Chapter 194 — The Great Adventure of Tyr the Sea Siren
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
It was plain to see that Miss Tyr the sea siren was not exactly thrilled about having "swum the wrong way."
And through his conversation with her, Gao Yang finally worked out how this deep-sea creature had muddled her way onto the human continent.
According to her, the sirens had fought a war against a group of humans about a month ago, out on the Endless Sea far from any land—"a pack of raving humans in black robes and short coats who could use all sorts of bizarre magic." The fighting had not lasted long; formidable as those humans' spells were, they were isolated on an island with no reinforcements and hopelessly outnumbered. The sirens had jointly summoned two lightning storms and several tsunamis, smashed through their defensive works, and sent the humans fleeing in panic.
In the latter half of the battle, Miss Tyr had lost contact with the main force. The humans' magic had probably clouded her judgment (so she claimed), leaving her unable to tell one direction from another. She had meant to swim home to siren territory, but somewhere along the way she wound up on the human continent instead...
"At first I thought it was strange—the seabed kept looking less and less familiar," said Miss Tyr, perched on the edge of the well, her fish tail flopping against the ground now and then. Gao Yang was frankly curious what sort of anatomy that tail had, to bend to such a degree. "Then I swam and swam and saw land, and the mouth of a great river... I thought I must have circled around to the far side of our continent."
"Your continent?" Gao Cen blinked. "You have a continent over there too?"
"We do," Tyr nodded. "Though you could call it a rather large island as well... I don't know much about life on land. We spend most of our time in the sea."
Another useful piece of information!
This siren was an absolute godsend, an unexpected delight. Gao Yang felt that his understanding of this world was about to be greatly rounded out by what Tyr could tell him, and he could not resist pressing on: "Do you know where those humans who fought you came from?"
"How would I know? They just showed up in our territory one day and seized a reef to hold some kind of ritual. That was a dangerous spot—there's a powerful unstable energy field on the seabed there, and the way they were messing about, nine times out of ten something was going to blow. So we sent people to warn them to stop. And what did those humans do? Without a word they started shouting something about 'the storm is coming' and charged at us, so we gave them a beating..." Tyr tilted her head as she spoke, as though she truly could not fathom the logic of the human species. "We don't have much dealings with humans, but that kind of raving lunatic was a first for us..."
"Stormborn!" Pi Yun immediately guessed the humans' identity from Tyr's description. "That explains it... Who else but the Stormborn would turn up in waters that far from land? Those madmen cut themselves off from human territory after the Fall—eight or nine out of ten of them took to the sea."
As he spoke, the little old man could not help twirling his beard. "Who would have thought, who would have thought... not only did those fellows run off to the far seas, they actually picked a fight with the sirens down there..."
Hedy looked at Tyr as well. "So you meant to warn those raving humans not to court disaster, and when they wouldn't listen, that's when the fighting broke out?"
Perhaps because she had already said a good deal, Tyr—though still wearing that languid air—began answering the others' questions too. "That's right. Otherwise who'd have the time to pick fights with you humans for no reason? We're busy every day, you know."
"Do you know what those humans were trying to do with that ritual?" Gao Qi asked, frowning.
"No idea. Couldn't make sense of it. Your human magic systems are too strange—I couldn't figure out a thing."