Mark of the Mermaid

a Mermaid Trilogy fanfiction by Carola "Ryƻchan" Eriksson

Warning: This is a dark story, with a good part of violence, gore, 
bloodshed and perhaps even morbid ideas. Anyone familiar with the 
Mermaid Trilogy will know why this is so, and not be surprised by it, 
but as far as anyone else is concerned... if you're sensitive, don't read 
this. I don't want anyone to get upset by it.

I would also like to recommend to anyone who might read this to check 
out Takahashi Rumiko's fabulous manga trilogy about the Mermaids. If 
only both the main characters were female (and lesbian, of course ;), 
it'd be absolutely perfect. *grins*

Feedback would of course be very, very welcome.

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What do you know about mermaids?

Do you think of them as cute little redheaded princesses that are 
willing to give up their voices for true love, perhaps? Or even the more 
sad original fairytale about the little mermaid who gave her life in a 
vain search for love?

Or are you one of the few that might have heard the dark legends of old... 
that knows that eating the flesh of a mermaid grants a human eternal 
life and youth?

The romantic tales are harmless, if cloying to one that knows the truth. 
The other... is a damnation for the greedy hearts of men.

I heard those tales myself, in my far distant youth. The flesh of the 
mermaid was longevity and happiness, and most of all it was salvation 
from famine and disease that plagued us all. I was a fisher and a 
hunter, when there was any game to find, in a small village that is long 
lost in time by now. My family was ridden with the same misfortunes as 
all others then, and I watched my brothers and my father all fall to 
them. In the end there was but me, my ailing old mother, my brother's 
wife and his small son.

Today people might think it strange if they knew how little it mattered 
to my people that I was a woman when I fought alongside them to keep 
what remained of my family alive. It was, after all, so very long ago. 
It certainly didn't matter when finally, in desperation, I agreed to 
join a few of the last moderately able-bodied men from the village in 
what I assumed was a wild goose chase.

We were going to catch a mermaid.

I never did find out how the knowledge of her presence came in our 
possession, or why she was suddenly just... there. I never bothered to 
ask, then, I just picked up my spear and rowed along with the other four 
into the dying night. It took us five days to find her. Five days that 
might each have cost us all that we were fighting for, but we knew this 
was our last desperate effort to keep at least some of our loved ones 
alive.

When she broke the water on the fifth night, scales glimmering like 
silver in the pale moonlight and her comely face too ethereal for an 
earthly creature, I was certain I was dreaming. It seemed like a dream, 
how the others threw their spears to harpoon her, and how I raised mine 
and let it fly alongside them.

They all hit home, and we had her body pulled from the sea in no time.

Someone else cut up the meat and divided it between us, ending me up 
with a smaller piece of the tail than perhaps had entirely been the 
agreement. I did not argue as I was grateful I would not have to cut up 
what to my eyes was still a woman's body myself, but took my smaller 
share in silence as we travelled back to the village.

It took us another two days before we reached our home, and it was a 
sombre homecoming. I do not recall it rightly, but I believe that we had 
all lost someone during our absence. As for me, I had lost my little 
nephew.

The irony of it all is that it was mostly for him that I had gone. We 
all knew he had not long to live, just like my mother, and it was all 
that I could hope to do for him. I never wanted eternal life, or any of 
the things the myths spoke of, I was trying to save the last of my kin.

My sister-in-law blamed me for being away when her son had died, I who 
had been forced to take the place of the man of the family. We ate our 
last meal together that evening in silence, each of us lacking the 
desire to live anymore, but damned to eat regardless because not doing 
so would have been to diminish all those lost before us.

It began immediately.

My mother began coughing up blood almost as soon as we had all swallowed 
our small fare, and we rushed to her side in horror. With a mighty heave 
of her small and emaciated frame, life left her body and she went still, 
staring blindly into the distance. My sister-in-law began to keen, a 
ghastly, grating noise that would never fade in my memory afterwards, 
and doubled over in pain. Before my horrified eyes her body twisted and 
turned, buckled and bended, limbs elongating and growing, until what 
remained was not the small, skinny woman of mere moments before. She was 
now a hideous monstrosity, huge with scales, fangs and claws, twisted 
into a nightmare that should never have been allowed to step out of the 
night.

The monster then attacked me, cutting me to the bone and tearing me into 
a bloodied mass before I had reacted. I can recall the pain of that 
first death, but to this day I do not know why I was not eaten by the 
beast. Regardless, I woke the next day, my body hale and sound though 
filthy with blood, and my clothes mere rags.

I stepped out from our ramshackle hut into hell on earth. Mere words 
cannot describe the sight that met me on that trodden piece of mud that 
had been my home for all the twenty-six summers I had been under the 
sun, so I shall not attempt it. Let it be enough to say that of the 
roughly two score people that had been alive at nightfall, only a 
handful remained. And they were all beasts like my sister-in-law, indeed 
I could tell no difference between their twisted forms as they fed on 
the corpses of what could have been their own family members, or fought 
viciously with one another.

In time I would come to learn that beasts like these are called 'lost 
souls', and that they are created when an unfortunate soul tries to feed 
upon the flesh or blood of a mermaid but does not die from it. Only a 
rare few, perhaps no more than one or two in a century, are like me and 
can survive the dreadful poison of the mermaid flesh.

I discovered many things that day. I discovered that a lost soul is very 
difficult to kill, the only sure way would be to behead it, although 
fire can work too, and I would much later learn of a poison created by 
the rotting form of a mermaid that is most lethal to lost souls as well. 
I also learned that not only do I not die, or at least I do not stay 
dead for long, but all manner of wounds heal all but instantly, and I 
was stronger and faster than before. In fact, my senses seemed sharper 
as well, though I have never been able to tell if it was one of the many 
effects that comes with the change mermaid flesh brings.

When I left the village I had called home, I left it burning. I am the 
sole survivor of that tiny and long forgotten place, and not a mark on 
the soil remains to tell people it once existed there, indeed I nearly 
missed it when I came back that way a long, long time later. With me I 
took my spear, my dagger, a few small tools in a pouch on the rope that 
served as my belt, and a set of rags that while worn and tattered at 
least did not reek with blood.

At first I travelled aimlessly, not staying long in any place, just 
passing through life as a ghost. A hundred years passed unnoticed this 
way before I settled down in a village. When I settled down with 
someone.

She was a young widow that was well to do and needed not marry again to 
ensure her future. It was not a passionate love between us, but rather a 
friendship and understanding that kept us together, a need for a 
companion. I worked for her to the best of my abilities, and had she 
nothing to her name she would still have lived well, I made sure of 
that. I also provided her with a kind of protection against unwanted 
suitors, as surely no-one could say to her that she needed a man in her 
life when I so obviously filled that role to the fullest.

At first the people in the village held their tongues regarding our 
relationship out of fear and respect for me as I have always been a 
woman standing head-to-toe with any man, stronger than reason, and more 
capable at the things they did than they could claim to be. In time it 
was out of fear of me, period.

I didn't realize it until my... for all of our supposed arrangements, I 
thought of her as my wife. And my wife looked upon me one evening with 
an expression in her eyes that cut me far more deeply than any weapon or 
claw ever had; she was afraid of me. She was growing old, and I remained 
as ever I had been, appearing as though I was still merely twenty-six 
summers old. Even though I remained with her until the night she died, I 
was from that moment on just a stranger, a hired help that wasn't really 
trusted, in her home.

I had told her my secret, and she loathed me for it. But before she died 
she did look at me once with something akin to pity in her eyes, and 
told me that I needed to find a mermaid if ever I was to find peace. 
Nothing else would answer my questions, she said, and until then I would 
only be drifting through life as a spectator.

She spoke truer than either of us knew.


I am now roughly five hundred years old, give or take a few as 
individual years means so very little to me, and in this time I have 
seen so many things. I have seen the history of man stagger onwards 
before my eyes, and I have seen untold horrors that would leave people 
huddling together in fear of the night. I have had my heart broken so 
many times in so many ways... a young woman that touched my heart but that 
I had to leave behind, girls that laid their own hearts before my feet 
despite my attempts at keeping them at arms length, friends, children, 
places I would have loved to call my home; all gone.

Upon occasion my search for mermaids has led me to others such as 
myself, and those occasions have given me my greatest heartbreaks.

Like little Natsume.

She was a small girl travelling with her elderly father as he peddled 
his fake mermaid medicine in village after village, and I thought I had 
met someone like myself. She was impervious to harm, like myself, and 
seemed unable to age, and still naïve in regards to the nature of man, I 
thought she had been fed mermaid's flesh. A crazy monk told me the 
truth.

Natsume had died long ago, and the monk had aided her grief-stricken 
father in reviving her corpse with sacred chants and the liver of a 
mermaid. The child rose again, but without memory or, it seemed, 
humanity - she preyed upon any creature she could to tear out their 
livers and eat them; indeed she tried to eat mine.

And yet, the small child befriended me. She wanted so desperately to 
understand her own existence, and saw in me a kindred spirit. Also, her 
father was old and ill, and she worried that she would soon be left 
alone in the world to fend for herself. Perhaps I was truly too naïve, 
but I loved that child. I offered her to come with me on my journey, and 
she seemed overjoyed when she accepted.

It was not to be, however. While the old man, driven mad by his fear of 
losing Natsume, tried to kill me, the monk found her and removed the 
mermaid's liver. She ran away from him, and with her last strength, came 
to me.

I held her in my arms as death returned for her, turning back into bones 
and ash this child I had already begun to love as my own. It felt like 
my heart was turning into ash along with her.

Far from all that have achieved eternal life through the means of the 
mermaid's flesh would be as sweet as that poor, tortured child, although 
it would take a long time until I fully realized how dark my world truly 
was.

An encounter with an old oracle once told me that what I was truly 
searching for was the one that had been allotted to me. Over time I 
would come to realize that in a way that woman was right, and I was 
searching for someone to share this unending life with me. But if I were 
to have guessed who and how I were to have found her, I would never have 
come anywhere near the truth.


Going on my five hundred years I was heading up into the wild mountain 
areas that was reputed to be devoid of human population. That served me 
fine, I wanted solitude at the time and had no mermaid trail to follow. 
Or so I thought.

In those mountains I came upon one of the strangest thing I have 
encountered, a village of only women, and not only that, but all the 
women wore the same face separated only by age. They were hostile, so 
hostile in fact that on the first encounter a group of the younger ones 
speared me to death and threw my carcass down into a cavern.

By morning I was revived and quite angry, but before I had the time to 
think of what to do, I saw something there. At the water's edge where 
the ocean entered the cavern, lay a body. It had a woman's torso, but 
the long glittering tail of a fish... at long last I had found a mermaid.

She was beheaded with a piece of her tail missing, and I did not doubt 
for a moment that it had something to do with those overly aggressive 
women, and so I went in search of them.

I found my way to their village in the nick of time, or, seen in another 
way, just slightly too late.

I barged in into the manor house, the largest and finest building there, 
despite the women trying to once again kill me with their spears and 
axes. Inside I stumbled right upon a couple of old hags loading a young 
woman onto a palanquin. I threw the remains of the mermaid at their feet 
and demanded they answer my questions, but I had underestimated their 
willingness to fight.

I ended up grabbing the girl as a hostage to make them answer me, but 
instead the women appeared to be trying to kill her as well. In 
desperation I drew her to her feet, preparing to run off and pull her 
along with me just through the door so I could escape. It was then I 
noticed that her feet were shackled.

The whole event was not one of my finer moments, but in that split 
second when spears where dancing around my head, I did the only thing I 
could have and lived with myself; I hoisted her up on my shoulder and 
ran off into the woods taking her with me.


We ended up in another cave, hiding out while I used a spear I'd filched 
to smash open her wooden shackles. She told me her name was Mana, and 
that she had worn those shackles all her life. Apparently the women in 
the village treated Mana as if though she was a princess, although at 
the same time she was very much their captive.

It wasn't until I wiped the blood away from her wounds to find them 
completely healed that I realized that she had been fed mermaid's flesh.

I tore the edges of her fine robes into rags I used to bandage the awful 
wounds on her legs, and I was shocked to find that even in that 
situation I noticed what a rare beauty she was, this Mana. Small and 
shapely, with full lips and huge spring-green eyes, long red-blonde hair 
and unblemished skin that looked like porcelain; she looked like what I 
might have considered perfection to be had I given it thought. I 
remember I shook my head to clear it, bemused with why my reaction to 
this beauty was so strong. I had after all met many an attractive woman 
in my day, and none of them had pulled me in this quickly or this 
completely.

I asked her about the mermaid, but she knew nothing about it. We figured 
out that the old hags had fed Mana the mermaid flesh the evening before, 
on what was supposed to be Mana's seventeenth birthday, but for what 
purpose we had no idea. As we spoke over the dressing of wounds, I could 
suddenly hear a very familiar moaning coming out of the cave behind us.

The monstrosity that towered up behind us as we turned around could as 
easily have come from my home village all those years ago, for it's 
appearance was almost identical. Mana gasped out the name that I would 
from then on use for these creatures, calling it a lost soul, while I 
charged it with the spear I had taken.

As I charged it, it also charged me, and the spear in my hands embedded 
itself in discoloured, twisted scaly flesh somewhere around the 
shoulder. Another creature would have died, but not a lost soul, and 
instead it impaled me on its large claws and flung me across the cave. 
Instinct would have had me close my eyes at the impact with the 
rockface, but Mana's scream and the roar of the lost soul spurred me 
back on my feet instantly. I no longer had a weapon, but I still charged 
it to keep it away from her.

Mana's scream had alerted one of the village women out searching for us, 
and while I did my best to grapple with the huge beast she jumped down 
into the cavern to us. Armed with spears dipped in poison she lunged at 
the lost soul, scoring a solid hit in it's side, but not one that would 
otherwise have been lethal. It roared and flung me away again, then 
turned and slashed its giant claws over the woman's throat.

Mana screamed the woman's name, and I got my feet back under me to 
charge again, but the wounded village woman called me back. The creature 
shuffled back into the darkness and fled from us, it's pitiful moaning 
echoing in the distance as apparently even the relatively minor wound 
caused by the poisoned spear would be enough to kill it quickly. The 
woman fainted from her severe wounds, and I felt obliged to return the 
favour of rescue even though she had been sent out to kill me. I told 
Mana to stay while I carried the unconscious woman out of the cave, then 
I would come and lift her out as well.

Mana disagreed, stating that she wanted to walk. I was certain she would 
not be able to stand, much less walk, after all she had never been 
allowed to stand in her life, but I had not taken in account the 
strength of Mana's will. I would learn over time that Mana's will is 
quite formidable.

Was it a trick of light that made the air seem to glow around her as she 
stubbornly pulled herself to her feet? Either way she stole my breath 
away with the simple act of standing unsteadily on her own two feet 
while the light seemed to turn her hair ablaze. I stopped and stared 
like a fool.

Then she fell.

For all her formidable will, her legs would not hold her for long, at 
least not at first. It would take time and practice before she learned 
to walk and run, but when she did she was even faster than I. At the 
moment though, I hoisted the unconscious woman over my shoulders and 
lifted Mana into my arms, and carried them both out of the cave. I 
placed Mana in as safe a location as I could find and swore to come back 
for her later, then set off towards the village trying not to smile at 
Mana's cute pout as she stubbornly muttered to herself about not wanting 
to be left behind.


I stopped the villagers from attacking me when I reached the village by 
telling them that if I was killed, they would never find out where their 
precious princess Mana was hidden. A group of women that all wore 
exactly the same face as the bloodied one of my burden came forward and 
took her from my arms. The only face I could see that was not duplicated 
was that of the eldest hag, she who appeared to be their leader. She 
invited me to sit and speak with her, and that was after all what I had 
wanted all along. I wasn't foolish enough to let down my guard though.

We spoke of mermaids, and of mermaids flesh. We spoke of the curse of 
immortality, and eventually I proved that I had eaten it by cutting my 
arm open, then letting her watch as it quickly healed before our very 
eyes. I didn't realize the danger I had just put myself in.

I also did not know that while I had been away, Mana had stubbornly 
continued her attempts to stand. After a few most likely rather 
undignified tumbles she finally managed to stand upright and, with the 
help of trees and rocks along the way, walk towards the village.

The villagers intercepted her.

The old hag and I were interrupted by a ruckus from outside, and when I 
heard Mana's angry voice shouting I rushed to the doors. She was caught 
and bound, and frankly put, spitting mad about it. I shouted as well, 
demanding she be released, and was about to step out to her aid when my 
words turned to blood in my mouth.

One of the old women had crept up behind me while I was distracted, and 
rammed a steel harpoon through my chest.

While I stood there, swaying on my feet and grabbing the part of the 
harpoon that stuck out through my chest as my blood poured out of me, 
the old hag spoke quite calmly to me. Perhaps even slightly regretfully, 
although I really couldn't have cared less.

She told me that I had been mistaken. A mermaid would not be able to 
help me come to terms with my nature, would not give me my mortal life 
back. Indeed the only thing a mermaid had to offer me was death, true 
death to end an immortal life, by way of the mermaid poison that also 
served to kill the lost souls. She also informed me that the weapon 
sticking out of my chest had been dipped in that poison, and that I 
would most likely die soon.

Did she expect me to nod and sit back down like a good little girl? With 
Mana yelling at the top of her lungs? Not hardly. I grabbed the door and 
tore it of it's hinges, roaring furiously as I did so, and slammed it 
into the women holding Mana.

I caught Mana on the door before she fell to the ground - a rather 
nimble feat all things considered - grabbed her, and dashed back into 
the building. I snapped her bonds on the edge of the weapon sticking out 
of my chest, and managed to grab a large container of something that 
smelled oily just as the women clambered to get through the doorway. I 
doused them all and Mana threw the torch on them, and they, as well as 
most of the building, immediately caught on fire.

In the panic and confusion that followed I grabbed Mana and carried her 
under my arm as I made a run for it towards the woods. No-one pursued 
us... they didn't need to.


I made it some distance into the woods before I couldn't carry Mana any 
more, in fact I could barely keep myself conscious. Mana dragged me the 
last bit to a hole in the ground that proved to be yet another of those 
endless caverns that traced through the hills there. We got inside a 
ways before I felt it would be safe enough for me to pull the harpoon 
out.

It was... unpleasant. I placed the back end of the weapon against the rock 
wall, and had to ask Mana to help push me back all along it's length 
until it could be pulled out of me. I bit down on a piece of her robes, 
not that she had much of them left by now, and she looked very 
determined.

Then I asked her to suck the poison out.

I am fortunate that under that surface of refined sweetness she has a 
core of solid steel, because how else could she have bent down to that 
gaping mess of my chest and sucked the poison out. I am sure I would 
have succumbed to it had she not helped me like she did.

I passed out from the pain, but not until I saw her serious face light 
up slightly in a tiny relieved smile when she saw that I was still 
alive. I do not know how long I was out, but Mana has told me that while 
I was unconscious she sat watching over me in the dark of the cave. 
Eventually she heard the moaning of a lost soul heading our way, and as 
the completely fearless being that she is, she picked up the bloody 
harpoon and prepared to protect me.

She cut it deeply over it's belly, and it slashed open her cheek. It 
also threw her right into my arms, which is what woke me up. We both 
heard the rumbling just before the water hit.

The reason the village women had not pursued us into the caves was that 
they had another plan; they were going to flush us out. Apparently the 
caves that riddled those hills were all connected and ended up in the 
sea, which was why the lost souls wandered so freely through them all, 
and the villagers had long ago built a dam to keep the village from 
being flooded. Now they released the dam, sacrificing their village in 
their pursuit of us, and placed themselves at the exits where the water 
would come rushing out.

I clung to Mana, and she to me, and I was certain I was going to drown 
yet again. I had experienced that kind of death once before, and knew it 
was not pleasant. But then again, dying without the benefit of death 
never is.

Mana was no longer conscious when the water carried us out to the 
ocean's edge where the village women awaited us. So she did not share 
the view I had as I suddenly saw them all transformed by the water into 
their true forms... as mermaids.


A mermaid that is not hungry or on the hunt is a beautiful creature, so 
beautiful in fact that it lures it's prey right into it's arms - it's 
prey being humans - before it's true face is revealed. A mermaid on the 
hunt however is hideous, every bit as hideous as a lost soul because the 
beauty that was there mere moments before is instantly elongated and 
twisted into that horrendous fanged creature. It is even more 
frightening because it is only the head that changes, the rest of the 
mermaid remains it's beautiful, graceful self, sending a jarring feeling 
of... wrongness into your soul.

They opened their huge, hungry maws to attack, and swam right up to us. 
One white-haired beast bit deeply into Mana's arm, taking a chunk out 
before I could tear it away. As I fumbled with the harpoon that Mana had 
not lost during our turbulent ride, I saw the creature's face turn into 
a duplicate of Mana's as it swallowed the piece of her, it's hair 
turning black and it's body becoming younger.

The veiled words of the old hag suddenly became all to clear... the 
village women had raised Mana for the purpose of eating her once she was 
old enough, and if she survived eating the mermaid's flesh. Apparently 
it was the reason they had all worn the same face, as they took on the 
appearance of their victim.

I speared the creature wearing Mana's face repeatedly, until I managed 
to tear of it's head. Then I managed to get us both to the surface, my 
lungs burning from lacking air for far too long. I was in luck, and we 
had not come far from the rocky edge of the cliffs, so I pulled us both 
up and prepared for the attack.

And they came.

One by one in an endless row, throwing themselves out of the water at 
me. The harpoon in my hands was used to the outmost of my ability, and 
they were thrown back into the churning water. Until the last one.

I lost the grip on the harpoon, or rather I had to let it go as I needed 
to use both hands and all my strength to keep the mermaid from eating 
me. Thus occupied I didn't see the old hag walking up to Mana were she 
lay, still unconscious. I didn't see her as she lifted Mana and held a 
spear to her chest, intending to run her through. I didn't see Mana wake 
and struggle with her, or hear the old hag tell Mana that she must be 
eaten.

I did, however, see them when the old hag had the spear cutting into 
Mana's throat, and my struggles with the mermaid increased. I'm sure I 
shouted some profanities or threats at the hag as well. I had after all 
just found Mana, and was far from willing to have her taken from me so 
soon.

Just as I chopped the head off the mermaid I was fighting, Mana roared 
angrily at the hag and tossed her nearly all the way to the water's 
edge. She yelled that she wasn't going to let someone kill her, she was 
going to live, damnit!

Did I mention that Mana has a quite a temper sometimes?

I was back on my feet and with the harpoon in my hand, so I stepped in 
front of Mana just in case the old hag decided to try her luck. She 
wouldn't take one step before I had her skewered, and I'm sure she knew 
it. She sat, unmoving and silent for a long while. All that could be 
heard was the splashing and panting moans of the mermaid beasts right 
behind her at the water's edge, driven mad by hunger but unable to come 
to us now that the water was no longer churning so wildly.

The old hag sighed, then told me that it was too late anyway. The 
mermaids had reverted too far, even if they ate us they would no longer 
be able to return to human form. I asked her why she had not tried to 
eat Mana herself when she had the chance, after all, the ones that 
attacked me in the water had tried to get a chunk out of either of us 
any way they could.

To my surprise the old wretch told us that she was not a mermaid, but a 
human turned immortal by eating mermaid's flesh, just like Mana and 
myself.

If it had shocked me, the rest she told us shocked me more; she had 
lived in that village for a very long time, since it was the only place 
she thought someone like her could live. Every once in a while they had 
stolen a female infant from the villages surrounding their wild expanse, 
and raised them until they were old enough to be eaten. Only a rare few 
survived eating the mermaid's flesh, and the ones that turned into lost 
souls were brought to the caves and left there, as a new child was 
taken. Because mermaids need to feed upon the flesh of an immortal human 
to remain able to take human form and retain their youth. She had aided 
in all this horror, even though it had tortured her soul beyond repair.

And now that the mermaids were once again bound to the sea, she would 
remain there, alone, to watch over them. Until the end of time.


I took Mana with me and left that wretched place, indeed I don't know if 
I would have been able to let her go if she had wanted me to. But it 
didn't matter, she would have insisted I take her with me had I decided 
not to. And given her nature and my curious inability to truly tell her 
no, she would have gotten her way.

Through her eyes I am learning to see the world anew. I never noticed 
all the marvel of it before, but when she turns that wide-eyed green 
gaze my way and asks questions in wonder over something, I can't help 
but share it with her. I feel curiously young and hopeful again.

The one allotted to me.

She is young, so very young... I won't pressure her with any of my 
burgeoning feelings towards her, or the longing sprung from an immortal 
life in solitude. I'll just be her guide, her guardian and her protector 
as she discovers herself and the world, and we'll see what happens. 
Perhaps one day, when she is ready...

Suddenly the thought of seeing how long you can live before getting 
completely sick of it doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore.

Not a bad thing at all. 

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