The bells were ringing again in the lighthouse bell tower. Those damnable, beautiful bells. There was a time when they only sang their sweet lies rarely, when one of the Impossibles came to Carakera. We used to hold parades for them and their entourage, sing them songs as we tried in mortal vain to match the rhythm of the venom of the bells. And then we would gather like the congregations of legend, and the Impossibles would give us their wishes, and we would obey. That was always the way it was.

There were those of us, many of us, who spoke against the Impossibles in the times they were away. How often did we talk of them? How often did we say that when they returned, we would raise our voices against them? How often did we assure ourselves that our world, our very minds, we our own? And yet, when the Impossibles arrived, the bells would assault us with their beautiful catastrophe, and we would sing, and we would obey.

But now, things are different. The bells ring almost constantly. Perhaps not every hour, or even every day, but too much for me to count, too much for me to remember. The Impossibles come more often, but in much smaller numbers, often no more than one or two, and there are no more parades. They and their bells call to us, as always, but the voice seems different. More urgent. And there is something in that ringing that was never there before. It is difficult to describe, difficult to understand. If the Impossibles were mortal, I would call it fear. Perhaps it is anyway. All I know is that they no longer call us to celebrate, or to congregate. Now the bells only call us to war.

My name is Jonak. I am a soldier. No, that's not right. Or perhaps it is. That angelic, infernal bell makes it hard to remember. My father was a leatherworker. His father was a leatherworker. I know I followed in their footsteps when I became a...what was it, again? A soldier, I think. That sounds wrong, but what else could I be? Am I not carrying a sword and a shield? Was I not manning the bulwarks on the beach just yesterday? Do I not man the upper walls tonight? Do my knees not tremble with every wave crashing towards us? My name is Jonak, and I am a soldier.

The attacks began last summer. The first one took the town, our town, completely by surprise. I was working in my shop...my father's shop? Or was I manning the walls? I don't remember. Either way, they came from the sea in a living wave, the flickering lights of our torches and twilight glinting off of their cobalt, amphibian scales. I didn't see them when they first surged. The sound of their initial assault was muffled in the shop...on the walls? Those bells make it so blasted hard to remember!

But nothing could make me forget the aftermath. The bodies of the dead littering the beaches, the streets. They were friends, even family! Still, even those who were strangers weighed heavily on me and the rest of the survivors. And the smell! I have never encountered anything so foul in my life as the scent of the dead mingling so fiendishly with the odor of those damnable merfolk! It was a heavy thing, that stink, that seemed to hang low in the air like a morning fog. Never before had I ever been so repulsed. Never before, but sadly not never again.

I cannot pretend to understand the transformation that had occurred within those brine-baked bastards. We had always been allies with their kind before, hadn't we? We had always fished their waters with patience and care, always mindful not to disturb their affairs, and we had always shared in mutual trade. But something had fallen upon them. Some darkness, some ugliness. And that was not merely a metaphor for the state of their souls. Even their faces, which from my youth I remembered being much like ours, only more beautiful, had turned vile and inhuman. Funny, I don't remember noticing that on that first night. But my memory of their visage now is as clear as a bell.

The second attack came three nights later, but we were more prepared. Terrified, but more prepared. The merfolk could walk on land, but not like us. They were slumped, staggered, and seemed to struggle for air at times. That first night, they had surprised us. The second attack did not, and though our militia was hastily thrown together and exhausted from our three-night vigil, we threw them back into the ocean. We retained just enough energy to cheer before most of us collapsed and slept right there on the streets.

The Impossibles returned shortly thereafter, the last time the bells rang for joy. We thought they would deliver us, to reward us for our loyalty to them and our bravery against our sudden enemies. But the parade, the final parade, was dismally short, though the congregation afterward was mind-numbingly long. They say the bells rang for three days and nights, though none of us remember for certain. The bells make it hard to remember. But one of the Impossibles spoke to us, perhaps for the entire time. I do not remember what he said, just that he talked, and I listened. We all listened. We listened to every single word as that lovely, loathful bell just kept ringing.

I will likely never know how much time passed. What I do know is that when it had, the Impossibles left again, and the war began. With weapons we didn't comprehend, on vessels we didn't fully understand, the people of Carakera answered the merfolk blood for blood. We sailed out over their mighty cities and dropped strange objects on them, things that seemed to fall faster through water than through air, and the sounds they made soon after rattled my heart. And we didn't stop. The merfolk were our enemies now, they had started this war unbidden and unprovoked, and now they were beyond the reach of our mercy. I do not know how many of them died. I only know that many more still lived.

And those that did began attacking in force. Our once-beautiful, pristine sandy shore is now nothing more than a testament to atrocity. The brilliant, white sand is stained with the comingled, spilt blood of man and mer. Crude bulwarks of sharpened and pointed logs line the beach, a barbaric defense against our one-time neighbors. The merfolk are intelligent people, and do not foolishly rush into such obvious barricades, but it allows us to direct their motion, and thus, the battle. But, they are also ruthless, strong, and utterly determined. On the land, the advantage is ours, but the merfolk continually test it.

Tonight, though, feels different. Something more than this coastal storm is brewing beyond our shoreline. The War has been going our way. These ships, at least I think they're ships, that the Impossibles have given us have yet to be breached or capsized by our submerged foes, and on land, we are stronger than they. But still, something feels off to me. There is a scent in the air, something I swear I have smelled before. If those beautiful, damnable bells would stop their incessant ringing, maybe I could recall it. But the bells make it so impossibly hard to remember.

Then, suddenly, it was as if the world roared and bared its teeth. The ocean itself lurched forward and upward to meet the clouds, just as the storm released its fury downward toward the sea. As the two unthinkable sheets of deathly water converged, an impossible form thrust itself through them, and directly toward us. Shrouded in the veils of ocean and sky, and obfuscated in the darkness of night, I can think of no description for it besides 'nightmare'. The thing was huge, at least as tall as the lighthouse that rang the incredible, insufferable bells. It was all bulk and darkness, crashing up on the shore and smashing apart the simple bulwarks with its brawn. But the bulwarks mattered little now.

In this monster's wake, the sea itself assailed our beach, and claimed it for the glory of the ocean. In that single moment, the seas rose by at least a dozen feet, and the brave soldiers of Carakera were washed away like flotsam on an angry tide. The ocean burst like an army into our streets as the rain above aided its might. The walls of our homes, our shops, or our fathers' shops, struggled, and failed, to stand against its impossible pressure, but one by one they fell. In a few, cacophonous moments, everything we had spent our lifetimes building was washed away. All except the lighthouse. All except the immaculate, infernal ringing of those bells.

Many of us survived the Deluge itself, nearly all who weren't manning the beach when it struck. But water, in all its ferocity, was not the only thing that surged around that giant terror and into our streets. With the waves swam the merfolk army, cold calculation and brutal vengeance in their eyes. We fought back as best we could, but we were fighting on the sea now, and they had the advantage. But now we fought for our lives, because losing meant annihilation. And as those bells kept ringing above, we knew we had to win, or perish.

But the impossible monstrosity that towered above us had other plans. As the storm and the sea surged around it, the thing pushed itself across the blood-stained sand. All of our defenses crumbled away under its massive bulk, and it swept the battlefield with tentacles larger than our wall as it made its way toward the Lighthouse. That great, stone structure that towered above our town had been built by the Impossibles themselves, and it was they who had hung the hellish, angelic bells above even the light of the tower. And when that nightmarish creature wrapped one long tentacle around the Lighthouse, I felt something deep within me lurch forward.

And my body did, too. I didn't know why...I still don't. But there was something primal within me that felt the undeniable need to protect and defend those devilish, dulcet bells. I must not have been the only one, because we surged forward together, we few remaining defenders of Carakera. We launched a counter assault that would have made the ancient heroes sing our praises and exalt our names. And while we could not hope to push back the tide of the waters swirling around us, we did turn away the tide of those hideous, alien merfolk.

But then, oh, but then! With a crack louder and more frightening than the fiercest clap of thunder, the terrible creature succeeded. The tower cracked, groaned, and finally fell, and in the ceaseless tumult of the battle and the waves, I heard the bells, those magnificent, malignant bells, as they finally cracked. The sound they made was no sound at all. It was a silence that spread across the world like a sudden dawn. Its ripple seemed to push everything away from its center, like a deep ocean whirlpool in reverse, throwing away rather than gathering toward. And deep within that eerie, prevailing silence, there was the merest echo of a whisper of a thought. It spoke not in words, but in understanding, and in that instant I knew those bells would never ring again.

It took me two days to scramble far enough that I was finally beyond the reach of those waters. Carakera was lost, but we lost much more than a town that day. We lost more than houses and walls, lighthouses and bell towers. We lost even more than the lives of those we knew and loved. We lost the lives they had lived, the lives we all thought we had known. Let the merfolk have the ruins of Carakera. Let them have the blood-stained beach and the flotsam of our lives. And let the Sweeper have his ocean, the shallow and the Deep. We will find a new life, away from the Impossibles and their shackles. I will make a new life out of the remnants they left us.

I think this time I will be a leatherworker.