The Drowned Temple

I remember the storm.

We were in the middle of the Trade Sea when it appeared out of nowhere. I had just barely closed my eyes and listened to the waves lapping against the hull. Then lightning stroke, right beside us or maybe it hit us because the next thing I heard was yelling and footsteps rushing back and forth and everywhere.

Another crack of lightning. The thunder following in its wake deafened me. Our vessel danced fiercely on the violent waves. I ran on the deck to see the situation and help if I could, but another wave hurled against the hull and I was bucked right off the deck and into the cold depths below.

I don't remember much after that. The water froze me in an instant. Chills ran through my paralyzed body. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see. A pain built up in my lungs with a steady pace, and I think that's what got be out of that paralyzed, frozen state. I reached out toward the surface, toward that small flicker of sunlight. But my ascent was too slow, and my sight began to turn black. That pain in my lungs threatened to burst out and make me breathe.

Darkness wrapped around me before seawater surged into my lungs. I always thought my last thoughts would be something more substantial or creative, but in that one, last moment all I could think of was 'I don't want to die.'

That should have been the end, and I still don't understand why it wasn't. Or maybe it was and this was the afterlife, and all the Yuiwian teachings I had been listening to my whole life were about as wrong as could be.

There was no moonlit silver path to a tall, shining palace made of gold and diamonds sheltered in a beautiful garden. There was only the darkness, and a faint sense of falling, head first, deeper and deeper into some nameless abyss.

At times I thought something moved in the darkness. A shadow in front of me, another there just at the edge of my vision. I almost grew used to this strange new reality. Then I reached the seabed.

Or at least it passed me by. It was a vast plain, void of anything one could call life. I almost wondered why it would approach from above me before I remembered my upside-down situation. We passed each other in eerie silence. Now in place of the empty reaches of the ocean I watched the wall of earth stretching before me both right and left.

It never occurred to me to panic. It was as if there was a numbness over my head, a blanket keeping me calm. Not comforting, exactly, more cold but...efficient seemed the wrong word. Callous, maybe.

Only when I came across that gaping maw did my breath latch onto my throat. In the wall before me, as upside down as I was, a doorway opened up into the earth itself. It was not of nature, that much I saw immediately. It was a clean-cut, triangular shape deliberately carved into the rock. Around it, similarly carved, were shapes and forms I didn't immediately recognize, though one looked something akin to an octopus. Another seemed more like a whale. They were...dancing? Fighting? The more I looked the more I understood.

The doorway steadily pulled in a current of water, and being as close to it as I was, I was pulled in as well. The current was strong, but not violent or overwhelming. Steady and temperate. I surrendered to it as I had to my situation overall.

I did not expect to reach any kind of shore ever again, but the dark waters led me to some hidden cavern carefully carved. Waves lapped and water bubbled into a hollow chamber. The sense of air caressing my body felt suddenly foreign. How long since I last felt the wind on my face?

I could still breathe the air as well as I could the ocean waters before. I could see just as well, too. It was as if I was still alive.

The chamber's walls and floor were all too smooth to be natural, the corners too sharp and clean. I climbed at the edge of that pool and looked down to where I came from. It didn't seem real.

I wasn't cold, despite the circumstances. There was no hunger or thirst, it was all so hazy. I could see in that darkness where anyone else would rightfully be blind, and not ever did it occur to me to ask 'why'.

I felt something pull me forward, into the tunnels ahead. It felt like a breeze that wasn't a breeze, a call without sound or meaning, but there was something here that wanted me to continue. So I did. I don't know why. I didn't particularly want to, nor did I not want to. I simply obeyed.

There is a lonesome feeling to these tunnels. Stories I don't understand are carved into every available spot on every wall I come across. Still the place is hollow, void, empty of purpose. I think it had one, once. The stone still remembers. It remembers a time before the temple drowned beneath oceans of water. I don't even know how I know it, but I do.

I keep telling myself this story, my own small way of rebelling against whatever entity or presence wants to keep me here locked up and empty-minded. I don't even know if the thing is real, I just know I don't want to forget who I was, or what happened or how I got here. Even though I know one day I'll be as empty as this damned, drowned labyrinth.