Chapter 187 — What Are the Sirens
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
The story went like this: after Gao Yang Cecil had assisted the great founding sovereign Charles I in establishing the kingdom, he grew deeply anxious over the monsters that kept wandering out of the Gondo Wasteland and the ever-spreading corruption of the magic tide. So he sought the aid of the elemental spirits of earth, water, fire, and wind. The four princesses of the four elemental planes (that lot had princesses too?) were won over by the young hero-knight and each offered him counsel, and Gao Yang Cecil in the end accepted the enlightenment of the water element and set out for the ocean in search of answers.
Though he had no storm priest to serve as guide upon the sea, Gao Yang Cecil had the help of the sea elves (of course, in the gentleman's telling, the sea elves sacrificed another princess along the way). The sea elves brought his fleet past the storms that ring the continent and guided the company ever eastward.
After who knows how many days and nights of sailing, the sea elves suddenly fell into panic and urged Gao Yang not to go on, for the waters further east were the domain of the "sirens," and no land-dwelling race could hope to contend with the mighty sirens in the ocean. But Gao Yang Cecil knew no fear and insisted on pressing forward, so the sea elves were forced to leave the company, and most of the fleet's ships departed with them. Only Gao Yang Cecil and a few loyal guards sailed on—and before long, they encountered the sirens.
The clever reader will have guessed at once that among the sirens there must surely be a princess too...
But here the story rather fizzled out. The gentleman merely noted in haste that Gao Yang Cecil won the sirens' trust and was guided to a "sacred and beautiful" place, where the company drank deep of fine wine for three days and three nights, and was then flung straight back to the Loren Continent by a storm.
This was plainly a fob thrown to the reader.
Instinct told Gao Yang that this story must correspond to the record of the far-sea voyage missing from Gao Yang Cecil's memories.
But here a curious race had cropped up: the sirens.
The name of this race was unfamiliar to Gao Yang. In the memories he had inherited there was only the faintest impression of it, and what little there was pointed to bizarre myths and tall tales—nowhere near enough to serve as evidence.
Just then, a knock came at the study door, and when it opened, the druid Pi Yun stepped in. "My lord, Amber said you were looking for me?"
Gao Yang nodded, and once the old druid was inside, asked him point-blank, "Have you ever heard of sirens?"
"Sirens?" Pi Yun rubbed his chin. "I have heard a little of the legends concerning them."
Gao Yang's eyes lit up at once. A druid, no less—the profession with the broadest knowledge of the world's races. Even if all Pi Yun knew were legends about the sirens, his account would surely be far more detailed than what ordinary folk knew!
"Tell me!"
Pi Yun twirled his beard and spoke unhurriedly. "The legends of the sirens are mostly concentrated in the eastern and southern parts of the continent. Here in Ansoul they are seldom mentioned; and when they are, it is only in horror stories or similar tales of the strange. The sirens are said to be among the oldest intelligent beings in the world, their history very likely as ancient as the dragons'. Long before humanity rose, they had already ruled the ocean for tens of thousands of years.
"The sirens are a race entirely female, dwelling in the deep sea far to the east, and they almost never have dealings with the intelligent races of the continent. They are all beautiful of face, but only their upper halves are human in form; their lower halves are various sea monsters...