The waves brushed the shoreline in a tender caress. Bugs began to hum and flitter as the day drew to a close. An amber skyline shone down on the smooth sands as the gentle sound of breaking surf filled the air with a serene, peaceful, quality. All of this was registered in a half-submerged world, shared with the vibrations from below, as liquid filled her pale ears. The woman lay there like some poor victim of a far-off sea-wreck who had floated to shore. Her tattered white dress fanned out around her slender form, as did her dark-red hair. Certainly she was as pale as the dead, and her face was filled with a certain sadness that marred otherwise beautiful features. She bobbed delicately a short distance from solid earth, completely alone in her watery home. The day was like many others, spent in mourning over the woes of her past. Her name is Anna, and she is dead.

Unfortunately death means little to a Wraith. Very much aware of her surroundings, and capable still of locomotion, she started as a new sound flittered to her on the soft breeze. As perhaps one who has spent a day with nothing but the external stimuli around them may attest, any new sound is immediately noticeable. The brain hungers for more stimuli to relieve boredom. Perhaps that is what drew her to the sound, and allowed her to drive up the motivation to see what was causing it. Slowly, she rose and slipped half beneath the waves, allowing herself to gaze across the beach before her.

Joel lumbered through the dense forest, occasionally ducking his iron-helmeted head to prevent branches from smacking into his tall frame. As he continued forwards, the trees thinned out until he was standing at the edge of a beach. Dunes of fine, dry sand loomed before him, held together by the roots of hardy shrubs. Beyond that was dark, wet sand, and finally the ocean, vast and ever-changing. The sky was aglow with the colors of the waning day, distant clouds painted with bright yellow and burning orange.

He was glad to have found a shoreline to guide him - he'd lost his way in the depths of the forest more than once, and he had been away from home for far too long. When he took the first step onto the loose, dry sand, his clay foot sank ankle-deep into the dune. Joel used his geokinesis to reinforce the next patch of sand and cautiously stepped onto it with his other foot, glad to find that it held his weight. Sand was not quite earth, but it was close enough that he could exert limited control over it all the same. When he neared the top of the gently sloped dune, he caught sight of a figure in the water. Joel couldn't make out many details from this distance, but she appeared to be a beautiful woman with dark red hair and eerily pale, translucent skin. She wore a frayed white dress that looked as though it had once been expensive - hardly the sort of thing that one would wear when going for a swim. Cautiously, Joel raised a large clay arm in greeting as he approached. He made the hand sign for "hello" before realizing that she probably wouldn't understand it - instead, he drew the word in the sand.

Now, one has to understand that Anna in her second life had never been particularly rational. Though she herself could have been considered a monster, she still retained the prejudices from her time as an ordinary woman and they emerged as her eyes fell upon the large clay Golem. At first, those beautiful features twisted in alarm and shock as she forgot for a moment that she was not the Anna she had been remembering. Then, as soon as they had come those emotions left her. The void had to be filled with something, and as was the case all too often she filled it with anger. Anger at having been made to feel weak and helpless in the face of the strange interloper. Rage that it had disturbed her mourning.

It had probably not gone unnoticed by the friendly Golem that she was not pleased to see him. His attempts to converse with her were met with similar hostility. Had he been able to just speak to her he might have been able to avoid the inevitable conflict. As it were, his inability to placate Anna could cost him, at the very least he may be forced to find another path to follow. Minor inconvenience perhaps, perhaps not.

Anna sized the Golem up with an interesting glance. It seemed to her to be a large man-like creature made of clay, which was a pretty accurate observation as those things go. What it was doing on her stretch of beach was uncertain, what was certain is that its presence was intolerable to the Wraith.

“Go away!” She yelled, her diminutive voice bolstered by some more ancient force, barely perceptible yet somehow with an affect not unlike the echoing of a mountain. She slowly submerged herself, floating as she was about ten meters out from the shore, leaving only her head exposed to glare at the Golem.

Joel watched as as the expression on the woman's face changed from mourning to hostility to rage. He felt confused, and slightly hurt - surely he hadn't done anything to warrant such a reaction. Since he spent most of his time around people who already knew and were friendly with him, Joel had forgotten the effect that his brutish appearance could have on others.

She yelled at him with a powerful, resounding voice - not the voice of a young woman, but that of something old and fearsome. She cemented his impression of her when she dropped down into the water with the ease of a master. She didn't move like someone who was good at swimming; she moved like gliding through water was as natural to her as breathing. Joel didn't know who or what this person was, but he felt that it would be unwise to antagonize her. Unfortunately, he couldn't follow her instruction - nightfall was coming, and he couldn't possibly arrive home before dark if he had to blunder around in that forest. Even though he knew that it was futile, he made the hand sign for "sorry", then continued walking further onto the beach. Her hostile glare seemed to be burning him, but Joel didn't stop moving forwards. He optimistically hoped that she would just let him be on his way, or at least do nothing more than yell at him until he was gone.

How dared he.

If only Joel had been capable of human speech, he could have begged off the inevitable combat at hand. His silent advance was to Anna’s eyes unacceptable, a clear sign of the creature challenging her authority. With her power, she refused to stand for it, especially there in her natural element. No dumb monster would oust her. Not while she still drew breath, metaphorically speaking.

The Wraith had not delved underwater of a whim, nor because she was particularly shy. Her presence there had been to further the spread of the spiritual energy contained within her form into the water around her. Like oil spilling into the Ocean, her invisible presence leaked out into the surrounding sea and grasped it tight, establishing her dominion over her natural element. As a Water Wraith Anna was gifted with an affinity for the basic element, and with time and effort she could bend it to her will.

However, Anna was not what one would consider a fighter. She did not think particularly pragmatically about situations, certainly not tactically. Her violence was in most respects born from petulance and emotional anguish, and her response tended to be reflective of such.

Revealing her power in a woefully ineffective fashion she hoped would see off the Golem, a great tendril of water burst from before her in the likeness of a riot hose to splash upon the Golem’s rocky form. If an ordinary human had been hit, they would likely have been knocked off their feet.

A long tendril of water lashed out from the sea, moving rapidly towards Joel. Caught off guard by the attack, he hastily raised a wall of sand to block the water. Even strengthened by geokinesis, loosely packed sand does not make a sturdy barrier; the makeshift wall scattered in all directions when the water reached it. His action had not been entirely futile, however - it did slow the water down a little, turning a hard-hitting attack into a mere shove. Joel staggered back a step, but his strength and density permitted him to stay on his feet.

If this woman wanted a fight, she would get a fight. Joel knew that it would be unwise to engage an unknown enemy in combat, but the injustice of being yelled at and attacked without provocation, at least from his perspective, made him unwilling to back down. He wouldn't acquiesce to the demands of someone whom he perceived to have wronged him, and with that decision, their misunderstanding was set in stone.

In order to fight, Joel needed something more substantial than the loose sand at his feet. He reached to the edge of his range and began slowly bringing rocks of varying shapes and sizes from the forest to the beach. They generated an ominous rumble as they rolled along the ground, accelerating as they drew closer; the nearer they were to Joel, the more control he had over them, and the faster he could cause them to move. While he did so, Joel kept his eyes on Anna, not wanting to be surprised by her next move.

Anna’s seemingly weak attack that had served only to stagger the Golem in fact had a more sinister motive. The water that had splashed into the Golem’s large form was imbued with her spiritual essence, and as it dripped down his rocky body its unnatural effects would slowly make themselves known. As time went on it would sap the Earth mover of whatever energy he utilized to move and fight. Setting the precedent for the fight by ensuring time was on her side, Anna smiled beneath the waves. The cunning of the spirit was not something to be trifled with.

For now though, she had another concern. The Golem had proved it was capable of manipulating an element like herself, sand in this case. However, if the ominous noises echoing from beyond were anything to judge by, it was altogether possible its powers extended beyond just sand. It was in Anna’s interest to continue to saturate the Golem, as striking it down with her conventional abilities would be difficult at a glance. It was fortunate that it seemed to be made of Clay, a substance particularly susceptible to liquids.

Like a child causing havoc in a swimming pool Anna brushed her hands forward beneath the water to send a great wave blasting up into the air. The Golem was some distance up the beach, so it would be unlikely to have much power behind it, but it would serve the purpose of further saturating the Golem with liquid. The wave crashed down onto the beach, about a third of the water likely to land in Joel’s general vicinity. It was the sort of wave that may knock a man to his knees if caught unawares, hardly dangerous at first glance.

A massive wave built and loomed in the air above Joel. Unaware of Anna's powers, he didn't see the point of the attack; surely the previous one had proven that he was too heavy and steady to be knocked down or carried away by a comparatively small quantity of water. To ensure his stability, Joel deliberately buried his legs knee-deep in the sand, then let the apparently harmless water crash over him and wash back into the sea.

From Joel's point of view, that large wave had an additional benefit - it had drenched the sand where he stood, turning dry, loosely packed grains into firm, wet sand. Now that he had to use less of his geokinesis to prevent himself from sinking, he could focus more power on preparing his first attack. He could also construct sturdier structures out of packed, wet sand, should he need to later on.

The smaller rocks and pebbles had reached the edge of the forest. With a thought, Joel sent them flying at Anna in a rapid barrage. Pellets of varying sizes came from the forest in multiple directions, converging on Anna's location. Typical ranged missiles slowed down throughout their trajectories as they encountered air resistance. Joel's pebbles, however, gained speed as they flew, since he used the force of his power to continually accelerate them. Most projectiles also continued in a straight line after they were hurled, but Joel could alter the directions of his missiles up until they were near the very edge of his 200 meter range. Unfortunately, he didn't have fine control by that point, so he planned to change their trajectories slightly earlier. He kept them flying in straight lines for the moment, not yet demonstrating the true extent of his control. If Anna tried to dodge or block, however, Joel was prepared to make them rapidly circle around obstacles and target her new location. He was aware that most of the rocks and pebbles would probably miss, but there were a lot of them, and each hit would be enough to cause pain and bruising.

Sensing the impending danger of the barrage of rocks from the first few pebbles that entered her domain, Anna took evasive measures. Hiding under the water like she was it was fairly simplistic for her to avoid the barrage, as she could move at extreme speeds. Gliding along the shore she covered one hundred feet to the right by travelling underwater with little more than a few superficial bruises from the first of the rocks to land in her vicinity. However the attack had served to anger her enough that she was starting to feel reckless. The Golem was still standing on the beach off to her left, and though she had done a decent job of wetting the figure to slow it down her attacks had otherwise proven ineffective. Working her way through the hard shell would be difficult, ideally there was a highly effective strategy she could utilize but getting it to work was going to be a pain. For now, she wanted to see how the Golem would react to her sudden relocation. She had not been particularly visible in her escape, nor was she now as she floated just beneath the surface of the murky waters. As she had carried most of her imbued water with her she once again began to spread her spiritual control. Slowly, her power crawled up the beach, following the line of wet sand and delving deep into underground water, like some great sea-creature slithering onto land.