And so cold... always so cold. As if I'd been thought dead and laid to rest in snow. But I wasn't. I tried to cry out, to stir, to reach them and beg them to take me elsewhere. No one answered.

Some great weight lay against me, pinning me and holding me to the cold. So great a weight that no matter how I strained I could not breathe.

I wasn't dead. I was dying.

The voices, the faces... they were going to kill me.

I fled away into the darkness of my mind. If I could not fight, I did not want to know. I fled to where the whispers could not reach me.

Time passed... hours days... I had no way to know.

There was something slimy along my leg. More of the same surrounded my arms and brushed across my breasts. I could breath and there was the smell of green around me. I was still cold but it no longer hurt.

I was going to live.

I would never have thought that could be worse.

Faint green light seemed to come from all around me. The water smelled like kelp beds where the otter played. And, finally, I was warm. The water around me like a lake on a late summer day.

I was also quite naked, but that wasn't a surprise. Everything after was.

I was laying in what was supposed to be a bed... but it looked to me more like a bathtub. An underwater bathtub of rough stone filled to over flowing with the slimiest, shiniest green algae I had ever seen. Which is saying quite a lot when you live in an under water kingdom.

The algae is what glowed. Providing its own light to grow by, which was fascinating. It gave way as I moved. Floating over the side to drift to the floor or floated alongside. A good amount of it clung to me and after a moment's panic I had made certain it wasn't actually growing on me.

I was in a cave with unfinished walls and more of the algae growing there. There were other, paler algae growing like a crust on the walls also glowing, but brighter.

The floor was covered with silt and sand and almost as slimy as what I was lying in. I drew my legs back into the tub, back into the cocoon of warmth. I wasn't ready to brave the cold just yet and it had occurred to me that the algae was giving me most of the oxygen I needed. Another reason to stay where I was.

It seemed I was asleep again in an instant. How sad that I did not over come my reluctance and had not fled while I might have.

Hands dragged me forth and I was brought to the floor on my knees before a pair of sandaled feet. They were a woman's feet. Dazed as I was, they were all I could focus on. So I sat on my knees with one arm held behind me, another hand in my hair, around my neck forcing me to look down.

Another hand reached down to tilt my chin and the hand in my hair now forced my face up so she did not have to touch me. The new hand matched the feet. Alabaster and thin with no flesh to spare. The face that regarded me was the same. Almost gaunt. But perfect, as if formed by an artist in love with an anemic.

Huge dark eyes and red lips that frowned at me. Raven hair that reached the floor to drag through the muck and flowed like a river of the dead behind her.

"Your name, girl." Her black eyes bore into mine as if she would look straight through my soul. A voice like a hiss and I could not help but answer.

"Daphney."

She stepped back, looking displeased. Whether it was my name, my voice or that I understood her that was so distasteful, I had no clue. But her lips twisted and for a moment I thought she would strike me. But she did not. She gestured and the men to either side pulled me to my feet and followed after her. Like dogs on a leash... led by the coils of black hair that trailed behind her.

They held me between them, my toes only occasionally touching the ground. At least I didn't have to watch where I was going.

The woman was wearing a long gown of something soft looking and black. It was open in the back for the length of her spine and I expected it to simply fall off of her at any time. The men were as pale as she was, with eyes even larger. Like sharks, flat, black... expressionless. They wore gray armor, the edges of each scale trimmed in black that rippled as they moved.

The pale algae growing out here was twisted into intricate forms. Like rock topiaries formed by unknown hands. The sharp edges seemed sinister, the whole place cold and unwelcoming. It reminded me of some of the older arches in Rebma... but all wrong, as if they had tried to make something fanciful, or beautiful with what they had and only gotten it half right. As if they simply couldn't remember the rest.

Globes affixed to the walls at intervals provided extra light. But it was all still dim and shadowy. My eyes had adapted as far as they could but I could only see the globes ahead of me. There was only dark and the pale algae beyond their poor pools.

We crossed through a doorway guarded by an iron gate so corroded I think I could have broken through it bare handed. Beyond was a city.... a city that had once known sun and song... high arches and buildings with windows... terraces and balconies, and planters decorated with dolphins. Images of fishes I did not know decorated the walls -- whole schools of them in cracked fading tiles.

All of it in a state of decay and disrepair.

People looked at me from some of the windows. Like wraiths and things from horror stories Lorine liked to tell. They stared at me with greedy eyes... looking jealous and hateful. Some of them had tattered clothes that had once been colorful. The rest were dressed in dark somber clothes… crude hides from creatures that lived down here. Bits of jewelry here and there in the feeble light, robbed of its glitter by years of tarnish.

There was a frightening, quiet crowd following us as I was half carried into a dingy palace. Like zombies.

I was too frightened to care that I had no clothes. My mind racing to gather fragments of spells from my memory, to put together ideas for escape.

The palace was more of what the city had been. Rooms full of rot and gook on the floor that had once been carpets. Cracked spires of dim crystal that would have been beautiful in the sun. Broken, chipped chandeliers that gave no light.

I was hauled into a throne room in the wake of the ghoulish woman. A room of cracked marble and other things that spoke of rich opulence. Extravagance.

The man on the throne had hair that was almost purple. Huge black irises rimmed in dark blue in a face as pale as all the others. But he seemed less distorted… less wrong than some… as if he simply hadn't warped as far as some of the others. Or had not adapted as far. Generations of adapting would do this… small changes growing larger with each generation.

"I have brought her." The woman hissed at the man. If the crown made him king, it gave him no power over her. But he only half smiled and the look in his eyes gave me qualms like few others things had ever done.

"You had no choice, Evangaline." He almost laughed at her as he came down the steps to us. But he never looked at her. Did he see the hate in her eyes? Or did he simply not care? I wondered which of them was truly as strong as they thought they were.

"If she pleases you, take her. My gift." The woman stalked around him, like a cat. I wanted to protest, indignant, but watched the power play between them instead. Pointless arguing would not save me any grief.

"But her blood will wake the old gods…. With them we shall reclaim what is rightfully ours… and yours…. And the people have already gathered. They await the words of their king. The old promises made good." She smiled. She was right, I had seen the crowd and now I was happy they were there. They did not mean to, but they saved me from what was in his eyes.

He frowned, his gaze almost turning to her.

"Once she has served the purpose of the people, she will be yours. Too serve as trophy, and reminder." The woman's soft voice cut the currents between us, the two of them balancing against one another.

I cringed. Shrinking from all of them. Their cold assured manner chilled me more than the water. They were barely human. I wanted to scream, to fight. But even if I broke free I did not know where to go and even if I should reach the edge of the city, the pressure and cold of the water assured me that there would only be the Abyss to greet me. And the very long, impossible climb to the surface.

So I waited. Wishing I had, even once, accepted any of the combat classes Aunt Moire had dangled in front of me.

My guards did not look at me, and I hung between them with no place to hide.

They welded a collar around my neck and the pain left me dazed. I could not focus even as the crowd now roared in response to something their king had said.

Vorinnox.

He had laughed when I had tried finally to talk to him once the witch had left to gather her priests. Watching from where he sat in his chair, concerned only that they did not burn my hair.

He was speaking now of a time of glory and power. Of a kingdom survived by its slaves, proof that there were riches to reclaim. The people cheered. The priests would gather the magic and he challenged them to destroy the usurpers who held what was theirs. The people roared.

Fallen Atlantis. I never looked for you. But I would never have dreamed that you had fallen so very, very far.

To my eyes the temple looked desecrated. Foul. Age and the violence of the Breaking had left statues toppled and broken.

The king and his courtiers stopped in the first chamber. Frowning as the guards led me deeper in still. The woman's black hair snaking out like tongues.

The priests were gathered. Old men and one so old it might have once been a woman. Robes robbed of their color and texture and hanging from their forms like webs. Clinging like the algae. Sickly.

An alter stood at the far end of this room. Black with age and ripe with the reek of pain and death. Runes were carved into the floor…. Lines and circles leading outward…

There were too many hands to fight. Old bent hands like claws whose grip was stronger than it had any right to be. They held me even when the magic began. A summoning that made my ears ring and my senses fled me. Their knives freed the blood from my body and the witched called to things with it. Dark things.

Someone called to me, from beyond the pain and sorcery. Too far for me to reach. A faint star almost beyond what the eye could see. Then it was gone.

I struggled again, desperate to evade further torture, but it went on. Fainting was a mercy I only appreciated when it was over.

They were finished with me and I was dragged back out to where the king waited. Smiling. I could feel what had been done to me. I did not need to look. He did not seem to care, his expression never changed. They had brought him a chair from somewhere. Making him comfortable while he whiled away the hours.

Lying on the floor at his feet, I was quite certain it had been more than simply hours. My vision faded in and out unsteadily, but I could see that his clothes had changed. What few people I could recognize from before were also changed.

Again someone called to me. The lightest brushing of a mind against my own. Above me, in the shadows, was a face looking down at me. A man. The familiar touch of the Trump wavered and vanished. I prayed to the man above the room that they would call back.

They talked. Argued. I studied the face. Kindly. Old and wise. With a grim expression. The face was strange and ugly in its way, but it wanted me to fight.

I shifted, gathering myself and what pitiful strength was left to me. It seemed to approve. I screamed, thrashing upwards from the floor, and where I had legs, again I had a tail with which to swim. The face seemed triumphant.

Kicking free I launched up toward the face. The man seeming to nod in the changing angle of the light.

Above the broken walls of the temple and the shouts I saw the body that went with the face. Covered now in white algae, the scaled tail was still visible in the dark around him. Powerful and huge, he leaned over the temple, one arm out stretched, the hand reaching with a broken trident into the inky water beyond.

The witch called out words and the pain ripped my belly as surely as if they still had their knives to me. The collar choked me and I fell into the giant's other hand. Cradled like a bird in a nest while her voice shrieked out other Words, using my blood and my own pain to summon me back. But held in the hand of blue marble, she seemed suddenly very far away.

He would not let her harm me again.

I rallied and spiraled up to the face, turning to follow where he pointed. The darkness closed in and a faint star of light winked on ahead of me. I rushed for it. Shouts and the clanging of ungraceful men driving me along.

My passage was formed of crumbling blocks.. the remains of the cataclysm… my final door framed in white. But here the algae was untouched by human demands and it flowed around the opening like icing on a cake. I slipped through, knowing that no one any larger than myself could follow.

Around a crooked flight of stairs. Under a fallen pillar. A small diamond of soft blue light, like a window to Tir. A promise.

I entered a room with no doors. Trapped.

But the ugly man with the wise eyes stood before me. His head even with where I floated as he leaned against a throne of dolphins.

One eye glowed blue… the other…. I shook uncontrollably. Sinking to the floor. Where the other orb should be was a starburst scar. The Heart of the Sea. My heart pounded to see its twin.

The eye of Lir.

Noise behind me. They knew where I was. Somewhere far away stone fell and men shouted. They were coming.

I sat before a god who had not saved his people -- in a city he may himself have struck down. Too weak for further flight, even if there had been a way to go.

Defeated.

Someone was beside me. Even with my head bowed and my eyes closed there was a sense of presence, as I had known in my last moment in the Abyss. A Being I feel, but cannot see.

Hands brushed my hair and my fears dissolved. I did not need to fight. It did not matter that I had no strength left. They would be my strength. He would protect me.

I seemed to almost sleep in their arms. Gathered gently up in such a blanket of quiet and peace that the pounding noise drawing nearer did not disturb me. The one eye continued to glow and I watched as it began to pulse. There was a brilliant flash that stabbed my eyes that had struggled so long to pierce the darkness.

Within the Light that is blindness, I See.

I think I fainted then.

Arms embrace me. Lifting me up and out of the room. I am aware only that we did not leave as I came in. I do not know how many of the ones I could not see there were. Their bodies pressed to mine, surrounding me like a living shell. Then I am the light. Glowing bright and blue with no sense of myself. Defined only by their bodies' memory of where I was.

Atlantis fell away. The decaying city, with its sickly feeble lights and its curse swallowed again by the Abyss. Again the ascent is too fast, but those that hold me rush on. The passage to the surface is distorted. Confused. I am only suddenly aware of light and sound.

Then I am alone.

I wash to the shore as senseless as the tide. Welcoming the place of not knowing, I sleep.