Chapter Text
"Legends change depending on who tells them, Phaedra." The head of the Bonefish loomed over the side of the Mantaluna, wearing the soul of the plesiosaur that seemed to be his favorite of the creatures in his macabre repertoire. The ghostly princess broke from her story with a start and turned to face the intrusion upon her tale. An all-too-familiar toothy grin greeted her, too large for even the huge face of the dinosaur soul. The red eyes that burned against the velvet indigo darkness of the night sky gave a blunt indication that the grin was anything but joyful.
"I'm surprised at you, really." Cheth continued, this time from his favored male soul on the exact opposite side of the ship. "That even as you are, you'd have the audacity to tell that story and get it all wrong." He leaned casually on the railing, looking towards Phaedra intently.
"Really?" The manta princess interjected defiantly, whipping around to meet the flippant gaze of the aspect of Cheth on the ship with a determined glare of her own. "Well, then, how would you describe the Tide Wanderer? One of your favorite minions?" She crossed her arms in front of her, ready to fight whatever argument the death god could give.
"Why, yes!" Cheth gleefully replied, "He most assuredly was! But that, my dear little princess, is entirely beside the point!"
"As I was saying," Cheth's favorite female soul cooed from the bow, having joined the increasingly crowded space while everyone was distracted by his other aspects, "the legend changes depending on the storyteller."
The female soul sauntered across the deck towards the increasingly annoyed blue princess as he continued, “After all, would your beloved plume church recognise you now, as heroic devotees?” Cheth paused to point a finger at Phaedra’s forehead, hovering just millimeters from the skin. He pulled away with a small “tsk” and a reprimanding waggle of the same finger when the princess took a swipe at his hand. “Because I think they'd see a cabal of evil spirits off to commit atrocities in my name.”
The two Cheth aspects on the deck joined each other in front of the princess, adding in unison, “We all know the truth, of course.”
(Behind the now thoroughly disgruntled and distracted princess, the plesiosaur variant of Cheth beckoned another of Phaedra’s spectral crew to come closer. It took very, very little to get Lani’s over-excitable attention. Similarly little effort was required to convince her to translate a ghost story for the benefit of the child onboard, though he did have to concede that she could omit anything too intense for “his cute wittle ears!”)
With Phaedra still steaming, Cheth continued to speak as if he had said nothing incendiary whatsoever.
“You’ve been told the Tide Wanderer was cursed, that he was once my only herald, that he was coerced,” The male aspect began the story, “but the truth of the matter-”
“- from someone who was actually there-” Added the female aspect.
“- is that he was far more like you than you realize.” The male aspect of Cheth returned to leaning on the railing. “He beat me, but he himself chose not to leave the sea.”
“It was completely-” The female aspect interjected, looking towards the door to the ship’s interior where he knew there was still a reasonable amount of wine in storage.
“- and utterly-” the male aspect continued.
“- out of my hands!” The end of the sentence came from all around, every distant voice of the Red Tide seeming to speak in haunting unison.
The sea quieted, and stunned silence ruled the deck for only a moment before Phaedra could no longer prevent herself from interjecting. “What in Goddess’ name do you mean he chose to stay?! Who in their right mind would choose to stay like- like this?!” She gestured frantically to herself and took a single step towards the god of death before he stopped her in her tracks with four words.
“Someone who was murdered.” He stated flatly, reaching down to grab a bottle of the Mantaluna’s wine from the hand of another aspect of himself. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“It was a long time ago, too long for anyone still living to remember him. He was a Lodestar, inquisitive with a predisposition to choose his lines of study with no regard for the approval of any authority other than his own. This ultimately proved fatal, unfortunately.” All aspects of Cheth wore a brief expression of sorrow. The expression completely lost upon Phaedra and her companions, not upon Pavel behind her, who returned his sympathy in kind.
“When he challenged me…” In his mind, Cheth traveled back to that fateful day, meeting eyes he had seen before, eyes he understood a little too well. There was a look that could only belong to those who had been killed out of malice, and who knew too well how brief their time would be if they won back their own lives. It was tired, frantic, hopeless. Cheth had been all too ready for the man to give himself up without a fight.
That was when the first surprise had come.
“He didn’t want to win, he wanted to have an interview. With me!” Cheth laughed, a manufactured bit of levity in the middle of a story he wasn’t sure why he had started to tell. (He tried to tell himself it was a chance to catch the princess being undeniably wrong. He wasn’t convinced.)
“In the most infuriating move any soul has made against me until you came along,” He paused to look pointedly at Phaedra, “He chose the longest card game he could think of. Told me that if there was no point in winning, he may as well have learned the secrets of death as his final achievement. As I recall, I made no promise to answer any of his questions.”