Well, how about that, I am actually getting to my daily writing before Noon even rolls around! And I took a break and I am finishing it at my usual time of the late evening. . .oh well. Now, lets see if I can keep the length reasonable this time too *fingers crossed*. Later Jon: “hahahahahahah”
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Prompt: Your fantasy world is on the ocean floor. The story involves mythological gods. A beloved god dies. The story includes a Necromancer. The story also includes a book of spells.
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Fantasy Plot Generator
Time Spent: 60 minutes
Word Count: 2112
The boat rocked gently as I finished my preparations. I had enchanted my bags and all my tools that they would be completely impervious to water, I had several crystals ready to provide light and even pockets of air, if I need to work freely, ready to go. I packed away my robes in one of my bags, I might well need it later, and slung my bags across my chest, so they would be secured.
As I stood on the edge of the small boat I had hired, in my undergarments, looking down into the dark blue depths of the ocean around me, I wondered for at least the hundredth time, in the last day, whether this was a good idea or not. Trying to push those thoughts down, and hold onto my determination, I took several deep breaths, muttered the spell, and made the appropriate hand-signs, to give me the ability to breath underwater, for a period of time. Readied as I ever would be, I jumped feet first into the ocean and let the weight of my bags drag me under.
The shock of cold almost took my breath away and it was an odd, and unnatural feeling of sinking, fast, into a body of water and doing nothing to stop it. As I plummeted past a variety of puzzled looking sea-life, I fidgeted with the crystals on my belt, and found one that caused began to hover next to my head, providing light and clearing my vision for what was around me. Perhaps not a moment to soon as I barely had the time to disoriented a large shark that was coming over to get a good look at me.
My lungs began to ache and I realized that, out of habit, I had been holding my breath. Closing my eyes, I forced myself to trust in the spell I had cast, and finally opened my mouth to breath in. I could feel water rushing into my mouth and down my throat, but then flowing out of gills that were now on the sides of my neck, quickly. My lungs, filled with the air that the spell filtered out of the water. It took a moment to get over the bizarreness of this, but nevertheless after a moment I was breathing normally.
I began to see various ruined structures below me, and at the center of what I understand was once a great underwater city of the Merfolk, lay my target and goal. The war between Ocean and Land, as it was called, ended with a hero in service to the Goddess of the Earth, Galaea, struck down and killed the God of the Sea Maritaeus and his body had sunk and crushed much of one of his people’s cities.
Well, being a God, killed might be a bit strong of a word. After all, bound as they were to the very soul and fabric of the world, no divinity could be outright killed without causing serious and probably irreparable damage to the very fabric of this Terra. His body was slain and with that his essence was scattered. The chronicles said this had happened a few times and the slain god or goddess would return, within a few centuries, maybe a Millenium or two, but I feared we did not have long to wait.
My Name is Sevoran Tridensa, and I grew up in a coastal city on the edge of this great sea and I witnessed the fall of Maritaeus as a small child, the patron deity of our town. Ever since, the Kingdom of Gnathus, devoted to Galaea, had often pressed our people into their armies, levied heavy taxes, and seized our fishing and trading vessels and forbade contact with our long time Merfolk allies. The sea became that much more unpredictable and floods, damaging storms, unexpected waves, and many other things became all the more common.
I did not grow up in a family particularly avid in its worship of our chosen deity, or any of the other ones. We attended the festivals, more for the fun and comradery as anything else, and participated in the ceremonies as all of our neighbors did. This passive participation ended when I met the Oracle, a right of passage for all children in my city when they came of age at 18, and was told that my hands would hold the secret to the resurrection of Maritaeus and my name would be an honored one.
It had taken me nearly twenty years of study and travel before I got the answers that I needed. During that time, I taught myself magic, for I had the spark to do so, enchantments, various specialized crafting that I would need, and then finally, as I neared the end of the information I would need, I began to learn necromancy. That one was harder, as the practice was frowned upon, if not outright forbidden in many areas, which hardly makes any sense to me as it seemed logical that raising another from the dead could only be of benefit, as far as I understood it.
As these thoughts ruminated in my head, I began to near the sea bed, with the ruined buildings and towers of the Merfolk City now gliding, seemingly upwards, on either side of me. I made a few small adjustments to my rate of descent so as to not impact the bottom too hard, and soon I found myself nearly knee deep in silt, and I began to walk, as quickly as I could, to the head of the Slain God.
The body of Maritaeus was vast, easily hundreds of feet long, with great purple and green shimmering fins on one side, and the torso and arms of a powerful man, with a huge head bearing a stern face and flowing hair and beard of a reddish brown. He wore beautiful armor made of linked scales that were nearly as jaw-dropping as his tail, and a powerful trident lay beside him.
Luckily for me, his head had landed near a small chamber, which looked like a cave carved out of the seabed, which I chose to make my main center of the complex rites I would need to perform. I walked into the cave and carefully withdrew one of the crystals that I had prepared. With a careful manipulation, the crystal moved to the center of the chamber and from it a bubble expanded until the entire small cave was free of water, allowing me to take my bags off, and begin to withdraw items, and even eat a little.
I pulled out the tome that I had compiled, full of notes, transcriptions of various other texts, and instructions. It was my hope that were my theories to be proven correct, this might become a volume that was famed. Paging to the appropriate sections, I got the information that I need, pulled the tools I would need out of one of the other bags and condensed everything into one bag, leaving the rest of my tools and the tome behind. I recast the spell to breath underwater, and another to allow me to walk on the bottom more easily without weights,
It took the rest of that day to setup the various scrying crystals, gathering circles, and a wide variety of glyphs and symbols carved around and onto the body. I reached the cavern, consulted my self-made codex and performed the next step of the spell, which locked in what I had already done, and found a fairly flat patch of ground to get a little sleep on.
I slept restlessly, with visions of tidal waves, flooding, and rage and felt barely rested. I began the next steps of the process as soon as I had eaten a little food. It took the better part of the morning to finish the various signs and chants. In the end, I saw outside and could sense that the power of the ocean was beginning to flow back into the body, the runes I had drawn and carved were glowing, and I could sense that there was a consciousness now tethered to the body.
I took a rest after I did that before I began the final step. Double checking that the waterproof spells had been appropriately cast on my spellbook, took out another crystal and created a bubble that would travel with me, so I could speak properly, and moved myself up to a place just over the forehead of the body. I open the book to the final and hardest piece to find.
I took a deep breath and began the final incantation for re-animating the body of a deity and bring the consciousness back. The language I spoke had not been uttered, so far as I knew, upon this Terra for an age of creation at least, the language of the Demons, the creators and original masters of re-animating bodies and retrieving souls. The various hand-signs and runes drawn in the silt before me left glowing images in the air and ground. The body began to glow and whisps of spirit and tendrils of energy started gathering into it.
I don’t know how long that the ritual took, the information I had said to continue until life and soul had been returned. Finally, I saw a flutter of the eyelids and a stirring of the limbs, and I allowed the ritual to stop and I waited. The great being, God of the Oceans, open his eyes and stretched limbs while looking around.
As I watched Maritaeus stir, I saw a change come over him. His face was one of fury, the tail transformed into a swirling vortex of water, and the rest of his upper body became a darker blue and covered in scales and he seemed to be growing in size and the water began to twist around him. He finally noticed me and moved in my direction so I was soon face to face with the vast, and menacing face, of the god I had restored.
A voiced boomed, “so, you are the one who has summed my mind, will, and power back to the body that has laid here, slain, for thirty years?”
“Yes, oh God of the Oceans, I have dedicated my life to restoring you to life, so you may avenge the ills inflicted on your people at the hands of the servants of Galaea.”
“My people!” the roar nearly deafened me. “The same people who urged peace, who capitulated, who sat at the conflict!? The failure of my Merfolk is why I eradicated them, and absorbed their power before the final battle, and I when I was struck down I had intended to flood your whole, accursed continent!”
I was aghast at this, “Divine Voice of the Seas, the city I grew up in has only ever served you, and we are upon that continent, we were aghast when the Earth Champion struck you down! I ask you to spare us and strike down our enemies! I sought to revive you out of that devotion.”
“No!” snarled Maritaeus. “No ‘Earth Champion’ or any other mortal creature struck me down! Somehow the accursed Dragon King got wind of what I planned, and it was he who slayed me, scattering my will and power, and I could sense, even in my fragmented state, that he cowed Galaea into submission as well! What is more, I can see inside your mind and while I can see you have honor for me, your true aim of reviving me was to see if you could do it! You may speak words of praise but in the depths of your heart but your fame as a scholar and the tome you have assembled is your true aim!”
“Please,” I began but was immediately cut off.
“Still, I suppose you have earned some reward for saving me the effort of regathering my mind, will, and power over the coming centuries. I shall grant your wish. Your Spellbook on how to raise a dead god shall be famous, and your name shall be cursed across the lands, for I name you my herald. You will go forth and warn the Terra of my return, and my wrath. They shall bow before me, or the flood will claim them all!”
As I felt myself filled with a strange power, and lifted out of the water, propelled toward the distant shore, spellbook clutched to my chest, and had time to look back at the great, swirling vortex that was forming in the ocean, I thought to myself “what have I done?”
This story rather took off on my, and I had fun writing it, and as I drift myself back into the mindset of working on my current book, this short story turned into a vignette set in the same Universe as my two published and current In-progress book, with reference to a major character.
Hope you enjoyed and that you are having a wonderful day and get to do, or experience, something creative.
– Jon
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