PDARPG Boss Fight Entries: Laguna 7: Siren's Song (Prompt 8)

“No good,” Eltanin sighed, flopping back into the coral chair one of Laguna’s employees had helpfully brought him. “It’s like yelling into the abyss.”

 

“Yell not into the abyss, lest the abyssopelagics yell back at you… to get off their lawn,” the mermaid said, sealing the portal for the time being. “Perhaps it is time to pass on one of the Thalassa-pod’s greatest secrets.”

 

Was she talking about… “The siren’s song?”

 

“A fragment of it, anyway. Enough to call my brother, nothing more. Do I spy disappointment in your eyes, Paperdemon? Did you really think I was going to give away the secret to charisma itself to an outlaw?”

 

Well… maybe. And here Eltanin thought they’d built up a rapport.

 

“Swallow that arrogance and sit up. Take a deep breath. Feel it in your bladder– or wherever it is you surfacers store your oxygen. Now, follow my pitch and tone.”

 

To the rest of the merfolk around in the workshop, they must have looked completely mad, yodelling and ullulating in tooth-gritting tones while Laguna occasionally thwacked him with her tail. “From your chest, not your throat.” “More vibrato.” “You sing like a five-year-old–”

 

“Well, how long did it take the five-year-old?”

 

“Hmm. Point taken.”

 

At last, they seemed to have found an approximation that Laguna was satisfied with. Eltanin took a moment to soothe his parched throat, which in this case was just opening his mouth and swallowing, and then Laguna reset the portal to its standby state.

 

Eltanin breathed in, letting the water flood his lungs. He breathed and breathed until he was almost light-headed with oxygen, and then he closed his eyes and imagined himself on the grandest stages of Soujel, soliloquying his heart out for the Empress herself.

 

“Heyyyy, Ronin!”

 

His song rang out in the clearest timbre, straight from the diaphragm. For a moment, silence. A flicker, perhaps? Nope, just a shrimp swimming past the portal. But then, a flash of blue water, crystal caves, and a familiar, sultry voice.

 

“Captain! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

 

“To your sister,” Eltanin replied, as Laguna reached her arm through the portal and seized Ronin’s.