Prologue

Ships sink.

When a ship sinks, sometimes depending on placement it gets washed ashore, and sometimes it eventually makes it ways to land by the oceans current, but sooner or later the ship parts in such a way that it's scattered, a plank of its former self. Sometimes it's a lot of the ship, if the ocean can manage it, and sometimes its only the heaviest parts, because gravity likes to bring things down, in every sense of the word.

No man had ever made it this deep before, or if they did they weren't alive to see it.

In this case, all that managed to make it toward the depths of sea was a few odds and ends, one of them being an anchor. It had taken a while for this particular anchor to sink but it had done it, and was headed straight down with little concern except landing.

Bits and odds settled in the sand before the anchor ever did, tiny dust clouds that hadn't moved in centuries were alive, if only briefly, in a puff. They settled too.

An eye the size of a manhole opened lazily when this happened, and was about to close again when it saw nothing of important was happening. Nothing had happened in seven hundred years, after all, be it by luck or fate.

Until all of a sudden luck went on a holiday and fate tossed the dice.

The anchor landed hard, and bounced against something much bigger than the ship it once belonged to. The creature gave a long low bellow and moved, causing lots of ancient sand to shift with its thrashes, a creating an underwater desert experiencing a dust tornado.

A limb crashed through an older resting ship, and tore it in half with the gesture, but this only seemed to fury the figure more, like when you wake up and head for the alarm clock only to trip over your blanket.

On the surface, the water rippled a bit, and no one really noticed. Which brings us to the question, if a monster awakes in the deep and no is around to hear it, did it make a sound?