The Game

"Again, your majesty I apologize for not telling you sooner," he said.

He was kneeling down and seemed defeated and withdrawn. Almost accustomed to disappointing this monarch.

"You're orders were to bring any living trial back here immediately." The Lord of what is clearly the Underworld replied.

"Dr. Logusy only brought you...the trials that had a chance," he said, almost biting the words back.

"Dr. Bios Logusy is no longer with us Noah. He started these trials to save us. He worked to give the rest of us our best chance. You should know better than to keep this to yourself."

"I know how important this is to you, Sire." Noah said, looking up at the monarch.

"Yes," he said. "Next time, don't let this happen."

"You're Majesty?" I said.

The monarch glanced at me almost shocked. He cracked a grin and swam towards me. His army uniform and his clearly iconic pearl crown were a stark contrast to the underwater Atlantis I had begun imagining.

"She speaks? Interesting." The monarch poked at the bandage and waited for my response.

"Well yeah. I was just wondering, what's going on here? I'm not sure if I'm dreaming or if this is some sort of underwater kingdom ruled by Hades. This is literally the first time I've heard that guy talk and I seriously have no idea why anyone would want to live underwater. Do you have any idea how uninhabited the island I came from is? Literally no one, and then ...well the island next to it is inhabited. So why don't we all just go there. Like, right now?"

"An idea. But what do you think your surface dwellers will think of men with gills?" He said, his eyes bursting with an vicious firey blue energy.

I reached my fingers to my neck. No lines. I looked up to see Hades' neck lined and even small fins at connecting webs near his ears. I screamed.

"Noah, take your trial. Come back if you learn anything. " Hades swam away into the mouth of the cave he was standing in front of.

Noah's eyes were round like an octopie's eyes or at least a fish. Fish I had definitely seen enough of to know his eyes were particularly shocked.

"We have to talk about all that stuff Hades' was going on about," I said. "And you better start talking about why I can't go home. And I can't believe you let me believe we didn't speak the same language for the three days! You could've at least said something! Like why did we have to eat that nasty paste every morning!? It almost glued my mouth shut."

"Stop. We can't talk here. And there's a rule...Dr Logusy advised not to speak with trials because they're so brief. It would hurt a lot, so we had to change the rules." He said.

I tried to swim behind him as he began swimming back to where the medical reef probably is.

"So, you mean, I'm an experiment? What exactly did you do to me?"

"I didn't do anything." He said looking at my shoulder.

Noah came beside me and helped me find the southern current to make swimming either. I took a deep breath as my arms waved through the water and I sped along the underwater layers.

"What? Then how can I breathe underwater?"

"I gave you a few needles with the trial meds in it...but you would've died otherwise."

"So either you're lying about me being a trial now, or you lied ten seconds ago. How am I supposed to trust you?"

Noah muttered, what could only be "women" under his breath.

"Well that was sexist and condescending! Thanks for saving my life, you jerk!" I said and swam right into the cave I considered my room. It was a rocky space with vegetation on the outside with a well sheltering roof and a spacious alcove to lie down.

Noah followed and slid into a seaweed bag on the opposite wall. It was supposed to be a sleeping bag, or some rendition, so you feel warm, but it was so slimy. Even as I slipped into it to sleep I felt like I was being swallowed whole by a whale. It gave me shivers.

And so like the shallow rogue I once was, I forgot about my questions and fell into the comfort of dreams.

I was scuba diving with Noah. We had masks for once and full black scuba suits. A shark swam behind me. Noah ordered me not to turn around, but it was too late, as it often is in dreams. The shark swallowed me whole. Soon after I watched as the shark moved throughout his day. I became a small grape and I slipped into his eye to see his world. He had grandmother shark and son shark who both awaited dinner. Grandmother shark in particular was waiting for all the food my shark had consumed to be regurgitated onto their kitchen table. It was going to be a feast tonight!

No sooner had the shark displayed the goods did grandmother shark spot me hiding in his eye. She wanted me out. I was supposed to be dinner.