermaids of the sea sought out by the fiercest of pirates and gentlest of men—of those who believed anyway. Danger was always imminent.
The pale girl situated atop the rock peered down at her sister below the waters. Vallyn's eyes were wide and colored entirely with a mystical black cloud, her blood red lips set in a wicked grin, but something about it wasn’t humorous to the sweet young siren called Valerine.
“Haven’t you always wanted to come along?” Vallyn inquired. “You know why I’m here. If you’d rather entertain yourself with the sea sharks and weeds, stay and go back to the fusses of the children.” She stopped and Valerine pondered her sister’s suggestion. Their plan was dangerous, but she knew Vallyn didn’t care. She had traveled to the twofolk world countless times with no regard to the danger of pirates and ruffians; the persistent siren had a dream, and she would never cease to attain it.
“The wind is picking up now,” Vallyn noted. She closed her eyes, drinking in the scent of the salt and breeze, “I feel something is coming.” Her upper torso was visible while what should’ve been legs, a mystical blue siren’s tail replaced, thrashing violently against the sea waters. Vallyn had always been getting into a sort of mischief, luring foolish men and tricking common folk above, but it was different this time. As Vallyn was her elder by five years, Valerine—a girl with only eighteen comings—had heard the occasional rumor of the strange stories that surrounded her sister. It was said that Vallyn had left for the two-folk world for months, even years on end with no sign of returning, only to have come back with a sing-song voice and child in her stomach. Sirens were known for their beauty and seductive nature, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to Valerine, a girl yet to understand the meanings of life at the time. Yet, traipsing around the two-folk world for such extended periods of time should’ve been impossible with only bone magic in play; she must’ve consumed a man.
“Let us go back, sister. Please. I know I said I’d come along, yet this will end grievously.” Valerine’s voice was soft and persistent. She pulled Vallyn’s tail beneath her, but it was a fruitless attempt as the girl clung to the side of a rocky stack situated amidst the crashing of the storm.
Valerine had never accompanied her sister to the dangers of this world, but she still sensed that today would be different for the Ravine sisters. Today she felt as if something would go terribly wrong; the storm was violent, yet there was an eerie stillness in the air Valerine couldn’t discern.
“There!” A roaring ship appeared in the open waters, stricken with the hailings of the storm and the sharp waves of the sea. “The whispers were right: a pirate’s ship. They haven’t dared trek into these waters for many moons past. And in a storm such as this! We’ve gotten lucky.”
Valerine looked disapprovingly at the ship and then slowly made her way to Vallyn’s side, clutching her sister’s arm in terror. “Vallyn, I’m scared.”
“Stay behind, then. You were right, Lerine. The danger is too great for a Ravine who’s yet to manifest their bone magic.” The words stung Valerine like the pinch of a crab on her tail.
“I’m eighteen. The bone magic and song are soon to follow. You said so yourself!” Valerine retorted. She looked ashamed as Vallyn shook her head and dove into the water, not bothering to check if her sister would accompany her on the dangerous mission.
Valerine stared at the figure swimming violently through the depths below, sighed and took a shaky breath before she found herself following close behind. Although her magic hadn’t manifested, the smite against her was too great. She would prove Vallyn wrong. She knew that her sister had long developed her bone magic and song, a siren’s greatest powers to lure countless sailors with the seductive trance. With her song and her dream, Vallyn was unstoppable.
“So you’ve decided to come after all,” Vallyn looked sideways at Valerine as she flanked her left. The latter rolled her eyes dismissively.
They reached the foreboding debts, peering up as they swam beneath the ship. The bottom was nearly rotting, and Vallyn shook her head at the poor material. “It’s bound to sink soon enough, sister. Look at this wood…” she traced her hand along the side as the ship shook and rattled against the storm. It was a deep auburn, turned to a shade of ebony to any common two-folk beneath the darkened waters—yet to a Ravine appeared clearer than a sunlit day. “It would only be in the kindness of our hearts to do such a thing; luring these men will be the happiest days in their youth. When do you think they’ve last received a woman's grace alone in the confinements of the sea? We will be doing them a favor, dear sister.”
Valerine scowled at her remarks. She peered above through her thick eyelashes and began to swim violently upward toward a haphazard netted rope hanging below the ship. Vallyn followed close behind and chuckled, eyeing her sister viciously. They lifted their bodies on the net, a strenuous task for a siren lacking in magic. Soon, they reached an opening where they were able to cling onto the side of the ship, watching as men and boys danced enthusiastically, arms linked and circling around each other. Vallyn giggled maliciously while her sister caught sight of a handsome boy sitting on a barrel, appearing forlorn among the wild crowd. A stout viola sat beside his feet, yet there was no melody accompanying the strings. Hard rains patterned the deck, but the pirates didn’t seem to mind.
“Come on, boy, play us a tune. We heard you were the finest bard in your band!” An old towering man with a slight beard growing all the way up the side of his cheeks guffawed at him. Others laughed and danced some more, drinking from skinned bottles and yelling excitingly. “Play!” Another shouted.
The pungent aroma of the ale and beer intoxicated Valerine, and she almost lost hold of the railing in a drunken state herself. Vallyn caught her just in time before she could tumble back into the depths.
“We’ve done you a favor, Edmind, bringing you aboard this ship. Not many would’ve taken someone such as yourself.” The words were said in spite, and the young boy grimaced at the sudden wash of the sea from the inebriated man’s mouth.
Edmind shook his head and arose from his seat atop the barrel, his height nearly towering over his contender. “I’ve played enough, Chump-roast. My strings will break in time, as will my voice be stifled by this incessant howling of the wind. It’s a wonder you can dance in this storm.”
“The storm is my spirit,” Chump-roast pounded his chest, “my soul is the sea. There’s nothing a little water can do to the Flea Kings, boy. We are made of the ocean, born from the Drunken Goddess herself. We are here to find sirens! Do you know what a siren is, boy? Do you know how to capture a siren? You should be grateful we took you with us. Your mother begged us, young Edmind, groveled at our feet, yet when we heard you were a mere singer, we scoffed and scorned the woman. But Captain Rike had a soft spot for your late father, or maybe for your mother, and he allowed this treachery onboard.” The man named Chump-roast jabbed his finger into Edmind’s chest, laughing drunkenly at his jest. “The Flea Kings are a selective branch in Telveria. It took me years to rise to this level, and now here you are parading around the confinements of our ship, and you won’t even play us a damned tune.”
Edmind wasn’t intimidated by the man’s words. He slowly inched towards Chump-roast until he was merely inches away from his foul breath and stared menacingly into his eyes, not blinking once. “And here I am, parading your ship, stealing your rank, captivating the heart of the Captain. My father was one of the greatest pirates who ever lived. You’re nothing but a low-ranked flea, sucking on the blood of the living, killing us all softly in our sleeps, halving our souls! And sirens? Don’t make me laugh. Those creatures are merely myth, fairytales to build the hopes of pirates like you who can’t find a true lady in the real world—”
Before the two sirens could listen to the rest of the boy’s rebuke, Vallyn whispered words indiscernible to her sister and shifted, growing tall legs and graciously pulling herself on the ship’s deck. Where her siren’s tail should’ve been were bare appendages, her entire body soaked from the sea. Her figure was covered in blue silk, a dress of the waters and waves, and her black hair coiled around her neck and down her back like a snake ready to poison. Her appearance startled the boys, all already forgetting about the skirmish between the two men. They dropped their skins and bottles, gaping at the entrancing beauty of a siren herself—although it would’ve been a wonder if they even realized her true form.
Vallyn spoke, yet her sister could barely understand it against the crashing of the waves. The allure of her voice was enough for the pirates’ temptation to heighten. The eyes of several men became disillusioned and widened as her words penetrated their minds, filling their ears with a melody more beautiful than any mortal bard’s.
“Where did you come from? Are you truly what I believe you to be?” Chump-roast, the man with the cheeked-beard asked in awe. He looked shaken, but pleased as Vallyn emulated a glow, seemingly a woman more beautiful than the gods from above; she might’ve been a god to the men on the ship as they marveled in drunken admiration and lust. Although the Flea Kings had dreamed of capturing and selling the beautiful sirens of myth, even now they could not believe what presented herself before them.
Valerine, still holding the side, watched the bard, unwavering toward her sister’s sudden arrival. He did not seem to care for Vallyn’s beauty, but rather had a sinister look brewing beneath the surface that Valerine did not seem to notice. His face was still, his mouth set in a taut line while the other men smiled and laughed in desire at the fair maiden of the sea. He may have been caught up in the previous confrontation with the man named Chump-roast, and even a beautiful mythical creature couldn’t sway his attention.
“It be not matter where I come from, but what I came for.” Vallyn cocked her head to the side and grinned with a malicious intent that the men could not detect. “I will entertain you today, not with foolish bards and dancing pirates, but with the Song of the Siren, the Song of Vallyn Valencia. That is my name. Do not forget it.” She chuckled and a man in the back hooted, the others quite pleased at the spectacle. How foolish, Valerine thought. Edmind, the musician, was still not amused. He was beautiful, she decided, with dark hair but a seemingly gentle look in his eyes. He was right to defend his good name, she concluded. What he was doing among these scoundrels and swindlers, Valerine would’ve never fathomed.
The sailors were erratic, craving for the attention of the young woman. They believed in her holiness and magic, that she was a deity from the sky above, the Drunken Goddess they seemed to so eagerly worship now, where in days past they found themselves rejecting the faith.
A man shook in utter adulation, dropping himself onto the grounds and lifting his arms up to the siren. “She has come down to us! Oh by the waters, the Goddess is here! Pray to her, oh pray, dear Flea Kings.” Others began to follow until they all bowed and shook in a daze, unbeknownst as to where Vallyn’s true intentions lied.
Before the men could perpetrate any harm against the siren girl, Vallyn opened her mouth and began to sing. It was a shrill sound, and it seemed like every living creature her voice penetrated died with it. Immediately after the first chord struck, souls were ripped from the bodies of the very men that bowed in awe, struck with her power and magic, dazed in confusion, heads lolling back, eyes rolling inside themselves. They were not aware of the entrancing melody of Vallyn’s Song. It was her song, and her song only where no other siren could ever replicate its beauty and deceit. It was the song that had lured pirates and sailors for the hundreds of years that sirens had lived in the waters, born from the Great Seed. Valerine’s song had not manifested inside of her yet, but she knew that when it did, she would unleash hell on the mortals who shot them down and stole their sisters and mothers.
Vallyn was alive. The men’s lives were halved, years taken from them with every minute they listened to the song. None of the men could speak or talk, and they stood there in placid unawareness, unmoving, eyes clouded with the drug of her voice.
The boat was headed straight for the rock that not only minutes earlier Valerine and Vallyn had sat perched on its highest peak. From a distance, it was a shadow in the waters, looming higher than Valerine had remembered before. She suddenly knew of her sister’s intent. With no one to steer the ship, it would crash and burn against the stone. The storm would suck her survivor’s underneath the waves until they lay and died at the very bottom of the Misty Kingdom. Vallyn would feast on their hearts and souls and become one of them, a two-folk creature of the two-folk lands, where she would roam the cities and kingdoms that found itself amidst other sands and deserts that the waters could never reach. She would explore the life that she had so eagerly prayed to come to her. She would find Victor and Lera and take them back to the seas with her, living the life they had cherished before they were stolen from her arms in the dark of night, taken and sold by the pirates and ruffians of the sea. Her magic would transform her siren-self into that of a man of the world above and she would finally take her children back. Yes, this was her plan, this she knew, and it was so clear and perfect in Valerine’s mind, she was almost certain her song was manifesting inside of herself, until before her black eyes, she saw movement from behind.
The bard boy, Edmind, had broken the spell of Vallyn’s Siren Song. His eyes were no longer clouded or fogged, and they were stricken with fury and a rage that Valerine was too afraid to make out. He was alive again. Valerine screamed for her sister, but her voice was muffled against the waves and waters spraying the ship’s floors. Inside Edmind’s boot, he pulled a dagger, curved at the tip, sharp and glinting in the pale moonlight. Droplets crashed onto the blade, washing away the red horrors the weapon had seen in battles past. He was quick to act. He charged forward, knife in hand, past the other men and sailors still transfixed on the song.
Valerine was helpless. She had not mastered the Bone Magic her sister had barely understood herself, nor did she have her song within. Vallyn had human legs now, but she could only control herself for so long. The magic would wear off soon enough, and it was why she must have feasted on the pirates and their souls for the true effect to transpire.
“No!” Valerine screamed before she could understand the situation.
Vallyn’s song had consumed even her own mind, and she was drooping, singing a forever melody of death. She was unconscious, her head turning, her lips moving with no life behind her eyes. Although her countless acts of seduction in years past, she had never entertained a crowd as large as this. The magic overpowered her as her soul linked to the pirates in a thousand different directions.
In a sudden rage, Edmind’s dagger pierced flesh—the heart of the siren, Vallyn Valencia. Blackened blood blossomed from her chest, spilling onto the wooden floors and washing away from the thunderous rain. The blood was one with the waters now, consumed by the sea’s great open mouth, and with it the last song Vallyn would ever sing.
Valerine couldn’t breathe, couldn’t process the transpiring events as she saw her sister fall limp, dead into the darkness. Her voice was stone. She couldn’t feel sad, but an anger rushed inside of her, cold and heartless, and she suddenly willed the gods to strike the poor boy, Edmind, the beautiful boy she had so ardently trusted to be unlike these men. She cursed him a thousand times, repeated his name upon her lips over and over until it was etched into her heart. The ship rocked back and forth, and Vallyn’s body slid on its surface until it fell overboard, plunging into the sea below and into its dark depths. Valerine watched in horror as the men slowly came back to life, their souls in mere pieces from the enchantment. They were frightened and shaking, unaware as to what had truly occurred.
Valerine turned her head and the rock was looming closer than ever. She could not shift now, not without her song. She was helpless with no one to save her, not even her sister or the sea folk below.
She must save herself.
Edmind stood motionless, water spraying his face, the roars of the waves shifting and rocking the boat until Valerine could barely hold on. The Storm was picking up. She heard the young bard scream commands, and from the cabin, a shaken man dressed in Captain’s clothes rushed out. Edmind ran to the hull, the wheel turning from the winds and rains pounding against the deck. It was no use. Death was inevitable.
Every decision had led to this moment. Fleeting memories surged through Valerine’s mind. She thought of her mother, her sister, both subjected to a pirate’s choice of fate, and not their own. No. That wouldn’t be the end of it. She refused it. She swore it upon Vallyn’s dying breath.
“By a thousand gods and the Drunken God herself, by the thunderous winds howling, the waves cursing, I swear to you, this is not the end,” Valerine’s voice pierced in the night. Her head lulled back and she closed her eyes.
She found her lips moving, not in words and stories, but in song.
The Siren Song of Valerine Valencia.
It poured out of her like a wave in the storm, cursing every man and woman that traipsed aboard the ship. She could feel every heart pulsating beneath their soft flesh, and in her mind, she could take every remnant of their souls as she pleased. She could rip their minds in two and it would be merciful. She shuddered, and they shuddered with her, linked to her like a hand held a hand, like a fist tightly enclosing around them until they were no more. The men had fallen and stopped again by the Song of the Siren, more powerful than Vallyn’s herself, for it was said that the first song was filled with ceaseless passion and anger and magic. She could feel her body transforming, and she willed herself to do so. There, she found herself standing on the ship among the fallen men, neither alive nor dead, only shells of broken bodies. She saw the young Bard amidst the others. Only then did she place her hands on his skin, icy in the night, and ripped back flesh, revealing the bones and the dark red blood she so eagerly consumed, heart and mind and soul gone from the very beautiful boy that once was alive.
The rock was mere inches away. Valerine, her mouth dripping in red, her eyes not black anymore, but clouded in a milky white, jumped overboard, falling deep into the depths, her human legs finally shifting to its true self. The siren’s tail of the night thrashed violently in the water and she peered above through her thick eyelashes as the ship collided with rock, the wood splintering itself into a hundred pieces and bodies crushed and drowned in the blackened waters.
She let out a ragged scream and frantically swam away, searching for the body of her sister that was no more. She closed her eyes and she could feel the soul of the young boy named Edmind now a part of her very own.
Vallyn’s dream would be fulfilled.
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