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Plot
The old gods want to be free. They seek to cut the tether to humanity, so loss of religion no longer threatens their very existence. Many of them still remember Tiamat and Inanna. They see indigenous divines fading away around them. If some magic, some ritual, some sacrifice or power could set them free, then no divine ever need fear the encroachment of Western religion ever again.
Gaia, Odin, Set, and Kali (taking a special interest, against the wishes of her still-powerful pantheon) have dedicated themselves wholly to this strongest of divine desires: to break their dependency and unshackle themselves from the tides of human thought. They don't want to be susceptible to changing their fundamental natures due to misconception and clumsy syncretism. Set, more than any of them, knows this danger well. This cause has become a massive but covert worldwide effort, with many fronts and avenues of inquiry. They will try anything, learn everything, chase every lead and look under every rock to find that elusive key to true existence.
For many years, the freedom initiative seemed to stall, with little progress being made on any front. Then, one day, something incredible happened: a new divine was found. It was no god or mythological being, but a creature of urban legend with the barest of honest belief.
Slenderman.
It rocked the divine community. Never once had they considered that an internet creepypasta, of all things, could harness the kind of belief and emotional energy required to think a divine into being. Questions flew like snowflakes immediately. If an internet "legend" like Slenderman could become real, they obviously had far more to learn about human and divine nature. More mysteries to uncover. The freedom initiative now had the mission of understanding the limits of human belief. This meant exploring every corner of the Earth- including the farthest reaches and most mysterious depths.
They needed someone who could explore the great undiscovered front: the ocean.
One day, an unsuspecting mermaid was accosted on the street and forced into a van. They "escorted" Ursula into an office, where Gaia gave her a job: to search the oceans for certain legends and stories. The Kraken, not seen in a century. The sea monsters of old, thought extinct. Atlantis, never seen but sometimes wondered about. Behemoth. Leviathan. R'lyeh and the Great Old Ones, a mere figment of fiction, suddenly an actual possibility. Mermaids can swim at faster-than-sound speeds, so Gaia considered them perfect for the task. "Anything- the Kraken, Atlantis, the sea monsters. I don't care if you find Cthulhu down there, just FIND something. We need to know what else is out there!"
When Ursula expressed her reservations, Gaia's human assistant performed a magical spell using Ursula and Gaia's blood, so Gaia could track the mermaid wherever she went. There would be no escape. Under this coercion, Ursula accepted- with the hope that it would be nothing more than a wild goose chase, leaving her tasked with exploring the seas indefinitely.
Unfortunately, Ursula actually found something. In the vast, never-explored deeps of the Pacific, she came upon an incredible discovery: the shining underwater city of Atlantis.
The find was revelatory. Nobody ever really believed it existed, despite the incredible unplumbed depths of the oceans. Surprisingly, the people of Atlantis knew not just about the surface world: they also knew about its gods. Ursula, frequently bubble-headed thing she is, didn't pick up on the fact that they knew far more than they should have.
Atlantis held more surprises than mere existence. The mysterious peoples in their undersea dome informed her of something even more shocking: they had managed had found a way to exist independent of human reliance. Their citizens were no longer immortal, but had traded their eternal life in exchange for a three-century lifespan, and the theological freedom afforded by mortality. The civilization itself managed to sustain itself free from the tether of humanity. Nothing would convince them to divulge their most precious secret to a stranger. However, they promised to send an envoy to the surface, to treaty with the old god leaders.
Ursula's stay was lovely. The Atlanteans welcomed her with open arms and proved themselves unfailingly gracious hosts. She was something of a curiosity to them. The people of Atlantis were of course adapted to life underwater, but not half as well as a mermaid. Their city was under a dome, and they relied (to some extent) on technology in their explorations outside of it. Thus they marveled over her, and envied how she roamed the deep ocean with nothing but her unfettered self. Ursula found herself staying longer and longer, enjoying the attention- and the utter freedom from her recent (and only) responsibility. Days turned to weeks turned to months in that shining city.
But all good things come to an end. Daggers gleam as bright of gold in murky waters. Ursula rather violently discovered the dark secret of Atlantis. The power and independence they enjoyed derived from the ritual sacrifice of one divinie and ten humans, performed once every ten years. The kind of death even the most powerful divine couldn't come back from.
They wanted Ursula specifically for the power and unique adaptations she had as a mermaid. By their estimation, sacrificing a mermaid would suffuse some of her abilities to the Atlantean population, perhaps freeing them of their lingering dependency on technology and certain magics. And, perhaps, it would drive back the disease quietly plaguing the city.
Ursula was in more danger than she had ever been in her long life. More than a hundred harpoons, more than a thousand sharks. Killing her way out was neither easy nor fun- for real, blood is incredibly hard to clean out of scales, and fighting an entire city of people with mildly superhuman strength was a massive pain in her fish ass. In fact, it might even be accurate to say that she was scared.
Scared enough to lose her head. Scared enough to get careless. She fled as fast as she could, but weak and injured as she was from the fight out of Atlantis, she couldn't swim any faster than the average dolphin- far slower than her usual top abilities of faster-than-sound. Even her fastest swimming felt like a crawl to her. In her fear, she fled the open ocean for clearer waters, and got in her panic she got sloppy.
A research vessel captured her. Ecstatic with their monumental find, they decided to take her to a facility on the shore for study. She was doomed to vanish into some government facility, a lab under a mountain or a tank in Area 51, never to be seen again. What a prize- and a curiosity, that a creature so mysterious would suffer obvious symptoms of illness.
When they reached the port, someone unexpected was waiting for them: visitors from another dimension. Zenith gently informed scientists and specimen both of the mermaid's predicament. They offered Ursula a way out, to join their program for a cure, to volunteer and escape a future of captivity and vivisection. Needless to say, she jumped at the chance, and happily went with her extradimensional saviors without asking any questions. Who cares what the "treatment" is?
She's going to Zhautas, ready to serve.
Gaia, Odin, Set, and Kali (taking a special interest, against the wishes of her still-powerful pantheon) have dedicated themselves wholly to this strongest of divine desires: to break their dependency and unshackle themselves from the tides of human thought. They don't want to be susceptible to changing their fundamental natures due to misconception and clumsy syncretism. Set, more than any of them, knows this danger well. This cause has become a massive but covert worldwide effort, with many fronts and avenues of inquiry. They will try anything, learn everything, chase every lead and look under every rock to find that elusive key to true existence.
For many years, the freedom initiative seemed to stall, with little progress being made on any front. Then, one day, something incredible happened: a new divine was found. It was no god or mythological being, but a creature of urban legend with the barest of honest belief.
Slenderman.
It rocked the divine community. Never once had they considered that an internet creepypasta, of all things, could harness the kind of belief and emotional energy required to think a divine into being. Questions flew like snowflakes immediately. If an internet "legend" like Slenderman could become real, they obviously had far more to learn about human and divine nature. More mysteries to uncover. The freedom initiative now had the mission of understanding the limits of human belief. This meant exploring every corner of the Earth- including the farthest reaches and most mysterious depths.
They needed someone who could explore the great undiscovered front: the ocean.
One day, an unsuspecting mermaid was accosted on the street and forced into a van. They "escorted" Ursula into an office, where Gaia gave her a job: to search the oceans for certain legends and stories. The Kraken, not seen in a century. The sea monsters of old, thought extinct. Atlantis, never seen but sometimes wondered about. Behemoth. Leviathan. R'lyeh and the Great Old Ones, a mere figment of fiction, suddenly an actual possibility. Mermaids can swim at faster-than-sound speeds, so Gaia considered them perfect for the task. "Anything- the Kraken, Atlantis, the sea monsters. I don't care if you find Cthulhu down there, just FIND something. We need to know what else is out there!"
When Ursula expressed her reservations, Gaia's human assistant performed a magical spell using Ursula and Gaia's blood, so Gaia could track the mermaid wherever she went. There would be no escape. Under this coercion, Ursula accepted- with the hope that it would be nothing more than a wild goose chase, leaving her tasked with exploring the seas indefinitely.
Unfortunately, Ursula actually found something. In the vast, never-explored deeps of the Pacific, she came upon an incredible discovery: the shining underwater city of Atlantis.
The find was revelatory. Nobody ever really believed it existed, despite the incredible unplumbed depths of the oceans. Surprisingly, the people of Atlantis knew not just about the surface world: they also knew about its gods. Ursula, frequently bubble-headed thing she is, didn't pick up on the fact that they knew far more than they should have.
Atlantis held more surprises than mere existence. The mysterious peoples in their undersea dome informed her of something even more shocking: they had managed had found a way to exist independent of human reliance. Their citizens were no longer immortal, but had traded their eternal life in exchange for a three-century lifespan, and the theological freedom afforded by mortality. The civilization itself managed to sustain itself free from the tether of humanity. Nothing would convince them to divulge their most precious secret to a stranger. However, they promised to send an envoy to the surface, to treaty with the old god leaders.
Ursula's stay was lovely. The Atlanteans welcomed her with open arms and proved themselves unfailingly gracious hosts. She was something of a curiosity to them. The people of Atlantis were of course adapted to life underwater, but not half as well as a mermaid. Their city was under a dome, and they relied (to some extent) on technology in their explorations outside of it. Thus they marveled over her, and envied how she roamed the deep ocean with nothing but her unfettered self. Ursula found herself staying longer and longer, enjoying the attention- and the utter freedom from her recent (and only) responsibility. Days turned to weeks turned to months in that shining city.
But all good things come to an end. Daggers gleam as bright of gold in murky waters. Ursula rather violently discovered the dark secret of Atlantis. The power and independence they enjoyed derived from the ritual sacrifice of one divinie and ten humans, performed once every ten years. The kind of death even the most powerful divine couldn't come back from.
They wanted Ursula specifically for the power and unique adaptations she had as a mermaid. By their estimation, sacrificing a mermaid would suffuse some of her abilities to the Atlantean population, perhaps freeing them of their lingering dependency on technology and certain magics. And, perhaps, it would drive back the disease quietly plaguing the city.
Ursula was in more danger than she had ever been in her long life. More than a hundred harpoons, more than a thousand sharks. Killing her way out was neither easy nor fun- for real, blood is incredibly hard to clean out of scales, and fighting an entire city of people with mildly superhuman strength was a massive pain in her fish ass. In fact, it might even be accurate to say that she was scared.
Scared enough to lose her head. Scared enough to get careless. She fled as fast as she could, but weak and injured as she was from the fight out of Atlantis, she couldn't swim any faster than the average dolphin- far slower than her usual top abilities of faster-than-sound. Even her fastest swimming felt like a crawl to her. In her fear, she fled the open ocean for clearer waters, and got in her panic she got sloppy.
A research vessel captured her. Ecstatic with their monumental find, they decided to take her to a facility on the shore for study. She was doomed to vanish into some government facility, a lab under a mountain or a tank in Area 51, never to be seen again. What a prize- and a curiosity, that a creature so mysterious would suffer obvious symptoms of illness.
When they reached the port, someone unexpected was waiting for them: visitors from another dimension. Zenith gently informed scientists and specimen both of the mermaid's predicament. They offered Ursula a way out, to join their program for a cure, to volunteer and escape a future of captivity and vivisection. Needless to say, she jumped at the chance, and happily went with her extradimensional saviors without asking any questions. Who cares what the "treatment" is?
She's going to Zhautas, ready to serve.