Remnants

Many years ago, there was an island off the north coast of Gertai, a Vulpesant port city. The island was home to a religious fortress known as the Red Mount, as a massacre of believers had occurred there several thousand years past. The religion, known as Viefda, is the largest government-recognized religion on Midden, with 80% of the population belonging to it's churches at the last census. More on this later;

The island was a small volcano, that had been inactive for nearly ten thousand years, and was projected to remain that way for the foreseeable future, as due to a large magmal shift, the fluid rock had flowed back down into the planet, after the volcano was formed. The main temple was constructed eight thousand years ago, and a sacred city sprang up around it. This city was fortified during the Godwars, a series of conflicts fifteen hundred years before the Great War, which ended in the decimation of the Bovura sect of the Viefda religion, and Primary Viefda becoming the dominant religion on the planet.

Eight years after the end of the Godwars, Beim Rengal, a Viefdan minister, while traveling with his scribes through the Nagal Plains, had a vision of the Red Mount collapsing into the sea. He rushed back to Gertai, and boarded the first vessel he could to the sacred isle, which happened to be a barge loaded with royal marble and gold-laden lead, supplies for the construction of the Simerius Temple, to be built at the site of it's predecessor, which had recently been disassembled. Beim rushed to inform the head clergy of his vision, when the entire mountain collapsed in on itself. The island literally imploded, sinking into the sea in full view of the sailors and citizens of Gertai. Vessels of every make and size rushed to the frothing sea, managing to pull hundreds of clergy and workers out of the water. In what was deemed as a miracle, only five individuals died, workers in the basement of the temple that was being disassembled, who were deemed to have chipped through the stone of the mountain, that coupled with the weight of the materials being brought ashore caused the island to collapse.

Beim Rengal was deemed a prophet, and the incident was interpreted as Veif, the Primary God of the Veifdan religion, voicing her disgust with the construction of much more extravagant temples than necessary. A crater remained where the island once was, outlining it's shore. A few structures remained above water, and the remains of many more were visible submerged and crumbled. Everything was left the way it was, lest to provoke an even more impressive display of Veif's wrath.

About the picture...
I had a dream the other night where I was walking through a destroyed city of marble and gold, and the ground was torn open as if it had suffered a massive earth quake. Then she (see picture) swam up to me, and I realized I was underwater, thus drowning, and woke up.

Oh yeah, the anemones in the background allude to my next picture...