[EVENT Ch 4 - Story] Cracks in Paradise

The dome was never silent anymore.
What once had been a seamless curve of Atlantean glass and stone, a barrier between the deep ocean and the jungle paradise below; now whispered its fragility with every tremor. From the foundations to the highest arch of its ceiling, it creaked and groaned, like the ribs of some dying colossus. No citizen of Atlantis could walk the jungle paths without hearing the slow drip of seawater leaking through.
Faramond heard it most of all.
The styracosaurus stood at the fissure’s edge, his legs sunk deep into wet soil. His plumage bristled along his shoulders, a halo of black and cream feathers tipped faintly in pale blue. Water pooled around his claws, carrying with it the faint sting of salt. His heavy breaths misted in the damp air, the sound swallowed by the vast chamber of the ruined biodome.
Above him, the fractured dome caught stray shafts of sunlight filtered from the true ocean. Fish swam past outside, shadows skimming over the glass. Schools of silver anchovies moved like living rivers. But each time they darted past, Faramond noticed how the cracks refracted their bodies, splitting them into two, then three, then more. He wondered if that was what Atlantis was becoming: a world breaking into pieces.
Behind him, the jungle sighed. Vines clung to half-fallen human statues, the remnants of a time when Atlantis had been more laboratory than kingdom. Huge cycads and fern-fronds trembled as though even the plants felt the dome’s decay. Bioluminescent fungi clung to the stone foundations, casting wavering green light across toppled marble. Birds; creatures bred here long ago from forgotten stock; flitted between the ruins, their feathers glimmering with strange colors.
It had been paradise once. A secret Eden beneath the sea.
Now, it was drowning.
And then she came.
The Queen.
From the shadows of the undergrowth, her form emerged with a presence so commanding the air seemed to bend around her. She was an iguanodon of regal bearing, cloaked in a mantle of dark blue feathers, her body marked with bands of white and black that sharpened her silhouette. Her eyes, yellow as polished amber, pierced through the gloom. Every step she took seemed measured, deliberate, and the ground itself seemed to hush for her passage.
Around her trailed members of her court: slender hadrosaurs bearing bundles of resin, armored euoplocephalus carrying vines like cables, and lithe raptors darting ahead as scouts. Each one lowered their head slightly as she passed. They feared her, revered her, or perhaps both.
Her gaze fixed upon Faramond.
“Knight of my jungle,” she said, her voice as smooth as running water, yet undercut by an iron command. “You hear it too, don’t you? The dome’s death knell.”
Faramond lowered his great crest, its spikes catching the dim light. “I do, Majesty. The sea presses harder every day. The crack bleeds salt into the soil. It will poison everything if left unchecked.”
A ripple passed through her feathers. She moved closer, and though she was smaller than he, she seemed to tower above him. “And will you let it? Will you stand idle while our paradise withers? Or will you give your strength to bind it closed?”
Behind her words lay something unspoken: a challenge, perhaps even a threat.
Faramond bowed his head lower, though unease prickled along his spine. “Tell me what must be done, and I will see it through.”
The Queen’s eyes glowed faintly in the bioluminescence. “Then you shall be more than a knight. You shall become the keystone of Atlantis itself.”
They gathered at the edge of the fissure: the Queen, her court, and the working citizens of Atlantis. Dinosaurs of every kind moved through the ruins with purpose, bearing tools fashioned from scavenged human relics, resin harvested from jungle trees, and woven mats of vines.
From the Queen’s vantage point atop a broken marble stair, she surveyed the work. Her voice rose above the din, carrying across the biodome.
“This dome has shielded us since the age when humans still walked above the sea. It was they who built it, thinking to hide their wonders. It was we who claimed it when they fell, turning their machines into soil, their ruins into our kingdom. For generations, it has kept the ocean at bay. But even domes are not eternal. The earthquakes that freed us also threaten us.”
Her yellow gaze swept across the assembly.
“Yet hear me: Atlantis shall not fall. Even if the ocean swallows our dome, we will rise upon the islands above. Our jungle will spread across their shores, our seeds will take root in their soil, and their lands will belong to us. This is not a plea, it is destiny. But first, we must mend the dome, and we must be strong enough to hold it until the day of our expansion comes.”
Murmurs of approval, tinged with fear, passed through the crowd. The Queen had never asked for permission. She commanded, and the citizens obeyed.
Faramond stood apart, his horns gleaming faintly, his feathers stirring with the heavy currents that filtered through the fissure. He was no stranger to battle; he had defended the Queen’s realm against leviathans from the outer ocean and against rebellious creatures within. But this task was different. He was not being asked to fight. He was being asked to anchor Atlantis itself.
And part of him wondered what it meant, that her plan was not merely survival, but conquest.
The court set to work.
Vines as thick as ropes were dragged across the fissure. Buckets of volcanic resin, harvested from vents deep below, were hauled up and smeared into cracks. From hidden vaults, Atlantean citizens carried ancient seeds, glistening and pulsing faintly as though alive with some inner light. They were laid reverently in shallow basins, waiting to be embedded into the dome.
The Queen turned to Faramond.
“You will be our anchor,” she said. “The crack is widest here. If it widens further, the dome will collapse. Place your crest against it, and do not yield. Your body will be the brace upon which this dome is healed. The seeds will grow around you, binding you to the wall. They will drink your blood, your strength, and in return they will seal Atlantis.”
Faramond’s breath came heavy. He understood then: this was no simple task. It was a sacrifice.
But when he looked into her yellow eyes, he saw no room for refusal.
He lowered his head. “So be it.”
With a bellow that echoed through the chamber, he drove his horns into the fissure. Stone cracked, water hissed and slowed, his crest wedged deep into the breach. Salt stung his wounds, blood slicked down his hide, but he held fast.
The citizens swarmed around him, weaving vines across his body, pressing resin into cracks, planting seeds along the fissure and into the gashes of his flesh. Roots curled, digging into him, fusing with the wall. Bioluminescence flared, lighting the chamber with eerie glow.
Faramond gritted his teeth as the jungle claimed him. His veins burned with sap. His feathers stiffened as tendrils wrapped around them. He was not merely standing against the dome now, he was becoming part of it.
And the Queen’s voice, soft yet commanding, whispered in his ear:
“You are mine now, Faramond. Mine, and Atlantis’s. Through you, the dome shall live. Through you, our seeds shall flourish. You are the keystone.”
Days passed.
Faramond remained braced in the fissure, half-beast, half-root. His strength kept the crack from spreading, his blood nourished the seeds that wound across his body. They grew with unnatural speed, weaving a living lattice across the wound, glowing faintly with their own bioluminescence.
But as he endured, he began to feel the truth of them.
The seeds whispered in his mind. Not words, not thoughts, but hunger. They yearned to spread, to root deeper, to drink salt and soil alike. They were not merely repairing the dome, they were waiting to be unleashed upon new lands. They were invasive, relentless, uncontainable.
And he realized: the Queen had known this all along.
She did not care whether the dome held forever. To her, it was a stepping stone. If Atlantis endured, she would spread its seeds across the islands. If the dome failed, the jungle would flood upward, consuming everything in its path.
Either way, the world above would be hers.
And he, bound by roots, fused to the dome, was part of it now.
The Queen visited him often, her yellow eyes gleaming with pride. “You are more beautiful than I imagined,” she said, running her claws along his feathered hide where roots twisted into his skin. “The first of my true knights. Not flesh alone, but jungle. You are proof that Atlantis will never die. Through you, we will conquer.”
Faramond said nothing. His strength was hers now. His silence was his only rebellion.
The fissure slowed. The leaks lessened. Citizens rejoiced, believing their dome saved. But Faramond knew the truth. The dome was not healed, it was merely transformed, its wounds filled with seeds that would never stop growing.
At night, he dreamed of islands strangled by vines, of ruins smothered beneath forests that pulsed with bioluminescence. He saw the Queen standing atop a shore, her feathers glowing like fire, her voice commanding the tide of jungle to march.
And always, he saw himself, rooted, silent, watching as the hunger spread.
One evening, as another quake rattled the dome, he spoke at last.
“Majesty,” he rasped, his voice low, choked by vines. “Tell me truly… if the dome holds, will you keep Atlantis beneath the sea? Or will you still spread the seeds above?”
The Queen tilted her head, feathers shimmering. Her yellow eyes glowed in the dark.
“Why choose one destiny,” she said softly, “when we may claim both?”
And with that, he knew. His vow of fealty had bound him not just to Atlantis’s survival, but to its conquest. He was no longer a knight guarding a paradise. He was the spearhead of an invasion.
And the jungle grew hungrier by the day.
Following days felt like an eternity to Faramond. The roots dug deeper each day.
By now, his legs were half-fused into the wall itself, his hide latticed with pale, bioluminescent vines that pulsed like veins. The fissure no longer bled seawater, yet the hunger of the seeds gnawed at him endlessly. His strength fed them, and in return they whispered in his blood, always urging, always hungering.
He felt more tree than beast. More wall than knight.
And yet, the Queen returned to him as she always did, moving through the jungle like a living flame. Her feathers shimmered in the light of the dome’s crystals, her yellow eyes unblinking. She studied him, and for the first time, Faramond thought he saw not triumph in her gaze but something stranger, contemplation.
“You have given more than I asked,” she said softly, her voice carrying only for him. “More than any of my court could have given.”
Faramond’s breath came ragged, but he lifted his head. “You asked me to be the keystone. I have done it. The dome holds.”
“Yes,” she murmured, stepping closer, her claws brushing over the roots that bound his flank. “But it has cost you too much. You are no longer my knight, you are my monument. And I…” Her voice faltered, if only for a heartbeat. “…I do not wish to lose you to the roots.”
Faramond blinked, weary. “It is too late. The seeds have me.”
But the Queen’s feathers bristled with sudden resolve. “No. There are older powers still. Secrets even my court does not know.”
She summoned them to the ruins at the dome’s heart, a chamber built by humans long ago, now swallowed by jungle. There, beneath a broken statue of a faceless figure, lay the Atlantean crystals.
They were shards of pure light, forged in the age before the dome, humming with power. Each one glowed a different hue, their surfaces etched with lines that seemed to shift as if alive. Few had dared touch them; they were said to bind life and death, earth and ocean.
The Queen carried them herself, their glow painting her feathers in shifting color. She placed them at the base of the fissure, forming a circle around Faramond. The air thrummed. The vines binding his body twitched, recoiling slightly as though afraid.
“Crystals of the First Makers,” she intoned, her voice rising into chant. “You bound the sea. You forged the dome. Now I call upon your strength to unbind my knight. Let the roots release him, let the wall stand on its own, let the jungle hunger find other soil.”
The circle flared. Light leapt up around Faramond, sinking into his hide, searing through the vines. He bellowed, shaking the dome with his roar, as roots writhed and peeled back. Sap hissed, blood steamed, the seeds shrieked in his mind.
And then; release.
He stumbled forward, free at last, his crest dripping with resin and sap, his feathers torn but unbroken. The fissure behind him held, sealed not by his blood now but by the crystal’s light, which burned into the seeds and hardened them into glassy stone.
Panting, Faramond turned his gaze to the Queen. “Why?”
Her eyes, yellow and unflinching, met his. “Because Atlantis needs you free, not buried. You are no root, no wall. You are now my horn and my shield. When the day comes that we rise upon the islands, I will need you beside me.”
Her feathers shimmered, catching the glow of the crystals. For the first time, her words carried not just command, but something perilously close to trust.
“You are bound to me, Faramond, not by roots, not by blood, but by choice. And so I free you, because your choice matters more than your sacrifice.”
Faramond lowered his head slowly, the weight of her words pressing upon him heavier than the roots ever had. He could not deny her power, nor the strange bond she had chosen to forge with him.
“I will stand beside you,” he rumbled, his voice steady once more. “Not because you command it… but because I see the truth of Atlantis. Whatever world we claim, it will need guardians. And I will be one of them.”
The Queen’s feathers rippled, and for the first time in many days, she smiled, not a cruel smile, not triumphant, but something quieter, rarer.
“Then rise, my knight,” she said. “And let Atlantis rise with you.”
The dome still groaned, but the fissure held. The crystals pulsed faintly, feeding strength into the wall. The citizens of Atlantis whispered in awe of the Queen’s rite, though none dared speak of what it had cost her.
Faramond walked the jungle paths once more, his steps heavy but free. The roots had left scars across his body, glowing faintly with bioluminescence. He carried them not as shame but as proof, proof that he had stood against the sea, proof that he had been bound and released.
The seeds still whispered faintly at the dome’s edge, yearning for soil to conquer. And Faramond knew the Queen’s vision had not changed. Atlantis would one day spread across the islands. The hunger of the jungle would not be denied.
But now, he walked not as a monument, but as a knight, scarred, wary, yet unbroken.
And when the Queen’s call came again, whether to defend the dome or to march upon the islands, Faramond would answer—not because he was bound, but because he had chosen.
And in that choice, perhaps, lay the true secret of Atlantis.