The vision of the strange, bipedal creature lingered in Arrluk's mind even in his unconscious state. It was as though the image had been pasted over the insides of his eyelids, growing clearer in focus all the while he lay unmoving, vaguely registering a kind of cool aura washing over him.

The human was very much like the Tethyians in appearance: they had similar body structures, except that his eyes were pools of white, ringed with a dark brown hoop in the center, in which resided another smaller dot of black, rather than the orbs of pure darkness that filled the sockets of Arrluk's people; his hair was dark and curly, his skin light brown, with a broad portion of flesh protruding from underneath his eyes, thin, purplish lips, and where the Tethyians had large, strong fish tails to maneuver through the expansive seas, the human had two long, slender legs joined to his torso.

Arrluk didn't even know how he knew that the being was a human, he wasn't even sure if they were real. He, like many children in the city, had been laid to rest after hearing stories of countless other creatures that lived above the surface of the water, peculiar things that breathed air and walked, flew, and slithered over land with the sun on their backs.

He had not heard such stories in ages, nor had he ever heard much details about humankind in them. The depictions of the Land-walkers in Tethyian storytelling, on top of being few, were also varied, so he was not too sure which one was really accurate, and he had never really been curious, until now.

The cool aura around him suddenly became icy, as though he had plunged into a cold stream, and he became aware of the murmur of voices around him. Hoarse, rhythmic whispering: chanting. He opened his eyes, and his surroundings came slowly into focus. He was lying in bed, in what he realized was his own room, which had been scrubbed clean of ink. His father was floating at the edge of the bed, staring out at the opposite wall, and two hooded Tethyians were hovering on either side of him, their hands laced above him, with streams of a wispy, light blue energy flowing from their palms upon him.

"Father."

Hatak whirled around at the sound of Arrluk's voice, breathing a sigh of relief. The hooded Tethyians broke their union and drifted to the other side of the room, leaving Hatak to converse with his son.

"Arrluk, you're awake! How do you feel, my son? What happened when you went to commune with the Oracle?"

"I . . . it . . ." He paused, trying to remember. He felt oddly hazy, as though a fog had settled over his brain. "It spoke to me," he said slowly.

"What did it say?" said Hatak avidly.

"That . . . that 'dark times are approaching,' that as the next one in line for the throne, it would be my duty to protect my home from whatever threat's out there."

Hatak looked baffled. "Dark times — you, protect —?" he said incoherently. He shook his head and closed his eyes, trying to settle himself. "Did it elaborate?" he asked, more calmly.

Arrluk remembered how he had asked the Oracle to do that very thing, how its tentacles had coiled around him in reply, lifting him towards its massive, terrible eyes, how all sense of feeling, of knowing, had been wiped from his body at its touch. . . .

"It showed me something," he said. "Visions. There was . . . a rock — a sphere. A very large sphere, almost as big as the entire city. . . . A strange-looking creature — er — like a half manatee, half serpent — thing . . ."

"Was that all?" Hatak asked.

No. There were indeed other visions, but Arrluk had no idea how to interpret them, except for one: "A human."

"What?" Hatak gasped. "You saw a — a Land-dweller?"

Arrluk nodded.

"Are you sure? How did you know?" Hatak demanded.

"I don't know. I just — did." Arrluk looked up at his father. "Humans. We were told they were just a myth, a legend, but they're real. What are they, exactly?"

Hatak's face darkened. He surveyed his son grimly, while behind him the cloaked Tethyians exchanged looks beneath their hoods. Then Hatak said, "The humans . . . they are a complicated breed."

"Simplify it then," Arrluk told him. Normally he would not have been this insistent — even the Crown Prince had to respect certain boundaries when it came to the King — but right now Arrluk was not speaking to the King, he was appealing to his father, whom he knew all too well; he would dance around the issue, as he did everything else he wasn't comfortable discussing, make his responses as vague as possible in the hopes that his quarry would simply give up. But Arrluk wanted to know — he needed to know.

His father looked as though he were considering the matter deeply. Arrluk's vision was, after all, a direct result of his interaction with the Oracle, whom Hatak respected. He would surely appreciate the severity of the situation, the Oracle's words, and assist in any way he could. At least, so Arrluk hoped.

Hatak stared sternly down at Arrluk, who stared right back defiantly. A few moments passed. Neither wavered. Then Hatak sighed. "Oh, very well. Can you move?"

Arrluk tried to prise himself from the bed, concealing the rush of satisfaction that he had felt at his father's concession. He struggled at first, still feeling rather faint, but he shook it off and glided over to his father's side. He was going to get the information, no matter what happened.

"Very well," Hatak said again, "come with me. Yes, you two as well," he added to the hooded Tethyians. He turned and glided out of the room, arms folded behind his back in a very characteristic gesture. The two sorcerers waited for Arrluk to move ahead of them, then set off behind both.

They swam along the corridor in which the same hole he had soared down earlier with the guard sent to fetch him lay, but his father did not move towards it. He turned around a corner before they had reached it, his tail fluttering behind him as he moved down the corridor leading to his own quarters. The path was lined with gleaming sheets of abalone, leading to a pair of ornate, obsidian doors. Hatak pushed them open, and entered.

Despite being the Prince, Arrluk had not been inside his father's chambers very often. It had changed dramatically since he had last been here, over two years ago. It was a palatial room, filled with similar handsome decorations as Arrluk's own room, and lined with sumptuous coral shelves stocked with stone tablets, with a long line of milky, yellowish orbs that hovered above the shelves, each of which displayed the image of a past Tethyian that Arrluk knew to be one of his own forefathers. Hatak's enormous, kelp-wrapped bed was set in the center of the room, beneath a massive, unnaturally pale shard of sapphire, which cast a soft blue light over the entire room.

The King swam over to the shelves, perusing the contents of his personal library while Arrluk and the two sorcerers waited respectfully at the door. Hatak moved from shelf to shelf, his hand on his chin as he observed the various tablets, looking in no hurry at all. Arrluk was steadily losing patience, but he did not dare rush his father; he felt that he had pressed him quite far as it was.

"Ah, here we are," the King murmured at last. He reached out towards the shelf to the right of his bed and withdrew a particularly large, weathered-looking tablet. "Here," he said, thrusting it at Arrluk, who took it, bewildered.

There were many carvings made into it, mostly of symbols he knew, but some that he had no idea what they were.

"Read what you can," Hatak said.

Arrluk peered down at the tablet. Though the stone was weathered, the gouges were deep enough for the markings to still be discernible.

"Eliza Jackson, a visitor from the surface world, appeared at the gates of Athedonia today, accompanied by several naiads who had used their combined magic to ensure her protection against the seas.

"A tall human female with straggly, ink-coloured hair, she seemed quite strange at first, not only in appearance, but in basic manner. She took particular interest in the most mundane items of our homes, simultaneously admiring and comparing them to items apparently used by surface-worlders: objects known as 'tellyfones,' 'camraas,' and 'stoves,' among others. The human world, according to Eliza's reports, was very technologically advanced, though their strides had dwindled severely in the field of magic. Magic?" he repeated, staring at his father.

"This was not our first encounter with humans, son," Hatak said. "Unfortunately, this is one of the very few scenes to be recorded. The rest were passed down through word-of-mouth, the most famous being 'The Tale of Enoch.'

"The story has been edited heavily in many places, but among the constants were his name and the fact that he lived several hundred years ago, appearing in our realm in what was an extremely underdeveloped time period of their world — primitive, you might say. What they lacked in technology, however, they made up for in sorcery. There is even a pattern with their escapades in the sea. Read on."

"Eliza, however, possessed a very rare gift among the humans, a gift that even we Tethyians were unfamiliar with — the gift of communing with aquatic life. She possessed a few others as well, though undeveloped in comparison to her marine-speech. Unfortunately, we didn't have the chance to explore her true capabilities, as she tragically died soon after in a sudden attack by a herd of Great Whites."

Arrluk paused, unable to decipher the next few lines of text, and flipped the tablet over. "A strange pattern was struck up from the visits of the other-worlders. Each time they appeared at our banks, the seas experienced some disaster of the highest order. During the visit of the first rumoured man, Enoch, we experienced a highly destructive war between two gods of the Northern and Southern Seas. During the visit of Eliza Jackson, the kingdom of Epithelia faced civil war as its residents rebelled against their present, corrupt king, Triton. The war spanned a total of four years, and when it had finally ended, the entire city had been obliterated.

"We believe the arrival of the humans is directly linked to disaster — perhaps it is their appearances that cause them, perhaps they are sent to help solve them in some way. Regardless, whenever a human appears on our borders, Thalassians must be braced to expect the worst. . . .

"That's grim," Arrluk said, looking up at his father.

"Nevertheless," Hatak said, pulling the tablet from his son's hands and replacing it upon the shelf, "it is accurate. The arrival of humans in our lands seems to be directly linked to catastrophe. It is why contact with the upper world is forbidden."

"But the Oracle showed me that vision!" Arrluk said. "While it was trying to warn me about the incoming danger. Maybe it was showing me a possible ally!"

"Or a possible enemy. That human you saw could very well be the Harbinger of the 'dark times' that the Oracle foretold."

"I don't believe it," Arrluk said at once. "If the other humans were harmless, I don't see why this one could be the force of darkness that could end all life in the sea."

"You can't know that!" Hatak said, flaring up.

"And neither can you!" Arrluk said hotly.

They glared at each other. This time, it was Arrluk who conceded.

"Please, Father, this could be important. At least let me meet him. Whether he's an ally or an enemy, he's bound to show up here regardless. At least this way, if he is an enemy, we have a chance of finding out much earlier and dealing with him before anything happens."

Hatak stared down at his son's immensely hopeful face. Then he too gave in. "Oh, all right. But how in the Seven Seas will you even find this boy? You don't know his name, where he could be . . ."

Arrluk was silent for a moment, thinking. He was trying to remember what the Oracle had showed him. The manatee-serpent, the human, the huge sphere . . . And the image of a beach suddenly swam hazily to the forefront of his mind.

Arrluk grinned. "I might have an idea."