Flooded

I always thought that running for my life would be easier said than done. That somehow the adrenaline pumping through my veins would effortlessly propel me forward to make sure I get to see another day.

I always thought I was somehow mentally preparing for this since I was alive. That fighting as I was to carve out a place for myself in the world would be enough on the day the hammer finally falls.

How wrong I was.

They came suddenly and without remorse. My village, small and unimportant, smugly tucked away in a valley just beside the sea, would see its last sunrise that day.

My parents woke with the usual cheeriness of those who know their place in the world and accept it. The animals had to be fed. The crops had to be harvested.

I stepped out of the house to start helping them with the chores, and stopped for a minute, putting on my boots, while enjoying the sun and the birds singing.

That`s when we heard the scream and my blood froze.

It was an unearthly sound - a last, terrified act of someone, who knew they were going to die.

Then I heard the horses` hooves on the ground and men shouting, metal clinging. The clinging of swords.

Then came the smoke of fire being carried by the mild breeze I was enjoying just a minute ago and the howling of people being massacred.

My father`s eyes widened. He looked at me with desperation.

My mother ran up to me and hugged me tight, while whispering in my ear:

"You need to run. Don`t come back."

She pushed me away before I could start protesting, and pointed at the forest beside our home.

"Run!" She screamed.

The first horsemen showed up on our street and started getting closer. Men, dressed in black, or perhaps drenched in the dried blood of their victims. With hardened faces, they would slaughter anyone who would try to get away from them. My neighbors. My relatives. My friends.

I was standing there, shaking and expecting to wake up from this nightmare, but the horsemen were ever approaching. My mother slapped me hard in the face and shouted at me once again.

"Run, you stupid child! Run for your life!"

I turned and started running with their screams ringing in my ears for days.

***

I knew the forest like the back of my hand. I grew up next to it, it was a friend to me my whole life. A dense forest, right next to a cliffside, from where one could see out on the sea. I would sit there often on summer nights, wondering upon the stars above and listening to the waves below. Seeing the horizon always had a calming effect on me, as if it was saying, everything was going to be alright.

There I was now, too terrified to cry or to even stop, wheezing from the effort of running almost blindly, but my feet knew the way through the trees. I did not believe they would follow after me, but I think one of them saw me. The whinnying of multiple horses and the booming sound of their hooves followed me and I was not sure anymore if it is only in my head or if they are real. But the men shouting certainly seemed real enough.

My side started piercing, and I felt like there is no way I can move on. Why must this happen?

I ended up at the cliff, the one where I used to sit for hours and believed that there was a greater good out there.

When I looked back, I was surrounded. My head was spinning and I was out of breath.

A group of men with dark grins on their faces started circling towards me, their swords sparkling in the sunlight, still dripping with fresh blood.

I fell to my knees in hopelessness.

A shadow detached itself from the group, a man with murderous intent mounted on a giant of a horse, ready to cut me down.

I thought I was ready to die. But the strangest thing happened, and a frightful wish to live took over my body. With no thoughts, as the horse reared towards me, I lunged forward and bit down hard on its neck, my teeth sinking into its hide, tasting salty blood from the beast as it filled my mouth.

The horse screamed, thrashed wildly, and threw its rider off its back, right into the splashing waves down below us.

Before I could thank my lucky stars, I was also kicked and sent tumbling backward, where I fell right into the cold sea. I could not hear nor see a thing, the wind filled up my entire being, then I hit the water hard and I was in and out of consciousness for a while. Salt and death filled my thoughts and I was pulled by a strong current.

***

I was in and out of consciousness for a while. In my half-awake state, I thought I saw the outline of a building, or rather, ruins of a building. But that can`t be right. I was under the sea. I must be dead. But that is where the current pulled me towards.

My eyes were suddenly wide open. I was lying on a cold, wet, stone floor. Everything hurt. But I could breathe. The air was heavy with the smell of rotten seaweed.

I slowly got up, and found myself at a corridor, with barely any visibility and a nauseating dampness all over the place. The walls were oozing with saltwater, and I started believing that I myself am composed of only saltwater now.

I slowly started walking and realized that I am in an opening of sorts. An opening into a much larger chamber and something fluorescently white inside, made even clearer by the darkness around us. Fluorescent, like a deep-sea fish. Moving almost human-like, but swaying in a strange way, like she was floating on water. I could not make out anything else.

I was terrified, but staying at the entrance would not yield more information. I was slowly accepting the fact, that I might not be dead after all. So where am I?

I stumbled into the chamber and shuffled closer to the humanoid looking creature. It did not pay any attention to me, even though the sounds were echoing clearly through this strange construction. As I got closer, I heard the metallic sound of... chains. Am I in a prison?

Now I was only a few meters away from the creature, and I could see more clearly. It did look like a person. In a pathetic state.

It was a woman, her skin and hair unnaturally white, her eyes unblinking and bulbous, like a fish. Her wrists chained up, her dress, once fashionable, no doubt, now in tatters with moss all over them. As I tried getting closer and reaching out to her, suddenly a swirl of water surrounded her and pushed me back, knocking me down.

That`s when I also saw the body of the horseman laying by her feet. Or rather, what was left of it.

The body was missing a head, and it looked like it was forcefully ripped open, with several organs seemingly missing.

It was all too much. I gagged, and had I had access to clear air, I might have been fine, but the heavy smell of salt and seaweed, with my hopeless situation, resulted in me throwing right up. Then I started crying.

That`s when she spoke to me for the first time.

"Why are you sad? You brought me a sacrifice. You will be spared."

"What have you done?" I stood up, shaking, keeping my distance from her.

"What do you mean? Isn`t this what you wanted?"

"Well... I guess, in a way. Yes, I did want him to die. Or rather, I did not want him to kill me."

"Then your wish was granted."

She sounded distant, almost hoarse, like someone who doesn`t use her voice often.

"Who are you?"

"They said I could never leave. I am here, because I could not be contained. My love, the sea, is what keeps me locked away." Her eyes dart back and forth, she tries to smile, but her face twitches instead. I suck on my teeth and almost burst out crying again. Mother of all that is holy, this woman is completely mad!

“I was locked away, trapped beneath the waves, cursed to rot in salt and silence. The seaweed is my only food, the salt my only companion. It seeps into my skin, poisons my mind.”

She laughed then, a sound like the waves breaking against the shore.

Her eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment, I felt the weight of centuries pressing down on me.

“Now, you are here. Why?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I just want to live.”

"Too bad. There is no life here. My life ended centuries ago."

"Could you not get out?" Even with her current mental state, she seemed to be more than powerful enough to get out of her confinement.

"Did you not just see what happens when you get close? The water won`t let you come near, nor will it let me go. We are one, bearing each other`s fate." Her voice falls to a whisper.

"But... I need to get out of here! You got to help me get out!" I shouted now, unaware how loud my voice echoes in the halls.

"Why? I have been alone here for so long... The company will do me good. And then... you will die a natural death."

I was shaking uncontrollably and looking at her with deadly menace. She stares back at me. The tension rises. Then she suddenly asks:

"Do you think everyone is deserving of mercy?"

I pause for a moment, and without replying, I leave the chamber to explore this desolate place and perhaps find salvation.

***

The darkness certainly does not help in figuring a way out of here.

This place is... big. And old, centuries old, it must be, preserved by an ancient power, no doubt. Is it her power? Or someone else`s? As I follow along other parts of the prison, I am feeling my way through rather than seeing. I can feel runes etched into the stones, runes I am unfamiliar with, but they invoke a deep sense of power, and brings to mind stories of gods that are long gone from our world.

The mad prisoner’s chilling question echoed in my mind: “Do you think everyone is deserving of mercy?” I had no answer. My parents, my village were certainly deserving of it, yet they received none of it. This woman, this unfortunate soul, trapped here since centuries ago - what was her crime? I did not know. Yet I was about to grant her this unspoken wish.

The damp corridors with their darkness and moist air pressed down on me. I stumbled and sat down, my back to the wall. I was exhausted beyond words. Yet, suddenly, I felt a pulsating warmth spreading in my body, and, for the first time in who knows how long, I could breathe free.

I stopped, clutching my chest, breath hitching. The saltwater air tasted different now, sharper, alive with the instinct that saved me before on the cliff.

I looked down at my hands. A faint glow beneath my skin, like veins filled with liquid light. Panic surged, but so did clarity.

This power I could feel from the prisoner was not beyond reach. Something inside me resonated with it, a hidden thread woven into my blood, calling for me, louder and louder by the minute, alerting me to something I could name.

I remembered the stories my mother told me, of our ancestors gifted by the sea itself—guardians with the rare ability to absorb and contain the ocean’s wrath.

Could it be true? Could I be one of them?

I started feeling like maybe I had the power to draw the prisoner’s power into myself. But I had to set her free to do it. And I had to shield myself from whatever has been eating away at her sanity all these years.

What a terrible choice. But if I am to get out of here alive, I need to take the chance. And risk losing myself in the process.

In order to do that, I had to become something new - something terrifying. Something powerful beyond my wildest dreams.

I clenched my fists, feeling the glow intensify, and headed back towards the prison chamber.

***

The prisoner was exactly in the way I left her, swaying gently like she was being tossed by waves in the sea, eyes unseeing to the hopelessness of her situation.

I took a step forward, the cold stone slick beneath my feet. The prisoner, pale and grotesque in the darkness, looked at me with a sudden suspicion.

"I am going to set you free. I am going to grant you mercy." I said with an unnatural calm in my voice. The prisoner`s eyes widened.

A dark energy began rising in the air between us and I had no doubts anymore.

Closing my eyes, I reached inside the warmth stirring in me, calling it forth to meet the madness in front of me.

Then I felt it, the magic in her pulsing to my own heartbeat.

At that moment, I let the magic within pour out of me, slowly seeping into the prison wall`s, weaving itself around the fragile essence of the prisoner and the magic walls caging her. Her body started shaking and her chains rattled, glowing in a deep blue light, as we joined in a spiritual bond, her imprisonment undone by a magical harmony.

The prisoner’s wild eyes met mine, confusion flickering beneath the madness.

“What are you?" She could barely speak at this point, water pouring out of her mouth, as if her entire being was being filled up to the brim with it.

“I am mercy,” I said softly. I did not want to prolong her suffering.

With a surge of my will, I drew her essence toward me - the raw, terrible power of centuries, filtered through this ancient magic I carried in my blood.

Pain and madness clawed at me, but I was ready. I had become the vessel now.

Her eyes, wide with a flicker of recognition shining in their depths, stared at me unflinching. She tried to scream, but the sound caught in her throat, swallowed by the rising tide of my power.

The chamber shook violently. Chains rattled and glowed with magic. The prison fought back, but my will was stronger. I wasn’t just breaking her free - I was becoming the key.

Then the madness surged - a storm of salt and seaweed, a scream echoing through centuries in my mind. Pain stabbed through me, sharp and burning, threatening to break my resolve. But I held on, letting the glow flood my veins, filtering the poison, turning it into something fierce and controlled.

Her power poured into me like a wild storm, fierce and terrifying -but I was the calm at its centre, steady and unyielding.

When the last chain shattered, she collapsed, spent and silent forever. Finally freed, I stood alone in the chamber, her essence now blazing bright inside me.

I was no longer just a girl running for her life.

I was the storm.

And the nightmare was only just beginning.