User blog:MockingJester/The Waxen Shore beneath: cursed journey

They say that treasure awaits in the depths of the Jonason city next to the sea. It has been for a time since the first arrivals. Many rumors were written on the pages of time about their fate at the bottom. They were either abandoned as spoils of failed voyages, lost pirates' bounties, or the fund of countless wars forgotten.

Wherever they may have come from, they laid in the unseen sea bellow with no hands to embezzle them. Who had the stomach to make such an attempt? Seeing that lost fortune means wandering in the belly of the shore and its sea, ripe with as many omens as there were potential treasures. Many did not stop to ponder the mass grave of boats, ships, and warships that laid at the rocks and cliffs of the shore's territory gutted open of sailors and the treasures they hoped to bloat.

They'd sink and drown, leaving no survivor, save for the miraculous few. The rest sunk in a bottomless chasm in the shore's ashen maw, the endless darkness scarring the vast blue of the sea. This seeming chasm was, over time, cursed with the title of 'Waxen Shore,' named as such, for the ashen sand that dotted its extremities. It was silvery in color with a strange slight shaking around the feet of those who walked over it. It was as if the sand breathed between the toes of those who could afford a day at this unseemingly beach.

But, the people of the Jonason city could not afford the day nor the space. Their shore was overburdened with fishing line, desperately grasping at the bundle of aquatic life that occasionally clings to the very edge of the Waxen Shore. The fear of their pulsating mass made them more eager as dinner for the plates than the shore itself. This silver lining was the only thing keeping this dilapidated city from utterly crumbling to abandon.

Its rotten tiles and bricks were only barely standing. The pathway to communal goods was broken and overdue for renovation. The cost of supplies and labor, however, was too much for the people. The so-called Waxen Shore gutted the ships that dared an attempt through its territory. The dead vessels that bled in its maw with time made many more others reluctant to cross it. The lack of business at their port made the rest of the city much less valuable. The less value meant fewer supplies. Fewer supplies meant an encroaching state of dereliction.

The only sprout of activity to keep this derelict settlement from territorial oblivion was the occasional march of the kingdom that claimed it ages ago. Salivating for the maritime taste of dread-filled fish, carriers came and went, pilfering the overwhelming majority of the catches as alternative taxes. Their only food, their only means of survival, was whittled away for meager coins in compensation. Always. Constantly. Monthly.

Daniel returned to the heavy rolling of oversized wooden wheels running amok in the overburdened road from the Jonason gates. A half a dozen of them rolled out in the darkness of the night teeming with the salty, bitter smell of fish on their charges.

"Ohh...so they came here before I did." He watches the caravans rolling away with the only valuables of the Jonason city. The darkness of his native city was barely lightened up, the lamps, pushed to their very limit as to not blind the men of the distant, towering kingdom afar.

Daniel sighs, knowing that barely a pittance of coins in a tiny bag was thrown in the city's coffers. Coins with a short shelf life as something, anything, was bound to break down. His bag and sword tightly packed on his back, he walks in, welcomed to squeaking gates slowly opening in his way.

Dust spills from the tiles he walks on, occasionally buckling under his weight and cracking. Many ahead were already broken, abused by years and neglect. Their sundering came recently with the sudden increase in maritime taxation. This increase in taxes compelled heavier caravans and increased passages. Those with the minimal ear outside their settlement whispered of ongoing warfare teeming between kingdoms, warfare that demanded more.

Teeming among broken tiles and cracked roads, Daniel sees flickering lamps across the main street, offering paltry illumination on the way. Fledging lights shine inside a few frames. He could smell the rustic scenery playing indoor, hear the benign song of playful chores, see the people make the most of what they could.

His eyes stop on one, in particular, denoted by a man slowly folding the clothing of his shop. The few stragglers of merchandise he was putting back seemed to have been here all day. They failed to find any buyer, again, once more relegated as unused boots.

The unkempt-haired man was spilling a sigh through his thick and groomed mustache as he shuffled the last pair of brown leather boots inside a box that slightly looked like it overstayed its welcome. His black eyes blur beneath two equally thick brows, only mildly stopping as Daniel's frame stepped into a close source of light.

"Oh, my best boy, you are back." His voice is a warm greeting to the returning young man, though Daniel feels a hint of morosity in it. It was clear to the man who used to enjoy a brighter tone from the cordwainer. The years of continual environmental degradation likewise eroded his sappier demeanor away.

"Mhm, hmm. And I bring business with me. My boots are worn down in my traveling and I hoped to make it here before you closed shop. But, I see that I will have to come back tomorrow."

"Broken boots?" The cordwainer closes his last box, a winced glance in Daniel's direction. From his long beard, a simper foams "Aye, then. Come on in."

"Aren't you closing, though, Horace?"

"Bah! You know I don't refuse last-minute requests from weary travelers. Less so from one of our own. Come on in, I know those boots aren't the only thing tired here."

The scent of leather was the first thing to tickle any of Daniel's senses. It smelled rough and rugged with a hint of produce lingering in the air. His eyes were the second sense to notice the gallery of leather plastered on work boards, still aching to be finished. Polished. Strings strewn from the boards' frames tugged at the uneven rawhides, surrounded by canisters of produce, most of them completely empty. Many more lay scattered with their caps open like someone was struggling to get the drip of liquid within.

Daniel tried making nothing of the empty cans leaking the last drop of life within. Nor of shoes piled up in semi-order next to a wall, the pairs, in varying stages of completion. Some looked like they were barely started on. Others looked midway done. A very few looked any close to being finished. All of them screamed to be completed, misshapen, and neglected through missing pieces.

Daniel was shown to a nearby bench deeper in the workshop, privy to the shoemaker's tools of the trade. The man quickly gathered them while his guest removed his footwear to present to the cordwainer.

A quick examination of his boots made Horace's eyes flicker in understanding "I see." A long sigh escaped the man's beard "Very sorry, little lad, it seems that the fault is mine."

"Really?" Daniel raised an eyebrow "How so?"

"Take a look." The cordwainer's approach is steady and meticulous, filling his guest's view with the damaged sole. Between it and the top that bound them, a large gash was wide open. It traveled the back of the boot like a scar, strewn with a snapped rope that once held it together. The tiny rope seems to have suddenly cut off midway, strained by further effort of the wearer.

"So it snapped."

"Aye, from poor quality leather, it did. I wish I could have offered you better boots for your journey. But the damned kingdom rarely bothers coming down with new merchandise if ever. They continually claim that it would be wasted here through a lack of currency. A currency that they snag in excess amount to leave nothing but a pittance. Scavenging from my best was my only option." As Horace spoke, he glanced at the incomplete shoes again. Many of them seemed to be lacking laces over the sole.

It was a precarious time for him to have left, hoping to make a few coins as an explorer. He remembered the cordwainer making the best of what he had, presented in decent boots, rugged and rough, but dependable. They were in his mind, only breaking down in the last few miles back. But...

Seeing him seize one of the many incomplete pairs made him distraught. When he left, the coffers were enough for them to send buyers into the mainlands to snag some basic supplies. He was supposed to have something of fresh produce to repair his boots with.

"Horace..." Daniel looked at the cordwainer's work, eyes frozen over his further dismantling of used soles.

"Hmm? Ohh, yes. Sorry to say, little lad, we didn't get new supplies."

"What..."

"They were fresh out of stock according to our envoys. Surely you must have heard of the erupting conflicts happening far in the mainlands, our supposed rulers seeking to expand their territories?"

"I did, but, I thought that--"

"I thought so too. They scrounged every drip of resource they could for this expansionism of theirs and didn't think we'd need the 'excess' despite working with stuff beyond recycled, ready to break down completely. It didn't help that they still pilfered whatever meager savings the Jonason town came to barter with, touted as 'contributions to the war effort'. Contributions. By the edge of their swords and spears. The envoys came back empty-handed and worse for wear, the boldest of them, coming back with cuts and bruises.

"They attacked them?!"

Horace was roping a new lace into Daniel's boots, stopping a few seconds, immobile. His silence said more than it needed.

"...and they took our coins? Our small savings? The things many of us worked to exhaustion for..."

Silence once more. Broken by a sigh "I'm sorry, little lad. I know you saved up a lot before leaving for a few months. The people rejoiced to see the coins you insisted on throwing here. We hoped to make good use of it. We had plans to send our people further, seek supplies elsewhere. then they came, once again with 'tribute' on their lips. Came in, again and again, almost every time you had sent a sum here. Came with armed guards a tad too swing-happy."

"..." Daniel promised them coins that he wouldn't need beyond his basic living. He hoped that they would slowly make with the due, piling it up into another push of basic supplies. Enough to pull the minuscule city out of its drought. To hear that it was all stolen under the name of 'contributions'...

"Here, as good as I can make them." Horace looked up at Daniel, his boots ready. The patched-up lace was visible to someone with a reasonably keen eye, standing out in makeshift binds. But, for what the cordwainer had with him, overused tools, overworn rations, it was above average.

As Daniel began fitting into the boots, the bearded man ripped away a piece of napkin nearby to rub his hand clean of the excess polish from the pair he cannibalized. A flight of a small bag, however, prompted a jolt from the cordwainer.

"Thank you, Horace. I appreciate this."

"Little lad, you don't need to offer me this much. You don't need to give me anything, you already gave--

"It's fine, it's fine. I went and got a few more for...emergencies. This is as much one as what I'd expected."

"I...even so, lad, this is too much. Too much for an old shoemaker like me."

"Please..." Daniel was already at the door as his voice seemed more distant than the man thought. Traveling afar taught him a few tricks "...take it. Don't worry about it. I've made a bit more on my return."

"..." Horace looked at the bag he carefully plucked from the ground, never bothered to look at Daniel's disappearing body from sight. There was more than he awaited, maybe enough to...

The cordwainer's tale was not alone in this darkening night. Daniel's return spread as quickly as it could. Nowhere fast enough to spare the surprise from their faces. The draftsman who long abandoned the schematics of extension and repair for basic maintenance. His shop remained ever empty of the spoils that would allow dreams of expansion, gutted by the constant rundown of structures that were well overstaying their welcome.

Or the angler, one among many whose bones rattled in exhaustion with either the line or the cages. The cold of the sea splashing across the shore made whatever meager clothing they tried for protection worthless. The shore never was as timid as many others, so eager to vent its endless wrath on the ashen sand and those who had to endure its bitter chill.

The coxswain was given leisure by his others, standing over the slippery bridges of the fishing deck since this morning. His coat was thick with saltwater, looking more like sticky mud rather than the elusive current. Daniel insisted: they exchanged coat, his shivering hands feebly grasping the young man's considerably drier top.

"Didn't know you were coming home this day, laddie." His well-used fishing pole rested upward on his back as he walked alongside the returned traveler. Insulated in a relatively dry coat, Tommy wasn't as clattering as before. Years of maritime voyages built his endurance on the rougher temperament of the sea, but even someone of his resilience could do little more than rattle against the borderline inhumane work piled on his back. He was another one who wouldn't bother taking a load off if it meant either taking another, newest's shift off their clacking hands, or exploiting the smallest chance of an excessive catch. A few of these proved to keep the Jonason city from complete abandon, but only just.

"I was supposed to come earlier. I thought I could get a bit more on my way back."

"Aye, you're fine in my book, no need to cobble up anymore. I just didn't expect you to come swing by with a persistent follow-up to a late dinner."

"Well, I know you like to stand tough all day, Tommy. Always on the bay from dawn to dusk. The others were pretty happy to take your load off."

"Sailors keep their nose on the sea, laddie. You never know when an opportunity creeps up on ya until you missed it...unless you await it."

"Your nose is pink and picking up frost, Tommy. I think you outta give it a break. You don't need to drop dead trying to muster a fabled catch."

"Trust me, laddie..." The lights of a sizable building barely make their way to the entrance door. Whatever oil allowed their lamps to shine was quickly running out of steam. But, they were still enough to display a small restaurant.

"...I wish I could." Daniel could already hear the same story the cordwainer gave him midway. Sitting on the bar's counter, being accosted by the bartender, another sufferer of short supplies and lacking the coins to get beyond the bare minimum, they gave their part. Horace had been quite gentle in his tale.

The envoys they sent, those daring to bring the town's trickling of wealth beyond their walls, were viciously coerced by the tax makers and their bodyguards. Their forked tongues spilled this 'contribution' as the result of the need for funds toward their expansionistic mindset that drew the ire of a neighboring kingdom.

Vocal threats and insults weren't enough for them, blades were involved and the envoys came battered and injured. That they came back at all was a miracle, even if convalescence was their life for months.

Daniel's hands clutch into fists, astonished by the treatment of people, his people, who simply sought to get the strict minimum to keep afloat. And then Tommy kept going. Per verbatim, the angler's words co-joined the bartender's in mimicking the cordwainer's tone. Every last coin he sent in grueling efforts was swindled by the same men, often via additional threats and honeyed words of false promises. They would bring them harbor, comfort, anything to keep the city from crumbling completely. And yet, nothing...

Daniel said nothing throughout their struggle, sunk in silence by their correlating word. He was offered a warm plate despite this, a gift the man was gracious enough to wrap for the increasingly weary Daniel. In exchange...

"Hey, kid, I did mention this one was on the house, didn't I?" Morice was rinsing a mug to serve a lukewarm cup of rum to the tired sailor, his throat dry in the irony of his very wet workplace. He stopped as the other jolted in place. Both faced a stack of coins before them.

"The man's right, laddie. Don't want to waste your hard-earned pittance on washed-up middle-aged men, do you? Just because we vomited a sob story--

"No, take them." Daniel raised a hand, already on the way out. His eyes hid under the scowling shadow of his forehead, slightly hunched down "You two know you've already done more than what I could ask for when I left a few months ago. It's the least I can do."

He didn't wait for their further protest, instead, hoping that they could make good use of the small wealth that landed on their craggy hands. It was the same in the dark of Jonason's streets. The couturier, the cultivator, even the inadequately-armed warders gave him the same words, the same tale, the same everything. And, just like with them, a small sack of coins left his pocket, a hope they could get something...anything.

Envoys could be sent elsewhere with this small wealth, somewhere away from the kingdom wreathed in warfare. Beyond the sea, perhaps...across the Waxen Shore...

Daniel shakes his head at the thought of the town's travelers desperate enough to try to cross that cursed sea. His mind turned elsewhere with urgency. His boots reverberate in the darkness of the night still reflecting the pale moon upward as he hurried to a domain in the depth of Jonason. Across its narrow streets and uneven roads, he found the object of his scrutinizing eyes.

Before him, a house just like the others stood, decrepit with decades of unintentional neglect slagging off it. Its stone had before weak from the semi-regular moisture of rain and fog. Its wood, rotten from the lack of maintenance, pressured well beyond its breaking point. But, it also looked close to being mundane, devoid of grievous lack of care. It was as if someone was taking care of it as much as they could with the everlasting shortage of supplies.

Ascending its stairs to the entrance, Daniel stopped for a moment, fixated on a small token hanging from the front of the door. A stone relic, immaculately chiseled to the likeness of a spider seemed to be drifting down with black rope on the two uppermost of its legs. A large sapphire gem was etched on the spider's back, glistening in the night. It was ominously shining in the moon's light.

Other buildings had the same effigy, all gems glimmering and radiating a dull blue. It was a common item hanging at every house in the city, prone to phase out of people's view unless they intently looked at it. The few who dared a visit, hostile or otherwise, seemed blind to them.

It was remarkable that they were seemingly untouched by the neglect of time that coursed through Jonason. They were clean and pristine, as new as the day they were crafted. This one looked like it was starring back at him, welcoming the current master of the decrepit building.

Daniel opens the door to the darkened interior. Seconds pass before his eyes adjust to the ambiance inside. The cradling cold that permeated outside was replaced by a homely warmth. Its invisible tendrils rushed to meet the man who, right now, was colder than he thought carrying Tommy's saltwater-soaked coat.

It infiltrated his folds and set him as ease as much as the house could. Nostalgia was at his mind's door, ready to indulge him in his happier memories, the few that were.

His fleeting thoughts ignored them, however, hurried to the living room. He passes by the kitchen in his booming steps, soaking the table with salt and water dripping from the coat hurled over.

The living room immediately warmed his sight as much as his body, both fueled by the crackling logs burning in the room's chimney. It was a dry contrast to the outside's humidity. Daniel's mind filled his view with the nostalgia of a lively, bright place charged with many relics of the past, innocuous types that used to give life to the room. Wine bottles that were getting tastier with age, carpets of distant pasts, furniture molded from artisans, all adorned in a sunny spotlight of the nearby windows. The room used to be his favorite place indoors.

But, as Daniel blinked, they were gone, disappeared in a puff of smoke dragged outdoors by a cruel, bitter wind. The room's bright colors dulled. The relics disappeared, either sold for spare coins or given away to others in rougher spots.

Medical equipment filled their spots, the majority of them, depleted. The room no longer smelled of a slice of life outside a day reaching its apex. The pungent scent of drugs and medicine choked his nostrils. his eyes filled with the array of long-used capsules, needles, bags, and other medicinal supplies. It all smelled bitter and overwhelming, mixed as they all were.

At the heart of the room, a bed of metal and a soft, yet worn down mattress. It was heavily pressured downward, almost curved at the middle from where Daniel was starring. The white luster it used to display with pride was long lost, replaced by the weary stain of non-stop usage.

The gloom in his stare relented by a degree as he finally set his eyes on the one who laid on the bed. Wrapped by a heavy coat and wrinkles across her slumbering face, the wisened woman perked up as another shade leaned close to her, feminine touches in her voice "Miss Antoine, you have a visitor."

The local caregiver mustered most of her time into Clementine Antoine, especially with Daniel's departure in hope of fortune. The people around here knew of her decaying condition only accelerated by her only grandson's departure. Her blessings in his journey to scrounge up something did not stop her from warily sitting by the window, often carrying a medallion of a silver spider encased in a rock mold.

Seeing him step beyond the shadows of the kitchen prompted the caregiver's smile, slowly turning the bed away from the outside window with a nod for the man. He reads the permission he has to approach his grandmother, doing so with a chair that he pulls nearby.

While approaching, the caregiver packs up equipment that was close to the bed. Her smile persists, though her eyes convey a different demeanor to Daniel. She'd want to talk to him after his convo with his grandmother.

He nods, noting the caregiver's idling stand by the frame of the living room, waiting quietly. It was probably grave news, but he put that on the back burner of his mind. For now, sitting on the wooden stall available, he joins his hands to the trembling fingers of the old Antoine.

"Ahh, my sweet grandchild" she speaks while feeling hands that she hadn't felt in months. Her eyes open, almost completely white. The lustrous violet that adorned them was long gone, disparate from the picture frames of her younger years.

They blink and wince, struggling to catch a good look at Daniel, who leaned in to give her a better view of his unkempt black hair aloof over his pale visage.

Her happy demeanor dilutes in favor of a worrisome gaze "Oh, Danny, you're so pale."

"Don't worry about it, grandma, I'm fine."

"You know you shouldn't overwork yourself like this. You know that, don't you?" Clementine's voice is the soft worry of a grandmother watching the child of her child as worn down as her long-deceased husband. Tired, sluggish, withered without even realizing it.

"I know, grandma. I just..."

"Go on, tell me what you've done." Her hands cradling over his, she compels him, pushes him to speak. And he does, touting everything that went on his journey afar. Every wound, every tribulation, every failure, he describes them in earnest, unable to stop himself.

She listens to all of it, an ever understanding demeanor of an elder. Her aura is calming and soothing, her worries stowed deep inside. To see the last one of her line so worn down despite being young...

Still, it was a relief to see him back in the family house. To finally hear about his adventures, the successes, and failures, it didn't matter which. She was glad. He could have been swept up in his return in warzones, the road he took, ripe with battlefields, patrols, and skirmishes. So many ways to die from a stray arrow, being mistaken for an enemy spy, or other, more sinister ways.

It seemed disparate to what he thought as Daniel lowered his head, reluctantly pulling his hands away from his grandmother. They plunge into his pocket, pulling a particular bag of coins. One of the last two.

"I'm sorry, grandma...that's...all I have." Instead of his shivering hands dragged down by the cold, Clementine felt a bag of coins land squarely in her palm "There were others...they told me that everything I had and sent was stolen before they could..."

Daniel didn't realize how...tired he was. Not before handling the last purse of coins labored over. All the weight of his tasks, his chores, excavations, and expeditions...

...the trekking, the walking, and running. The withering journey...rendered worthless by the greedy hands of a kingdom in a war of expansion, tired him. To see that nothing had changed despite his effort tired him. To see that they would still relegate his place of birth as nothing but the occasional exploit of one of its few resources tired him. It all tired him, and only now, it rammed into him.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry, I couldn't keep it all, they were with practically nothing--

"It's alright." Her hands drop the meager bag, ignoring its gilded clamor as arms came to swarm around his nape "It's alright, my poor child. You are here, it's all that I've prayed for. My heart still holds as it wouldn't, had you perished on your way back."

She holds him like this for minutes, each one, a grain of sand falling in an eternity of relief. This does not last, not with her strength weakening, her arms leaving him.

The caregiver's steps prompt Daniel to turn from his grandmother, receding on her bed, closing her eyes once more. It was indeed more bad news that neared with her. Clementine's withering, treatable as it was, became ever more urgent every day. And months passed on without any sign of enough wealth for the caregiver to go and acquire a kit for her perishing condition. The enfeebled muscles that ached worsened, threatening to give out one day, far before her true time to pass away. She gave him the price that such medicine fetched. Too high for what he came back with, even without giving the little he had.

It was yet another weight on Daniel's shoulders, another burden. Her face was twisted in chagrin, almost as morose as his. The stack of coins, the last one, that he dropped in her palm did little to offer comfort. Basic medicine, nothing more. Nothing that could remediate anything. Only pittance...

The night was nigh its apex when Daniel finally reached his room. He did not sleep, he did not move from the top of his bed. His head was a blur of lost chances and burdening wounds festering on this city, the people. All from a war they never heard of, in places they never saw. It was all spiraling in his mind, screaming for attention with no way out. Nothing.

His head slumped into his hands as his mind sank deeper into desperation ...deeper. The moonlight shines bright, brighter than ever. It cuts the rain away from sight, offering, instead, its unnatural blue hue, luring his soaked eyes. His trembling whimper lulls down, consumed by the grandiose sight of the moon seemingly descending. Just enough to make its closening presence known to the man.

Daniel felt odd. The blue masking its celestial presence wasn't a phenomenon he ever witnessed before...much less seeing its glow beaming down the cursed shore. Somewhere close to what looked like caverns in the distance. Curious...he never saw those before. From where he stood, it shouldn't be so clear, not with how far it looked. But, across the entirety of the Waxen shore and its trepidatious sea, it was as clear as the day.

Daniel felt a compulsion to this spot. It slowly burned into his mind, the location and seeming navigation. Motes of beams danced over the sea whose colors, they seemed to steal from. They forced a sense of calmness unto the rebellious tides, eager to swallow the occasional ship bold enough to try its shortcut.

And it remained all night, shining over the town, faint, hushed winds coursing through every open gap in the streets. They sounded like...a calling...whispers. A lure ambient in his ears as he continually stared into the gigantic body of pale blue light and craters. It seemed to call him...

---

The night was a sleepless one. Sleepless, yet Daniel was oddly at ease with himself. His movement lacks the sluggish throb of a restless night...though, he doesn't quite recall spending all of it staring back at the voluminous entity, lifeless in the heavens. His exhaust-riddled face is discontent with the rest of his body, the sole worn-out piece.

His mind is singular in his moving, grabbing all he can. Ropes, supplements, a lamp, his trusty weapon, its homely scabbard. It was as if he was already on the way to another expedition. The morning was barely up, still battling the night for the spot at the top when he left. His grandmother was asleep, deeply so. She needed her rest.

He left without a word, only a prayer. A prayer he often heard her whisper in weak tones, always clasping her medallion of its pale blue marble making.

Mother of the deep,

How I beseech you,

Bring safety to my heart and mind,

Shelter them from the harm of the outside,

As I walk evermore in your depths,

he muttered the prayer whistle holding her loose hand, as quietly as he could. A prayer, not for him, but for her. And he left, his mind made up...

---

The early dawn was as bleak and bogged as it ever was across the Waxen Shore. Whatever measure of peace Daniel could purchase in the depth of Jonason wilted in the battering rain splashing the gray sand.

Across the harbor still packed full of worn down dwellers dragging metal cages filled with frightened life, several ships rise and fall along with the restless tide. Many of them are bruised with wounds and holes. He looks to the bay beyond them. Damaged as they were, he doubted their owners would part with them for his most risky endeavor.

Some of the space reserved for the bigger tonnage was empty. A gap between two of them, some with space for two of them, and so on. Not too many were away, but it seems some anglers sought to try their luck with a pack of fish elsewhere...even if it meant skirting the Waxen Shore.

Beyond them were smaller boats with rowing paddles, much less valued by most people. Who would attempt any journey in cold, shivering seas with what was nothing more than a plank of wood compared to the bigger ships? Some surely did, what with the empty sets of rope flapping against the abusive waters.

Daniel saw no other way. Between the larger vessels gathering still an inkling of value to the impoverished people and the ease of noting one, his eyes turned to the smaller ones. These were more numerous, finding no one willing to risk travels through a violent sea in one of the 'open-casket coffins'.

His feet smack the thin layer of saltwater clinging on the wooden bay as he makes his way to the smaller boats, his whole equipment bearing down on him. His breath thickens slightly under the added weight of water smearing over everything.

The shouts of men and the rattling of cages swarm him, mixed into a likeness to the screaming of metal. The tumultuous howl of the winds and the beating of the rain deafen him. They overwhelm the sound of approaching steps. Puddles flop closer and closer, closer than he was to the end of the bay.

It wasn't until he was midway through the bay that the inaudible smack of puddles and water became as cacophonic as the rest of the noise. More so, however, a glove thick with oozing water plants its fingers on Daniel's shoulder, its presence more than enough to stop him in place.

"Hmm?"

"Going somewhere, laddie?"

The coarse voice of the angler appropriated the fingers that quickly receded from his side. It was bait enough to prompt a quick turn from Daniel. The soaked Tommy appeared a head larger than him, bearing down a large bag over his shoulders with one hand. Though his voice was cheerful, his face was much less so. It was wary, in dispute with how perky the rest of his body was.

"Nowhere important. You don't need to worry." His eyes shift unwittingly, quickly glancing. His bones still rattle, feeling the moon still echoing. It pushes against his notion of nothingness, making its purpose visible to the experienced angler.

"Your face tells me otherwise, laddie, never mind the bag that seems to be strung on your back. And let's not speak of that weapon you're bringing to 'nowhere'."

"No, really. It's just...a walk. A small..."

"A walk?" Another voice. Another mass standing not too far from Tommy. His ragged beard was withered, shrunk by the endless rain battering it. Horace stood behind the ex-sailor, a heavy trench coat bearing down the cordwainer in a dull, washed-up gray. It wasn't dissimilar to the man before him, nor the younger Daniel who sought to bring the attire of a long, perhaps, journey without return."

"No. I know you too much, young wanderer. You have the wizened face of a man under too much duress. Desperation clings to you..."

"..."

"Not the first time you buckled under that overwhelming weight," Tommy adds " 'tis undeserved, for a youngling like you. To know that all that time away was for naught...and hearing of miss Antoine's condition. You need coins, but you do not want to go back and take the pittance you gave away..."

"..."

"Honestly, I'd tell you that going down that cursed sea to the distant caverns...poor idea, laddie." Daniel jolts somewhat under both Tommy's and Horace's quiet sighs. They knew the man, recollecting his softer, eager visage. One yearning to help...when not tending to his grandmother's errands in place of her slowly decrepitating state. Always armed with a sunny smile...

...a smile eroded, replaced by burden. A burden that wouldn't allow any persuasion back "Follow me, laddie, we're grabbing my ship."

"What?" Another jump from Daniel "Your ship?"

"Aye. That dinky barge you've been eyeing is only going to hasten your demise at the sea. My old ship will at least make sure you don't tip broadside."

"But, that would imply that you're coming as well. I can't--"

"You shouldn't go at all, laddie. A place like that doesn't take kindly to younglings like you. But, here we are. Trying to convince you to let this duo of older men take the saddle to a potential deathly journey would be a waste of time with the way you're marching." The middle-aged ex-sailor could see the demeanor wrapped around the younger man. That needy ache to try, well, anything. Like he did when he left for the unknown, hope carrying his pace.

Though this case was different. It was different from the mere danger of foreign territory. His mind told him of the innumerable close encounters with death, the witnessing of other ships crashing against hidden rocks jagged like silver daggers. His bones rattled at him, pleading at the old sailor to make use of the innumerable reasons to keep Daniel from this cursed sea rotting with sunken ships.

He didn't. The array of words he wanted to spit out just disappeared midway in his mind, faded away like the fog. Trying to draw them out seemed only to imprint exhaustion on his body, quelling the worries. They spilled out as a mere sigh of resignation "So I think we should make this a triad and make the best of our chances, yes? Wouldn't want your old lass made aware that I just let ya die trying to cross the sea in a stupid gamble we were going to take..."

"...right." Their steps became a chorus to themselves. A series of wet stomps each luring the attention of a few wranglers. Eyes follow the trio as they quietly mount the 'Wayward Wanderer', Tommy's compensation of a past life. A life cut short with the death of maritime business by the shore.

Silence followed closely, each one, realizing what voyage they were intended on. As they mounted the small ship soaked in gray bulk, the middle-aged sailor utter a prayer, his hand, reaching for his chest.

A blue medallion chiseled in stoned and polished to marble quality escaped into his hand, still tied around his neck. Horace followed suit, his head craned downward at the prowl as his necklace was knocked loose from the thick layer of clothing beneath. Daniel was further at the prowl's edge, staring afar. He could hear the mariner howl his litany, familiar with the intent, but not his variant.

Mother of the deep,

How I beseech you,

Attend to this vessel,

Steer it clear of the sea's temper,

So it may make its way to your grace.

---

They left the shore of ashen sand, grave steps leading them afar. The way of the sea was tumultuous, violent. Tommy's mind expected no less while steering his Wayward Wanderer. The waves rapidly came crashing against the ship's prowl. Horace was at the starboard, fingers, and palms dangled in the ropes of the sails.

Every turn of the ship was a struggle for him to keep the wide steering flags from shifting and spinning at the winds' leisure. This straining task was further burdened by the slippery boards that composed the top, making a mockery of their collective heavy boots.

Daniel huddled the thick oak that fixated the sails in place. Shameful to admit, he had next to no experience on a ship beyond the ferries he rode to distant lands. Being in a vessel this tumultuous was a new sensation to him. A dangerous, shivering, salty array of sensations merged into one.

He could do little more than to suggest the obvious danger of his truncated view through the deep sea and heavy rain. Whatever he saw, the angler was already steering to adapt. Sometimes early, giving them a few seconds of peace.

"Damn it!" Sometimes, the stationary stalagmites hid beneath the waves, unmasking themselves at the last moment, ready to gut the vessel from bow to stern. Barely dodging these insidious hazards, the angler let out a short whisper to 'the deep mother'. Assuming it wasn't a sailor's curse to the moist, jagged obstacles.

These hasty steers, close to the potential butchers of their boat, brought a stark reminder to Daniel in the form of deceased vessels crashed atop many of these oddly large stalagmites. On their flanks, many gored vessels were stitched to the spikes that bled them of their valuables. Their sails were rotted or torn down, devoid of the proud colors they used to bear. Their bows still pointed to the direction they were forever barred from, now, a reminder to the traveler.

They became ever more numerous as Tommy struggled to steer more and more, battling the screeching winds and howling waves. Every abrupt turn away from death brings icy cold water on the top, splashing the trio in its glacial touch.

"This is getting out of hand." Horace poised deeply in his cordwainer's skill, manipulating the sails' ropes from giving out. But, the enfeebling cold of the sea and the blinding roar of the rain were getting the best of him.

"Join the club. I'm barely able to get this damn thing to turn." Tommy grunted as he spun the wheel, fighting the vessel's instincts to do otherwise. It was attracted to the deathly dangers running amok this place. Come to think of it, they were running more and more across these--

"Spike! A large one!" Daniel shouted as the dark atmosphere gave just enough in the way of sight for a massive upward rock. This mound the size and width of a city rose to the heavens themselves, its jagged top scarring the overwhelming dark clouds that swirled and poured their tempest. It drank of the beam of sunlight its wound made, giving Daniel a horrifying spectacle.

How it was, he'd never know, but, as Tommy forced the wheel of his ship into its utmost limit of a turn, they got uncomfortably close giving in to its tribute. he saw them litter his perception. Hundreds of carcasses of wood and cloth dotted its surface. None of them were anywhere close to being intact, missing their ports and starboards. Many more were devoid of their front, the bow that presented the ship's insignia.

Their bloated forms were gutted wide open in violent cuts, punctured by one of the massive mound's many smaller spikes. With how drastically they were rotting on the object of their demise, he couldn't delude himself into thinking that anyone slamming into this...thorn of the sea survived.

"The fate of many who thought they could cross the Waxen Shore..." Horace watched in quiet awe. Reflexes compel him with a firm grasp of the spider medallion beneath his neck. He brings it close to him, muttering "Mother of the deep..."

"Aye." Tommy won his struggle with the sea...for now. He was allowed a moment of leniency to stare at this mass grave. Untold hundreds of ships were gored here. And who's to tell of the crews who manned them? He followed the cordwainer's steps, clutching his ancient medallion close. A kiss gives him momentarily composure "This place be cursed with monuments like this. These are the 'lucky' ones we can see."

"M-more? T-there's...more?" Daniel stuttered. Pity and dread fought to be at the forefront of his emotions, out staged by the incomprehension of what he was seeing.

"Beneath the waves, most likely. The more tragic ones, no less. Myths count the fatalities to thousands of ships."

Heavy breathing consumes Daniel, realizing that he was close to going through this by himself. On a small boat. That Tommy and Horace arrived in the nick of time was fortunate--wait. How did they know that--

Daniel's heart skips a beat. The Wayward Wanderer was still cruising forth. But all the eyes aboard were staring down this graveyard wrapped around the stalagmite. he almost did not see the second one "Spike! Spike! Another one!!"

"What?!!" Tommy immediately cranes his head forward, faced with another equally morbid mound. The wheel's axel grinds with pain as the angler forcefully pulled it to starboard, narrowly avoiding the mount.

Only to be faced with a third one. Daniel did not see those when he stared at the sea from his room! They were not here! There was no sign of these, where did they come from?!

A string of fearful curses spills from the angler who was continually turning the ship starboard. Port. Starboard. Port. Every turn gave way to yet another gloomy necropolis of stalagmites and deceased vessels.

They seemed to appear out of nowhere as if they were rising from the depth of the Waxen Shore. Too many to count. Too many to witness. All dreadful.

And yet, the more appeared, the more Tommy looked like he was staring to gauge and adapt to their sudden presence. The more Horace felt compelled to synchronize his movement to the helmsman, making for sharper, more focused turns. Their instincts ran wild, over honed to a degree their minds had difficulty comprehending. It was as if they were running on autonomous functions.

Daniel didn't see the blue of their eyes, the innocuous hue dimly shimmering in their irises. He was consumed by the sea, his instincts, bellowing out pinpoint mounds long before his eyes could see them. The hue of his irises was as blue as the deep of the sea. His body was no longer clinging to the ship's pole, firmly clamped on the bow, a rough shout cutting through the storm to his companions. Every word he said was immediately picked up by Tommy, reacting in inhuman alacrity.

They seemed set on a path, seemed to be possessed. Their movements were sharp and instant, without waste. The ship gradually accelerated, passing across more of these gruesome spires, impossibly hidden to the last seconds. It didn't matter to the trio who were laser-honed forward.

Eventually, the boat slow down as they passed through the last one. Not far from here, a cavern he spotted in the vast distance of his home was nearby. Well, not so much 'nearby' as 'in front of them'.

"We have arrived...huh?" Daniel blinks once. The blue hue in his eyes dissipated. Confusion clothed his expression "What...what happened?"

Tiredness as well. not just to him, but Tommy and Horace as well. The alacrity that inhabited them was also gone, replaced by incredulity "I don't recall docking here."

A small ladder was already sprawled out from the ship into a rocky platform, a large island. The ground was unusually plain and smooth. The sailor slowly made his way down, his body, breathing excessively. It oozed with exhaustion, struggling against the heavily soaked coat that draped over him, unhelped by the bag that further weighted him down.

Horace was the same, slowly descending. His hands had a red streak over them, beyond the gloves he brought. Scars and gashes left them practically useless, ground down by the rope he refused to let go of. Landing down, he would cast them back into his bag, hoping that he had another pair.

Daniel wasn't spare the exhaust despite doing relatively little more than pointing. A feat he wasn't sure he even committed. His mind was a blur, beset by fogs. The sky was dark, but slowly shifting into a grayish silver. Undulating...

And the mounds that were 'suddenly appearing'. Despite not seeing them, he was...seeing them as clear as water. Beyond the thick upheavals, they were plain, ever-present to this 'sight'.

But now, turning back beyond the battered hull of the angler's ship punctuated with holes and gashes, he could no longer see them. Even the closest one only gave away a hint of its proximity.

"Tarnation!" The angler was staring squarely at his bruised vessel, astonished by the crippling wounds its hull suffered "Even when we dodged the ridiculous amount of hazards, my boat still got beat up! It'll be months before these idiots playing war ever bother giving me basic stuff to fix this! I--ugh..."

"More worryingly, I wonder how we're supposed to go back." Horace ruffles his thinned beard, squeezing streams of water from it, his voice somber "It barely survived the voyage here, I'm not sure it'll survive the trip back."

"What about the others?" Daniel looked beyond their location. In his view's wake, other ferryboats swaying in the tidal waves. The battering on their shot down his hope of taking one of the other derelicts, equally as aching and hurting "Oh...they're all..."

Tommy looked at the others as well. None of them had the inkling of surviving a trip, which put a damper in his already somber mood "Thinking about it, maybe listening to its call wasn't such a good idea." He turned from his raggedy boat and the other abandoned ones with a soaked sigh, a hand on a resin-wrapped club. His eyes looked up as he took a few steps forward, before stopping "Well, we're already here anyhow. We might as well follow it."

"Well, hopefully..." Horace does the same, a small lighter searing the bottom of what was revealed to be a torch bursting into life. He did the same, raising his eyes to the sky "...it can lead us out across our excavation...maybe towards a relatively intact vessel? Or planks for a hasty repair?"

It? Daniel remembered how coincidental they were in spotting him just as he was going. Almost as if they saw the...

...moon. It couldn't be. Even in the avalanche of dark clouds and blinding rain still pelting them, it was above them, gleaming its pale blue shade. Its celestial body seemed closer than usual. Enough that he could make out thousands of tiny craters on its surface. Looking at it made him uneasy, especially this up this close. It seemed so local...yet, so distant Did they see it too? Was that what they referred to?

It wasn't here beforehand. Not in the dark of the storm "Wait...you can also..." The howl of the sea increased with no warning, further wounding the crippled vessel as water began to reach the plain they stood on. Winds whistled with greater intensity, threatening to cast them out into the hungry maw of the deep, no doubt filled with hundreds of smaller, hidden stalagmites as teeth.

The thought died in his head, consumed by the drive to run deep into the cavern. He ran behind the cordwainer and the angler, following the unstable flicker of roaring fire fighting the ceaseless rain and winds on their torches. They run into the depth of the nearest entrance, struggling to ignore the violent upheaval surrounding them.

The hollow cavern welcomes them with a sudden silence. The cacophony of the outside elements is banished from the step door of this not-so-dark entrance. It was strangely cozy around the walls, wrapping around the path like a rectangle.

"Woah..." Daniel takes a look at the walls, narrowly stretching deep in the darkness "I didn't think this place would be chiseled like that." The interior was absolutely chiseled in markings Beneath their feet, over their heads, left, and right, every inch of the corridors was decorated in hard-earned carvings. Carvings of undulating waves danced across the structure.

Daniel takes a closer look, much closer. Did they seem to be...moving? He wasn't sure, but the one he has been staring at for seconds was ostensibly undulating high and low. Steadily, subtly, almost like it wasn't. Was it?

Daniel becomes curious, absorbed by intrigue. His heavily soaked hand wrapped in leather slowly comes, tempted to touch it, feel his finger run through it. Was it moving? Surely he'd feel it--

"You shouldn't touch this, little lad." Horace came in close, his torch, lighting up more of the wall nearby in its amber shades.

"Ohh--eh? Touch?" Daniel immediately pulls his hand away with sudden flight. It instead reaches for the pummel of his sword as his ear feeds him the grinding slid of the angler's cutlass.

"You almost succumbed to these walls' allure. Legends say that to touch these is to suffer a curse." The cordwainer also drags out his mundane, but relatively pristine one-handed, courtesy of the farrier.

"What kind of curse?" Daniel unsheathes his weapon, a sword still somewhat worn down from the months spent traveling beyond. He never thought to ask the farrier to repair it, not from witnessing the man barely able to keep his tools in shape. He thought he'd do without for a while.

"Unknown. The myths only mention the sapping of life from those who dared touch them." Tommy approaches, then passed across the two others "At the very least, they do seem to point out that spot beneath the sea in that shore. Let's get going."

"Of course."

"Yes."

They wander in deeper, seeking out that sweet depth of gild and glitter. Time made gluttons out of the mounds decorated with the corpses of countless boats, carelessly swallowing the overconfident crews. Their mistake in the Waxen Shore was singular and costly, rarely leaving out any survivor, much less sane ones.

The golden blood of the ship sunk deep into the sea, rumored to form amalgams of treasury deep in its many gullets. Those rumors intertwined with ideas of caverns that shared space with the depths, spread only by insane relicts who, by a cursed miracle, managed to reach one of the many entries. They did so, leaving a sinking ship behind, dead as it was, punctured by holes and gashes.

The myths all ended the same: with madness. Doom and gloom haunted them to an early grave, besieged by walls and jagged things they could only describe as undulant structures. Undulant and porous, like sand...

"Like sand," Daniel mutters as he followed the angler and cordwainer, their weapons reflecting the short, wild fuming of their torches. The caverns lost their illusion of myths, thought to be something natural. The walls they walked by were much more. More chiseled scriptures of 'words' and shapes appeared, stretching their black depth all the way from the beginning. It stretched on for miles and miles further in the darkness.

The sensation of their undulation did not leave Daniel, noticeably nervous as he occasionally spotted one that seemed to move just out of sight. Trying to ignore them and look forward, he saw the two men ahead of him give subtle, but sharp glances around them, as fixated on one part for a few seconds.

As they reached what felt like the end of the descent, a sense of unease firmly coiled around their hearts as the room before was blockaded by darkness. It ruled the ceiling, giving them nothing to stare beyond its thick nothingness.

"There's nothing up here." Daniel stares upward, expecting more of that weird chiseling on the walls. Instead, the emptiness of the excessively wide room welcomed the trio into an expansive space. At the distance, massive pillars that resembled more like towers stretched out into the infinite dark of the ceilings, their dull gray texture, barely visible.

Unlike the floor beset by flawless tiles of marble. Polished to inhuman perfection, they also favored a wide streak into the ambient twilight. The wide room they were setting foot in had many seemingly empty door frames of stone and scriptures, the tiles behind them, stopping starkly at nothingness. Each of them was adjusted into the vast, distant pillars stretching, pointing to reach them.

"But the road is non-existent. What sense does that make?" Horace inspected the inert frame, carefully trying to get a good view behind it. The thing was that, while stopping suddenly, the marble tiles did not think so, ending with a stone-like bar that indicated the end of their expanse.

"It probably collapsed." Shrugged Tommy, swathing his torch as to get a better view. As with the ceiling, the floor beneath seemed to be an endless abyss, a fatal drop if they were to botch their stepping near the edge.

"But, the floors don't look like something was taken from them."

"It doesn't but, we can't know for sure. Regardless, wherever it was leading to, it's probably not what we're looking for. Better keep on moving."

"You're right. The sooner we do, the quicker we can find the cove. Maybe somewhere, we can find a way out or something to make emergency repairs to the ship." Horace removes himself from the empty frame and turns away, following the other two with a grip on his weapon.

Many arching door frames are passed by, all beautifully crafted into masterpieces on their own. But, their apparent uselessness and their tomb-like silence only serve to further unease the trio that crosses them. They were all copies of the first one, nothing behind them, no purpose beyond simple existence.

They walk ahead, slowly apprehending the next step as they reached another flight of descending stairs. This one was open, wider than the hollow closing of the previous flight, but without walls.

"Don't go looking down, now." Tommy tries to relieve the others from the abyss that now was staring at them. His heart was in his throat, beating as hard as the others as they slowly descend the twisting stairs.

"I'll...try not to..." Daniel was much less confident, shaky in his steps. One slip and death was certain. To what depth, he does not know.

"No worries, little lad. It's a short one, fortunately." Horace was behind him, his eyes set on the youngest of the group, a hand twitching, waiting to catch the man should he slip.

Their steps lead them further down another platform. Daniel was carefully walking, only ever looking at where his feet landed. But, a glimmer in the distance caught his eye, flickering in the light.

"Something ahead!" The silence of the shore's belly fell to ignorance as they reached the second lower floor where something was shining.

"Hmm? Hold on, laddie, wait!" Daniel took the lead, sprinting in the echo. Treasury awaited in the bowel of the room's dead end. At least, it looked like one, what with the walls encapsulating the place. Distance decreased proved to be a gilded treasure of coins and crowns. Jewels and scepters. All in gold and gems filling the relatively small room with its incandescent reflective light.

A venerable mountain of it lingered idle, surrounded by dust motes on the floor. The steps their boots kicked up swaths of abandoned screens of particles. By the time the angler and the cordwainer reached the place of gild and old relics, Daniel was already packing the most promising of wealth. Assets that would give Jonason a break. Or more...

"So much treasure to bring! So much to carry! We could drag our city out of its continual misery with nothing more than a small sample of this mountainous sum!"

"I concede so, youngling. That seems to be the case despite being a relatively insignificant sample of what these depths truly carry."

"But, it seems a bit too convenient that this bundle is, to this place, at surface level. We haven't crossed the deep enough for this sort of bounty, and yet, there it is." The two men agreed, their eyes not on the vast wealth in front of them. Daniel was the only one measuring what he could carry.

They stood across the frame, their senses ringing the tolls of death. Their heartbeat a cacophony in their throat. It rattled their body to the bone, trying to alert them of danger. Shivers slowly crept up to their back as the sensation of eyes lurking about made its way into their mind.

Someone...something was watching them. The darkness forbade an accurate spotting of the stalker, but they knew. Horace looked at Tommy, the angler, who nodded towards Daniel. He was oblivious to the sensation, masked by the walls of the treasury.

The shoemaker made his way to the wanderer excruciatingly slowly, making no true step, but sliding his soles. Tommy took to the frame, his cutlass searching for anything in the dark as he was. His heart skips a beat, his body flinches as he thought he was a flicker of light.

"Youngling, I think it's due time that we excavate ourselves out of here." He creeps up to the base of the mountain treasure, a hand sloven on Daniel's shoulder.

"What?" The wanderer turns to the cordwainer, the latter, looking back to the angler "But, my bag isn't full yet. Even if I can't carry--

"No, no, little lad, our time is past. There is danger afoot."

"We didn't see or hear anything. What danger could be---

"Shh! Pipe down, there's something here." Tommy engulfed himself in the frame, just a bit inside the gilded room. The darkness of the cave was not so dark. A porous, distant illumination was gleaming atop the platform he stood in seconds ago.

"Sentries? Natives?" Horace slowly pulls his hand from Daniel's shoulder, the latter, no longer so excited at the prospect of wealth. All eyes were on the moving cone of light strafing left and right. It was a deep blue, intense and blinding. Almost burning in concentration, it sizzles in wandering across the tiles of polished stone. Darkness was rebuked by its presence, scurrying away from it.

"I don't know. I saw a light some distance away. Couldn't see whatever was casting it before it really began looking here."

"Goodness, it might be an artificial construct to this cavern. The myths regarding the cursed shore spoke of stone that moved with a deep blue light beneath walking with thin, chiseled legs."

"An amalgam walker..." Daniel mutters, a harrowing sense of dread in his voice "Creatures of silver and stone, sprinting on two thinly jagged legs, but scampering on four...like a spider. Faceless like the stone that surrounds them."

"Aye, they be a popular tale to give to petulant children in Jonason. Easy to make one scarily eager to sleep when mentioning that they can slip in any crack from any wall to drag them away."

"But, these are just stories, right? Grandmother's nighty tales can't be real...right?" As he spoke, Tommy looked at him, a swift pass on his throat. To still himself as the light no longer looked so distant.

A scampering cacophony rattled in its stead. Steady, punctuating, yet forceful and hurried, it was like a creature frantically searching for something.

Tommy gazed ahead, trying to measure the source of the noise. The hollow, wide scope of the cavern dulled his effort, making it seem like it was coming from everywhere. Beneath them. Above them. Left, right, and--

"!!" Tommy turned to the other two who were still to this time. His hand gestures hurriedly to the walls beside the frame. His eyes were gleaming a bright blue, snapped into without reason. They gifted...or cursed him with clarity, candles holstered in his irises without the heat that burns.

They shimmered at the vast distance, allowing him to cut through the darkness. They showed him things that were clambering and scampering in impossibly distant walls no longer hidden by darkness. Things that were plainly visible in his new illustration.

They showed him the one formless, lone thing. The solitary, well, amalgam walker glued to the top of the roof where they stood beneath. By what cursed ailment, he didn't know, but he could see it, a thin-limbed humanoid entity of sharp, puncturing edges as hands and feet. Colors and details were vague as, under the angler's ominously shining eyes, it appeared with a blue layer.

He did not speak to either of them, unable to understand how it was that he could see what he was. He didn't question the sight, drunk in instinctual reflexes directly the thing's every move.

Quickly, quietly, he glances at the two, a finger on his jaw, rising to the ceiling. They understand, weapons at the ready, but their bodies concealed as the thing poured its 'head' in, punctuated by two startling jabs at the door frame.

Daniel snuffed out a gasp that almost spilled out, panic beating in his throat. It was here, at the door. Markings glimmered from its chiseled face, conquered by sapphire-like rounds. Two above, two below. The sound of mineral tapping on stone came with the visual of two small mandibles, darker than onyx, chiseling their sharp edges on each other.

The trio's breathing became still as two more violent jabs punctured the frame, never really inside. Its 'eyes' beamed the mountain of gold, polluting its perfect hue with the shade of blue. The wide beam snapped in directions, looking around it, inspecting it. Its body gradually loosened to the floor, giving the trio an unpleasant puncture of onyx on stone.

It let its weight crash on the marble stone beneath it, its stumps of razor-edged needles cradling the side of the frame. Things close to Daniel and Tommy on either side. Threateningly close.

Its head snapped in direct, pinpoint spots, unnervingly clicking all the while. Clicking, clicking, clicking in an echoing grind. Dangerously close to crossing the room, Tommy looked to the two, branding his cutlass. His visage was gleaming from his eyes, a sordid dread well plastered. It might see them, it might attack.

But, as Daniel and Horace, lost in short, snuffed breathing, armed themselves for a potential confrontation, the thing snapped back. Its back, if it could be called that, suddenly bent backward, grinding the many small spikes on its exposed spine on themselves. The grinding was almost unbearable, aching, throbbing at their ears.

It was a sigh of relief, however, as Tommy slowly lowered his arm "Its leaving..." Indeed, the amalgam walker skittled back, its 'limbs' reversely scampering. Midway through, another of its kind reached out from the abyss, meeting the lone one. Their eyes and heads snapped into a distant pillar. It was slowly glowing across several parts, blue flowing upward its far, stony flesh like blood rushing through veins. Life seemingly was taking into it, prompting the two walkers back into the abyss.

Tommy raised his hand, calling for Daniel and Horace to remain still. With how close it was to catch them, he preferred not trying his chance with two of them.

Only when his elevated sight saw the things rapidly descend where the latter came from, he lowered his hand in a slightly relieved gesture. Their collective breaths exploded in gasps and acridity, struggling to catch large gulps of air.

"Too close," the angler announced, hands clamped on his knees "That thing was too close to catching up. I don't think we could have fought it off then."

"This thing, the walker, it's..."

"Walkers. They're real. And hundreds are skittering about."

"What?!" "Good grief..." Daniel and Horace spat out, eyes glazed over like damned men.

"On the walls at the distance...at the top...beneath, these things... there are hundreds. Thousands, maybe. And they're all moving like sand on the shore. They're all moving...hope you got something out of that pile, lads, I'm not chancing another encounter any longer."

"I did, but--

"It'll have to do, laddie." The angler clutches his cutlass, the staunch look of uncertainty deep in his expression "We can't stay here. If we do..."

"You're right. I've got a few coins and trinkets in my bag. It's not much, but they'll do. Let's go, maybe we can patch your ship with parts of the other boats." Horace re-affirmed his grip on his tool-turned weapon, a large shaft of wood with a head replaced by a lump of malformed iron.

"But--" Their feet rattled as did the rest of the ground beneath them. Everything began to rattle. The tiles of polished stone split. And split. And split. Tiles split and accumulated, wrought from the emptiness of space. Edifices rose from the ground, wreathed in that dark cerulean life spotted seconds ago.

Artifacts that grasped for higher value, statues spliced of materials yet unknown, innocuous items superimposed on pedestals, miscellaneous objects laying about the plinths, everything was appearing out of nowhere. Or so, it looked.

"What's happening?!" Daniel struggled to keep a steady foot over a platform that could slide something previously undisclosed without any warning. His feet constantly threatened to give in and fall.

"Careful! These things, whatever they are, they're--Horace, get out of the way!" The called out didn't question it, diving away from his current position. A second proved this leap wise as the apparition of a statue would have made for an impromptu demise.

"This is madness! How are we to predict where to stand and where to move?!" Horace watched the apparition with intent, too aware of this all-too close encounter with an agonizing death.

"They're not appearing from nowhere! They're phasing them in by some way!"

"What?! Preposterous! These things weren't here, to begin with, and you're telling me they just tucked those somewhere else?! In a platform that doesn't look like it could host many of these?!"

"I'm serious--Danny boy, to your left!"

"!!" A dodge to the side spares Daniel the abrupt face-to-face with another of the petrified depiction of a robed individual.

"Nonsense! I think this place is getting to---to..." Horace's eyes begin to glimmer amidst his tremoring heart and buzzing ears. His senses overwhelmed him, and warmth ran his veins. His eyes glimmered with unknown brilliance, allowing him to see.

The first thing he saw was a shining beacon beaming from Tommy's chest. A curious spider-shaped light peered within. It looked like it was diffusing smoke, once invisible, around him. He also had dust swirling like a second, very thin layer. Even Daniel was beginning to show the signs of this strange light. The same that synchronized them back at the sea.

But, looking away from either of them, he saw them. Items. Objects. Pedestals. Statues. They were indeed here as Tommy told him. Just out of plain sight, hidden in what looked like another dimension. A thick weave of...web was strung around them like a cocoon. This...web was also hidden from their eyes before. It traveled far and wide beyond this ever-extending platform, seemingly guiding the many meticulous floors together, sinewed between them.

One of the many statues was freed from its silky prison. Light began to shimmer from it, peeling away from it like magic dust. Its head was the last to breathe its true colors of gray and shimmering blue, snapping into existence as soon as the last shred of it was bereft of silk.

"By the deep...those things are...were always here. For how long?"

"I don't...I'm not sure." Daniel's eyes were no longer normal. They shared the angler and cordwainer's light, seeing the same distance of hundreds of amalgam walkers. Of these artifacts phasing in. Of the atmosphere, no longer of darkness, but of a gray undulation and sapphire hues "I'm not sure--and why are we seeing these?! Why is everything coming to life?!"

"I don't know, something must have been triggered. But what?" His question came with a dreary answer as the life that picked up among these walls came to a stabilized end. But, noises were still echoing about. Voices, not stone. Human voices.

"Are you...are you both hearing this?" Daniel's face locked in a spot. He didn't know it yet, but he saw "Shouts. Screams. Cries."

"I do."

"So do I. It's...not looking good for them." They stared in the distance, their senses, filled with alacrity, making a mockery of human limits. The pillars at the distance were sparked with tiny, ember-like specks of light.

Torches. And light. The same gleaming eyes as the trio. Weapons in hands. Another group afar disproved the notion that they were alone. Distress was at their heel as a pack of amalgam walkers scampered close behind them in their struggle to gain ground. The expending happened everywhere, judging by how wider it looked.

The ones at the back were shouting the most, crashing their swords and axes and spears against the resilient shape of the walkers, never stuttered. One of them spread its arm out, grabbing one of the correspondent adventurers, whose shout sent a cold shiver down Daniel's spine. In an instant, he disappeared beneath the tide of amalgam walkers, the tide that continued forth after the rest.

"By the deep..." Horace couldn't help but put his hand on his chest, clutching the medallion inside. Another series of yells lured their eyes to another nearby pillar. The same thing ad nauseam occurred, but with all of the travelers falling to the legion of walkers, their despaired cries snuffed out.

And another batch on another pillar. A third one. And a fourth. And a fifth. Until they realized, the boats they saw, were recent. Every pillar, every platform they saw had people of their city desperate to find something of worth. Desperate enough to walk this cursed place. And slowly being whittled out by a seemingly endless tide of humanoid terrors deep from the tales of myths.

Daniel wasn't sure what to make of this. He was witnessing the death of his desperate kin, drowned in onyx and stone, sure that he knew some of them. Sorrow and panic mixed in his knees, weighting down on them as his hands joined. A eulogy for those he may never see began spilling from his increasingly unnerved pitch:

Oh, mother of the Deep,

Please, I beg of you,

Bring these wayward souls to--

"We will mourn them later, little lad." Horace swings his weapon ahead whilst putting a hand on Daniel's shoulder.

"But...but they're--

"I know, but, alas, one of them has noticed us from the other side of the platform."

"W-what..." The violent puncturing of mineral on stone made a discordant tune as an amalgam walker made its way back to the previously uninteresting floor they were standing on. A brilliant blue light flashed directly at them, giving them the terrifying warning that they were spotted.

"Run, run, run!" Tommy's heavy boots stroke the ground with great weight, completely abandoning the notion of stealth in his pace.

"Come, come! Quickly, now!" Horace's fingers loop around Daniel's armpit, pulling without restrain. The strength of panic drags his on his feet with hurried momentum, fleeing from the ramping clicking that was steadily increasing as more amalgam walkers took to the chase.

The cavern once more rattled, sending its expansionistic shockwave across its tiles, making the sudden stop as nothing but a lull. The beat of skittering limbs behind them did not lose any beat nor any momentum as they seamlessly steered left and right. The tempo of suddenly phasing items and splitting tiles did not bother them in the least, slowly reaching out to the panicked trio in their unknowingly deeper venture. The exit had been subtly shifted, blurred from them in the tumultuous routing that these things seemed to take to.

Daniel's eyes drifted to the back, where a wall of lights and jagged stubs was rampant. They sought less dire space to gaze at, only finding the account of distant adventurers falling to the swarm tailing them. Left and right, there was no solace to find, no--

"Look out!" Horace was looking behind him, devoid of distraction like Daniel was. He saw one of them take a told sprint and lunge, its 'arms' stub splitting. Where there was a sharp point, five lacerating 'fingers' as long as knives became. And one was reaching for Daniel.

"!!" Momentarily frozen in place, he did not hear the reeling steps of the cordwainer, nor see his heavier body placated between him and the leaping walker, smashing his blunt weapon against its grasp. The sparks that sizzled out from the contact immediately set the young man from his stupor.

The lump of iron reels back from the strike, held back by the 'hand' of blades. Their thin nature proved to be deceptively resilient. Horace used the momentum of his bounced stick of iron and swung it against the creature's face. Considering how quickly it was to divert its reach for a response to his makeshift mace, it was unnerving to see it take the blow.

It just stood and endured it, its blinding light dimmed considerately. The others that were following its wake stopped starkly behind it, giving pause to Daniel and Tommy, who, seeing the stunned surprise of Horace, slowly retracted to his side. Why did they stop?

The struck walker bore no sign of a hit from a lump that would easily destroy a wooden support pillar. Gazing deeply at Horace's attempt at a second swing, its mandibles vibrated with a faint blue hue. Sounds and symphonies whirled themselves into his head, stopping him midway like a pick drilling into his mind.

"What is it--argh!!!" Horace's head felt the vibrations burrow in, impairing his senses as his wracked mind struggled to comprehend what syllables it was forcing in.

--?llewnu uoy era...llewnU--

--selggurts ti...dnim s'remialcer ehT--

--su ezingocer ton od tub su ees yehT--

Many more amalgam walkers accumulated close to the struck one, looking down at Horace's aching mind currently suffering the invisible vibrations that locked him in place. Their mandibles added to the dreadful chorus even with Tommy and Daniel slowly pulling on the man's armpits. Though they struggled to hear the sounds and symphonies, it was nowhere as deep as the cordwainer's aching.

"Come on, old man, we can't let you die here! Danny lad, take his weapon!"

"Yea! Yea! We have you, Horace, we have you!"

--su dnatsrednu tonnac yehT--

--Deep Mother eht fo egdelwonk eht tsol evah yehT--

--Deep Mother eht fo eugnot eht dneherpmoc regnol on nac yehT--

--Abyssal Daughters eht ot meht gnirb ew ecno dnatsrednu lliw yehT--

--srehto eht ekiL--

--here lured evah yeht srehto eht ekiL--

--erom ecno meht dna su fo egdelwonk gnirb oT--

Daniel and Tommy had Horace's arms on their shoulders. His head slumped down, oozing with an aching mind and a garble of words spinning around "Deep...Deep Mother...daughters? Daughters? What? Daughters? Where? Lured? Lured? Where? Here? Lured here? What?"

"What are you saying, old-timer?" Tommy glanced at the bearded man's jumbled speech.

"Lured...here? Lured here? Lured here...Lured here. Lured here."

--meht ekaT--

--meht ekaT--

--]MEHT EKAT ;degdelwonkca evitcerid emirP[--

"Lured here. Take them? Take them?! Take them! Ambush! Those things lured us here!"

"What?!"

"What?"

"This is just an ambush! All of it! These things set us up! Like the others we saw!"

"Ambush?!" Daniel stared wide-eyed at the creatures that cropped up around the first one. Once still, now they hunched and slammed against the floor.

He recognized their sudden cradling as the toil to the chase rang again "Hurry! They're coming!" The trampling of spiked limbs became abound as a mass of black and gray hurled themselves at the trio.

The cacophony is almost as unbearable at the blinding legion of lights casting them, hiding their imminent presence beyond it. An approaching, inevitable presence far faster than two panicked, blindly limping men carrying the third one muttering still.

The crash is quick and sudden. The light became smooth stone and black onyx imprinted on the trio. The still-expanding pathway they were running on was thin, easy to fall off from. The crash made it easier for the walkers to split the trio, a few of them for each one. Freefall became their reality.

"Horace!" "Holy sh--Horace!" The wind rushed across their bodies, no longer beholden to anything but the gravity that was dragging them to the darkness below. Horace, the cordwainer, was utterly lost, mumbling still, unaware of his predicament even as amalgam walkers were cropping up around him, faded in the darkness below.

"Horace! Damn! Sh--get off me! Horace, I'm coming, old-timer--god...damn! Get off--" Several amalgam walkers were cropping around him in the high-velocity free fall that was dragging them deeper. Their 'hands' of blades and jagged edges were invisible, seemingly reaching for the angler, who wasted no time swinging his cutlass at them.

Sparks gave brief light to his losing stance against the arms that clutched behind him, behind his nape, tightened around his throat. The fading image of Tommy struggling against many, locked in stillness, was the last thing Daniel witnessed before his sight was obstructed.

"Tommy! Tommy! Tommy, I'm coming! I'm--I'm--" Barely able to direct himself, Daniel's faint track of the drifting angler fell to dark by the obstruction of additional amalgam walkers. Their mandibles vibrate with an eerie deep shade of blue.

Daniel's sword comes in, swinging true just as he began to feel a push in his head. His stroke is true, striking the creature just beneath its head on the black cord serving as its spinal construct.

"Damn you, move! Move!" Violent sparks spill from his blade as he continually tries to sever the walker's head off, remarkably left to his strife. He saw the speed with which the former one culled Horace's blunt stroke. He did not think of questioning why none of them made the slightest attempt at countering him, let alone retributing. Then, the buzzing on his head became heavier.

--remialcer eht htiw teem ot sehsiw iry'laV--

--enitnemelC leinaD sa nwonk remialcer ehT--

--segrahc rieht htiw tem era naireH ecaroH dna elliebroC ymmoT sremialceR--

Daniel involuntarily grits his teeth as the sensation of grinding metal on a slab of stone ground up against the folds of his mind. These things were...speaking to him. Or, at him. Whichever it was, garbled noise was all that wormed inside his head, demanding to be heard.

"!!!" He swings, one of his eyes closed as to acclimate him to the sudden, grinding sensation beating on his brain. Accuracy abandoned him a while ago through a missed chop. Before a second attempt, blades close in on his blade like bramble wrapped on a pole.

The deathly sensation of daggers gently poses on his shoulder as he is met with one of the walkers, surrounded by others. It feels so close to cutting into his flesh, the beginning of his end. Its triangular 'face' smoothened by round edges approached the struggling, flailing Daniel, its sapphire 'eyes' glimmering with a dim brilliance.

--rorret yb demusnoc si remialcer ehT--

--sremialcer rehto eht kees seye gnihctiwt siH--

--htped eht ni teem lliw yehT--

"No! Get away! Get away! Tommy!" Darkness reached him, making the sight of the distant gray walls, the ambient light, everything...no longer visible. Nothing but the darkness trying to coddle his arm, his arms, everything.

"Tommy! Horace! Horace...anyone..."

A ring of walkers placated around him, embracing the struggling man as he finally fell in the depth, no longer able to move or see. He was like a statue dragged to the abyss, soon, no longer to keep his cognizance alit...

---

Darkness. That was the first thing that met with Daniel's eyes. Opening them slowly, he saw nothing. Nothing but the endless darkness that wreathed itself atop his limbs.

He felt the lukewarm grasp of his fingers wrapped around a hilt. His sword "Ahh! Ohh, I still have it. The way it was clutching it, I thought it'd snatch it off--!!!"

His instincts push him despite the lethargy of his limbs. How long he had been asleep in the depth, he couldn't fathom. But, he pushes against the grogginess, the limp sensation to force himself to sit...

...and almost lost balance "Ehh??!! What is this?!" His limbs recovered quickly, spurred by pure instinctual prowess. But, they no longer felt on solid floors. The eerie sensation of dangling pushed them back and forth as something silky, yet sturdy was beneath his lap.

"Where am I?! What is this place?!" His head swirls left and right, desperate for a source of light. Anything.

And his eyes glimmered once more with the hue of the blue. As was the spider-shaped effigy of his medallion, stronger than ever. The darkness became a mesh of gray and sigils. Sigils of spider icons and orbs hovering over pedestals. They were perfectly rounded without a speck of flaw. The light to his eyes, however, also bore him a witness to the creatures that dragged him to this place. The amalgam walkers, dozens over dozens, stared back at him from elevated columns and additional structures of chiseled stone.

They were here, but frozen in place, almost like statues. He saw too many of them in dreadful movement, however, to believe this. Neither with the light in his eyes whispering to him as well, pointing to the square aura dim and scribbled in hundreds of mind-aching lines around them. The betrayer to their stillness, shaped as unfathomable energies.

Not that feeling their 'eyes' dotted undividedly on him helped anymore. Their immobility seemed to hold on nothing more than a string like something was withholding these things from simply leaping at him. He could see their limbs rattling at the prospect, rattling ever so slightly. Something was holding them at bay.

Inevitably, panic won over, prompting Daniel to take back to his feet. His instinct bade him caution as the 'structure' he was on wobbled. Violently.

"!!" Gazing down, he now knew why the surface was so unstable. This wasn't a floor of soft mud or anything brittle. Large gaps peering into rock bottom stared back at Daniel as he realized his feet were battling imbalance on a very wide layer of a spider web.

He didn't know how far it stretched or down deep the fall was. Nor did he know why the threads were flowing with the same radiance as his pendant. He was lost, unsure of where to run, where to try and regroup with, well anyone that might have--

".pu ssa sih ekaw ot sediced yllanif rerednaw eht ,lleh yloH"

And then, his thoughts freeze in his mind. Another excruciating bout of buzzing culls any pondering he might have had, forced to cradle his head in a vain attempt to resist by one hand.

"Ahh! Ahh! Who's--" Struck with incomprehension, Daniel's one answer was to wave his sword around each of the still amalgam walkers, finding none of them moving.

The tone that drilled into his head was different from theirs. None of it drilled in with the lifelessness of their stone flesh and onyx limbs. It was potent. Much more potent. Feminine, even. Something else. Someone else.

"!diputs ,ereh revo m'I" His mind struggles still to understand, to decipher this inhumanly human tone. His medallion, once shimmering with dim power, now took the beating radiance of a heart, pulses felt across his whole body. It understood the alien phonetics, snapped to life by the deep soaking of this darkness, this abyssal shore.

"!rerednaw ,sruoy fo nocaeb taht ot netsil tsuj ,zeeJ" It beats in correspondence to the alien terms, absorbing any that tried worming their way to his mind. It told him, guided him as more phonetics echoed in this wide darkness.

"!pU !rerednaw ,pu kooL !emit nmad tuobA"

"Up?" By then, unable to ignore the medallion firmly noosed around his neck, Daniel lured it out, gazing at it. It made the buzzing more attuned to his senses. Or, rather, it seemed to elevate his as to understand a crumble. 'Up'.

He looked beyond the immobile walkers, rattling still in their spot. Higher, to the thick darkness of the endless chasm where he fell from. At the edge of what even his elevated eyes could see, there was a figure. It was atop a gigantic empty arch shaped like a rising rectangle of stone, chiseled with the alien markings across it. It looked like it was undulating in ways he couldn't quite understand.

The figure was much less still than the creatures that condemned him into this endless depth. It was sitting on the arch, undaunted by the distance between it and the bottom. It, Daniel couldn't believe it...

...was a 'she' "A woman?!"

"...srae ruoy rof emas eht yas tonnac I,hguohT .seye gninoitcnuf evah uoy, rerednaw ,snoitalutargnoC" The medallion shined in beats, vibrating his whole body. It was adapting his senses to this more acutely alien tongue as the words became comprehensible |Congratulations, wanderer, you have functioning eyes. Though, I cannot say the same for your ears...|

"Wanderer?" He whispered to himself, a lull in the terror his mind was previously drowning in. An odd sense of familiarity called to him in her pungently feminine voice.

The woman's eyes, deeply drenched in the blue of the seas, winced, catching his faint murmur "!?gniees m'I diputs namuh etalp reliob taht si rO !?ereh llef uoy nehw daeh ruoy mals wohemos uoy diD !?diputs uoy erA !?tihs htrow gnihtyna teg dna yrt ot yawa shtnom ruof tnew ohw nam ehT !rerednaw ,seY"


 * Yes, wanderer! The man who went four months away to try and get anything worth shit?! Are you stupid?! Did you somehow slam your head when you fell here?! Or is that boilerplate human stupid I'm seeing?!|

Scathing words clawed at his mind. The sheer abrasive tone set him astonished. Enough for him to almost miss her sudden twirl into the empty below...where he was.

Her landing rattles the wide web, giving strife to his balance. He wobbles slightly backward, giving the woman a much closer grasp to his shoulder, firmly instilling a sense of balance in his feet. A clearly irritated glare masks her inhumanly beautiful features. Daniel crossed paths with many women in his distant walks. Warriors, knights, merchants' daughters, nobles. And none of them could hope, no matter their lavish backgrounds, to make the ever-so-slightly pale complexion that adorned her skin, her cheeks. The sapphire irises that were fixated on her visage shined with the brilliance of diamonds and twice their immaculate prowess. The long hair diving down to her shoulders' length was a seamless stare into benign darkness, one inhabited by millions of little white dots akin to the sky during twilight. Merged with the softest-looking lips just a bit thick in color than the rest of her caucasian skin, it gave away a face that would, with the faintest effort, make the hardiest man's heart melt in their chest.

Not that the rest of her presence was left wanting. Hidden beneath a coat looking to bear the cold of winter, her figures compelled it to mold to their designs, giving him virtually no imagination as to how she'd look beyond them. From the buxom chest clad against a wooly string traveling to her back to the hourglass chiseled from hips to thighs to legs, there was nowhere Daniel could look without feeling a faint desire.

Alas, what her face and body worked to display, her voice destroyed in a harsh recall to reality !ssecorp ot redrah ytisoiruc ym ekam ll'tI !hcum os gniyaws pots ,s'ekas kcuF"


 * Fuck sake's, stop swaying so much! It'll make my curiosity harder to process!|

"Curiosity?" He asked, feeling like he was talking to someone familiar. The medallion was buzzing softly in his hand, giving him a sense of security despite this place. It felt like a pet rekindled with its master.

"!edoba nmad 'sretsis ym dna ym ni gniod snamuh gnimriuqs ,yhtlif fo kcap a s'tahw wonk ot tnaw I .seY"


 * Yes. I want to know what's a pack of filthy, squirming humans doing in my and my sisters' damn abode!|

The words were hostile, now. As well as her once delicate visage, twisted further into ire. Panic swelled in Daniel, blinded from the peerless woman he saw moments ago. His elevated eyes drew him to the two smaller dots peering behind her hair, equally blue. He thought he was seeing things, thought to shake his head...

But, he looked back to the two peerless eyes. They were slit like a snake's, chiseled in anger. They were changed. Alien. Her whole visage was alien. Dread began to creep up on his back like it never left since his journey to the Waxen Shore.

"!lluks ruoy ni tnacav era t'nera seiddub diputs ruoy epoh I ,regnits s'rehtom ym yB !?em no gnimaerdyad uoy erA !diputs ,yeH"


 * "Hey, stupid! Are you daydreaming on me?! By my mother's stinger, I hope your stupid buddies aren't are vacant in your skull!|

Buddies? Tommy? Horace?! They're still--

"!?ereh gniod uoy era lleh eht tahW !ssabmud ,uoy ot gnikaeps m'I !yeH"


 * Hey! I'm speaking to you, dumbass! What the hell are you doing here?!|

Her anger sprouted out black spires. Each of them spurred upward...no, wait. They were here. They were always here, just out of sight in the ambient darkness. But, the gleaming beads...eyes lodged in the spider-like legs unveiled their jagged presence. Eyes...somehow, Daniel knew those were eyes glowing from the flesh. And they were cruelly glaring at him.

Fear won over Daniel, whose face became as pale as a table shroud. The 'woman' saw it. Felt the fear settle deep in his bones, heard the rattling sword that was shaking in his hand.

---t'nsi sihT .yrros m'I .tihs..."

"!!!" Quickly, he cuts down the web beneath him, instantly falling down on the ground. The pain did not stop his terrified sprint to anywhere. Anywhere but here.

The woman was aghast seeing him run away in pure terror, the visage of a man who saw a monster face-to-face. He saw her as a monster "...tiaW"

Fear culled any way to his ears, making understanding as pointless as it was before. The woman's ire turned to remorse and panic itself. Her body slammed feet first into the ground where he landed "!esaelp ,tiaW"

"Get away from me, you monster! Damn it, Tommy! Horace! Horace, where are you guys!?" He ran fast. Unnaturally fast. Faint dust picked up behind his step, fluttered in magic. She didn't like it.

!no dloh ,esaelp ,yeh--gninael-er trats ot ydob sih rof emit eht lla fO !ti nmad..doG" The spider tendrils at her back shined and pored heavily in the dust. It pushed her faster, following in the fear-blind man seamlessly navigating the endless expanse. The place seemed to recognize him and his agency, making steps spontaneously appear before him. Chasms and gaps filled with pathways, compelled by his instinctive hand movements. He didn't think, nor ponder. He just moved things that felt made to do so.

Higher and higher, Daniel ran, looking the sides, using the light in his eyes to scope the landscape. Nothing. There was nothing but inert platforms and spires. As well as amalgam walkers running through other hovering platforms. He could see the course they were taking, an interceptive path.

"!nwod dnatS" Her voice again. Closer than he thought. The creatures stop in their track. It was only her and him.

And again, she called to him in her alien tongue "!elitsoh siht eb ot gninaem t'nsaw I ,esaelP"

"Tommy! Horace! Guys, where are you?!" His voice echoed in the vast caverns, hoping for a sign. Anything. Nothing...there was nothing but more gray, more stone.

Tears flowed from his eyes, thinking about their potential deaths. They surely must have died, butchered by those things. He turned away to a nearby hole somewhere in the height they were reaching, the spider woman hot in his heels.

It was large enough to fit a grown man, detached from any platform. But, his instincts once more compelled his movement in ways he couldn't understand. The platforms followed before him, giving him the way to its vacuous access.

But, it was glimmering in a different light. The light in his eyes saw it and translated it to his body in a shiver. This was a warding light, one shining through many other hidden holes. Seals.

Not for him...

Daniel pressed through, his hands and sword at the front, readying himself for a desperate push as he thought to pass through it. But, as he crossed its divine-looking shine, he felt nothing. No obstacle, no bulwark, nothing. It was like air.

No, it came to violent light as the spider woman almost reached him, a hand so close to grasping him by the shoulder, only to bounce off the solid wall of light. An alien screech voided her throat "?!sdraw gnikcuf diputs ruoy redisnoc t'now llits uoy dna emit siht llA !nodiesoP uoy nmad doG !!!hgrA"

"Hah?" The pounding of tendrils and fists on an unbreakable wall echoed in, giving relief to Daniel as he turned back to what looked like an imprisoned monster. His steps were already on the way up. Maybe he could find them...

But, why? Why was he feeling grief? And aching in his heart? His medallion shined again in tempo, her voice filtered through, sorrowful, miserable. It passed on without the cacophony of the buzz that would ache "Come back...please, come back...Daniel. This isn't what I wanted to say, I didn't mean to..."

Whoever she was, she knew his name. Worse still, her voice felt so warm. Like a life-long friend's. How?

He spare a glance at her, cradled against the wall of light, hunched down. Her eyes were hidden beneath her hair, hopeless. Looking at her, Daniel felt a calling. An ancient voice calling him from the depth of his soul. And he returned with lethargic pace to his feet. Possessed feet under possessed eyes that felt increasingly blurry up to the moment where he was against the wall of light. Where she looked up, a single tear dropping from her iris...

...her hand pressed against the wall, reaching for his, hoping...