RP:Priceless
Part of the A Line Drawn in the Sand Arc
Part of the Two If By Sea Arc
Ghost Ship
A trio of weathered, somber masts rise toward the skies like the shattered, grasping bones of skeletal limbs. Broken, mangled, and twisted yardarms still jut out from the masts, some of them draped in the ghostly shrouds of shredded sails covered in algae. Mildewed ropes and rigging coated in barnacles swing in the wind, their once anchored lengths tossed about in elliptical laps that often collide against the deck with resounding and cacophonic results. Bright clumps of coral have made their homes upon the deck, bulkheads, and railings of the ship from forecastle to quarterdeck, blanketing everything in a sharp, craigy crust. A two by three arrangement of once wooden, now ossified, hatches between the fore and main masts plays host to a bevvy of potentially poisonous anemones and urchins. The wind moans through the wreck, notes and currents howling through holes and gaps in eerie, lingering strains. The odor of stagnant brine and the distinct scent of decaying flesh wafts in billows across the main deck, the origins a mystery.
Moire is already in the process of shedding her skin - in the most literal of senses. The selkie pauses just outside of the barely buoyant vessel to peel away the layer of white and grey dappled fur that transforms her into a seal. The magical pelt pulls apart like taffy, strings of ever-morphing, mottled color turning into dark grey streaks and giving way to a mass of black below. Strands of hair float up between the gaps in the stringy skin, floating like fronds of kelp toward the surface in tethered clumps. Bony flippers continue to claw at the enchanted skin, rending it further asunder until, at last, a human head and face appear from the kind-eyed seal skull below. The midnight-hued oculars remain, now transferred to the pearlescent visage that emerges. The monk shimmies the rest of the pelt down, over her shoulders, torso, and hips, before finally prying it from her legs and feet. Then, with as much haste as a human form can muster (and much more slowly than a seal), the holy warrior swims through a gaping hole in the hull.
It had summoned him from Cenril’s shores, this slow, terrible song. First in whispered, unintelligible snatches, a low and mournful dirge Mac thought he was imagining, audible only when his head was turned in a certain direction, at certain times of day or night. It had been an annoying distraction, an ear-worm, that half-remembered song that you can’t quite name or recall any of its words, just a few bars that ghost around in the mind, surfacing at random moments only to wave and drown again. Maddening, really.. He’d finally set out to locate the source, though the song itself provided something of a warning of its own nature. Few places had a song like that, and in Mac’s aeon’s-long experience, none had proven to be places anyone sane or interested in self-preservation ought to go. All the same, he’d followed it through the sea, losing its trail for days on end, only to pick it up as he turned for the eastern shore in resignation.. As he arrived in the vicinity of the strange floating wreck, the song became unbearable… a moaning, wailing thing like the choir of hell itself come to sail the sea. He’d probably have retreated, were it not for spotting a figure slipping through that hole in the timbers…Her own song he knew, though it barely could be heard above the cacophony of the ship. Mac wondered whether Moire had heard it too… In any case, he wasn’t going to let the selkie enter that place alone, so she’d sooner or later find him right behind her.
Inside the Ghost Ship
Green and black algae clings to the walls and floor, the waterlogged wood beneath greyed and splintered with age and abuse. Long, slimy curtains of kelp dangle from the ceiling throughout the space to create a forest of scum-covered obstacles, their lengths still shedding acrid sea water into stagnant puddles on the floor. Ominous creaking and ghastly groaning echoes through the chamber, while the relentless drip, drip, drip of water emanates from every direction. A sickening slurping sound, punctuated by a cadence of thick, wet squelches, radiate from unseen nooks and crannies. The disembodied noises reverberate through the kelp shrouds, causing them to quake. The entire room shudders at irregular intervals as if threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment. Untethered shadows dart and chase between the plantlife hangings, their amorphous forms darker than the whole of the unlit interior.
Moire pulls herself up from the area in which the ballast stones are kept. The selkie's bare feet curl about the scum-covered ribs of the keel as she climbs, the infernal dripping sending a sluice of miry water down a hole from the deck above, covering the female monk is algae and grime. She coughs, spluttering and shaking her head vigorously, before each hand in turn finds a grip upon the greyed, water-logged planks of the mysterious floor above. The seal maiden hauls herself up, legs held stiff at the knees and ankles as she slides on her stomach through the stagnating pools of sea water and spume. The darkened deck groans and gutters about her, shaking down to the very timbers that comprise it. Like an ape at play, the seaborn scuttles across the floor, careful of the acrid waters and any smaller but still treacherous holes in the deck. For the moment, she is unaware of Mac following her. It seems that she cannot hear the songs the cecaelia does, and is so intent on whatever her purpose is here that she is oblivious to his presence at her posterior.
Mcracken, cursed to keep that same human form, felt his human face twist into a grimace.. the dirge was deafening.. How could Moire stand it? He realised then that she could not hear it, or surely she’d have fled by now, rather than continuing her path through the ship’s ruined underbelly. Mind-numbing, then, that song, that awful chorus that plucked with ghostly, nonexistent fingers at his courage and will. Perhaps to those without the ‘ears to hear’ such things, the ship would merely hold an ominous sense, as haunted structures do, of something dire lurking in the dark, just out of sight, waiting… waiting.. Mac clenched his teeth against the din of it, the horror crawling up his spine, across his skin, ignored the slap and slime of dripping detritus. and called her name.. “Moire!” It was the one pure note amid a devil’s symphony.
Moire wheels around at the sound of her name. The monk's hands pull up, first coiled into fists and then played out, fingers pulled wide and palms flat. It takes a moment, a very guarded tick-tock of seconds passing, for the selkie to realize who is bellowing for her. She sighs silently, though the gesture causes her entire torso to relax, dropping several centimeters from its previously tensed posture. The holy warrior mouths Mac's name, though no audible sound comes out. She dips her head, recognition and greeting meted out to him in kind. A single, scum-slicked finger is pressed to her lips, a gesture of quiet where even the room refuses to be silent. Continuing the slow crawl toward the far corner of the barnacle-crusted deck, the sealkin again crouches, padding on bent arms and legs into the furthest, shadowy recess of the structure. She disappears entirely for one, two, three breaths of time, then re-emerging into the light covered in black grime and smears of blood. Callused hands at first cupped against her chest, the selkie slowly, gingerly lowers the pooled palms to reveal what is held so sacredly and securely against her own body: a bevvy of gems and precious stones.
Mcracken felt all three of his hearts sink to a sudden, chill abyss of fear for the selkie when she vanished into whatever dim recess of the hold swallowed her, and for the brief time she was out of view clambered through scum and rubbish, over dislodged planks and rotted, fallen bunks, intent on grappling her out of the ship’s dead grasp.. The song battered at him like an ill wind, relentless and intrusive, as if seeking a crack through which to enter and take possession of his shell… Moire would emerge to find the kraken almost on top of her, his features a mask of dread concern, his odd-hued eyes scanning her over for obvious injury before alighting on the prize cradled so preciously in her palms. His attention stayed on the gems for a moment, before shifting up again to meet the seal-maiden’s black, fathomless gaze. Treasure.. this is what she’d come for? Dared the horror of this undead wreck for? Just then, Mac could swear that somewhere, in the inky, foul stomach of this wooden monster, something laughed.
Moire tilts her head slightly to one side, her inky, starlit sights focusing particularly on Mcracken. The drape of her hair falls in accord, sheeting to the side while several tendrils remain clinging against the opposite hip. The sacred fighter frowns, one obsidian-hued brow lifting in unspoke query toward the cursed creature. She shakes her head in the next instant, shooing away the momentary concern that gripped her. Thrusting her chin toward the side of the deck they had both clambered up through, the hole leading down into the keel, the seal maiden urges Mac to turn around, flee the unholy ship wreck, and escape into the roiling waters of the sea.
Like he needed urging… In all his untold centuries of life, the kraken had met with dangers, with horrors and perils that most creatures could barely imagine were real, yet none, not even the vile of touch of A death-god’s curse, had chilled him quite like this place. Gladly, he sought the breach and exited into the clear brine, scant relief from the relentless dirge swarming him but better than being in its jaws. Free of the rotting structure, he turned to seek the selkie, gesturing to shallows and shore. All this while, the usually murky-blue rings scattered across his skin had glowed an electric hue, a natural response of his particular species to the presence of danger, real or perceived. They glowed still, where his skin was visible – shirtless as he was, they could hardly go unnoticed. A spume of brine was coughed from waterlogged lungs when they gained the beach, a gasp of dry air inhaled before he spoke, “Seal-maiden…” he meant to ask her: had she really not heard it? Felt it? The horror, repulsion, dread and ominous promise of doom? But nothing about her suggested she had, so instead he continued, “Thou art injured…thy hands, all bloody..”
Moire follows Mcracken to the beach, her legs kicking tirelessly, as she is propelled through the water and nearer to shore. Once the pair are in the shallows, the monk regains her feet to stand upright in the surging surf and then wade cautiously toward the shore. Moire's hands are once more clutched to her chest in protective stance of the gems contained therein, while pink-tinged water streams down her forearms and drips steadily onto the white sands at her feet. "Fine," the husky, disused notes spew forth from between petal pink lips, "Only minor." The sealkin kneels then, spreading the wealth of gems out along the sands only to begin dividing them up into groups. The clusters are strange, not adhering to size, shape, color - anything apparent.
Mcracken nodded, watching in silence as Moire arranged her glittering salvage, shuddering now and then as though to shake off the slime that ship had left on his mind, its horrible song once again – thank Selene! - subsumed to the back of his awareness. Later, he might puzzle over why he was so affected by the ship’s phantasmal atmosphere, while Moire was apparently not. But for now, he was content allow curiosity at her actions to hopefully steer him into calmer, clearer waters.
Moire feels her skin crawl, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up when someone is simply watching you. The seal maiden looks up, hesitantly at first, to the cursed kraken. Her lips move, flexing and yawing like the rise and fall of the waves upon the beach, though no sound comes out. Her jaw saws, the hinges straining against their opaline coating of flesh. "Temple," her dischordant notes eke out at last, "That ship." She clears her throat loudly, attempting to shake off some of the years' accumulated barnacles upon her vocal cords, though it does little good. "It was one of our temples. The land-walkers raised it," the monk continues on, huffing breath between the words as each one takes enormous effort to form and push forth, "To loot it. Treasure. But they did not get everything. Not all of our blessed relics."
Mcracken would tickle Moire’s hackles a while longer after she’d spoken, for he did not avert his gaze.. indeed, it bored into her more steadily now, the kraken’s humanoid eyes widening while understanding rang within him like an abruptly struck gong – Moire was a holy creature, a monk.. and Mac was not. That was the difference. That was why she could enter the ship with impunity. Mac was a devout, his belief in and reverence for Selene, Mother of Oceans, profound. But his life was not dedicated to holy service, as the selkie’s was. “Thank the Mother,” he murmured, kneeling, dipping his gaze to the rescued relics, an old and familiar prayer falling from his tongue. The words ended, and Mac bathed in the wonder of the sacred items another moment before he glanced up, “Didst thou get all of it?”
Moire watches Mac a moment, silence slipping between them like thread unwinding from a skein. "No," she says at last. Two of the gems, the largest of the bunch, are swept up in either hand. One she extends toward the cephalopod-turned-human, her cupped hand overturning, so that the back is presented to the sky, and the gem offered to Mac to hold. "Twelve. I have only two," the holy woman says remorsefully, following up quickly by including, "These are the most important." The selkie stares pointedly at the cursed male, onyx orbs wavering with pinpoints of bright, white light that flare and quelch in rhythm to the waves breaking on the shore. "You take this one," the ebon-haired female insists after a long silence.
Mcracken hesitated long enough for the pause to become awkward. “But I.. I am not…” Worthy, he wanted to say, but then he wanted to hold that sacred gem in his own hand a whole lot more. Blessed Mother, what strange fortune had come his way of late… was this perhaps his reward, for harking and obeying Selene’s will? Surrendering to that thought he meekly extended his hand palm-up, breath trapped in the hull of his chest, such was the kraken’s anticipation.
Moire presses the sacred gem into Mcracken's palm, a small smile lighting the moon of her face. "Find them," she urges the kraken at last, "Two from twelve. Ten left," the sacred woman counts out in her grating, guttural timbre. Her penetrating, fathomless gaze at last departs from it's unwavering observation of Mac's face, swinging instead to peer intently at the roll of ocean waves beyond the shore. "She shall reclaim that which was taken from her," the monk recites aloud, quoting scriptures from the sacred rites of Selene.
Moire gave Mcracken 1 priceless gem.
The moment that hallowed gem touched his palm, Mac’s knees all but buckled under him as if he’d had a great weight lifted from his shoulders that had been there so long his flesh and bones could not adjust to its absence. He’d stare at it in rapt awe, then close his fingers around it tightly. “And the Mother’s will be done,” he responded by rote to the ancient prayer, more a prophecy. More directly to Moire, he said, “I will do as thou hast bid. And shall make a new temple for Selene, a reliquary where the grasp of the dry-world denizens may ne’er again reach. This I vow,” he gave the gem a squeeze, “In Selene’s holy name.”
Moire lifts her chin, a nod causing her round visage to bob like a cork upon the ocean. "Be careful," the selkie grunts out in warning, "Your words carry weight, and your intentions moreso. Do not make vows you cannot keep." A moment after the warning is levied, the rough-hewn, muscular woman stands to her full height. A curt nod is issued to the cecaelia anew, and the sacred warrior thrusts her chin toward the inland path. "These walkers, they reach everything."
Mcracken’s own chin tilted, in defiance of the monk’s admonition and her latter statement both—for of all creatures, Mac understood the weight of words. “Not everything,” he said,, the very phrases resounding with gravity as only a profoundly-believed truth can, when spoken aloud. “To this task, I pledge all of the life that remains to me.” If Moire’s star-kissed ebon gaze found him again, she’d see this vow written on the kraken’s face as dauntless, steely resolve. The oath spoken and thus sealed, Mac softened a little, “Too long it has been since I have seen thy face, Seal-Maiden.”
Moire 's face lifts into a half-smile, an ironic grin that flickers, threatening to blossom into a full guffaw, but instead promptly fades. "Very well, then," she replies to the cephalopod-come-human. Once more, the partially mute female falls silent, her eyes wandering out to the curls of white froth that top each wave as it rolls into the shallows. The round, full face of the seal maiden falls, the corners of her rosebud lips turning down into a steep frown. "Ahhh," she intones, shaking her head so that the curtain of her hair flaps like a banner in the wind. "There is a ship in Cenril, north of the ferry dock. Sneak aboard. Look around. Count the skins hanging on the upper deck," the warrior woman advises before once more taking up her stoic quiescence.
Mcracken said, "The Nautilus? The mermaid Zirael made mention of it.. A raider’s vessel.. I wouldst destroy it, but it is my understanding that one of my own breed doth reside there as captive, and therefore likely has his own plan to save the seaborn aboard, before the ship and all who crew it may it be smashed to shark-feed and splinters.” His dark brows lifted, “Thou art too playing at prisoner?"
Moire arches both jet black brows at Mcracken, turning just her head to peer over the crux of a well-muscled shoulder at him. "No," she says in the gravel-strewn husk of a voice, "I was on the ship once. There are all manners of horror there. He knew. The kraken there. He knew what I was, and got me off the ship before anyone else realized, as well. It was a narrow escape - and how I ended up with that bit of sailcloth." The selkie's throat moves, a gulp swallowed along with a gout of breath. She coughs gently, huffing out air and briney scent. "So many selkies...trapped," she murmurs just loud enough to be heard above the breaking surf, "That need to be rescued."
Mac considered her words for some time before making reply, his webby fingers combing his beard, his brows knit to a glowering frown. Eventually, he said, “There seems no sense to this kraken’s presence there, without that he simply break the ship in twain and be done…” His gaze returned to the selkie, gravid and intense now, “It seems awry. Needs be I must board this vessel, to ascertain the truth of it. And set all the seaborn free, for no matter this kraken’s will, a single day’s captivity is a day too long.”
Moire nods to Mcracken, affirming his conjecture about the kraken aboard the ship. "He was in chains," the alabaster-skinned woman declares, a sorrowful expression pulling her lips down at the corners, "Perhaps they're enchanted, and weaken him somehow?" The idea is left to simmer in the sun, and is not further expanded upon. Silence again spools out like woolen yarn from a skein, and the selkie seems intensely focused upon the horizon and the frothing caps of waves. "I can accompany you," she says at last, her garbled voice flat and stern, "And we shall see first hand how much the kraken is helping or inhibiting."
The kraken chuffed assent to her offer, staring at the gem in his hand, “As we travel, we ought discuss the means of boarding.” He seemed somewhat preoccupied by the jewel, and expression of realisation garnishing his features as though a great many disparate facts were falling into place, just at that moment. “Too long lay I in the abyss, Sea-Child, lost in bitter grief, memories crumbling like the walls of ancient maze….” He shook his head, “And remiss was I, in my duty to our Great Mother.” What this meant, precisely, would remain a mystery for several moments, until he spoke again, “For if this aquamarine I hold be the Star of the Sea, that sacred stone rumoured in legend to be hidden in Selene’s most holy grasp, then the loss we suffer at the hands of these land-walkers is far greater than I had supposed.”
"Aye," the selkie replies in monosyllabic fashion before only the shushing of the waves upon the shore fill the silence. Clamboring over the rocks along the shoreline, the holy warrior eventually comes to a large boulder. Her hands delve below it, scooping sand out until, at last, the grey-and-white dapples of her pelt are dragged out into the light. One hand moves to the velveteen underside of the skin, and begins to dig into the folds. Shortly thereafter the other large, priceless gem rescued from the raised ship is produced. "And this," she says, allowing the stone to lay flat in her palm, "Is the Eye of the Abyss. Another fabled stone." The seal maiden heaves a sigh, two callused fingers of the opposite hand pressing to her forehead. "The others were stolen," she reiterates in the crackling timbre, "We have to get them back."
Mac's head bowed low as if his mind bore a great weight within, and he nodded slowly as he gazed on the selkie’s palm, the treasure displayed there. “No doubt remains… For amid the sacred gems was ever kept the most holy of holies” He wouldn’t need to call it by name, for it was a common legend among all the seaborn peoples, albeit one that was in this age and for many ages past spoken not in terms of truth but only myth. The kraken then dragged his attention from the gems and looked toward the south, exhaling a great gust of breath. “So aye, we must. Yet I am loath to depart on this task, urgent as it be, before assuring the drow-witch and her geis will poison our people no more. I would ask of thee a few days, for the sake of those innocent lives elsewise certainly lost. Then we shall retrieve from this ...Nautilus, all that is ours.”
Moire's mouth draws into a hard line, the carnation pink, rosebud pout flattening into a stern streak against her opaline skin. She issues a single nod of her head to the kraken's request, a lone pulse of assent. Plopping onto the sand, the selkie then begins to pull the sealskin over her body, starting with her feet. Magically, the pelt's flippers appear from nothing, stretching like black gum over her toes into bony-phalangeed webbing. The transformation continues, with the stalwart woman pausing nearly half way through to peer over her shoulder to Mcracken. Inky, fathomless sights land upon the jewel-wielding male, glancing between his face and the faceted rock. "What was lost shall be found," she says gruffly, almost barking out the words.