Aquatus

Aquatus shifted beneath the cold, Praetorian seawater, his gills rippling along his jaw. He watched the small patrol of brutes as they gathered on the white sands of the beach. One of them carried a child, gagged and bound, struggling to free herself.

Aquatus gauged the distance between him and them, accounting for the distortion caused by the sunlight's refraction upon the surface. The brutes stood around their prisoner, readying knives and joking with boorish abandon about how the meat would taste.

Floating closer, Aquatus slowly and silently broke the water's surface until his head emerged. One brute took a knife to the child's arm and began sawing. The others laughed as the child screamed. Aquatus whispered the runes of magic, and another brute shouted and pointed toward the sea. The others turned to find a leviathan emerging from the ocean. As one, they dropped their blades and fled.

Aquatus glided through the water and rose to his feet on the beach. He approached the child and crouched beside her. She stared at him, eyes wide with fear as she clutched her bloody arm.

He smiled. “You are safe now,” he said in his strange, gurgling voice, “but we must hurry before they realize it was merely an illusion I cast.”

He lifted the child, pressing his webbed hand to her wound, and carried her into the sea. Lemell is a flooded realm covered in vast oceans. The Aqua Sapiens, a splinter of humans with gills and webbed fingers and toes, inhabit the shallow waters surrounding its islands and archipelagos.

Aquatus was young when the Chaos Legion came and the dark god drained his home of magic. When the Riftwatchers followed, the Aqua Sapiens remained wary, not knowing whether they were friend or foe. But when a landing party arrived on an island near his home, Aquatus was curious. He snuck into the Riftwatchers' camp late at night and stole a satchel. In it, he found waxed scrolls bearing ancient runic symbols, and something stirred within him. He became obsessed, and for years after the Riftwatchers left, he studied the runes, even fashioning a bandolier so he could carry them with him everywhere he went.

When next the Riftwatchers visited Lemell, Aquautus sought them out. They promised to teach him how to harness the power of the runes if he joined their fight against the Chaos Legion. Aquatus agreed without hesitation, leaving Lemell and his people behind for the promise of a new beginning.