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The only thing that registered in Anyu's mind was the cold.

She'd thought that she knew what cold felt like. She didn't know what it was like to be not cold. Her whole life had been lived amongst blizzards and snows frigid enough to steal your fingers and toes if you stayed outside a moment too long. How could anything possibly be any colder than that?

Now Anyu knew how ignorant she'd been. This is what it felt like to be cold.

Anyu imagined this is what it would feel like to burn if fire were cold instead of hot. Like ice was crawling over her skin and slowly but surely consuming her alive. The water sucked all of the heat from her body in one short breath, leaving only her frozen fear. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She could do nothing but endure the icy tendrils ensnaring her in their embrace.

Her eyes screamed in protest at the contact with cold water, but she couldn't will herself to close them. That, or they were frozen open. Anyu couldn't decide which possibility was worse.

She couldn't see anything. Only vague shapes and shadows focusing in and out of existence in the absolute blackness... Until her eyes caught on a small point of brightness, a light casting itself down into the watery abyss. Light, her mind told her almost instinctively. Sun. Land. Warmth.

The sudden sign of hope finally ignited Anyu's innate will to survive. She flailed her arms and kicked out her legs desperately, striving towards the small bit of light above. 'Arms and legs' being abstract terms. At this point her limbs felt more like heavy stones that she was trying to force upwards against their natural inclination to sink. Or was it upwards? She couldn't tell anymore, but she couldn't dwell on that now or she'd lose the fight.

She kept moving, although the light didn't seem to be getting any closer. A distinct humming sound reverberated through the water, and Anyu paused to listen to it, entranced. It sounded almost exactly like her mother's voice, lilting softly in her ear. If she hadn't been already submerged in water, Anyu was sure that she would have cried. Was this it? Was this how she was going to die? How shameful. Drowning like a coward instead of dying protecting her people and home. At least none of them would ever know... At least Anik would still be able to hope that she was out there somewhere, fighting with all her strength to come back...

Her body was almost completely numb, but she still felt it when something slimy and rough coiled tightly around her ankle. Anyu's stomach dropped sharply. A few seconds later more of the clammy things gripped her arms and torso, tightening their hold and beginning to drag her down.

Anyu renewed her struggle to reach the surface, but there was no point now. The forces pulling her down were too powerful, and she had no more strength. It felt like she'd been underwater forever, but the sudden burning agony in her lungs let her know that it had not been so long yet. However it would be too late anyway if she didn't get air very soon.

She thrashed wildly growing desperate, until a memory sparked in her mind. Anyu normally would have prayed to the gods for luck, but with her recent experiences in mind, she simply prayed to her ancestors' spirits for guidance. Sure enough, when she reached for her belt, her knives were still there. With numb fingers, she clumsily grabbed one in each hand. Both because of the water and because of her frozen hands, she didn't have her usual skill with the blades, but it didn't take any skill to recklessly stab the tentacle-like things holding onto her until they recoiled and let go.

Her lungs felt near to bursting as she kicked up towards the surface triumphantly, a wave of adrenaline fueling her efforts.

Almost there...

She needed air in her lungs or she'd combust.

Please, just a few more seconds...

She felt herself slipping towards unconsciousness.

More limbs latched onto her, halting her ascent and dragging her back down with a sharp jerking motion. Down, down, down, until the ray of light was just a speck and then vanished entirely. Her one last chance of life, gone.

Her vision was going blurry, her thoughts growing fuzzy. She couldn't do it any longer. She took a gasp of air and-

Instead of the expected rush of water into her mouth and nose, she breathed in normally. Her body relaxed as if it had been replenished with oxygen. But that was impossible. There was no oxygen. She was underwater for the gods' sakes!

The water was becoming lighter, as if something was illuminating it from farther below. Anyu turned to try and get a look of her captors and her heart stopped and restarted beating in its chest.

The faces that looked back at her were only just barely humanoid, covered in skin that was completely white and had a slimy, gnarled appearance. The beady black eyes were sunk back deep in their sockets and surrounded by thick, gruesome wrinkles. Their mouths were huge, stretching from ear to ear, and seemed to be permanently stuck in maniacal grins with thin, shark like teeth stuck close together. Stringy black hair sprouted from the creatures' heads and trailed behind them as they swam like oily seaweed. The creatures' bodies reminded Anyu of both a human and seal form. Their limbs were much longer than any normal human's, with twig like fingers that were nearly a foot long. The skin was a sickly shade of off white and the slippery quality of it reminded Anyu of blubber. Those were the slimy limbs that had grabbed onto her and were still pulling her down.

She had never seen one before, but she knew what they were: qalupalik. There was no way it could be anything else. From the flowing dark hair and the grasping fingers, the description matched too closely.

Qalupalik, the treacherous demons of the sea. With long fingers to snatch children and beautiful voices to fool any who heard them, they kept the Nenet constantly wary of the water. Anyu shuddered in disgust. After seeing their horrid faces up close, she knew she'd never want to go near any body of water ever again. But that was optimistic thinking. First, she would have to survive long enough to get back to dry land.

The qalupalik finally made their haunting humming noise, tossed her down, and swam away. She hit a rocky floor covered with a strange fuzzy substance that pulsed with a soft glow. It allowed for a modicum of visibility in the otherwise pitch-black depths. It was green and smooth and felt soft under her fingertips, but Anyu didn't have a name for it.

Taking a deep breath of- water? air? She didn't even know at this point- Anyu lifted her head to take in her surroundings.

She was at the bottom of some kind of underwater fjord. Two massive cliffs rose on either side of her, completely blotting out her view of anything above. The cliff faces were made of a smooth black material that was dark as night but with the same sparkling sheen of clear ice. They were almost too precise, too orderly to be natural formations. It looked more like someone had cleaved the ocean floor cleanly in half. Anyu gulped. Not so long ago, she wouldn't have paid such a thought any mind. But now...

"Welcome," A silky voice echoed from the darkness.

Anyu snapped her head back from craning up at the cliffs to the source of the sound. It came from a corner of the rock face, too hidden in shadows for Anyu to make out.

"Who are you?" She called out nervously, fearing that she already knew the answer.

The figure of a woman swam into view. A woman from the waist up, at any rate. Her top half was that of a beautiful young woman, albeit somewhat off-putting with her green skin and thin-lipped smile. Her eyes glowed a menacing orange, and they did not appear to blink. She had long, thin arms, and her fingers were webbed, just like an otter's. Below, her narrow waist tapered into a tail of mottled gray and green scales. But her tail, although surprising, was not what drew Anyu's attention. All of the stories of Sedna spoke of her as part sea creature, whether it be half fish, seal, or whale. What the stories did not mention was her hair. At first it had been hard to notice; it was the same black hue as the surrounding water and blended in well. But as she drew closer, Anyu couldn't help but gape at the sheer mass of it.

She had thought the qalupaliks' hair was long. That was nothing compared to this. Her hair was easily three times her own size, perhaps more. The rippling black locks flowed every which way in the water, giving her the appearance of having a veritable mane.

"Welcome," She repeated, drawing closer with a swish of her tail. "I am Sedna." Her lips parted to reveal two rows of pearly white teeth as she smiled deviously. "And I have a very important task for you."