Tritanus | Aleria
The Tritanus dominion, bastion of the Mer and throne of their watery world, stretched like a jeweled tapestry across the deep ocean floor.
Built upon the bones of a sunken tectonic plate, the kingdom shimmered like an cerulean dream.
Spires of luminous coral and pearlescent stone climbed upwards like grasping fingers, bathed in the soft bioluminescence of aquatic lantern flora and spell-infused orbs.
While nearby streets paved with polished obsidian led through bustling districts where enchanted currents swept citizens along their daily paths, reducing the fatigue of swimming and ensuring an effortless elegance in movement.
Coral bridges laced with runic light stitched the sector domes together—vast, shell-encrusted spheres alive with drifting fauna and spellcraft that hummed like old lullabies.
Luminous kelp-fiber cables hummed with power, feeding energy into crystal veins embedded in everything from streetlight to floating bubble bazaars.
Here the arcane flowed not just in rituals but in everyday life—runic conduits filtered impurities ensuing ease of breathing, lamps glowed without fire, and even the schools of docile, domesticated fish darted between glassy walkways and domes, some harnessed as messengers or cleaners, their behavior guided by glyphs etched into their scales.
Suffice to say sea essence and machinery danced in harmony with the former flowing freely through the city's veins, powering everything.
At the very heart of the kingdom stood the Citadel of Ten Tides, the ancestral palace of the ruling Tritanus line.
Grand halls made of deep-sea marble and reinforced shellstone led into a throne room wide as a stadium and glittering like the inside of a clamshell.
Around the citadel, great houses of noble blood clustered like ornate barnacles — the Valmari, the Selachrin, the Syrenthari — just a few, were each vying for favor and whispering politics into eddies and undertows.
Yet for all its splendor, the city still bore the charateristic hallmarks of a feudal society.
Sea-knights clad in enchanted kelp-mail swam in disciplined phalanxes, guarding noble estates. Poorer Mer lived in shell huts clustered against the trench walls, eking out lives as pearl divers, beast tamers, or mana-miners.
Between domes, local taverns and inns buzzed with gossip—usually about taxes, sea beasts, or the worsening health of the High King.
Far beneath the citadel, within the Veiled Chamber — a hidden meeting hall shielded by wards older than the reign of kings — a secret council convened.
The walls pulsed faintly with sigils etched by the first Tritanus monarchs, their silent glow suppressing scrying eyes.
Nearby a ring of nobles floated in tense stillness around a crystalline table, at its head seated Princess Aequora Tritanus, her golden tail coiled regally beneath her.
Her eyes, normally sharp with arrogance, now flicked warily between the nobles and her brothers flanking her.
The hall's high ceiling sparkled with mirrored plates reflecting the swirling ocean above, but anyone could tell the chamber itself felt claustrophobic with expectation.
To her right sat Prince Caspian, the eldest—tall, radiant, the very image of a monarch. His golden locks framed a face of impossible symmetry, his violet eyes calm yet calculating.
At the peak of the Trench Tyrant realm, rumors said his sea aura alone could shatter even ancient coral.
To her left lounged Prince Lucien, the youngest—sharp-jawed and glimmering with youthful beauty. His strength was not physical but cerebral; a master of sigilic logic and mechanical constructs.
Lucien's slender fingers toyed with a floating interface etched with runes, his eyes darting between it and the nobles present with casual disdain.
The court was crowded with the elite: House Selachrin, House Valmari, House Syrenthari, House of Brinn, etc. All clustered like sharks in heat-scented water, their jeweled fins and crested armor gleaming with wealth and suspicion.
"I've summoned you," Aequora began, voice taut, "to report on what Archivist Thaleos and I discovered beneath the Spire of Nereus."
Murmurs broke. Skeptical glances darted like eels.
At that moment Lord Syrenthari leaned forward, his jowls quivering. "A decrepit ruin built by a half-mad ancestor? HA You waste the court's time with ancient rubble and ghost stories."
"Ooh you mock what you do not understand," croaked Thaleos, the aged scholar seated beside Aequora. His skin sagged like wrinkled parchment, barnacles clinging to his robe, but his eyes gleamed like a prophet's. "The Sea Sentinels have awakened."
Silence. Then raucous laughter erupted .
"Clockwork myths," snorted House Brinn's matriarch. "Is this supposed to be some sort of a jest?"
Caspian leaned back with a faint smirk. "Are they to judge us, Thaleos? Or just spin riddles in the dark?"
"They are real," Aequora snapped, rising. "And they speak of only one thing: the return of the Leviathan King."
The name hung.
Nereus Azr. The Worldshaker. The Drowned Crown.
Lucien's voice cut in like a harpoon. "Boring and allegedly centuries dead. Convenient of you sis to fish up a myth to rattle the court on the eve of Father's inevitable passing."
"Enough." Aequora straightened, her voice like cracking ice. "Fine, if you don't believe me then see for yourselves. Bring them in then!"
The double coral doors groaned open and then they entered.
Five towering constructs—each over seven meters tall—drifted into the chamber.
Their bodies shimmered with liquid silver alloy, shaped in the semblance of those mythic and ancient sea beasts.
The Megalodon, with its massive, finned frame and cavernous jaw.
The Kraken, all twitching tendrils and coiling limbs.
The Jellyfish, its translucent dome pulsing softly with arcane light. And one more flanked them—the sleek and armored sea dragon—silent and observant.
All metallic. All terrifying.
The nobles gasped. One knight reached for his trident; another dropped his wine goblet.
The lead sentinel floated forward. "We are the Sea Sentinels of the Deep. Forged for the coming Leviathan War. Awakened by the Spire."
"Who commands you?" Caspian then demanded, stood floating now, his aura pulsing faintly.
"No one you know," said the Megalodon sentinel. Its voice was deep and harmonic, vibrating through bone and soul. "We have only one directive: the extermination of Nereus Azr, Leviathan King."
"Then you will serve us. Tritanus rules these waters. If war comes, you will fight under my banner." Caspian replied haughtily.
The Sentinel cocked its head, eerily mimicking a curious tilt. "You are soft flesh and scales draped in brittle pride. You will never command us."
Lucien gave a derisive snort. "They're programmed weapons for Poseidon's sake Caspian, far from gods. They're just ancient constructs malfunctioning with their creator's delusions."
The sentinel's eyes shimmered. "We are not ancient dolls. We are judgment made form."
"Spare me the dramatics," Caspian said with narrowed eyes. "I've slain real threats. I see now you're just machines with a bloated sense of purpose, I am not amused."
"Yet you would not survive our amusement," said the sentinel dryly.
Then, as if to punctuate the insult, its silvery mass began to shrink and contort. Limbs morphed. Tails shortened. Skin shimmered.
And then—four perfect Mer replicas stood before them.
Blonde, regal, handsome or beautiful beyond belief. The mimicry was unsettling in its exactitude—if not for their silver skin, they would have passed as noble-born Mer.
Even Lucien's eyes widened. "Impossible… this level of anatomical mimicry…"
The jellyfish-formed sentinel tilted its head. "We thought it polite to match the faces of those we'd bury."
Gasps. Lord Vantess choked on his own saliva. The nobles shrieked and backed away.
Then out of nowhere and even slowly —it hit them all.
A pulse.
Silent. Invisible. But ancient.
The Sentinels snapped their heads to the east, with their bodies immediately stiffened as if possessed.
"The signal…" one whispered.
"The Sea Essence Signature…" another hissed.
Suddenly, in a violent surge, they expanded. Bodies burst outward as silvery limbs returned to their massive true forms as the water around them began to quake.
The Megalodon form lunged.
The Kraken lashed its many arms.
The Jellyfish shimmered with electric pulses.
At the same moment, deep within the outskirts of the Tritanus kingdom, The Spire erupted in an eyecatching azure light again while alarms no one even knew were in place rang across the palace.
Never before seen sigils blinked in urgent sequence and the outside, sea-beasts panicked.
Inside the council chamber, chaos reigned.
"Contain this! Now!" Caspian roared, his trident forming from compressed essence.
Lucien barked commands into a floating sigil interface.
Aequora remained frozen.
"Something ancient stirs," whispered Thaleos, tears in his eyes. "The prophecy…"
Just as Caspian surged forward in a blur of golden light—
After the pulse ended it was only stillness.
The Sentinels slowly settled. Lights dimmed. The Spire stopped pulsing.
Silence reigned.
After a long moment, the megalodon sentinel spoke: "He is not here… yet. But the echo grows."
At that moment nobles began to shout as on call advisers muttered spells of secrecy. Soon enough, couriers were then dispatched in whispers to block the news from reaching the populace. But the panic had already begun to fester.
However eventually, the meeting broke, though fruitless and disoriented in it's ending.
As nobles after noble and attendee after attendee trailed out of the hall, Caspian remained behind a moment, fists clenched. "If they can fight him… then they can fight for me."
Lucien too watched them go, only whispering to himself, "No control. No loyalty. Unpredictable. Dangerous. They must be destroyed...but how?"
In a darker chamber elsewhere in the citadel, an informant bowed before a shadowed figure — the middle sibling, Mael.
Half cloaked, with golden rings on his middle fingers and an inscrutable smile on his face, Mael's amber eyes glinted as he received the report.
"Sentinels huh … how fascinating," he murmured. "It appears chaos walks the sea again. Hmm perhaps its time to move my own pieces into place..."
Back in the Veiled Chamber now empty, Aequora lingered alone, her fingers resting lightly on the table. It was clear to see the weight of what she had witnessed before and now weighed heavily down upon her.
She looked not at the Sentinels, now silent sentries in the shadows, but at the far wall, where the ancient sigil of Tritanus flickered faintly.
'Something is coming', she thought, a cold certainty coiling in her gut like an embryonic sea serpent.
'And the Seven Seas let alone the Ten will never be the same again....'