The Dominant Species

I recruited some merpeople I trusted who were powerful and good at magic and asked for their help in saving humans. They also got months of training.

Giselle and Alastair always came whenever we hunted the creatures too. Alastair said he didn’t want me to face this alone. Giselle thought she could kick ass and she wanted to help humans.

The first time I was really nervous. The humans and merpeople left the safe places where they were and we all looked for the creatures. The only place they avoided was the desert. We started by looking close to the beach.

We’d split up into several groups. There were four hundred merpeople and a thousand humans. We’d all gotten together several times to plan this search. Each group had representatives from both species. Our group had twenty humans and twenty merpeople. All of the other groups searched different parts of the jungle.

I was holding Alastair’s hand as our group walked down the beach.

I couldn’t believe we were looking for something that could kill us, but I couldn’t help it. Life had put us in a situation where we were forced to do something that would otherwise have been stupid.

“How long does it usually take before the creatures attack?” Giselle asked. “There’s no fixed time,” Caleb answered.

“But they attack every day because they need to feed every day,” a human woman added.

All of the humans kept looking around, more nervous than the merpeople. They’ve had to deal with the creatures their whole lives. Caleb told me he was always nervous. I felt really bad for humans that they were so scared all the time.

I squeezed Alastair’s hand.

We kept walking down the beach.

Half of me was hoping the creatures would hurry up and attack, so we could get rid of them.

Half of me was hoping we wouldn’t find them.

“If we can’t find them like this, we should go look for them by the volcano,” Caleb informed the rest of us.

“Where do they usually live?” Alastair asked.

“Everywhere but the desert,” a human woman answered.

Suddenly, two creatures attacked!

My heart went cold.

Some of us screamed.

Everyone got out of the way.

One of the creatures bit a woman!

I gasped!

I cast a spell to get it away from her.

It took me a second to see that she would survive, but I couldn’t look longer than that because the creatures were still attacking.

A merman healed the woman.

I was glad healing spells worked on injuries. They didn’t work on diseases, since diseases could strengthen the immune system. Merpeople hospitals were only for diseases.

The other creature went after Caleb.

Giselle cast a spell to make a rock fly in its face.

The creature stopped and screamed in pain.

I was relieved for a second.

The first creature came after me!

My heart stopped!

I froze!

When the creature had taken a few steps I screamed at myself to snap out of it. Alastair and I cast a spell to make the creature fly away.

The creature growled for a few seconds before it hit the ground.

A human woman cast a spell.

I was terrified, but a part of me was still fascinated. I’d only ever witnessed one human spell, the one that turned merpeople into humans. The creature raced at the woman and clawed at her.

She screamed in pain and collapsed.

But it was after she had finished the spell!

The spell made the creature’s teeth fall out.

It screamed.

Everyone, even the other creature, froze.

The scream was so loud and filled with agony.

If it had been any other animal, I would have felt sorry for it.

The woman it had attacked was hurt and bleeding.

A mermaid cast a spell and the creature went flying away from the woman.

A merman knelt on the ground next to the woman and waved his hand over her. The wounds began to heal, but they would take a few seconds. We had to distract the creature from them. It still had claws.

Giselle cast a spell and a tidal wave came from the ocean.

I gasped!

The water flew over our heads without touching us and landed on the creature, sweeping it a few feet away from us.

Slowly, the water flowed back into the ocean.

The creature got up and coughed.

It shook itself and was ready to attack again.

The creature attacked Giselle!

I screamed!

Giselle cast a spell and made the creature fly in the opposite direction. It kept flying until she dropped it over a cliff. The creature screamed.

Some of us screamed too. Giselle ran to see the damage. My heart was pounding.

The other creature lunged at the rest of the group.

They managed to get out of the way.

Alastair cast a spell and the creature flew through the air in the direction of the ocean. It roared as it flew over the water.

Then, Alastair dropped it into the ocean.

Alastair made it fly so far away from the shore that it couldn’t swim back. It tried, but it wasn’t good at swimming.

The rest of us watched as it tried to swim back. It kept sinking into the water and reappearing.

Finally, after a few minutes, it sank and drowned. Giselle came back.

“The other creature is dead,” she announced.

I ran to her and hugged her.

We all took a few minutes to check on each other.

“I think we should all go home,” I suggested, shaking.

I wasn’t the only one who was shaking.

“We could still hunt a few more,” a human man argued.

“Yes, but I think we put our lives in enough danger for one day. I don’t want us to take any more risks.”

Everyone agreed with me. The creatures had terrified them.

We met the other groups and told each other what had happened. Some groups hadn’t been able to find any creatures at all. But most of them had managed to kill at least one creature.

The merpeople waited for the spell Caleb had cast to turn us into humans to wear off. Right before it did, we were standing in the water. Once we were merpeople again, we swam home.

My parents were thrilled to see me.

“Thank God!” Dad said.

Mom swam toward me as quickly as possible and hugged me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Is everyone else?” Dad asked.

“Yes.”

“Thank God,” Mom exclaimed.

Dad hugged me too.

We all sat down and I told them what had happened.

Mom looked terrified when I told her about the attack. My parents tried to convince me not to hunt down the creatures again, but I made the same arguments I had the first time we had talked about this.

Caleb cast the twenty-four hour spell on us many times and we hunted down the creatures over several months. It was easy to know where to look for them, since they only avoided the desert. But it was still hard to find them. Still, they always attacked us first because they always saw many humans walking together and they fed on humans.

With the combined magic of humans and merpeople we managed to find all the creatures and kill them. Merpeople could cast healing spells, so every time someone got hurt we could heal them. It was stressful and obviously very dangerous. Every time I came home my parents hugged me.

Sometimes I held Alastair’s hand to make us both feel better. Sometimes Alastair held my hand to make us both feel better.

It was getting harder to find the creatures after the first three months, since we had killed many of them.