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Chapter 0: Prologue
The world around Mizuna was a vast place. Since the beginnings of her life, even as a tiny egg she had struggled to survive. Once she had grown old enough to depart from her mother, Mizuna and a group of her many other sisters spread out from the coastal area where they were born and raised. It was a mixture of natural instinct as well as the need to venture forth from the cramped cave. Ever since then, she only saw glances of her other sisters, but only rarely. Sometimes is was unclear if other sahuagin she saw were related to her or not.
But from the first few days on her own, she quickly learned that the ocean was a dangerous place. Her first experience there involved getting sexually assaulted by an aggressive scylla, so she learned rather quickly to avoid that place if she desired not to be violated by suckers. Because of that incident, she felt rather defenseless. And seeing other sahuagin with crude weapons they made on their own made her realize she needed something of her own. A bit of trade with traveling goblins and she found herself with her double pointed spear. With that, she found hunting and defending herself to come much more easily. It wasn't long before she had taught herself how to wield the weapon with competence.
Her hunting grounds were the river itself for quite a while. Although as she became more curious, Mizuna found herself once again drawn to the open sea. With a bit more combat experience and power, she met with the scylla again and chased her off when the tentacled beast tried to harass her again. Thus, her hunting grounds expanded. And she had more room to roam with her new protection. However, as she would discover, there was one location all other creatures avoided. Near the outer ocean plains, where an inexplicable barrier prevented any life from leaving. To the northern waters, where the cold became a bit harsh for Mizuna's body, the sahuagin had seen from a distance, a rather desolate, yet rather impressive ruin formation. Even Mizuna herself felt strange as she got even remotely near the ruins. Her natural instinct told her that she should just avoid that location, but... As she looked at it from afar, perhaps her curiosity would get the better of her one day.
Chapter 1: Secrets Words Can't Describe
Ever since she saw the ruins, the memories of it's structure and the sensations she felt never left her mind. As she grew more curious about the land around her, the curiosity of what the interior of the ruins were like grew as well. For so long that one place remained a location she had not explored within the lands she had seen. From within the wet and damp cove that was her home, Mizuna awoke with yet another dream of the ruins. This time, she dreamed of swimming closer, and closer to it, a sense of anticipation growing in her heart that seemed almost alien to her, as if the feeling were not her own but a sensation from the ruins itself, trying to call out to her, while she drew ever closer to the ruins.
But such were just dreams. For so long she had followed the example of other sea mamono and kept clear of the ruins. But her dreams were not known only to herself. Fellow kin of her race had seen her, especially one of blue hair who she came to know as Cai. Without speaking a word to each other, the two sahuagin met one day, and identified with each other as explorers of the water. Cai followed Mizuna on her own whenever she saw her, and often tailed her for a long time, swimming together before she'd return to her home. And now, Mizuna found Cai had tailed her to her home, as from within the underground bubble of earth, Cai's head and fins stuck out from the pool at the end of her cave that connected to the river outside. Silently, the other fish stared at Mizuna as she awoke, before she saw Cai lift her fin, and place a stone rock that Mizuna would recognize on the ground. That was the same stone as from the ruins that intrigued both fish so greatly. Pushing the rock forward, Cai put emphasis on it. It was her way of saying,
"Let's go to the ruins."