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“Eric, you saw the temple, didn’t you. I want to know everything, was it beautiful?” Her eyes were wistful, hopeful. He understood the feeling, It was beautiful. He already ached to go back, his heart full of a foreign emotion, even stronger than longing, and much older.
“How do you know about that?” he asked, bewildered as well as longing.
“I could feel it.”
“Yeah, it is beautiful, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“You freed it for us.” She grabbed his face, “Thank you, my love. We couldn’t break the seal that was placed upon it centuries ago.”
“So it’s true." Eric said, a wave of betrayal coursing though him. “You, you’re a…”
“Yes, you knew it was true.” And he had, even if he denied it both aloud and in his mind, he had known it was true. “We were brought together for a reason, Eric, to serve a greater purpose.” Her hands once again upon his face.
“You feel it, don’t you.” Eric nodded weakly. Eric had always been a romantic, but he knew that the feelings that he felt for her went beyond normal love. He had felt a deep sense of loss, a hole in his heart, which was only filled when he looked upon the temple, or in his dreams peppered by images of the ocean, and of Dagon.
“I did.”
“She's bewitched you, Eric, you're not thinking straight. Fight back!” Ferdy called to him. Eric knew he was wrong, he never felt so clear.
“I have done nothing of the sort.” Aurora spat. She turned back to Eric, her face and tone softer, “Eric, everything between us is real. Our love is real.”
Once again, Ferdy interrupted, “Don’t listen to that vile creature.” Aurora lunged at him, teeth bared, Eric held her back, “Stop, look at me! Don’t hurt my friends, look at me. You’re not going to hurt them.” He pleaded with her. He understood the hurt, and felt the longing, but he loved his friends too. Protection for his friends and foreign adoration swirled in his heart. “You’re not going to hurt them, promise me. Promise me you won’t hurt my friends.”
“All right. You have my promise.” The weight of her words hanging in the air. “And if you know of my kind, then I cannot break it.” Eric had known that was true before she said it, though no one had ever told him.
“Tell me, why did the minutes feel like hours when I was down there?”
“You experienced time the way we do. Centuries feel like months, hours like seconds.”
She smiled, eyes wide. “That’s the way it can be for you, too. We’ll finally be together for eternity.” How desperately he wanted that, and all it entailed, with both the emotions brought on by his strange dreams and the temple, but also with the emotions of Eric Prince, the man. “Do you promise.” She kissed him. “You can trust me.”
He nodded again. “So what’s next?”
“We finish what you started. We go to the temple and we summon The Old Ones. They will return and take this world back, and we will make it beautiful once more.” Eric nodded and began to smile, joy and desire filling him at the prospect. “Okay.”
It was at that moment when Eric finally understood, his beloved in his arms and his purpose so close again he could almost taste it, that Archie sliced though the net and he and Ferdy were free. Archie began to stab Sebastian, while Ferdy grabbed the harpoon, and killed Collins, He then set his sights on Aurora. Eric found himself putting him in between two people who he loved.
“Step aside, Eric.” said Ferdy. “Let me kill this monster.”
“I can’t let you do that, Ferdy, she’s my destiny.” Overwhelmed by his love for Aurora, and his feeling of purpose, he smiled slightly despite the blood and gore coating the beach. Ferdy looked at him bewildered. “Have you lost your mind? She’s going to destroy the world. You can do what you want with your own life, let her kill you, but you can’t make that decision for the rest of us.”
Eric stayed put, arm in front of Aurora,“It looks like you’ll just have to kill me first, Ferdy.”
“Please don’t make me do this. You know what she’s talking about. You know what the text says is gonna happen next.” Eric felt sad and almost disappointed that one of his oldest friends didn’t understand how what was happening was a good thing. As if sensing his thoughts, Aurora called to him,” Eric, come with me, walk with me to the water.” She put her hands on his face, pulling him close, “I do love you, that is not a lie.”
“I know.”
“But I must do this, I hope that you understand.”
Ferdy cried out, and Archie fired the harpoon, but he was too late, and her teeth were already in Eric’s neck. He and Aurora fell into the water, their intermingled blood coloring the ocean pink. Aurora reached behind Eric, pulling the harpoon out of them. She grabbed him by the shoulders and swam off into the water.
Water filled his lungs and began to burn from the salt. He felt more pain from the bite spread down through his veins through the rest of him. When it reached his legs, he felt his bones break and shift. He felt something grow beneath his skin before piercing through it. His muscles snapped and reformed into a different shape. He felt the flesh of his torso fill in, before feeling the things that had pierced through the skin of his legs begin to spread to his lower stomach and back. His teeth ached and his mouth abruptly feet too full, then just right. In fact, despite the excruciating pain, he felt no fear. The same feeling of belonging and purpose was back ten times stronger. He laughed as the last bit of air left his lips. More seawater entered his lungs, and this time it did not burn.
Through all of this, Aurora held him firmly, swimming, bringing them far away from the shore. Once she could no longer see the men or the shore, she stopped. Eric felt the pain subside, and lifted his hands to Aurora’s face. They were tipped with claws, though that did not surprise him. She smiled at him, and her teeth were sharp, and his blood still coated them, washing off into the water and making him hungry. She was more perfect to him than she had been on land. “How do you feel, my love?” She said.
“I feel… whole. It feels as if I have been chasing this feeling my whole life, and only just found it.”
“The emotions that we Deep Ones feel is more intense than that of mortals, our lives and goals are influenced by The Old Ones, it is a purpose much greater than any mortal endeavor.”
“The seal, by now Archie and Ferdy will have put it back, we won’t be able to bring them back.” Eric responded, feeling awash with despair at the prospect, and of never seeing the temple again.
“Do not fret, my love. We live much longer than humans, and there are other temples and other Deep Ones. Remember, we have eternity together, we can wait a few more centuries.” His resolve renewed, he pulled her into a kiss, on instinct intertwining his tail with hers to hold her close. “I can’t wait to spend that time with you.”