Citizen 979 Deidre

Deidre was tired. Mentally, at least. Her mind was clouded with fear, doubt and anxiety, and it sought to be freed from the torment that they inflicted upon it, which was why for the first time in her life, she was heading towards the deepest parts of the Posian Trench.

She was barely an adult, her throat plates while mostly solidified still felt soft and quite bendable in certain areas. The sign of adulthood was a terror that she did not wish to bear, not at least today. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, and the ocean was the only place that she could think of where she could find anything that could resemble peace.

The water's pressure felt horrible at first. Her muscles tensed, her throat was clogged, and she found herself swallowing over and over with her closed mouth as if that action was a remedy of the ancients blessed upon her. But with time, her body relaxed, with the exception of her ears, which listened to the ocean's silent lullaby. It was a song that was bothersome, and she found herself slowing down in her swimming as the darkness enveloped her. A gaping maw it was, threatening to confuse all who would reach this point, and Deidre herself was becoming disoriented at this part of the ocean.

With a little effort, her halo began to emit a soft glow, an effort to give herself more sight within the ink-coloured waves, but it was in vain. The darkness around her did not submit to the magic of the young rexal.

"Where am I?" Deidre wondered as she began to swim again towards the bottom - or at least what she suspected to be the direction to it. And finally, a small peck of light appeared. The only thing that she could see, and like a fish to the bait, she was attracted to it. The sadness and despair that she once felt upon the beginning of her adventure was now replaced with curiosity and hunger for discovering the unknown.

As she paddled, a whole new world slowly unravelled itself around her, as the colours green, purple and pink began to form intricate plants and animals around her. She did not even know where to look; her eyes could not believe the new world that she had stumbled upon. With a little effort, she finally managed to "land" at the bottom of the sea, her feet touching a material that she could not quite describe - a hellish mix of sand and rock, one that, oddly enough, was just as slippery as glass.

An etmopterus lailae took an interest in the rexal, its soft, blue, bioluminescent light making it into a living lantern as it approached. Deidre immediately froze at the sight of the weird creature, her fight or flight reflex immediately kicking in as it swam closer. In the end, she ended up trying to swim away from it. Needless to say, the lailae was not that keen on letting go of its newly found interest. It followed like a wolf on the smell of blood, its beady eyes covered by a thick layer protecting it from the crushing pressure. Certainly not a pleasant sight, Deidre was afraid that an unknown beast of the waters could still deal a devastating blow to her, even despite its size, with something potent, like poison.

Soon enough, Deidre found herself too exhausted to continue "running away". She knew well that she needed to conserve whatever energy she had left, lest the waters be her grave and for her to never be found by her kin ever again.

Her gaze stuck to the lailae as it finally caught up, bumping it's nose into her in several places, before taking a small, but relatively painless nibble on her tail. It did not even break skin - which was a surprise to Deidre. Soon enough, the animal lost interest - finding that the rexal was not edible, it decided to swim away, looking for something else that it can munch on.

"Good riddance", Deidre thought as she twisted her head from left to right, trying to find any sort of waypoint that she could use to anchor herself enough to know where she was - as if it mattered. This was her first time in the Posian Trench; there was no way for her to find anything that would provide substantial guidance. In the end, the only thing she could find was the sight of a distant, sunken ship, or rather, what remained of it. It appeared to be the home of several large schools of fish who circled in and out of it in great numbers. It somehow ended up reminding Deidre of the Posian Island streets during market days and how other rexals would behave like these fishes - walk so close to each other as if they wished to crush each other's bodies.

She found herself exhaling out physically - an act that was equally as dangerous as it was smart. She immediately noticed the direction they were going in - silenced round birds of safety flying towards the surface, which she decided to follow. Feeling her lungs growing tired and her oxygen running thin, her magic was now struggling to keep her alive - and her anxiety returned with the ferocity of beasts as it urged her to return to the surface. and instinct that she followed without an argument. As she began to make her way home with steady paddles, she wondered if she would ever be able to return to this exact place again or if the endless darkness would swallow it all, making sure that she would never find her way back, and the possible hidden mysteries within.

ForgottenCerberus