I hit 100 followers on Tumblr a while bac, not much to brag about, but it's there. I wanted to do a video for you guys, but I couldn't figure out how and I'm lazy so you guys get a fic that started as an idea a while ago and grew into this thing. So yeah, this is my way of saying thanks to all of you for being awesome followers!
Omi, Atlantis
The first thing he did once he learned that he was the Dragon of Water was to learn everything he could about it. He'd read every scroll and book he could get his hands on about rivers, lakes, the water cycle, the ocean, everything. He knew all the names of the different sorts of clouds, because what were they but collections of water particles, he knew the path of every current in the sea, he knew that if you dropped pure sodium into water, it made a big sparky explosion.
He knew the depth of the Marianas Trench by heart, ten thousand, nine hundred and eleven meter, give or take forty. He knew that water weighted three and seventy eight hundredths kilograms at room temperature. He knew that the average human being was fifty seven to sixty percent water. He knew that its density was one gram per centimeter cubed. He knew that it covered seventy one percent of the earth, and that almost ninety seven percent of that was in the seas. Only two and half percent of all water was fresh water, and almost ninety-nine percent of that was in groundwater and ice.
He knew also that only five percent of the sea floor had been explored. He had never fully understood why until he found himself staring at the sunken city before him. Even then, he didn't really understand, he just had a feeling that he was not welcome here.
Old Atlantis, Dojo had called it, the part that was taken beneath the waves long before his rampage. This Atlantis as nothing like the parts he'd seen interred in the earth. Those ruins felt, well, they felt like ruins. Nothing there but dust and spiders. It was empty, but it was a good, final sort of empty. Those ruins felt dead, the bleached white bones of a once great city. This Atlantis was nothing like that.
It looked empty, nothing there but seaweed and barnacles and an occasional fish, but it felt like there was something there. No, his Tiger Instincts were telling him, it didn't just feel like there was something there. There was something there. Something old.
As he swam closer, it was all he could do not to turn back. Hannibal wanted the artifact though, and that was enough to make him press on. The Sphere of the Archon wasn't even a Shen Gong Wu, just a thing that even Grand Master Dashi thought was too dangerous to mess around with. Nobody even knew what it did, as far as records went, it was barely more than a hastily scribbled side note in a scroll.
Dojo said that when Dashi found out about the Sphere, his first instinct had been to retrieve it and see what it did, but when he resurfaced after his dive, he was empty handed and said that they needed to leave. If even the greatest Xiaolin Warrior of all time could not, or would not, retrieve the Sphere, he didn't know what chance he had.
He swam through crumbling gates, the city could not have felt more alive. Or more dead. It was the uncertain, not really one or the other nature of the place that made him so uneasy. Like it had been removed from the real world and taken into an alien place. The city did not belong in this world. Or, and he felt this was more accurate, this world did not belong around the city.
He swam through the empty, but not truly empty, streets, unable to remember a time when water felt so foreign to him. He'd always felt safe in its soft embrace before. Even when he was young and fell in the temple pond, giving Master Fung the fright of his life, he hadn't felt afraid. Even before he knew how to swim, he somehow knew that the water would keep him safe. Now he wasn't sure. No, it wasn't that he wasn't sure, it was that he knew that here, the water listened to something far more powerful. If he needed its guidance or help here, it would do nothing to save him.
The further he went, the more he wanted his friends there. He knew they would not share his unease, with either the water or the things that he knew lurked just outside of normal senses. But even with the Gills of Hamachi, they could not manage dives of more than a few meters before the water pressure (another atmosphere for every 10.05 meters) would get to them. The deep water was his domain, his responsibility, and his alone.
The statues and buildings, though covered in sea life, appeared otherwise untouched by time. They weren't worn down by the currents, they weren't discolored, and other than the algae and barnacles and coral, looked every bit as new as when they sunk beneath the waves. This bothered him almost more than anything else. The faces of the statues should have been unrecognizable after thousands of years.
Dojo said it sunk before even his time, there should have been nothing left. Instead, he could still see, in perfect detail, the stern, but wise face of a bearded king and the almost soft looking stone folds of fabric around him. Time should have ravaged him to the point where he was forgotten, even by the city he once ruled, but still he was as detailed as the day he was sculpted. It was as if the water had taken the city not just from the earth, but from time itself. He knew time better than any of the Xiaolin Dragons. Time did not simply give things up, but it appeared that here, it did.
He hoped to find the well soon, find it and leave this unnatural place as quickly as he could. Dojo told him that Dashi hadn't said anything else about the city, just that the sphere was at the bottom of a well and he left it there.
As he went further, he could have sworn he heard voices, but they were too deep and too soft for him to know what they were saying, if they were even there in the first place. He thought he saw movement, shapes in the shadows of buildings and in the currents, but whenever he turned to look, they were gone.
Something brushed up against his leg as he swam into what looked like it had once been the town square. Bubbles escaped his mouth in a wordless scream and he kicked out at whatever it was, but there was nothing there. Not even seaweed.
The well was at the center of the square. He told himself he would ignore its immense age and perfect condition. He didn't need to think about that. He just needed the Sphere of Archons. He put his hand on the rim of the well and stared down for a moment before he began his descent. It was dark, but not unusually so. He'd expected some sort of otherworldly void, but it looked no darker than the well at the temple.
The supposed voices stopped when he started to swim down. Now he was sure he heard them earlier. Their absence proved their existence. Above, their murmur blended into the currents and became phantom whispers. Here, it was silent.
Not the quiet of the temple at night, but an all-encompassing emptiness. He could hear the currents as they swirled around him, but it was an empty, hollow, cold sound. The sort of sound where you were aware of your own slow breathing, the fact that you were breathing in water as though it were air, and the cold of the ocean floor around you.
Still, he swam down to the bottom. It wasn't far, maybe only thirty or forty feet at the deepest. He was surprised to find that he could still into the gloom. At the bottom, there was a crack in one of the stones and somehow, he knew that it was there. He couldn't see his hands as he reached into the crack and felt something smooth and cold. His eyes were bound to the Sphere as he drew it into the meager light.
The Sphere of Archons was dark, like the space between stars. It seemed to radiate the dark, not in a malevolent way, like Chase's citadel or Hannibal's armor, but in a way that indicated that it was a thing that belonged in shadows. Now all that remained was to bring it back to Dojo and put it somewhere where it would be safe.
He was about to start his ascent, but found that his limbs would no longer respond, and he didn't want them to. He was tired, so tired he barely noticed himself falling back and onto the sandy floor of the well. He could feel the water drifting over him, the same back and forth push and pull it had maintained since the dawn of time. It was soft, like a blanket. He stared at the circle of light above him as his eyes drifted slowly shut.
Eldritch voices whispered to him, more clearly than before. They were deep and soft, almost like a lullaby and he didn't really hear them so much as he felt them. The voices resonated within him, telling him things he didn't understand and couldn't remember once they were gone. He knew that between those things, they were telling him to sleep, and he was too tired to refuse. It was soft here, warm and peaceful, safe enough to sleep. Particles of sand drifted against his body as he drifted off.
It was almost like being back in the ice. He wasn't worried about anything; he didn't have to think about the fate of the world, the world would be safe while he took a little nap. It was peaceful here, everything just where it should be and just as it should be. He was removed from the cares of the world and all he had to do was fall asleep. Voices like whale song carried him off and he dreamt.
He dreamt he was floating, an incorporeal form above his body. He swam up and out of the well to see the city around him, its submerged streets bustling with people. But they weren't people. They were extensions of the current, shapes of spirits formed by swirling waters drifting through their lives, just as they had when they sunk beneath the waves.
He found he could blend in with them with the utmost ease. He knew that if he chose, he could join their world. It would be so easy to leave the realm of time and space, all he would have to do would be to merge with the crowd and he would become one with the water. Funny how he'd trained his whole life to do just that and no the chance to do so was right there before him.
The voices, or was it a single voice, called to him as he started towards the people, making him turn away just as he was about to join a priestess in her journey to the temple, just as she'd done every day. "Omi," they, or maybe it, said. The voice was deep and smooth, but had hints of danger and indifference. He turned away and started swimming towards the palace.
It had once been grand, white marble columns and statues of gods so old even Dojo would not know them littered the wide entry hall, but it was faded and seemed even less real than the rest of the city. At the end of the hall, there was some sort of figure, but at the same time there wasn't. If he looked carefully, he could see something, at times it looked like a great squid, at times a seal, at times a great sea dragon, sometimes a humpback whale, but it would vanish, leaving nothing but clear water in its place, before he could really see it.
"Omi," the voices said. Like before, it didn't speak to him, its words resonated within him. "Do you understand?" The voice was a glass sea hiding a riptide, to be answered carefully or risk being pulled under. Maybe he would be pulled under anyway. He did not fear for his life, but not out of any notion that the being would let him live.
"I do not know what I am to understand," he replied. They weren't words though, only thoughts.
"Child, you see before you a city where gods once walked as men." The voices were icebergs crashing together, the gentle lap of waves on the shore. "And they sought to know more than the mortal realms. Do you understand?"
Still, he did not know what to say. He shook his head and a great tremor went through the hall. For a moment, he thought he could make out the form. It had a long neck and flippers and a body like a turtle, something prehistoric or out of a fairytale. Then it stopped and the hall was empty again
"The floods that brought Atlantis to us still rage. Do you understand?"
He shook his head again and he heard a great roar, not like anything he'd ever heard before and a crumbling column fell as the city shook. For a moment, the whole hall was filled with dozens of creatures, each with hundreds of forms all at once. The new monarchs of Atlantis.
"Do you understand?" The voice was rage, daring him to once more be a stupid, simple human.
"I understand," he said. Whatever that sphere had welcomed into the world, the sea had taken as its own. It had taken Atlantis from time and space, set above it an eldritch ruler, and kept it from the rest of the world. The sea was drowning it and its inhabitants to this day.
"The water keeps its secrets."
He was back at the bottom of the well, gasping for air, but only found water, water and sand. He calmed himself by reminding himself that he was the Dragon of Water. He could breath as easily here as above the surface. It did him little good though. Slowly, he swam to the surface, letting the orb slip through his fingers as he did so, back to the bottom of the well. He left the city through empty, silent streets. Not until he reached Dojo did he feel like he could truly breathe.
"Kiddo, did you forget something?" the dragon asked as he crawled onto his back.
"It was at the bottom of a well," he said. The dragon gave a start, he had heard those words before. "It is safe there."
The water keeps its secrets.