[center][img]https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSQflg-z9nQOc9a6bCHFtrSb4lRpHccGrYNtw&usqp=CAU[/img]
[h1]Jiugui[/h1]
&
[h2][colour=steelblue][mamang]Mamang.[/mamang][/colour][/h2]
present

[b]O, to drink like a fish![/b][/center]

[hr]

[center][h3]XXI[/h3][/center]

The passage of the great walkers had become familiar, now, to the ancient whale. He greeted them with his song, as he greeted any other old traveller in those cool northern seas, though of course they did not hear. Perhaps, like the circling shorebirds, they could sense the ring that now adorned Mamang’s tail, and laughed with its passage, but the whale heard nothing in their sorcerous song, saw nothing under the sheet of red on which they walked. 

There was another sound with which the whale had now become familiar: the groan of rising mountains. It was a sound as soft as a whisper, lower than the deepest voice of the earth. To a whale like Mamang, it was clear as could be, no matter where he wandered. This, now, was the closest he had ever heard it, and he raised his eye cautiously to watch the shore. Was there some shape on the horizon now, where none had ever been? Perhaps. Memories of land were always dim and distant memories. Only the shorelines were fixed in his heart, and the shorelines [i]never[/i] changed.

He exhaled and rammed a freshly-created shoal of squid down his gullet. 

It was then that a buoy of flesh slapped into the water from above, tossing up a fog of bubbles. A spherical object rolled around sloppily like a half-eaten jellyfish, at the mercy of currents and waves alike. Around it ushered forth an invisible cloud of something woefully smelly.

Filth! Sorcery!

By this time, Mamang was well acquainted with the noxious powers of the ancient ones. Diving quickly into the safe dark waters, he eyeballed the limp-legged thing. Surely a corpse! He had seen many thousands of such limp shapes bobbing in the Sea of Keltra on that fateful night. Some numinous terror had slain this poor land-creature, and all that was left was to warn other whales.

Mamang surfaced just about enough to get the cadaver on his tail, and raised it, briefly lifting the body before it rolled off into the waters once more. Then it sent the warning-signal common to whales and Bjorks alike: a firm, loud tail-slap, crashing down on the surface of the waters, slamming the stinking body deep under the waves.

But the cadaver was far from dead! In fact, once the sonic slap washed it in even more salt, sea and sound, the body stirred to life, rambling something mighty slurred like the voice of a lapping wave. Not even dolphin speech was this incomprehensible - a clam would have made more sense. The ball clapped at the water surface in some crude attempt to swim, but only ended up circling around like a one-finned fish. Around it spilled more of the toxic tea, soiling the seas with sickening smells.

The land-calf was clearly not yet free of its lethal curse. Even a whale could see that it was in need of another cold, sobering wash, or perhaps the sweet, merciful embrace of a swift death. The gigantic tail was not enough. 

There was only one thing to be done.

As the floundering goblin gasped for breath, the shadow of the gargantuan whale disappeared into the dark with worrying alacrity. Then, after a moment of quiet, the ocean exploded in a mighty column of spray, and a mountain of whale-meat covered the sun. The last thing Jiugui saw was Mamang’s pleated belly covering the whole of the sky.

[b]C R A S H[/b]

Anything unfortunate enough to suffer this sort of cetacean send-off would surely find themself in the Afterlife not too long after. However, the goblin still squirmed, flopping around like a swimming sea anemone. It looked at least, uh, somewhat revitalised, for his movements seemed to indicate the basest of survival instincts - retreat. 

The whale stared at the tiny spluttering thing with sense of dumb shock as it recovered. This was [i]witchcraft.[/i]

Meanwhile, the little ball unleashed small squeals and groans which travelled through the water with a sort of supernatural dexterity and clarity that only holy creatures could manifest. Like a blown-up, but finless pufferfish, the creature clumsily propelled itself away from Mamang, spitting profanities like a drowning sailor.

Something was clearly not quite right here. Mamang was, of course, too stupid to discern whether it was the body, its pernicious longevity, its stench, or in the whale itself, but [i]something[/i] had clearly been fumbled for the worse somewhere in this odorous affair. It circled the body, there in the watery blueness safe from the chill and chop of rough waves above, and let its man-sized eye drift right up to the submerged goblin. And he said:

[i]Mhäm mähm?[/i]

The ball stopped and squinted fiendishly at the whale. “You shtohp dat name-callin’! I ain’d no caff!” The goblin snorted out a web of salty snot and washed its mouth with some more of that witchly concoction that oozed around it. “I’mma Jiugui ‘n I wash havin’ a lil’ nap until you decided ta wake me! Who doez dat?”

A what now?

“Jiugui,” repeated the little man. “You zbell id… Achtually, dozzen seem like you can neizher read or wride, on accound of your small eyez ‘n finny limbs.” He nodded sagely while the great wrinkled eye squinted pointedly at him. “Forgib me, pleaze… I’fe been so mush wiff this one group’a ghosts up in the moundains dat I fo’got ozzer creashurs egsisted.” He lifted his cup, which now was full of sea water, and toasted the whale. “Buzz bray dell, wass your name, big sir?”

[i]Mähm-mmäng,[/i] sang the whale, a process which took the better part of a minute. It was by no means finished: [i]Mmä-mäam mhäm mähm mähm mahm mmang mämm, mä mmähm-mähm määäm mäng mähm mäm mmahng.[/i]

Jiugui nodded understandingly. “A beauziful name, sir. A pleashure. Quite a shtory too, huh - from caff off in the Norf to travelz all aroun’ and explosions ‘n singin’ to endin’ up ‘ere, a sagely ole vederan of the sea…” He shed a tear which floated to the surface before burning off in a puff of alcohol. “Boodiful… Oh, I muss hear more ovvit! Shay, Mammy - you ain’d busy now, righ’? I know dish place a few thousand nautical milesh to the souf - great atmosphere, warm waters. You thirsdy?”

The whale was suddenly struck with the knowledge that, though he was over a century old, he had never had so much of a sip of anything in his life. What’s more, he was surrounded every day of those long years by salt. He was positively swimming in it.

There wasn’t a second to lose. He was thirsty. [i]By God he was thirsty.[/i]

[i]Mäm,[/i] he explained swiftly as he turned his body away and around. Once again, great haste had become a necessity. Something told him this wayward landling wouldn’t fit down his blowhole with nearly the elegance of the last one, and it would probably be hazardous to try. Within a few short seconds, Mamang was facing Jiugui head on once more, and this time his lips parted to bring the impossibly vast cavern of his dark maw to bear on the squirming god. The god had barely time to react before the whale swallowed him up. 

Inside, though, Jiugui made himself comfortable sitting on Mamang’s enormous tongue. He shrugged and said, “I understan’. If you thing dis is de best way of travel, I gan tag along ‘ere.” The water in the whale’s mouth drained by some convenient miracle, and He poured himself a drink in the now-dry baleen hall and took a sip. “Sho is straight souf from ‘ere, I think. Then– WOAH!” 

As Mamang dove down, Jiugui spilled some of his wine all over his tongue. Mamang recoiled from the burn of the liquor, and the floor, as it were, rolled like a wave, such that the top of Jiugui’s greasy unwashed hair just about brushed the whale’s palate.The orb of a god tossed screamingly around the massive maw, more wine was spilled, more awkward tongue-rolling was had, and by the time Mamang was familiar enough with the sting to settle his mouth a steady trickle of it was making its way to the whale’s distant throat.

The journey got interesting after that. Sure, Mamang may have made a few illegal migrations and awkward turns, but there was no one under the light of Heaven who would possibly indict the whale for diving under the influence. It’s just so easy to get lost at sea, see, where everything’s better down where it’s wetter, and all the same colour to boot. 

They looped around the dancing isles, speeding along merrily at the last minute as the glowing laektears turned from yellow to red and the stone began to rise, then sailed past the convocation grounds of divinity, where Mamang skimmed his fin through the wall of the last-remaining surface of vertical ocean between two mountains. They stopped somewhere in the far west when Mamang realised he was skirting the wrong continent entirely, and wheeled merrily around for a while before turning back, flaunting his bangle to a bewildered Zhongcheng somewhere in the glittering bays of the Ring of Shadows. Their route may as well have been drawn in chalk on a convenient wall by a giggling toddler, and no less entertainment was had. No laws were broken that night, but more than a few were written the next day by an assembly of whales, laektears and godfish, their quarrels momentarily set aside to establish some basic rules of propriety for travelling the high seas.

Then, finally, guided by ingrained navigational memory and a smattering of miracles, they arrived.

[center][h3]XXII[/h3][/center]

Before them laid exactly nothing - on the surface, that was. It was just about winter time here, so whatever traces of the island paradise Jiugui had talked about laid resting at the bottom of the sea. It wasn’t hard to find, sure - eventually their sloshing search brought them to coordinates roughly fifty metres beneath the surface of where they had initially arrived, whereupon they were greeted by a forest of coral and salt-crusted surface flora. Crustaceans and slugs, bacteria and algae all grew thick on the surface flora, eating what they could before the island’s eventual rise back to the surface. The whale, by now in sore need of a little lay down, settled his great belly in the middle of the island and crushed a good deal of it. [i]Mähm.[/i]

Jiugui pushed his way out of Mamang’s mouth and scratched his head ponderously. “Gosh, coulda sworn thish was above the wader when I lash shaw id. Mussa been some bender, huh,” he chuckled to himself and nudged Mamang amicably on the nasal nob. “Le’s see if my secret stores are still ‘ere…” The orb flapped his way into the coral forest, frightening crabs and gulpers alike. 

Mamang belched a contented cloud of bubbles from his blowhole, watching placidly as a snub-nosed dolphin berated him in no mild terms for his impudence. He flicked his flipper upwards, tossing a previously well-disguised skate into his interlocutor and sending both the confused islanders spiralling away together. His big sleepy eye rolled once more towards the blob.

The fat man had reached the heart of the forest - an overgrown beach full of rocks, broken eggshells, dead trees and skeletons of whatever was unfortunate enough to not make it off the island before it sank. Jiugui kicked a skull over and dug around in the sand. A curious school of anchovies nibbled on his robes and a broad-shouldered king crab plucked at the stale bones of the now-beheaded skeleton next to him. The violent protestations of a local hagfish went unheeded. 

After some time of digging and the interruption of two very intimate sandworms’ delicate privacy, the drunk god fixed his grip on a hatch. He squatted down and flipped it open with godly strength, causing tons of water to rush into the air-tight cellar and causing a cacophony of breaking glass and pots, immediately murdering everything within the one-metre radius as a wash of concentrated alcohol pushing way beyond reasonable percentages oozed up from the cellar entrance like a plume of poison. Nearly all of the anchovies flipped onto their backs from acute alcohol poisoning, and the crab stood still in the ooze for a brief moment before she, too, keeled over. Even Jiugui wafted a hand over his nose and went, “Pee-yew! I reckon da’s the [i]baijiu[/i] barrels bursting! Funny whad fifty cubics a’ water does to a wine cellar. Lemme go down ‘n see whad survived…” Jiugui squeezed his way into the cellar entrance and whistled a little tune.

Watching the perhaps-immortal goblinoid waddle down into the pit of noxious death, the whale shrugged his flippers and remembered that, unlike the other mammal in the vicinity, he occasionally needed to breathe. The stars high above were beautiful, if a little unsteady-looking, and it was a few minutes before he came down at last to see whether rotund little buddy had finally carked it. The initial cloud of poison had dispersed to the point where a smug-looking hag was able to escape its shield of slime, alive, if terribly wobbly. Shortly thereafter, the goblin climbed out of the hole again carrying a morbidly obese ceramic pot corked with a trunk-like lid. The drunken man giggled to himself and said, “Heheheh, the honeypot was shpared, my fren! Now lessh see if is all still here!” The goblin swam up towards Mamang with a raunchy chuckle on his lips.

The whale waited, floating, and watched with not a little admiration for the carrying capacity of the blob. For a god with more flounder than swim in him and the distinct look of one who might draw his own bath only to drown in it, the sight of that round artefact had sure filled him with spirit. Little did the cetacean know how much it was about to fill them both with spirit by more direct means. The Spirit of Spirits swam into the gape of the whale and sat the pot upon his tongue with a wet slap. Weighting nothing short of a ton, the pot was so wide that it approximated some kind of great squat toad, or turnip, or drunk goblin god, sitting neatly on the tip of the whale’s gargantuan tongue. Jiugui unlidded the container with a well-placed jumping kick and the ooze of obscenely strong alcohol filled the cavity of Mamang’s mouth. The enormous cork was lost somewhere in the darkness.

[i]...Mäaämh?[/i] No sooner was the pot opened than the whale was suddenly none so certain of this game. The night had been fun so far, but a trickle was one thing. He was, after all, an inexperienced drinker. The drunk god seemed oblivious to this and scooped up a keg of the stuff, pouring it down the whale’s gullet with festive glee. “Oh, don’ worry, my friend - is a firsh time for everyone! [i]Ganbeiiiiiii![/i]”

Well, they’d already come this far.

[i]Mäang-mäaii~![/i]

The keg’s contents disappeared swiftly down the whale’s gullet, and if it were only half-shot for Mamang, then, by God, it was certainly a [i]strong[/i] one. The whale slammed shut his lips and eyes and slapped the water with its tail. Perhaps he had made an error of judgement earlier in the night. There was no doubt that this was sorcery, but, if the joy and love overflowing in Mamang’s heart once again were any indication, it could only be good sorcery. Another? Why, yes please! Another would be most welcome!

[i]Ganbei![/i]

That night, the ocean was a magical place. The moon rose high, and from its brilliant eye drifted down glittering sparkles of magic and light, splashing down into the water all around like shining confetti. Mamang’s tail-band attracted every manner of sea-being to come and enjoy the celebration, and many compliments besides. The drops that were spilled were swallowed down by flashing silver fish, and those that perished were snapped up by sharks and squids and laektears and porpoises, themselves swiftly intoxicated. They sloshed and slonked and rolled about together in the waters for hours in the shadow of the whale. The nautilus drank so deeply that the octopus rightly suspected that he would never swim straight again. A big dancerfish oozed a lava-lamp glow of reds and pinks that crawled slowly over her boozed-out body, a field of incapacitated firefly-squid pulsing dumb messages to each other as if the sunken island were itself a curtain of stars. 

Then Mamang lifted its mighty head from the water and made to quiet the commotion of light and sea-noise. His brain rolled in booze like a raft in a storm, and the lightning-flash of drunk inspiration had struck. It was time for a poem!

[center][i]Mamm mhä maäm mng mähm mmang mam-moom,
Moom mäng mhä mammam maang män-mmäai
Mämmmäa mah mma määä mng mhäm-oong,
Mamm mhä manng mng-mam mhäi.[/i][/center]

The crabs wept and clicked their pincers. The dolphins slapped their tails and hurled themselves for the water, chittering for encore. The octopus crunched one of the crabs in its beak and wiped a string of briney mucous from its siphon. Even the hagfish swayed with pleasure. Tragically, however, the entire host was so well pissed up at this point that any hopes of translating this magnificent verse have been thoroughly lost to maritime history.

It was well that the evening should end on that high (well, technically, very low; Mamang was a baritone, even by whale standards) note. The sky grew brighter as the booze grew sloppier, and the whale’s tilting vision gave way to whirling fits of nausea. Up and down ceased to make sense, and were his capacious lungs any less suited to the task of gasping in swiftly his chance encounters with air, he surely would have drowned. The island seemed to grow further and further every time Mamang tried to swim back towards it. Flashes of fire began to streak across the sunken stone: the mouthless godfish had waited patiently, but now it was their turn to clean up all who had perished in the orgy of godlike excess, and slaughter the weak; the feast at last was theirs.

The island was lost altogether. The world spun. The tides of dream washed Mamang away into a swirling bubble, buried far in its black and baleful depths. His burned tongue tasted only moon-dust and spirits. His trembling eye swung left and right, fearing things he could not know, and glossy black whale-lice multiplied on his face, chewing into his skin. A shrill cry rose up from an unknown reef, as if some rooted jellyfish was weeping from its bell. Shadows of whales swept over him, and the shadows did not sing…

The dream dried up like foam on the sand, and Mamang was alone under the bright ocean sun.

[hr]
[hider=get sloshed]
Mamang encounters a disgusting goblin out on the high seas, polluting the water with stench and filth. Naturally, he tries to do the right thing and put the flailing globule out of its misery.

Surprise! It’s Jiugui. They quickly clear up this little misunderstanding and Jiugui invites Mamang to come and drink and tell his life story at a lovely island to the south, where the atmosphere is just fine. They head on down, breaking records and laws on their way.

Surprise again! This is one of the islands that rises and sinks with the seasons, and is now underwater. Jiugui rummages around for his stash of booze and pops it open, flooding it and breaking many of the vessels within. The resulting plume of concentrated booze-water kills everything it touches for a while, but disperses, presumably to the great pleasure of aquatic partygoers.

Then Jiugui discovers his whale-sized jar of strong baijiu (because of course he has a whale-sized jar of strong baijiu) they start drinking and partying in earnest. Glitter falls from the moon and good times are had by [s]all[/s] [s]the survivors[/s] most.

The night ends as a very drunk Mamang drifts away from the island and dreams fitfully of the events happening in outer space at the time, and godfish come to slaughter anything too sloshed on the divine slurry to get away in time.

Jiugui’s whereabouts remain unknown.

[b]3,181 whale points vomited up the following morning.

Total whale points: 18,414[/b]

[/hider]