Aquarelia was prepared, or at least as ready as she would ever be, for the impending royal visit. Since generations before there had been a designated meeting spot for such discussions. (According to legend a place where a fisherman used to go for a secret rendezvous with a Mer he had fallen in love with. The story hadn’t ended well though, as said fisherman was a cheat, made a living on the water, and didn’t realise that Mer folk were the type to hold a grudge. Or that his ex had access to a small hand drill, and the ability to get at the hull of his boat any time she wished. Apparently breakups are even harder when the other party has means, motive, intent, and a plan to give you an impromptu, and rather permanent swimming lesson.)

The place had been in use for a number of years now, and had at some point been subject to something of a keeping up with the Jones's situation, with both land and sea determined to outdo each other. On the water side there was a gigantic statue of the so called “king of the sea.” A being who of course had never really existed outside fiction, due in part to the nomadic nature of most ocean dwellers, who usually dwelt in a particular stretch of water for a set period of time. Negotiated at a sort of council meeting every decade, this was to prevent over hunting in the waters. In the current circumstances they would usually have long since moved on, but the agreements they held were rigid, and trying to change them would lead to social shunning for decades afterwards. So for now they had to take their lumps, swallow their pride, and ask the humans for help. A task that in itself would get her some stick come the next council meeting.

As for the human side, they’d decided on some kind of sculptural stone giant, who was tactically positioned to be glaring at the “sea king”, and subject the people looking up from below to, well let’s just say the entire things was clad in a toga, and had a bell mounted. When you were swimming you got a rather unwelcome view of his clapper.

Of course from there things had escalated, and several other statues on each side had raised middle fingers etc. She couldn’t help but sigh, honestly sometimes it was like trying to maintain a peace treaty between five year olds. She got into position, and carefully supervised the setting up of the communication stone. Or she would have if not for a human head suddenly breaking the surface and speaking.

“Uhhh , hello? Just a heads up you won’t need that, we can talk just fine without.”

Of course at the sudden speech Aquarelia was a tad taken about, but you don’t take charge of an entire school be being so easily thrown. So she took a moment to gather herself.

“Ah Princess, may I ask how you’re doing that? Usually the humans object to breathing water.” In her personal experiences humans who attempted to breathe water usually started flailing and struggling long before now. They were very dramatic like that, had they been hiding this particular talent all along? If so she would have a real problem explaining to the council. They’d held the land water divide as something of a border, if the humans had figured out a way around that how long would it be before some wazzock with a flag tried to claim the ocean floor? (They really seemed to genuinely believe that planting a flag in something meant that they owned it forever, with no questions asked. Until somebody else came along with a bigger flag to plant, at which point they usually got rather aggressive about the issue. Something that made her extremely glad she would never, ever, ever have to witness a human courtship ritual.)

“True but usually the humans in question don’t take the trouble to have a magic circle tattooed. into their back.”

“You did that just to talk to us?”

“Well that and because I love the water, and miss..... I mean really want to be able to swim more freely.”

“Now that I can understand.” Aquarelia replied, somewhat mollified that humans would appreciate the greatness that was the ocean, but still rather concerned, for the reasons mentioned earlier. It was bad enough there were constructs and skeletons running around down here willy nilly lately. Though she was glad they were helping to clean up the trash the humans left behind.

“Ah I know that look, would it help if I told you that from my own research the magic only lasts as long as your mana supply, once that depletes you need to wait for the stones to charge up again. So it’s only good for a few hours, and even that only because I’m freakishly good at water magic as far as humans go.”

“Ah, that is reassuring, we don’t mind the occasional visitor down here, but much prefer it when their visits end.”

“An average human spell-caster would be able to do this for an hour tops, and there’s not really much of an indicator of it running out. I need to work on making it show up better, so as not to be responsible for more drownings than a Briony Deyp bad hair day.”

That made Aquarelia wince, as a Mer it was expected to display a certain level of reverence for oceanic deities. That said all the storms lately had been a right pain in the tail-fin. But she really didn’t want to say so out loud, the whole omniscience thing, and the “the gods are watching,” thing was a bit of a concern when the gods made their displeasure known.

So she wisely held her tongue on that particular issue, and instead tried to steer the conversation in a more productive direction. Just what exactly could they do about a giant bloody shark, and The Quacken, because they weren’t exactly things that you could fight.