You awake from cryofreeze to find no one listened to your warnings. The sea swallowed the Earth, and marine life enslaved all humans.

Now the only way to freedom is to kill for it in the Undersea Thunderdome. Blood sport is the zenith of entertainment for marine royalty, and if you impress them, you may earn back a small amount of the respect you had as a TerraGeneral.

Before your first match, the other gladiators share folk wisdom to keep you alive. You worry these clichés will make your performance predictable, but turn a weary ear to them nonetheless:

• Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of breaths you take from your opponent’s respirator tube.

• Actions speak louder than words, unless you fight a shrieking sea ghost, in which case, scream the Incantation of the Manta Banshee.

• Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent hurling your opponent into the underwater volcano.

• Hell hath no fury like Klorthap, the human-sized carnivorous blowfish.

• The kelp is always greener in another Thunderdome, but that’s how the carnivorous algaebots lure you over to skeletonize you.

• Life is like trivia night with King Crab. You never know when you’ll drop through a trap door and fight Klorthap.

• No good bleed goes undecreed. Don’t finish your rival without the Eel Queen’s approval. You’re not just fighting for your life. You’re fighting for royal favor.

• Home is where you die, for there is no rest but death in this marine apocalypse.

• Good things come to those who use refraction to warp their opponent’s depth perception.

• A pain porpoise in the arena is worth two in the beaker. Er, because pain porpoises are genetically engineered in beakers. You didn’t know that? You must have been in cryofreeze for, like, ever.

• If you can’t stand the hydrothermal jet stream, stay out of Neptune’s Rift.

• A penny saved is something you must never show anyone. If the Eel Queen discovered a gladiator owned currency, she would execute them as an example. Save sand dollars instead. You can use them as projectiles.

• Follow your dreams, but first make sure a neurojelly isn’t feeding nightmares into your brain stem.

• Some days you wear the bionic marlin suit, and some days the bionic marlin suit wears you.

• You don’t know what you’ve got until the Kraken Prince sacrifices it to Cthulhu.

• If you don’t have anything nice to say, it’s because the arbitrary justice system caters only to Neptune’s whimsy.

• Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Except if doing that thing requires movement, and you are being hunted by an aquarex, whose vision is based on movement.

• If at first you don’t succeed, bite the poison capsule under your tongue so the sea hounds don’t find you alive.

• Haste makes you swing your sea urchin mace at a hologram, lose your balance, and get stabbed by a stonefish with a coral dagger.

• The sea raptor pack that preys together stays together.

• You shame 100% of the time-surfing hammerheads you spare. The shame haunts them so terribly they rearrange past events to prevent their birth.

• Bless this gelatinous mess that used to be my favorite leg.

• A victory throne of a thousand skulls begins with a single terror-induced vomiting attack.

• When in Atlantis, cover your Lobster Death Pit trap with vegetation native to the area.

• Those who stand near liquid nitrogen tanks shouldn’t shoot harpoons.

• Absence makes the heart grow moss. Or maybe it grows barnacles. Basically, if your heart is absent, you die, and sea plants grow on your heart after you die. AUGH, LOOK OUT! *grappling hook whizzes past* NOW RUSH FOR THE WEAPONS TRUNK!