Page 31 of Monster's Melody

That a siren’s voice was effective on land and in the sea was one of its many wonders and I’d been blessed to inherit every bit of a siren’s power from my mother.

The water dragon turned sluggishly to face me and I sang a few more notes, coaxing him to settle back down.

As I scanned the water around us, searching for Vorzak, the dragon slowly sank to the deck of the ship, where his eyes began to droop.A few moments later, he was sleeping once more.

I still didn’t see Vorzak, but he was wearing my shell, so I should be able to follow it.

I manipulated my song into a finders call, and the ocean responded, plankton forming a bioluminescent trail for me to follow.

I swam as fast as I could, but it took entirely too long to reach the end of the trail, which led right up to the entrance to an underwater sea cave.

I hesitated before entering, worried I’d find that Vorzak had been eaten by some huge sea monster.

As it turned out, hehadbeen taken by one—a sea serpent to be exact—who’d dragged him into her lair, but who didn’t appear to have much interest in eating him.

Instead, she appeared quite enamored of both himandhis snakes.

Her body was coiled around Vorzak and her attention was fully focused on his snakes.

They were swimming all around his head, bobbing up and down and looking eerily as if they were communicating with the giant serpent.

I couldn’t be certain, but they seemed to actually like her, leaning toward her as they danced in the water, and she seemed quite charmed by them, weaving her heads this way and that as she reacted to whatever it was they were saying or doing.

I swam closer and the sea serpent’s three heads jerked around to stare at me.

Vorzak’s snakes began bouncing up and down in the water.Then, to my astonishment, they started growing, slithering through the water toward me, faster and faster.

Within seconds, they were winding themselves around me, hugging me tight.

Well, this was just one big snaky situation, wasn’t it?

The sea serpent had Vorzak wrapped up like a burrito and his snakes had now done the same to me.

Vorzak glared at me from where he sat, his arms pinned to his side by the sea serpent’s large body.

I wanted to laugh, maybe even linger for a while, but again, we’d only made it through the first challenge.We hadn’t even found the second one yet.

With no other ideas for how to extract Vorzak, I sang my calming melody again, and it worked as well on the sea serpent as it had on the water dragon.

Her three heads began to droop and then they were down.

Vorzak struggled to get free of the very large, and I imagine very heavy, sleeping serpent’s body, while his snakes entertained themselves by exploring everything.

And by everything, I meanme.

They seemed intrigued by my diving suit, sliding over it, nipping at any exposed flesh they could find, nuzzling me and generally smothering me in affection.

“I know,” I crooned, my voice rippling through the waters around us.“I love you, too, my darlings.”

Vorzak finally managed to extricate himself and swam toward us.

As he got closer, his snakes retreated until they were once more floating around his head, though they were all still very focused on me.

I blew them a kiss, which unfortunately had the same effect as if I’d blown it to Vorzak, who seemed stunned at the gesture.

I rolled my eyes, whirled and swam out of the cave.

The minute we exited, a giant two appeared above us.