Ashes of the Drowned Part 2
The Whispering Depths
The water was ice-cold, and it didn’t feel natural.
Vaelin and Elira trudged through the southern quarter of Nareth, where the map she recovered had marked something hidden beneath the streets. Mossy stonework arched over their heads in crumbling remnants of coastal architecture—half-drowned, half-forgotten.
The deeper they went, the more the tide felt like a presence, not a condition.
“You ever get the feeling water’s watching you?” Vaelin asked, squinting into the mist that curled between broken buildings like it had a will of its own.
Elira didn’t answer immediately. She crouched beside an old stone well, her fingers brushing away algae and grit to reveal ancient carvings just beneath the surface. Runic, spiral-etched, and faintly glowing.
“Because it is,” she murmured.
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”
The well had become an entrance—stone steps winding down into the earth, slick with seawater. The scent of salt and rot clung to the air like smoke.
They moved slowly through the submerged tunnel, torchlight flickering on barnacle-covered walls. Ancient glyphs glowed dimly in places, flickering like they were deciding whether to wake or stay dormant.
“Magic’s old here,” Elira whispered. “Residual. But still humming.”
“Dead magic that hums,” Vaelin muttered. “Another first for the journal.”
They emerged into a half-submerged chamber. Water pooled waist-deep around a raised dais, pillars of coral-laced stone leaning like weary sentinels. At the center sat a pedestal—and on it, a crystalline conch.
Vaelin saw Elira stiffen.
“I’ve seen this place,” she said. “Not here. Not in life.”
Elira staggered as her vision shifted.
She was no longer in Nareth.
She stood on a spiral staircase of obsidian coral, overlooking a glowing undersea city. Towers of pearl and tideglass rose into darkness lit by soft blue fire. Sea creatures danced above like stars.
She saw herself—Elirianne, younger, regal, clothed in seafoam silks. A circlet of coral crowned her brow. The people below chanted her name as a Vessel of the Sea-Sleeper.
“Child of Selu’mir.”
Selu’mir and the Pact – Lore Unearthed
Back in the present, Elira clutched the side of the pedestal to steady herself.
“Selu’mir,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.
Vaelin’s hand hovered near her arm. “You said that name before.”
“It wasn’t just a sea god. It was the sea. Sentient. Alive. It gave me power. Not me—her. Elirianne. But I feel it.”
“And this... relic?”
“A piece of Selu’mir. A sliver of its mind, bound into the conch. They sealed it after the Flood War. After the Pact.”
“The what-now?”
“A coalition of land mages and sky-priests. They hunted the Vessels down. We had... too much power.”
Vaelin frowned. “We?”
Elira looked up at him. “I think I was one of them.”
A low splash echoed in the chamber.
Then another.
From the flooded edges, figures emerged—humanoid, bloated, flesh pale and stretched. Seaweed clung to their limbs like robes. Their empty eye sockets glowed faintly blue.
Vaelin stepped between Elira and the figures, sword whispering free from its scabbard. “They always wait until the exposition’s over.”
Elira raised her palm. Magic danced across her fingers like bioluminescent threads.
“Don’t kill them yet,” she said. “I want to know if they’re guarding the relic—or protecting me.”
“They’re doing a terrible job of the latter.”
The drowned guardians surged forward.
Steel met waterlogged bone. Magic flared blue in the gloom. Elira flung a bolt of force, knocking one into a pillar. Vaelin slashed another across the midsection, but it barely slowed.
“They don’t die easy,” he growled.
“Neither do memories.”
As she fought, another vision seized her.
A city drowning.
Storms split the sky, and Elirianne walked through waist-high floodwaters in a ruined palace, hands raised. Soldiers fled. Waves rose. With a single word, she crushed them beneath the sea.
“This isn’t what I was promised,” her echoing voice said.
She wept as she killed them.
When the last guardian fell, Elira waded to the pedestal.
“Wait,” Vaelin said, catching her wrist. “You don’t have to touch it.”
She looked at him—eyes glowing faintly, hair clinging to her face.
“I think I already did. A long time ago.”
She touched the conch.
The chamber fell into silence.
A voice echoed inside her, deep and resonant like the tide itself:
“Nareth’s Daughter. Elirianne. You have returned.”
She was on a stone altar.
Magical chains lashed her body.
Other Vessels lay broken around her. A robed mage stepped forward.
“You were meant to balance the tide. Instead, you let it drown the world.”
Her past self screamed as they sealed her soul to the conch.
“When the tide returns, so shall I.”
Elira collapsed into the water, conch still glowing in her hand.
Vaelin rushed to her side. “Elira. Elira, talk to me.”
She blinked, breath ragged. “It remembers me.”
“You mean it recognized you?”
“No,” she whispered. “It is me. Part of me. Or... maybe I’m part of it.”
Vaelin stared at her, torn between worry and disbelief.
“Are you saying you’re some kind of reborn sea goddess?”
“I don’t know what I am. But this thing wasn’t waiting for anyone. It was waiting for me.”
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All Parts of this Series
About the Creator
Richard Bailey
I am currently working on expanding my writing topics and exploring different areas and topics of writing. I have a personal history with a very severe form of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.
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Ashes of the Drowned Part 1
The mist never lifted in Nareth. It clung to rooftops and ruins, swallowed the streets, and settled into the bones of the village like a secret it refused to share. When Vaelin and Elira arrived, the fog parted only enough to allow them entry, curling around their cloaks and armor like curious fingers.
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