[So, I kinda said id release this as soon as I finished the cover, but I procrastinated it so... here goes.
Edit: cover has been hastily made-]
It was a beautiful day, one like sabre hadn't seen in a long time. Finally, the sand floating around in the air from an earlier asteroid had cleared up, showcasing the nearly luminescent water.
It glowed with the colours of the rainbow, like a kaleidoscope. Giant corals, each about the size of a building, shone with iridescent blues, greens, and pinks.
Tiny colourful seahorses no bigger than someone's hand were visible here and there, each and every one of them seeming to be a different hue than the last.
sabre glided through it all, admiring the living artwork that had been undiscovered to him only a few days before.
he swam with the group of seahorses, staring down at their long thin bodies and wide eyes. they seemed to be deep in conversation, seemingly gossiping about a passing jellyfish, which clearly couldn't be bothered enough to stop them.
he laughed and waved to them, then looped around them in circles.
eventually, he noticed something swirling in the distance.
"a whirlpool?", he thought, slowly swimming away from the seahorses which seemed not to be interested in the bubbling mass building a mere 20 meters away.
"yep, a whirlpool.", he confirmed that yes, it was in fact a whirlpool.
it violently enveloped the surrounding terrain, slowly appearing to get larger, and larger.
rather quickly, it was threatening to pull him in, the foam starting to swarm around him, and soon enough, he was sucked into the swirling vortex.
he flailed his fins wildly against the unforgiving current. with one swift flick, his fin snapped and pain shot through his body.
he sunk deeper into the depths of the whirlpool until everything went dark.
when he awoke, he did not find himself at the bottom of the ocean, bleeding out onto the sand, or somehow lying on an abandoned island, being eaten by birds twice his size.
instead, he seemed to be in some sort of... stronghold?
unsurprisingly, the first words that came to his mind were, "well, that's ominous."
he tried to swim up, immediately noticing that he wasn't enveloped in water like usual.
he pushed himself upward and into a sitting position, deciding to look around instead of lying on the cold stone floor, prone to an attack from whatever dragged him out of the water.
there might have been someone in the room, after all.
not like he could see them in the darkness.
"wait... what happened to my fin? it got sliced by debris, didn't it? it doesn't hurt right now so...??", he tried to look at his fin as he sat on the ground, but it was difficult to get anything more than a glimpse.
he turned it left and right, trying to make it give itself up.
finally succeeding at putting it in a position where the damage was visible, he could see that the fin was crudely stitched together with thick white thread.
before he had any time to consider the fact that he was likely just kidnapped, an odd box in the middle of the room opened up, revealing... something?
he chuckled, it was probably just a prank from someone, right? there's no reason to be scared, he thought.
he crawled over to it, and pulled himself up onto the edge, staring into it.
he could feel the sweat steadily beading on his forehead as he stammered, trying to absolve himself of the fear that had taken hold of his body.
he forced a laugh, but it was weak and ineffectual, a feeble attempt to cover his terror.
"yep, that's- that's normal. that is.. so normal." his laughter cut off abruptly, replaced by a sickly silence as the thought of what might have happened dawned on him.
his mouth went dry and his heart hammered in his chest as he scrambled to deny the fact he seemed to be staring into a very clearly bottomless pit.
"woahh, okay-," he stammered,
"that's totally not absolutely horrifying. scared? me? nooo, totally- totally not..." the words sounded hollow, even to his own ears, as fear coursed through his body.
he immediately let go and scurried into the nearest corner. as even more dread filled his chest, his spine stiffened and his throat tightened.
he felt the coldness of absolute terror running down his veins. this wasn't safe. this wasn't a prank.
if it was, it really, really wasn't funny.
as his vision finally cleared, his heart thumped heavily in his chest. there, in the corner of the room, sat a man with a smug look.. he hadn't noticed the figure before, but the stranger had been watching him silently throughout the entire ordeal.
it seems it noticed him looking in its direction, as it silently walked over, smiling, which on its own was incredibly creepy. however, what freaked sabre out the most was that he couldn't hear its footsteps.
anything with legs had footsteps, and he could clearly see the figure walking.
unless this was some creepy "hue-men" creature, with "sound-proof-soals" from the folktales, which could've been arguably worse, that thing wasn't normal.
there was something terribly wrong with it. Ignoring its icy-blue physique, it was translucent and covered by the same smoke that seemed to be blinding him earlier.
the man stared down at sabre, who was still shaking in terror in the corner. he then knelt down, to be at his level, and stared at him right in the eyes, as if he could see through his sea-weed bandana.
the man was still smiling at sabre, and sabre smiled back, even though he was still shaking on the ground. His breath stank, he obviously didn't go to the dentist recently.
"do humans go to the dentist?", he thought.
it didn't matter now, however, as the man was even closer to sabre than before.
the man's spindly-looking arms scooped up the merman, who desperately wriggled and squirmed.
despite his efforts, the man held him tight and refused to let him go.
he stood back up and carried sabre in front of the unidentified box.
sabre stared up at him, pleadingly, very worried about what was next.
For a split second, the figure seemed to be second guessing its choices.
It took a deep breath and dropped him right into the coffer. [A/N, idk if that's a word, English is weird, sorry.]
the smoke surrounded him, and before he could try to reach out for the edge, he seemed to be in an entirely different place.
this place, unlike the last, was devoid of darkness, the walls were shining brighter than the sun, burning his eyes, even through the blindfold.
he crawled into the unknown, hoping that he would just be sent back home and that he wouldn't have to deal with this nonsense.
alas. he was never that lucky. not when his people nearly all went extinct, and not now.
His arms were both incredibly tired. Both of them seemed to be screaming in agony from the amount of shuffling he had to do to cross whatever corridor lay before him.
eventually, his hand makes contact with what feels like a portal of some sort.
it resembled a hole in the wall, with a swirling glow coming from within it. it shimmered like a rainbow. yellow, red, and green. As mentioned two sentences before, like a rainbow
it shined and burned, and sent light into every pore of his body.
he stared at the portal, his hands shaking.
he knows he must go through it to not die of starvation, yet something inside of him fills him with dread.
his heart raced and his stomach churned as he briefly considered just sitting here and dying of thirst or something, before finally mustering up the courage to take that first step and dive into the portal.
he took a deep breath and jumped forward, the heat from the doorway before him searing his skin. his entire body burned with unbearable pain as he threw himself into the portal.
[BOOOOOOOOM, FIRST CHAPTER, sorry if any of this sounds weird, I've had to write this exact scenario like 5 times, not including the one I actually published. Anyways, the next chapter should be better, things kind of get a lot less wellwritten when you have to rewrite them five times becaUSE YOU DIDNT SAVE THE WORD DOCUMENT 🙃,,, yep :,] Anyways, thanks for reading!!]