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Deep-sea diving off the Tropical islands of Forquantica, nothing much more pleasant can be experienced. I look around at all the corals and sparse shoals of fish and smile at the great variety in colours and shapes around me. Suddenly, my grin disappears as my eyes fall upon a human face a few metres in the distance. Eyes closed and mouth partially open, it looks dead. I drift towards it, and catch my breath as I realise the disembodied visage is actually clutching onto a rock. I suddenly remember that this is no face, but a plant, albeit a strange one.

The Visium Mortus, more commonly known as the 'Face of the Damned,' a plant not commonly seen, due to their inability to live anywhere where there is not an extremely high abundance of bottom-feeders and algae-eaters, is considered a bad omen by the locals, since it resembles the head of a drowned sailor, hence its morbid name; and my morbid fascination with it...

I move even closer, studying it with a sort of fondness, and see it in more detail, the deep red flesh on the inside of the mouth a sharp difference from the clammy, green skin of this fennedible, who has evolved much like the Venus Fly-Trap, luring the shrimp and small fish inside its mouth where the exposed meaty insides form a small, warm cove, attracting the small creatures to rest in it; but when they do, it's all over, because the mouth closes shut on them, locking them in a death-grip, while it paralyses them, electrifying the water it has swallowed with them and then dissolving their bodies in order to absorb the nutrients they leave.

I observe the immobile features of this grim physiognomy, realising why, although they could, the locals had never attempted to cook and eat this meaty mockery of a human countenance. The legends go that each time a sailor is lost at sea, and he did not pay his dues to the God of the Water, Kharybdis; and this grotesque face in front of me only let these stories sink deeper into my heart, sending a chill up my spine in harsh contrast to the warm water surrounding me.

This brought me back to my senses, and I backed away from the plant-turned-omen, and headed straight for my boat. However, as I was turning away, I couldn't shake the sickening feeling that its dead eyes had followed my movement underneath the moss-covered eyelids, but I didn't look back to check.