Benthos (D&D AU)

[SimSimma]

Hi again! This is a little something I had whipped up, just to tide y'all over! It's a little strange, in as far as getting a bit deeper into the eldritch horror vibe I want to give this story, and as such I would love any feedback as to how it reads or feels. Don't wanna drag on too long here, but thanks to all the people who've read so far! I was expecting single digit readers and I'm so honestly blown away. It's motivating me to keep writing, that's for sure
Anyway, it's 3:30 AM and a bitch has her Machine Design quiz in eight hours, so I'm gonna call it here...

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Normally, meeting a figure whose existence every Church denies might cause some consternation, or a little internal turmoil. Our First Mate, however, took it almost in stride. After all, it's something he'd considered many times before, given the way he'd grown up.
Generally, a Genasi's bloodline is fairly easy to discern. They generally have personalities that match the natural phenomena they're aligned with. As a matter of fact, many Genasi tribes believe that the conditions under which you are born are a gift from the extraplanar figure you're descended from, and will name you based on these conditions on the spot. So if you met an air Genasi named Sirocco, you might expect them to be a warm, maybe sensual person. But if you met one named Gale, you could expect a hothead or someone with a forceful personality.
The First Mate doesn't know his name, or the conditions under which he was born. He was found among the refuse at the edge of a human town, after a heavy rain, as the stray dogs nosed his infant body and wondered if it was still okay to eat meat if it was blue. The grizzled veteran who saved and raised the First Mate never gave him one, referring to him as "Boy" (though he used to call him "Girl" until the First Mate grew old enough to correct him). But even without a name, he knew he wasn't descended from any of the usual names when it came to water deities.
Firstly, where water generally splashes and ripples and announces its presence, the First Mate was quiet. He could comfortably go days without talking, and even spent a few years completely nonverbal. That being said, unlike many of the placid Lake and Stream Genasi that were common, the First Mate was brimming with energy, and intensely curious besides. While he mostly napped through the day due to his light sensitivity, it wasn't uncommon for a person to look up during their family dinner to find a pair of faintly glowing bright green eyes staring directly at them through the window. On rare occasions you'd find him just standing in your house.
But the main thing that told him he wasn't like other Genasi was the beach. Genasi generally love being around their namesakes. (In our previous example, you might find Sirocco lying supine on a sand dune or Gale dancing barefoot in the eye of a storm) As a teenager, he put a lot of time and energy into trying to find what water was his, visiting lakes and rivers and chasing storms across the country, hoping to find that Pull other Genasi wrote about. Eventually, his searches took him to the shore, where the ocean and the beach danced their eternal two-step. He swam in the water for the entire day, but didn't feel anything beyond the usual buzz brought about by water. As night fell, he began to reluctantly exit the water but suddenly, he stopped short. At the exact moment the sun slipped below the horizon, he felt the finest gossamer thread brush past his consciousness, causing every hair on his head to stand on end. Dread and anticipation warred in the pit of his stomach as he slowly turned around. Hoping against hope, he walked deeper into the water and submerged himself fully. As he slipped beneath the surface and began to breathe the water, the thread became stronger and more solid, and started faintly tugging at the base of his spine. The Pull. Fuck.
There could be no reason for him to only feel The Pull when the sun was down - unless he was a deadwater child. Deadwater referred to the fact that nothing would thrive in water outside of Pelor's light, and those that felt it's Pull were destined to suffer. One of the cursed who nobody would claim, because in their blood was the end of the world. Even though, officially, the Deep Ones never existed, everyone knew the reason that deadwater children just vanished when their local Church found out about them. It showed that the gods remembered, and were afraid. Those that believed in The Deep Ones described(in quiet voices, but if you knew how to look, they were easy to find) how the first gods Gruumsh, Moradin, Corellon Larethian and Pelor, fought for weeks, day and night, to chain The Deep Ones to the bottom of the sea, and subjugate the sea so that it might be made to part for the creation of dry land. Those stories had always thrilled him, but for the wrong reasons. Where most people cheered as they heard about Sekolah and Procan and Demogorgon and the rest were pushed down into eternal sleep, and the world was brought to order, he had always been rapt as storytellers described the world before the fall of The Deep Ones. At that time, there was no dry land (though there were buildings, towers and temples and observatories, that survived until the present day). Gruumsh also hadn't wrapped the sky around the planet to control the waves, and Pelor hadn't hung the sun. When Sekolah swam the sea and Procan walked the bottom, the seas were filled with boiling blood as animals ate, and were eaten in an eternal feeding frenzy. There was no sun, no alien light from elsewhere, but nearly every living thing exhibited some form of bioluminescence, painting the entire area in a dull red glow. Finally, the sea wasn't yet bent to the rules of moon and wave, and it writhed and undulated as if it was alive, a titanic copper serpent that spanned the entire earth.
Picturing this tableau often left him dizzy with excitement, and aching to hunt. It was usually those urges that got him out into the yard, cajoling his father until he'd reluctantly show him a few things he picked up in the army (or later, just spar with him, until he grew too good for even that).
Looking back at that, it's honestly laughable that he was surprised that he was deadwater at all. He wondered if anyone else had seen the signs, and resolved to act as if he'd found his Pull in the ocean during the day, instead. As was the custom, he collected some of the water around him to take home with him.
Two months later, he could say one thing. "Deadwater" was a complete misnomer. He'd kept the water in a glass aquarium under his bed since he got back home, and while the small creatures previously living there had died, there was... new life inhabiting the tank. A few weeks in, some strange fish had begun rapidly growing, feasting on the festering corpses of the flora and fauna that had died there previously. He had been shocked by the speed with which the fish had grown from microscopic specks, so small he'd thought they were just detritus at first, to fish about the length of his finger and shaped like flat arrowheads. They had spines along the edges of their body that looked wickedly sharp that they used to carve up the corpses of the larger animals they feasted on. As he watched them, The Pull at the base of his spine tightened to an insistent pressure. On a whim, he used razor sharp nails to open his skin at the finger, and let a drop of blood fall into the tank.
Immediately, the tank quieted, as in unison the fish stopped their bottom feeding to stare at the shining turquoise teardrop that splashed into the water, sinking slowly while somehow avoiding the dispersion expected from a similar liquid. There was a moment of silence, one heartbeat, and then the water was whipped to boiling by the frenzy of hundreds of living daggers hurling themselves in the same direction. In the fray, many scores opened in the flesh of some fish as their neighbors tore by and ripped into them uncaringly. As the drop off deadwater Genasi blood settled on the floor of the tank, the aquarium became a bloodbath as fish fought to the death. He watched with his heart in his throat. This was worlds beyond what he'd expected. Tears rolled freely down his face as he stared unblinking at the scene before him. He couldn't believe how...how beautiful this was! Was this what the time before Light looked like? He wondered which great deity had ignited that frenzy. Honestly, watching this made him kind of feel like a deity himself. The rush was indescribable.
He continued to stare at the tank for what felt like seconds (he later learns it was just under eighteen hours) until it was over, and fish corpses floated at the top of the tank in a thick layer. There was one survivor; a fish who was now pressed to the bottom of the tank, ignoring the blood that streamed from half a dozen gloaming wounds as it greedily shoved its face into the droplet as if its life depended on it (Who knows? Maybe it did?). Hundreds of lives, snuffed out just like that. He blinked, and almost immediately fell over as he realized how faint he felt. He was starving. It felt as if sharp teeth were tearing at his insides, and for a second his eyes strayed to the tank, with its scores of fish aberration corpses, scythed wheat ready for harvest. He swallowed, but managed to fight back from the precipice of madness. It wasn't worth it, he reasoned. There would likely be more fish spawning in the tank, and feeding them would help them grow even larger. Interestingly enough, once he said this to himself, the pain decreased to almost nothing, leaving behind the normal dull ache of hunger. He pushed the tank back under the bed and stumbled out of the room. Several hours later, when he came back sated and ready for sleep, he peeked in on the tank and was surprised to see the tiny specks he knew to be new fish, showing up much earlier than he'd expected. In addition, the fish that had previously won appeared to still be alive, and the bleeding had stopped. To his eyes, it had also grown slightly! Nothing alarming, but instead of the length of his index finger, it was probably about that of his middle finger instead. The excitement began to creep up his spine, but he resisted his urges and fought himself to sleep. When he awoke, he sprung out of bed and had his face pressed to the tank seconds later. The fish had already grown to full size, and he observed them as he got ready for the day. Not even bones remained of the ones that had died last night. After a moment's pause, he grinned as he pricked himself again and let another drop of blood fall into the tank.

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He sprinted through the gloom of the forest, twisting through labyrinthine branches and vines with a practiced ease. Since the last time he'd changed a bit. The catlike curiosity was still present in his face, but it had sharpened into something more predatory. He'd filled out, with the musculature of someone who came by it naturally and not one who'd spent time lifting weights. His black hair was now about waist length, and whipped behind him in clean, thick locs. He wore nothing save for a pair of cotton pants to prevent his legs from being lacerated by thorns, and a cloth chest binding to allow him to run properly.
It had been five years since the first time he had caused a Frenzy, and since then the water had been permanently tinged red from the consistent bloodbath. He continued to tempt the fish with one drop of blood. Over time, the average size of ALL of the fish were growing, not just the winners, and he was concerned about using more blood than he already was. Tonight would be the last one. He'd just left the funeral for his father, who had died of old age not two weeks ago. While he still mourned, he also knew that there wasn't anything holding him in this town anymore. He ached for the deadwaters beyond the edge of Pelor's sunlight, and he was going to reach them no matter what. The Pull at the base of his spine throbbed in assent, low pulses teasing at his soul and constantly keeping him on edge. Presently he reached the cave in which the last Frenzy was taking place.
He had had to get rid of the tank once the fish became larger than his hand. There were too many to swim freely anymore, and so he'd gone searching and found a massive, deep underground pool in a cave in the forest on the west side of town. He'd sealed off any and all light from above, and with liberal application of salt (and blood) a hospitable environment for aberrant fish was created. Right now, two fish were locked in a war of attrition. As they grew, the fish were able to survive longer, and the Frenzies became less of a quick melee and more a drawn-out battle. This Frenzy had lasted almost a month, and the last two fish (now about the size of large dogs) had been fighting for twelve hours.
As he squatted by the edge of the water, the more perceptive of the two gladiators noticed something with its pitiful vision and was distracted for a split second. But that was a split second too long, and a quick lunge from the other one had its skull shattered as he slowly floated belly up to the top to join its brethren. The Final Champion ignored him as it whipped around and took off like a torpedo towards the bottom of the pool. However, it didn't make it. The water around it became solid like a cage, and against its will, it was pulled out of the water to violently thrash in front of him. Saliva was running like a waterfall over his lips and down his chin as he stared at the fish before him with a hunger he'd never felt before. It felt primal. If he were able to see himself, he'd notice that his teeth had become sharp points not unlike a shark's in shape, and in that vein a second row of teeth had appeared behind the first one. His eyes had gone fully black, and seemed to take up his entire face. In addition, his hair was standing on end, locs thrashing and whipping about like flags in a storm. His first successful Hunt.
Without thought he immediately bit into the heaving side of the fish, tearing a strip loose as he ignored its thrashing. He barely even tasted it as it slid over his tongue and into his throat, taking another bite without stopping to breathe. The sounds of noisy eating filled the cave for the next hour.
When he came back to himself, he was lying on the floor of the cave, covered in blood. He had ended up eating every single dead fish in the pond as well, somehow consuming well above his body weight. His chest heaved as he came down from the incredible high he had just experienced. The blood on his lips and tongue tasted better than the finest wine, and he knew it was because he had Hunted it. He had spent five years stalking the perfect meal, and the release from the experience was insane. At this moment, he realized that The Pull at the base of his spine had quieted. He felt... at peace for the first time in his life. He glanced at the pool, and at the droplet at the bottom, and turned away. He knew the port was somewhere along the shore, and he'd just walk until he found it. Someone would be staffing a ship, and need a new Cabin Boy, right?