The Descent of íde (ee-da)

The Siren of StarSea

This article is set in the Explorers of StarSea™ setting.
Written by Julene Johnson
Cover Image by Nsey Benajah

StarSea, with it's vast expanse of space and aether, houses species without number in the kingdoms of Mortals, Monsters, and Majestics. Each kingdom has claim on a level of StarSea. Majestics thrive in the thin aether and chaos of the high seas, Mortals sail their age-of-sail starships on the aether currents of the open seas and settle on its scattered islands, and Monsters swim through the dense aether of the deep seas, surfacing into the open seas for food or sport.
But there is a tale of a mortal driven by an unquenchable thirst who sank into the Deep Sea, to live among monsters. It is a tale of caution. A warning to those who lust for power. It is a legend, relegated to the category of myth. It is a nightmare, the shadowy creature that hides beneath every sea-bed.
And yet, this tale is true.

The Ghost Ship

Our tale begins with a restless young woman and the ghost ship she espied caught in a cerulean aether current in the Azure open sea. íde, she was called, and the ship was an unknown vessel passing near her home, the island of Salus. The people of Salus watched for such ships - those which crashed about, pitched by errant streams, no direction or control evident in their motion. Ghost Ships. For there were many which found their way into the island's domain.

When íde called to her people, they paid no heed. For though they knew her report likely to be true, íde was known to use words as weapons to aid her pursuit of dominance. But soon, the starship was spotted by others, and the people moved as one to the shore.
Tow boats were sent, the Starship Tural retrieved, and the salvaging begun. Supplies, starship parts, abandoned personal items. All were taken, bartered, recycled, not out of greed or apathy, but because the people of Salus knew the truth without checking. No one survived the Cerulean Current.
Or so they thought.
íde was ambling beside others hard at work on the Starship Tural when a scream pierced the air, drawing eyes to the ship, and spurring the pound of running steps. First to site the of the scream was íde, and the salvage crew found her standing over a man cowering in a closet in the captain's quarters.
Whispers began, and swelled through the salvagers, down the gang plank, and across the island.
Someone remained on the ghost ship. Someone alive.

Sound like Crimson

His name was Ronen Brek, and he was an anomaly. Never before had the people of Salus seen a survivor of the Cerulean. Questions fired at Ronen. Answers were slow to come. Only when silence reigned, did truth find its voice. The sound, Ronen said. The sound like crimson called to his crew, and they heeded.
Ronen's heart, too, had been pulled by the sound. Unlike any music before it, there was a soul to the notes that directed the life-force of a mortal. He might have heeded, but to Ronen, sound appeared as color, shape, and motion, and the dancing crimson fought at the pull of the sound.
The people of Salus knew now the cause of the ghost ships – sound with life in it which pulled at the soul of a mortal. Something had been enhanced by a mystic, for mystica dealt with the life in all things, and the connections between them.
In Ronen's story, most heard hope. There was a way to survive the Cerulean Current, even if it meant searching the Azure sea for the right mystic.
íde heard power. Power to call to the life within a mortal and be obeyed. And íde wanted to be obeyed.

The Ghost Island

Ronen's anomalous survival brought him renown, and a yearning for deeper understanding. The later led him to brave the Cerulean Current again, lone swain on an undersized starship. Ronen watched while he sailed his sloop, and did not cower when the call came. So it was, all of StarSea learned that where the sound rang, the aether pooled and swirled, and led to that space below: the deep sea.

But no swain could venture into the depths alone, for below the open sea, starships required shielding and hands enough to secure it. And none but Ronen dared sail where the sound sank souls.
Still, visions of the song danced in Ronen's mind, and so he set sail on cerulean thrice more, pen and paper in hand, turning the sound like crimson into lines and notes of ink
And íde knew he had.
His objective completed, Ronen settled on Salus to stay. Slipping through his unlocked door while Tunis, the night star, shone, and all of Salus slept, íde claimed the sheet music for her own, and with it, the souls of Salus. Her shriek like scarlet shattered the silence. Her people followed her every sung word while Ronen begged his neighbors be freed. But íde's heart only knew the call of control.
The life of the song she sang slithered around her own soul, squeezing tighter with every note. The more she sang, the more she desired. And the more she desired, the more she sang. And down she spiraled, until the souls of Salus were insufficient to satiate her thirst. So together with her captives, she boarded the Tural, and sailed for new islands, as the silhouette of Ronen and Salus faded behind her, a ghost island, robbed of it's people, save one.

Where Monsters Roam

Power had consumed íde, heart, body, and soul. Aboard her starship, the thirst had become desperate, and her features began to change - nails grew sharper and longer, eyes narrowed to half an almond, fingers and toes webbed. But íde was sure it was she who held power and not the other way around.
The song, now entwined with her, pulsed in her heart, and a call echoed in her head for only her to hear. Drawn by the song, she charted a course for the vortex, unafraid of the sound she believed she owned.
But crimson runs deeper than scarlet, and thus íde was overpowered by the source of her song, and so, as the sound rang from the swirling pool, íde followed her gathered souls over the edge of the ship, and descended into the deep sea.
The starship drifted until, from a roof on Salus, Ronen spied it. Knowing what he would find before he checked, Ronan sailed along the aether to the ghost ship. He passed the ship, empty and silent as it was, and journeyed one last time along the Cerulean Current.
Above the pool where sound like crimson rang, íde met the sloop, hands clawing at the steel-wood amalgam of Ronen's starship. But her song, now crimson as its source, could not command Ronen. So they talked, and Ronen learned, and he recorded all words, but no sounds.
As he left the sound like crimson behind him, and sailed for other islands, he thought of íde, the siren who'd descended into the deep sea never to return. Wherever he went, he told the tale.

She'd had power, he'd say, and yet, though she had sung with all her soul, it was constricted and withered, tied forever to the life and power of the song, which called her to the deep. With hands like flippers and legs newly fused into a tail, íde had swum until she found the skeleton of a man, and the crimson starheart in his arms. Come to me, it called, come to me. I am alone. And there she stays and, alone no more, the call of the crimson heart has ceased.
But when starships drift down the Cerulean Current, above the whirlpool descending into the deep sea, íde feels that yearning for control of mortal souls, and swims up from under the open sea. It is then the starheart's call sounds again, and íde calls with it, and swain are lost to the deep sea, where monsters roam.

Pronunciation

íde (ee-da)

Name Meanings

íde means "thirst"
see Behind the Name

Ronen means "song and joy"
see Behind the Name

Tural means "to be alive"
see Behind the Name

Salus means "safety" in latin

Fun Fact

Ronen has Synesthesia, which means he associates input from one sense with input from another. Specifically, Ronen has Chromesthesia. For him, sound is associated with color.

Under the Sea Flash Challenge Entry

This article is an entry to the unofficial Under the Sea Flash Challenge.

Last Updated 2024-01-26