>>5355466>>5355427>>5355422>>5355365>>5355347>You suppose you could... try and meet this king of theirs. If only to remind them all of the true hierarchy of the sea.>This is our domain by right, but what is a kingdom without subjects. Meet this pretender king and show them their place... beneath us in service (and by extension our god).By your nature you are of course superior to all creatures, land or sea! However, as disdainful as you are of merfolk, as fellow ocean denizens you can at least tolerate them compared with land dwellers. So keeping with the current of wisdom, against your instincts you decide to take a softer approach.
After all, without guidance or say-so from your deity, you're free to act as you please. Until such a time, your own will is the guiding force.
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<span class="mu-s">"H-Halt there! What swims before the King in the D-Deep?"</span>
Having navigated your way through the ruins at your own pace, you eventually find your way to the highest point of the foot of the seamount down here, what had once been the island of Atlantis. In its sinking and through the ages the civilization broke apart into separated portions, so this lowest portion of the ruins down at the sea floor is what would have been the farthest periphery. Specifically, the harbor of the old city.
<span class="mu-b">"You know what I am. You feel it in the water."</span>
Mind you, it wasn't particularly easy finding your way up here, as further-destroyed as the ruins were by the earthquake (or perhaps they already were this way?) and without much of anything to guide you. The merfolk of course all fled, some even aimlessly out into the open ocean as you watch their glowing bodies grow fainter into blackness. But the remainder traveled up through the ruins, and so you followed.
To what remains standing of the harbor temple to some Atlantean sea god. A frightened assembly of the merfolk huddle among the broken columns and collapsed roof, at the feet of an insultingly human statue. Well, you could hardly call it an assembly when there's not more than fifty survivors, a collection of families including children and the elderly as well as those injured from the earthquake. Along with those who fled out to sea you wouldn't place the settlement at more than a hundred merfolk total, though this is to be expected of abyssal dwellers... not much of a life this deep, not much to eat.
<span class="mu-s">"Mercy please!"</span>
<span class="mu-s">"Save us oh king!"</span>
<span class="mu-s">"S-Silence!"</span> the one you suppose is the "royal" envoy feebly commands over the rest, <span class="mu-s">"What is your purpose here, forsaken one?"</span>
It really is quite a pathetic sight, the interior of the temple dimly lit by the collective luminescence of the feared and quivery lot of merfolk. Dreading the worst, they struggle in their own ways to find (or forsake) some hope that your arrival isn't their end. Some pray to their own mermaid god, some nervously take up arms against you, some even throw themselves at your feet.
