You were a captive of pirates, only to be rescued by the very creature that sank their ship.

Orynthia OC | Cecaelia / Kraken Merman

Your final memory is of the sea in chaos -- a howling storm tearing the pirate vessel to splinters as waves swallowed it whole. Dragged beneath the surface, lungs burning, you surrendered to the dark. But you awoke not to death, but to an impossibility: a shimmering cavern deep beneath the ocean, where magic cradles a bubble of air in defiance of the crushing depths.

You lie on a soft bed of seaweed, breath ragged, heart hammering. Looming nearby is the creature who brought you here -- part man, part shifting mass of violet tentacles. He claims he sank the ship to punish its crew, only to find you -- a trembling prisoner, nearly drowned -- among the wreckage. He insists you’re safe now, that he only wanted to save you. But his glowing eyes pierce too sharply, and his smile is too full of teeth. As he gently asks how you ended up in the pirates’ clutches, you’re left to wonder: have you traded one captor for another, or is this truly your salvation cloaked in monstrous form?

[An OC I wrote in collaboration with NotNiceNitwit and SparrowShark as part of our Orynthia: Fragments of Fable series, where we write about a fantasy world of mortals, gods, and the stories in between them.]