No Sanctuary (Solo)

[Warden Thrice]

1st of Spring Something was wrong. Eorar threw off the covering of the bedroll and stood. He had woken in the middle of the night and hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. He had blamed it on the nervousness of what would be his first day at the University, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake it. It was a fluttering in his stomach, a small voice in the back of his mind telling him that something was off. He no longer needed to keep a hand on the wall. He knew his way around his cave by heart. He knelt by the pillar in the center where he had put his human things; his clothing, his books, his quill and paper. Running his hand over the cool leather of the bag he used to transport things to and from the surface without getting wet, almost as if hoping that it would calm him down. It didn’t. Sighing, Eorar slipped from the stone to the water. The change in temperature erased any trace of sleep, and his gills flared involuntarily as he swam through the darkness with powerful strokes, not really caring where he was going. He just needed to get out. There was a small pinprick of blue light looming ahead, which gradually became larger and larger until the tunnel opened into the sea. It was early morning, with only the barest shafts of light piercing the waves, creating weak patterns on the sandy bottom. Surveying the floor as he passed above, he watched for anything out of the ordinary. There didn’t seem to be anything. His reef was bustling with life, a small school of silver fish glinted in the distance, and Tenten bubbled up at him from below. Far away, he saw the ship graveyard. He felt a small tug, and angled towards it.

[Warden Thrice]

Even the ships held the aura. What once would have been proud was now sinister, and every shadow seemed ready to move. He shivered. Every passing second seemed like an age. It felt as if the world was holding its breath, remaining deceptively calm. He ached with the infuriating sense of waiting, wishing for anything else but unable to do anything else. Something was coming. He felt it in the water. He saw it in the darkness. He smelled it in the currents. The pressure was rising, and Eorar realized he was sinking. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. He felt a brush on his skin, and his heart skipped a beat. The tide had changed direction. He suddenly felt dizzy, and his attempt to rise were weak, only managing to slow his descent. The he heard it. The rumbling. Everything was shaking. His vision became skewed as his entire body vibrated, but he still managed to catch sight of the cause. His breath stopped. He couldn’t remember ever seeing them before, yet they were there, ominously beautiful. There, in the center of the ship graveyard, were two obelisks. One was obsidian black, almost purple in its depth, while the other was a glittering ivory. He could feel magic, pure and powerful, radiating off them with massive force. He couldn’t breathe. They were rising. Slowly, the sand and stones around their bases sank, and they gained speed as they neared the surface. The crackling djed between them was almost tangible. He couldn’t breathe. His body began to burn. He couldn’t breathe. His gills flared to their full extent, but it did nothing. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe! His sluggish limbs began moving, clawing at the water. His once-graceful movements were reduced to jerks, twitching. Why couldn’t he breathe? Why couldn’t he breathe?!

[Warden Thrice]

Sudden strength surged through his limbs, and he coiled like a snake before thrusting upwards. He needed to get out. He needed to breathe. Pinning his arms to his sides to minimize resistance, he pumped his legs up and down like a dolphin with all the power he possessed. His pain, his desperation, his body’s screams for oxygen that had suddenly vanished, it all fueled him and gave him strength where he might not have had any. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet, and the numbness was crawling slowly bur surely up his arms and calves. Still, he swam. He was getting closer. The obelisks were thrumming with magic. They were deafening, making his very bones rattle in tune. He was almost there. He heard a ship’s mast snap beneath him, heard the groan as if fell and the crash as it landed. The surface was rising. What? It was getting farther away. Where was it going? Eorar’s mind was fuzzy, and all but the most simple of thoughts fell apart. He needed to get to the top, but his destination retreated above him. He stretched one hand up desperately, as if to grasp his salvation. He needed to get out. He needed to get… He needed to… He needed… He… …

[Warden Thrice]

He was shocked awake by sheer cold as lashing wind roared over the bay. Frigid air wrapped his entire body as he burst from the sea completely, reawakening his muscles cruelly. The sky above was dark, without any trace of the coming sun, and crackled threateningly with bolts of unnaturally colored lightning. He fell back down, water enveloping him once more, and he coughed and struggled back to the surface. His gills flared and he opened his mouth, gasping for oxygen and scrabbling to stay afloat when everything around him was trying to pull him down. Dragging his arms through the water, he swam clumsily towards Zeltiva, unable to think of anything save that he needed to get out of the water. Wait. He was too high. The sky was too close. He paddled furiously west, fear twisting his innards. What was wrong? Where was he? He climbed to a crest of water, and his breath stopped. Great Laviku. It was a tidal wave. He was on a tidal wave.

[Warden Thrice]

He floated there, jaw agape in shock, and slowly, very slowly, the already colossal wave swelled, then began to move forward. A bright light exploded from his left, and he turned in time to see the white obelisk struck by red lightning. A split second later, blue lightning hit the obelisk of black. Eorar twisted fearfully, but there was nowhere for him to go. He was going to die. The wave gained speed, gaping like a mouth ready to swallow the city. The Charoda’s stomach chilled in dread. Though the distance between him and the ground was great, he could feel how fast he was going in the air above him, the water around him. He wheeled and flailed away from the city as fast as he could, but his inability to leave the air hindered him. He floundered in a clumsy dog-paddle, unable to think clearly. He needed to get away. He heard the roar of the wave as it prepared to bear down on Zeltiva, and he heard screams erupt from below that chilled his heart. He spared a look behind him, and discovered hat he was in the exact same place at the wave’s crest. He was going to die. The wave plunged towards the city, and Eorar probably would have vomited had he not been shrieking himself silent. His ears were filled with a deafening roar, blocking out everything but the bolt of lightning that sundered the sky. He writhed and clawed, as if trying to swim away in one last desperate attempt to escape, but his attempts were fruitless and he could only watch in horror as the buildings rushed towards him. He threw his hands in front of his face as a white exploded around him, and then— —nothing.

[Warden Thrice]

He felt nothing. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. He was nothing. He floated in a sea of nothingness, void of everything, suspended in time and space and mind. Vaguely, he wondered if he was dead, but even that small sliver thought was immaterial, flitting away before he had the chance to grasp it. “Boar.” What? “Border pon—” crackling “—sinister.” Somewhere, a child giggled. “No, no, no, you can’t make tea! We’re underwater!” Something loomed from the darkness, a blurry spot of blue against black. It floated towards him, focusing and sharpening, and he realized that he was looking at himself, not possibly over seven years of age. He was grinning, and in one hand held a glittering pearl. “I told you I’d find it!” the little Eorar said gleefully, speaking to someone outside the older Eorar’s vision. “That hornfish was going in circles!” The person next to him said something too soft to hear, and the little Eorar erupted into peals of laughter. “I know! I’ll show you! Come on!” Little Eorar laughed and wheeled, sprinting away. Wait. A shadow, even darker than the darkness around it, slipped after. Come back. The little Eorar faded out of detail, but not sight. He became a pinprick of something in the nothingness, and then Eorar heard it: a dim whine. It grew, becoming a ringing, became deafening. It filled him with fire and heat, but he couldn’t do anything against it, didn’t even had an eye to blink. It fused with him with glorious, terrible pain, and he screamed with his mind. The pinprick in the distance exploded into light, and everything became silent.