Strangers of the Forsaken.

Chapter Three: Part One.

Chapter Three: Part One.

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The rippling waters of the mysterious creatures' pond were darkened, aphotic and dingy. The fiends whom had made their very homes deep within these waters, were hard at work as always. Keeping a close watch over their pathetic, miserable human slaves as they worked themselves to the bone. The underwater city of Forsaken Falls was coming along swimmingly, all was going perfectly according to the monsters' excruciatingly painful plans. What's more; the pitiful, enslaved humans had intrinsically zero chance of making any kind of escape. To even think about attempting such a thing would be simply foolish, as the evil beings had the entire city effectively surrounded on all sides. Nothing and nobody was able to either enter or leave the city, without the expressed permission of the most well-respected beings of the waters. To freely allow a human to make their way out of the city was practically unheard of, as their captors needed all the help they could get with building their city. What exactly this city was going to be used for was still very much kept a secret, known only by the two creatures whom ranked highest in the pecking order. Leaking of such valuable, prized information would no doubt result in a punishment so severe; the dark beings didn't dare to even imagine it.

The very moment that dear young Carsten had disappeared beneath the surface of these unforgiving waters, his dear friend Stefan had therefore given up all hope. He had known right from that moment, that any and all promise of seeing Carsten again was now utterly shattered. Destroyed, like the heart within Stefan that once beat with such intensity and a now extinguished drive for life. Now, all that was left of his once brightly burning flame had turned to nothing but ashes; his passion now nonexistent. No longer having Carsten in his life had been just about enough to kill what little emotion remained inside of Stefan. It was this overbearingly crushing feeling of devastation, that had caused Stefan to then take the plunge, and jump straight into the waters himself. Little did he know; he was about to find out that jumping into that pond was, quite possibly, both the best and worst decision Stefan ever could have made in the situation.

Finally arising from his blacked-out state, Carsten tiredly rose a hand to his face and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. Looking around himself, it was most definitely obvious that the young boy had absolutely no idea where he was. He knew he was underwater, that much he could tell straight away. However, his immediate surroundings told him that this was surely no ordinary underwater scenery. The very first thing that struck him, was that he was somehow able to properly breathe rather easily, below these mysterious waters. Normally, Carsten would not be able to hold his breath for more than twenty seconds below the surface. He never had been much good at swimming, something Stefan had always been acutely aware of. Something that had contributed greatly to the growing bond between these two boys, was that Stefan had invested a great deal of time and energy into helping little Carsten, to become more accustomed to being in the water. It had taken rather a long time, but eventually Carsten began to trust water again. He knew that this never would have been possible to accomplish, without the help and dedication of such a good friend.

When Carsten had finally awoken below the murky waters of his new prison, he was quick to realize that all around him lay various tall structures. If he were not mistaken, to him these places looked almost exactly like real buildings. Though the more rational thinker from within him was screaming loudly inside of his head, shrieking that none of this could surely be real at all. Under exactly what sort of understandable logic could an entire city of buildings, be constructed this far underwater and by whom? The intensely throbbing pain inside of Carsten's head was now rapidly increasing at an alarming rate – in part due to the hundreds, if not thousands of racing thoughts running throughout his suffering mind. But also because of the hard, metal, harness that was somehow pressing down on his forehead. He was currently laying down, that much he could tell for sure. But for whatever reason, Carsten was totally unable to move his head at all. It felt almost as if his head were being pushed down by something rather heavy. Looking downwards, he could see that both his feet had also been bound by very similar metal harnesses. Both his arms were held down too, but not by harnesses. His arms were bound by what looked to be rings of bright purple magic, connected together. This left him able to lift his arms up to face level, but no further than that.