The Siren of Blood

Zane Joly

In the middle of rich, luscious plains stood a walled city, called Sirwash. The city was older than almost any of its inhabitants knew, first created by an ancient people. Then conquered by another ancient people, then expanded by another, and on and on until there was almost nothing left of the original civilization builders. Nothing but dust, repurposed bricks, and a small worn and cracked tablet in the city’s lower district, surrounded by the starving.

            About a tenth of Sirwash was a beautiful piece of land called the Va’asne, which translated to “Finest Garden'' in the language of the ancestors of most who currently lived in the city. Here, the nobles who controlled the city resided. Most of it was gorgeous green gardens, but a considerable portion were giant mansions and, of course, a colossal star-shaped building with five points called thePalace, as royalty had once lived there. It was used for meetings to decide legislation for the city, grand balls, and a treasury. It was a place that practically radiated social power.

            Another tenth of the city was the Merchant District, where the upper class professionals and traders resided. It provided living quarters for many nobles’ personal servants and staff.

            The rest of the city was a disorganized mass of homes ranging from small, to ramshackle, to blankets hung over heads. It was called theLower District, and it was where the immense majority of the city lived. There had once been many other sections, but the lower district had consumed them all one by one. It and its denizens were held back from the other districts by tall gates and well-equipped guards.

            Few managed to get past them and survive, and even fewer could make the return trip. One of these exceptional individuals, a girl of fifteen who went by Mally, was racing down alleys and small streets in the lower district, with a stolen necklace clutched in one hand. The necklace was made of gold with several large sapphires set into it. Tacky, but worth a lot. If Mally could sell this to someone, who could in turn arrange for it to end up in the hands of someone outside the city, then she would be able to feed herself and her friends for months. But that depended on not getting beaten to death by guards first.

            She raced along as fast as she could, her lungs screaming in agony. Mally didn’t have the focus to plan a route, she just ran where she didn’t think the guards could or would follow, but they did, every time. Which is why she ended up in a dead end. An ally with high walls on every side but behind her, and an old, cracked, worn stone tablet leaning against the wall of a bordering building, with broken edges, as if it had once been attached to some grander statue or altar.

            She turned around to face those following her. Men in heavy armor with weapons both nonlethal and fatal. Mally barely had time to register them before an iron fist cracked against her jaw, sending a tooth flying. She fell to the ground, and a drop of blood fell from her mouth, and landed on the very corner of the stone tablet.

            Urchins who grew up in the lower district developed an instinct, an ability to anticipate trouble, a sense for the city. And the moment the blood hit the stone, a red smear against gray, that instinct started buzzing stronger than ever before.

            The guard was reaching for his sword when suddenly a voice spoke, with no source that either Mally or the guards could see. It was a ragged voice, but young. “The blood of commoners has been wrongfully spilt upon my altar, and I awaken. You know, they say that blood is scarlet. But it isn’t, not really.”

            All of them looked around, trying to identify the source. It seemed like it hummed from the walls around them and the ground beneath them. “After a while, blood dries to an ugly, brown-red sort of color. Scarlet is the color of passion, of heat. But after the passion has faded, when the adrenaline rush is done, when the man is lying dead at your feet, when his blood has had time to dry, when all illusions are stripped away and there is no constructed power that can save you… that is when blood is its true color. An ugly red-brown. Everyone bleeds. And what’s more, everyone bleeds that same ugly shade. Those who have the ‘proper’ breeding, likely involving a dangerously small gene pool, they don’t bleed blue. Those who have lots of shiny metal and pieces of paper that say they are important, they don’t bleed gold. Everyone bleeds red.”

            Then there was a flurry of movement. There were screams cut short and blurring motion in front of Mally, and when it finally stopped, the guards all had their own weapons buried in their throats, and a man was standing over their corpses.

 He had dark brown skin and long, dirty hair that hung to his shoulders. He was wearing a shirt that was too small for him, and ragged pants that were too big. His most noticeable feature was his tattoos, complex patterns without recognizable shapes, encasing almost his entire body but stopping at his neck, wrists, and ankles. It was done in ink the exact color of dried blood. A dark red-brown. Mally recognized the style of the tattoos, the particular way the thick lines flowed together, but she couldn’t quite name it. The man’s complexion was unusual. The majority of the city’s current population had skin a lighter brown. This man was young, but so thin he looked sickly. Almost skeletal.

He knelt down and laid his hands upon the ground, where the blood of the men he’d killed was pooling. As the blood reached his finger tips, it stopped, then started to travel up his arms and into his tattoos. Soon there was no more blood, and all the guards looked extremely pale and gaunt, as if it had been sucked out of them too.

The man was a little healthier looking now. Still thin, probably a little thinner than was healthy, just like Mally. But he didn’t look like he had a clinical illness now. The man turned to Mally. She had dropped the golden sapphire necklace she had gone through all this trouble to steal. He picked it up and looked at it, then handed it back to her. “Such a little thing. And it will set so much in motion. Thank you for waking me. This city needs balance. Use this necklace to help  the right people. And I will try to do the same.”

He seemed like he had no intention of killing her, and he turned away and began walking down the alley. “What are you?” Mally asked.

The stranger began to dissolve into dark red mist, but before he faded away he said, “Call me the siren.”

In the southwest point of the Palace, nobles danced. Lord Vandeer usually loved balls, but not tonight. His wife had recently passed, and a solitary widower was not a good look. A marriage was an opportunity to make connections. But every man or woman he found who fit his personal needs was already married or in a courtship. He supposed that he’d have to take up Lord Seldin’s offer, even though Vandeer found him terribly boring.

The giant doors at the entrance to the ballroom were pushed open, and a solitary figure strode forth. A pale man dressed in fine clothes with strange tattoos all over his visible skin.  The herald didn’t announce him and actually looked quite confused. He must not have been on the guest list, and Lord Vandeer had never seen him before. No one of any consequence had arrived in the city lately. Who was this?

Everyone on the dance floor who saw the figure seemed to have a similar reaction and froze. The minstrels, trained to ignore most distractions, continued to play.

            The man looked up at the crowd studying him and gave a dazzling smile. Then everything seemed alright. The staff resumed attending to their duties, the nobles resumed dancing, and questions of who, how, or why slipped from Vandeer’s mind like water running through his fingers.

            The stranger wore a noble’s dress similar to what many of the men at the party were wearing, with a skirt that reached past his feet and dragged slightly on the ground. The dress wrapped around the upper chest but left the arms and stomach exposed. It was made from a shimmering gold fabric with blue designs in the same pattern as his tattoos, pointy and with lines that flowed into each other in complex ways without creating any recognizable image.

            The tattoos stood out in stark contrast to his extraordinarily pale skin, a dark reddish brown. The stranger had bright red hair, and eyes that were the same color as his tattoos. He must have made the tattoos match on purpose.

            Those same eyes seemed to single out Lord Vandeer, and his smile widened. Vandeer’s heart began to beat a bit faster.

            The stranger walked, with what seemed like glacial slowness, towards him. The song ended, which was odd because it seemed like it had just been in the middle. A slower song started. “May I have this dance?” said the stranger, with a soft and delicate voice.

            Vandeer was too dumb struck to do anything but nod. The stranger took Vandeer’s left hand in his right and laid his other hand on the lord’s shoulder. Vandeer laid his hand on the other man’s waist, and they began to waltz for what seemed like an endless eternity. And he fell deeper under the stranger’s spell.

            After they were done dancing, it occurred to him he didn’t know his dance partner's name. After he asked, the man smiled and said, “I am called Lord Iren.”

            “What a lovely name.”

            “Yours as well.” It didn’t even occur to Lord Vandeer that he had never told Iren his name.

            At the end of the night, after the lord had had a few glasses of wine, he gathered his courage and said, “Lord Iren, tonight has been absolutely lovely, and I would be honored if you would allow me to court you.”

            Iren smiled, and for an instant, Vandeer saw something in those eyes and it scared him. But he forgot all about it a few seconds later. “My lord, nothing would please me more.”

            The two courted for two weeks before the siren broke him. As they courted, Vandeer noticed that Iren’s tattoos grew steadily more and more red, like his hair, and less brown. And the entire time, the two of them never went to Lord Iren’s estate. It was just one of the many discrepancies that he didn’t think about.

            They were walking in Vandeer’s small private orchard, with plums growing on trees all around them. Iren looked around with an expression of faint disgust, though about what Vandeer couldn’t guess. Lord Iren’s tattoos were so bright red that Vandeer could have sworn they were softly glowing.

            “My love,” he began, “There is a question that I absolutely must ask of you.”

            He got down on one knee, pulled out a gold ring, and asked, “Will you be mine?”

            “Quite the inverse in fact,” muttered Iren. He looked down at Vandeer with disinterest. “But I do accept. If you will swear something to me.”

            “Anything,” Vandeer said, his desperation so great that his entire being was consumed with desire, a need to be Iren’s eternal slave.

            “Swear devotion and fealty to me. Swear that you will give me all you are, and all you have. Willingly give over the entirety of your being to me.”

            The kneeling lord barely even had time to understand the words before he said, “Yes. I swear fealty and devotion to you. You can have all that I am and will be, and all that I have.”

            Now Iren smiled at last. But it was unlike any other smile of his that Vandeer had ever seen. His tattoos were truly radiating red light now. As Vandeer watched, gold slowly flowed up the tattoos, starting at his fingertips, until they were all colored with a yellow metallic sheen. The plum trees around them all withered away to dust in seconds.

            And then the glamor fell. Vandeer was looking up at a much darker skinned man with unkempt hair and mismatched clothing. Only the golden tattoos were the same. And all of his doubts, all of his questions, all of the rage and fear that had been suppressed for the last two weeks came rushing back to the lord, and he fell to the ground from the sheer force of it all.

            “What… what have you done?”

            There was a chuckle, with a kind of terrible realness to it that Iren had always lacked. The man picked up Vandeer by his neck with one hand like he was a kitten. The siren lifted up Vandeer until their eyes met and he said, “I’ve only just begun.”

            Then the lord could feel the energy draining from his body, and everything went dark, as he stared at the siren’s grinning face.

            Lord Vandeer’s body was found in the dust of his orchard, his skin pale and drained of all blood, with no evident wounds. But something even stranger was found. Every single coin in his vault, and those in banks, turned to a dark red dust. A similar thing happened to the deed to his house and every other piece of property he owned, as well as all papers and contracts for his staff. Essentially, every coin or parchment that proved he owned anything or anyone simply vanished.

            Mally was scrounging for food. Again. Stealing that necklace was supposed to be her one way ticket to a better life, but fate had a way of sometimes just sucker punching you. Her stomach rumbled, and she itched, but both of those were familiar feelings. “Hello again,” said a voice behind her.

            She turned around and drew out a small knife, an old habit. “Nice reflexes,” said the siren. He looked the same as the first time she’d seen him, but a little healthier, as if he’d been eating a bit better. His tattoos were now metallic and golden. And she wasn’t sure whether they were in the same pattern as before, it was hard to tell.

            “What happened to your necklace?” he asked.

            “Someone stole it,” she said, bitterly.

            “Humanity’s tendency to rip and tear at each other when they most need to band together is one of life’s greatest tragedies.” Mally couldn’t tell if he was speaking from personal close experience, or from an outside perspective. She wasn’t sure what this man was, if he even was a man.

            the siren reached out one hand. A drop of gold liquid flowed from his tattoos and into the middle of his hand. The drop expanded and shifted until he was holding three gold coins. Enough to afford reliable food for her and those around her for a couple days. Mally eagerly snatched it up as the man said,“I know that it's not much, but I have to evenly distribute this, and I have a lot of stops.”

            Then he vaporized into mist and Mally was alone again. She resolved to hide her treasures better this time. And she had a feeling that this would not be the last she saw or heard of the siren.

            People all over the Lower District reported a dark skinned tattooed stranger appearing before them and giving them three gold coins, then disappearing. The only major difference in the reports was that the earlier ones said his tattoos glimmered like gold, while the later ones said it was a tan orange, until the last few said that it was a brownish red with small gold flecks. One woman even said that she saw the last small spark of gold leave the man’s tattoos. Then the flow of gold coins across the Lower District stopped. Curiously, it seemed that every single person, from the eldest to the smallest children, received exactly three gold coins.

            Enforcers of the law and enforcers of gangs and syndicates were sent out to gather the coins. Such a sudden redistribution of wealth made for a lot of very vulnerable and profitable targets. But these thugs, be they sent by the ruling nobles or the many rival criminal organizations, kept ending up dead, pale as death, their skin cold as ice. Close examination revealed they were completely without blood. Now, not all the enforcers died, in fact most survived, but enough fell that it became a job people were significantly more hesitant to take.

            A rumor spread unusually quickly, although no one could tell who the source was, that to take those special gold coins from the poor was to anger the city and its patron spirit, who was the one draining the enforcers.

            So soon the siren was left without prey once more, or at least a population too sparse to be worth it, and he moved back to his favored hunting grounds, the ball room.

            On sudden notice a great and lavish ball was hosted, and many important individuals attended. They weren’t sure why, but they were all very slightly nervous. Disquieted. Something was wrong, but they couldn’t quite place it. And if some of them looked out of the corner of their eyes, the still unclaimed land of Lord Vandeer’s estate and the air around it was a bit distorted and had a very slight red haze. It looked normal if you stared straight at it, of course.

            And no one could remember why Lord Vandeer had passed. Rumors circulated, and a few of them caused the individuals of quality who heard them to pause, as if they almost remembered a piece of something important. But they could never tell what it was.

            Then the doors were opened by a man with strange tattoos in a blue and gold dress. And it began again.

            It took him nine days to break the Lady Vwansei before she swore total devotion to him. And soon his tattoos were golden once more, and soon riches rained down upon the Lower District once more. What happened over the next few weeks could be described in detail, but would most likely not be very interesting given its repetitiveness.

            Nobles fell, each one quicker than the last, to the siren. Men and women alike fell before him, even those who ordinarily did not fall for men. When the siren got bored he went after married couples, charming both of them into swearing simultaneously. But if one were to track his prey, which no one could, given the memory altering powers of his song, they would notice a few patterns. The siren never went after those who had young children, and usually avoided close families. One could say this was because it was much harder to make a child forget their parents than anyone else, but perhaps it was not entirely calculated.

            Enforcers kept trying to take the newly gifted wealth of the vulnerable in the Lower District, but it kept going poorly for a sizable portion of them. A few more doctrines materialized in the public’s knowledge seemingly out of nowhere. They all concerned keeping each other safe, not tearing each other apart. People began to worship the patron spirit of the city, a mystical guardian which it was believed had come back to protect them.

            Meanwhile the balls in the Va’asne district became less and less celebratory, and more and more like livestock being dragged to market for sale. Unaffected by what happened in the other two districts but still very worried were the residents of the Merchant District.

            They noticed that many of their regular financial transactions with the nobles were dropping, one by one, and after a bit, the nobles’ quarter seemed to go quiet. The staff of any noble who passed away wandered into the Merchant District, confused and remembering almost nothing. Many newly unemployed guards were hired by the nervous merchants to defend their part of the city, in case what was sometimes called “the Va’asne hunter” came for them.

            The once beautiful upper district was now filled with a dark red fog. Sometimes people could see a humanoid silhouette walking along the fence, the purpose of which  had once been to keep others out, its hand running along the bars.

            When about half of the noble population had been taken by the siren, he decided that it was time to enter the next phase. At this point, all of the staff had fled, as he had decided not to keep them under his song’s grasp. The remaining residents of the Va’asne, a few dozen nobles and their children, were gathered together in front of the Palace.

            A man dressed in dirty clothing and with brown-red tattoos was standing on the steps of the great building. And then he stopped singing that song of his that never actually required him to open his mouth, the one he had been singing to them for weeks, the song with no sound.

            There was a pause as the fog cleared from inside their minds, although the physical mist remained. Then for a few minutes there was screaming, as was common from the mental whiplash. Quite a few tried to run away, but they all got lost in the fog and ended up back in front of the tattooed man, who just watched with a look of faint amusement.

            When they had all calmed down, relatively speaking, he spoke. “You are lucky, though you would probably disagree. In fact you’ve been lucky your whole lives, but I mean in this specific instance. I am giving you the chance for a fresh start. Just swear that you will give me everything you have, except your lives and that of your families. I am feeling charitable, so I will accept just that. Your lives are yours to keep, or at least not to lose by my hand. I cannot speak for the knife of fate, as she is known to stab when least expected and to, on occasion, poison the blade.”

            Quite a few knelt on the ground and silently muttered oaths. A few just stared in disbelief. A couple tried to run away again, with the same ineffective results. A couple dozen yelled insults or pleas, unwilling to part with what they had, even though they knew death was the other option. Children started to cry, and the slaughterer of hundreds winced, not in annoyance, but in regret.

One man was foolish enough to try and charge the ancient one. The siren sidestepped and dodged, quite easily. I could have done that even when I was all me, he thought. When he was what he was now, it was laughably simple.

            There was a flicker in the air and, for a second, both the man and the siren disappeared. Then the predator stood exactly where he had before, but the man was gone. His body was later found impaled on the fence between the Va’asne and the Lower District.

            The the siren turned back to the remaining people. Most of them had sworn their belongings over by now, and his tattoos radiated golden light like a miniature sun. “As for the rest of you, I suggest you make that oath now, or this could get painful.”

            Perhaps a dozen more did, but a little over a dozen adults were left, staring defiantly. “Have it your way.” They collapsed on the ground, screaming. The song was so deafeningly loud in their mind’s ear that it was agony. The others heard nothing, physically or mentally.

            Minds are delicate, and it is not healthy for them to go through a major change in just a few seconds. In perfect unison, those writhing on the ground stopped and said, “We willingly swear over all that we have, and all that we own, including our lives.”

            The the siren had to admit it was stretching the definition of the word “willingly”. But if the mind itself, down to the deepest subconscious, not just the body, could be bent and manipulated, then what even was will?

            The mist darkened until no light could pass through it.

            When it cleared, all of those who had gathered before the siren were lying on the ground with a few gold coins in their hand. None of them remembered anything of their past lives, except their close family.

            All along the fence between theLower District and theVa’asne the bars had been bent apart to make large gaps. The gaps in the fence were too wide to have been pulled apart by any human’s hands. But the masses that flooded the district didn’t care.

            There was one more blessing of coins upon the poor in theLower District. The merchants began letting controlled numbers of people from the other district into their own, because a paying customer was a paying customer and many of their patrons had just disappeared for reasons they didn’t want to think too much about. On some subconscious level, they knew better than to try and cheat their new clients.

            Things were an untidy mess, as the ruling class was no longer around to rule, or at least no longer remembered that they were the ruling class and had no wealth to remind them. There was conflict, and many of the worst aggressors ended up mysteriously devoid of blood. At this point, the tenets of the siren were taken seriously, and the guardian spirit of the city was widely revered.

            But one woman, named Amirah, managed to take more control than any other. She had run a criminal organization in the Lower District, and had taken full advantage of the sudden influx of both guards and law enforcers suddenly without steady pay checks. Mostly through intimidation, though with occasional violent exceptions, she carved out a sizable chunk of both theVa’asne and the Lower District as her own, and thePalace became her base of operations. In Amirah’s domain there was a loose order. She made certain that everyone got treated mostly fairly, but those that helped her run and maintain things gota not inconsiderable bit more than others.

            And one day she was approached by him. She was in the Palace eating a leg of meat, sitting in a stylish chair she often rested in that wasn’t a throne, but wasn’t quite not a throne. She noticed cracks starting to form in the large intimidating doors that led to this chamber. As she watched, the cracks grew larger and larger. In fact it was like they were in the shape of a symbol. They spread in a similar pattern to the tattoos of the  man who had visited her like everyone else.

            Then the door shattered apart into wooden fragments. Thankfully no one was hurt, but dust filled the room. A single man strode through it with an impassive expression.

            “I had a hunch that you might come,” she said, “Have a seat.” One of her employees set a chair before the siren, and guards started to walk into the room, to add to the ranks of the ten that were already there. The men readied crossbows, loaded with stone-tipped bolts, and pointed them at the siren.

            The tattooed man set a single hand on the chair, and after a few seconds it shattered the same way the door had. “I prefer to stand,” was all he said.

            “Are you here to congratulate me on making lemonade out of the lemons you so graciously offered?” Amirah asked.

            “I am not. I am here to remove you from control. I recognize that an imbalance of power is inevitable, but I will not have a tyrant reign so soon after I rid my beloved city of an oligarchy.”

            “I thought that was a likely possibility. So I did what those idiot nobles never had the brains to do and did some research. This isn’t your first time. You’re old. Possibly as old as the city. I don’t know if you’re a ghost of someone, or a dark mage, or a god, or what. What I do know is that you aren’t omnipotent. You had to slowly regain your power by consuming blood. You were frail and unhealthy before you fed off those guards. The kid who woke you up was eager enough to talk, for a price. Now, if you’re capable of weakness, if you need to feed, that certainly implies mortality to me. Normal weapons probably don’t even tickle you, but these aren’t normal crossbow bolts. I studied your tattoos, and they are of a pattern unique to the Kastrellem people, the original builders of this city. I found your little tablet and the writing is from the same era. There are relics all over this city, and in other places around the world. It cost a lot to get enough of them. I shattered them, including your awakening tablet, into tiny little pieces of stone, and found an old ritual of consecration. So these crossbow bolts are tipped with consecrated pieces of stone from the original city. I’m fairly confident that that’s enough to hurt you, am I right?”

            After a pause, the man before her nodded and said, “Impressive. You’re not the first to think up something along those lines, but you’re the first to pull it off so effectively. I can see how you got to your current position. But even if you can kill me, I’m fast. I could probably do a lot of damage before I go out, possibly even kill you. So I’ll make you a deal. Listen to my story, and I won’t hurt you or your guards. I swear. Do you agree?”

            “I do,” Amirah said, too curious to resist.

            “Long, long ago, the Kastrellem people found a lake here in the middle of the plains. They built a settlement around this magnificent source of freshwater. They also noticed that there was a hole, about five feet in diameter, at the bottom of the lake, that went so far down they couldn’t see the bottom, and those who swam down couldn’t find it either. So they dropped a few stones down there. One of the people had cut herself, and so she got a little bit of blood on one of the stones. And when they dropped those rocks, they awakened something. Something that had been in that lake for many, many years, possibly since before there even was a lake. Perhaps before there was land around the lake, or before even the world itself. But this creature was oddly benevolent. Despite its terrifying appearance, it helped them build a great city. The royal family ruled justly for a few generations, but they became corrupt. The being in the lake saw this injustice and killed the royal family, but a new family just called themselves royals and took their place. They were even worse than the previous rulers. You see, this creature didn’t know how humans worked. So it appointed a man its high priest. This man led a revolution, and he was soon in the position of leader. He did the best he could to help people, but eventually the power corrupted him, just like those before him. The creature of the city and its loyal followers came to him. It told him to step down, and he refused. So he was taken, and in a ritual so painful you cannot comprehend it, the creature of the city and its power was bound to the man. And he was bound to the city. So when the blood of commoners was wrongly spilt upon its stone, he would awaken.

“I know what it's like to be without power or control your entire life, then to have an opportunity to change things. You think it's for the best. But if you have nothing to keep you in check then you will lose yourself eventually. That’s why I only materialize physically for a few months at most. If I stay to keep the balance, then I will inevitably start to kill just to feed my hunger for blood and try to justify it. For even though I am bound to that ancient being, you are correct that I am indeed mortal. I am vulnerable, and I am corruptible. I know because I have been corrupted. So I am giving you one more chance to step down.”

            “That’s a fascinating tale,” said Amirah, “Which may or may not be made up. But I’m not going to let anyone boss me around any more, especially some ghost with dark magic. Fire!”

            Crossbows twanged and dozens of bolts sank into the siren’s flesh. Blood spilled forth, and it was pure black. Light didn’t even reflect off of it. He screamed in genuine pain, and the consecrated bolts burned him, causing smoke to rise from his flesh. He groaned in pain, but he stilled for a moment, relieved, as he said “Thank you.”

            Then he fell to the ground and stopped breathing. But it wasn’t over. His blood, black as darkest midnight, started to flow into his tattoos, until they were the same abyssal darkness. Then his tattoos started to grow, new lines branching off and slowly covering his skin. Then it spread more. The tattoos somehow started to cover his hair, his nails, his clothes, his eyes.

            Soon sitting before Amirah was a formless mass of black. She knew something bad was coming. “Fire again!” she ordered and more bolts were loosed. But they all just sank into the black.

            The abyssal mass started to grow bigger and bigger. And it changed shape. Things that almost looked like tentacles began to emerge. And Amirah could see a faint light inside all the darkness, growing brighter and brighter. The song began, this time sung by its original singer, the one who had written its soundless melodies.

            Amirah and her soldiers just stared at the growing brightness. After a while they could see what it was. Many small motes of brownish red light, arranged in a complicated pattern, the same one as the tattoos. They glimmered in that darkness like a constellation, and it occurred to Amirah that maybe they weren’t small, just somehow very far away.

            The thing looked a little less like just a mass of dark matter now, and a translucent layer almost like skin had formed over it. Its central body was just a heap of matter but its tentacles were fully formed, and they waved around in the air, limbs of onyx darkness. The tentacles moved in a strange way, and she realized they resembled the tattoos the man had.

            One tendril lifted up into the air in front of Amirah, then so quickly it broke the sound barrier, it struck. The tentacle impaled her. Then the miniature constellation inside the being moved, and started to flow into her, through the wound. Her personal soldiers watched in horror as it flowed into her blood. Amirah felt a pain unlike anything she had ever known before, and couldn’t even manage to scream. The dark mass shrank, bit by bit. It was larger than her, but somehow she managed to absorb the strange entity, and the wound from the tentacle healed instantly. Then there was an explosion and the guards were thrown against the walls and knocked unconscious.

            Amirah looked down at her shaking hands. They had the exact same tattoos the man had had upon them. And she could feel things. The tattoos hummed, and there was a power that hummed at the same frequency in her veins. And that thing… it wasn’t gone. It was lurking in the back of her mind, watching. But then she realized she could feel the entire city. All the people moving around in it. And the stone of the city sang to her. She could also vaguely sense the pieces from her crossbows, of the original city, but not as intensely as the stone all around her. Somehow she knew it was because she had bonded with the true siren at this moment, so she was bound to the stone of the city as it was now, and would be forever. The man must have known that her guards had consecrated stone tipped crossbows. He’d wanted her to ambush him, or at least not cared if she did. He’d wanted to pass on the mantle.

            Then the true siren sang to her, but a different song than ever before. She felt the knowledge of millenia pressing down on her. She saw how generation after generation of mortals had believed themselves beyond corruption, and how invariably they all turned selfish and cruel. She knew that she had never stood a chance of fighting against that constant of human nature. And she saw that each time that the blood of commoners had been wrongfully spilt upon the stone of the original city, the siren had risen and done the best he could to restore balance. Sometimes things ended up more or less the same as before. And eventually, corruption always returned. But he did everything he could to make things right, again, and again, and again, and again. She knew this was her fate now too.

            DO YOU ACCEPT THIS ROLE? Asked the true siren.

            She hadn’t realized she had a choice. Maybe she didn’t, but she considered it anyway. This wouldn’t be her first pick for a dream job. But she had power. No one could boss her around. And she would be able to make things better for people. It was enough. I accept, she thought at her new companion. But do I have to seduce a bunch of stuck up rich people?

            I DID NOT ASK MY LAST HOST TO DO THAT. IT WAS HIS PREFERRED METHOD. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MORTALS, SO THE METHOD OF EXECUTION IS YOURS TO DECIDE.

            And then the new siren, the parasite and saint, the demon and guardian angel, the woman who had made mistakes and the ancient being, dissolved, waiting for the next time the blood of commoners would be wrongfully spilt upon her stone. Waiting for the next time to teach mortals who had forgotten the true color of blood.