Chapter One: The Untouched
Written by Jeff
Desperate cries echoed through the small communal chamber, packed from front to back with bodies that spilled through the doorway and into the storm outside. The rain came down in sheets, with vicious winds whipping palm leaves against all sides of the wooden building. Those stuck outside pressed themselves against the windows under the eaves, trying fruitlessly to escape the downpour and see and hear what was happening in the overcrowded room. There was little more clarity indoors; the howling wind and thrashing branches were almost loud enough to drown out the frightened exclamations of the people inside, causing the islanders to shout louder and louder until the din reached a deafening crescendo.
“What will we do?” “How will we survive?” “How will the fishermen return to the island?” What is happening? Please tell us what is happening!”
“Enough!” The command boomed with such authority that the room fell silent in an instant, leaving only the commotion of the storm rampaging outside. The chieftain had been waiting to address the crowd, trying to bide time for as many people as possible to arrive, but there was no use in delaying any longer. All eyes in the room, and many gazing through the windows surrounding the building, met with his in anticipation.
“I can only tell you what we have seen to be true,” he began. “The events of the last day are unprecedented. We have no reference for what is occurring around our island, and so we must not jump to speculation.” To this the crowd began to murmur anxiously, looking to one another with agitation. The chieftain raised his hand, and the attention returned to him. “This storm is unnatural. Many of us could feel strange energy guiding the winds in previous days, and some believed it was a portent for something more sinister. Indeed, it was. When we woke this morning, the ocean was gone.”
The room exploded once more in panicked outburst. The chieftain stood stolidly and waited for calm to resume before continuing on.
“Because of the storm, we cannot see how far the waters have retreated, but it has been long enough since they withdrew that the tides are clearly not a factor. Several volunteered to walk along the exposed, sandy floor to see how far it reaches, but the surface cannot be traversed. The volunteers sank nearly to their waist within ten steps, and were only able to be rescued thanks to those who remained on the dock pulling them up with fishing nets. Unfortunately, I cannot give you the answers we all seek. We simply do not know why the ocean has receded, how far it has gone from our shores, and if or when it will return. We must plan for the worst, but we must do so calmly and with purpose. We will find no benefit from fear and despair in the trying times ahead.”
“What about the boats?” shouted someone from the back. “There were four fishing parties out when the water disappeared. That’s nearly thirty men and women. How will they make it back to land?”
“I pray that they are still safe afloat in their vessels, with the waters beneath them providing food to keep them alive until they can return,” said the chieftain somberly. “If we cannot traverse the sands to look for them, then they surely will not be able to traverse the sands to return to us until the tides reach our shores again.”
“What about the beacon?” asked a woman near the front of the crowd. “Have we been able to contact Ranga, or any of the distant islands, or even the mainland?”
“The storm is disrupting the beacon. Something in the atmosphere is preventing the messages from reaching their targets, even to Ranga. Oftentimes our messages to the mainland are refracted and lost, but we have never been unable to reach our brothers and sisters on Ranga. Unfortunately, I fear their situation is currently the same as ours. On a clear day we can spot their island from the top of Piori Peak. It is possible that the ocean floor is completely exposed between our island and theirs, but there is no way to see until the storm calms.”
“We have to learn how far out the sands go,” said a man standing outside, through a crack in a window. “If the ocean has only retreated a few hundred paces and we simply can’t tell because of the storm, our response will be much different than if the water has receded past the Shelf. If the distance is short, we can begin immediately extending the docks and creating stable walkways to meet up with the new shore. If the waterline has dropped below the Shelf...” The man trailed off, and everyone silently pondered the implication.
“Let us hope that is not the case,” said the chieftain. “I agree with your assessment. We must determine how far the water has receded, as all actions moving forward will hinge on this. Still, the question remains: how can we traverse the sands? The surface is not stable, and cannot be walked upon.”
“Aye, it’s quicksand,” muttered a man in the center of the room. “I was one who tried to walk along it this morning, and it sucked me down with every step. I was lucky I only made it a few paces from the edge of the dock. It took ten people to drag me up out of the muck, like it was actively trying to pull me down.”
“You know the answer to this question,” came a soft, silvery voice from the back-right corner of the room. This corner, despite the general commotion and chaos in the rest of the room, had stayed to this point silent and composed. “You simply do not wish to ask of the one who can solve your problem.”
The whole room turned and faced the voice in the corner with suspicion. This was the section where the Aquine were seated, or at least the few of them on the island who had decided to join the assembly. It was rare that the Aquine took part in the communal dealings of the Callan people; even rarer that they spoke up in any hint of opposition or defiance. The sleek green hues of their skin shimmered in the artificial indoor light. Though the bodies in the rest of the room were packed uncomfortably close, there was a noticeable gap between the Aquine and the Callans who stood around them.
“I know what you would have me do,” said the chieftain with clear irritation, “and I would do it, if I thought there was any chance the Untouched would listen.”
“Touched,” the small group of Aquine responded in unison, stated in a tone of polite yet unabashed contradiction. The chieftain gave them a frustrated glare.
“Call her what you will, she has never concerned herself with the matters of the people of Koa, and I doubt she would do so now.”
“You know that she alone possesses the ability to see this island out of the storm,” stated another Aquine.
“No one asked for your opinion, fish!” belted a man near the front of the room, and several others in the crowd joined in to lob insults. The Aquine’s face showed little perturbance, but the translucent gills along his neck flittered in irritation.
“Enough of this nonsense!” shouted the chieftain. “This is no time for division. However misguided they may be in their suggestion, the Aquine are not wrong. The Untouched would be an invaluable asset to us right now, but we simply cannot rely on her assistance.”
“What other choice do we have?” asked a woman in the doorway. “What do we have to lose by asking if she says no?” At this the crowd began to grumble again loudly, neighbors weighing the proposition over with one another. Before long, another voice added, “We must ask for her assistance.” And then another: “Beg her for help! Please!”
The chieftain put his hand to his temple and sighed. “You all believe this is the way forward? This is what you would have me do?” Stoically, the crowd nodded their heads in agreement. “So be it. I will try, but know that I consider this to be a fool’s errand. When this island has needed her assistance in the past, she was nowhere to be found.”
“That is because my assistance was not actually required,” said a low voice in the crowd. “It was wanted - never needed - and I care little for what others want of me.” As she spoke, those around her inelegantly tried to squeeze away but found little room to retreat. The body looked like any other in the crowd, covered in a dark cloak, soaking wet from the rain with the hood still pulled up. As all eyes in the crowded room met her voice, she pulled back the hood to reveal her face: Skin of crimson red like the throbbing burn of the sun; hair a shock of white like bone bleached on the shore. If anyone near her would have had the room to look down, they might have noticed her bare red feet standing out amongst a sea of brown skin and sandals. The room exhaled an audible gasp, and those standing closest to the woman were now visibly and futilely trying to force their way away from her.
“Touched, you have come,” said an Aquine, bowing. “Blessings.” The woman bowed back courteously, then faced the chieftain again.
“Despite what some of you may believe, I am not this island’s protector, nor am I a shadow that haunts it in the darkness.” Her voice rang steady and strong, and those who were struggling to distance themselves from the woman stopped and heeded her words. “I am not of the Callan, nor the Aquine. Call me Touched or Untouched; preferably, call me nothing at all. I do not exist on this island or in this world to serve you. But whatever is happening right now, it affects all of us equally. In my long years, I have never seen anything like it. It threatens all life on Koa, and possibly all islands like it. Despite my...advantages, my fate is tied with yours in the survival of this island.”
“So you will help us?” asked the chieftain, trying and failing to mask his astonishment.
“I will traverse the sands and see how far the waters have receded,” she replied. “Of that much, I am quite curious myself. I will return and tell you what I have found, and from there we can begin a plan to ensure the survival of this island and its people.”
The crimson woman turned and faced the door, and without a word the people in her way scattered outside to make a path for her to leave. In the corner, the Aquine softly repeated the words “Touched” and “Blessed” and they pressed their hands together and bowed. Everyone in the crowd watched the woman pass through the doorway and make her way down to the beach, ignoring the chieftain as he attempted to maneuver his way through the mass of bodies to follow behind her.
As soon as she exited the wooden structure, the wind began to whip the woman’s robe furiously, filling it with pockets of air and jostling it around her body. As she reached up to pull the hood back up above her head, only a few of the onlookers noticed that not a single one of the long, white hairs on her head had budged from the gusts, nor did any of her hair or skin appear the slightest bit damp from the pouring rain.
“Please,” panted the chieftain, running up from behind her. “Please forgive me for not believing you would help. I’m sorry. What...what should I call you?”
“Don’t,” said the woman flatly. “Don’t call me anything. You have enough names for me already.” She said it without pause in her step. The chieftain followed along beside her clumsily with his hands clasped and head bowed in reverence. Behind them, a throng of onlookers trailed, cautiously keeping their distance.
The dock at the harbor now stood looming over the exposed, sandy floor. Several small boats rested on the ground with ropes still tied to the pier above; other boats without as much slack simply dangled off the edge. The support poles of the dock were covered in seaweed and barnacles, as were the large rocks that rested directly under its platform. Visibility was low, and little could be perceived past the dock itself, but even in the gray haze of the storm, one could still see the rich, rusty orange sand that blanketed Koa’s shorefront spreading out indefinitely into the horizon. Though the sand on the beach was bright and opalescent, the newly exposed ocean floor seemed its shadow, dense and caliginous from eons beneath the surf.
The crimson woman stopped at the end of the dock, took in the scene, and stepped off beyond the edge without a word. The chieftain grabbed for her instinctively but paused before seizing her robe, knowing better. Her foot came down and stopped on the air as if there were an invisible step, then the other foot came down and rested a step below that. The air seemed to flex under the soles of her feet, keeping them afloat. The group of villagers that had gathered around the periphery of the dock looked on in stunned silence as she descended the invisible staircase and strolled onto the coppery sand below. They saw her take several unimpeded steps before disappearing into the rainy haze. Her bare feet left behind no footprints in the sand.
Once out of view of the islanders, the woman thought about taking off her robe, but chose to keep it on. The fabric was thrashing around violently in the wind, which she found irritating, and it no longer served the purpose of keeping her inconspicuous among the Callans. The robe didn’t offer her any particular protection from the wind or rain; she didn’t feel either sensation against her skin. But she chose to keep it on anyway, as it seemed less of a burden to carry the garment with her entire body than folded up over her arm. Besides, she didn’t want to lose the thing if a gust blew it away. She needed it when she interacted with the islanders, however rare those occasions were. At the very least, she’d need it again when she returned to tell the others what she had found.
For the first hour of walking, the crimson woman didn’t find anything but rain and an unending sea of rusty sand, speckled with green stone, once-underwater flora, and patches of coral reef. There was no sign of the storm quelling in any direction, so she simply trudged on through the gray. Surprisingly, there was also no sign of dead sea life, at least not fish gasping for air and flopping in the mud. Clearly, the anemones, urchins, and other creatures too immobile to recede with the current weren’t going to last long in their new exposed environment, but everything else that lived in these waters seemed to have escaped with the ever-retreating tide.
In her pocket she had brought a few simple items, including a compass, which she followed on a heading due west from the pier. There was no telling if or when the storm was ever going to let up, and she wanted to be able to find her way back home once the investigation was complete. She had also wrapped up a small packet of food: dried fish and seaweed and a couple handfuls of boko nuts. It wasn’t enough to last her for a long journey, but honestly, she hadn’t expected this trip to take very long. How far out could the ocean possibly have gone? By the third hour of walking, her concern had grown significantly.
It was at this point that the seemingly endless brownish-orange path that spread in all directions finally changed. At first, it appeared that the clouds in front of her had turned a more ominous shade of gray, but as she continued on, a new bleak landscape presented itself. She now stood at a massive cliff face, with nowhere to continue forward but down, descending indefinitely into a pit of darkness. She had reached the Shelf. The islanders’ worst fears were real: This was the edge of the world, and even here the ocean was nowhere to be found.
When the ocean was where it was supposed to be, you could see the outline of the Shelf as a shadow clearly in the water. Beyond this point, nothing was certain. Koa’s boats didn’t sail past here without urgent cause, and many of those that did never returned. The deep that lie beyond the Shelf was home to huge and terrifying beasts. The crimson woman stared at the abyss and shuddered. She had sailed these waters with some of the most fearless, powerful crews to ever navigate the seas, and more than one had met its match underestimating what lives in the deep.
At first, she turned to start walking back to the island, preparing herself for the tough news she would be forced to deliver to the islanders, but then she stopped and went back to the edge, peering over the cliff. The view down was obscured by darkness, just as the view forward and backward was obscured by clouds. It was impossible to tell how far down it went, but it seemed to stretch forever. Nothing but vast, intoxicating unknown. She felt a shiver radiate down her spine. In all her travels, no one had ever claimed to have seen what lies at the bottom of the deep. If she needed a pragmatic reason to continue on - which she didn’t - it was still possible that the waterline was only slightly lower than the edge of the Shelf itself, and she simply couldn’t see it from where she stood. Unflinchingly, the crimson woman walked off the side of the cliff and began to descend down on an invisible spiral staircase, twirling slowly into the dark.
The further she descended, the more she expected to find her foot entering the surface of the ocean, but the water never came. Instead, she was simply enrobed in darkness, the dim light that made its way through the storm dimming further with each step downward. She counted each invisible stair into the deep. On step 10,679, her foot found purchase against the sandy floor, though none of the grains physically pressed against her skin.
The crimson woman stood in total blackness, soaking in the complete absence of light and the sheer dissociation it produced. Though she never could have planned for this particular scenario, she wasn’t entirely unprepared, and pulled out a small flare wand from inside her right robe pocket. She bashed the end of it against her palm and the wand exploded with artificial light, illuminating the area around her with such intensity that her eyes squinted reflexively in discomfort. The rain continued to fall so intently in the world above that misty, vaporous sheets still descended down to the bottom of the Shelf, but the seemingly impenetrable fog and clouds from earlier were gone. She counted her steps and did a quick calculation: This was still far from the bottom of the deep, likely only a ridge, but also likely deeper than most had ever ventured.
The crimson woman spun around slowly, taking in her environment. As she faced the rock edge, what she saw caused her to step back in a start. The top of a massive statue emerged from the sand. Though all that could be seen of the figure was its shoulders and forearms up to the top of its head, it still towered over the woman, and she estimated that its base must be buried at least seven or eight of her body lengths beneath the sand. She stepped closer and held up the light to get a better look at the statue. There were gills on the neck. Webbed hands holding a tremendous spear. Fearless, tightly-lidded eyes. This figure was undoubtedly Aquine, but somehow...more so. More significantly defined in all of the features that separated that race from the Callans. How old was this statue? How long ago did the Aquine live underwater, in the deep? Did they still?
As she walked away further from the edge of the Shelf, what at first seemed like rocks protruding from the sand revealed themselves to be the tops of structures. Decorative stone arches from roof gables were intricately carved with patterns and glyphs, but everything beneath was buried, giving only a glimpse of the city that lay below. She continued on a course due west from the statue, trying to get an idea of how far the city spread. By the time her flare wand began to sputter out and lose light, she got the feeling she had only passed the outskirts and hadn’t even reached the city center yet. These ruins were as large as capitals on the mainland. Oh, why hadn’t she brought more flares!
As the last flicker of light left the wand, the crimson woman took out her compass and made sure she was pointed due east, then trudged back to the Shelf in darkness. But before she even made it to the wall, she noticed something strange in the distance, something that glowed unnaturally in her path. Though she walked closer and closer, the glow didn’t seem to grow any brighter, always the same distance in the dark. Then, suddenly, she looked up and found that she was back at the wall, and the statue was directly in front of her. The glow was no longer an indeterminate distance in front of her, but now stood emanating from the sand directly between her and the statue. Without hesitation, she dropped to her knees and began to dig with her hands.
For this, the crimson woman took off her robe, as it unambiguously impeded her abilities. Just as she was able to create a barrier between her foot and the air, so could she also create a barrier in the space between her arms and the sand. With quick, fluid motions, she slid her hands and forearms under the surface of the ocean floor and shoveled out large piles of sand. Within 20 minutes she had cleared out the area in front of the statue down to its waist; within the hour she had reached the base of the statue and the original ground where the ancient Aquine city had stood.
The legs of the statue were positioned above an entrance to a cave which had been almost completely sealed by fallen rock and debris. Through small cracks she could see the unnatural light seeping out from inside. As she removed smaller boulders and cupped the dirt away with her hands, the rock pile began to loosen and crumble, sending more of the soft light into the darkness. When she yanked out a particularly stubborn stone from the center, it caused a rock wider than her shoulders to dislodge from the top and tumble end over end towards her. She didn’t flinch as the boulder seemingly smashed against the crown of her head and careened off into the sand, leaving no trace of impact on her skin. When she had finally cleared enough room to squeeze through, the crimson woman grabbed her robe, balled it up into one hand with annoyance, and shimmied through the opening into the cave.
The path inside wasn’t much wider than her hips, weaving between stalagmites that stretched from the ground to twice her height. How was this path formed through the rock? she wondered. It was so smooth and natural, almost as if it had been formed over millennia by the flow of water. But unlike streams that have bored through rock beds, this path felt deliberate, intentional. Just as it had been walking back to the statue before, the dull light rested on the horizon of her path, never seeming to get any brighter the closer she walked. She passed deeper and deeper into the cavern with just enough illumination to see the way forward, light emanating from a point perpetually beyond her reach.
After an hour in the cavern, she began to wonder if she was making a mistake, and stopped to eat her dried fish and nuts. The path was heading downward now, not steeply, but consistently. What was she expecting to find here? What did it matter? The ocean was gone. Without it, Koa likely wouldn’t survive. She looked at her compass again. Not due east, but close enough. This path curved and meandered, but it was still leading her back to the island, just far, far below it. She stood again and focused on the light that beckoned her forward, gleaming softly off the wet stones, and without worrying again as to why, continued to follow.
The way forward descended steadily, and after more than two hours inside the cave the crimson woman found the path before her submerged in water. She waded through it mindlessly, the liquid never touching her skin, sloughing off neatly to the sides of each leg. Taking in a breath, she had a realization: this cavern didn’t smell at all like the ocean. She cupped her hand and brought some of the water to her nose, then drank. It was fresh. No salt. She continued wading forward, now up to her waist, more intrigued by her surroundings than ever.
She turned a corner and a stone arch stopped her dead in her tracks, looming tall and carved deep through sheer rock. The shape of the entryway bowed and came to a sharp tip, with a thick molding inscribed in symbols and iconography similar to the ones she had seen on the roofs in the buried city, though decidedly more intricate. Beyond the arch the light beamed intently, softly pulsing, drawing her to its source. She passed through the gate, water up to her knees, into a chamber with an arched and polished stone ceiling. Down each wall like ribs, etchings of strange characters seemed to glow independently of the light source at the center of the room.
The crimson woman approached the pedestal. On it stood a glowing sphere of carnelian. As she drew near, its light intensified, but she did not pause. When the light was too much to bear, she closed her eyes and stepped forward blinded, hand unwaveringly reaching forward. As she grasped in the light, a figure appeared shadowed in front of her vision, blocking the intensity of the stone for only a moment. Its shadowed hand reached down and placed its fingertips on her forehead.
Her consciousness blinked. The light disappeared. Then there was only the ocean.
The storm was still raging, but the ocean had returned. She was in the middle of endless waves, her sight locked, no looking away. Where was her body? It became clear: there was no body. This was a vision. She let it guide her sight, absorbing everything she was shown. The perspective tilted upward. A column was rising from the ocean, ascending into the clouds and beyond with no discernable end. It was immense, inconceivable, as least as large as the entire island of Koa but stretching forever into the sky. Water rushed all around the column, nearly concealing it from view. The longer she stared, the less she could discern whether the streams were falling, or rising, or both at same time. The focus shifted from the foreground, and in the distance she could see another massive column protruding from the water, reaching beyond the clouds. Then she saw another, and another, each one surrounded by rushing water.
Her consciousness blinked, and the vision brought her to an island. It wasn’t Koa, but it was someplace similar, some remote island with Callan settlers not so different from the place she called home. The people were emaciated and thin, dying in their beds of starvation. The rains never subsided, the crops never grew. The ocean never returned, and they had nothing to eat.
Her consciousness blinked again, and now it was the crimson woman who was dying. Her eyes looked up from beneath water to the fading light of the sky as liquid filled her lungs. She tried to step up onto an invisible platform, desperate to escape, but her foot found no purchase in the water. Her body seized in the cold, and that was when she realized - she felt it. For the first time in an eternity, she felt the wetness of the water on her skin, the piercing chill of the ocean. She felt the water entering her lungs instead of air, and felt the life slowly leave her body.
With a heave, the crimson woman coughed out a lung’s worth of liquid. She was on her hands and knees in pitch black, half-submerged in standing water, retching. Her blind hand reached forward and found the pedestal, and she pulled herself up to stand and examined the flat platform with her hands. At its center the sphere of carnelian still rested, perfectly smooth and round, impossibly dense and unmoving. Its light was gone.
Another cough forced itself up from her lungs, a violent spasm that dropped her back down to one knee. Water splattered from her mouth onto the side of the pedestal and she wiped her lips with her forearm. The taste lingered on her tongue and dried out her throat. Brine. She was coughing up ocean water. Her hand dipped down to the pool on the ground and brought some of the liquid up to her mouth. It rinsed away the foul taste and quenched her thirst. The water in the cavern was still fresh.
Fate Index:
1. Protagonist dies
2. Someone important to the protagonist dies
3. Protagonist meets first love
4. Protagonist has great power but loses it
5. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
6. Protagonist has vision of the future
7. Protagonist learns unsettling information
8. Protagonist joins or befriends powerful creature
9. Protagonist leaves home for the first time
10. Global catastrophe
11. Shift in power
12. Betrayal
13. Protagonist finds powerful item or treasure
14. Protagonist discovers great power
15. Semi-permanent transformation
16. Permanent transformation
17. Protagonist takes up cause of beleaguered
18. Protagonist becomes antagonist
19. Protagonist becomes famous
20. Protagonist becomes infamous
Outcomes Used:
6. Protagonist has a vision of the future
10. Global catastrophe
Added outcomes:
Flashback episode
Something consequential turns out to be an illusion
