[center][img]http://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjg4LjI2YjNjNS5RV1Z6YVhNLC4w/zero.regular.png[/img] [color=LightBlue][i][b]The World-Drowner, Earthshaker, King Kraken[/b][/i][/color] [/center] Drums of war pounded against the golden shoreline in the dead of night and the light of day. Light where no man could see, sound where no man could hear, life where no man could breath. In the west it swallowed all light, in the east it birthed anew. Never calmed, yet constantly still. Always moving, never the same. Constantly amending, remaining unchanged. No description could truly capture it's mysterious majesty, yet only a few words could express it's beauty. Jack knew it would be a rough passage home. The sea was too placid for a sanguine moon. There was a storm a-brewing. The boat began to roll from side to side and the temperature dipped all of a sudden. Dark clouds obscured the moon. They churned grimly in the night sky, as black as a witch’s Sabbath. The moon’s mercury flush was painted silver by the thunderheads, casting down shivers of light with a ghostly glow. Underneath the moon, the rain moved towards him like a wraith’s veil of sorrow. A winnowing wind fermented and sighed, rippling the surface of the corpse calm sea. His boat heaved and tossed in the rising swell and he gripped the tiller with his naked fingers. He could just make out the figure of his wife standing on the shingled beach, lamp raised aloft to guide him home. Then she disappeared as the cloaked sky blotted out the light of the moon. The rain-shroud passed by, spitting at him with its undead tears. It wrung his hobbit curls into a mop and soaked his jerkin through. The rain whipped down like crystal nails and streaky lightning emblazoned the sky. The sea swells rose and his beard time froze as the north wind blew and sped him to his doom. Lacerating rain stung his bare arms like ice burn and the sea throbbed grey with woe. His boat bobbed like a cork upon the capacious sea and for the first time ever, he felt his own mortality. The brine hissed and sissed, lashing his face, and he felt a fever in his eyes. His little boat keeled and tilted like the death flop of a mackerel. The timber planks buckled and bulged, then screamed and shuddered, but the boat righted herself once more. The bedlam of the sea caused a hectic in his blood, but he could swear that an old man’s, spectral face was fixed in the sky where the moon should be. It wore a mask of hatred and longing and it transfixed Jack utterly. He looked at it aghast, like a mooncalf would stare at the night sky. The old man’s eyes seemed to glare at the sea on his starboard side. Jack’s own eyes followed and slowly widened as he gazed down into a whirlpool opening and spinning beneath the boat. The words of his father came to him unbidden then: “There’s nothing worse than the dreadful curse lodged in a dead man’s eye.” Jack became angry, trying to remember the rest of the advice. He knew it was important, but he couldn’t think with the tumult and the tempest. Jack’s two hands gripped the tiller and refused to let go. His father’s words came back unbidden; “A true mariner never deserts a sinking ship.” He gripped on tighter. A mountainous wave rose up before him, blotting out the sky. The wind howled out his doom, the whirlpool span faster and whiter and the old man’s face leered down in triumph. The boat rose with the swell, inclining upwards to its destruction. It was propelled up onto the lip and hovered there, a fly-speck on the cobwebbed lines of the wave. Time seemed suspended. The whirlpool gaped under him with dire-white jaws. It roiled and spun, inviting Jack in. Then the boat plummeted down into its milky depths, swallowed whole in a final, terrible, squeak of timber. [i]Hear, Aesis, ruler of the sea profound, whose liquid grasp begirds the solid ground; who, at the bottom of the stormy main, dark and deep-bosomed holdest they watery reign.[/i] Aesis' boom laden laughter shook the very foundations of the world, the sea responding to his giddiness with roiling waves and incessant rain. He derived pleasure from the little things in his realm. Every sinking ship, every sailors scream, every crushing wave, every childish squeal of joy when the cool tide washes over thier little toes. For hundreds of years the sea king kept to himself, watching and indulging. The Rebellion had tired him, lulling him into a silent stupor, giving mortals rest from his raging waves. Only death roused him from his nigh-slumber. Death wasn't kind. Aesis knew that. It snatched where it could, taking people who were far too young, far too good. It didn't pretend to care, it didn't pretend to distinguish. The hooded vale of death had hung over the world for a long time, always threatening. It had never touched Aesis quite so close. Death had ripped away a part of all his brethren, the part of him that was most loved. Now Aesis sat staring for hours, happiness soaking right into his bones. He closed his eyes and savoured the feeling, but never released his grip on the seemingly inconsequential piece of reality that now would decide his future. For the first time in forever his body and mind relaxed. Father was dead. He suddenly let out a boisterous laugh, rain falling in crazy chaotic drops, the gusting wind carrying them in wild vortices one moment and in diagonal sheets the next above the home of the King. Torrents of water traveled through and into the throne room, rushing waves that smashed and surrounded the room, keeping its inhabitants dry. A cyclone of waves turned and twisted in the massive throne of rainbow colored coral, a bubble of water surround it perpetually as Aesis body condensed and formed. Aesis blue tinged muscular body settled into the throne, his white beard soaking in his makeshift pool. He regarded his shield-brother Ferrum, and his loving enemy, Oksana. A pristine white smile formming on his face upon seeing his sisters wet, tear stained face. [color=LightBlue]"Are you crying sister?"[/color] he mused. [color=LightBlue]"And you shield-brother, does sadness gnaw on your soul? This isn't a night for mourning."[/color] he jibbed, shaking his head as a piranha nipped at his fingers lovingly.