hadriel | [text] there is water at the bottom of the ocean

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[text] there is water at the bottom of the ocean

[Originally, it started out as a well-meaning adventurous foray for personal edification, yadda, yadda, yadda. Time moves so slowly in Hadriel that Nate has been clawing at ways to occupy it, and since he's exhausted the library of any texts that aren't in gibberish it stands to reason he might seek personal fulfillment elsewhere. After waking up with the usual restlessness he considered the wide expanse of lakeside real estate out his window and thought, yeah, a swim sounds nice.

The swim was less than nice.

Several minor explosions and some (honestly) impressive spell-work later sees him soaked to the skin but otherwise unscathed outside of minor lacerations on one arm - there's really only so much you can do when trying to evade a shark with two fucking heads - scribbling quickly in a notebook with the sort of fervor reserved for the truly mad. Lake-adjacent, blessedly on the shore with a towel slung around bare shoulders, he quickly snaps a photograph of his work with his phone and hits SEND TO ALL.

The message is as follows:]

does anyone know what the hell this is
i found it at the bottom of the lake

Attachment: [monster.jpg]

p.s. don't go swimming in the lake

Threaded | Flat

[It was a good idea, at first.

Indulge in professional curiosity while simultaneously taking a quick dip, maybe see how deep the lake stretched, find something to bring back - if there was anything to bring back. The water was clear and calm and the jeans he sacrificed for this endeavor were a little bulky, but bathing suits weren't exactly falling out of the sky in Hadriel so he'd have to make do.

More surprising was how cold it was while wading in, like a fresh spring that would feel crisp and refreshing were it not for the steep drop-off about twenty feet in, a vast expanse of black water. There were fish (small ones) and plants (similarly small, grass-like) peppering the shallows and all of it stopped abruptly at the edge. Aquatic greenery waving at the fringe of the void. He took a deep breath and slid in.

As a salvage diver he had enough confidence in his lung capacity to not overtly worry about getting stuck somewhere, or finding something interesting and lingering a little longer, but about thirty feet below the surface the lake floor was a misty mass of sediment, drifting, empty. Nothing. It wasn't until he swam closer that he realized the fog that stretched across the entirety of the lake, this far down, was a halocline. It settled like a puffy blanket beneath him, an unfortunate indication that if he was going to go any further he'd need a submarine flashlight and another lungful of air just to see beneath the dense swirl of saltwater meeting freshwater. As he turned about a dozen feet above the murk, he saw it.

A massive, bulky dorsal fin emerging from the cloud, followed by a caudal fin that would place the animal close to the length of a school bus. It lifted its head - heads, it had two, Jesus Christ - and while Nate had never feared sharks the size alone was off-putting. Another flicker of movement caught his eye across the lake and other appendages rose out of the dark, tentacles and gaping teeth, like something out of a horror movie and he felt himself expel a waterlogged holy shit while the fog beneath him roiled with new monstrosities.

Thirty seconds later sees him on-shore and panting, five minutes later sees him standing in front of an apartment door in wet jeans, furious no one is answering his knocks. Pawing for his phone Nate sends out a frantic text to one of the only two people he knows with experience in "blasting" things.]

taako where the fuck are you i need your help

oh yeah textbook stuff.

fantasy jimmy buffetts lost shaker of salt

[DID SOMEONE JUST POST A DRAWING OF SOME BONES.]

Fascinating. It looks almost prehistoric. Did you bring any of it back with you?

[Yes you were "married" a week ago, no she is not going to bring it up right now, this find is more important.]

you went SWIMMING in the lake??

[Sorry, all of this is super intersting but she has a more important question.]

What do you think ate its head?

And it's hard to tell if those were just too many legs or just 'legs' part of a large moble fin, even snakes have 'leg bones' sometimes but they don't actually have more than stumbles actually visibile.

[Wow if he'd had any interest in swimming in the lake in the first place, that would've killed it completely.]

Well that's creepy.

Are you okay?

[Lance is guessing that the PS, combined with the little sharktopus, indicates Nate also ran into some just as creepy things that are still alive.]

If you are able to retrieve them Doctor Brennan and I can take a look. We're able to determine a lot by looking at the bones of a creature.

What inspired you to even swim in the lake?

[She's seen that lake. It does not look refreshing.]

How big was it?

I could try reanimating it.

My general rule is 'no swimming ever' but, yeah, the lake is a pretty shit place to take a dip.

Did the glassy shell fragments seem natural or manmade?

[The drawings were pretty adorable, Jill would give him that.]

Why were you at the bottom of the lake?

[Seems like a weird place to be.]

[Oh hello, this is interesting.]

How'd you manage to see anything at the bottom?

[Does he have armor?]

it looks like a notebook ?

you found a notebook at the bottom of the lake ?

[ hey teach ;))))) ]

gross. you saw that thing?? did you get hurt??

It's disrespectful to disturb the dead. You should have left them alone.

hold on.
lup wasn't lying when she said there were sharks in the lake???
how many dicks does a sharktopus have?

[Magnus is here to ask the real questions.]

Guess the gods weren't kidding when they said the previous inhabitants of this city were very different than us.

[And that's coming from the robot hiding on the other end of this text, who is watching this conversation riiiiiight here with particular interest.]

Something horrifying. Why was swimming in the lake a thing you did?

A better sense of the scale of the thing would be appreciated.

Threaded | Flat

[closed to taako & lup]

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