I loved the rain. The world always seemed so clean afterwards. As I watched the water level in the well rise, I didn’t like it all that much.

When I had fallen in, the well was dry and ten metres deep. When I had fallen in, I had broken my legs. Fractured the bones of my hands. Sighing with resignation, I lay down in the muddy water and let it slowly cover me.

From my perspective as I looked up, the falling raindrops seemed to converge to a point on the underbelly of the clouds. Sometimes, lightning flashed, painting the world white and silver. Thunder pealed. It continued to rain.

My hearing was the first to go, the water level rising above my ears and leaving me in a world of profound silence. No, the silence wasn’t complete. I could still hear the beat of my heart.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The gutsy organ was still trying its best to keep me alive despite my apathy. It brought a tear to my eye. It brought a tear to my eyes and opened the floodgates. I cried, I wept, I wailed, I cursed. Then, exhausted, I whimpered.

It rained harder. The murky waters covered my eyes. The ripples on its surface due to the falling raindrops filling my vision with static. My heart beat harder. It rained.

The waters covered my nose. I held my breath.

The waters rose and I could feel myself grow weightless as the air in my lungs helped me float. My long hair floated up around my face like a dark halo as I struggled to raise my head out of the water without my limbs.

My lungs burned. My body ached with the need to take a breath. My mind screamed against the instinct. My body won. Water flooded into my lungs, dowsing the pain, numbing it, filling me with a dull sense of weight. I sank. No longer held up by buoyancy, I drifted slowly down to the depths as a burst of bubbles trailed upwards from my open mouth, carrying my impotent scream upwards into the light.

The water grew murky. The light dimmed. My back touched the muddy bottom of the well and I thrashed, sending clouds of mud up into the water, darkening it further. The edges of my vision darkened as my consciousness faded.

Desperate, with the last of my breath, I screamed my plea towards the ever so distant surface of the water. Towards the light.

“Help me, someone. Please! I don’t want to die.”

The last thing I saw before the darkness claimed me was a gleaming spot of blue drifting down towards me through the water.

'Maybe… just maybe, it was here to help.'

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Isabella Chromis, the Demigod of the Waves, came awake with a start, shooting upright on her bed and throwing off her blanket. Moistened by cold sweat, the flimsy shift she was wearing stuck to her body, turning translucent and outlining her perfect curves.

‘That dream again,’ she thought bitterly.

Taking a few deep, calming breaths to settle her racing heart, she waved her hand across her body. As though heeding some call, the droplets of her sweat separated from the fabric and from her body, floating up and gathering into a small sphere of liquid that shimmered under the moonlight streaming in through the gap in the blinds.

The surface of the sphere began to boil as it shrank, the water vaporising into the atmosphere. Soon, no evidence remained of her night terror except the worried expression on her face.

Getting up from the bed, she walked over to the window, drew the curtains and threw the shutters open. The chill winter night breeze blew eagerly into the warm room, blowing the strands of her cascading midnight blue hair.

As she looked out over the brightly lit cityscape of the Wind Sector at night, she contemplated about her current state.

Immediately after dropping Mars and his wives off, she had travelled to the nearest Forbidden Zone: The Fourth Forbidden Zone – the Mines of the Central Province. While she was reluctant to practice soul magic on humans, she had no qualms experimenting on the mindless beasts that occupied the mines. She had learnt a lot from curing Mars’ soul and she wanted to immediately consolidate her goals.

Her practice had been very fruitful. Earlier, without a reference to compare to, she hadn’t been able to understand the difference between human and beast souls. But now, she could and her practice was all the more effective for it. By working on the mistakes, she had made during the operation, she had ensured that she wouldn't make the same ones again. Although she couldn’t work on some of the aspects that relied on emotion and higher cognitive functions of the subject, she was much better at soul magic than she had been the week before. And that was all that counted.

But unfortunately, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. This progress had come at a price. The nightmares, that had plagued her since her childhood and faded with age, had returned with a vengeance.

She had a pretty good idea as to what had caused them. When she was very young, barely more than twelve, she had fallen into an abandoned well and broken all her limbs in the fishing village she lived in. She had screamed herself hoarse but the well was quite a bit away from the village proper and her calls for help had gone unanswered.

To make matters worse, a storm had broken right at that time; the peals of thunder and the soughing of the winds drowning out her weakening screams further. There, lying at the bottom of the well, slowly being submerged by the water, she had fully expected to die.

She hadn’t.

When she had regained consciousness after being submerged by the water, she had discovered that all her broken bones had healed perfectly and that she could breathe underwater. The rain was particularly heavy and as the water level rose, she was able to rise to the surface and pull herself out of the well.

She had never mentioned the incident to anyone. She was an orphan and introverted. She cherished her secrets. But after the incident, she had gained the ability to breathe underwater (realizing later that it was nothing more than an application of Tier 1 water magic: Water Veil) and after she awoke to her magic, her progress was swift and violent. Whenever she tried to attempt any magic, she would have an odd sense of familiarity – like she had performed it thousands of times before.

Also, her nights would be plagued by nightmares. Mostly it was a recalling of the situation in the well. But sometimes, she would dream of another life. A life wholly different from the one she led now. She never could recall these dreams perfectly but the impression she took away from them was of a life of authority and power; the life of someone at the apex of the societal pyramid.

She knew now that she was the reincarnation of a Demigod. One who had reincarnated imperfectly, leaving her younger self’s soul intact and in charge of the body; only bestowing upon her an instinctive understanding of magic and a phenomenal growth curve.

After becoming a Demigod, Isabella had tried her best to find out who that mysterious Demigod was. After all, even if unintentionally, he or she had saved her life and bestowed her with such extreme talent. But all her efforts had run upon a wall.

No water attuned Demigod in Regiis had died in that timeframe and till this day, it was an unsolved mystery. The dreams had faded and she had relegated the matter to the back of her mind.

But now that the dreams were back and stronger than ever before, maybe she would be able to find some clue from within them.

Isabella shook her head. That was a matter for later. Drawing the blinds of the hotel room she was residing in temporarily, she turned her back on the window. Walking over to her travel case, she shed her shift and began to get dressed.

She had just returned from the Central Province and taken up residence in the Capital, using her magic to hide her identity from the hotel reception. It appeared that Mars and his wives had been quite busy in her absence. The entire Capital was abuzz with the news of his upcoming duel with the Princess scheduled for the following day.

She sighed. ‘Stupid politics.’

‘But,’ she mused, ‘there is an opportunity there for him if he can grasp it.’

Having finished dressing, her form wavered like a reflection on disturbed water and she vanished on the spot. It seemed like it was an appropriate time to pay her good friend, the Empress, a visit.