The summons came from Atlantis. Not in the normal ways, but as a ripple in the World Stream a magical current that only a handful could read. The instant I felt it, I knew it wasn't an invitation. It was a warning shrouded in despair.
Aquaman doesn't ask for assistance.
So when he did, I traveled.
I broke through the ocean's surface at maximum speed, piercing currents more rapidly than torpedoes. Water glimmered in my surroundings, receding before my heavenly aura, like it sensed that I did not belong but couldn't be withheld. By the time I came before Poseidon's Gate, two royal guards awaited me, spears bristling and eyes narrowed.
"Surface-dwellers do not dive this deep uninvited," one growled.
"I'm not a surface dweller," I replied. "I'm here for the King."
The second guard looked at the mark shining softly over my chest the divine seal left behind after the magical catastrophe. A symbol even the deep feared.
They took me through coral halls and pressure sealed gates until the city of Atlantis lay spread out before me huge, glowing, alive. Its power was wrong. Shudders rocked the ocean floor. Magic churned in wild waves, as if something ancient was stirring below it all.
Aquaman stood at the rim of a trench deep and throbbing with black light. Mera stood beside him, her face pale, her hair streaming like blood in water.
"Caught your message," he said, not turning.
"I have."
He was rough around the edges. Not battered never that. But like someone who'd spent years keeping a sea back behind his palms.
"What do you see?"
"A breach. Ancient magic. Pre Atlantean."
Mera shifted to look at me. "It's extending. The crust is weakening. If it breaks, the entire eastern ridge of the city will fall."
"Have you sealed it?".
We did everything short of offering up royal blood," Aquaman snarled. "And I'm not going to make Atlantis a temple for something I don't comprehend."
Intelligent. That was why I admired him, even before we'd ever met. He ruled with power, but more significantly, with restraint.
"Let me see it," I said.
I plunged into the trench.
The pressure would have crushed any ordinary being, but I wasn't ordinary. Not anymore. Divine light enveloped me, protecting my body as I fell through ancient coral, sea monster bones, and ruins constructed by hands that hadn't seen the light of day in millennia.
On the bottom, I discovered it: a seal. Not Atlantean. Pre-Atlantean. A construct of living magic, bound with threads of Leviathan essence. This was no mere underwater freak.
This was a prison.
Something had agitated it perhaps the same power that instigated the magical catastrophe up on top.
And it was trying to escape.
I swam upward again, water curling off my armor.
There's something old sleeping in your foundations," I said to Aquaman. "It's not only waking up. Someone's provoking it."
"You mean you're saying it's linked to what occurred in the mountains?"
I nodded. "Not only linked. Coordinated."
He made a fist. "Then we need to bury it. Deep."
"I can assist," I said. "But we do it together.
He looked at me for a moment. No longer a stranger, but an equal. And then he extended his hand.
"Let's ensure Atlantis remains."
Together, we funneled divine power and oceanic magic into a twin layered seal something neither of us could have accomplished on our own. The thing beneath let out a scream once, a sensation in bones and not ears, before the rift faded and pressure returned to normal.
Mera breathed out. "That. worked?"
"For now," I replied.
Aquaman nodded. "You've earned more than thanks. You've earned trust."
And in a world preparing for cosmic war, trust was the rarest treasure of all.