Shadows on the Sand [Skyard]

[Bay'Lin La]

14th Day of Winter, 516 A.V.

18th Bell (Evening)

Baylin stood a lonely waterlogged figure on the beach of Syka as he let his lidless gaze sweep over the ocean, looking out over the place that was to become his home. The Charoda was dressed in all black, a pointed contrast to his green skin and multitude of wreathing tendrils hanging from his head. The tips of each tendril coiled into themselves instinctively like snakes as he glanced down towards the head of another Charoda that broke through the surface of the water.

The head belonged to his sister May'lin. “Can't we go to the settlement yet? It's been days since we arrived, but you don't want to venture away from the beach. I hear the rest of Syka is beautiful.”

His jaw clenched at her words. At how she still found Falyndar beautiful. His fists balled at his sides so tightly that they began to hurt. "Beauty fades with time. Be weary of childish dreams. The sea is our home, not land. For now, lets just keep to the beach." Baylin had no interest in seeing the people of Syka. To him, the shores of Falyndar had rough memories attached to them, blood soaked memory tainted by with the stigma of Myrian brutality.

"Fine. But we came all this way, Bay. We should start exploring. Maybe help people and make a few friends." She smiled as she started to float on her back in the water. Baylin was not a philanthropist. He never blinked when he saw starving children; mainly because he had no eye lids, nor die he even cry over spilt milk; mainly because he never drank it, and he never felt pity for humanity. Because the last thing the dirt dwellers needed was the pity of a Charoda, what they really needed was the cold mercy of the Void.

"I've enough friends." Before he could say anything else, May chimed in with a laugh. "Oh no, family doesn't really count. I love you brother, but If not for me you'd have kicked a crab out of its shell and become a hermit long ago."

He took a seat on the sand with his legs crossed, removing his trident from the harness on his back to lay it on the ground beside him, now just watching his sister float around. "You do realize that you are not a child and can do as you wish. Go explore Syka on your own. I'll stay here."

Baylin could see the tension in her jaw, he knew it annoyed her when he tried to abandon her or leave her behind. "I wanted to come here to see new things with you. Be a normal family. Look at nicer things then... the dark." The dark. That's what she referred to the void as. "Why not look into the dark with me?"

May'lin felt uneasy at the idea, shaking her head in response. Despite loving her brother, she feared the void. At the mention of looking into it, she knew he was going to open a gate to the dark. It made he want to be anywhere else. "If you don't want to explore with me than I'm going to go check on Anyalsi. I'll get you to go later. You ... you, just be careful." She said before sinking down into the water to go check on her brother's seahorse.

With his newfound peace and quite, Baylin lifted his out stretched hands up to a his shoulders height, and shoulders width apart. He kept his palms pointing towards each other as he focused on empty space between them.

"Absent shadows of the sun. The lost. The prison we do not want to leave..."

They were words to a mantra that had long lost its meaning. They were words to an incantation he used as a vertex to will his djed into action. "Absent shadows of the sun." The words slipped from his lips, his body going through the movement as he felt his djed flow towards the empty space between his hands. "The lost." His djed started to act at a siphon, hollowing out a point in this dimension until a tiny obsidian portal formed connecting This Side to The Other Side.

"The prison we do not want to leave" He spoke while continuing to feed his djed into the portal, creating one that hovered in front of him the size of his chest. He began to loose himself, not letting his attention focus on anything in particular within the void. He used the void as a tool to aid him in entering a trance. A quiet, empty, steady, and deeply personal meditation on nothingness.

[Skyard Underwood]

Skyard as always spent his days without a care in the world ;now that he had the only person that ever mattered to him back. With Kaie at his side he became whole again, and felt as if he had the power to craft his own destiny with his bare hands. Today at the beach he found himself at rest as always, and he looked on in awe of the beauty which lied in the most simplistic things. The horizon bore a beautiful combination of colors today. A sight that Skyard refused to miss even if the sight occurred each and every single day. He noticed that the cloud coverage however had not been as ever-present as it would under typical circumstances. Today he chose not to wear a shirt and bask in the direct sunlight perhaps this place truly was a paradise and not simply a wild nightmare.

However, the moment he spotted something peculiar he felt the need to investigate. He saw what he initially thought to be a creature with tendrils for hair in the water. The incredibly pale individual stood erect for a moment, and attempted to get a better look at the ocean. The moment he stood he saw it in full detail his suspicions were confirmed, and indeed a head stuck out of the water. The creature was one he had never seen before, and never thought existed. There were “Fish-People” and he had absolutely no clue that they existed. Of course he figured that was because of the fact they likely never had to come to the surface in their lifetimes.

The Lion watched on as the large Charoda approached and sat cross legged on the Beach. “What the ----” He whispered to himself as not to be heard while he heard the incantations of the creature.

Within a few split-ticks he noticed that a large dark opening was created without even a hint of warning. It became obvious to him that the sea-creature itself was a magic wielder just like him. The question from this point on was exactly what magic did the fish-person use? He had never seen someone wield it before, and perhaps it was a gate to another world beyond this one.

Curiosity overtook the Lion, and he decided to approach with a few select words in mind for the person at the opposite side of the beach with the large dark circular “portal” open. “Hey! You! Wielder of Darkness, from where do you hail?” He voiced aloud so that perhaps he would be heard; he took an immediate interest the moment that he saw magic.

Hopefully he would learn the secrets of the particular power that the fish wielded.

[Bay'Lin La]

For a timeless moment he sat there in front of the still, cold hush of the void, every irrelevant sound of the ocean, and sea salted scent. His breathing matched the steady thudding of his heart, like an ever slowing drumbeat. His gaze remained fixated on a distant point within the darkness of the portal. His awareness remained focused from moment to moment, only living for the moments in between every breath. Breathing in deeply through his faint nostrils, allowing his abdomen to expand, tasting the air on his tongue through his sense of smell. Then exhaled, through his mouth.

By not focusing on anything else, he wallowed in the sensations of his body as it worked the magics of the Void. He could understand why djed, was called the backbone of magic, because he felt a tingle flow up his spine like soothing water as he willed a smaller amount of djed to flow from his hand to expand the void portal larger by a small increment. His hands drifted further apart with his palms still facing each other, repositioning just beyond a shoulders width; the portal remaining stable at a foot and a half diameter.

All of his tendrils started to wreathed against each other when his head half tilted towards the stranger. "Hail? Do you mean my place of birth or the place I call home? To the first, I was hatched in Charbosi. To the second, I have been tasked to make a home here due to the persistent of a sibling." He dropped one hand to grab a handful of sand, feeling the weight of it in his palm. "And what of you, Alabaster Earth-walker? Where were you born?" Calling the boy by an equally elaborate title, then tossed the sand into the portal to watch it float away in the absence of gravity.