Deep in the thick of The Black City's depths, among the clusters of coral and alien Lessers, a chrysalis was hatching. The edges of the turquoise-and-black gemstone were illuminated by the faintest glow: a nearby obelisk, its glyphs pointing to something or other--serving, as it was, as a signpost.

The creature within wouldn't be able to read these glyphs, or any other. He was a child, only barely awakening, his coiled form within the relatively diminuitive gemstone becoming gradually aware of the pressure that contained it. He was squirming, coming awake, uncomfortable. And the thinning shell of the stone was about to allow him escape.

An eel-like jaw began to open and close, a light flickering up and remaining constant in his four eyes. Rainbow colors began to ripple along his flanks: dim at first, but growing in intensity as the child fully woke at last.

His little clawed feet, almost paddle-like fins, pressed to the thin shell and a crackle of frost seized them. He jerked back, the sudden pain startling, but his instinctive magic had done its job: the front of the gemstone shell cracked and then fell away, opening a window into the ocean beyond.

Within, the child remained coiled for a moment, shrinking back from the sudden unknown. A fresh consciousness tried to come to grips with existing.

"Hello?" he tried, the word the first thing to come to mind--but it was gargled through with water, incomprehensible, a sound lost to a muffling crush of pressure and the current of the sea.