Terror in the Deep: a Tale of PulchraGea

A Three Hour Tour

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. It started on a tropic isle just after Doug and I were jettisoned from a certain ship. As I lay in the warm, wet sand I remember in horror the dozens of bodies swirling around me as I fought the current to reach the surface. There was blood all around me as the Gildragoon began feeding. One tried to nip at me, but backed off when I used Champion to give it a third nostril. I looked around frantically for Doug, saw the beacon of sky blue light that was Doug's Rangersword, Frostbite.
He was hacking viciously at the aquatic dragoons piling up around him in the water. He was clinging to a piece of floating wreckage, upon which was a mother and her child, the ones from the quarantine mine. Doug was attempting valiantly to keep the predators away, but the scent of fresh, live meat must have been shorting out their basic sense of self preservation. In the end, both mother and child were lost. I felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, a burning anger.
These feelings return as the surf washes over my feet. Is it a sign, I wonder, proof that I'm no longer able to protect my people?

We don't stay on the island long. Although Doug lost his scroll in the water, mine always stays close about my person. I send Storm an emergency beacon and she picks us up within the hour. Neither I, Doug, nor the Sirolhi say a word as we fly with all stealth back to Ranger headquarters, AKA an old clubhouse behind the Argentum Law Office.
I'm not worried about the Security Council knowing I didn't die. Argentum is very much anti-Council and pro-Ranger in sentiment. But then again, the Argenteans have been around me since I became King, so they know who I am on a more personal level, are less susceptible to the Council's propoganda. Many in fact give me and Doug a wink before looking pointedly away, as if in promise that our secret was safe with them. It brought warmth to my heart, but a darkness to my mind.

We open the door to HQ and are immediately bombarded by the other Rangers. I look at each in turn and remember how I met each, and how each became a Royal Ranger of PulchraGea.
The first Ranger besides myself was Matt Ovalle, from Silva, a leather hunter. He discovered the Rangersword Gravity in the rotting vegetation of the forest floor. He was a short and relatively goofy character, but a very intelligent person, and a deep, philosophical thinker. He was probably the only Ranger who could even hope to match me with a blade, and a good friend.
Jason Arroyo was the second Ranger, wielder of Inferno, the broadsword of fire. He was a good pilot, a passable mechanic, and not exactly the smartest sumbitch in the world, but a very honest and loyal friend. He's a tough bastard whom I met even before I became King, when I was first searching for Keystones. He had been our pilot to Mount Spilmor, and he'd been clinically killed after being shot with a laser. Luckily for him, there had been an emergency stasis unit that helped keep his body stable until he could be revived by miraculous PulchraGean technology. He kind of found Inferno by accident.
Then there was Kermit Hall, the cousin of the love of my life Katy Greyson. He was a marine biologist who worked for the Oasis College. His Rangersword, or swords rather, were the twin scimitars of Zephyr, blade of the North Wind. It had been delivered to him by God in a thunderstorm/tornado in order to help combat the threat of the rogue Chimera named Rage, who had eaten John Mason's body and somehow absorbed his soul and the dark Rangersword Venom.
Doug also was a Ranger, but his story is relatively complicated; Champion was originally meant to be his blade, as Venom was originally meant to be mine. The spirit of the Rangersword was split for a while, drawn to its inheritor as strongly as to the one who broke away from Venom through sheer courage and force of will; it sounds more heroic and epic than I feel it really was, but its loyalty permanently aligned with me when Doug, my first real friend inPulchraGea, told me he believed it suited me better.
Now he wields Frostbite, which was given to him by an angel to fight a blizzard demon on top of the highest peak on the planet, while he and an archeological team were digging me out of the ice. It's... kind of a long story.
Then I look around, for half a moment hoping to see her. Instead I see her Sword hanging in its scabbard in a glass case. I won't speak its name anymore, though I sometimes called it Joyeuse to tease her.
Lastly, but most definitely not least, is Donahri, Lord of the Lyric'ai. His sword is Mirrge, which some call Mirage but is most closely translated to The Liar, although its story and true name are much longer. It's real name in Koro-thal is Mirrge ns Sarta (MEER-gay nawsh SHAIRT), or in modern Narakh-thal Death is a Lie. I met Dohni during the Korokonara invasion, when he volunteered as a guide into Wintarsis to strike at the Korokonara leadership to end the war once and for all. If Venom could be said to be the Father of all Rangerswords, then Mirrge is their Mother, a tender healer and righteous punisher in turn.

So I stand before my fellow Rangers, chosen to protect PulchraGea during its greatest trials.