Shattered Reflections - Chapter 1 - An Atlantean's Day

"Looks like we'll need to ration again today."

"Again? How long is this shortage going to last? It's been nearly a week!"

"I know, I know, but there's nothing we can do about it."

"We could get higher priority by-"

"Listen, we've talked about this. Gura isn't joining the military, especially in the state she's in."

"But we don't know how long this is going to keep up."

"They said it isn't going to be much longer. The new Priestess is getting pushed back out of our main region soon."

"That's just what they want us to think…"

"Unfortunately, that's all we know."

A pale, bed-ridden Gawr Gura laid in her room, listening to the conversation between her parents. They would argue like this every now and then, but it never got bad. A growl in her stomach forced her to roll onto her side. The pain grabbed and tore at her insides.

"So… hungry…" she whimpered to herself. Maybe she should just run off to the military on her own. Her body craved food so badly even though her parents were giving her most of it. Some disease was probably ruining her digestive system, possibly even a parasite. It wasn't unheard of for an Atlantean to get sick, just very, very rare.

The pain subsided soon after and drowsiness took over. This was how her life had been for the past few weeks. With the ongoing war outside, food was getting harder and harder to come by. Officials tried their hardest to ration what they had the best they could, so that no one went hungry. But of course, they weren't perfect.

Gura fell asleep in the fetal position like she normally did. It was just really comfortable. A few flashes of a bad dream caused her to wake back up, nearly immediately. In them, the war had gotten too close to home and one of the creatures had injured her parents.

She awoke in the fetal position, just like how she fell asleep. Except she wasn't in her room anymore. She was in the main living area, pulled against a wall. What was she doing out here? There had been a few cases of her sleep swimming, but normally her parents would wake her up. But they weren't here either.

Gura got up off the floor and drowsily swam across her living room and into the kitchen. Still no signs of her parents. The front door was locked and closed when she'd passed it, so they were probably still in the house. She had a bad feeling about this.

She swam up to the second floor and found her parent's bedroom's door slightly ajar. Her parents never left the door open, even a little bit, when they were sleeping. A slight clump of something floated out of the gap. It was a purple, foul smelling liquid. The feeling of unease grew inside of her as she approached the door and looked inside.

Her parent's room had been ripped apart. Pieces of bed sheets and curtains floated about the room along with more of that sickly purple slime. Gura was repulsed when some of it made its way near her. Even the furniture was torn apart with something resembling bite marks covering the piece's surfaces.

It smelt like death in the room. Her eyes continued to reluctantly scan around the room. As the debris moved about, she caught a few glimpses of her parent's fate.

Among the floating objects were an assortment of body parts.

Gura felt herself gagging, but couldn't pull her eyes away. The flesh was mostly intact, but there were large chunks taken out in similar bite marks. They were oozing with whatever purple liquid was in the room, it seemingly replacing the blood inside.

A torso eventually made its way into her vision. It barely even resembles a torso at this point. Massive chunks of flesh and muscle were missing and strings of organs spilled out. Gura added her own fluids to the mix. It was a miracle she could vomit with how little food she'd been eating.

When she was done throwing up, she slowly swam her way back down the stairs. She broke the glass on the emergency handle and pulled on it. The sound of the underwater siren filled the ocean. Gura fell back into a fetal position, as help would be on the way soon.

Gura woke up in a bad mood. That stupid nightmare again. Why did she keep dreaming about it? Wasn't like she could change her past. The Atlantean stretched her arms above her head and yawned, trying to feel a little better about the day.

It had been over 800 years since that day. The day Atlantis had fallen.

Gura knew exactly what happened after the end of the dream. Help never did arrive. After a few hours of waiting, the younger Gura had made her way out of the house in search of anyone or anything to help.

What she found were more corpses, if you could call them that. They all were in pieces just like her parents, bite marks, missing flesh, and purple liquid included. She eventually found that the automatic defenses had triggered all around the underwater city.

They had lost the war.

The Priestess had killed every single Atlantean.

All except for Gura.

Maybe she had managed to stay hidden, as she didn't have a scratch on her when she woke up. Her dream that night must've been inspired by whatever horrible noises her unconscious self heard when her parents had been killed. Even the thought of what had happened sent shivers down the current Gura's spine.

Gura eventually stopped thinking about it. Nothing good ever came of it anyways. The only good that she could do for herself now was find some food. A growl from her stomach reinforced her thoughts.

She swam out of the cave she'd been sleeping in for that past few months. It seemed like a fairly safe place since nothing had tried to attack her there yet. Normally, she would have to move her sleeping spot every couple weeks, either due to a Priestess or human attack. Then again, a Priestess hadn't bothered her in some time. It was mostly humans at this point and they were getting aggressive.

Her sense of smell detected blood quickly after a short swim. She made a beeline straight towards it and found a school of fish getting harassed by a tiger shark. Nasty pieces of work they are. They're even more aggressive and dangerous than great whites.

To prove Gura's point, the shark swiftly changed targets and locked on to her. It didn't have a good reason besides it didn't like her at that moment. Gura shot over to the side, making it overshoot her. However, before it could completely sail past her, she chopped it in the spine. It was paralyzed immediately.

Despite her small size, Gura was extremely strong both in the sea and out of it. There were very few creatures that could match her physical abilities in any conditions. Only human guns and magic from a Priestess posed any real threat to her. Everything else was child's play.

She devoured the shark's corpse down to the cartilage. For a moment, she wondered whether or not to eat it, but she decided it wouldn't be worth it. Cartilage could get stuck in her throat and she still had a lot more to eat. Her stomach yearned for more food. Obliging, Gura swam off in search of more nutrients.

This was her feeding schedule. A few weeks to a couple months of peace in between massive feeding frenzies. It felt like they were slowly getting more intense, too. Her Primal instincts were coming out more often. She could feel them pulling her consciousness away from the forefront, begging to be set free. It was difficult, but most of the time she could keep them in check.

But when she couldn't…

From Gura's point of view, she was transported ripping apart a large fish in the middle of the ocean, to sitting on a dock of some kind on the beach in an instant. But, she was still ripping something apart.

A human arm was grasped in her bloody hand.

Gura felt the need to throw up, but she fought it back. Instead, she threw the arm as far away from her as possible. Humans were the one thing she wouldn't eat. It reminded her of the Atlantean limbs floating in the dead city. Her Primal side didn't care, though.

She tried her best to ignore the several other human corpses laying around her, all in various states of disembowelment. Walking away from the carnage, she tried to clean herself off in the ocean. The urge to go back and keep eating continued to pull at her.

This was why humans hunted her. They were scared of her, They hated her. She killed them without warning or mercy. For the last few centuries, she had been known as a cold-blooded killer that lurked in the Pacific. She hated that she was thought of in that way, but couldn't blame them.

She was an animal just surviving. There was no greater purpose in her life, no ultimate goal for her to achieve. Her days were spent in boredom and sadness thinking about her past mistakes and regrets. She was no better than the tiger shark she'd just killed earlier.

The blood came off of her skin and tattered clothes slowly. Eventually, she was mostly clean and collapsed back onto the sand. She wasn't full yet and she was tired. Maybe she could just lay here until the morning and finish her hunting then.

Sirens in the distance made her think twice about staying at this beach. She launched herself into the ocean and began to swim away from the shore. Regret built up inside her thinking about the people she'd just murdered again. But it is done now. There was nothing she could do to change it.

Eventually, she found her way into a nice cave and fell asleep. No nightmares gripped her this time. Barely any dreams floated their way into her mind. It was depressingly peaceful.

When she awoke the next morning, she wasn't sleeping in the cave. It still felt like she was in a dream, but she knew it was real. A young looking girl stood on the edge of a beach. Gura lurked just under the surface, getting as close as possible before being noticed.

Gura recognized this feeling. Sometimes, she would see glimpses of whatever her Primal instincts were doing. She was about to kill the innocent girl and there was nothing she could do besides watch. Straining to make her body listen to her, it did the complete opposite and pounced at the girl.

Through the blurry vision and broken hearing she was given in this state, she knew she was eating. The feeling of being satisfied again slowly filled her stomach. If she could, Gura would be crying right now. Another person killed for no reason, just like her parents. She was no better than that damn Priestess.

Her senses came back to her slowly. She laid with the sand on her back. Water ran up against her before pulling back out to sea. She didn't even want to get up to see what she'd done. This time, tears began to spread across her eyes.

However, they vanished when the girl she thought she'd just killed entered her vision above her.

"H-hey, are you ok?" The Atlantean barely heard the words as she fully realized what the girl, no, thing was.

A golden halo and crown with tiny wings. Purple robes and tentacles sprouting from her back.

This thing was a Priestess.

She had just attacked a Priestess and now was defenseless laying on her back.

Gura sprang up from where she was laying and darted away. She wouldn't get far before a tentacle reached out and grabbed her.

"Let go of me!" she screamed as she began to tear her way out of the tentacle's grip. It was futile, though, and she knew it. At any moment, she was going to be struck by magic and crumple into a heap on the ground.

This came to pass and she screamed as her body convulsed against her will. The Priestess crouched down next to her and stared into her eyes. Gura was initially terrified as the thought of death crossed her mind. She was going to die here.

But the Priestess' eyes didn't show any malice, in fact, "I-I'm sorry about that," it apologized to her.

"W-w-what-t…" Gura struggled to say. Her body had stopped convulsing, but it was incredibly painful to move.

"I didn't want you to leave," the Priestess almost sounded sad. Gura internally scoffed at that.

"W-why…" she asked with what she thought would be her final breath.

"Because I want to talk to you, Gura."

That was not the answer she'd been expecting.

Author's Note: This is most certainly the darkest bit of the story. Gura's nature just invites violence. Getting to see Priestess Ina is also very nice. She's a bit shy, but still very persistent when it comes to friends.

Gura's past certainly isn't the happiest. None of the Myth girls' pasts are really. It kind of goes with the theme of not denying you past, but accepting it and moving forward with that in mind. Gura is the embodiment of that philosophy in this story.

Also, added a nice little cover art for the story. It's kind of crude, so I'll probably clean it up when I have more time.

Next Chapter: A talk with Ina

Any feedback/criticism is appreciated!