Paimonrhoth
Faction: The Broken Circle · View the Gallery
The Broken Circle: 1 - ABZU (Power Level 3)
All sirens come from the Abzu. That is where they begin — in the deep temples of the first rank of the Broken Circle, where an ever-burning flame has lit the dark since before the upper world had names for fire. Paimonrhoth grew up in those temples, well-loved, often found staring into that flame as though it was trying to tell her something.
She was not the first of her kind to venture to the surface. Others had gone and returned with stories — the warm waters, the strange abundance, the creatures who breathed air and walked on two legs. When her time came she went too, as curious as the rest, and found it harder to leave.
It was in a cove that she first saw a man. She had heard the stories: sweet flesh, easy prey. She dived when he spotted her. Then she heard him say please don't be afraid — and she thought: afraid? Her? She surfaced. He walked to the water's edge without caution and held out his hand. His name was Noal. As she reached for his wrist she was already calculating the grab, the dive, the depth. Then he said: my goodness, you are beautiful. Probably the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.
She froze. She let his words in. She looked at him properly for the first time.
She pulled him in anyway — old instinct — and had to drag him back to the surface when she remembered he couldn't breathe like her. He lay on the rocks coughing, and when he recovered he was staring straight into her eyes. She said I'm Paimonrhoth. Sorry I pulled you in. He kissed her. She had never been kissed before. She liked it.
For several hours they bobbed in the ocean. He said I love you. She thought: he loves me.
He showed her his cottage in the cove. He carried her up the beach as her tail became legs — she stared at him the whole way. They danced. She had never danced before either. She stayed for days, and when she had to leave she told him she would return. He kissed her and she was gone.
She did not know who had been watching from the water. She found out when she reached the Abzu — another of her kind had reported her to the council. Her uncle Daroamrhoth led her to the chamber of rites without a word. All the elders were in session. The Beacon's third eye was wide and aimed directly at her. She was accused of heresy and forbidden from returning to the surface.
When the one who had informed on her passed her in the temple and said don't worry about your human, when next I surface I shall consume him — Paimonrhoth removed several of her scales. The council was not sympathetic. She was temple-bound for thirty days.
For thirty days she stared into the ever-burning flame.
The day after her release she took it with her. She left the Abzu and did not go back.
Noal was on the beach when she returned, staring out to sea. He called her my love and then paused, looking at the fire in her hand. She explained everything — what she was, what they would do if they found her. They left together and travelled until they found the right place: a tropical lagoon, a quiet island. He built them a house on the shore with an entrance she could swim into.
As time passed his skin grew thin while hers wore fire. She sang to him often — of their love, of how they would be together always. He died with a smile on his face. She built him a tomb on the ocean floor where he would never be parted from her.
For ten years she barely moved from it.
A Mason found her eventually — a cloaked figure who explained about the Lodge and offered to take her grief. She was persuaded. She came. She gave the Telling. And then for three hundred years she drifted through the Lodge and barely spoke — because when grief is everything you have and someone takes it, what is left?
It took the Masons three hundred years to understand their mistake. They called her back to the chamber. They gave her the Telling and told her to burn it. She found him again — the memory, the pain, all of it — and it was hers. She left the Lodge that same day and returned to her vigil.
That is the story of Paimonrhoth. Take from it what you will.