The crushing weight of the deep Atlantic was the first thing Namor felt as the silver grey mist of Sefirah Castle dissolved from his vision. One moment, he was sitting at a long table above the clouds, bargaining with a billionaire and a king, the next, he was back on his throne of carved whale bone in the heart of Talokan, the pressure of ten thousand feet of water settling against his skin like a lover's embrace.
The water around him felt more vibrant. Every vibration in the current, from the grinding shift of tectonic plates miles below to the rhythmic pulsing of the bioluminescent hydro gardens in the city square, hit his senses with the force of a tidal wave.
He sat perfectly still, his hand gripping the familiar vibranium shaft of his spear. He glanced at the bioluminescent coral clock embedded in the wall of the throne room. Exactly fifteen minutes had passed. To his royal guard, motionless statues in the periphery, he had merely closed his eyes for a moment of divine contemplation.
But as Namor stood up, the water rippled around him with a kinetic intensity that made the nearest guard stumble back. He felt the Beta Level High Speed Regeneration anchoring itself to his soul, a golden wire threading through his essence. The old scars on his chest vanished, knitting together until his skin was as smooth and hard as polished jade. The fatigue of three centuries evaporated. He felt as though he could swim through the core of the earth and come out the other side without breaking a sweat.
"K'uk'ulkan?"
Namora stepped forward from the shadows, her hand hovering instinctively over her weapon. She looked at her King and froze. Namor looked younger. The weathering of time, the subtle weight of ruling a hidden empire, had been violently erased. His eyes, usually dark pools of ancient worry, now glowed with a golden clarity.
"Summon Attuma," Namor commanded, his voice vibrating through the water like a sonar ping, powerful enough to rattle the bones of those present. "And the Council of Elders. The world above has changed and Talokan must rise to meet it."
Within minutes, the inner sanctum was filled. Attuma, the fiercest warlord of the deep, entered with his usual heavy tread, the shark skull helmet gleaming. But even he stopped short when he saw Namor.
"My King," Attuma grunted, his eyes narrowing as he sensed the shift in the water's pressure around his sovereign. "You look... different. Has the surface air changed you?"
"The surface has provided a key, Attuma," Namor said, gesturing for his two most loyal generals to approach the throne. "The era of hiding in the dark is ending. But to lead our people for the next five centuries, you must be more than mere warriors."
Namor explained the concept of the Anchor… the dual blessing of the Super Soldier strength and the Beta Level regeneration. He didn't bother with Aryan's scientific explanations, to the Talokanil, science and magic were the same breath of the Feathered Serpent.
"Touch my spear," Namor ordered, extending the weapon. "And repeat the words I speak."
Namora and Attuma exchanged a confused glance. They were used to blood oaths, ritual combat and sacrifices. But what Namor was asking sounded like the strange superstitions of the surface dwellers. Nevertheless, the command of K'uk'ulkan was absolute. They stepped forward, each placing a hand on the etched metal of the King's weapon.
"The Fool that doesn't belong to this era..." Namor began, the honorifics tasting strange in the dense water.
Attuma's lip curled, revealing jagged teeth. "The... Fool? My King, is this a joke?"
"Speak the words, Attuma, or I will find a general who will," Namor hissed, the water around him boiling with sudden heat.
The chamber echoed with the rhythmic chanting of the Sefirah Honorifics. Attuma sounded like he was swallowing stones as he muttered about the King of Yellow and Black who wields good luck, while Namora's voice was a hesitant whisper. To any observer, it looked like a high stakes cult initiation at the bottom of the Atlantic.
As the final line… was spoken, the water in the room seemed to flash white.
Attuma roared, a sound of pure shock, as his body was forcibly restructured. The knotted muscles of his shoulders became denser, his bone structure reinforcing itself to withstand pressures that would crush a nuclear submarine. The grey streaks in his hair vanished. He grew an inch taller in seconds.
Namora gasped as the chronic fatigue of a century spent guarding the borders evaporated. She looked at her hands, flexing them, realizing they now possessed the strength to crush raw vibranium ore into dust.
"I feel... I feel like a god," Attuma whispered, flexing his massive arms, watching the water displace around them with violent force.
"You feel like a soldier of Talokan," Namor corrected, his voice stern. "And you will stay this way for five hundred years."
The Council of Elders arrived next, floating into the chamber, their faces pale with fear. They had heard the rumors of Namor's "new light" and the shouting of the generals.
"Elders," Namor addressed them, pointing to the glowing vibranium vents that powered their city. "The surface world is developing sensors that can pierce the deep. Our isolation is a paper shield. Therefore, I have moved the 'Heart of the Sea' to a place where no human, no machine and no god can find it."
He revealed the Void Vault. With a wave of his hand, he demonstrated the storage of a massive crate of processed vibranium ingots. The crate vanished into a ripple of grey fog that opened and closed in the water like a hungry mouth.
"This is the Void of K'uk'ulkan," Namor declared. "It is an airless and timeless vacuum outside of this world. Our true wealth will be stored there. Even if the surface world invades these waters, they will find nothing but empty trenches. We have moved our soul into the Void."
The Elders whispered among themselves, terrified yet awed.
"We are going public," Namor announced.
The room erupted in chaos. Bubbles of panic rose from the Elders.
"The surface dwellers will hunt us!" one Elder cried, his jade ornaments rattling. "They will bring their bombs and their greed! They will poison the currents!"
Namor silenced them with a single strike of his spear against the floor. The sound wave knocked the breath from their lungs.
"They will not hunt what they cannot touch. We are not joining the surface world as a colony. We are joining the Earth Federation as its most powerful founding member. We represent seventy percent of this planet… the blue parts they have never conquered."
He leaned in, his voice dripping with calculated political venom. "We will tell them that we hid because of the corruption of their old world. We will say we could not trust a race that poisons its own air and betrays its own kin. But now, with a new Federation built by my peers… Stark of the Land and T'Challa of the Hidden Forest… we are stepping out to claim our seat. We will offer them the resources of the sea, but only on our terms."
Finally, Namor turned back to Attuma. "Bring me the hundred. The elite of the elite. The warriors who will be the spearhead of Talokan."
In the Great Temple of the Abyss, located near the searing heat of the magma vents, a hundred warriors gathered. They were the fiercest hunters of the deep, men and women who rode orcas and wrestled giant squids for sport. Namor used a temple of bone and fire.
He had them surround him in the water, a spherical formation, each touching his arms, his shoulders, or the long shaft of his spear.
"You will repeat the Honorifics," Namor commanded, his voice amplified by the acoustics of the temple. "If you falter, you die. If you succeed, you become the immortal guard of K'uk'ulkan."
The sight was absurd and terrifying. A hundred blue skinned warriors, underwater, chanting in unison about The Mysterious Ruler above the gray fog. Namor stood at the center, looking like a dark messiah, his eyes closed, channeling the power of the Castle.
The energy transfer was a physical shockwave that sent a plume of silt rising from the floor. A hundred heartbeats synced into one. A hundred bodies became Super Soldiers. They gained a predatory telepathy among themselves, a unified will forged in the magic of the deep.
"You are the Centurions of the Abyss," Namor told them as they knelt in the water, their new strength humming in the current. "The surface world has Captain America. We have a hundred of him."
Namor looked at his transformed kingdom. The Elders were pacified by the immortality of the royal line, the military was empowered by the Super Soldier anchors and the wealth was hidden in the Void.
"Prepare the royal ship," Namor told Namora, gripping his spear. "We head to the Umbrella Hive. T'Challa and Stark are waiting. We have a treaty to sign and a broken soldier to mend."