The fishmother was a good parent, Viisvang thought, gnawing on a bone she had discarded. She ate all that came within reach, snapping it up with long sharp teeth, and plenty of scrap drifted down to where Viisvang crouched under the heavy pressure of her treasure hoard. He had been beneath her hoard for as long as he could remember, though he had vague memories of open seas from sometime before, when he was not a god. He wasn’t sure she actually knew she had a son, but regardless, he was well taken care of, lots of delicious food to eat, a safe and comfy place to stay, what else could a little crab god want?
There had once been other crabs beneath her hoard, other small scuttling bodies scavenging the fishmother’s crumbs, but they had long since disappeared, eaten by him in his efforts to reduce the competition for the delicious morsels that drifted down from the fishmother’s many meals.
He remembered the first of his brethren he had eaten, it had been a little thing, much smaller than himself, he had cracked through its shell and gorged himself on the meat within. Crab meat, he reflected, was delicious. He had since taken on larger prey, had fierce battles where he had only just come out victorious, but it was that first tiny crab that stayed with him. How it had rubbed together its claws in a warning that went unheeded. How he had ripped its legs off one by one.
The fishmother mostly ignored the goings on beneath her, focusing her attention on the larger prey that swam too close, though she would occasionally snack on a crab if one came within range, or if she hadn’t caught another fish for too long. She was a massive thing, easily thirty feet long, a monster among moray eels. Electricity sparked along her back, charging the waters around her. Giant sea glass teeth, sharp broken things that had been embedded in her jaws, oozed blood as she captured prey, their brilliant beautiful colors belying their dangerous nature. It was her massive gold hoard, a treasure collected from around the sunken city their reef grew out of that she guarded jealously, from what Viisvang was uncertain. Who would dare to steal from the fishmother?
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It had been when he had first arrived at her hoard, scurrying under the hoard for the cover it offered that he had been transformed. A pile had lurched, fallen over, trapping him beneath it. He had stayed there, fixed in place, barely surviving off the fishmother’s scraps for a long long time, crushed under the weight of the gold, the impression on the face of one coin pressing into his shell, imprinting it with the image of the boy-king that had once ruled the sunken city. Silica sediment had been compressed into his shell, opalizing him into a living fossil, sealing his fate as a god, beholden only to the fishmother herself. He had worshiped her after that, every morsel thanked her for the gift she had given him with prayers of gratitude. She was a benevolent god, and he was her dutiful son, however unaware she was of his birth.
It was only later that he discovered he could take on the boy-kings visage through the imprint on his shell. Cracking open his armor across the imprint and emerging, his shell dangling from long sinew like fibers as a talisman around his neck, as he explored what was once a great city. And a great city it had once been, statues of mysterious beings in every courtyard, beautiful geometric mosaics lining the streets, now growing beautiful coral and stationary sea creatures, the wreckage rich with relics that he gathered to bring back to the fishmother as tribute.
Who had lived here, he wondered, what had their people been like? They must have worn the same form as him, their ruler, no matter how small he had been in relation to the statues he saw spread about the city. He examined his fingers, a delicate film between the digits and tipped in sharp pointed nails, his neck fins wafting gently in the currents. What strange looking creatures they must have been.
In the center of the city, in the midst of a ruined castle, a volcano rose, occasionally spewing thick hot rock, and thermal vents spread throughout the remains. Viisvang would often frequent the heated vents, resuming his more heat resistant crab form to scutter about and enjoying the torridity, clacking his claws at other crabs to keep them at bay.
The former city now great coral reef was rich in ocean life, various sea sponges, oysters and clams, sea stars, urchins, and many many species of fish darting around, busy with their short lives, Viisvang thought as he watched them, secure in the knowledge that his own life was now without end, thanks to the munificence of the fishmother.