[Anni] Dramatic Deities

Decompression was never a fun process. It was slow, involved a lot of waiting, of treading water, or sitting in the water column in one's ship, waiting for one's body to adjust. It required depth gauges to be accurate, for swimmers to understand just where they were in the water. To be able to switch air tanks.

More than any of that though, it was dangerous. Move too quickly, get too impatient, and your blood turned to foam.

It was easier in the ships. Separated from the weight of the water by akadri tech. But even there, moving too quickly affected breathing and blood gases. So the prince took his route slowly, encased in the protective mithril and garonite frame of a long bodied fish, swimming elegantly towards the surface with careful nudges and pulls of joysticks and levers. Every fifty meters he stilled his climb, and waited.

And envied Chayandhal. This was the fourth time that their glowing patterns had flickered to life in the dark water to tell Ajit the Guardian was here. The fourth time that the Guardian had popped by just to check in.
The fourth time they'd told him about the surface.

"The fog remains thick, I don't understand why you're going up there." their voice boomed as they approached. "There will be nothing new when you arrive."

The Guardian did not need to go through decompression. The Guardian could simply Exist.
"I wish we could just take yehr word for it." he said. Chayandhal's lights shifted and turned in front of his view port—the clear daras casing that separated Ajit from the crushing depths around him.

Chayandhal's voice rippled through the ship, and their shadow passed across the very distant lights of leviathans and lutas. This section of ocean needed to have more lights placed down.
"I've been tasked to keep you safe." there was a mournful note in the Guardian's voice.

Ajit's heart ached to hear it, and he put a paw to the daras shell. Around him, the water shifted, rocking his little ship as a new current carried him sideways, then back down. Not far, no more than three meters, as the Guardian circled the ship and—much smaller, appeared in the viewport, placing their claws against Ajit's. The wide mouth atop their back was twisted into a mournful expression, while the more reptialian one below stared at him in completely passive ambivalance. "We trust yeh." he assured them. Chayandhal's wide mouth twitched, gratitude lining it. "We know yehr watchin over us. …Even when ye eat us."

"I've needed to do so so rarely." Chayandhal's voice didn't boom so much now. "Paschmahaa is safe."

It was safe.

But above the fog was sky.

The sky, which had not been visible to a garoch's eyes since before Ajit was born. His mother's spoke of it. Of an endless blue that transformed into inky night.

Decompression was unpleasant, it was boring. He really had no reason to be out of Paschara and many reasons to be in it.

But maybe there would be a break in the fog. A glimpse of sky.

"Come with me then? Escort me, if yeh must." he said. For a long while, Chayandhal was quiet. And then they nodded.