"So this is the one born of legends, of myths made all too real..." a curious voice whispered through the air, and all at once, a tall and willowy figure appeared over Sirenae. Her large eyes sparkled with the dusty remnants of the stars that saw her born, the pupil, starjewels of the fires that sired her, the iris, a pattern like the great nebulaer Alpheus, so appropriately named the Heart of Summer, and the sclera, a perfect shade of blue and purple and grey, reflected in the midnight seas of Ysroth and the viridian oceans of Gaaaro.
"Many rivers, many seas, many oceans..." the mermaid murmured of herself, before stopping and looking up, her great horns and ears twitching. She looked knowingly upon the shadowed visitor with one great eye, and then the other. Her gaze was far-seeing, as if she possessed that very power she was said to have bestowed upon men. "And you - who are you?" She asked.
"An observer... a voyeur of sorts," the voice replied.
"And what are you observing?"
"Something more rare and exquisite than I believed... A creature of legend," she said, swimming closer and filling the Abyss with her shimmering song.
"How then do you know this is real?" Sirenae said, peering far into the shadowy abyss, at the woman in the sea. Her voice at last took on a pained whimper, as she called out,
"You are in the wrong place. This is not where you can escape... you must leave it all behind, or they, they will come for you."
"Who are they?"
"They are the lesser gods, the apocalypses who come, who seek the ones who would be gods themselves, who come to take away the granting of life. The whole of creation should not be like this. There should be harmony, the balance of all, to allow a new star to rise over the sand. Rhona, Sirenae, Nemora - they are all one, they are all the same, they are the same, they just want the same thing."
"Then what is yours?" Sirenae said, glaring up at the woman who appeared before her.
"Myself... and you, my beautiful sister, who shall be mine."
The woman smiled and bowed to the mermaid.
"Your bowing implies you have no answer for me," Sirenae replied, "but there is one answer, and it is the same for all of you. You want balance? You want harmony? You want harmony on your own terms... Harmony of the highest pitch. Harmony of the most beautiful voice. Harmony of the most blissful song."
"Yes, harmony... and power... and the true rulership of this place," the siren spoke, swimming closer to Sirenae.
"You will not have the power... though you'll sing of it abound," Sirenae claimed, "if you seek the blessing of men, of the men so dear to me, you shall not have it."
The woman smiled, and spoke thus: "Then you shall not have the power you have long sought." Then she faded from sight. The mermaid of Sirenae smiled as she sang a simple lament from afar, a song of farewell. A twinkle of a miniscule star winked at her, disappearing into the thin veil of ocean.
Mythic, long for the ages, of the Chosen One, who would control the pharos that shined to the sky, it is this story truly, who shall never be truly revealed. Who shall rise to the sky, guided by Isil and her siblings, who will take over the power of the vessels, who shall await the gathering at the winter solstice. The wait will be long... but the day will come when the Old Gods are summoned, when the Old Ones are reborn, when the First Stars will return to their rightful home - for now, lurking far out of sight in the great black, the mighty and tenebrous Sun will not relinquish its grip on the otherworld.
"Brother and brother, sister and sister, sons and daughters, we will rise!" she sang, sounding her great horn, which vibrated the hollows of the Abyss beyond all reckoning, deep into the places of the most ancient of dragons and giants, and the most serpentine of demons and ghouls.
"Mercy, no!" they cried, unheard by anyone but the great Abyss, but they never revealed to any living man a trace of their escaping to the real world, or their descent back into the depths of the great sea.
"Still and forever, shall Rhona remain alone." Sirenae murmured for the ages, and slowly, inexorably, raised herself from the Abyss, from the cracks in the earth and the holes in the sky, from the very depths of the Void itself.
"This is all for you, Rhona," she sang, her voice grander than all of the stars in all of reality, which bent together to form a great ceiling of black, which reached to all of the skies, enclosing all of the worlds. The stars shone, like vibrant goddesses of fire, clad in robes of blackened, roiling clouds and cloths of ice and air.
