But they had to let them go eventually. And then… Then they could feel water in their lungs. It was impossibly unnerving, letting it pour down their throats. Every instinct and sense they had was screaming at them to get back to the surface, that they couldn’t live breathing in water no matter how much of it they pushed into themselves. That it was killing them.

But they hung there, forever suspended in that last moment before they’d drown, their bodies expecting a death that wouldn’t come. In the beginning, the panic grasped them tightly. Only time would make it weaken.

The first to recover was Emony, who kept nervously glancing at Tiphaine, ready to intervene at the first sign that something was wrong.

Was Tiphaine feeling the same way she was? she wondered. The magic keeping her alive at the bottom of the lake was clearly different. Like the king, she did not swim – she moved unperturbed through the water, exactly as she would on land. She slithered down the steps cut into the seabed. As she kept to the ground, Emony swam through the water, seemingly free of gravity, kicking her tail and trying to stay on Tiphaine’s level.

As they made their way behind the king along the polished stone steps that split the seabed, she saw countless schools of fish in every direction, stretching far above them, too, while crabs and snails crawled along the ground, seaweed like tall grass making its way past the pebbles. Eventually, as they reached the bottom of the lake, the steps they followed became a path, before becoming a long bridge where the fields of seaweed abruptly stopped and the seabed was cut short by a pitch-black, bottomless abyss.

“Do not fall,” the king warned Tiphaine once they made it to the edge, before turning back around and moving on. “You would not make it back.”

Emony gulped, awkwardly swimming over to Tiphaine with her golden tail, getting ready to catch her companion if anything happened. The bridge had no railings, and it wasn’t very wide. But to Emony’s immeasurable relief, her companion stayed on it.

“None of this is possible,” whispered Tiphaine as she floated beside her. Her voice sounded different in the water. “There’s no way such a small lake could be this deep. It’s like another world. And can you feel it? The sheer volume of magic?”

“Yes,” she whispered back. “Even I can, at this point. My bones are shaking. It really is all black, isn’t it? It must be hard for you. Let’s just focus on getting through this, okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Hey, um, on another note, you’d just as easily kiss the king as you would me? You literally just met him – way to make me feel special… Even after I saw you staring at me all those times. Like today, while you were on the tree…”

She was only trying to lighten the tense mood, Emony knew it, but she could practically feel the blood rushing to her cheeks.

“You saw...? Ha… Well… My bad,” Emony stammered.

Tiphaine gazed at her curiously.

“I’m sorry, okay?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Tiphaine said.

“Then… stop looking at me like that!”

“Like what?”

She was obviously smirking. Emony, on the other hand, was quickly finding that her cute new face was far more prone to blushing than her usual one. She looked away, covering up her unfamiliarly rosy and hairless cheeks with her hands.

“…I hate you,” Emony said.

“Oh? Is that why you didn’t want to kiss me?”

“That must be it…”

“Ouch.”

Emony shook her head. “No, that wasn’t it. I just wanted our first time to be different. Like… like not because we were forced to do it by some all-powerful undead king, and… not when I was wearing this face… I’m glad it worked, though. Are you breathing alright?”

Emony could have sworn that she saw Tiphaine smile, even though she had her mask on.

“I happen to like both your faces, so I wonder if I should lie, and apply some force myself,” she said.

Emony flicked her lightly on the shoulder. “Very funny.”

A while later, swimming over the path beside her, she saw the far edge marking the end of the abyss. A bed of seaweed was climbing over the cliff out of the darkness to reach their level. But beyond that, through the clear, dark water, she saw castle walls.

It was another impossible sight. For over a minute, Emony thought her eyes were deceiving her. There was no reason for such a structure to exist at the bottom of a lake. Stone walls and towers, covered in seaweed, grime and sand, stood before them like a human castle on the surface, dirty red banners lined with seashells swaying gently in the current. The stone path led them directly towards open, rotting wooden gates in the center, where a drawbridge was laid down for them.

Once past the walls, Emony stared in awe at the many towers standing tall over the seabed and the palace from which they rose. They made their way towards the building, moving between beautiful statues lined up symmetrically on either side of the marble path, each depicting the most alluring of mermaids. Behind them, she suddenly noticed, stood the undead, the men of the lake. They were completely still, staring at nothing, unmoving despite the tide that was gently shifting the seabed. They stood in groups of twenty, seemingly surrounding the palace.

She, Tiphaine and the king swam, slithered and walked past them, straight towards the doors of the gilded marble palace. The king stopped in front of them, at the door, turning around and speaking to her and Tiphaine for the first in a long time.

“This is the sunken palace of Acu’enah. A place mostly forgotten by the world outside these waters.”

He lifted a hand and gently touched the stone archway leading into the castle. “This is my wife’s home. My queen’s. You will not disrespect it.”

Emony and Tiphaine nodded in unison. “We won’t disrespect it.”

After a long, appraising stare, the king nodded back.

“Then I invite you in. Verena will come to see you shortly, and after hearing what she has to say, you may or may not leave this place alive.”

“Understood,” they breathed.

“And you, siren,” the king continued, “You will not sing while in my presence. In addition, you will beg the lady Verena for some clothing, which you will wear. I will not be brought to lust anyone but my queen.”

The sudden realization hit Emony rather quickly. She’d lost her ripped tunic somewhere in the water quite a while ago. She quickly concealed her bare chest with her hands, again made acutely aware of the magic that was tying itself around her/no, his brain.

But with those words, the king turned around again, grasped the twin mermaid handles of the huge, ornately gilded marble door of the palace, and pushed it open.