× siren's lure

@yangyang *kun™ It was expected to fail sometimes. Zhan was completely fine with it. Yet the overwhelming craving of answers still flooded his body. The rumors of a creature lurking in the water and snatching people had started up again. It was getting to his sense of rationality.

Deep in thought, the prince didn't notice anything glimmering under him as he swam and he sure hell didn't expect to be sliced. A pained yell escapes Zhan and he flails momentarily. Then the red of being cut is slowly swirling around him. It burns due to the salt water and he pushes forward to shore. Chuyue immediately is at his side and cursing.

It's all background noise as Zhan looks at the water.

When he finally looks down at it, it's 3 jagged lines. Not too deep that he couldn't walk but the chances of them scarring were high. "I think some coral caught my leg." Zhan pants out and gives a light laugh as Chuyue uses his shirt to bandage the prince up.

When Zhan returns to the beach just a week later, he has a different thought in mind. He's alone and the sun is beating down on the island; making everyone want to seek shelter from the heat. Leaving little to no people outside. The unnatural glow that was shown to him on that day replayed in his mind like a tune from a feast. Over and over until it was so diluted he forgot what the original was. He knew that he needed to see it again and it would lead him to some answers.

The prince climbs up on top of a giant rock with two buckets. One carries chum and the other live fish. Zhan is drenched in sweat from carrying them and he lets his bare feet dangle into the water briefly. Pulling them out to toss in some chum. Waiting until he saw movement to toss in a live fish.

There was a twinkle of reflection in the water that made Zhan's hair rise on end. Water barely moving differently. He dropped in a live fish and watched it closely. Wondering if it was just a small shark or a big fish in the water below. Eyes trained on any unnatural movement.

@zhan Land dwellers were fascinating, human or not. They always stray too close to the water, though not that Yangyang was complaining. He often forgot that none of them could breathe underwater for more than a few minutes, but the bodies that now lay on the ocean floor did keep him from feeling lonely nowadays. The dead couldn't speak, however, and it only prompted the siren to keep taking more victims without really knowing how to make them last longer. Halfway through the month, he practically had a collection of villagers near his little cave home, mostly little children who wandered too far from the shore and mothers who made the mistake of going after them. At some point, they were begun to crowd and the prince had no choice but to start feeding on some whenever the fishermen ruined his chances of hunting.

Sirens were not meant to be friends with humans, his father would always say. Although Yangyang still couldn't see why despite all the rotting bodies he had managed to pile up. Everyone who came to the beach had a watery grave waiting for them down below, and so the villagers had suddenly stopped coming. And if they did, they never stepped close enough to the water. Yangyang didn't lure with voice just like his sisters, but rather with the shimmer of his tail and the look in his eyes. However, his victims needed to be close enough for him to be able to do so.

He wakes up one day to the scent of a human floating by, leisurely swimming as if half of his village folk hadn't disappeared in the past week doing the exact same thing. The human was swimming back to shore slowly, and the temptation to grab him made itself known in the way Yangyang's fingers trembled with urge, claws growing despite his intentions being entirely different. He was itching to drag him underwater, but instead he swan just a few meters below him, deciding to lunge out last minute before he could get out of the water.

A few droplets of blood paint the water red as Yangyang slices at the human's leg, leaving a siren's mark before hurriedly swimming back down further into the depths. He doesn't bother to look back but he knows he had probably caused damage when he hears pained yelling.

But despite that, he knew they would come back. They always do.

@yangyang *kun™ The next time that Zhan wakes up; he's in his own room. Apparently, the lie that Chuyue went with is almost complete bull.

The lie is that he fell into a pond from horse riding and hit his head on a rock. It was believable enough so that no investigations were made. Yet when it was just Chuyue and Zhan by themselves; he snapped at the other.

"Don't tell me you didn't see that shimmer in the water?" That straight forward question earned a confused look in return. "No? What the are you talking about?" Zhan huffed and settled under the covers more as a chill overtook his body.

How could his best knight not see it? That unnatural gleam by the water? "I–" He hesitated. To say that something grabbed him meant that the stupid story was real. "I just thought you saw something." Zhan finished off and bit his lip at the prospect of finding something.

In the meantime; villagers were reported missing and families grieved multiple losses.

About 2 weeks later, Zhan was returning to the very same beach. The prince knew what he saw but considering the stories; he assumed they were all fake. Something to be scared or in result of royal pressure. No way in hell did he see a Siren. They were fake!

This time he told Chuyue to stay on water unless called.

"This is stupid!" Chuyue called out as Zhan dove under the surface water. "I didn't ask! Just wait for my call, Yueyue!" He retaliated just before doing a spin under some waves.

The water was darker and definitely farther. Not to far that his arms wouldn't be seen though. "Come and get me..." This time the young prince was treating himself as bait. Considering he was taken in the same manner. Floating and flipping himself in leisurely movement told him this was all useless, that he had been hallucinating. 30 minutes passed until he sighed and moved towards the shore. "I'm coming in Chuyue!" Zhan shouted out, body sore from keeping himself afloat as he moved towards the shore.

@zhan Humans were quite interesting, and apparently not very fond of the water. It takes Yangyang a few seconds to realize that the struggling creature in his hold could not breathe the same way he did, and in an instant, he uncurled his tail from the human's legs, swimming away immediately and leaving the other for his friend to save him. He dives back down a bit lower, still floating comfortably where sunlight was abundant. But the moment he saw a finger being pointed in his direction, Yangyang dived even deeper, further away from the light that was making his scales shimmer.

His father had always warned him of the dangers of the human world, and so he wasn't going to push his luck for today, preferring to observe them from afar just in case one of the two on the shore tries to harm him. Fortunately, it seemed the human he almost drowned had survived with just a little water left in his lungs. Yangyang wasn't very worried. Either way, the man would live to see another day if he stayed away from the water.

With one last resurface, the siren prince swims back down into the comfort of his cave, surrounded in the wealth he had amassed over the years from terrorizing his own ocean folk. The riches were essentially useless to him, but it did attract other things for him, like curious humans and potential dinner, lured in by their greed only to have their half-eaten bodies rot on the ocean floor. Yangyang wasn't exactly a killer, or so he would have liked to believe, but he had to rely and survive on anything that came by, regardless of whether they were human or not.

@yangyang *kun™ Everything hurt. Zhan couldn't breathe and his eyes burned from keeping them open. His own dark brown orbs, looking at a creature he couldn't describe properly. His movement stopped for a moment before flinching at the light pressure against his skin. Then the prince was moving once again. Hands twisting to scrape at wherever he could. The bubbles around them increased as Zhan thrashed about; vision turning hazy.

'Less than 60 seconds, Zhan! It can be less than 60 seconds before you drown. Are you listening to me?!' The memory of his father screams over him, gripping his small shoulders. Zhan's mother had died in childbirth and it only added to his father's paranoia. The prince was about 6 in this memory and the feeling of his father's fingers digging into his skin.

A pathetic burble of bubbles left Zhan's mouth as feared gripped him in full force; the salty burn of water filling his lungs.

"-han, Zhan! Can you hear me?!" It's Chuyue shouting in his face and then water is being projected out of his body. Heaving, turning to his stomach and wheezing out air. Zhan never knew such pain of his body getting oxygen again. "Wha-" More violent coughing and he laid in the sand. Eyes going towards the ocean in exhausted energy. "We need to go back to the castle." The knight said with urgency; already moving to grab the panting Zhan. "No- the /thing/-" He rasps out and points towards the unnatural shimmer that hits the water.

@zhan Yangyang was only eight years old when his father first spoke to him about the throne. He had been swimming around the nearby coral reef with his sisters when he was rudely interrupted by a royal guard, quickly escorted back home upon the king's orders without a word of explanation as to what he was even being disturbed for. He remembers curling his own tail around his torso, being the only siren in the family born with one long enough to do so. He was scared, understandably, because his father seemed very bothered, long golden hair floating in a tangled mess of insanity, splitting from the lack of care. He slams the end of his trident against the edge of his throne as he approached his son, and Yangyang remembers being threatened with three sharp prongs digging into his collarbones.

When the boy had turned ten, a crown was forced onto his head. It didn't make him king just yet, but his father gave it to him as a reminder. Yangyang could see the crazed look and unrelenting rage in the man's dark eyes, and the thought of him meeting the same fate as his father greatly worried him. He didn't want to be insane, but he was naive and unaware. At sixteen, his father had completely lost himself in his dreams of war, in his determination to eliminate mankind. Yangyang missed his old father, and he couldn't really blame anyone else but the humans for causing him his sanity. It was only a simple and short-lived hatred, however, as Yangyang grew curious of the said creatures, wondering if he could be friends with them instead as it seemed a majority of the siren community was avoiding him and his family.

At twenty, he ran away from the kingdom, leaving the crown in his oldest sister's hands even as they begged him not to go. He locked his father up in the abyssal dungeons for the sake of everyone that lived in his proximity, and with a single goodbye, left his family in better hands and swam off to slightly warmer waters, settling into a small cave below an island teeming with human life. Yangyang's curiosity was untameable, like a child who had just learned something new in the world, he swam even closer to shore, big eyes scanning the beach from the safety of the rocks he held onto. There, dipping themselves into the water, were two humans with incredibly loud voices.

He observed them quietly, swimming around carefully as to not ripple the calmer waters. His tail shimmered under the sunlight that broke through the surface, and it would have given him away if he hadn't dived deeper. He stared at the human floating on the water, much like a puppy observing a stranger for the first time. At first he was quite content with just watching them, until the time came for them to leave, and for some reason even he couldn't explain to himself, Yangyang didn't want them to.

So in a desperate attempt to keep them around, he wrapped his tail around the human's ankle, lunging out to grab him by the forearms and drag him down. He hadn't meant to pull him in so deep, and the struggle was soon evident in the way the water around them bubbled and rippled from all the thrashing. Yangyang continued to snake his tail around the man's legs in an attempt to hold him still. Again, he stares at him from behind the long strands of silver hair falling over his eyes. And, despite the human running out of air, the siren prince quietly observed him, running a chipped claw along his jaw and down to his neck, feeling for gills, if there were any

@yangyang *kun™ There is deep history with the kingdom that's made home on Dignia Island. The Xiao Kingdom is said to be warriors, champions, and definitely fitting for a the island which translates to worthy. King Xiao rules with an iron fist.. regarding his only child and heir. Prince Zhan. It's all due to a bedtime story.

Growing up, the young prince was told a story in which his great-grandfather had fought in a war with mythical creatures called Sirens. They say it was a brutal fight with many lives lost and the sea turning red. It was years before the bloodshed ended. His great-grandfather holding the Siren King's head above his own with a mighty roar. Yet, due to this this triumphant win, the Xiao family is said to be cursed. Even if the island itself is full of amazing fishermen and swimmers; the Xiao family have been forbidden to set even a foot into the sea. It brought death and bad luck to the island. Due to this silly myth Prince Zhan had only been allowed in streams and small ponds. Just enough swimming to get him to the shore if needed. That was the plan anyway.

He hated being controlled by others fears of fake creatures.

Just turning 24, more than a grown man at this age, Zhan decided he would prove everyone wrong. Prove that there was no curse or sirens. That the royal family is being paranoid for nothing. That punishment for teaching Zhan to swim was too harsh on their people. Tell everyone that the lore surrounding his lineage was just that; lore. Also to prove to the locals that the rumors of people going missing were nothing as well. Drownings were rare after all.

Zhan made his way down to a vacant beach with a trusted friend. A knight who grew up right beside the him. "Do you think this is a good idea?" Chuyue hissed at him in a low voice; hand resting on Zhan's shoulder as they hid behind a clump of trees. Zhan smirked and patted at the hand. "Nothing's going to happen. If it does then you can say I told you so." It was too light of a reply for the knight and it earned a smack to the back of the head. "Aiyo-" Zhan starts only to cover his mouth at rustling from nearby bushes. They move quickly and make it to the beach without a hitch. Stripping down to undergarments and tossing them towards his friend; Zhan stretches.

"Let's put these swimming lessons to use, Yue Yue!" The prince cheers and gives a flex, making the other man roll his eyes. Also down to his undergarments in case something happened. Without much hesitation he started wading into the teal blue water; shuddering at how cold it was. "Wh-Why the is it so cold?!" He shouts and waits at his waist. "It's the ocean!" Was all he got in return just as he started to swim around a more, dipping his head under soft waves easily. It was nice floating around in the water. Just basking in the sun. Then Zhan was going further into the water and he could distantly hear Chuyue shouting something. Yet, the sound is muffled by the water in his ears. It's been long enough so he decides to move towards the shore. He's proven his point with distance and the fact he's a Xiao who hasn't died instantly. it fake curse!

Suddenly he's being yanked under the water and Zhan can't help but try to grab at something. "Chue-"

The world becomes blue and his lungs are burning as he tries to hold his breath; kicking his legs with all his might.