@Izurich@vietmyke@Ithradine@Psyker LandsharkShe slipped free again, and the knife-bearing young man wrenched his torso to roll and keep pursuit.
He was being pummeled.
Like a ragdoll caught in the jaws of an overexcited hound, the countless eddies and sudden riptides that swirled about the Faye Pseudolon’s frame as she danced beneath the waves, always just ahead and
just out of reach, were tearing him in seemingly every direction.
Though he was no sailor, and had plied his trade well into the interior of the continental landmass’s valleys, fields, and badlands, he
was a capable swimmer by any measure— but neither that, nor the strength hidden in his tirelessly trained body, seemed to matter. It was a fool’s errand, trying to catch Leviathan in her home territory— and as he exerted himself more and more, willing his burning lungs to hold out as he pushed to close the gap, that point was proven further and further as she slipped away each time.
Every effortless, almost lazy circle she drew around him drove it home that he was trying to make the best of a
terrible situation— had this been in any way intentional on his part, he would die the biggest idiot on the planet.
And through none of it did her song let up. He was right about Naga and their ability to slow their prey, but thbis was no Naga, and this was no mere Slowing.
It had already gotten him into this mess on the surface to begin with, clouding his mind and diluting enough focus that by the time he'd clocked that he was about to spiral out of control into the waves, it had pretty much already happened. And now, surrounded by it with enough resonance to feel in his bones...
A labored swipe barely nicked her white garb as she darted again out of his way, forcing out a grimace. He was running out of time before he'd need to surface, and he knew it. The moment he broke off, he was toast. She'd just pull him down, and let his last bit of air burn out. He had to get ahold of her. He
had to reach her. She was
right there. Daring him into it. Calling out to him.
Hey, kid—She opened one eye placidly, meeting his own for the first time with a heart-fluttering smirk, giggling to herself as she drifted away and he surged into her wake. Down here in the blue, that eye seemed to glow an unnaturally brilliant sapphire, shifting, rippling, easy to stare into, impossible to look away from. The shifting tides spun within, riveting, endless, dizzying, entrancing. A mesmer all its' own.
Her song continued. It was like a heavy blanket draped over him on a cold winter night. Warm... snug...
Rudolf.Their brackish waltz continued, a slow spiral, a slower and slower spiral. The edges of his vision were beginning to fade. White.
White... He had always believed nothingness was black. Was it white, the absence..?
He had to reach her. He had to reach out. If he could just get a hold of her... dammit...
Each failed attempt was another leaden chain on him. That was the black. Weight. The black was a burning weight, like his lungs, like his heart. Leviathan's song was white. Painless. Light, like he was floating away...
It wouldn't be so bad down here...
Hearing this lovely melody... Watching this graceful woman dance, ebb, flow as though the sea itself...
Danube...His thoughts were fading and disordered, as the struggle against the currents taxed even
his stamina, built over 15 years, to it's limit. The last air in his lungs was burning out... he could hardly focus. a thin line of black, desperately guarding the last color in the world... the shimmering blue he saw in her gaze.
Out of time.
How frustrating. In the end, he couldn't even reach out and touch her. Let alone stop her song.
Frustrating. Yes. Hold onto that. It's all been frustration. You listening?
This really what you want, kid?
Out of time.
...What he wanted?
...What the hell had it been?
What was he reaching so desperately for, anyway?
Tighter. Tighter. Even the blue fading. His mind's eye. One black line on the back of the void. Burning furiously. Every last bit of the wick feeding its desperate rage, its pain, its frustration. Out of time.
This song told him enough. That he could let it take him,
and his worries,
and fears,
and pains,
so many of each he carried... they'd all fade, like this. He'd fought so hard... He wanted it all to be over. That had to be it. That was why he was stretching his arm right now... if he could reach this woman, Lady Leviathan... her song was of warm embrace, that would take it all away. Danube and the sea would wash his soul clean...
Lose everything.
The tiny wisps of ink gasped that retort.
Everything would be lost.
Dying a failure.
Making one last promise he couldn't keep.
What about that?
...He could rest. Truly. Meeting Neve had been his last confession, ordering his business before... he gave himself. To this hauntingly vast, terrible, beautiful thing called the sea..."Aah~ fufu~"She's stopped.
Rip her apart.
The black flames
exploded outward, burning away the veil as the world returned to him for that instant, as a cascade of bubbles from an involuntary howl rising to the surface. He lunged with every last fiber of his being, to bring his stalwart steel to bear against this woman. Her shackles on his mind had released, and his grimace was now a bestial, maddened snarl. He couldn't let this slip. This was the corner he'd been backed into. Before she could do
any more damage, he'd
tear into her. This was his
chance—
Barely.
He had barely nicked her, not even the alabaster skin, not even enough to draw out blood. Just a scratch on the cerulean scales...
And then once more, the world began to spin. Dizzyingly fast, impossible to escape, a leaf in a whirlwind. They rose together as his mind tried to catch up, still in the haze of empty lungs, until...
"GAH!"He was flying.
Airborne by scores of feet, as the spout of water fell into the sea beneath, and he continued to rise with momentum.
Air stung as it replaced the salt and water that had begun to seep into his lungs. His head spun as it, for the second time, reordered the world. Rain was hitting his face, the clear skies he had said goodbye to as he'd hit the water supplanted by a tempest. Lightning cracked above him, shook his bones.
Below, the tides raged and boiled. He could hear the swell. Whatever Leviathan was doing, none of it was good.
A song again filled his ears. From the ship. From a familiar voice, not borne of waves, but of
wind.
Ciradyl.
Kirin!There, in that suspended moment of terminus at the height of the steep arc his frame drew, he wrenched his body 'round as his mind and limbs blazed with emboldened
will once more. He had his head back. He finally had his
fucking head back, and only seconds to use it.
Four heads stemming from a central mass of upswelled water, each in the shape of a serpent's sinuous body. The ship, buffeted by churning waves, accosted by all four points of that hydra's compass rose. Two barreling straight into the deck. Two more with maws wide open, as the seas coalesced within them, as though draconic. On the deck, his compatriots in formation, still accosted by the false dragoons and Valon.
They'd get swept off. Into that same mess. Gravity was taking hold again. He had to act—
Gravity!As Ciradyl's aria flooded his mind with that long-lost impetus, it grabbed onto the idea and
executed, out of time for anything else.
By some miracle, he flexed his right hand and still felt the knife's sabretooth hilt in his grasp. It wasn't balanced for throwing, had the suggestion of an edge for most of its length, but it was strong, sturdy, and superb for punching through the hide of anything on the planet with enough force. Up here, he couldn't see his quarry within the surging mass... but if he wanted to hit the center, his angle had been thrown off slightly. Angles, distance... they ran through his head, pushing his visual calculus as hard as he could.
His free hand reached into the pouch at his hip, palming two orbs that thrummed with condensed aether. One sparked with purple energy in his grasp, reacting to the idea his will was clustering around, the other...
"ARTON!"He whipped the arm and his torso behind it over, praying he put the right amount of spin on it as it rolled free from his fingertips. The green glint of the Shield Materia caught the thunder overhead— it had long overstayed its welcome in Rudolf's hands anyway, once Galahad had him dead to rights on the nature of the barrier he'd brought forth in the desert. It had no room in his hands, better serving someone stalwart, sturdy, properly able to protect... and standing in front
of the three of them. They had all sought him out and tried, in their own ways, to look after him. this was the only way he could do the same.
As for the gravity, well...
The purple energy crackled as his will flooded either hand, and he dropped
fast.
Faster, as he angled his body, bringing the blade to bear as it trailed a streak of smoke.
Faster still than even terminal velocity, as the magic pulled him down. He wouldn't be hitting the central mass where he suspected the Pseudolon's body sat within this construct, but he could hit that first incoming head, shaped like a Naga, at the point he
knew was a sure kill.
Toyed with his head. Nearly drowned him. Proved that his every pledge to not give up on those around him, to try his best to overcome his own weakness, that
he and no other was the master of his body and mind, proved them all
lies. He'd been helpless this whole damned time, and her song had turned him into a
witless, drowning corpse, holding up Danube's mirror to his soul, to the part of him that
gave in, every time—The first head of the hydra bore down on Izayoi and Galahad, set to swallow them into a one-way trip to the abyss— The one he'd just succumbed to, only surviving by dumb, dumb luck.
Thunder cracked.
He poured every ounce of that anger into the fifteen inches of steel, his last fang with which to hunt, and it blazed with weighty umbra as he drove it
deep into the base of that first thalassal Naga's skull.