Viren sighed as surveyed the seafloor beneath him. It had only been a few days since his mix of shark and mer escorts had left him at the edge of the Trench; the monster-filled pit between the Mer Kingdoms and Xadia carved out by the sea dragons eons ago.
He winced as the rough patch on his tail throbbed - he wasn't used to swimming for days on end, and the old injury didn't help. The scarred portion broke up his black and golded banded scales, and the half-missing pelvic fin on that side didn't help matters. Being sent into the open ocean was practically its own kind of death sentence - but if it protected Kotalis, it was one Viren was willing to accept.
He was still angry, but it was a resigned anger - besides, anger wouldn't find him shelter.
Viren paused, spying a kelp forest ahead of him. It wasn't ideal, but it at least provided cover. He swam over, intended to at least bed down for a bit to let his body rest from the long swim.
And then he felt it - a minute thrum of magic humming through the water.
One of the terms of his exile was that he was no longer allowed to practice magic himself, and part of him ached knowing he wouldn't be able to study whatever he came across. But he forced such useless sentimentality aside - magic was rarely left unguarded from the elements. While the banished mer sorcerer doubted anyone still lived out here, an artifact could mean a shelter enchanted to keep out lesser predators and the elements.
Still, he approached the source carefully, staying within the kelp as he threaded along. In the center of the forest, he found a cave entrance. He swam closer, noting what must have once been impressive carvings faded to near nothing. Reaching out with a webbed hand, he found a thin membrane of a magical barrier.
He pressed against it, but it did not give. He felt his gills against his neck and torso, and cleared his throat at his nerves.
"I am Viren, and I mean no harm," he said softly - a simple declaration that worked for most barriers such as these. He had studied enough Xadian history to know that much.
He sighed in relief as his hands passed through the barrier, but didn't entirely let down his guard - there was still the possibility someone else was inside.
Viren swam through a modest entranceway, though here the carvings were intact. He studied them briefly - carnivores and mer. Probably the same kind of carvings he'd seen many times before, from back when the mer were servants to the dragons and carnivores - he shook his head, moving into the main part of the grotto.
There seemed to be only one large room - an amphitheater, by the setup. A quick circuit revealed he was, indeed, alone. Letting himself relax a bit, he found a comfortable corner to curl up and sleep.
When he woke, he felt rested for the first time since the shark assassins had appeared in the Kotalis palace.
Which meant it was time to explore what would likely become his new home.
The source of magic he'd sensed was an enormous pearl in the center of the room, cut in half with the surface polished into smoothness. Viren yearned to study it and its properties - but his curiosity wasn't worth putting Kotalis at risk.
Again, a small voice in the back of his head reminded him.
Huffing at his own carelessness, he studied the rest of the room instead. It was clearly an amphitheater, as he'd first surmised. Soft sand covered the terraced benches that radiated around the pearl, and the domed roof was likely spelled to make the space brighter. The walls were lined with crystals - mostly smashed, shards littering the floor. Viren inspected some, and realized they had been memory crystals.
Even mer, without a connection to a primal source, could dedicate memory to crystals. The clearly deliberate destruction of so much magic caused Viren a pang of loss - though realizing how much the knowledge could have kept him company in the coming years of isolation made the loss all the worse.
However, the need for food overruled his desire for entertainment, so he dropped the shards he'd picked up and swam out in search of prey.
It was fortunate that the cave was inside a kelp forest - snails and sea urchins were easy enough to catch, even for someone as old and out of practice as Viren was. His judges had been gracious enough to allow him a few personal items - a small bag containing a food knife, a few of his own memory crystals, and portraits of his children.
That was another ache he set aside - Harrow would take care of Soren and Claudia. The king had promised, and he was a man of his word. Viren still trusted him - even if that no longer went both ways.
Hunger sated, Viren returned to the mysterious amphitheater - and paused at the carvings to the entrance.
Without other pressing concerns, he went to study them. The first thing he noticed was the lack of dragons - every other series of carvings he'd seen always had dragons. Usually at the top, to reinforce their self-proclaimed superiority.
But this mural…
Viren's completely black eyes roved the piece - being unable to produce a glamour, his true, dark magic corrupted form shown through. Ashen gray skin, cracked and plagued by bruise-like patches of purple. It didn't make much difference to him - the glamour only hid the appearance, not the constant dull ache, after all.
The mural showed mostly mer - which was unusual. The only carnivore was a cecaelia, and rather than being depicted above the many mer, they were shown in the middle of them all. All the mer were facing the cecaelia, and it was larger than them - but not in the exaggerated style of most murals, only to the scale that was common between mer and carnivores.
Viren glared at the figure, trying to decipher its meaning. He'd never seen a cecaelia before - they were incredibly rare by carnivore standards, but the many tentacles in place of a tail made the figure unmistakable. They seemed to be smirking out at him, like they knew something more than he did.
Or perhaps that was his own bias.
Shaking his head, he moved back into the main room.
With nothing better to do, the exiled merman cleaned out the shards of broken memory crystals, hoping he might find a few still intact. There were so many that it took the better part of two weeks to finish his first task, and he did indeed find a handful of intact crystals.
Unfortunately, they were ancient. Memory crystals needed frequent use to be maintained, and these had clearly been left dormant for a few centuries at least. He closed his eyes to view them, and managed only a few blurry, sepia clips. All of them of the cecaelia - he guessed in this very amphitheater. Different vantage points around the room watching the man - at least, the memories suggested he was a man through the giver's impressions - in the center of the room.
Between the vague crystals and the mural, Viren surmised the mystery cecaelia had been a teacher - of mer? The idea seemed preposterous, but…
If there was a carnivore willing to teach mer - something that had been illegal long ago - a small grotto a few days swim from the Reef would be the best place for it.
Surely students would stay here, Viren mused. Though he wouldn't put it past a carnivore to ignore mer comfort, it simply wasn't practical to have students constantly traverse the distance before being expected to attend lectures.
So he made a more in-depth search of the grotto, ending with the pearl he'd been avoiding. He hadn't wanted to tempt himself into studying the magical object. But the moment he touched it, it seemed to… dissolve, leaving behind a hole.
Blinking, gills fluttering with trepidation, he swam into the lower portion of the grotto.
A barrier that only allows mer to pass through? he thought, Clever.
He was starting to have a begrudging respect for the mystery cecaelia. He also realized the pearl was not the source of magic - he'd only thought it was because the real magic lay beyond it.
As he'd suspected, he found a well-made dormitory students must have used. Just beneath the amphitheater was a common room, bright plants having overgrown their containers and spreading around the room. One hall led off to a hall of beds - alcoves in the wall overgrown with algae. Another led to a kitchen - a small volcanic vent made Viren smile briefly at the thought of a cooked meal. A garden adjoined this, which Viren realized was under a glamour. Otherwise, he would have seen it from outside.
The last hall led to what Viren guessed was the cecaelia's own quarters. And it was here he found the powerful magic source that had led him here.
He approached it cautiously, though he was more certain than ever he was alone here. A mirror, seeming to glow with its own inner light. The mer reached out, spying the runes around the stone rim. He pulled his webbed hand back at the last moment, remembering himself. With a sigh, he touched the surface of the mirror itself instead.
Then pulled his hand back as the surface rippled, swimming back in surprise as the image changed from his own haunted visage to… another grotto?
It was bright, like it was closer to the surface. There were colorful tapestries hanging from the ceiling, and… Viren swam closer, studying the other side. Yes, walls lined with bright, shining memory crystals. Ah, how he missed the memory halls of Kotalis castle - the sight made the ache sharper.
He forced himself to study the rest of the room - polished stone floor, carved in elegant patterns. Windows - a true luxury if they used glass, rather than simply being open to the sea. There appeared to be a desk made of pearl, similar to the false pearl from the amphitheater.
And then the cecaelia entered the room.
Viren wanted to swim and hide from view, but he was transfixed. Because this wasn't a cecaelia - it was the cecaelia. The one from the murals and the memories. But the stone carving and the color-faded memory fragments couldn't have prepared him for…
For rich blue and purple skin, light glittering as he moved. For white hair that flowed silkily around the man, framing a noble featured face with amber eyes. Viren could even think of the horns and pointed ears as elegant, though he usually found the carnivore features distasteful. Even the black tentacles of the cecaelia's lower half moved in intriguing and graceful ways, more glittering lights beneath the skin.
The cecaelia pulled himself across the floor with them, headed for the wall of memory crystals and selecting one - or rather, reaching out to select one with one of his four arms before pausing, head turning towards the mirror.
That brought Viren back to himself, and he pushed off the object and made to swim back into the common room.
"Wait."