[GW2] — Darkness

[Note: since the subject matter is mostly a mystery in the world of GW2 at the time of this journal, anything written below is mostly headcanon.]

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Everything around him was dark. The bleak, heavy shroud of his birthplace. The all-enveloping, skyless amnion that was his universe, comforting like a womb, crushing like the belly of a hungry beast.

It was cold, this womb, and black. Far from the soothing pulsating radiance of his home, somewhere below his feet, and still not close enough from the dry scorch above to be able to perceive it.

There, in the twilight between both worlds, all he could see was the dull blue glow of his own fins.

He closed his eyes. Sight was not useful here. Instead, he remained attentive to his other senses. Here, creatures saw not with the eyes, but through the subtle changes in this leviathan’s belly: the echo of a distant call, the brush of a fluctuating current, the clap of a predator’s mighty tail as it rushed forward to snatch its prey.

His grip tightened over the hilt of his blade.

He did not like being here. He would have much rather stayed in the glow of the depth, near the world’s bosom, where everything was warm, and glistened with multicolored inner fires. True, he knew how to fight. Who among his people didn’t? But his strength laid not in the blade, but in magic. Raids to the surface were for the warriors. The protection of the Houses in the Deep was for the mages. He, was a mage. His purpose was not to brave the distance and the elements to claim trophies, but to remain, to protect, to push back the vicious titans attracted by the Glow. A task just as honorable and dangerous as the hunters’.

Yet this mage was slowly rising into that black, starless sky, into the hot, dry void above.

His hand reached to his neck, and closed around the symbol dangling there. He was already missing the swaying constellations far below him dearly, but he couldn’t turn back.

With that thought he gathered some resolve, and infused more power into the manta-shaped water sprite that was carrying him ever upward. Soundlessly it sped up, and the mage could begin to feel the change upon his pale skin: the water was getting warmer. He opened his eyes and he could see, high above him, the first twinkling sparks of the sky fire, piercing through the waves.

This would not be his first time to the surface. Each individual, when they come of age, must set foot on dry land at least once, lest they be ostracized as weaponless children for the rest of their lives, forever dependent on the mercy of their patrons. But after his first excursion….

He would have much rather braved a kraken alone than going back there. The sky there… Unreachable. Dizzyingly open and vast, a gaping, murky hole in the world, ready to suck everything in. The open air, always fluctuating. One time hot, the next cold. Water falling from above in thousand of hammering droplets, sometimes as pelting ice… The sky fire, blinding and merciless, not soft and gently pulsing like the shimmer of the plants and creatures from his home. Hot fire during the day, then pale and cold during the night.

The surface world was a world of madness, a maelstrom where everything was in a state of chaos. How anything could thrive up there was a mystery to him. And anything that did was to be avoided.

And yet that is where she went.

“Her steps have faltered”, they all said as they coldly nodded. “Must have. A shame, truly.” And they went on their business, the matter closed, the case dismissed. After all, of all that went, many never came back. Such was the Way. The Deep held many secrets, and claimed many lives. Those who were not strong enough to fend off Its predators, only deserved to become Its preys.

And this, he could not accept. Not for her.

He unsheathed his blade and grasped at the twisted wand at his side, pointing it upwards towards the light above defiantly. He was swimming along now, his fins cutting through the warmth surrounding him, bringing him faster and faster towards the open air. Blue fire erupted from it, cascading down his arm, turning him into an underwater blue comet.

He would pierce the membrane separating his world from theirs, and he would not do it quietly.

He was a mage, bearer of the Deep Flame, and he would breach into this crazy world and bring her back.