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"Far out past the coral ledge, underneath the diamond dancing lights. Chase the world from far below, silent sleeping indigo."
The enemy cannons are a thunderclap in the distance, a drumbeat in her ears that resonates like a funeral hymn. Wood splinters and cracks apart, blasting across the bowels of the ship, and it’s lightning through her veins. The water is cold, already biting viciously at her knees and numbing her toes, weighing her down more heavily than the iron clamped around her ankles.
The Alcor is sinking, and along with it, Beidou’s future.
She’d been an aspiring Lieutenant before today. A bright flame kindling in one of the most decorated Royal Navy flagships on the seven seas. A woman who had fought her whole life to get what she wanted, to proudly wear a title that carried at least some of the respect she deserved, to be recognized as an equal in a world of men.
A world that had never spared her a second glance, let alone any kindness.
Growing up, Beidou had watched her family crumble and starve trying to keep afloat. She had watched her parents sacrifice everything they had to keep her siblings from going hungry, and it hadn’t been enough. She’d sworn, teary-eyed and bushy-tailed, that she’d never be the same. She’d tried her absolutely damndest to live up to that promise—
—only for life to call her a fool.
Maybe she’d been too trusting. Maybe she should have known better than to rely on anyone but herself.
And maybe it had been guilt twinkling in Juza’s golden eyes as he had walked off the ship, leaving it to burn. A gaze Beidou typically saw sparkle with laughter—eyes crinkling with happiness beneath the hot sun, not honeyed regret. It’s hard to reconcile that with the betrayal burning deep in her chest, a raging inferno to match the blaze engulfing their ship. A difficult feat to accomplish when she’d seen his cutlass red with their captain’s blood and watched it drip onto the deck, every drop choking the air from her lungs.
None of it matters, though. Revenge, justice—those are foreign bedfellows to the souls moored in Davy Jones’ locker. A port Beidou will soon call home if she can’t find a way out of this mess.
Her fingers scramble for purchase against the chains anchoring her in the cell, and she gives it another hefty tug. It’s slow, and sluggish, working beneath the rising tide flooding in through the shattered hull. Despite the sweat and blood and pain, she can feel it coming loose.
Maybe Juza hadn’t tied it as tightly as he should have.
Her fingertips are raw, calluses built up over years of working the ropes scraped clean, and the water darkens with blood. She tries not to think about it. Closing her eyes, willfully ignorant of the screaming pain in her hands, she thinks of her family back home.
Her two brothers and little sister, with their big dreams and gentle hearts, and the shanties they learn while she’s away. The smell of her mother’s cooking swirling out of a hot kitchen. The sound of her father’s laugh as she regales him with tall tales of the sea, picked up from fellow fishermen and the bustling market. Their way of welcoming her home.
Beidou thinks of them, inhales, and heaves with all her might—but it’s no use.
On the exhale, the hull explodes behind her, a flash of heat and debris and ringing in her ears. The force of it blows her into the iron bars, and with a loud crack, her forehead splits open against cool metal. There’s a burning in her left eye, a searing pain that flares to life and obscures her sight, but she can’t fathom the cause. The room spins, a wave of nausea rising in her throat as the water level climbs up past her waist.
It crawls over her skin like a gentle embrace, the welcoming arms of an ocean set to be her grave. As her vision blurs and exhaustion seeps into her very bones, Beidou knows she’s done for. Even if she could manage to get the door to her cell open—an unlikely feat given the way the blast has twisted the iron—her strength is washing away, her movement sluggish with shackles dragging along the bottom of the boat, deeper and deeper beneath a rising surface.
Beidou fought all her life to be here, and it’s with a sort of twisted irony that her fire and drive should leave her at the very end. Swept away by the undercurrent she feels calling her to rest. The cold, salty kiss of the ocean crests over her chin, licking across her lips, and Beidou inhales one last time before she goes under.
She feels suspended in time, limbs loose at her sides, shirt partially untucked from her breeches and floating in the water alongside her long, dark curtain of hair. Her eyes flutter shut, heavy with the promise of sleep, a long-deserved rest for her aching soul.
Like all things Beidou has expected this dreary night, it escapes her, too.
As the final shadows close in around her consciousness, light breaks through. Something golden in the distance, swirling among the dark depths of the ocean. Her eyes slide open, and Beidou squints against the brine, trying to focus on the glow. She thinks at first that she might be seeing things, a sailor on her last legs hallucinating a lighthouse beckoning her to port.
The light grows closer, taking the shape of a woman with long, sinewy hair like liquid light, and a winding, scaly tail, flecked by the hues of sunset. Beidou nearly chokes on water in an aborted inhale.
Every sailor worth their weight has heard of sirens, but few have claimed to have seen one—if they’re even to be believed. Dead men tell no tales, after all. When the siren approaches, plush lips peeling back into a shark-toothed smile, Beidou can see why.
The creature’s molten eyes pierce the waters, a haunting gaze that seeps into Beidou’s very soul. As she approaches, the siren brings with her a sweeping, sweltering warmth, caressing Beidou’s right side and curling around her. Fingertips, delicate yet sharp, dance along Beidou’s waist, settling on the small of her back as the siren admires her, catching and holding her against the riptide.
The light she exudes glints off the silver necklace around Beidou’s throat, a token of protection from her mother when she’d left home. When the siren speaks, it’s with a clear, soothing voice and a simple question. “Do you want to live, little sailor?”
More than anything, Beidou thinks. The pressure’s starting on her lungs, and she knows that if she opens her mouth to answer, it’ll seal her fate. It’s all she can do to nod, wonder painted across her face and hope in her heart. The fear is there, too, clawing at the edges of her consciousness, but if she’s to die here in the warmth of this siren… well, it’s a beautiful way to go out, in any case.
“All I need’s a kiss,” the siren says, firelight in her eyes dropping to Beidou’s mouth.
She’s sure in another life she might’ve questioned the exchange, the weight of the deal, but in this one, the clock ticks fiercely onward. Beidou accepts with a press of her lips against a silky, warm mouth, letting the siren breathe life into her anew.
With a new lease on life, Beidou takes on the seven seas a different woman.
No more fighting for a place in a man’s world. One that never gave her a chance; that hung her poor family out to dry and left her for dead in the middle of the ocean.
She won’t make her fortune in the Navy with cold, bitter steel and high-collar rules, so she takes her dreams to new horizons and bluer pastures. She builds a new crew from the ground up, drifting from port to port, hand-selecting women that have been cast out and left behind, same as her. She takes in strays and hard workers with nowhere to lay anchor, all carrying a mutual desire to take from the world what’s long been denied to them.
A year on from the day Beidou sunk to the depths of the ocean and died, the Dread Pirate Stormbreaker is one of the most fearsome captains of the seas; her name spoken in hushed, awed whispers at every corner of the map.
None more so than a little port town off the coast of Nassau. A safe harbor she helped settle, on the shores where she woke up after her dance with death. A haven for women and children and folks of all kinds, protected under the banner of the Crux Fleet. It’s joyful, peaceful, and her little slice of paradise—yet Beidou still hungers for the whole pie.
Her thirst for revenge lays dormant, the eye of a growing storm low in her gut, happiness drifting further from her every day she doesn’t see it through. While at sea, she keeps a constant watch for the lightning flag of the Haishan. Her eyes and ears on land feed her any leads they find. No matter the riches and titles a life of piracy has given her, the ocean depths still call to her.
Today the summons are particularly strong, and she wanders the beach with a bottle of rum in hand, heels digging into the sand. At first, she’s without direction, but Beidou soon finds her boots tapping against wet rock, tide pools winding and swirling tighter and tighter towards the center of a maze as she approaches the network of caves on the outskirts of town. The yawning mouth of them sits at the base of a cliff, partially submerged beneath the tide and dark with the unknown. Rumours abound of late about townsfolk that have wandered out at night to explore, never to return.
To Beidou, it’s a gamble. A wager. She has no way of knowing what’s on the other side if she takes the plunge, let alone anywhere breathable—but curiosity is a kindling flame in her gut, and the cool touch of the ocean around her ankles feels as familiar as a lover’s embrace.
She polishes off her flask, and dives.
The water is warm. At first, she thinks it’s just the rum in her veins, but the deeper she swims, the more evident an answer blooms ahead of her. The glow is soft at first, barely a light at the end of the tunnel, but it quickly expands, glittering like starlight beneath the waves. By the time Beidou breaks the surface and rises out of the water into the cavern, there are constellations painted in hues of blue and white across the roof and wall.
Glowworms. Thousands of them. Little lights scattered from the dripping stalactites and tucked into crevices. A little slice of the night sky, made of living, breathing creatures on land. Beidou wanders along the closest wall, quietly admiring their beauty, careful not to disturb them save for the gentle tap of her boots against the wet stone.
Something brighter than any false star beckons to her from the back of the cave, in the low, swirling depths of another body of water. Like the warning light of an anglerfish, or perhaps a sun cresting the horizon at dawn; the siren’s long, incandescent hair ripples out along the surface as she swims towards Beidou, illuminating the cavern. When her lips part just above the water’s edge in a sultry smile, her sharp teeth glinting in the firelight.
It’s chilling to see the ethereal creature that’s made a home in Beidou’s dreams in the flesh again—she’d nearly convinced herself she’d imagined the whole thing. The resonant echo of something like home deep in her bones at the sight of the siren is far from imaginary, however. Drawn to her like a moth to flame, Beidou meets her at the water’s edge, kneeling against the cold, wet stone.
“I was wondering when you’d find me,” the siren says, and the gentle lilt of her voice is teasing. She’s beautiful.
“I wasn’t sure you were real,” Beidou admits.
Her laugh is a tolling of sparkling bells, and a hand reaches up, curved claw tapping gently at the tip of Beidou’s nose. “As real as you are.”
The admission carries weight to it, an anchor that sits uncomfortably in Beidou’s stomach. Hoping to dispel the bellyache, she asks with genuine curiosity: “Real enough for a name?”
A smirk plays across her lips for the barest of moments, as though she’s considering making Beidou work for it, before it softens. “You can call me Ninnguang.”
Ningguang . There’s the strangest pull to the name, deep in the back of Beidou’s chest, as if she’d known it all along. The crimson of her eyes sparkles in the firelight, and she treads water, staring expectantly up at Beidou—but the human knows better.
“Stormbreaker,” she says, and though the name stopped feeling foreign on her tongue months ago, it doesn’t quite sound right this time. It fits awkwardly in her mouth, and the lie burns like indigestion in her chest. Ningguang seems to know it, too. The curl of her lips is sharp as any knife, as are the fingertips that dance along the rock inches from Beidou’s foot.
“Though I was Beidou when you saved me.” The truth comes easier the second time, and the pressure in her ribcage instantly lessens.
“Beidou,” it sounds revered , coming from the siren’s lips. “A pretty name for a pretty sailor.”
“Pirate now,” Beidou corrects with a laugh. “Either way—I owe you my life.”
The siren hums, low and amused in a way that bubbles the water around her. “I don’t think you’re quite ready for me to collect yet, little pirate.”
Beidou blinks, taken aback. Collect? In all the tales she’s heard of sirens, there’s never been any talk of collecting from saved sailors—there weren’t any saved sailors to start. Ethereal and deadly, sirens aren’t known for making deals, simply preying on men.
Mermaids , however…
Beidou smooths out her ruffles with a smile. “I thought sirens were in the habit of drowning sailors, not saving them for a price.”
“They are.” Ningguang’s eyes glow with mischief, and her voice carries the words to Beidou on the faintest, soothing tune. “They also don’t have a magical bone in their body.”
A pointed distinction. Her tail lifts above the surface and gives it a good thwack, splashing water away in an arc. Mermaid, not siren. Which… changes a few things about their kiss—and shines an entirely different light on Ningguang’s line about collecting.
Beidou decides to test the waters, and leans closer.
“The legends say a kiss from a mermaid can save a pirate from Davy Jones’ locker,” Beidou muses, swirling water with the tip of her index finger.
“And is that what you think?” Ningguang’s eyes flicker to hers. They’re startlingly vibrant against the dark, starry waters—shimmering in shades of ruby red and sunset orange—and Beidou feels like she could drown in them. “That with one sweet kiss, you could breathe water as easily as you do air?”
She smiles crookedly, sharp teeth glinting in the light of the cave as her gaze falls to Beidou’s lips, daring. Something in the pirate’s stomach clenches.
Ningguang’s fingertips dance along her arm—a delicately cold touch, dripping water across her skin in a way that leaves Beidou shivering—then loop around her wrist. The mermaid gives her a little tug, and Beidou’s hand skims the surface as she leans over the side of the rock, closer and closer to the water’s edge.
“I think…” Ningguang’s face is close, and hauntingly beautiful. The glow of her hair and scales bathe the surface of the water with starlight, and Beidou yearns to trace her fingertips over the angle of her jaw. To sweep back the curls plastered to her skin.
Their entwined hands sink below the water.
“I think…” She can feel Ningguang’s breath against her lips, and wonders if she tastes like sea salt and brine, or something sweeter. Her jeweled eyes are so bright, sparkling with mischief and something close to longing. It’s a resonant echo of the crescendo building in Beidou’s chest, the strangely magnetic pull she felt from the moment she laid eyes on the mermaid. “I think you’ll sweetly drown me if I let you.”
Ningguang stiffens at the tip of Beidou’s blade, pressed neatly against her pale throat.
They remain like that, for a heartbeat or two, the air charged with anticipation—and then Beidou yelps at the sudden jerk on her hand that plunges her arm deeper into the water. There’s a sharp press of claws at her skin, and with her free hand, Beidou pushes her dagger a little more firmly to the mermaid’s jugular in warning.
“How wise you are,” Ningguang’s lips curve into a smirk, appraisal glinting in her eyes.
“I would hope so,” Beidou huffs, and the mermaid allows her to pull away.
There's a gentle hum in the other woman's throat before she flashes her teeth again. "Until next time, little pirate."
She watches Ningguang slip back beneath the surface of the water, a glittering stark winking out beneath an endless sky.
The water feels colder this time, as Beidou swims her way out.
"Drifting down into the endless night, I cannot resist your call. Take my hand, take my hand, follow me to the sand."