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Sarhush emerged back onto the surface in a place that had once been a seafloor. He clambered out of a deep fissure, steam pouring around him, the ground still warm beneath his feet. The air around tasted of salt, sulfur, and ash. Far in the distance, he saw the ground slope upward into what looked to be a great plateau: it took him a moment, but he realized that rise must have once been an island. A smile cut across his face, sharp and satisfied. Nature had yielded and the wretched water was gone.

Sarhush began walking in the direction of the former island. Dead fish and sharpened salt crystals littered the sandy ground everywhere, but the soles of his feet were tough, and it did not bother him to tread upon the bones of lesser creatures. Ashuru was not delicate and neither was its master. Carrion birds circled overhead, but they were not so numerous around this banquet as one might expect; the ashen skies had seen to it that many of them had succumbed alongside their would-be meals. 

Eventually, Sarhush came across a great stinking mound of flesh that was squarely in his path. He inspected it as he grew nearer; if he’d ever taken the time to swim in the sea or even sit by the shore, he might have seen whales and recognized this corpse for what it was. Alas, his disgust for the oceans meant that he’d never witnessed such a creature before that moment. He gazed upon the great beast’s rotting corpse without recognition, let alone anything like remorse for how the creature had suffocated when the waters receded. As if in answer to his callousness, the bloated whale exploded in a geyser of gore just as Sarhush drew near, the gases trapped within it building until they finally tore the body open.

[i]Some failed leviathan, then. A creature that had depended too long on a softness the world no longer permitted. Another worthless piece of Nature cleared from his path.[/i]

As he stepped through the gory remains and climbed over the whale’s now exposed spine and to the other side, he came across a dead ur-human lying upon the silty ground, yet with a corpse that seemed unwounded. Sarhush wasn’t bothered. Those bereft of strength or wits naturally succumbed, but there would always be some worthier survivors to carry on the great toil, to realize his dream of Civilization.

Besides the dead human, the still-damp sand was bubbling. Sarhush approached with a keen eye, and a keener nose, and saw immediately what had happened: toxic fumes were escaping from deep underground, rising up from a barely visible fissure to poison the air. This one had approached the dead whale hoping for an easy meal, only to suffocate for the attempt. Bad luck!

Sarhush didn’t think of things the same way Alechior did, but he did understand chance. Some were favored, others were not; just as some were strong and others weak, some clever and some dull. That was simply a fact of existence. And in this existence, Sarhush concerned himself with the living: the strong, the sharp-witted, and the lucky. The rest were no more consequential than the wind.

He continued his trek towards the island-plateau. When the slope steepened and he began climbing what had once been a beach, the ground shifted beneath his feet. There was movement below, not yet violent, but like some great beast stirring in its sleep.

[color=#9E5020]"You endure,"[/color] he announced aloud, not to the carrion birds scattering in the sky, nor to the distant figures of a few hardy surviving beasts fleeing across the broken flats, but to Ashuru itself. [color=#9E5020]"Good. I would have been disappointed otherwise."[/color]

As he’d been climbing up from the fiery depths, it had seemed as though the whole world had been screaming, a cry both psychic and deeply real. But he saw now that it had all been just noise, like those bothersome Patrons squabbling in the hole. Ashuru was durable. If it had turned out that he was so mighty, his power so terrible, that he’d managed to break the world to the point that it was no longer a suitable place for his great work of cultivated Civilization, then he would simply smash the pieces back together.

Ashuru answered his words with a deafening boom, like the trepid roar of a half-broken beast straining against its captor. A second sound soon followed: a deep rumble, like that of rolling thunder.

[color=#9E5020]"Hear this,"[/color] he told it, his booming voice carrying effortlessly across the world. [color=#9E5020]"You have more land than before, to be built upon and cultivated."[/color]

Sarhush cast a baleful eye upward and saw a mountain further inland, its angry peak glowing red, ash rising upward in a widening halo about it.

He trod upon a shard of obsidian, because he’d been looking upward. The thing was wicked-sharp, but not enough to break his skin. Sarhush looked down upon the glassy black rock and smiled; this was something new. [color=#9E5020]"You have more varieties of stone to be broken, shaped, used! More fire to be put to work."[/color]

He continued his climb even as the slope grew ever steeper. Rocks shook loose above him, scattering down the incline like pollen shaken from a leaf. Some glowed red-hot; one struck his shoulder and burst apart, spattering molten fragments across his skin.

Sarhush laughed.

[color=#9E5020]"No more forest to blight you,"[/color] he listed off. [color=#9E5020]"Less sea to soften you and impede my work."[/color]

The volcano roared again, but in strain more than fury. Lava surged, ash billowed, and the mountain’s scream deepened as pressure sought release. The world was not defying him, not truly; it was trying to learn a new shape.

But Sarhush liked its current shape well enough. He stepped through the lava flows, weathering the heat, and came to stand at the very peak. Here lava bled freely and great clouds of ash were coughed up with every heave of the earth. Beneath his feet, the stone trembled continuously, as though uncertain how much more it could bear.

[color=#9E5020]"Heel,"[/color] he threatened Ashuru, [color=#9E5020]"lest I strike and burn you into submission again."[/color]

The mountain settled. Its convulsions slackened into a low, uneven pulse. The lava ceased its gushing and began to scab over the open wound of the world, at least for now. Ash still fell, but more slowly, as if the sky itself were catching its breath.

Confident that the world understood the lesson, Sarhush stood upon its pinnacle and turned from the volcano’s mouth to take in the clime below. His satisfaction did not last.

Far in the distance, a line of greenery still marred the land. There was a surviving treeline, stubborn and defiant, sheltered from the lavaflows by a gulch that had been torn open through the earth’s recent thrashing. It seemed that some forests remained after all.

Sarhush scowled.

[color=#9E5020]"I will correct that,"[/color] he promised, and began his descent.

[hider=Actions]
Did you think Sarhush would feel guilty? Lol. Lmao!

He loves everything that's happened. He walks through the hellscape talking to himself. He threatens to hit a volcano with a stick and burn it, and it settles down (thanks to Khthon's taming of the volcanos, not anything Sarhush actually did there) and this makes him immensely satisfied.

But then Sarhush sees a couple trees and his blood pressure spikes again.

No conviction spent in this post.[/hider]