Vivian showed Ilona around the village after that, or at least what was left of it… Many of the huts were burned or otherwise destroyed, some of them splattered with dried blood. The untouched huts were built high up in the trees, where Ilona and the others now resided. The formori periodically returned, searching for something… perhaps survivors, perhaps simply scouting for food. Either way they never made their way up to the treetop huts, and so the six of them were safe for the couple of weeks that Ilona was laid up. The worse news was that the four humans who had checked up on her while she laid abed that first day were the only humans left on the island it seemed. Over the course of the two weeks she got to know them a bit, learned their language well enough to at least converse on a basic level with them.
The little boy was named Moggle, and he was a depressing lad. Cheerful, energetic, playful… and too young to fully understand the tragedy that had befallen him. It seemed half his family had been eaten alive in front of him, the other half raped and carried off, though he still seemed to believe that things would return to normal at some future point. He was a sweet boy, though, and despite her lack of energy Ilona spent a fair amount of time with him when she was otherwise alone. It helped her practice her conversational skills, and playing with him to the best of her ability helped reinforce what she was learning about moving on two legs, and above all it kept her attitude much more positive than sitting around alone with her thoughts ever could.
The couple were named Nieri and Shinn, and Ilona spent less time with them than with Vivian and Moggle but still a fair bit. Nieri was a very… forceful personality, though unfortunately she was too physically frail to make much use of it. She had a condition that seemed to restrict her breathing if she was too active, one that was very dangerous for her, which was quite a shame. Shinn, on the other hand, was a skilled hunter and probably the reason the others had been able to stay alive after the formori invasion. He had taught Vivian how to move on land, and now he helped to do the same for Ilona, along with teaching her his language. He impressed the mermaid with his skills, and she was very grateful to him even if he did eye her up perhaps a bit more than she would have liked.
The old man was Oglen, and he seemed to have been a religious leader of some sort for the village, though he was lacking in any sort of power. She saw him little and spoke with him even less. He gave her the creeps a little bit, and occasionally she would catch him peering into a window at her when she woke up, as if he’d just been watching her sleep. What little conversation she did have with him indicated that he thought the formori were only the first sign of a bigger problem, a greater evil from the depths of the sea… It wasn’t a thought worth considering, really. After all, if it were true they were all simply doomed. The formori might be enough on their own.
One day Vivian and Shinn brought Ilona a spear from their hunt, a crude formori weapon that amounted to little more than a stick with a sharp shell on the end… Perhaps taken from a formori they had ambushed and killed. It wasn’t much, but it would do for the moment, and it was good to incorporate some spearwork into her movement training. She didn’t have armor and likely wouldn’t for quite a long time… The villagefolk didn’t use it, and anything she would scavenge from the formori would be ill-made and ill-fitted to her. She was poorly prepared for combat now, much worse off than she’d been at the beginning of her journey, but for now this was about as good as it could get.
She knew that her tail wouldn’t heal as quickly if she were always in human form, so when she was in no need of moving around Ilona would revert to her mermaid form to let it air out. The first sight of her once-beautiful tail mangled and shredded caused her to weep bitterly; what little had healed was scarred over badly, and it seemed pretty obvious to her that it would never be what it once had. The formori that had done this to her had gotten off too light… she should have flayed him alive for the suffering he had caused her. And all the while the mermaid’s belly was growing… She was burdened from the moment she had first woken up, but she was absolutely gravid by the end of the second week, barely able to walk at all for the last couple of days. Those were dark times, and she sat propped against the wall of her hut almost the whole day, staring down at her egg-filled gut and shredded tail alone, unless others chose to stay with her.
When it was finally time to lay her eggs Vivian led Ilona to a small, sheltered tide pool that she settled into in mermaid form, glad she would soon finally be rid of this horrid pregnancy but anxious to be sure; she had never given birth, much less to formori, and she had no idea how it would go. Having Vivian there was a great help even if it would have been better to have a magician of some sort present. And so she laid in the pool, holding onto the redhead’s hand tightly as she began to lay the eggs. They were soft, but they were also bigger than she had been expecting… Passing each one was a bit of a struggle, caused her a fair amount of pain as they stretched her poor sex. She tried her best not to cry out so as to avoid giving away their location to any formori that might have been prowling about, but Gods it was hard. It didn’t help that there were so many of them…more than forty eggs filled the tide pool by the time she was done and she was utterly exhausted, her human half drenched in sweat.
The eggs were transparent revealing their vile contents readily… all formori, nothing that looked even remotely like Ilona. The two of them set about destroying the contents of every egg, though Vivian did most of it… They stabbed the little formori, which twitched fitfully as they died before filling their egg with blood. It was a fantastic and satisfying feeling, slaughtering the vile creatures before they could be properly born… and further revenge on the dead creatures who had forced her to lay them. It was difficult transforming back into her human form and walking away; Vivian had to help her significantly, allowing her to lean on her until they got back to the village, where Shinn carried her gently up the ladder to her hut, allowing her to cling to him tightly for a brief while he laid her on her bedding, allowing her to rest up and have an early, long sleep after her ordeal…
She awakened feeling… actually pretty good. She wasn’t pregnant anymore. She had gotten used to walking around on two legs, and now that she didn’t have all that weight hanging off the front of her it was practically easy! She just had to be a little bit more methodical than she would have liked, that was all. Vivian arrived a bit later to eat breakfast with her and asked if she would like to join in the hunting… Part of Ilona didn’t feel qualified just then, but she also felt obligated to help out. "I’m not sure how much help I’ll be if I’m honest, but I’ll join you if you want me to" she replied, her speech more or less perfect by now… though her grasp of the islander language was only serviceable.
