Mariners drown first

Chapter 1 - Whirlpool'd

[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.