The World You Left Behind

Obsidian waves lunged like jutting rock, crashing against each other, breaking into explosions of mist. Broken waves plummeted, gathering low before rising again for vengeance.

She peered above the ocean’s surface. The turbulence was perpetual. The sky concealed the world from light, as her father denied forgiveness to mankind.

The ocean’s king lurked in the depths below, projecting this darkness from a mind all but consumed by grief and fury.

Through a torrent of wind and rain, she could see a royal ship sailing the horizon—and a gull careening towards her haphazardly.

“Beautiful day to die, eh, Chaera?” the gull squawked.

“There’s enough death in these waters without your feathered corpse, Boonn,” she shouted. “What are you doing? This is no place for birds!”

“She’s here!” Boonn flapped excitedly, “Or, at least, what’s left of her.”

“You speak of my sister? On that ship?”

Lightning tore through the sky. In that flash of illumination, a whale could be seen bursting through the water, harpoon in its side, fountaining black spray. The prince was hunting.

“You know, I’ve eaten corpses,” Boonn reflected. “They’re not so ba—“

“Boonn!” she interjected. “She watches this murder complacently? Does the marriage between our kingdoms now mean nothing?”

“She’s human, now,” Boonn said. “Why do you think I’d rather be shark bait, out here with you, than living my best life beak-deep in their garbage?”

Chaera felt the weight of tears forming in her eyes, tension in her throat. “I just don’t understand how someone could change like that!”

She swam towards the ship. Boonn squawked, alarmed. “But, Chaera! If they see you—!”

The sound of sad, pensive strings seemed to rise around Chaera, as she sang,

🎼 “Sister, you held me,

You’d sing me to sleep.

Taught me to question

The way things should be.

Still just a girl

When you left to be free,

Tell me, do you remember

Your own little sister?

Could it be true that you’re gone?”

Her vibrant voice carried across the water, sweet and pristine. On the ship, a nymphlike woman with long, golden waves of hair and fierce green eyes turned towards the sound. Her knees faltered, hand moved to cover her mouth. She saw Chaera in the water, looking up at her.

“Calira!” Chaera cried.

The prince moved Calira aside, glaring. “That isn’t her name!”

There was a piercing crack in the air, and a pungent, burnt scent, as something whipped through Chaera’s arm. She gasped and felt the thick wetness of blood slide from the wound.

Boonn was a flurry of pummeling wings and shrill cries, attacking the prince’s riflemen, as Chaera sank beneath the surface in disbelief. The loudest sound, she felt, was Calira’s silence.

Another piercing crack, and Boonn crashed through the water above her. “Father, please help us,” she pleaded. “Father...”

Chaera awakened to a face so sharply pronounced and heavily shadowed, it seemed a statue was watching over her. Its mouth moved.

“Daughter, the end is near,” its booming, almost disembodied voice said. She blinked and tried to focus her vision. Father had found her.

“For Calira, I kept my pact with the humans,” he continued, “bearing their dishonor and desecration.” He lifted a hand, palm open, as the current began drawing his fingertips out into foam.

“No, Father! You can’t!” Chaera cried. She touched his face, held it.

“My time is over, beloved Chaera,” he said, eyes flaring at the disintegration of his body. “Yours is just beginning. The pact dissolves with me. You must reclaim our sanctity.” He was almost gone. She could no longer hold onto him.

“Seek Eutheria,” his drifting voice said, “Library of the Eternal.” The subtle glow of his trident faded, and he was no more.

Eutheria was a tale told to merchildren, Chaera recalled. A sanctuary lush with boundless wonders from the beginning of time. But the stories were always about how you’d get there—through a bottomless vortex of darkness called “the eclipse.”

The most titanic creatures on earth were said to live in the eclipse. Giant squids, kraken, and sea worms with mouths full of thousands of teeth.

Only those who could wield the latent power of Father’s trident could hope to survive the journey to Eutheria. But “this is what distinguishes us from the humans,” Father had said. “We respect Eutheria with humility, knowing that not all power is meant to be taken.”

Chaera approached the eclipse, trident in hand.

She heard the sound of a giant squid’s young: a high-pitched, metallic flittering. Their translucent bodies strobed a cycling spectrum of electric color, and when she saw them blasting into the vortex, she thrust herself after them.

Now, the eclipse was pulling her in. She was soaring through a gigantic tunnel, sides vaguely lit by the squidlings. They were passing side tunnels filled with spirals of curved, dagger-like teeth, outlined by what could only be pink, fleshy worm lips.

The teeth gaped open and lunged from a side tunnel, snapping back with a squidling in their clutch. The squidling pulsed bright red, emitting a wavering siren before being obliterated within the worm’s maw.

Chaera’s heartbeat accelerated. She braced herself behind the trident, as ancient text beneath its prongs lit up in blue.

A furious, multi-layered roar shook the water, making her bones quake. A giant squid mother was near. The squidlings flittered anxiously—then tremendous tentacles lunged up past Chaera from below, striking at worm tunnels, shattering rock, flesh, and teeth.

The impact waves sent Chaera rocketing through a thin space between the sides of the eclipse and the squid mother’s dimly pulsing, camouflage body.

The eclipse opened into a sprawling chamber. Miles of giant worm could be seen in segments illuminated by the eyebeams of a kraken, both monsters thrashing, trying to entangle each other.

The sound of hissing came from afar. Chaera saw hundreds of wormlings drilling through the water towards her.

“Use your voice,” she heard Father say. She tried to sing the trident’s ancient text, summoning a power beyond her control:

🎼 “In shadows, and

Between the words,

Immortal, sleeping

Voice is heard.

No thief can lay

A claim to thee.

She’s everywhere,

They’ll never see,”

The trident resonated with Chaera’s voice, expanding its blue light into a beautiful sphere around her. She continued,

🎼 “Each moment is

Forever now,

Eutheria,

My sacred vow!”

The sphere around her swirled and jetted spectral flame, like a sapphire sun. The wormlings recoiled. A beacon of light burst from the sphere, traveling further down the eclipse than she could see. She was launched along the path of light so quickly that the eclipse distorted around her. Then, there was peace.

Eutheria’s crystalline seahorses contained their own starlight. Thousands of them swam through the vastness of the sanctuary, synchronized, sparkling, purposeful. They sang softly with the voices of children, in beautiful choral harmony.

Chaera felt she was in the center of a galaxy, stars swirling around her. Luminescent clouds served some function between rest and nourishment, seahorses wrapping their tails into it, drifting along.

Then, there were the elder seahorses. After the eclipse, she was relieved to see peaceful giants.

“Chaera,” an elder said, telepathically. “Your father’s curse continues to darken the ocean, sky, land. You need the darkness—to restore the light.”

“What can I do?” Chaera said, feeling vertigo at the sensation of speaking telepathically, herself. “Father is gone, and Calira has forsaken us for the humans.” She grimaced. “Why are they gifted with immortal essence? They destroy everything they see.”

The elder’s calm eyes glowed like slowly turning orbs of twinkling light. “The life of a human is often a crime in itself,” the elder said. “They seek satisfaction through malevolence, always unfulfilled by the results. They do not learn from their mistakes. Instead, they recreate the past, and repeat it, in servitude to a sense of dominion.”

The elder paused. “Immortal afterlife allows them to replicate the scene of the crime, so to speak. A wasted gift—“ the elder’s eyes shifted color, then, swirling with sparkling streams of red, “—a gift that is meant to be taken.”

Chaera felt a terrifying chill freeze through her body. Her flesh and bones were numb—she stretched her tail apart, transformed into legs. She grew fangs, and her teeth restructured.

Then, she was burning hot. “Why am I so thirsty?” she cried. “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re vampira now,” the elder said. “You can turn from seabound to landwalker at will, and more—but you’re thirsty for that immortal essence. Take it from them. Restore balance.”

A gleaming diamond ring materialized on Chaera’s hand.

“A star of vengeance rests within this ring,” the elder continued. “When you find the prince, remove the star and set it in his forehead. Bring him to the ocean. Only then will the light return.”

Chaera stared at her legs, wide-eyed, and toyed with her fangs. “If you can do all this,” she said, breathlessly, “can you help Boonn, too?”

“Boonn awaits you in the sky,” the elder said, “with new form.”

Chaera found herself in the sky, above the clouds, and screamed—until she realized she was standing on the clouds themselves, light as a wisp.

She twirled, breathing in the night, marveling at the ethereal landscape of moonlight tinted clouds. She felt the wind breeze through her long, midnight hair, and couldn’t stop smiling.

A shadow was moving along the clouds towards her. She heard a panting cackle, and saw a large, furry bat silhouetted by the moon.

“Boonn?!” she exclaimed.

He smiled, too, and sang,

🦇🎼 “Chaera! Can you believe—

A more amazing kind of me?

I’ve never felt so fittingly

Frightful and wicked!”

👩🏻 🎼 “I thought I had lost you, Boonn,

But now we’re flying by the moon,”

🦇➕👩🏻 🎼 “And everything feels like a dream,

A world of possibility.”

Boonn circled her, tongue out, eyes glistening excitedly. She grabbed his fuzzy face and hugged him.

“You fought humans for me, Boonn!” she said. “I’ve never known a bird—bat so courageous. I’m sorry I caused so much trouble.”

“Sorry?” Boonn said, “I thought we were just getting started! Can you see the headlines? ‘Former Seagull, Shot Down by Critics, Responds.’” He mimicked typing on a typewriter with his little hands.

“I’m thirsty, Boonn,” Chaera said. “Let’s have a—what do they call it, again? A ‘night on the town.’”

Chaera could smell the scent of the rifleman who’d shot her from the ship. She drifted through his bedroom window like a feather, and saw him in bed, surrounded by bottles of rum.

She kicked him against a wall, lifted him by his throat, and silenced his screams by plunging her fangs into his neck.

Immortal essence tasted wonderful, and she was parched. She wiped her mouth on his shirt and dropped his body.

Outside, she saw a flickering orange glow in a nearby house. Fire?

She flew into the castle, and found the prince, sleeping by Calira. Boonn flew in and startled him—he fired a bedside pistol at Chaera, with no effect.

Calira ran out. Guards bustled into the room.

“There’s something I’ve never told you, Chaera,” Boonn said.

She looked at him expectantly. He grinned.

“I’m a fire breathing bat.”

Boonn spread his wings and spewed flames at the guards, burning them crispy beneath their armor.

Chaera seized the prince and shoved the star of vengeance into his forehead. He screamed as she carried him into the sky, to the ocean shore.

The prince thrashed in the sand, body transforming. His ribcage burst through him, becoming legs that scuttled him into the ocean.

A white narwhal emerged, encrusted with gold and diamonds. His own men hunted him, tearing off his treasure-laden flesh, only for it to regenerate.

The narwhal would destroy hundreds of ships, enraged.

The light had returned.