Cursed | Armando Salazar x OC

THIRTY

I blink and all I see is blue.

Blue everywhere.

Water.

I'm underwater, floating about like plankton along the leisurely current.

But...how am I alive? The last thing I remember is being crushed by towering walls of water and after that...nothing. There is no way a person can survive that; I shouldn't have survived that.

And how am I breathing?

I look around again – yes, definitely underwater. So, I'm not going mad, then. What's more, there is a strange sense of weightlessness in my body, and I can't feel any of my limbs.

Neither my face.

Usually, I'd feel it when I frown or blink, but I'm not feeling anything. Nothing.

And when I look down at where my legs are supposed to be, that's exactly what I see: nothing.

I feel a sudden panic overcome me as I discover I don't have arms either, neither a body nor a head. I am nothing.

No, not nothing.

My inner panic stops when I hear a voice. It sounds neither male or female and seems to come from everywhere nowhere alike. It's just a voice and deep in my soul, I know I've heard it before.

Look around you, you are finally where you are meant to be.

At that moment, my mind opens up to what is truly happening – I am part of the ocean.

Not just part of the ocean, you are the ocean.

In a beat, I become aware of everything that occurs at every corner of the world. I'm everywhere at once – at the shore of St Martin, watching the guards patrol the docks and chasing the seagulls from sitting on their hats. I'm at Tortuga, hearing the lively music coming from the taverns and seeing men leave with dauntingly dressed women. I am also at the deepest trench where the light doesn't reach the bottom, where the temperatures dropped past freezing point. And then I'm in the middle of nowhere but surrounded by clicking whales, leisurely swimming to their next destination.

How is this possible? I thought I broke the Trident.

As Poseidon's heir, you are only limited where the water runs dry. The Trident was merely a symbol of the power that you hold.

But when I broke it, that pain in my chest...

The pain you felt was mere the loss of your connection with the Trident, nothing more. It is time you accept that you are Poseidon's heir, the true ruler of the seven seas. Use that power wisely.

Is that why the ocean protected me that night my parents' ship was attacked? Because it knew the pirates would have killed me if that meant breaking their curse?

Your blood would have tainted the water, yes.

That's what Barbosa meant when he said the sea protected me from him. Which also means that the man I thought was my father...couldn't have been.

When I realize the silence has become deafening, I call out for the voice to wait. There is one question I still need to ask.

I transport myself to the surface where the Silent Mary floats nearby. My view of the deck is limited, but I see the outlines of a figure at the rail. Moving closer, I'm overcome with joy to see it is Armando. He made it! And he's mortal and...crying? But...why?

One tear drips into the water and I'm hit with more grief that I thought a person could have. And I realize, he believes I'm dead. He watched me getting crushed by the walls when I sacrificed myself so they could escape Poseidon's Tomb.