[h3]Narkissa Langdon[/h3]

Narkissa let out a gasp, sputtering foreign fluid as she was unceremoniously ejected from the strange pod. Temporarily blinded, she thought it was quite strange that she was choking on water. Sure, the submersible had sprung a leak, but after hitting the bottom of the sea floor, it subsequently rolled off the coastal shelf and into the abyss of the deep Atlantic. By all rights, there [i]shouldn’t[/i] be a chance to drown.

But despite being drenched, water really wasn’t entering her lungs. In fact, she was coughing it out, and a moment later, she thought to clear her eyes and blink. Expecting darkness, she was surprised to find herself in an unknown location. It was far from the watery coffin that she had expected… but then she recalled a fleeting dream, what she thought were hallucinations in the milliseconds before her instant death. 

What that actually… real? Did she actually speak to a god? Rubbing her eyes, she hastily took in her surroundings. She was in sparse, ancient room. Aside from the strange, test tube-like pod that was still slowly emptying out into the room, there was what appeared to be remnants of furniture scattered about, and a few intact shelves along the walls. More curiously, they still seemed to hold some of their contents. 

Looking down at herself, she was surprised to find that she was not wearing the comfortable oversized t-shirt and jeans for her underwater trip, but something else entirely. Although they were soaked, there was no denying that the clothes she now wore would be better described as ‘dapper.’ A dark vest with pockets covered the simple white button shirt she was wearing, and a pleated skirt that matched her vest clung to her lower thighs. The uncomfortable wet feeling made her want to strip and dry off, but in want of more information, she held off.

If this was still part of a hallucinatory dream, it felt very realistic. 

She wracked her memories for whatever she remembered of her interaction with the goddess. If everything she remembered was true, then she really had died in that tiny pressure can. Then… was she in another world?  Looking at the pod behind her, she felt more like the was the unwilling participant in some strange, unethical, illegal experiment. As she checked her own body, she was beginning to feel it really was like that. 

While she had been in her late thirties and considered herself pretty fit for her age, as she began to stretch out her cramped body, there was no denying the newfound spryness in her body, nor the strange white color of her hair in the corners of her eyes. If she really was given a new body, then why was her hair already white? Even so, her hair was soft and lush to the touch, nothing like the hard, scraggly strands of old age. 

No matter what she thought, the evidence really pointed to divine intervention. There had been no saving her down in the depth, and her current circumstances were strange at best. To drive the nail into the coffin on the matter, she had found her good-luck charm in her new vest’s pockets –a golden pocket watch and a family heirloom from two centuries past. The body was warped and the face of the timepiece was shattered from the pressure of external forces, frozen at 10:51, indisputably the moment she had met her end. 

It might have been destroyed, but apparently it was enough of a charm to bring the intervention of a god in her favor. Recalling the blessing bestowed upon her, she let out a chuckle to herself. 

It was destiny, wasn’t it? With what she knew and what she could do, it was fated for her to restore the British Empire in a broken world. 

In the meantime, though, there were some more pressing concerns. For example, the ancient books on the bookshelves, just waiting to be inspected by an archaeologist like her, but probably more importantly, the voices she could hear calling out to her from below. There was no way to get downstairs though, at least, not without a faith-testing leap, and in fact, if she was hearing right, it sounded almost like there was a scuffle downstairs. She peeked her head out from above, and did so in time to witness a man being assaulted by another person.

She had been tempted to call out to see why other individuals might be in this forsaken place, but thought better of it and ducked back down. She was probably better served checking out those books on the wall, and so she did. 

[@Cu Chulainn] [@Crusader Lord]  [@Guy0fV4lor] [@Rune_Alchemist]