HOME | DD

Description

Deeper and deeper, til the crushing darkness fell blacker than a moonless, starless night - til raven beaks and obsidian shards would seem to glow in comparison to the world around her, she descended further down.

The ocean had always frightened Ryla. It was big - bigger than anything else on the planet, really - and it was dark. Those two things alone were intimidating enough, but it was always the notion of what might be down there that really got under her skin. She remembered being unable to bathe for days after finishing a documentary on giant squid. It had been a cute affair, and the host had toasted a CGI kraken at the end of the show, but she could never get the images out of her mind of tentacles in the darkness, pulling her down, closer and closer towards an inevitable grisly end at the point of some alien beak. She remembered being unable to turn out the lights because the darkness of her room reminded her of the ocean's darkness.

It all seemed so distant now, like an old dream. And yet here she was, diving deeper and deeper, this time of her own volition. She had to. The captain had taken them. Somewhere, miles down below, the ship waited, some twisted remnant of a vile crew's demise. Somewhere below, where the laws of man no longer applied, a ship of dead men held her friends and her sister. She didn't pretend to understand what was keeping them alive right now, but she knew her window was closing. No one else could make this dive right now. No one else could adjust to the pressure, or see so clearly in the dark.

With each mile she descended, she felt the pressure grow ever stronger, pushing in from all sides, trying to crush her. Normally, the water was very comfortable for her. She could relax and let go of the tension that held her together, letting the water flow into her porous form and rejuvenate her. She was, after all, mostly water herself. Underwater, she could become so much larger than she ever could on land.

At least, near the surface. She was used to swimming in estuaries, through lagoons and aqueducts. There was no pressure up there. Down here, it was all-consuming. Down here, she had to exert herself constantly to resist the ocean's ever tightening squeeze. The act of swimming became a battle as she felt her torso compress further, the gaps between her organs shrinking. She had long given up forming anything resembling bones, deciding instead to take a page from the book of sharks.

All around her, bodies shot through the darkness, and she would have shivered, were such motions permitted by her current environment. Giant squid were an earthly nightmare. Fronterra was a new world with new secrets. There could be literally anything down there.

Of course, she knew what was down there. Oswin, and Makinti, and Shelly, and who knew how many others? Like the eye of a storm, swirling through the clouds of her raging, instinctive fears, this one thought shone indisputably. They were counting on her. No grisly death that any world's ocean could offer held a candle to the terror of losing her found family. Fronterra's abyss could throw whatever nightmares it wanted at her.

Spires of absolute blackness pierced the faintly green-tinted haze of Ryla's night-vision, and she realized she had arrived. The ocean's jagged floor lay directly below her, the wreckage of countless ships looming around her.

They seemed strangely small.

Ryla scanned the ocean floor, the faint light from her eyes casting more than enough for her keen sight to spy the familiar ship, perched on a shelf of granite. The ship that held her family.

It was indeed a lot smaller than she remembered.

The green haze gave rise to strings of mist as the bones littering the darkness rose up to greet her, now well within their own domain. A dozen dozen dead men rose up from their pitch tombs, each one united by their captain's demand: To see to it that her friends joined them, and that Ryla herself meet her end down here, crushing miles from anywhere living men had ever set foot.

And yet as the graveyard of the damned came alive, she was faced with the same unassailable realization: These men were tiny.

All at once, it hit her. The water pressure, it wasn't simply squeezing from the outside. Like the surface water, it had permeated her, joined with her, assimilated into her very being. More pressure meant a tighter squeeze, and her body had adapted, just like it had adapted its respiration. The pressure wasn't the ocean trying to crush her - she could acclimate to that, just like this world's natural denizens. The pressure was her own resistance - in trying to keep it from crushing her, she had prevented it from merging with her. And yet it had seeped through anyway. With a deep, salty breath, she allowed herself to relax and, in doing so, felt a wave of relief as the wondrous sensation of the ocean pouring into each and every one of her cells took hold.

The hazy green bones advanced upon her, the captain leading them, staring up at her defiantly, wordlessly. Despite herself, she grinned, the burning green light from her insides lighting up the abyss.

There were indeed nightmare creatures lurking in this ocean's depths. And she was one of them.

Description

Deeper and deeper, til the crushing darkness fell blacker than a moonless, starless night - til raven beaks and obsidian shards would seem to glow in comparison to the world around her, she descended further down.

The ocean had always frightened Ryla. It was big - bigger than anything else on the planet, really - and it was dark. Those two things alone were intimidating enough, but it was always the notion of what might be down there that really got under her skin. She remembered being unable to bathe for days after finishing a documentary on giant squid. It had been a cute affair, and the host had toasted a CGI kraken at the end of the show, but she could never get the images out of her mind of tentacles in the darkness, pulling her down, closer and closer towards an inevitable grisly end at the point of some alien beak. She remembered being unable to turn out the lights because the darkness of her room reminded her of the ocean's darkness.

It all seemed so distant now, like an old dream. And yet here she was, diving deeper and deeper, this time of her own volition. She had to. The captain had taken them. Somewhere, miles down below, the ship waited, some twisted remnant of a vile crew's demise. Somewhere below, where the laws of man no longer applied, a ship of dead men held her friends and her sister. She didn't pretend to understand what was keeping them alive right now, but she knew her window was closing. No one else could make this dive right now. No one else could adjust to the pressure, or see so clearly in the dark.

With each mile she descended, she felt the pressure grow ever stronger, pushing in from all sides, trying to crush her. Normally, the water was very comfortable for her. She could relax and let go of the tension that held her together, letting the water flow into her porous form and rejuvenate her. She was, after all, mostly water herself. Underwater, she could become so much larger than she ever could on land.

At least, near the surface. She was used to swimming in estuaries, through lagoons and aqueducts. There was no pressure up there. Down here, it was all-consuming. Down here, she had to exert herself constantly to resist the ocean's ever tightening squeeze. The act of swimming became a battle as she felt her torso compress further, the gaps between her organs shrinking. She had long given up forming anything resembling bones, deciding instead to take a page from the book of sharks.

All around her, bodies shot through the darkness, and she would have shivered, were such motions permitted by her current environment. Giant squid were an earthly nightmare. Fronterra was a new world with new secrets. There could be literally anything down there.

Of course, she knew what was down there. Oswin, and Makinti, and Shelly, and who knew how many others? Like the eye of a storm, swirling through the clouds of her raging, instinctive fears, this one thought shone indisputably. They were counting on her. No grisly death that any world's ocean could offer held a candle to the terror of losing her found family. Fronterra's abyss could throw whatever nightmares it wanted at her.

Spires of absolute blackness pierced the faintly green-tinted haze of Ryla's night-vision, and she realized she had arrived. The ocean's jagged floor lay directly below her, the wreckage of countless ships looming around her.

They seemed strangely small.

Ryla scanned the ocean floor, the faint light from her eyes casting more than enough for her keen sight to spy the familiar ship, perched on a shelf of granite. The ship that held her family.

It was indeed a lot smaller than she remembered.

The green haze gave rise to strings of mist as the bones littering the darkness rose up to greet her, now well within their own domain. A dozen dozen dead men rose up from their pitch tombs, each one united by their captain's demand: To see to it that her friends joined them, and that Ryla herself meet her end down here, crushing miles from anywhere living men had ever set foot.

And yet as the graveyard of the damned came alive, she was faced with the same unassailable realization: These men were tiny.

All at once, it hit her. The water pressure, it wasn't simply squeezing from the outside. Like the surface water, it had permeated her, joined with her, assimilated into her very being. More pressure meant a tighter squeeze, and her body had adapted, just like it had adapted its respiration. The pressure wasn't the ocean trying to crush her - she could acclimate to that, just like this world's natural denizens. The pressure was her own resistance - in trying to keep it from crushing her, she had prevented it from merging with her. And yet it had seeped through anyway. With a deep, salty breath, she allowed herself to relax and, in doing so, felt a wave of relief as the wondrous sensation of the ocean pouring into each and every one of her cells took hold.

The hazy green bones advanced upon her, the captain leading them, staring up at her defiantly, wordlessly. Despite herself, she grinned, the burning green light from her insides lighting up the abyss.

There were indeed nightmare creatures lurking in this ocean's depths. And she was one of them.