Information

Nerin has a minion!

Nautica the Phyra

Nerin
Legacy Name: Nerin

The

Hydrus Torrent
Owner:

~~Johnny_673~~

Age: 7 years, 10 months, 2 weeks

Born: June 2nd, 2016

Adopted: 7 years, 10 months, 2 weeks ago

Adopted: June 2nd, 2016

Pet Spotlight Winner
March 3rd, 2018

Statistics

Level: 1
Strength: 10
Defense: 10
Speed: 10
Health: 10
HP: 10/10
Intelligence: 0
Books Read: 0
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

It was a miserable life she lived. She grew up poor, lonely, without a father or even a single friend to look out for her. No, all she had were her little brother, and her pathetic excuse for a mother. She was growing tired of this existence, and it wouldn’t be long before she found the courage to do something about it.

Nerin hadn’t always been so bitter. She had a good home, and a happy family once. She was a typical mergirl, frolicking and playing with the other merchildren. She had a loving mother, a doting father, and baby brother on the way. Nerin’s life was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

It all happened so fast that no one had a chance to process any of it. Her father, the love of her life, her absolute favorite merperson in all the world, died suddenly on a whaling expedition. Everything fell into chaos then. Her mother went into pre-mature labor, and her brother was born months too early.

The baby was ill, almost at death’s door, and so Nerin’s mother had stay at home, providing the round-the-clock care and attention that her new son so desperately needed. Unable to work, unable to do anything other than care for her newborn, Nerin’s mother was forced to sit by and watch as her home, her things, her entire life was ripped out from under her. All she had now was her children, and she had no idea how to support them on her own.

After weeks of searching and swimming and nearly starving to death, Nerin’s mother finally found a cave large enough to house the family. She scrounged and saved for weeks more until she had enough money to purchase old, ratty furniture for the place. It wasn’t much, but Nerin’s mother was proud to have provided even this meager home for her children.

Nerin wasn’t taking the changes so well, however. She began to resent her mother. Nerin hated the fact that her mother couldn’t—in her mind, wouldn’t—find work to support them. Because of this, they had to rely on the frugal kindness of strangers and whatever scraps of food she and her mother were able to piece together.

Her mother never learned to hunt for fish, and her father died before he could really teach her. So the family had no real source of food, and Nerin was still too young to work. Her mother was constantly busy caring for her younger brother, who—while a child now—was still sickly and required constant attention.
So Nerin slowly began to resent her mother and the constant attention she paid her little brother. If her brother wasn’t so damned sickly, their mother might be able to go out and find work and actually support the family, instead of leaving them all to starve.

The hatred and bitterness hardened Nerin’s heart, until she could barely stand to look her mother in the eye. It was too much. She had to go; she had to escape this wretched excuse for a life she was living.

It was a while before Nerin finally gathered the courage and strength to leave. She fantasized about it for months. How she would slip quietly into the night, wander for a few days before coming across a whole new world, a rich place, a place where she could make her own way, where she could work and support herself. And maybe, just maybe, if she could support herself, she could begin to amass a power and fortune she could call her own.

She couldn’t wait.

***

Nerin had made up her mind. If she didn’t escape now, she would never have the nerve to try again. She treated the day like any other, except that for the first time in Shinwa only knows how long, Nerin actually had a smile on her face. As she went about her business, she made mental arrangements. How many of her scant possessions she would take, juts when she would leave, which direction she would take. She couldn’t risk having her mother find her, not that she thought the merwoman cared enough about her to convince her to stay.

Nerin waited patiently for the day to be done before quickly and quietly packing what few things she could take before stealing into the night. In the weeks prior, she had made it a point to go farther and farther on her fishing expeditions, and now she was confident that she had the beginnings of a clear and safe escape route.
So she followed the path she’d laid out for herself, and survived off the few fish and shellfish she was able to find. It wasn’t much, but it kept her from starving, for now. She travelled for days like this, until she was unsure just how much time had passed.

It wasn’t long, though, before Nerin had exhausted her knowledge of the area, and before the fish and other food stuffs became slim. Nerin knew, though, that she had to keep going. She had no idea what lay before her in this unknown territory, and the idea both terrified and invigorated her.

The feeling didn’t last long.

***

The lands she’d come across were completely barren, part of a trench where no fish dared to tread. Which meant that Nerin was practically starving and had to survive on the scarce and disgusting sponges that managed to thrive in these waters. It was a grueling and arduous journey without a clear destination in mind, but Nerin was determined to get as far away from her mother as she possibly could.

It was this steely determination that drove her to continue on her path, wherever it may lead, and it might have been the reason she came across her future savior. Merana, the sea witch.

Nerin was almost at her breaking point. Cold, alone, lost, starving, and desperate, she was using the last of her strength to crawl along a ledge of rock. Merana was swimming lazily in the area when she happened upon the mergirl. She took in the poor creature before her, marveling at her haggard beauty and the obvious resolve that led her here.

The little mergil looked up at the sea witch, awed at her corrupted countenance and the sheer power that she radiated. Nerin wanted to know what it would be like to radiate that kind of power herself. She wanted something like that to call her own. She reached out to the sea witch, her hand shaking with exhaustion and hunger.
Merana looked down at the girl, and in her eyes, she saw something, something that reminded her of herself. She waved her hand over Nerin, healing her just enough. “Speak, child.”

Nerin threw herself on the mercy of the sea witch then, begging her for help. She didn’t know what exactly she was asking for, but she wanted something, anything more than the miserable life she used to live.
A thought occurred to her then. Merana had power, and Nerin wanted power of her own. What if she could learn from the sea witch? What if Merana could teach Nerin what she knew, what she could do, so that Nerin could do the same? With that kind of power at her disposal, Nerin would never be poor, never want for anything again. She began to imagine the life that awaited her, if only Merana would say yes.

“So, yer wantin’ t’ learn from me, eh? T’ be me apprentice, as it were?”
“Yes, yes please. Please! I’ll do anything, anything. Just give me a chance!”
“Well, ye can start by tellin’ me all about yerself, mergirl,” Merana commanded.Nerin took a deep breath and began to tell her story, from her earliest memory all the way up to the first time she’d lain eyes on the sea witch, making sure to spare absolutely no detail, especially not about her mother. It felt like hours had passed before she was finally finished, but Merana listened quietly and intently, interrupting only to ask questions and offer pity. Nerin first thought she was boring the sea witch, but after a while, the notion escaped her. It was nice to finally have someone to talk to, someone who would listen to everything she’d been keeping inside for so long.

“So it seems t’ me like yer family is the root of all yer problems, eh?” Merana concluded.
“I guess so,” Nerin agreed bitterly.
“I sense somethin’ in ye, girl. Somethin’ I ain’t seen since I took a good look at meself!” the sea witch said with a laugh. “I’ll take ya on, all right, but first ye gotta prove yerself worthy of me time,” she warned.
“How? How? I’ll do anything. Name it,” Nerin said eagerly.
“Well, it seems t’ me like you’ll never be free unless ye get rid of that family o’ yers,” she mused.

Nerin jumped at the chance before she even full understood Merana’s intent. “I’ll do it! I’ll do it. I’ll kill them both,” she offered.
The sea witch let a wicked smile cross her face.

***

The journey back to the cave was much faster than the one Nerin took to leave it. She wasted no time, made no stops, refused sleep, until she reached her destination. Nerin found her family asleep in the center of the house, huddled around one of the few toys that Nerin used to count herself lucky to own. She pursed her lips then. So they did miss her…

It didn’t matter though. The only thing that mattered now was taking her revenge on her mother, and taking her place as Merana’s apprentice and maybe even eventual heir. The thought stopped her cold. Heir? Next in line to the sea witch’s throne? Nerin had never let herself imagine anything like that before, but now the thought had taken root in her head, and she had no idea how all-consuming it would become.

Nerin shook her head to rid herself of the thought, at least for the moment. Right now, she had a job to do. She took a deep breath and went to her brother. He had to be first, and it had to be quick. She may have hated the fact that her brother was always so sickly, and was basically the reason they were poor, she still loved him. She took him from their mother’s arms and turned him around so that his back was pressed against her stomach, and—just when he began to stir—she put her hands around his head and gave a sharp jerk, snapping his neck.

It was quick, and painless, the kind of death he deserved after such a miserable life.Her mother on the other hand, would not be so lucky. Nerin looked around for a knife, settling instead on a jagged piece of rock with a sharpened edge. How pathetic, she thought to herself. The woman couldn’t even afford a damned knife. No matter. This piece of rock would do just fine.

Nerin left her family in the cave. They didn’t deserve a real burial, and it would be weeks before they were discovered anyway, as they had no friends. She took a deep breath, gave one last look over her shoulder, and set out to start her new life under Merana’s wing.

***

She found Merana at her home, a lavish cave on the waters not far from the Omen Islands.

When Nerin entered her cave, Merana immediately noticed something different about the girl. A dark confidence that had emerged from within her. The sea with smiled at the mergirl. “I see ye rid yerself o’ that baggage o’ yers. Come on in, we’ll be startin’ ye first lesson now,” she said.

In the months and years that followed, Nerin learned all she could from the sea witch, absorbing every bit of knowledge that Merana could offer. Nerin grew by leaps and bounds, quickly becoming almost as powerful as Merana herself. She began to take on some of the sea witch’s lesser duties and Merana had even allowed her to “bless” some of the pets that came before them. Nerin eagerly did all this and more, all the while scheming and plotting on how to take her place.

Someday, perhaps one day soon, Nerin would rule the seas just as Merana had…

|| Story by

Rampage ||

profile by

~~Johnny_673~~
art by

Obluda
[x] by ???
[x] by

Ravel

backgrounds from L u n a and toptotal

Nerin has a minion!