Bruce was right, I could feel it the moment I submerged into the water.  Something was wrong.  A silence that shouldn’t be there, a tension that seemed to echo through the currents.  Something was wrong in the ocean, and every inch closer to the merfolk town was an inch closer to the source.

I approached cautiously.  I didn’t have magic or martial knowledge to use here, no experience in battle or anything.  The only thing I did have was the element of surprise – as long as I kept it – and an unwillingness to allow a tyrant to threaten children for her own benefit.

I slipped silently through the eerily empty town, keeping to the shadows in case she had allies around watching for stragglers, when I peeked around the corner of the town center towards the large, open, circular area used as an open amphitheater to gather the entire community.

And there, as I feared, was the Elder, pacing back and forth in front of about a dozen small merfolk children who were crying and clinging to each other, terrified, as some of her supporters guarded them.  At least seven people there with her, behind her and around the children.  Not a lot, but enough to keep the children in check and harm them if someone from the community tried to stop them.

Skye was facing her, across the open ground, her face pale but angry, behind her most of the village, some furious, some crying with fear as they kept their eyes on the children.

“You can’t force a community to accept you!”  Skye was saying.  “This is nothing more than a dictatorship, and it cannot last!  You cannot seriously imagine that threating the children will earn you favor with the town?  And you,” she swept her arms towards the supporters behind the Elder, “you seriously think this is okay, to harm children for the sake of power?”

A couple of them shrugged coldly, but I did notice one who looked uncomfortable.  Maybe he’d been promised the children wouldn’t actually be hurt, but whatever his reason, he didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the situation.  Maybe that would be useful to me, maybe not.

“You want to push it?”  The Elder sneered coldly.  “If you want to test my resolve, please do.  I will not hesitate.  I have fought too hard, too long for this place, and if some must die for the sake of the good of the community, then fine, some must die.”

Skye stared at her in horror.  “It’s not for the good of the community!  It’s for your own good, for your own selfish desires, nothing more.  Killing our children is not for the good of the community!”

The Elder glared at her, then reached for one of the children, a small oceanid boy who looked absolutely terrified.

He squeaked when she grabbed him and I saw what I assumed were his parents jump in the crowd and look panicked, unable to determine how to respond.  Rushing her would be pointless – the Elder had too much magical power.  But with the children as hostages, just the fact that the community had superior numbers was insufficient.  They didn’t dare harm her when the lives of their children were at stake.

“Please let him go,” one of his parents begged.  “Please, he never did any harm to you!”

The Elder had the child by his shoulder, but her magic was beginning to weave around his head.  His parents were growing more and more frantic and the child looked like he was about to pass out from fear while the Elder, strangely, was smiling in a satisfied way.

She wanted to see the child die.  Even from here, I could see it in her eyes.  She wanted to see the community suffer, to see it crushed beneath her feet.  Metaphorically speaking.

She was going to kill this child for the fun of it.

I wasn’t close enough to ram her like I had the shark shifter, and I doubted I would get close enough – between her and her supporters, someone would doubtless spot me before I got there and would use magic to stop me.

So I used the only other thing I could think of to make her pause.  I darted out from behind the pillar, to the left side of the opening from the Elder – Skye’s right side – and bellowed at her.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!”

My sudden appearance and thundering shout did serve to startle them all, bringing the Elder’s attention towards me.  Her supporters, too, shifted to look at me.  Practically magicless I might be, but I was an unknown factor in this fight, and they knew it.

My goal now was to hold her attention – hers and her followers.  If they were focused on me, it might give Skye’s community followers a chance to get into position, plus Bruce should be sneaking up behind them.  It wasn’t ideal – the children would still be in the hands of the Elder’s followers – but it was a chance nonetheless.

“You?!”  The Elder scoffed.  “You’re not even a part of this, and you don’t even have the magic capabilities of a toddler.  This isn’t your affair – stay out of this unless you want to die, like you should have before.”

She was right about my abilities, but wrong about this being my problem.  And when lacking other options, I found bluffing an acceptable alternative.

I folded my arms across my chest, my cold exterior settling into place.  “Actually, since I seem to be the reason for this fight, I’d say it is my affair – and yes, I don’t have magic, but I’d say you still want to stop.  Or, well, things won’t go well for you.”

She started at me incredulously, then looked at one of her followers as if she needed confirmation that they’d heard this, too.  “You actually think you can threaten me, a weak, pathetic thing like yourself?”

Before, those words might have hurt me.  Now they just rolled off me while I let a cold smile cross my face.

“Oh, well, as it turns out, you don’t have to have magic to have power.  As it turns out…I think I can threaten you.”

A couple of Skye’s people were slowly shifting backwards, then around towards the opposite side.  They’d realized what I was doing and were trying to take advantage of it.  Good.  I wasn’t sure how long my bluffing would hold up.

The Elder, still holding on to the whimpering child, scoffed again and rolled her eyes.  “Fine, let’s hear this thing you think will be enough to make me pause, me, who has more magic than anyone in this community, from you, who has none!”

I let out a low, dark chuckle.  “The thing you fear the most.  You see, if I don’t come back unharmed and make a phone call, then tomorrow, newspapers will break stories about the existence of the merfolk – about this community, in particular.  Pictures, proof, everything the humans need.  There will be hundreds of reporters and scientists and tourists here by noon, all seeking for a glimpse.  Hundreds and hundreds of humans flooding your waters, looking for you.”

I saw the look that flashed across her eyes.  She hated humans, but she feared them, too.

She laughed a not-quite-sincere laugh.  “As if you’d really do that.  It would put everyone here at risk, all supernaturals around the world, even.  Surely you cannot be so foolish.”

I shrugged.  “Well, I was raised in the human world, after all, and I’m still so bound to it,” I said innocently, “maybe I’m optimistic about what will happen.  Maybe I want to see humans and supernaturals get along together in one world.”

Her eyes narrowed with anger and I saw her start to pull her magic towards her to fling at me, but she hesitated – hesitated because she was worried that I told the truth, and if I didn’t safely return to the surface, that my threat would be fulfilled.

That hesitation was all Bruce and Skye’s community members needed.  With her focus and that of her followers so fixed on me, trying to determine whether I was bluffing, they didn’t notice until too late that people were there behind them.

Bruce is large and powerful, but normally he’s rarely violent, one of the kindest people I know.  This was an exception as he hit one of the Elder’s supporters hard, hard enough to knock them into a stone pillar and at least stun them if not knock them out entirely.  Another he bit into, his teeth ripping into them without remorse.

One of Skye’s oceanids was barreling into another supporter while the other spun water magic against the sand, swirling it around to obscure their activities as it grabbed at the children.

A mad scramble, a rush of people from Skye’s side of the amphitheater to join the others, and the sand cleared to show the Elder with her back against the town center, three of her followers with her but the other four injured or otherwise incapable of following her.

And the children were all back safely within the arms of their parents – all except for the one the Elder was still holding.

She was furious.  Beyond furious.  Had she been able, I think she would have turned into molten lava from pure hate and fury.  Her plans disrupted, ruined by the community she’d sought to oppress, a community that was now starting to circle around her, their eyes just as angry as her own.

She didn’t have a chance of forcing submission now.  She had one child still, true, but that wasn’t enough of a bargaining chip now, not with the entire community and only four people on her side.

But she’d kill the child out of spite, I was sure of it.

As if to prove my theory, I saw her fingers tighten on the child’s shoulder and he cried out softly, his panicked eyes meeting mine for just a second.

In that second, I was reminded of another small oceanid child, looking out the window as devastation destroyed everything he’d ever known.  Crying in fear as he begged just for his parents to return – only to have his prayers denied.

I wouldn’t let another child get hurt like that or even worse, die in horrible pain and fear before his own parents.  Not if I had anything to say about it.

“This is your answer?”  The Elder screamed.  “Then this is mine!”  She raised the child up, her magic starting to weave to slice his body into pieces before the community’s eyes.  His parents screamed, people tried to jump forward, knowing it would be too late to stop her –

And then a rush of water hit her and her followers, unstoppable as it gathered them like a tornado, tossing them past the crowd, then yanking them back, frozen in water spirals that they couldn’t escape from.  The Elder attempted to use her magic – first a bit, then more, then all of it – but the water held fast, as unbothered by her flailings as the ocean by a child kicking at it.  Her followers tried, too, just as unsuccessfully, one even attempting to throw himself physically through the barrier, only to be tossed back and spun around so many times he ended up dazed and confused.

Where they’d been a moment before, the child remained, untouched by the water tornadoes, and for a moment he froze before realizing he was free and rushing to his parents.

And then, almost as one, the community turned to stare at me.

The faintest strings of currents from the tornadoes to my hands were the barest echo of the source of the rush of water, a type of magic capable of containing even the Elder without issue.

I was pretty much as surprised as them that I’d done that, but I’d done it entirely instinctively, the need to protect the child triggering something deep within me.  If I thought about it, though, maybe it was just the right timing – Skye and Bruce might have been right, that I had been capable of more under the right circumstances.  Maybe the right circumstances were being happier, or being more willing to accept the ocean, or being more willing to accept myself – I’d even decided I was okay without magic, and I’d proven to myself both in rescuing the twins and here today that it actually was possible to stand up to people regardless of my magical power.  Maybe it was all of them, but whatever it was…I didn’t think I could claim to not have much magic anymore.

Come to think of it, maybe there had been hints that this was happening before now.  That jellyfish – what if it had touched Vance, but my protection marks had unknowingly strengthened enough to actually protect him as my magic started to increase?  I hadn’t even tried to use my magic in ages, because I just assumed it didn’t work.  Maybe it just took the trigger of needing my magic to work to protect a child that reminded me of myself for my magic to actually finally show up, but…the signs had been there, now that I thought about.  This had started before tonight, it had just taken tonight to actually break through and find that magic.

“Morgan!”  Skye reached me a moment later, her face delighted.  “Your magic!  It’s beyond normal – beyond even superior levels!”

“Great, but, um, can we contain them or something?  I, uh, don’t want to do this forever, if that’s okay.”

She laughed giddily.  “Yeah, yeah, we can definitely take it from here.  You just saved us – it’s the least we can do.”  To my surprise, she leaned in to give me a hug.  “Thank you, Morgan,” she whispered softly.  “Thank you for being willing to risk yourself to help us even when we aren’t your community.  I hope we might be in the future.”

She swam off to gather some people to imprison the Elder and her followers properly, leaving me to promptly get swarmed by pretty much the entire merfolk community trying to thank me.  Bruce slapped my shoulder with his fin – he couldn’t breathe underwater in his human form so he had to remain an orca – and told me he was proud of me while the parents of the children, especially of the boy who’d been saved last, offered me so many thanks I felt a little like I was drowning in gratitude.

I didn’t need their thanks, but…it was still a nice moment.  It was nice because in that moment, I actually felt like part of a merfolk community that accepted me.  It didn’t even seem to be because somehow I’d turned out to actually have a lot of magical power, but because I’d helped them save their children, most of which I’d done without using any powers at all.  They were just glad that I’d come, glad that I’d offered a distraction to help them save their children, glad that I’d helped stop her before she murdered an innocent little boy.  Most of them didn’t even seem to care about the magic I’d displayed last-second – though some were clearly impressed and even told me so – but more about the fact that I’d helped.

And I was just glad that, for the first time in my life, I was starting to feel like I might actually belong.  I had my own family – my twins that loved me – I might have made a second friend for the first time in ages, and now…maybe I could be part of a good merfolk community after all.  Oh, right, and apparently I did have magic after all.

Maybe this really was my home.