For days, the Sirens wandered into west, trying to avoid the mortals and their beheading blades. But they never got out of days reach ahead of the mortals.
“Where can we go?” the Sirens asked. They had been walking night and day without a break, and now twilight was on the horizon. “We are near the Kildr Ocean by now. Soon we will be at a dead end!”
Alamere knew this, but she didn’t know what to do about it. What would they do, once they reached the shore? None of them had ever seen the ocean before, although it was not out of their knowledge. The Gremlins to the south and the Water Faeries to the north would not hide them, so it seemed to Alamere that the only thing to do was press forward as far as they could go.
But they didn’t see the shore. All they saw was the beach. The beach with its golden brown sand, warm and inviting, like a giant blanket for them to snuggle under. It faded into a thick mist before reaching the water. Steam vents, the ventilation of Nremoril, hid the shore from the sand. And the mist, which sparkled like a thick layer of diamonds, appealed even more to the Sirens.
“Crawl into the mist, girls! It will shield us from our enemies!” Alamere cried joyously. The Sirens entered the clouds, dancing away until they couldn’t be seen- nothing but their silhouettes remained.
~
The mist did shield the Sirens, and it saved them from the slaughter that otherwise would have occurred. But it did not shield Alamere from a life of grief. She had saved her followers, but at the price of her best friend. And for it, the Sirens could not longer turn into white swans. They were all ebony swans, no matter how hard they tried to be white. Alamere, in her despair, took to singing out her woes, just behind the wall of mist. Mortal men who passed by the beach were enchanted by her voice, which did after all possess the Sirenesque powers of music. Those that came too close were killed by Alamere, who was so disgusted by them that she refused to let them see her. She realized that their singing could be used to avenge Leda’s death, and so the Sirens began to sing what became known as the Songs of Summons, and they killed those that came too close.
As the generations passed on, the Sirens turned their singing into more of a game. They would use the mortals as their slaves, sometimes they would even torture them before killing them, allowing them to see the Sirens only just before they were killed. For this, the Sirens were branded with red stars on the foreheads of their swans- for murder and pain. It is also why the Sirens were primarily known as evil throughout Lenderen. The Lenderien forces banished them to Thalniae with the rest of the Rogues, where they were miserable without their familiar beach, and dreamt of returning to Lenderen in power.
