[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/inS0Xvb.png[/img][/center] [hider=Character] [u][b]Skills[/b][/u] [list] [*]Master of Seas ★★★★★★ [*]Element Resistance ★★★ [*]Combat Sense ★ [*]Iron Skin ★ [/list] [u][b]Inventory[/b][/u] [list] [*]Nicked One-Handed Sword [*]Boot Knife [*]Rope [/list] [/hider] He was dead. Floating above the waters that consumed him, the rage of the storm insufficient to alter his spiritual form. And yet, it had not been death that surprised him, that had changed his world so greatly. No, it had been the understanding that the winged being towards him, pale-skinned and black-haired, was not the prophet that he had veneered, that his family had spoken of. His presence was warlike, his countenance disdaining humanity. Belo had expected hell. He had received another world instead. And as that winged being placed their hand upon his chest, Belo’s hand reached up to grab them by the wrist. Not squeezing. Just a firm enough grasp to remind this creature who plundered this drifting soul, lost at sea of a single thing. He was not taken by Allah. But he [i]never[/i] worshipped Drasil. [hr] If he kept his eyes closed, his ears shut, perhaps he could imagine that he was back home. Coarse sand and small stones scratched at his skin, and the salt in the air tickled his nostrils, a brininess that at once whetted his appetite and pulled at his consciousness. But even if he was blind and deaf, he could smell it too, the iron tang of blood in the air, mixed with vomit and fire. He could feel it too, the tremors in the sand, the thrumming in the air, the weight of pounding feet of pursuer and prey. Even if he was blind and deaf, he knew something was afoot. His ears, now huge flaps of skin and cartilage, were far too big for him to profess deafness. His eyes, beady and black, absorbed the light in terrible clarity and granted him a much too sharp awareness of his surroundings. Plumes of smoke stained the clear skies as blazing spheres rolled along the beach, leaving trails of soot in its wake. Long-limbed creatures, cloaked in a fabric that sparkled like steel, shouted out commands in a foreign tongue, as the more well-armed of them rushed forth with slender sabres, cutting down those that fled or those that fought. A strange witchcraft seemed to seize the limbs of the burlier race, their movements arrested mid fight or flight, before their blood contained to soak the white sands a sanguine pigment. Chaos was abound, the chaos that confounded an organized defense. He had seen the work of bandits before though. He had been a pirate himself, knew all about the practicality of a shocking attack. They were not collecting their plunder though. They were not taking hostages for ransom, not using threats to force surrender and submission. No. Those pale-skinned [i]soldiers[/i] were in the business of sawing off ears, of setting ablaze a village and all its goods, of running through their targets with a lethal grace entirely at odds with the brutality they marketed. Belo felt his own blood sluggishly ooze down his crown, slip down his pudgy nose, splatter upon the sands. Had that winged creature hurled his soul into a vessel that had just lost their own? Was there anything more to expect though, out of a creature that desired war and conquest, conflict and… [i]You’ll have a new family to protect very soon![/i] Bastard! He hurled himself forwards, his body so much lighter and stronger than he was accustomed to. He could hardly register the gawkiness of his own limbs, the strange way that his teeth did not fit inside his lips, the ways his clawed feet dug into the sand as he charged shoulder-first into one of the soldiers. They tumbled into the ground together, a tangle of limbs, but Belo had the advantage of surprise and the knowledge that if he did not act swiftly, his own body would be paralyzed by the witchcraft that these [i]invaders[/i] wielded. It was a quick thing to do then, pulling out the small knife that he had somehow known was there and ramming it into the open mouth of his stunned opponent. Blood, the same sanguine ichor, gushed out from tongue and throat. An instant death, swift enough that it was only a terrible heartbeat later that Belo registered who it was that he had just killed. A woman, in the spring of her youth, one who couldn’t have been even twenty years old. Her long-lashed eyes subsumed with a blank, deathly terror. Her unblemished skin drenched with sweat and blood. Her features of such refinement that he thought he had gotten things wrong for a moment there. That he had somehow attacked the wrong person. The shouts of others, in a tongue neither Somali, Arabic, or English, snapped him out of it, and he remembered why he had broken out from his feigned death. His expression hardened and he scrambled up once more, picking up the pudgy, pig-like child by the neck and tossing them over his shoulder. [i]She[/i] had been the one to pull a blade on a child. [i]She[/i] was the one who ought to have expected all this! And though his own skin now shared the color of the shaytan whom tempted humans to sin, his own religion did not apply to this new world and devils did not bleed red. He did not drown, did not become forsaken, did not become reborn, simply to die once more. But, in pursuit of life, of life saving life, Belo left that burning beach as well, left the gleaming ships and the glistening sea, for the shelter of a forest so dense that the greenery itself was blinding. He delved into the forest, one hand warding off the branches and twigs and brush that impeded his path, another hand grasping firmly upon the soiled loincloth of the child he had plucked out from the massacre. Knowing nothing, nothing at all, of how it was the [i]woods[/i] that the [i]elves[/i] were most comfortable in.