Prologue

                                    

                                          
"Shouts, screams and war cries rose into the pitch dark, star-speckled sky. The sorcerers were adept at overwhelming their opponents with their immense strength, and they used charms to-"
     "Ugh! Boooring!" Rui rolled his eyes, giving a flick of his glittering, teal-coloured scale-coated tail so that he drifted backwards in the water, his back lightly tapping against the light purple stone wall behind him. "I'd rather kiss a blobfish than listen to this stuff! I wanna learn about the machines that the sorcerers and the Lupus people create up on Terra Firma!"
     "No, Rui. You have to stay with us and learn how our technology works," the King told the little parr before him, otherwise known as his offspring. "You know, you wouldn't have to have these lectures so often if you would just pay attention, like Nene. Us adults need to prepare our children for war in case it ever breaks out again."
     "Why do we have to keep on living in fear? That Solis guy already took care of those issues for us all those hundreds of years ago and made the Terrawalkers believe that we don't exist anymore by saying he killed us all," Rui complained, stretching out his arms and separating his scale-covered fingers, the aqua-coloured webbing between them going twang with the tension. "You literally won't shut up about it."
     "Rui, my little fry," King Aequor swam over to the frangible-looking child of scintillating lamina. "I don't want you or Nene going anywhere near the surface. It's dangerous up there. What if a Lupus pack finds you and eats you? Worst of all, what if the Unguis pack finds you?!"
     "They live in the forest, Dad," Rui nonchalantly pointed out. "They hate getting wet, from what I've heard about. I can't walk on land, anyway. I'm a fish. They're dogs. What're they gonna do, lick me to death all the way from their dry land?"
     The king's face darkened. "Do not underestimate Lupus people, my boy."
     Rui rolled his eyes as his father dramatically turned his back to his child. "Here we go again..."
     "Once upon a time, on a dark moonless night..." Aequor melodramatically lifted his hand up, palm facing upwards, and performed a horizontal swipe of his hand above his head. "I, having once been an ignorant and innocent soul like you, my little fry, unknowingly wandered into the territory of the Lupus people..."
     Rui groaned and crossed his arms, the pitch-dark serrated claws on the tips of his fingers fidgeting with the stretch of skin jutting out and running the whole length of his biceps and forearms, which had the same teal pigmentation as the webbing between his dark blue-green fingers. He didn't enjoy the tickling sensation it gave him when he fiddled with the frills of webbing running along his arms, but he couldn't control his fingers; he was always fidgeting subconsciously.
     As his father rumbled on, Rui only found himself further spacing out even more. When he was yanked back into reality due to his father's abrupt exclamation as he recounted his anecdote, Rui got stunned.
     Having recovered, Rui turned his back-which was decorated with dark blue royal markings-to the king, who was lost in his own memories and talking as if he were narrating a grand performance in Seaweed Square. Not that Rui would know what Seaweed Square was like, since his father would never let him outside of the walls surrounding the courtyard...
     Rui longingly sighed as he gazed out of the hole in the pastel-coloured wall, his head resting in his hands. The thought that had occurred to him a multitude of times before popped into the back of his mind, the voice inside him egging him on, to bolt out of the imprisoning stone walls that shut out the vast world that extended way beyond, all the way to who-knows-where.
     Normally, Rui would have little difficulty suppressing the voice and carrying on with his typical monotonous day, but the voice was more powerful than ever this time. Rui wondered why. He wondered until he spotted a peculiar flash of pink-a rare scale colour to find in the boundless depths of the sea, especially in a merman, parr or not. Rui realized that it was a parr around his age that looked completely and utterly lost, and had somehow wandered outside of the village. He glanced over his shoulder at his father, the frills on the side of his head grazing the marked skin of his shoulders, to see that his father was still retelling his story.