The dive from the deck was quick and unceremonious. Swyftfurusat had insisted on some kind of planning, while Coren and Gwenyth only barely just left the captain's cabin before Cephaelia just jumped into the water of the Viranna Trench. This trench was located in the oceans between Hadaria and Regalia, and had been determined to be of noteworthy interest before by a number of dives with dive bells and Mai-Allar. It had first been heard of during the makeshift alliance between the Mai-Allar and the Regalians during the Crysant War, a piece of sea floor around a massive underwater canyon that the Mai-Allar once lived near, hunting grounds teeming with life. The rising of the Deep Sea Serpents had displaced the Mai-Allar however, and many of their villages had been abandoned, at the time. After Cephaelia jumped offboard, the rest of the party just shrugged, settling in for the long haul as she would most likely be diving for hours, and instead tried to peer into the Soul Rivers. Surprisingly, there were in fact no soul rivers there. No matter how much they tried to move their boat around, no Soul Rivers were visible above the water surfac. In fact, there was nothing visible at all besides just water, blue sky, and the occasional cloud, with the Imperial Dragon circling overhead far, far up in the sky. Hails to communicate with him resulted in no response, leading the party to just leave the matter be, and presume he had some business of his own take care of. Cephaelia meanwhile dove deeper beyond the Mai-Allar villages. Far from the ramshackle underwater tents and shacks, the Mai-Allar had built complex coral formations reminiscing of pillared archways and towers, though they were obviously abandoned for quite a while now, and had somewhat been overgrown by seaweeds. An ocasional fish swum up to Cephaelia as she paddled further to the edge of the crevasse, seeing only complete darkness below. As unceremoniously as she had jumped off the ship, did she leap over the edge of the seafloor, down into the darkness where the reef fish would not follow her. The dive further down drove her further away from the cliff, as if the cliff was actually concave, with an overhang. Darkness surrounded her more and more, until she could only rely on her own ability to see in the deep to even peer anywhere. Occasionally, some sonar sounds or speech of fish would reach her, the silly droning of creatures with half a braincell to contemplate the meaning of life. The sound of other sea life progressive became less after what seemed like hours. Reaching the point where Cephaelia's own sight underwater would no longer really hold up against the all-encompassing darkness, she could just make out the silhouettes of a few Mai-Allar that had followed her all the way down out of curiosity. They turned back, the area that she would eventually sink to being too deep even for them. She kept sinking and sinking, there was simply no end to this bottomless pit. At a certain point, perhaps three hours after leaving the ship, Cephaelia had simply stopped paddling and let her weight do the rest of the work with some help from momentum as she continued to sink. The water got colder and colder, which started posing a problem, as despite her ability to dive to any depth, her skills did not grant her protection against freezing temperatures. The silence and lack of stimulation was torturous on Cephaelia, who was forced to listen to nothing but her own heartbeat in her ears. She contemplated whether madness would take her if this drop went on forever, forever darkness, forever nothingness, forever silence. Eventually she closed her eyes, and resolved to keep her eyes closed until she would hit the bottom, which was still nowhere in sight. At some point, Cephaelia started pondering the questions of life, or more specifically, pondering what she could do to stop herself pondering these thoughts. She tried humming tunes, counting proverbial sheep, and eventually, seemed to succeed even falling asleep into a nap. She lost track of time sinking in her half dream-like state, until a sudden whisper sound woke her up. Her eyes went wide open, her posture upside down returning to upright, turning around each time the whisper could be heard to figure out if she could see anything. Unfortunately, she was so far down, that even if she pointed her trident ahead of her, she couldn't even see the tip, and so was completely caught like a fish on dry land. Her cheek was brushed with the vibration of something moving in the water. At first it was gentle, then rougher, but she could definitely sense it was something really big. The inability to see was immensely frustrating, she jettisoned herself from side to side to see if she would hit into anything, but no matter how much she tried to jump around underwater, nothing would hit her. The frustration in her grew as the whisper started becoming more clear and pronounced, proclaiming "Wake up" in a hushed yet urgent tone. "Wake up? Wake up from what?" She kept repeating in her head, pinching herself just to be sure she was indeed not asleep. Then, she heard an almost ear-splitting "Wake up now" behind her in a booming gravely voice, causing her rapidly whip around, and as she whipped around, everything changed. She suddenly saw a massive surface of white, bright glowing and almost blinding light, all beneath her yet stretching on for as far as she could see. It was as if she just hadn't been paying attention this entire dive, and was suddenly merely feet away from this massive glowing bright mass of white light that seemed to pulsate irregularly yet with some consistency as if a beating heart. She could finally see around her, but there was something very eerie about this, in that she was sure that she would have seen this massive light surface coming down, and having faith in her own mental fortitude, Cephaelia had only one conclusion left to make: That someone was messing with her mind. Then all of a sudden, she felt a clap on her cheek, like a slap to the face. Her eyes momentarily closed, before they re-opened merely a second later staring up at Gwyneth and Coren, a blue sky behind them. She looked around herself, finding herself laying on her back on deck of the ship, wet and in a puddle of water, but definitely not in the water. Gwyneth apologized for slapping her, explaining that she refused to wake up no matter how many times Coren asked her. Cephaelia tried to explain the whole ordeal of her diving down to the bottom of the ocean, everything she had met and seen, and all that she had experienced to the party and the crew of the ship who had gathered around her. At the end of her tale, everyone looked confused until Silver spoke for them: "You've only been in the water for thirty seconds before you drifted back up to the surface, face down in the water and passed out, we had to fish you out of the water". Cephaelia got upset at this supposed trickery, assuming the rest was in on it, and she dove down into the water, rapidly speeding to the edge of the crevasse to prove she wasn't insane. And yet, on the way to the edge, she passed by the coral houses, just as she had described them, and then passed by those same silhouettes of Mai-Allar that had tracked her, in her version of events, coming back from a hunt with a few fish tied to their belts in tow on their way to the surface. The implications of this all gave her pause, eventually deciding that there was something seriously wrong down there, in that dark deep nothingness, and that for now, they needed more information before blindly going after the Teal Dragons again. She eventually returned to the surface, happy that the others had meanwhile decided to leave, as a massive cyclone was sighted on the horizon that had materialized out of nowhere, and because the Imperial Dragon had landed and urged them to leave, adding that the weather phenomena wasn't his making, and he was powerless to stop it. The group ventured home, the crew avidly talking about Cephaelia's tale on the way home.
