"Get these tethers all the way to shore..."

A smirk cut across Xanatos' lips "You heard, our Ladyship!" they rumbled.

Sargent Wilfund echoed in bark. "Squad Six!"
"AYE SIR!"

"Move to secure the lines!"

"AYE SIR!"
"The dampeners need to be in the ground -- as deep as you can dig them!"

"Below the pier are undead... Anyone who goes down there will be vulnerable,"

"Come then, guard Fainlight! To the shore, once more!" the horn crowned Seneschal called out. "Cut down every bile blooded againwalker your blade might reach!"

Down the steps they went. Step by hard won step. A blade lashed out to hack through skull. Wet slush poured out. But the bloated mass kept coming. A hand that was all crab claw clacked out. Pinched down along flat of blade.

Panic shot through the young man's body.

Fell upon deff ears as they moved. Xanatos coralling the others. "To the anchor points!" they directed, grabbing bodies and pulling them forward. A shove in the right direction. Where twined steel snaked down from up above. Dangled toward the sand.

Shovels already being distrubuted. Heels drove down spades as distant calls to hold fire rang over the din of the undead's wash against the pier.

"Squad Six! Hold the anchoring ground!" Xanatos said. Thrust their sword through the throat of one horror. lopped it off with a split cut. The shambler fell. Another was there to take its place.
 
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Now, all at once:​

Men and women moved at Eden's command. The Scorpions were assembled, hoisted, and tethered. All hands slowed to steady caution as the last component - the massive shroudstones that tipped the Scorpion's stingers - were upacked. Cradled in their boxes within a nest of cloth and straw, strumming with raw, unshaped power.

It took three men to lift each crystal, and another to affix it into place.

One of the men lost his footing on the slick boards. Startled grunts and whoa's rippled through the others as they shifted their weight to compensate for the stumble. The heavy crystal dipped a few inches down before they got it steady again.

"Careful, guardsman," one of the more experienced sailors warned with a cruel laugh. "Drop that thing, and come next Tuesday they'll still be scraping bits of you off the docks."


Black were the waters lapping against the shore, a thousand hungry, rotting tongues. Any doubt that it was only the dark of the night reflecting off the water was wiped away by the stench of it all. Detritus stirred up by the storm, grains of shed blight that assaulted every sense. And of course, there was the dead. Clawed and finned, Nautilus-headed and silvered with barnacles, the dead kept coming, compelled by blight and drowned memories.

One of the shamblers that pressed against Squad Six stopped strangely. Gurgling came from its throat. A word. Black liquid spilled from bloated lips.

"Fainlight," it said. "Once More."

Maybe it was repeating what the Senechal had called out before. Maybe that wasn't the gleam of hatred in its eye, only hunger.

But maybe, it was personal.


The pale scales of the leviathan shook and spread in defiance against the burning fires along the shoreline. Huddled behind hastily propped barriers, the archers nocked arrows and tensed muscles in anticipation of the order to come.

"Hold, dammit," the guard captain called out. He grabbed the shoulders of a shaky looking youth and pushed them behind the line. "Don't fucking shoot!"

The leviathan was close, now. It rose itself to a great height, its shadow falling on the archers.

"Hold!"

Slime dripped from its fangs as it unhinged its jaw. Coil after Coil spiraled behind it, crushing forward only inches behind the barriers. And there in its cold eyes, the fire flickered.

"LOOSE!"

The captain slashed his hand downwards. Arrows rained up towards the beast. Clattered against scale and stuck in crevice. Some left streaks of burnt oil along its sides. Not a one made it flinch.

It slammed down hard against the ground. With an arc of neck and swing of jaw, it snapped up three guards at once.

Those who could, scattered. Those who couldn't became its next meal.

Either way, there was enough of them to keep the leviathan occupied. Long enough for the Scorpions to take aim.


"How many weavers are there left?" Eden asked the sailor reporting to her.

"There's no one, your ladyship. We'll have to fire the scorpions without one and calibra-"

"We haven't time." Eden peeled her gloves off. Soaked as they were, it took a good wrench of the shoulder to get her wrists out. "I'll do it myself."

The scorpion was ready for her. She wrapped her fingers around two handles placed in the interior of it, and felt the beast respond. Around her was an intricate mess of levers and lenses that led to the crystal at the Scorpion's center.

With a hum of warmth, the crystal began to spin. Fire and static, oily in color, pulsed and fed into itself in an ever growing loop of energy. Eden called out instructions to the sailors to aim the thing. The leviathan was in her sights.

No one noticed the woman in white robes. She stepped out of the rain like one of the dead. In her hand flashed a thin stiletto.

"The Souls of the Sea will be free!" she cried out. Barreled into Eden with dagger held low. Pushed her off the Scorpion.

Eden felt a bloom of warmth pierce her side. The shroud slipped from her fingers as she tumbled down with the priestess.

The crystal cracked. Storm clouds roiled, and lightning strikes three places in silent wrath.


Sequence of events:
  1. The scorpions, huge magical ballistas, are assembled atop the pier.
  2. Squad Six does or doesn't secure the anchors into the shore below the pier.
  3. A zombie recognizes Rinrose Fainlight.
  4. Some distance down the shore from the pier, the squad of archers led by the Guard Captain face off against the leviathan. Their odds of survival are low.
  5. Eden begins to charge the first scorpion blow, but then she gets stabbed by a mysterious woman.
  6. The warmachine destabilizes and sets off the shroudstorm that's been brewing above.
  7. Lightning (magic lightning!) strikes wherever you want.
 
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Back down to where she came from, steps creaking beneath the men and women brave enough to go down to the front lines. The Leviathan wailed on, the storm raged against it. It was easier to grasp the ropes and tools with gloved hands rather than bare, but Rinrose stood watch, attention towards the shore, below the pier, and all around. Her blade sang a melody that was too rigid; it broke instead of bending against the forces of nature. As if the sea was the gate of hell to keep restless souls from the fighting living, out came a face that was familiar, even if the waters had roughed it up.

"You," Rinrose said, looking over at him. Translunar glow caught his eyes. Rinrose got ready, holding her blade towards this new foe. She didn't think the only undeads could speak, but then again, none of them were as fresh as him. The corner of her mouth quirked into a smirk, seeing the knife she had used to stab him in his heart still stuck in his flesh. When the first strike of lightning hit, that knife flashed white, too bright for human eyes. She raised a metal hand out before her face, squinting

He rushed towards her, all the speed and power he had as a living man. He staggered, going to his knees. Rinrose closed the space between them, raising her blade up high. He threw a handful of wet sand into her face twice. His aim was still good, much to Rinrose's dismay, as she had to spit out grit and salt and took a step back.

"I should have lopped off your head," Rinrose muttered. "Traitor."

"My heart still isn't enough?" He lunged, she dodged, he reached, she shielded with her sword, put space between them with a couple of steps. His hand went to the knife, and with a roar, he pulled it out. Bastard didn't even make a face. He raised his blade up high over his head. "I'll make you pay."

"I've paid enough already for your shit." Her sword was low. She had reach, as long as she played it safe, she would win. He cackled, bending over in a fit of glee. When he rose, he wore the same shit-eating grin he had when he had died. He opened his mouth, and the sound that came from it was hardly human.

Lightning struck, not as a flash of white, but a flash of blue and purple. It was attached to the point of his knife, rolled down to his arm, and limned his form in colors that looked too beautiful to be considered deadly. Mixing with the tang and the salt, the brine and the dead, was now the smoky, sweet, and savory tang of roasting, burnt, extra crispy flesh.
 
She loosed one arrow and knew as she watched the trajectory that this was not going to work. Monroe had always been sure of her aim, of the power she gave to the loosening of her arrow, but this would not work. Even with the magnitude of archers, they would not pierce past those scales carrying droplets and trails of the sea clinging to them.

The leviathan rose, and perhaps it was foolish to run before a predator, Monroe knew survival was her gods-given right.

She ran, no stopping until she was convinced she was out of range. Other had moved along with her, but came to stop to reposition themselves to shoot again.

"Move!" She roared, hoping her voice and warning could travel through the pelt of rain, but she did not dare to look back. Monroe's legs protested heavily, straining as she tried to keep her boots steady and adjust her weight if she felt the slickness of puddles beneath her feet. "Fucking move!"

It was hard not to feel fear the moment she heard the crash of teeth and the screams of captured archers. It was a sharp and cold stab in her chest, restraining her breath for a few seconds as she felt that fear sawing into her. Let it pass, she told herself, we do not stop for fear.

Her eyes caught the Scorpions moving to position, it's target found and made ready. She saw the Lady, Eden Sinclayr, who had asked Monroe to fight along with them. Pride, it was enough to keep the fear at bay seeing the woman take up a Scorpion.

It was her knightly duty of care, or concern and outrage to watch the white robed woman appear and make the Lady Sinclayr fall.

Monroe knew anger. Was friends with fury. Bitterness seemed to coat her tongue always, and irritation was like a silken sheet she could lay upon.

Something within her reignited. Her anger called, and the shroud was more than willing to answer, like the very flames Monroe nurtured inside her.

"Sinclayr!" It was rage flickering to embers in her eyes, heat filling her lungs to give breath to her outrage. Not all her power and weave returned to her, but it was enough to refuel her willpower.
 
Splitting. Searing. Burning.

All the way down to the bone. Pinpricks and hot irons turned to glowing reds and bottomless whites. Runes, long carved and branded into the flesh along their spine, illuminated with a singular imperative.

Eden til Sinclayr.

Pounded through the skull like a chisel hammered through stone. Bled out of a wound in the Seneschal's side. Turned their breath ragged as the magicks wove to their purpose.

The sympathetic webwork of runes carved into them, delt their body damage as the shroud woven between them through ritual reached its equilibrium. Stitching Eden's wound back together.

Fresh. Hot. Blood. Poured out as his flesh sliced open and split from an unseen blade. Soaked into gambeson and padding.

"Anchors set, Ser!" one of squad six cried out.

Calls for retreat broke across the rippling line of soldiers. A clawed gauntlet snapped out and grabbed one of the guardsman by loose of his robes. Snatched him up off his feet, and tossed him back towards the violent hell of the beach.

"NOT ONE MORE STEP BACK!" The Seneschal bellowed. Horns flared against the storm bright sky. Lightning flashed, and crashed down betwixt their feet.

Squad Six stared wide eyed.

Horns sparking with purpled webs. Their sword swiped, and split deep across the collar of a walker. Snapped in the fall and tumble. Bootheel crunched and shattered water logged skull. Crabs crawled and skittered out and ran for the surf.

"We hold the scorpion anchor!" Xanatos called out. "Retreat, and your life is forfeit! And it will be my hand that ends it!"

Fear. Weighed heavy down their spines.

Whilst the leviathan went on thrashing against existence. Gulping up two and three guardsman with each gnashing snap of its jaws.

"Ready bows!" A sergeant called out.

"Shield wall!" another man at arms ordered against the crash of another tied of the dead.

Arrows loosed. plunked off. But some found the soft spots.

"Aim for its eyes!"

A new sword in hand. Xanatos butchered back against the dead wave.
 
Lightning struck once, and the Traitor burned in technicolor.

Lightning struck again, and an ember caught kindling inside the hero knight.

The last bolt of lightning splintered against the horned crown of the Seneschal.

Rough strength pulled the priestess off of Eden. She barely felt them through the bloom of pain. With shaking hands, she grasped the dagger's hilt left in her side. A lung punctured. Drowning in it. She pulled.

Stars swam in her vision. Pale and red twinkling ones, watching over her even at that distance. Felt the wound closed, and the runes burned, and the blood poured into another cup.

The dagger clattered to the ground.

Someone called her name. Several someones were doing that, actually, as the ripple of her fall went through the sailors. But the knight's cry stood out most to her. There was weight behind it, an outrage that realigned sinews and pulled at the fabric of the cosmos.

Another weaver.

"Miss Sinclayr, are you alright?"
"Get the Lady up and out of here!"
"Find the attacker!"

So much commotion. Eden swatted away one of the hands that reached for her. "Enough of that, I can stand on my own."

They gave her room, but one of the sailors still hovered around her elbows as rolled herself up to standing. The wound at her side was no more than a tear in her shirt, and a dark stain on her jacket.

She stumbled towards the scorpion, veins swirling with borrowed strength. "Back to your posts!" A grunt. Bloodied hands grasped round the levers of the war machine. She pressed her chest against the caging, and peered down the sights. In the distance, the snaking beast tore at the shoreline, and the archers scattering there.

"If this kills me," Eden said. "Find that Dawn Knight."

The Scorpion hummed with power. A thin line of light flashed stark against the dark of the storm. The leviathan screamed in pain before the onlookers on the ground could see what happened. A moment later, the explosion burst, bits of blighted flesh raining down, crackles of green and red smoking upwards.

The serpent's jaw hung limp and open, and for the first time, it slowed.

Eden collapsed against the machine. The raw threads of the weave burned up her arms and into her inner mind, squeezing the breath out of her. She gasped in the rain, too weak to stand. Shivering, she pressed cold fingertips against the runes writ on her heart. Tried to will them to darkness, tried to stop the transfer of consequence. But the magic was not hers, and it did not respond to her plea. She couldn't afford another sting from the Scorpion. The next one would surely kill Xanatos.
 
"Ugh, get off of me," Anemone awoke to the entirety of her ship shaking and shoved the man to the floor. He was still breathing, sort of. Drunken dyspnea perhaps, but his chest still moved with more vigor than it ever had the night before. Anemone swung her legs, the hammock swaying as her toes touched the deck of the ship and she lifted herself to standing. The Devahni woman pulled a simple tunic over her head, one long and low, down to her knees as a shift. What was all of this noise about? She walked sleepily to the upper decks and opened the door of the Vagrant Breeze.

"Hells." She mouthed.

She closed her eyes to focus, on the zombies, on the sea monster, on anything, to feel the wind, to channel the storm she knew she so easily could. But instead her head throbbed. "Fucking..." She cursed her own mind. 'Yeah! Another shot Nemmy!' She squinted, 'bet you can't drink this!' All of last night rushed back to her, and every single consequence making themselves so known, now. Even the pirate that danced so very well and passed out immediately in her bunk.

"Okay, Anemone, there are dead things climbing all over, one of them is going to..." get on your boat, and it did. "Fuck!" She panic channeled lightning from her palm and completely evaporated the zombie's face. Which would have been something to be proud of, had it not drawn the attention of dozens more to her scrumptious living flesh.
 
The strike from the heavens had done all the work, but Rinrose heaved, mouth agape, blue eyes still ablaze with fury from seeing a familiar face that was supposed to be at the bottom of the sea so she'd never have to see it again. Her sword felt heavy in her hand as it always did after a fight, like the steel had consumed the soul residing in the flesh or that blood had seeped into it, making it heavier with every strike that hit. There was yelling behind her, the scorpions were anchored, the men were running towards the stairs. Although she had offered to protect them, they didn't wait for her to follow after them.

Another flash of light, this time from the pier to the sea. Rinrose watched it strike the sea serpent, the torrential waves illuminated about. That was when she saw the boat with the undead climbing up the curved walls to try and get onto the deck. Another flesh of lightning, but this time from the boat. Did the strike from the skies happen because of whoever was on that boat? If so, Rinrose owed them one.

She sheathed her sword, raised up her hands and holding the vial of pale blue light to try and get their attention. She was no lighthouse, but maybe it would be enough to lead the magic-user to the shore, otherwise, they were a sitting duck for the zombies and the sea serpent whose body still reached across beneath rolling waves.

Behind Rinrose, one of the last men climbing up the wooden stairs had slipped. He fell down, down, down, hitting his head on all the sharp edges and landing bluntly with a crack from his neck, body and limbs twisted as if he were a doll discarded by a fickle child. Eyes were open and unblinking, the moonlight leaking through the pupils, the roar of waves echoed between two ears.
 
Heavy heart pump pumped through the whip of storm whilst the red web of woven script still sizzled across long ashen limbs. Wisps of steam rose through salt sprayed armor. Waterlogged breath pulled and loosed in streams and jets as Xanatos ground his teeth with horrid crunch. Kept their spine stacked tall and straight.

No matter how much each pump of blood and pull of air begged them fold over to the drawing out of an unseen blade. The transfer of a wound born unto another's flesh. For Xanatos to bear.

Still their arm willed sword to hack. Their fists drove steel through skull. Never mind the splinter. The stab. The pain. They would bleed through it. Grit through it. Bite and fight as all their bones and ligaments strained to will their flesh to act.
Red runes glowed white in a burning flash. A clamp that seared and squeezed and rung them down, marrow dry enough to crack.

Out fired the beam from scorpion overhead. Thin as a needle led thread against the dark steel grey of the storm shadowing as it crowded down from above. Bright white that turned to hues of dreams. Blazed to nightmares. Churned to the waking world in a roil of woven energy let loose against dead sea monster's live-again-flesh.
Jaw blown off, the beast thrashed.

Rain pelted, surf surged to waves that crashed and washed across the heavy wet sand. Sailors, live and live-again, tumbled and roiled in and out of the water. Ships crashed. Boats turned. All as the sea serpent whipped and whirled the shallows.
Xanatos fell to their knees. Breath boiled out of their throat. Coughed. Hacked. They forced air down their lungs as the runes went on burning. As their blood went on boiling. Steel clammed fingers spread through the silt and sand.

A white light burned ahead. Raised high over head. Xanatos swallowed down a breath and rose up to their feet again.

"Fall back!" they called out. Whole world frazzled and popped back from pools of star burned ink. Hissing and spitting whispers against the ringing in their ear. Own voice doubled over between the bones and teeth. "Squad Six! Organized retreat!" they cried out as the undead overwhelmed the gaped line of guardsmen.

Hack went the seneschal's bade. Whip and whack went its silvered steel streaked black with blood, and shined pale blue with vialed light. Pulled soldiers along. Shoved them up the stairway. Grabbed at the armored knight without a sword.

"It's time to go, condottiero!"
 
She thought she had a moment to take a breath, but the dead gave her only half at best. They climbed the hull of the Vagrant Breeze, clamboring over one another, some falling into the water below. All coming for her. Because she was alive, her beating heart a lighthouse for their hunger. They were like fire ants she had seen once, devouring a gazelle in Asharkan. She felt now the fear that the gazelle must have felt in its final moments.

The first hands grabbed the rail of the Breeze, and her eyes locked on to them in fear. Those cold, bony fingers. The face that snarled between the railing was vomiting black bile with bloodshot eyes. She pressed her back against the cabin wall. She knew that face, or, did, her heart skipped a beat at the realization. Once, hardly a fortnight ago he was smiling and hauling lines, he was young, and had so many years ahead of him, and now. And now this. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed. She slid along the stormslick wood of the cabin as more and more gnarled and broken fingers clawed at the railing, rocking it with a force she feared it would break free.

One of the creatures, (no, not creatures, Anemone reminded herself, they were people. Once,) spilled onto the deck of the ship where she stood. She fell backward with a yelp. Anemone raised her hand, channeling the storm above her, letting it flow through her like it did before feeling the hairs of her arms, on the back of her neck, raise with the static of a lightning strike soon to come, as the dead man climbed to his feet.

And there was nothing.

Not a spark, not a fizzle, nothing at all. The betrayal of the storm raging overhead tore at her worse than any of these monsters would, and in their dead bloodshot eyes and their cold determination, they were gods sent on tearing. She scrambled to her feet, wrapping around a barrel to pull herself up as she ran to the prow of the ship, realizing that this was it, there was nowhere else to go. As if to punctuate the finality of it all a brilliant white flare of retreat lit up the sky above her, casting all of the monstrous faces that pursued her into bright gnawing light.
 
Monroe was running, and fuck was it a burn she did not enjoy.

With every boot that hit the slicked docks, a pain shot up her legs. They used to be able to withstand agility and endurance, but she had taken over a year to find herself again. Where Monroe felt capable of fighting like she used to, her body had healing still yet to go, and even as it warned her she would exhaust soon, she chose to ignore it.

Her lungs were the next thing to burn. That scream over pelting rain and thunder and light. The image of Sinclayr falling. It was enough to boil something her body never forgot. Anger, that thought of a fight not ending the way she hoped things would go. She wanted to live. She wanted to go home. To the knight, the only way she could go home was if the commands of Sinclayr got them out from all of this alive.

Fire flared and Monroe knew the familiar warmth and heat of the shroud given gift of this element was beginning to catch. Even a small ember in her was enough to bolster her spirits.

Monroe ran. It was all she could do, to make sure they all survived this. Her ears rang after lightning struck nearby, the force of the sound hitting her but did not falter the strong strides she took. Not even the two waiting animated corpses that turned her way, stepping away from shadow and coming into the light of the lightning storm.

An ember of power was enough.

Monroe only slowed enough as her arms were in motion, an arrow nocked and ready within her bow. She loosed, eyes trained on the arrow's point and bid the iron there to burn and remember what element was used to forge it's shape. The fire took to it, a small bloom through the rain before it struck true to her target. The ember turned spark, and Monroe weaved a spell she knew well.

For the first time in near two years, Monroe's Pursuit of Flame called to her anew.
 
That blaze cuts right through all the drizzle and the chaos of the night; a shooting star, its spark screaming into supernova. It’s the best point of reference Osytha’s found so far in this fresh nightmare, so she picks her heading and closes in. Not upon the glaring crack of Flame way out there at arc’s terminus, but backward, to where that ember must first have come to life.

Her darting feet quickly set the knight before three figures. From their movements, their shape — it’s easy to tell even before Osytha gets close enough to see their briny rot, that two of them are recently dredged from the sea. She steps in toward one from vom tag, welcoming it to town with an oberhau that caves its head in. The other isn’t surprised, isn’t thrown off by the suddenness of her appearance. It simply lurches at Osytha the moment she makes herself know. She responds by shoving on the pommel with her lower hand, guiding the longsword at its crux with her upper. The blade wrenches free of one busted noggin with a zwerchhau that cracks deep into its second.

The strikes look so casual as to be downright lazy. In truth, they’re simply calculated — those are fairly rotted skulls to begin with, and the longsword’s leverage does most of the work for Osytha, anyway. No need to go tiring herself out first thing after getting here, not when she’s already been riding all night beneath those ominous moons. And she’ll bet there’s a ways to go for them all, yet.

Her eyes snap up from the second crumpling corpse to the last figure ahead. Bow, a burning bit of Shroud-weaving, and an expression that could sour milk with a glance? The woman’s hair is longer than it used to be, sure, but that’s still her alright.

“Syr Monroe?” She rises up a little from her low stance. “Et’s— et’s Osytha.”

She remembers good old Osytha, right? Right?

Osytha sure hopes she does. But just in case, she settles back into a relaxed sort of tag with the flat of her blade resting against her shoulder; prepared, but not brandishing. Her eyes rove away to watch their surrounds through the open visor of her sallet, and she moves to take up position beside the other knight. Sword, helm, and clamshells glimmer in the moonlights, but her gambeson drinks it up black. No hauberk for Osytha tonight, not against this foe. Better to stay mobile, better not to weigh herself down and wear herself out. That horde drags her to the ground and it won’t matter what she’s wearing.

“Order sent me. ’Eard tha wert back, an’ — shit, first things first. What dost tha need’st of me?”
 
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There was nowhere left to run. Anemone looked out among all of the dead faces, gnashing teeth, snarling black bile leaking from their lips. Their eyes were lifeless yet bloodshot as if clinging to some vitality long lost to them as they surged forward across the prow of the ship. Of her ship. She closed her fist, feeling a static crackle of the power she failed to summon before. It was truly quite an awful time for the gods to be absent.

If only, if only she could make it to the source of that flare that burned still high in the sky. If only she could find other survivors.

If only someone knew she still lived.

But the flare felt so very far away now with the horde of undead bearing down upon her. Anemone gulped, feeling a dry weight in her throat. A leap of faith it is then, even when her faith had so recently failed her. She bolted for the railing of the ship as the first of the gnarled rotten hands grabbed for her, launching herself overboard. For a moment she saw dozens of hands reaching up from the water, soaked drowning mouths hungry for flesh in the tide pool.

And she started to fall to meet them.

Her leap proved to be remarkably foolish, though the deck was some three stories above the dock proper, the distance to safe stone was far too much for one mortal to leap. Anemone called out one last time to her gods, her mind’s eye focusing. And the storm clouds above answered.

Her vision sparked instantly, bright white, as she felt her form shift from the physical. No skin, no bones, just pure concentrated energy. Her ears rang as she dissolved incorporeal.

The air burst around her in a harsh and resounding thunderclap that rattled her to her core as she spilled out in the form of mortal flesh, tumbling, sliding along the middle of the docks. The air tasted of static and ash in her mouth as she picked herself up to her feet. Whatever distance she needed to escape the monsters that pursued her, she had launched herself several times that, but will no doubt have paid for her journey with several fresh new bruises.

But the pain can wait for later. Anemone blinked, steeling herself. There is the direction of the flare. And toward it Anemone ran.
 
The Dawn Knight's arrow arched red and white through the grey night. It landed true, buried deep in the already-split jaw of the leviathan. Fire ate away at the coiling serpent from within, blistering beneath scales down its gullet and into ichor-filled belly. Cracked wounds of battles long gone glowed as embers. Black blight oozed like tar from the leviathan's mouth.

With a sizzle and a whine, its long neck collapsed against the docks. Wood splintered, and waves crashed against its bulk. A sopping wet heave came from the leviathan, one last pulse of movement in the middle of its ribs. It couldn't have been a breath.

"Fall back!"
"FALL BACK!" ​

The order came, echoed from its source. Sailors and guardsmen fled the docks and the shoreline. Pulled each other into the safety of the cobbled streets. All but a few - the ones who would not abandon the collapsed Lady Sinclayr, and the ones who'd lived through a Wave before, and knew better.

"It ain't over yet, kin," called out a dwarf with a rusty brown beard. He stomped along on one wooden leg. "Ready yourselves for the reverb!"

One giant lay felled. And behind it, a thousand skittering, crawling, dripping pinching men and mollusks emerged from the deep. Most mangled beyond recognition. Some fresh enough to still gibber madness. All with a blighted rage in them that crashed hard against those that struggled on the shore.

An Astersaari sailor with indigo-hued skin cut down one of the drowned dead before it could get a foothold on the docks. Next to him, a wayward weaver clattered down on the decking and gotten herself a few new bruises.

"Hey, did you just see that lass fall out of the storm?" But no one else had seen her, and she was already running away.

"Nevermind that, come help me with this doohickey," urged the dwarf. He was unscrewing something important from one of the Scorpions. The Astersaari sheathed his sword and caught a valve just as it threatened to spin loose. Took both their might to twist the damn thing the other way.

The warmachine whirred, and the crystal at its center glowed a pearlescent white. And the dead, they crawled towards it as moths to a flame.

"That's right, just a little closer," urged the dwarf. "Thisaway, you dumb dead shits."
 
The lightning returned, but Rinrose could not see where the lightning maker had gone. Longer than she expected to, the condottiero stared at the sea. Though she had fought many undead, more were coming. The aberrated behemoth had not been her concern for she was smart enough to know that she could do little against it. IHer sword would be like a toothpick, a mild annoyance. It was wiser for her to come to the shore to protect those that had to anchor in the warmachines. Those shuffling towards her had been put to rest again. She'd do it a third, a fourth, even a fifth time if she had to.

A hand on her shoulder strung her up from the hazy reverie like a meathook, sharp clarity inthe moment if only because her guard had fallen. She almost swung her sword around to lop off a head yet Rinrose heard the voice clearly despite waves and storms still swirling in her ears. A flash of lightning and that was followed by a deafening scream instead clap of thunder. Quickly, back to attention, Rinrose turned towards the man. She pulled her sword out of the body she had stabbed in her daze, the sea taking the bloated form back into its foam and salt.

"I'm behind you." A shout that couldn't waver, even as adrenaline kept coursing through her bones. Rain bounced off her armor and made the sand sticky beneath her feet.. Rinrose was no liar, following after the man. She could see his other men climbing up the steps, jumping over the man that had fallen and broke his neck on the steps. She sheathed her sword before going up the steps, careful to hold onto the wobbly railing to guide her up, up, up.

Above the sea, she could see the next wave of undead coming to the shore. Rinrose breathed out a curse. Was she a fool for thinking she had slain many? Had she turned into the exact sort of commander she detested, the ones who believed every great things about them, who exaggerated their feats and believed in them? But on the sand she could see the dozens of bodies and creatures she had put down, and the many bodies were impressive.

All it amounted to was a single drop in the bucket. The great sea and Beloved Moon would not be stopped by a handful of mortals who were so small and insignificant that they were like a dust mote, invisible unless the sun granted them a moment of grace and yet always so inconsequential. All of Rinrose's skill and experience, the bravery and tenacity of the men, the mechanical scorpions and shroudweaving wouldn't quell a entity that had been there before life began and would still be there when all life ceased to exist.

Rinrose saw the last of the stragglers retreat, turned her head and could see the fallen Sinclayr. This time, she could get a good look at the destruction caused by the leviathan and the damned thing itself. She saw the sailor and dwarf messing with the scorpions.
 
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