Annannala was a beautiful world. She wasn't young, but she looked like it. Her two moons, Innas and Draco, had seen continents rise and fall. They had witnessed how their brother, who bore no name as none was there to name it, had fallen into Annannala and wrecked terrible destruction. They alone bore witness as the gods found Annannala just as the oceans were threatening to devour her last continent, millions of years later. They saw the gods select three species to reshape into the worlds caretakers. They saw the gods raise a ring of twenty islands from the shallow seas as a home to the humans and the dolphins, two of the three chosen species, they witnessed as the gods helped them move everything from the dying continent to the new lands. And then they saw the continent fall.
What they did not see was the changes taking place far beneath the surface of the sea. At the deepest places, where no light ever reached, the most different of the three chosen species dwelled. The squids. The squids needed a lot of help to reach their potential, unlike the two others who only needed a gentle nudge in the right direction. The squids were made far smarter, and their minds grew. Eventually they became the silent watchers of the deep, watery abyss.
But there was one more change going on. One that the moons witnessed, but the gods where to blind, or careless, to see. A change was taking place in the deceptively calm emptiness surrounding Annannala. Something had followed the three gods to Annannala. The humans would eventually name it. They would call it evil.
