But that fear... He stared at it. At the chattering teeth, the quaking arms, and the pacing of men and women. There was more. Undoubtedly, there was more.
The Excubitor had called this a fate worse than even the draining by the Gresendant Sonitras. What was it?
Mentation was spinning, the storm was coming, the sky was churning.
It was a looming wail. A scream of Entropy.
What was it?
A voice boomed from the wall. "NOW!"
Suddenly.
A bright beam of whiteness fired off the walls, thundering through the heavens, casting a ray of light never before observed by this Ashman.
His heart went cold.
He turned to the sea, slowly, and saw... there... rising off the inky waters... was a worm. A single black-eyed worm. Meters high above the waters, the mouth a round maw of sharp black teeth. It was stunned, a gaping red-rimmed hole pierced through its stomach.
The beam had met its mark!
The shore went mad!
His breath was pouring off his lungs, his shoulders bumping in some rhythmic fashion. He turned left. There, running towards the boats and ships across the sea were the NightSailers. Men and women, most unaware and confused about the nature of everything happening.
Like he was.
On his right were more of the same... Men, dashing towards the ships, and even some running towards the giant gates of the Nightfell Walls. A mistake. There, they were met with rains of arrows and light.
Retreat was never an option.
Merrin looked up, wide-eyed, and screamed.
He couldn't!
The storm had slammed into his form, tossing him like cloth into the air. He winced, whirled in the air, marshaling the frantic weaves of the wind. They resisted for a bit, the world spinning in shades of black, howls and screams of men and women.
What was happening?
He smashed into the bed of something hard—something wooden. The pain warmed across his flesh, stinging. He gasped, his eyes blurring with screens of rain and whiteness. The storm had come, met him, and had revealed the weak boy he was.
Ashman believed in such things...
The storm reveals!
A voice flowed into his awareness... a series of shouts, sinking through the chattering rain, the bouts of thunder, and that constant boom that brightened the sky in absurd radiance.
A weapon likely from the Nightfell Clan.
He panted... The voices again spilling into his awareness.
"WHO THE MIST IS HE?" Seemed a woman.
"I DON'T KNOW!" Male.
"THEN TOSS HIS RAGGED ASS OFF MY SHIP!"
Ah...
Mist!
Am I going to die?
He whirled, eyes brushing off the rolling blasts of water across his face. Not that it helped. Incessantly, it drenched his face and body, adding a slightly higher weight to the worn clothes. Annoying, really. And then there was the matter of the itchy saltness of it all.
Everything did clear, though.
On a ship, he stood, curved inwards on the edges, with poles masted with black, wet fabrics. He stared at it... What ingenuity.
Below was a series of arranged wood, a deck that creaked with each motion of the feet—planks wrapped and silvered by the crackling white and itchy salts. Ropes hung in stiff, albeit wet, frayed coils, whispering as the wind brushed against them. Lots of wind. The mast above towered above him, leaning slightly, its patched sail fluttering frantically in the frenetic gusts.
"GET OFF MY MISTING SHIP!"
A woman roared at him, her arm wrapped around the pole of one of the masts. Wide-eyed, face pinched into that look of deliberate agitation, the rain soaking her face and clothes. Wet. She gasped, wiping the rain off her face with her free hand, futilely. "I SAID GET OFF!"
"NO!" Merrin screamed.
"WHAT?"
A young lad holding on to the rim of the ship looked confusedly. What did they really expect? Would anyone truly throw themselves off a boat? That was akin to jumping off the mountain with no chains to hold.
Suicide was never a good look, especially on an Ashman.
The sky thundered loudly, a beam of white piercing through the welkin, radiating.
Indeed, Chaos had come to the sea!
Horrible.
Merrin lowered his gaze, taking in the duo's features. Somehow, they had managed control over a full ship--not one of them lesser boats, but a complete craft. They must be fast. Odd for casters, but who could truly speculate on the might of such beings? Creatures with that awesome power and the awareness of its mastery.
Anything was possible.
"THROW HIM OUT!" The woman commanded, the wind slapping her nearly off the wooden pole of the ship. She persisted, the inky waves crashing into the ferry, splashing onto the mighty shuttle's deck.
Would it drown it?
The ship bobbed, his feet slipping off the saturated floor, ass pounding and sliding down the planks. Mists! He collided with the side of the craft, a brief warmth spreading across his skull. There was total darkness, the taste of salt assaulting that conditioned Ashman senses. Everything was a muddle of stimulations.
Gripping the edge of the ship, his legs skimmed the floors, skidding uncontrollably. Nothing was working. Not even the supposed mastery of balance. This wasn't the first time in unfavorable levelness; the mountains were dangerous enough outside the dampened-everstorm caused surfaces. But here, with the roaring of the tides, the distant screams that pierced the gloom. Everything was a mess.
He gasped--a splash of murky waters, airing its desires across its face. Now all was screened over a layer of deeper blackness. Not the absence of light, but the mask of the raven fluids.
Mist it all!
He glanced at the edge of the waters; there, in the rolling sheets of mist, were shadows--some tall, some small. Boats, ships that skirred the waters--seeking for that mentioned thing. The crack, yes.
Would the Casters of Nightfell protect us?
Why aren't they down here themselves?
"HEY YOU!" The woman.
He turned, saw her, still tightly grasped on that wooden shaft, features hidden within layers of ink fluids. She mouthed. "WHAT CAN YOU DO?"
Mentation spun.
She wants to know what symbols I can easily cast?
"WHAT CAN YOU DO?" Merrin threw back the question.
"MIST YOU!" She cursed. "THIS IS MY SHIP, AND YOU WILL ANSWER ME!"
"THE SHADOWS!"
She gritted, fist, clenching harder on the ligneous pole. "USELESS!" She screamed. "ALL OF YOU ARE USELESS!"
The boy whimpered expressively. Merrin cringed. Were these truly casters? Nothing like the ones within Est--Orvane's dream. Not even a similarity could be drawn between them and that other one: Morgan!
"THEN BE MORE USEFUL AND DO SOMETHING," Merrin uttered, mind imposing a layer of dissimilarity between the behavioral traits of today against the one within the mines. He was different...No, not that, just more of the same. Except without the need for expectations.
Who does that help exactly?
A sound flowed into his awareness--sudden. He whirled, taking in the larger seas plagued by those churning storms, heavens of foamy darkness, and waters overlaid with whitish fogs, a tune came from it.
Spittle drained down his throat. "There's something in the waters..."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY!" She shouted.
"There's something in the WATE--"
A crunch sliced the discordance, all notes drowned in that singular chord. What was it? The sky was flashing with those constant beams of whiteness, casting brief illumination over the observable world. It was chaos.
But that sound.
Slowly, he turned, eyes wide, heart pounding hard within its confines. He could hear it; that badum badum of the inner beats. What was that sound? What was it? Cautiously, his gaze scanned the ship, the deck of rustic woods, the floors of inky waters...Steadily, his vision rested on that ligneous shaft. The pole.
It was missing something.
The woman.
Below it, on the floor, something hunkered there, munching on another. A hand was laid out, pale, blood splattered across its form. What? The creature cared little for it, dark-skinned, furless, four-legged, the size about twice the size of a man's head, taleless. But it's maw..Now that was broad, opening, and crunching the bits and pieces of flesh and blood.
The woman was there, the eyeless Beast biting deep into the depths of her neck. Abrupt. Dead. It was sudden, really...To see, to know that just a moment ago stood a leaving creature. A sentient beauty with passions...and now...it was no more.
What was this?
The boy screamed, his wail snapping Merrin out of the horror-induced trance of the observed cruelty. He cupped his lips, cogitation struggling against the quelling of certain reflexes. To scream, to chatter, to lose control over the physical self...All of that.
The mind held strong...But yet...watching this...He trembled.
And the boy, on the other hand, he pushed on the invisible air, frantic, feet skidding off the ground, sliding towards the other end of the ship--towards the feeding beast.
He would die!
Merrin surged, reaching into that well of awesome power. To that unending tide that desired the complete domination of all things. The mindForce. In it, feeling the power coil through his fingers, stoking the cogitative abilities, slowing the world to the minutest moments. There, he opened himself, the world dripping away like a wet canvas, replaced by a shade of blurring grayness...In it was chaos.