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-< ♦ >-
Two heroes born of moonlight, storm and sea.
They shall rise or fall to bring unity.
They will be tested or bested by evil’s hand.
By their choice one will remain: sea or land.
-< ♦ >-
The first-born Chosen One was a fact kept hush in the oversea.
It was something not known to the common people- not even in Allport; the world's largest hub for those from all walks of life.
Only those high-ranking in the Navy were privy to the information that Ava Ferin, daughter of the Navy Admiral Jason Ferin, was destined to unite the land and overtake the sea.
For a time not even Ava herself knew, but as time does, it moved on and on until one strikingly special evening a triton of the Tidestrider family was born of moonlight, storm, and sea.
A second Chosen One: destined to unite the four seas that had been severed by land so long ago. The Undersea claimed this champion for their own: and began training him from a young age.
The Navy caught news of this opposing champion when Ava was 19, and Gillion Tidestrider only 11.
And they set out to remove the threat to their precious prophecy.
-< ♦ >-
Gillion Tidestrider and his frogtapus, Pretzel, were having a perfectly normal day.
He'd had combat training during early tides, and suffered a few injuries. But that was okay! He'd started learning about healing magic a few weeks prior, and was able to mostly fix the gash in his arm.
Next was his studies, which happened to be Gillion's least favourite, but Pretzel enjoyed the pictures in the textbooks and so he tried his best to concentrate for her sake.
Gillion's favourite teacher (who just so happened to be his grandfather) had stopped teaching a little while ago and the new teacher was sort of... He hesitated to say drab, but there was no hint of passion in the older triton's eyes as they drawled on about politics or some other topic that Gillion would be scolded for not paying attention to later.
Lunch was fast and efficient as always, and the day was set to conclude with a subject that rivalled studies in Gillion's dislike of it.
Magical precision training.
Today, specifically, was lightning.
Gillion swam hesitantly towards the training grounds with Elder Taurgin following close behind, and pretzel tucked securely away in her bauble to avoid the Elders' glares of disapproval: it was only thanks to Gillion's near-debilitating nervousness at the start of his training a few years ago that he'd been allowed to keep her at all.
The young champion already felt the phantom sensation of burns along his arms and forehead as the memory of his last session flooded back to him.
The Elders had said that a triton's markings were supposed to act as conduits for their magic, but - though Gillion would never say it aloud - he had always thought that the darker skin of the swirls that decorated him were the same if not more sensitive to the lightning than the rest of him.
Regardless, there were many hours of hard work ahead, and Gillion was prepared to follow them.
Until Elder Quarn intercepted them before they had reached the training grounds.
Gillion bowed his respect, as did Elder Taurgin, before he and Elder Quarn turned to one another and exchanged some hushed words with brows creased.
Elder Taurgin's fins pinned back as he heard what the other had to say, sparking a pit of fear in Gillion's stomach. His hands fidgeted nervously, picking at the webbing between his fingers.
And after an excruciating minute of waiting, he was finally addressed.
He quickly wished that they hadn’t remembered he was there at all.
-< ♦ >-
To leave the training grounds was forbidden on all but a few days; perhaps to visit Edyn or to simply have a day off every once in a while.
To leave The Trench entirely was akin to blasphemy for a younger triton like Gillion. So many horrors were there this deep in the Undersea that it was considered suicide for those without capable defence to travel alone.
And so, to leave the Undersea entirely...
Gillion's day was far from normal now.
As he was escorted by Elder Taurgin further and further from the capital and out to wasteland waters, Gillion looked back upon the conflict erupting across his home and vowed he would never forget that Navy may as well be a synonym for Evil and Sin.
Elder Taurgin hurried him along, mingled amongst other fleeing tritons, and thankfully Gillion had always been a nimble swimmer.
But as they reached the borders of the trench everything went horribly, horribly wrong.
The Navy were expecting evacuees.
And there was a bloodbath.
These tritons were not warriors, not soldiers, and not prepared. The Navy were merciless, unwilling to let anyone go in case the champion they were after slipped past their greedy human fingers.
Screaming, so much screaming, as Gillion's vision was clouded with the haze of deep-blue blood and some vibrant red, swirling in the water to create the illusion on unity and harmony.
So much death.
A strong hand grabbed Gillion from behind and he yelped, the world moving in slow motion as the sharp feel of the tip of a sword pressed into his back and this was it, he was going to die, to fail his people and the prophecy. At the ripe age of 11, Gillion was going to let down an entire species, an entire people.
And as the steel pierced his back he screamed.
And the water erupted in a divine display of crepitate moonlight that burned with the anger of a goddess against those who had dared harm her Chosen.
Gillion's vision turned to black.
-< ♦ >-
He awoke to nothing.
Well, not quite nothing: every inch of him burned, every muscle and every fibre of his being drained and aching.
His ears rang, only the sound of distant water-muffled voices cutting through the din.
At first, he thought he might be dead, but then wondered why the afterlife would hurt so bad. Perhaps he had been condemned for ruining the prophecy, and was to spend an eternity in this burning sightless hell to pay for his sins.
But eventually the ringing in his ears quelled, and some awareness returned to his senses. The voices he had picked up on were louder now, and Gillion's heart was seized in icy fear as he recognised they were speaking common.
Humans. Navy.
He tried to concentrate, summoning every language lesson he'd been to from his pain-addled brain to decipher what was happening.
"...freakish....some... explosion?...no...all dead....move...chosen one?... not yet..."
Something pushed past him, moving his body aside and sending flames of pain erupting throughout his body. Despite himself, he whimpered at the movement.
There was a pause. A stillness in the water.
"...hear something?" One voice said, earning a thoughtful hum from another.
Screw what Gillion thought earlier; this moment right here immediately shot to the top of the 'Gillion's Worst Moments' list. Even trumping that time he had accidentally impaled himself on an ice knife, or the time he had accidentally impaled Elder Yakirm on an ice knife.
He was not very good at controlling ice magic just yet.
Gillion's stomach rolled in waves of nausea as he tried to keep still and quiet. It was all made worse by the fact his eyes were shut tight, unable to tell if the Navy were looking directly at him, trying to discern whether he was actually dead or not.
The moment lasted an eternity. And then it was over.
"Nah... just...go back..."
"Sure."
The stillness of the water returned, but still, Gillion waited. He counted his shallow breaths to at least a hundred before he dared open his eyes.
Nausea returned tenfold at the sight of the blackened charred corpses floating around him, looking for all the world to be an undead swarm teetering on the lip of the trench like an otherworldly invasion waiting to happen.
Gillion himself had been one of them. Gillion himself had been the cause.
Gagging at the sight the triton turned and swam, the weight of what he had surely done laying heavy on his young shoulders.
And he made for the Oversea.
Leaving the world he knew behind.
-< ♦ >-
Gillion swam further, shaking hands oh so gently pushing past the gore of the corpses around him.
Even underwater their wounds were cauterized; streaks of lightning tore intricate patterns on the exposed skin and the eyes still held the echoes of pain as they bulged from charred heads.
Needless to say, Gillion was sufficiently traumatized.
But as he swam there was one corpse in particular that stood out to him.
A human.
Not too many identifiable features remained, and Gillion couldn't tell whether the hair was naturally red or if it had been stained such a colour.
He felt sad. He felt grief, for this one in particular, like a part of him had been lost with this one despite the fact they had probably been a part of the Navy force that had attacked in the first place.
There was a hairpin floating nearby, the end of it stained reddish-brown. Gillion reach out for it-
Pretzel chirped quietly from her bauble. (She had been mostly unharmed: thanks to Gillion's overprotectiveness and tendency to be a little volatile with his magic, her home was thankfully able to withstand quite a bit of force.)
She was right really; they had to keep moving in case anyone saw him and finished the job. And so he absentmindedly pocketed the small pin, swimming up and away towards the surface.
Leaving the human behind.
-< ♦ >-
A hero born of moonlight, storm and sea.
They shall rise or fall to bring unity.
They will be tested or bested by evil’s hand.
By their choice one will remain: sea or land.
-< ♦ >-