RP:A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along the briny beach

Part of the A Line Drawn in the Sand Arc

Pebbly Beach, Cenril

The night tide was eating up the shore in patient increments, slathering the beach with moonlit foam and wide, murky tongues of brine. Pebbles glittered in the water’s wake, where not dressed in ocean debris: flotsam kelp and bladderwrack, bits of shattered ship-timbers riddled with wormholes. Sleepy gulls yawped their last for the evening and flapped away to roost, as the moons rose in pearlised verdant and scarlet splendor. Ah, the serenity! All but lost though, on the man-shaped kraken pacing thigh-deep in the waves like a rag-clad loon who’d lost some impoverished treasure to the water below. In truth, Mac was agitating on matters of far greater import, making of it in his mind an imaginary game board, on which he’d soon be making a very bold move indeed.. perhaps one most foolhardy. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the saying goes

As there were old, like the kraken trapped in the shape of a man and upon the shores of the surface, there were older, like the being that came for him. It was with such age that came the supernatural, the scions of void-like power, a harbinger of end times and of all times; like the pale horseman, its path could be clearly defined, perhaps even felt, in a single, direct line projected to intersect with the young, relatively speaking, kraken's position. But such concepts were, at the height of their tangibility, simply vague concepts. The literal and physical scene was much different, especially if one were to pull away the palpable and very real presence of power between the two; one man, juxtaposed in age and youth, hobbling along with the help of an old, gnarled, cane, toward an homeless, rag-clad loon.

Not only in his thumbs, as yet another adage would have it, but deep in the meat below the skin, Mac felt the pricklish forewarning of a great and wicked power’s approach; felt it crawling up his borrowed spine to shiver his nape. He knew it at once, of course, for whom else in this world was so old, so rich in heritage and all the power that the dark touch of a darker god could bestow? And it came not unexpected— had not Mac himself laid the trail that would lead the dragon to water… Now, if the thing would only drink. “Ancient,” he drawled, needing no immediate proximity to be heard, for his voice was on every salt-laden gust buffeting dunes and fishing-vessels alike. No need to tell Xersom what he doubtless already knew, but Mac knew things the dragon probably did not. “The drow D’Artes has thy wife.” He’d grown still with this speech, wary of whatever storm was to come of it.

Even the sand beneath every step of the soles of the ancient's boots had a deathly reaction to his presence, and staled, grayed, grew even more brittle like it had become the cinders and ash of some great ruin that had just finished ending in a pyre of destruction. The words were heard, but the only immediate response that was given as an acknowledgement was his gait in a wane, ebb, and finally a cessation altogether. Then his own voice; the drawl of the kraken was a powerful thing, and in all the bardic powers he possessed, it had something that gave it a certain distinction; it was natural. The former General's voice was not. It was eerie, it was haunting; it was both sinister and soothing, both intoxicating and yet all the same it was dangerous, like a madman's lullaby, or a spider's beckoning to the wayward fly. "D'Artes. Vakmathras makes a move against me?" It was almost ludicrous were it from the mouth of anybody else -that a god might quarrel with him. "You did not stop them."

Lesser creatures would have cringed and buckled as the old one’s voice slithered into their ears and.. from there, their minds and souls. Mac’s power, in this form, lay primarily in sound’s realm, and his skin—both actual and figurative— was thick against the worst of wiles audibly borne. Nevertheless, Xersom’s accusation struck its mark and forced a hasty response from the kraken’s mouth, redolent with trepidation, all hackles and tension, but it also reeked of absolute truth mingled with a rich air of chagrin: “I tried. And I failed.”

Xersom wasn't having it; his step forward -a single step- culminated in its movement the very wrath, the very destruction, the very evil that this ancient could harbor, unseen but at the same time, all too visible. Death, destruction, sin and wickedness was thicker than some constrictive smog and surrounded him in plums that were only echoes of his mere fury. Sure, it was contained to his proximity, to his human vessel, but it was forever threatening to breach, with barriers only further weakened by the absence of his ice genasi wife. This was not the understanding creature that Mcracken had met once prior; this was ruin incarnate. "Failed?" There was nothing about his 'question' that signaled he desired a response, and he continued in the thick, horrible and yet alluring tones all the same, "Were you outpowered? Out-experienced, out-muscled, out-sized, out-willed? Is it because of your fragile form? You put her in danger, and you let her be taken. D'Artes!" He spit, the saliva blackening mid-air and landing like tar against the beach -foul and unnatural. "A clan of dirt-dwellers not a fraction of your age! And you, what? Failed? And instead of rectifying your... error -what have you done? Sit, without attempt to return her to me?" Another step. The rage could be felt like some bile in the very belly of the earth, a disease, a virus constantly spreading and adapting, "If she suffers but a single second of harm with the D'Artes, I will return after destroying every last remnant of that family and its history -and I will end your entire -race-!"

Mcracken had withstood over the span of millennia fate had so kindly, and so far, allotted him, such storms as would shatter cities, had they occurred on the land, vasty swells that lifted even he from the floor of his beloved abysses. He had, only of late, walked right up to the emanation of death’s own god and walked away again – alive, if not unscathed. Before Xersom’s glowering wrath, these now seemed trifles. He waited out the dragon’s rant, rather in the same way a man in a rowboat waits out a tidal wave, and spoke again, “I knoweth not D’Artes’ purpose in snatching thy mate, though I do have suspicions on it. But just as thou dost hold thy Emilia most dear, I have in my grasp a thing this drow values every portion as much. It was my intent to trade on this, in exchange for what was stolen from thee, and from me. If thou dost intend to simply march in, slaughter the drow to the last and claim her back yourself, however, the leverage this thing affords is moot. Given the opportunity to use it against this witch, it may ensure the drow will not strike thy mate down in spite. Nor will she hold the power of hostage.. over thee.” There it was, ducks in a row. Or fish in barrel.. Either way, the kraken was as prepared as any creature could be for what might come next.

Xersom 's fury was suppressed -or rather, halted, as if in a perpetual pause that had the proverbial tidal wave poised so precariously over the head of this story's protagonist rowboater. But the pause offered the distinct opportunity for thought, for collection, for a calmness to overtake the ancient that was perhaps just as dangerous and frightening as any storm -the wheels in his head where moving, the thoughts were formulating. There was something concocting in there. "Power of hostage over me. She walks a precarious line, then, this young daughter. Her predecessor would rather leave me well be and depend upon the stability of letting sleeping demons lie, but his successor... She knows not who she agitates. But alas! I would let her run amok for the well-being of my wife, for the eternity of condemnation and hell I could bestow upon her would never return to me a love slain..." His words were not at all directed toward Mcracken, but rather as if he were, in that voice of intoxicating and thriving venom, musing to himself, and lacked only the pacing that the mad usually possessed. But when his eyes, a brilliant color of green so vivid that they actually cast a soft glow about them, snapped back to focus on the younger creature, it was apparent he was now addressing this idea. "And so, you do not want me to interfere, lest she manipulate me with her puppeting strings, or worse, I destroy whatever chance you have of healing," the subject of what was to be healed was indicated with a dismissive and uncaring gesture of his hand. "But you have made a dangerous blunder when you involved my wife. Which brings me the questions I had upon the revelation of her capture. -Why- was she here. Why did you hail her? And why did you fail? And why should I not take your frail cage of a mortal vessel and cast it into very heart of the deserts, where no water has touched since my master's ancestry touched their feet there!"

Let her run amok… It took a moment for Mcracken to realise that Xersom had embarked on a soliloquy, before he noticed that awful tide of the ancient’s voice had turned inward…As it dawned upon him, the kraken also became cognizant of the fact that his hand was raised to his throat, cupping the sacred gem ensconced behind the rags he wore, internally voicing several phrases of his own.. a silent prayer of gratitude to Selene, Mother of Oceans, for peeling the scales off his eyes…or ears, as it were. The fear that gripped him unfurled its claws. The fly broke free of the web. The man in the boat took courage anew, having remembered that he could, after all, breathe underwater. The creature creaking its ire before him now was merely a creature... abhorrently powerful, yes, but not a –god-. By the time Xersom quit talking to himself and intoned threats, demands and questions once more aimed toward Mac, the kraken met the creature’s hellish gaze with an utter calm that translated to the ripples of sound pouring from his own lips, “She came to help— because within her is a heart that is essentially good. And that goodness is why, when I discovered that it was thy wife, on what she believed a simple treasure-hunt, who sparked my people to declare war, I negotiated with her the appearance of justice. For the sake of the many lives that would be.. and perhaps still may be.. lost, due to her unwitting crime. And also for her own sake in the case that war cometh between land and sea regardless.. that she would not be stained nor soured by the fall of innocent blood. We agreed upon terms, and as I formed in my throat the request that she appeal to thee for sanction of these plans, and while thy wife spun from the ocean-water ice for the barrier you may see for yourself, half-built along the shore, and my attention lay wholly upon this” he gestured toward the south, “D’Artes took her chance. Cloaked in shadow and silence, mounted upon a swift reptile, the drow crept up behind the wall and…” Mac glanced down toward his own extremities then, “My present limitations prevented swift pursuit. I may have wounded the mind of the witch.. to what extent, I cannot say.. but I did not shatter it to pulp within her wretched skull. And so I failed thy Emilia – and by it, perhaps have doomed thousands to perish..” he caught himself sliding back into that mindset of abject helplessness and shook his head, once more calmly and directly meeting Xersom’s gaze. “And yet, there is hope, as long as my plan remains unspoken, and thus unknowable to D’Artes and her minions. As for thine actions against me.. I have spoken naught but naked truth. Do what thou wilt….and the gods take the wheel.”

"Damn your gods!" This snap was not a natural one; the sound of his voice, the focus thereof if only by the most easily understood by the creature across from him, was that same terrible softness, that sweetness of mulled wine spiked with the danger of poison, but it was all belied by the echo thereof; a distorted and hellish repetition of his three words in a tone that was not borne from this plane. There was a distinct difference in Xersom that separated him from every other being currently in the realm; he was not born from the mortal plane. The gods were not his creators, they did not give him their favor; he was born from and of the Immortals, specifically the Dark-aligned, and even reincarnated into his still-eons old dragon self, had a severed link with the deities of the realm; a void, a chasm, that was impassable and impossible to bridge. He did not fear them. He did not like them. And it was with this expulsion of apparent hatred that the very sea and tide recoiled from his from, forming an unnatural and large circle from his proximity, as if not wanting to be near him out of its own volition. A breath, sharply and through his nostrils, steadied this rage and ruin incarnate, to a simmer, a boil just beneath his surface. "Thousands. I have slaughtered millions without the slightest remorse. I have burned forests, homes, and people all at once, just to drive them toward my sword. Millions. If something happens to my Emilia, you will have doomed -millions- more. Get her back, unharmed and safe, to my arms, kraken, and I will spare you of your failure. Fail this task, and there will be no seafolk to save, and no surfacers to war with -for the entire world will feel the suffering that has been beset upon me in the absence of my dearest Emilia. You have a plan, I will do as you wish for that plan's success."

Mcracken barely registered any of that aside from Xersom’s final utterance, for he now knew who.. what.. this creature was, precisely. There were songs… Among the most ancient were battle hymns which spoke of this being when he went by another name, one even the most esoteric lore-keepers were loath to utter. As Xersom continued his tirade, Mac’s mind bloomed like a violent wound with scenes from a time so distant as to be almost beyond the realm of time itself.. And Xersom, a creature not only out of time, but place.. an anachronistic remnant, marooned in this era of mortals all alone, and not even the gods for succour.. In his own way, Mac understood what such loneliness was, and once he too had found relief from the gravity of it in a mate.. most beloved, then lost.. How they’d paid.. and paid for her death. Yes, Mcracken understood, profoundly, why this one small woman was so essential to the ancient— what would the kraken himself not do, had he such a chance to regain his Evriale? “All that may be done for now, is being done,” he spoke into the silence, when it came, “D’Artes is bold, but not an idiot. Thou canst at least be comforted by the knowledge that thy wife’s death is not her agenda. As for Emilia’s return.. “ he thought a moment, and said, “There is a gem, sacred to the seaborn, in her possession but not on her person when she was taken. It hath vast power to heal not only flesh, but mind and spirit.. but of most import to thee is that thy wife hath held it in her hand.. I believe this, in conjunction with another relic, may aid in locating the exact place of her captivity. This is why I sought thy home, though none I found yet could tell where it is. With thy permission, I will come there and reclaim it.”

Sacrilus drew back, but it was neither defensive nor out of some recoil against perceived offense; it was moreso a contemplative draw that implicated once again to mull over the words offered by the seaborn. It reigned a silence that lasted for several long, turbulent moments, before those intense and vivid emerald-hued eyes narrowed to more keenly scrutinize the man-trapped-kraken. "Very well. But you will not let the chldren even suspect that their mother was taken." The stare slid away from the being, then, and over the sea -cresting waves like diamonds strewn across a great blue blanket. "And it is much further inland."

“Thou hast but to tell me where, and I will go there forthwith with mine full assurance that thy spawn shall remain unknowing.” Mac had been thigh-deep in the water, now it washed around his ankles as the tide shrank from the uncanny ancient on the shore. He waited there, barefoot in half-sodden raggy trousers for direction, gesturing to a distant pale horse pawing at meager dune grasses on the sandhills above the far northern beach. “I hath procured the service of yon running-beast, for traversing the dry world with greater alacrity.”