Now, the end of the world via flooding had some positive side effects. Mostly? As sad it was to say, a lot of the woke crowd found out too late that they were part of the establishments useful idiot brigade and did not have a place with the elites under the sea. On somewhat positive side? The paranoid rural community has been doing fairly well, as there was already a great deal of self-reliance and independence before the flood waters came. Sure, there are still the doomers, warlords, crazies and worse... and at the end of the day? I'm probably one of those things that's worse.
For a given value of worse, as I ponder my options. Because on the one hand, I was empowered with the might of the sea and would only evolve and get stronger from here as my legend grew. If I was sufficiently ambitious, I could even make a go at cracking open some of those underwater dome cities the oligarchs fled to. I could of course, always bring together and enslave the various raider clans, the pirate fleets, forge my own nation out of the wreckage. In any case, there was more than one kind of mythic destiny ripe for the taking.
Of course, in this new and wild age of monsters and heroes... well, I looked over my options again, because it seemed that I was being chosen as one of the monsters, to be something that the heroes would be striving against. Of course, there was more than one way to be an antagonist, a villain in this grand tale. In some respects, I was just going to be another warlord. But then, what was a king but a warlord, a bandit chief, who had gone legitimate, extracting 'taxes' instead of tribute?
Mostly in how willing the people were to pay them, from all that I could tell.
Antoms Deep was a thriving under sea city, and one of the places that showcased that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. After all, there were levels in the dome cities, even in a small extraction colony such as theirs. Down at the bottom of the colonies, close to the sea floor, in halls of steel and stone were the workers, those that lived and toiled for a chance at a better life. It was from that that the staff for the companies were drawn, that the general workers, factory staffers and maintenance personal could be found, the farmers and fish tenders.
Here, the air was stale, the food bland and there was little luxuries and entertainments, little out of the way bars and stills, pubs and sports teams, trained snakes and crabs for pets. Even the water was recycled instead of just desalinated, but it was better, all could agree, than to be on the surface.
Higher up in the structures could be located the windows of belonging to the educated workers, the guards, enforcers, journalists and lesser artists, as well as the entertainers. In many ways, the small luxuries were simply more common, with the vices of those at the top trickling down and some of the things below bubbling up. These were the direct servants, the overseers of the lower classes and the smaller, but still useful minds. They were the hunting sharks of those above, scything to accomplish their wills and whims in the hope they might yet grow legs and climb ashore.
For at the top of these undersea structures was the dome itself, each containing up to four grand place compounds stretching from a single point like a flower. Here the rich and powerful dwelled, above it all as they dwelled in oceanic luxury on top of the peasants, able to gaze out into the depths of the sea inside their artificial bubbles of the lost surface world. Each was personalized to their owners tastes, and yet each was also a great monument to the ruling party, to the kings and queens of these undersea city states. All wealth flowed up, even as they directed their vision and demands below with near divine authority. It was ironic then, that they would be the first to fall.
And no, not to modified sharks or whales, or even great battle squid. No, the harbingers of doom had been barnacles of all things, small little blemishes on the glass that suddenly began to scream, tiny voices, tiny vibrations, cracking and burrowing as they started to dig, to burrow right into the transparent alloys far harder than normal glass. Others, elsewhere, ate into power lines, algae blooms clogging weapon emplacements as jellyfish rolled in. Oh, how the rich and powerful screamed, as their domes cracked open, as the sea flooded in, the hordes of war forged beasts soon following.
There were scattered survivors, soon hunted down, their palaces invaded by creatures against reason, against logic. And then, below, there was a cackle, as the intercom cackled to life. "Hello good people of Antom's Deep! I'm here to announce that you are in the middle of a hostile take over! If you surrender, then you can join up and be born anew into this wonderful age. Of course, resist and you will feed the fish!" The booming voice laughed, as down below, all wondered at what had happened, at the change to the routine, to the normal.
Of course, a week later, when the Northern Basin Convoy arrived, it was to find a shattered ruin, abandoned and trashed as whatever had come through left. There would of course be theories, and yet, the thing was as they looked things over, as security forces were dispatched to investigate for the insurance companies, it was something new. Something that did not fit any established patterns. Eyes were had on the fellow cities of the deep, at the only others who could have been responsible for this.
After all, there was no way a surface savage could be behind the fall of one of their domed cities!
I enjoyed the roast, as the girls giggled in my lap, one of them holding a flagon of cranberry juice and pouring it as needed, gold and silver chains about my body, the signs of success adorning me, and the bodies of my captains, as we enjoyed our victory feast at the cove, and already planning our next move. And then I belched, gut shaking to the roaring laughter of the crowd, hand coming down to grope the ass of one of my lap warmers.
Ah, the joys of being a barbarian surface warlord were many... so long as the victories kept coming!