The Awakened World
DEMERGI URBES
The Sunken Kingdom, realm of the mer
Demergi Urbes (Sunken Kingdom)
(pronounced dem-ER-gee URB-es)
The Sunken Kingdom is a series of dome-protected cities on the ocean floor. The one nearest the coast of Daryatla is Demergi Urbs (which just means “Sunken City” in Latin), and as it was the first, the entire kingdom now bears the name; land-dwellers refer to each city and the whole realm by the English words—Sunken City, Sunken Kingdom, Far City, etc. Among the mer, they call each by its Latin name.
In the era following the Great Cataclysm, a portion of the world’s population had to take to the seas to survive the horrible conditions on land, and thanks to the magic of the first Awakened, they found a way to build protective domes to enclose their cities. Air has to be piped in from the surface, and enclosed way-stations are located between the cities for traveling mer to make stops without needing to surface; mer cannot breathe underwater, but they can hold their breath for an hour at a time, much like marine mammals like whales.
The Sunken Kingdom has five dome-protected cities; Demergi Urbs is the biggest, Usquerbis the farthest away (it means “Far City”), and the central dome is Margarita Civitas (“Pearl City”). These are the three that appear in Awakened.
The Mer Royals
In the early days of the Awakened world, the Sunken Cities were ruled by the Sea King along with Daryatla, but the Black Tails—a violent revolutionary group of mer—rose to fight for independence. Now its own kingdom, Demergi Urbes has suffered through coup after coup, the kingdom never quite escaping its legacy of violence upheaval.
Though a cousin of Seidon’s mother had been ruling in Queen Brenn’s day (see Captivated), the House of Sael had since won control of the mer throne, and Ralia is the ruling Queen in Seidon’s day. The Crown Princess is Mariana, but the youngest sibling, Finn, is vying for power.
In Awakened, the Black Tails have arisen again. Prince Finn is the leader, but we also meet one of his distant cousins, Electra, who is a general in his new army.
Electra
Prince Finn
Faith System
The Sunken Kingdom is predominately a Christian kingdom, though we never use those words. God is called the One, who most recognize is the same as the Triada of Daryatla; the two kingdoms share sacred Scripture, though not always interpretations of it (think of the divide between Protestant and Catholic here).
Queen Raila, however, has little use for religion, so she has largely ignored the priest sector. Among the Black Tails is a distant royal cousin, Librus, Priest of the One. He’s the one who has interpreted the prophecy about the coming Sky Magic and targeted Jade, stepsister of the heroine of Awakened, as the one waiting to be Awakened to this new magic. This is, he insists, tied up with their faith and the promised deliverance for the mer, who will no longer be at the mercy of the land-dwellers for things like air.
Librus
Magic System
The magic system in the Awakened world is the same in all kingdoms, though there are unique qualities to each. “Beauty follows magic” is a truism in the Awakened world, and magic not only grants one control of the given element, but also long life and good health. The known magic is control of water, and water is a key element in the Awakening Ceremony, which is the foundational, most sacred ceremony in the kingdoms.
It begins with a crystal bowl of water—usually salt water in Daryatla or the Sunken Kingdom—and a curved blade called the Awakening Blade, made of titanium.
Only someone already Awakened can preside over the ceremony. They wield the Blade, making a small cut in the finger of each young person and spilling a single drop of blood into the bowl of water. If they have dormant magic waiting in their veins, the drop of blood won’t just make a red cloud like normal blood does, but it will make instead a subtle flourish…though it sometimes takes a trained eye to see it.
This is referred to as priming the blood. The Blade does something to the blood, though what, exactly, is a bit mysterious to the people. Seidon’s scientists have finally isolated nanites that live in the blood of every Awakened, which kill off disease and keep them young, but they don’t yet have technology that allows them to see how these nanites are reacting to the Blade.
What they’ve long known, however, is that a second step is required to fully Awaken someone, to make the latent potential into something active. They need a drop of blood from someone already Awakened.
So when the one conducting the ceremony spots that telltale flourish, they will then cut their own finger and lower both it and the still-cut finger of the other person into the bowl. With the water as a conduit, they send their blood out, toward the other person’s finger. When the magical blood encounters the wound, it Awakens the nanites in that second person’s blood, which feels like a zap of electricity to the newly Awakened individual.
But as with any magic, any strength, it has its weaknesses too. Awakened blood has no natural clotting agent and requires something else to help it clot. In the case of water magic, it’s water… for those in Daryatla and the Sunken Kingdom, it’s specificially salt water; though fresh does work, it’s not as fast and only works on small cuts. So if they get a papercut, they can just suck on it…but if they get a knife wound, they need to submerge in salt water or they’ll bleed out.
Magic only occurs in the meeting of people from two different worlds. In the case of Daryatla and the Sunken Kingdom, one must have blood from both land-dwellers and mer. Two Awakened can also have magical children, and they are often more powerful than either parent. However, the more powerful the magic, the harder it is to have children; Awakened couples often go decades without conceiving and have many years between children. King Seidon has never fathered any surviving children; his magic is too strong for an Unawakened, and he’s never found and Awakened strong enough to match him either.
Sky Magic
Each book will introduce a “new” magic as well. In Awakened, we learn that the mer are awaiting the advent of “sky magic,” which would give the holder power over air or wind. They’ve interpreted the Writ in a way that promises this but do not know what it will look like.
