Prologue A Meeting Between Worlds (Patreon)

The young girl stretched as she stepped into her bathroom to start her day. She glanced at the mirror taking in her appearance. She was 127 centimeters tall which was only a little short for her race. Much of her skin was coated with a layer of fine blue-green scales that glinted in the light and contrasted with creamy if pale skin. She had a cute round face with a small nose, pink lips, and large expressive cerulean eyes. Framing her face was her shoulder-length light blue hair, something that likely came from her land-dwelling ancestors.

Yes land-dwelling, she was a member of an aquatic race, an amphibious aquatic race. Her webbed ears and her scales showed that. Her scales covered her cheeks lightly but the rest of her face was smooth skin. They also covered her arms like gloves and her legs like tights. While not reflected in the mirror, they covered her back fully. What was reflected in the mirror was the fact that her chest and her belly were fully exposed. Completely bare of scales. She had small delicate nipples with modest light pink areolas. Her breasts were full and perky if modest. Down below, she had a small mound with a fine dusting of scales on each side of the mound.

Naturally, the reason these were visible was her current undressed state, but that was normal for her. Some liked to swim in a wet suit, but she preferred to swim nude. Like most members of her race, she spent most of her life naked.

Turning away from the mirror satisfied with the way she looked for the moment, she went to take care of business. First, she emptied her bladder, and then she grabbed a brush and started her bath. While some would think an aquatic species would not need baths, they would be wrong.

As soon as the bath was drawn, she slipped in and started cleaning her scales. Just the normal daily maintenance. Although today was special, her first birthday in a new place. She was officially fifteen, and her mom, unfortunately, had to be away. It was a nice place though. The water was warm, they had their own private little house away from the center of town with a decent plot of seafloor. Her younger sisters weren’t up yet, and her brother had left for the academy a couple of years ago. Dad had gone with him for work reasons. At least that was what mom had told her. She didn’t really believe that, she wasn’t stupid. Something more was going on there. She had a feeling it also played into why they had moved out here last month.

Anyway all that meant that at least for the next couple of hours, she was alone. She felt she would go for a nice swim, and explore the area after her bath. There were quite a few places she wanted to explore around her new home. They had a nice reef not far from her new house, and vast Kelri forests dotted the seascape around here. Kelri was a large plant common to the middle depths. They towered above the seafloor and reached almost halfway to the surface when fully grown. Kelri created thick lovely forests that she loved to swim in, but also had plenty of places to hide. Just like the reef. Near the base of the plants were large fleshy pods that were quite rich in nutrients. They also tasted good and were one of many sea plants they grew for food. Her people were farmers and hunters.

Before long she was done with her bath, and heading for a swim. When she heard a strange noise coming outside. Her curiosity peaked, she hurried down the corridor from the living area to the entrance room. A small plain room with a dark pool of water in the middle and several large windows served as the entrance to her family home. She stopped to close and lock the front door behind her. She had the key clipped to her hair looking like an ornament. After checking it was secure, she dived into the pool.

Another young girl found herself in a different set of circumstances. She stared out a viewport watching the fish swimming by. This wasn’t exactly how she expected to be spending her days. Just a month ago she had been planning a lovely party with all her friends to celebrate her upcoming fifteenth birthday party, then a week before it all began her mom dragged her out here on a deep-sea expedition. They weren’t quite in the deep sea yet, but they were deeper than any sub had gone before. This world’s oceans were filled with sea monsters. The most powerful of which was a large predatory creature. Although no accurate description had been given since they stuck to the depths most of the time and were very aggressive. They went out of their way to destroy ships and subs.

She didn’t want to think about sea monsters, but that was all she could think about. She kept imagining one of them attacking the sub. She sighed again, utterly bored. She idly adjusted the pressure suit she was wearing. Her mom had made her wear it, and its presence just exacerbated her worries. It was a precaution in case of a hull breach, but all she could imagine was a tentacle crushing the hull and plucking her out.

She was turning from the viewport hoping to find something to distract herself with when she caught sight of a large tentacle. It barely registered for her before every alarm blared followed by a loud screeching sound. The hull buckled and water started pouring into the room. In a panic, she grabbed her helmet and put it on while rushing to the hatch. She never made it to the hatch. The sub suddenly rocked hard, just as she secured her helmet. She was flung into a wall and the world turned dark.

She slipped into the water and swam down the short tunnel out into the open ocean. She slowed and looked around. As she did, she caught sight of her new home. At its core, it was a dome but not that boring in its look. Clean organic lines with four smaller domes attached to the main dome. Growing around the structure was locally grown coral that provided camouflage for the structure, and attracted smaller fish to the area. This was true of most homes in the middle depths and was also true of the sparsely populated upper depths. Anything deeper than the middle depths used a different style. The entrance to her home was a tunnel at the base of the dome, and it was hidden by the coral. The camouflage helped to deter intruders. Not that they had many to worry about, at least here.

She barely thought about that, only enjoying the colorful appearance of her new home for a moment. Then she chose a direction. Nothing looked out of place in the area, but the sound she had heard came from the Kelri forest to the right of her entrance. As she entered the forest, she kept low. She kept a constant eye on her surroundings and reached out with her other senses. From experience, she knew that she was not an apex predator here. Around here the apex predators were the Krakis, but those creatures preferred large prey. She was far too small for it. No what she really had to worry about were smaller predators like Draki. The Draki was a small armored fish that hunted in small groups and were known to attack anything, even a Krakis, if there were enough Draki in the group.

They weren’t the only predator that could be found in this region of the middle depths, but were the most dangerous. Thankfully they lost courage if you killed enough of them, but the preference was always to avoid conflict. Her experienced eyes picked out every hiding place and kept an eye on it. Always waiting for an ambush, but thankfully none came. Her superior senses had allowed her to avoid several predators. Combined with the clever use of a few illusions, they were her best tool.

She pushed thoughts of predators away when she saw the broken and torn Kelri ahead. She swam into the resultant clearing eyes open, looking for any threats. Any ocean dweller that got to her age already knew the dangers of swimming alone. One careless move and you were dead.

Slipping around a broken floating piece of Kelri, she finally saw the cause of the sound. Something big had crashed into the forest. It was large metal, and entire sections looked to have been crushed. She had never seen one like this before. It was a submarine, but not like the few she had seen at the sub pens or the small transport her family-owned. Mom had taken that for her business in town earlier. It was small, unpressurized, and designed to get the family around town. It was only five meters long, outfitted with a small cargo bay, and a passenger cabin. Pressurized personal subs were only owned by the wealthy, and were honestly just a show of wealth.

This one was huge like the war-subs she had seen at the pens. She even had the chance to see a few moving once or twice. The sub before her was lacking the thick armor plates common to war-subs, and evidently, it must have been pressurized. She could see air slowly escaping the hull. The hull was a drab brown, ruptured and crushed in quite a few places. Then she caught sight of the rear and noticed the propeller. It was an odd design, very unlike what her people would use for propulsion.

Curious about the wreck, she moved toward it. Reaching out with her senses searching for any signs of life. She found only one, unmoving. Deeming it safe enough, she swam into the wreck for a look around. Inside she found the interior was just as drab, and now she smelled blood. She sighed that wasn’t good, predators were attracted to blood. Thankfully this blood smelled off, so maybe she would be fine.

Turning a corner, she found the source. A body floating and leaking its life fluids into the surrounding waters. Curious, she examined the strange humanoid briefly. He was large, even for a male, at just under two meters tall. Attached to his rear was a long scale-covered tail that was half his height in length. It ended in a bladed stinger. He was extremely muscular and ungainly. His limbs wrapped in some kind of wetsuit. She pulled it off an arm taking advantage of a tear. Whatever he was, he wasn’t an ocean dweller. His limbs were not suited to swimming at all.

Now she knew who built this sub, it belonged to the land dwellers that took over the surface a century ago. She honestly didn’t know why they wanted the surface. The young girl had seen images of the surface in school. There was nothing there. It was completely unlike the lush ocean, well if you ignored the lower depths. They were rather sparse, but life could be found there.

She put those thoughts aside and started looking around. Wondering what brought the land dwellers down here. There didn’t seem to be anything that would tell her, but then she remembered that one sign of life she had felt earlier. She headed for it but found herself blocked by a door. The door was sealed and the frame was crushed. There was no way to open it. At least with her muscles. She focused on the door, and after a moment the metal screeched and deformed. The barrier slipped out of its frame and crashed to the floor. She paused to recover her energy for a moment, and then slipped inside. The room was flooded like the corridor, and floating not far from her was a single body. Getting close she found a single individual this time, they appeared female and she was sealed in a suit of some kind. This one looked far more intact and wasn’t torn.

She could sense that this female was alive, the suit likely responsible for that. She didn’t think this land dweller could breathe the water. School had taught her that most land-dwellers could only breathe air just like most ocean dwellers could only breathe water. Her kind were special in that they could breathe both. A fact they often used to their advantage.

After a moment’s thought, she grabbed the land dweller and began to swim back. The land dweller wasn’t moving, and down here she would not live long. She needed to get her somewhere that she could safely examine her. Then she could ask questions later.