Bound With The Water Dragon

On the Other Side

The gateway was far less kept than the one in Maine, Morgan realized at a glance. There was life growing from it that Ejder could only assure him was otherworldly. 

It was amazing. Their very existence relied on nearly nothing at all. It left Ejder to make a nod about how life was what they made it, “Except for this. This is ruining life and had to be done away with.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s even on though,” Morgan countered. “Wouldn’t it be shooting water up for miles?”

Morgan could hear his grin in the dragon’s retort. “What do you think the trench is?” 

Morgan’s racing mind came to a halt all at once.  He gaped around them in the endless darkness, then asked, “Why is it so still? Wouldn’t it be de-fragmented like the other one?”

“Not after thousands of years…” Edjer answered. “It’s the most concrete structure. Even with its flaws.”

Morgan did his best to settle his mind while he imagined being shot to the other side of its exit point. He opened his mouth only to close it again. He found himself struggling to process just what he needed to do here. 

“It’s not whole though,” Morgan pressed. “The other one was complete. It had all of the runes…”

“They’re here, buried under all of this,” Ejder said and forced his fin to destroy it. 

Debris and old stone crumpled easily making him wonder just how fragile this place really was. 

“I don’t see how I’m going to be able to fit here,” he murmured mostly to himself. 

Morgan’s form, while small enough to get down there, was cramped. There was no real way to maneuver the area, not like in Maine.  

“Oh, you will,” Ejder promised as he cast a spell that surrounded his face with air. 

Morgan’s head began to throb as the bubble surrounding his face grew larger. The air itself felt weighted, much like the water around him but equalizing it throughout his body seemed completely undoable. Pressure slammed through his skull making it hard to think, let alone focus on his task. He was a tool and only that. At the slight shake of his head, Morgan was completely dry within the bubble. His human form struggled within the trench. The water surrounding him crushed him in all directions. 

“We better move,” Ejder huffed as Morgan began to lose consciousness.

Morgan felt as though he was sinking like a stone despite being dragged around near the sea floor. His body carelessly flailed around him at the speed that Ejder moved him up and back, left to right and right and in diagonals too. He could feel the compression threaten his life. A light in the darkness told him so. A stab through his stomach and yet another impaled his legs simultaneously despite nothing being down there with them. Morgan gritted his teeth and took the pain. There was nothing more he could do but allow the light to guide him home. 

“Morgan,” it called out to him. 

Not even it sounded like anyone he knew. Shrieks sounded around him calling his attention elsewhere but he couldn’t look away. The golden light burned through the depths, lighting up the trench’s walls brightly until all he could see was it. His eyes soon shut, unable to take it’s brilliance. There he began to make out that there was a form to it within the negative that sat behind his eyelids. It wasn’t death coming for him. It was Liia. 

Morgan lost though. In his human form at the bottom of the trench, he couldn’t move. Not on his own at least, and Ejder was certainly not done with him yet. Morgan rolled his eyes into the back of his head. He struggled to get even shallow breaths in; his own carbon dioxide poisoned him while he tried to keep himself alive just long enough for her to reach him. 

A tug along the sides of him wrenched him backwards. Ejder seemed to know where to go next, or at least it’s what it felt like. A tug forward had him wondering if Liia was close enough to see one last time, but as he opened his eyes for what felt like the final time, the gateway ripped them apart. Water surged in both directions forcing her back up and away from him with his name still on her lips. All the while, the two of them flew backwards for what felt like miles. Gallons of water dumped them out, hard onto a floor where Morgan choked on the fluid still in his lungs. 

They burned fiercely. The salt raged through his system, trashing all he had left. In the distance he could hear the water splashing around him hush. Not even the wave’s tumbling crests hissed as they evaporated into nothing. Morgan continued to cough. He struggled to get air in, just as he did on his exhale. 

“I swear to god…” he wheezed. “If you punctured my lungs,” Morgan struggled to get his whole thought out as another sharp pain shot through him. 

Morgan dropped back down to the floor, ruined. There he huffed against the slick surface while he tried to regain his strength. It felt like ages before he could open his eyes again. They felt swollen and heavy but so did everything else. A moment later a splitting headache screamed through his skull, threatening to pull him apart. 

Morgan groaned and fought it but it took hold harboring every last nerve ending in immeasurable pain. Not a thought made it past the barrier it created. The severity was unreal that not even Ejder could make a sound. Morgan rolled around trying to stop it. He battled with the stabbing, the white hot burns that left no marks. He scrambled to relieve his pain, pushing back against it in earnest until he could finally rest his palms against his temples to release the tension there.

“Aargh!” he hollered through the remainder of his pain. 

He felt stupid doing it, but in some way it claimed the war between the entities was over. He had won. Morgan moved to roll to his knees; his joints cracked mercilessly as he settled there. Closing his eyes, Morgan managed to channel his fury through it. Slowly he found his way back to his feet only to realize his surroundings left him even farther from home. 

Morgan’s gasp hadn’t gone unheard.

“Where are we, Ejder?” he asked, expecting the dragon to respond as he had been known to but something about this space was telling. 

Ejder wasn’t going to respond. 

And… just like Morgan predicted, he didn’t. He left him again to figure it out on his own. Morgan sighed, hating the game. He stepped forward carefully on the slick surface only to stop. There in front of him were pieces of the gateway. More caught his eye as he panned around the room and back to it. Morgan turned to look over his right shoulder to find the gateway in ruins. 

He couldn’t help but stare at it. Idly he wondered if Liia and the others made it out of the trench before it blew. Her image still burned into his mind. It made him think of the spell that did reach him on his descent. He wondered if it was her…

In the background of his theories stayed his darkening thoughts, the ones that reminded him that he destroyed any of the chances he had getting back to a life after this. His eyes drifted upward from what used to be the top of the gateway, only to solidify his concern. 

Up above him, where the ceiling should have still been, was broken away. Pieces of its presence still floated above him while most of it was torn away, revealing a deep, dark sky, unlike anything he had ever seen before. As he panned back to the left to be sure he wasn’t seeing things, Morgan honed in on movement just beyond a small, bright star. 

Its light grew brighter still, forcing colorful gold and orange bursts from it for light years. It spread far across the night sky only for Morgan to realize what this truly was. He couldn’t help but gape at the figures that blew past him, lighting only another star further away from him. He frowned when he realized they weren’t heading to earth. They weren’t even going to try to reach them. 

Morgan forced himself not to make a scene. He wanted to give them a piece of his mind but there was no way to; no way to be sure he would even reach them. Their distance was like nothing they could ever experience there on earth. How was he going to reach the Maidens of the Deep like this?

Ejder didn’t bother speaking up again, which bothered Morgan deeply. 

“We’ll, I’m glad you got what you wanted,” he said sarcastically. “The least you could have done was let me know you were out… but please, we all know this was all about you.”

Even then, there was no response. Morgan shook his head in defeat, leaning on what information Ejder lined his hope with. His lineage made him capable of being here. It made it easy to survive in such conditions, he told himself. But the fact of the matter was, he was human first and wanted the life he almost had. 

Rage built up inside of him. 

Being left there as Ejder’s vessel hurt deeply, he grumbled, then kicked the remaining debris hard into the wall only to shatter once more. Pieces ricocheted in directions he could hardly see, only to regret it. If he had any chance of getting back, he’d need a working gateway, not his self depriving rage.   

Morgan closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair only to cradle his skull with them. There he wondered what it was he did to deserve this. He wanted answers. He wanted to know why Ejder ever found him in the first place. If he was supposed to die, why save him. 

Morgan’s frown deepened as he reconnected with his life before this one. He could see glimpses of people. His uncle, cousin and his family. The home they shared was always on the water. They were always moving but he never knew why. His uncle was a collector, fascinated with treasures lost at sea. It’s what got him into diving in the first place. He had the hunger for adventure where the others simply did not. Morgan’s cousin was busy with his own kids back then. As they aged their interests changed with the tide…

Morgan blinked repeatedly, trying to flush the images from his mind. Erasing them, he decided, would be easier on his heart than remembering there was more to life than this adventure. The small things mattered. Life on earth mattered. And the fact that the Maidens of the Deep couldn’t understand that did too.

His thoughts wash away into nothing the moment he begins to feel his magic wane. He can breathe still, Morgan checks, pressing his hand to his heart to steady himself before checking the rest of him. At the very least he feels weaker than he was. His buffs that Ejder kept aiding him with, strength, stamina, nourishment and hydration all played an important part in order to get him through this and now they were running out. 

Morgan could feel the panic setting in as each one of them ticked off. He was in no position to find food, not out here. He’d starve before he made it off and into the dark unknown. It pushed him to practice all he heard Ejder say. Several times he hurt himself. A poison or two laid him out for several hours, but when he did finally get the right spells, the grumbling hunger left in his belly dissipated. With his strength returning and his thirst quenched, Morgan felt ready to take on his newest task, fighting with his demons to get back, when he finally pivoted on his heel to find Bryson and Grant staring back at him. 

Their eyes flicked to the side. Their body language telling as they went, not to make any sudden movements. But as his eyes traveled to follow theirs, Morgan found Ejder’s enormous liquid body between them.