You must never go up to the surface, the sage had decided in their last attempt at conciliatory negotiations. You can always follow the current of the ocean to bring you home no matter how far you may wander, but out there on the land under the sky the tides will only sweep you away.
And he was more than okay with that. All the adventures he could ever want to take lay in the promising expanses of the great deep, in every deepsea trench and over every mountain ridge. He just could never stand the feeling of being locked away in the safety of their city, under the impervious walls of the titanic mountain, waking up every day and going through the same old boring routine. That stifling lifestyle would only need to placation, and contentment would lead to decay. He didn't look forward to growing up. The sages had told his parents that they would know him for his youthful spirit; his soul always yearned to see more, to find out what lay behind that coral reef or what treasure that sunken ship might have. Even though he had lived his whole life under the water, it could not extinguish the inner flame of curiosity within him, and the fire continued to serve as the fuel propelling him onwards as he leapt over a jagged rock and deeper into the sunken ruins.
None of his people could keep up with him, and none of them wanted to indulge him on his travels.
He wouldn't have to end up sharing any of the treasure he found, he would laugh to himself, letting his weight drop him through the fallen pillars encrusted with barnacles, a sign of the antiquated nature of the ruins. The structure had fallen on its side, although he couldn't tell whether it had done so before or after the sea claimed it. From the orderly way in which the pillars were spread out he deduced that it had been a temple, and where there were temples they would certainly have treasures. Deeper he plunged, the light fading as he descended further into the temple and farther from the rays of light coming from the surface, now just faint traces of illumination which barely made it to the sand at the bottom.
He was afraid, frightened, even, but he also felt excitement, and the stronger of the two feelings propelled him on to take a few more steps in the dark. The complete blackness wouldn't allow him to find anything of value no matter how many treasures might have laid around him, but he spied a light source at the far end of the passageway, and he made for it. With each step along the sea floor he turned to his sides, left and right showing the same empty oblivion, and dread began to take hold of his chest. It was probably best not to waste too much time here, making for the light as quickly as his webbed feet could carry him.
Because of the temple's sideways orientation, when he had reached the room with the light overhead, he could see that it actually came from the ceiling which lay on his right side. Squeezing through the narrow gap in the roof, he found himself outside the ruins and in the middle of the spires lying sideways along the seabed. The floor of the roof ran vertical on his left side, and he kept towards it as he continued along, figuring he would find something eventually if he tackled the building plan from the roof downwards. The priests would have stuffed the treasures in the back, he figured. He discovered that the part of the roof where it met the back wall had developed some cracks in the structure, whether by manmade force or the gradual weathering over the ages. With a gentle nudge, aided by the high pressure of water at the bottom of the ocean, he created an entrance just large enough for him to slip through. It seemed he had hit the jackpot, as with the faint light shining through the crevice he spotted the glint of golden coins lying in a large heap of treasure. Heading into the back room to get a closer look for himself, he found various gems amidst the sea of gold, rubies and emeralds and jade and all sorts of precious metals. He hardly knew what to do first, trying to figure how much his little hands could carry and if he could bring over some kind of container from the city to help bring the treasure over.
Would they even appreciate the jewels? He didn't think it unlikely for the sages to brush off the prospect of wealth, spouting some stupid mantra that they did not require any more gemstones other than the Sacred Treasures, the teardrop-shaped sapphires kept in their own temple. In truth, he didn't go on his adventures searching for gold or pearls or any of this; the thrill of finding anything gave him enough of a reward, but he wouldn't turn down a bonus if it stumbled upon him like this. He wondered if another intrepid explorer like him, a long way in the future, would eventually find his people's treasures just like he had stumbled upon this forgotten civilization's.
His hands made it halfway towards a particularly appealing star-shaped crystal when the movement of bubbles behind him indicated the presence of another, much larger being. Spinning around to put a face to the new arrival, he found a lot more staring at him than a face.
The eyeball itself dwarfed him in size, and he didn't even want to think about how far down those tentacles extended, but he began to make as much distance as he could between himself and the giant squid, all thoughts of bringing home a couple of souvenirs from the temple wreckage abandoned and replaced by his survival instincts. Fortunately for him the deep-sea gigantism affecting its body didn't appear to extend to its brain and it took several seconds for the squid to realize that it had found something which it could eat, giving him time to escape the tentacles which sluggishly lashed out to attack him, curling onto themselves in hopes of reeling him in. What he lacked in size and strength he made up for in quick thinking and quicker movements, easily dodging each appendage and weaving through the squid's tentacles. When it came to the dangerous creatures of the deep, aspiring adventurers made split-second choices which decided if they literally would sink or swim. The waters had quite a steep learning curve with no tolerance for sloppiness, but that was alright with him. He learned quickly. He'd faced many monsters of the deep before in his adventures, although he hadn't seen a squid as large as this one. Hoping that the general concept of squid-wrangling applied to the giant ones as well, he swam upwards, making sure not to move too close to the tentacles near its inside, as they moved a lot faster, and aimed for its head.
The disadvantage of having such a large head meant a small fry like him could easily hide in its blind spots, and he safely made his way to the back of its head after dodging some of its tentacles and tricking the others. With his position on its back safely secured, he considered his options. With regular-sized squid, he usually just gave them a slap on the lower back before they would rocket off with him in the saddle, but he wondered whether the same gesture would elicit any sort of response from the giant kind. His hand came down on its slimy skin, but it didn't seem to have any impact on its behavior, continuing to whirl around in the futile hopes of figuring out where he went. Maybe it gave up on hunting for him, for without warning the squid contracted its tentacles before pushing out, flinging itself into a random direction at a high speed he could only describe as exhilarating. The sea floor below him passed by in a blur of blue and green, and if he could open his mouth to shout in delight he would. He never expected a squid to move so quickly, but onwards it rocketed past schools of fish which parted in it wake, and drew the wary stares of a few sharks as its titanic form moved through the water.
As much as he was having on his newfound joyride, the responsible side of him came through and he realized he would have to dismount, which proved a challenge in of itself. He would have to find an area where he could let go without the inertia of his previous velocity sending him into a compromising position, so he scanned the depths for any upcoming signs of kelp forests, where he could hide easily and not risk the chance of crashing into a rock face at high speeds. A patch of green towering above the seabed caught his eye, and as it neared closer he prepared to let go, taking into account their trajectory and the angle at which the squid approached the forest.
He kicked off the squid's back, propelling himself towards the foliage, and he found it difficult to assume control having just dismounted from a high-speed projectile, but the plants served to cushion his landing, and after about half a minute spent tumbling through the kelp he returned to normal swimming velocity, bursting out of the kelp forest and trying to decide which way was home. His mount had long left his sight, the simple-minded brute probably seeking out some unsuspecting oarfish for its next meal. Tilting his head upwards, he found the familiar ocean currents pointing back home swinging from his left to right, and he grinned.
As long as the current could bring him home, he'd never get lost.
His travels usually took him away from the city for extended periods of time, but he never worried because he would always come back to the same old place. The same old streets, the same old walls, the same old people. He loved them dearly, but he couldn't help but feel they would find themselves end up as the next batch of seaweed washed ashore by the tide, left in their decadence if they never even tried to break out of their familiar home waters.
He cursed the thought for how accurate it proved to be.
For all his qualms about his people's passive lifestyle, the streets would always be filled to the brim with people, from the temple in the middle of the city to the outskirts near the caves and tunnels which went outside the mountain into the frontiers of the deep. The sole advantage they held about their static life was that he knew they would remain there, the expected sounds and sights of normal life going by to provide a stable background to return to after the extravagance of his adventures. Instead he returned to a ghost town, every building and every road deserted. He had come to his own house to find the door eerily left open, and although none of their possessions seemed missing and all the property left untouched, he found no signs of his parents, missing like everyone else.
Invaders seemed unlikely, because they could only get to the city through the mountain passageways, and the guards along the city walls would've surely notified the sages if any armies or monsters made their way towards them. And he didn't come to the site of a battlefield, not the ruins of a city left to the cruel vagaries of war, because everything would have been the same if he had just found people, anyone, there. Or had the sages sanctioned a city-wide exodus in preparation for said invaders? He dismissed the thought from his mind with equal improbability; he'd called them lazy many times, but never would he label them as cowards. They would stand and fight, hardly strangers to the art of combat, and he knew of several armories stocked with weapons to arm them if any such occasion would arise.
He didn't know what compelled him to head for the temple, but his feet eventually brought him there, wondering if the Sacred Treasures remained there. If they had all left the area, the elders would surely have taken the sapphires, the centerpiece of their civilization, with them. He didn't know what kind of circumstances would warrant a migration outside the walls, but he persuaded himself that the elders had a good reason for it. He would probably have felt more concerned if they remained there, because it would imply that they hadn't left on their own volition. Making his way up the steps to the altar at the back of the structure, he looked to the raised pillar, which held a magically enchanted bubble in which the sages stored the Sacred Treasures.
Or would have, if the bare column held anything atop it. No bubble, no protection, and definitely no sapphires.
He tried to convince himself that he had seen the better of two alternatives, and surely the sages had the situation under control. Perhaps he should have felt more concerned for his own situation, as he didn't know where they had gone, but for some reason, the trepidation he held only reached out for the very capable population of four thousand, under the protection of the sages and the imperial knights, rather than himself, alone in the abandoned remnants of their city. Setting his next goal on trying to find their hiding place, he headed for the nearest armory, making sure he armed himself so he could fight if push came to shove. Finding the doors open but no one at the forge, as he had expected, he came across the first peculiarity in the building apart from housing no one inside. The racks usually held the weapons, spears and lances and even hand axes, but he found them empty instead. So the sages had told their people to head out of the city with weapons in tow? They couldn't have gone on an invasion; they would be the last kind of people to show any sort of unprovoked aggression. Chalking it up to a gesture of self-defense, he continued scouring the armory, hoping they had left at least one thing behind.
Lying on the ground in one of the storerooms at the back, a glowing light caught his eye, the white brightness pulsating like a heartbeat. Upon getting closer to the light source he discovered a beautiful three-pronged weapon, a large rod longer than himself, its handle designed like the tail fins of a fish and geometric designs on the outer two prongs. A trident. He picked it up, testing the weight and finding it surprisingly light. Once he held it in his hands the glow had faded from its tip, extending down the length and blinking one last time before it lay dormant. Considering it a promising sign of good fortune, he carried his newfound weapon outside of the building and went on his way, down the streets, into the outskirts, through the tunnels, towards the outside world once more. He wondered where he should start his search. He could think of no safer place in the area for miles around than their mountain fortress, and it still puzzled him on why they had left because he felt they would've walked into greater danger no matter what location they decided on, so he crossed out the trenches to the south, the second most defensible point in the vicinity that he could remember. They might have gone to perform some kind of religious ritual - he never paid attention to the practices of the sages, so it wouldn't surprise him. That lead wouldn't benefit him either, because he could think of no place nearby with symbolic significance. He tried to decide on whether to head for the sandbars to the north with the wreckage of a battleship or to the west to the coral reef with a stone circle around it when he heard the noise. A tremulous roar ravaged his ears, the distortion coming through the water only serving to amplify the terror of the sound.
The leviathan passed by overhead, and he felt like he had spent hours standing there in horror as the endless body slinked across his vision, even from a distance of about three hundred feet. Thankful that it didn't appear to have seen him, he didn't dare move a muscle until its shadow had long disappeared into the murky distance, and even then he found it difficult to swim, not really caring where he moved as long as he moved in the opposite direction as that beast. He stayed as close to the seafloor as he could, as if one move into the pelagic zone would summon forth a horde of leviathans to mercilessly devour him, and he didn't feel like becoming lunch today. The fear had already began to consume him to the point that he almost missed the blue shards at his feet.
Despite only having laid eyes on them a handful of times, he recognized the sapphires when he saw them. One of the Sacred Treasures lay shattered upon the sand, separated into a thousand fragments. He knelt down, carefully picking up one of the duller pieces so he would not cut himself, and couldn't believe his eyes. What were the sapphires doing out here on the open sea? The sages had to have possession of them, so did that mean something had happened to them? He looked behind him, remembering the terrifying size of the leviathan from a few minutes ago. The thoughts began linking in his mind, piecing together a horrifying reality no matter how many times he tried to destroy the chain in his mind.
No.
They weren't gone. He refused to believe it. And he knew the denial didn't solely come from his shock and belief at the spur of the moment, because the sages had placed such a premium on the safety of their Sacred Treasures that they ultimately entrusted their fate to a special kind of guardian, appointed to the post for the sole purpose of ensuring the safety of at least one of them. Mikko would have never succumbed to the leviathan, he told himself, and he would've hidden the rest of the Sacred Treasures somewhere safe. The sapphires would never leave their people's grasp, but apart from their one guardian, the people had left the Treasures. Was this the threat from which the sages tried to deliver the people? The picture intruded into his mind, a nightmarish painting of the leviathans intercepting his people on their way out and slaughtering them all, men, women, and children. But they would never take Mikko, the fastest of them all, a renowned explorer himself in his younger days, and he pictured the guardian scooping up the sapphires and swimming away, forcing himself to abandon all the people he loved, to turn tail and run as the leviathan crushed his family and friends underfoot, and to stick with his duty.
He had wanted to become the guardian one day. He told himself he'd have the indomitable will to make such difficult decisions like that.
But just like the azure gemstone in pieces at his feet, he felt his strength fracture. The world felt much too large for him, and for the first time in his life he wished he could go back home.
The sages had scoffed at him, saying the open sea had become his true home because he spent more time outside the city walls than in them. He never thought reality would make their meaning so literal, but for years he had wandered in vain, searching for any clue of where his people had gone, if any of them had survived. They had left an entire city's worth of possessions at his disposal, but he refused to come near the mountain again despite its protection. If they had any reason to leave it, then he would have even less motivation to return.
His permanent wanderings made him realize how little of the world he actually knew, and the one good thing he took from his self-imposed exile was that it had actually opened his eyes. The sea housed several other sentient races, the most striking being a race of fish with humanoid features making up their upper half called the Marai. Well, he had only run into one of them, who he took for a wanderer like himself, but she had shook her head and told him she had a mission of her own, to look for some stone which she said would serve as the key to eventually save her people from the creatures of the abyss.
He told her he also looked for a stone, but his people's salvation had long since passed.
They had parted ways not long after their short conversation; she had gone back to her people to prepare herself one last time before heading to the surface and seeking out her destiny. Unbeknownst to the Marai she had given him an idea, something which he had never considered since the sages had forbidden it. He might try his hand at finding out what lay above the water, to the surface, the land under the open sky. After all, they, along with their silly rules and restrictions, had left his life, and he didn't have much to lose now, did he?
When he burst from underwater and stuck his head out in open air for the first time, the exposure immediately wrinkled his skin, and he fought the temptation to dive back under. He would have to get used to the new atmosphere, the uncomfortable feeling of literally being a fish out of water. The sound of horns caught his attention, and he turned around to see a harbor filled with actual boats, real life ships. Ships attended with genuine crewmen, unlike the sunken wrecks he had encountered while exploring. The people babbled on in their human language, a mess of words and sounds unintelligible to him, but he found the new world intoxicating. He had found actual living beings with which he could interact instead of simply looking at the ancient ruins underwater, imagining a life which had been. Maybe he could use some of the surface world's knowledge to find out more about the ocean, about the mysterious leviathan which had caused his people to disappear and scattered their Sacred Treasures. It would take him a while to first learn the language of the landwalkers, but he kept his mind open, ready to absorb any and all of the characteristics of the humans. He would absorb all he could, taking in their mannerisms, their habits, the way they spoke.
He swam around a couple of dinghies and headed for the sandbar, his alien presence largely ignored by the natives. If they felt any surprise at his appearance, they didn't show it, and he surmised that the surface folk might have encountered all kinds of strange and unique beings. He certainly found them fascinating, and he pulled himself onto land to find out more. The feel of sand not drenched in water scorched his delicate feet, however, and he had to wait a while to get used to the feel of the white sand and its heat. Taking stock of his surroundings once more, he took a large whiff of the air - thick, crisp, salty. The scent of the sea. Clutching the trident in his hand and using it as a crutch while he got accustomed to his sea legs, he couldn't restrain the grin forming on his mouth.
The tides had brought him here, and he welcomed his new home.
A/N: Here's the new project I've decided to work on, a Bilgewater-centric universe. The actual story will bring about perspectives from a lot more champions, I just chose to use Fizz for the beginning. Writing this almost made me feel good thinking of this champion. It's scary what a serious mood can do to you. Screw Fizz, both mine and the enemy's.