Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
I nodded and we set out to find it. There was plenty of light this close to the surface. The water was cold, I suppose, though it felt wonderful to me, more like a soothing balm on my skin. Sooner than I would have imagined, Alyx turned and pointed ahead, motioning that we needed to swim down.
I followed them down, down, down toward the bottom of the sea. We hadn’t traveled all that far from the shore, after all, no more than twenty miles or so. The depth was probably about 1200 meters. After about ten or fifteen meters, the light started to change and get darker around me. It was still beautiful to see the shafts of light from the sun penetrate the water and then disappear into the depths. I looked back up at the yacht which was still there, and the hull looked tiny. Steeling my nerves, I glanced down into the abyss below. I wasn’t frightened, but it had been a very long time for me since I’d been in the open sea.
I knew objectively that the water was really cold, but I didn’t feel it. To me, the temperature was quite comfortable, even refreshing. I was struck by how dark the bottom was, although I had read somewhere that some light could penetrate the water down to 100 meters and we weren’t that deep yet. Still, it felt like the darkness was starting at the tip of my fin. I began feeling uneasy and crazy images of giant squid and sharks started popping up in my mind. What if my mother were waiting for us down in the darkness?
Alyx and Keion must have sensed my discomfort because suddenly they were beside me, and Alyx held out a hand. I gave him a shaky smile and took it, feeling grateful. We continued down and amazingly, though I knew the light from the sun was gone, I could see perfectly well. Colors weren’t as bright, but I could see fine and that was when I noticed the huge structure lying far beneath us. From where we were, it looked like a group of boulders, covered with coral. But as we descended, I could see that the coral covered only an outer wall and inside that wall was a castle.
At least it looked like a castle to me—it was lit up inside, and I could see movement. People were walking around and going about their lives as if they weren’t over a thousand meters under the sea. I knew that Atlantean structures existed, but I had forgotten how beautiful they could be. Alyx and Keion swam confidently up to the structure and seemed to be looking for something. I moved closer to Alyx and asked what they were doing.
“Tring to find the gateway—the portal leading inside. We’ve never been to this outpost before.”
I nodded and pointed to what looked to me like a shiny portion of the coral, different from the rest. “Is that it?”
He peered over at it and smiled. “It is. I forgot how well the Mer Folk see underwater in the dark. Come on, let’s go inside.”
We swam closer and I could see even more clearly now. The portal looked like a door made of rock, crusted with a thick layer of blue-green coral. Alyx drew closer to it and waved his hand over it. It opened, and I started to step through as soon as it did. A strong tug on my shoulder stopped me in my tracks.
“Do you know what you’re doing? Portal travel can be very disorienting, even for a magical being like you.” Alyx said, trying to take care of me, though I felt I didn’t need his help. Things were beginning to come back to me rapidly, and the years I’d spent on land were falling away.
“Thanks,” I said, anyway, squeezing his hand. I knew he was trying to protect me, though I didn’t need it. I began to remember everything, and a portal wouldn’t slow me down. A mother who had turned into a murdering sea hag and wanted her twin sons’ lifeforce to make her stronger—okay, that scared me. The portal—not so much.
“I can do this, Alyx.”
I stepped through the portal first…and almost immediately came face to face with a devastatingly handsome creature, a Merman but one who had taken on his human form. He was tall, with long black hair streaming over his shoulders. His eyes were piercing and dark blue. He was surrounded by others like him, and I knew instinctively that this man was my father, the king of the Mer Folk.
We both stood frozen, staring at each other. I felt Alyx behind me, a comforting presence. He put a hand on the small of my back, and I leaned back into it. This was the man who had sent me and my brother away from our people. He had off-loaded us like extra cargo he didn’t need, and then never checked on us to see how we were.