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< 1 >
Hours after dark, when the villagers were abed, a little boy stood upon the rocky shore gazing out to the horizon except that there was no horizon. Morpesok was so far north that there was naught but the grey ocean stretching out into the Neverending Dark, the empty void that marked the border of Teyvat.
In other places, the sky was painted with the glorious colours of the aurora borealis. But not here; not in Morpesok beyond which was the Edge of the world.
Morpesok; where the cottages bracketed the bay and the tiny harbour, each one facing out to the grey ocean and the grey sky and the emptiness beyond, despite the shared refusal to see the fate that awaited the world.
The child didn't know any of that, of course; he was just a boy and the fishermen stayed close to shore because their boats were small, flimsy things not designed for the deeper sea. No-one in Morpesok spoke of the Edge. No-one looked at it or acknowledged it because everyone knew that it consumed the minds of those who did.
Only once had the child gazed thus during daylight. He had been dragged away by his terrified, angry grandmother and lectured until he thought his ears would bleed.
But he didn't understand because he was only a little boy and Granny's fear and anger and lecture went in one ear and out the other because his eyes were already darkening more than anyone of Morpesok could stand to see.
So, they stopped seeing him.
After the lecture, he only went to the shore at night and spent hours gazing upon the Edge of All Things. Alone in the cold and dark, lulled by the sound of the sea, his mind emptied of useless thoughts and the demands of his family, he drifted like a stick cast upon the waves.
The Edge gazed back and it saw him as the humans could not.
The child was innocent.
Pure
Unaware
Disconnected
Empty
He was the perfect vessel to carry the legacy of the Void if only he could be brought into reach of it; the rage within, born of neglect, needed to be given an outlet before it destroyed him.
If he could not reach the Veil, perhaps he would accept a gift of power delivered to him.
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In the ocean between the shore and the Edge he often he saw whales, singly or in pods. Some nights, the quiet air was full of their songs.
Sometimes, whales came close to shore, as near as possible without beaching and he did his best to sing with them, as much as his weak human voice could manage.
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The Edge was beautiful.
Sometimes, he glimpsed distant specks of light or a shimmer as though it was a veil of fine cloth such as a Lady might wear in the stories his big sister Anya enjoyed. He fancied that beyond it was a different aurora made of stardust and midnight dreams.
One night, a bright speck fell through the Veil and raced across the night-grey sky like a comet until it impacted almost on the shore with a mighty burst of seawater. From where he stood, the child could see the glow of the fallen speck, distorted by the movement of the sea.
The child's gaze was fixed on the speck, which glowed like the stars beyond the Veil. Slowly he picked his way along the rocks until he was over the deep pool where the speck now lay.
He reached his hand toward it despite it being well beyond his reach; he knew only that he wanted it. He was barely aware of the brightening glow that consumed his sight and the actinic purple-blue-white flare that flashed from the speck to his hand.
He felt the spark push past the barrier of his skin and the pain of it as it zapped up the nerves of his arm and spread through his body.
He might have screamed but he knew nothing of that.
He collapsed forward into the waves and, with a flick of his tail, slipped free of the constraints of human flesh.
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< 2 >
The narwhal pod welcomed him and led him out to sea where they could play and teach him how to live in the waves that crashed against the Edge of the world.
The ocean was full of life and the little narwhal was a mere snack for much larger creatures. From his new family, he quickly learned to hide, to dodge away, and to use his size to his advantage. He felt loved and cared for as he never did in the village by the sea where alone had been his experience since the baby's birth and unseen had become usual since he began to visit the shore.
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A new threat invaded the narwhals' territory in the form of humans and their ships and sharp weapons. They weren't from the village though; the fisher-folk had no ships like this and would never attempt to hunt over the deep ocean.
These people were merciless and persistent, uncaring if their targets were pups or pregnant females. All they cared for was bloodshed and the meat and horns they could harvest.
This was his family!
The little narwhal was a determined creature, and he retained enough of human instinct that he had a very human urge for revenge. If the humans hunted the pod, he would hunt them back. He was sleek and fast and, more usefully, he had been human once and could probably do it again.
It took several days to figure out how to access the ball of power that filled him with warmth instead of the cold emptiness that had been his lot since the baby was born.
A mostly-human shape hauled itself onto a rock that rose out of the sea. It was night-time and he was much closer to the Edge than when he stood on the shore. He could see the faint sparkle of distant stars and the ripple of the Veil.
The Void gazed back at the tiny mortal. It was pleased that the infant had figured out how to use its gift so quickly.
The pup's attention was on his legs which were very much a tiny tail rather than the regular human arrangement. How had he done this?
He tried again, but instead discovered that his narwhal shape was much easier to achieve. Well, he thought, as he flicked his tail and sped away to find the pod, swimming is much faster.
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He was almost at the place where the humans kept their ships when he realised that the flotilla of hunters was already leaving the harbour.
Rage and hate boiled over. He didn't think he could bear it if more of his family were murdered today.
The empty space inside his chest burned like the white fire that transformed him originally but it had become part of him that day and, although it throbbed like a bruise, it didn't hurt. If anything it felt… pleasant.
He didn't understand what was happening until his body shifted unprompted.
He tripled in size and his colour changed to a dark purple-black. His horn gleamed like blue steel and the dark light of the Edge glinted off the sharp point.
He leaped from the sea over the rearmost ship, noting that one man was at the harpoon and two more were in the cabin.
Below the waves, he circled once, twice, hearing the shouts of the men.
Then he powered up through waves and rammed into the bottom of the ship.
His horn stabbed into the hull as though it was as soft as butter.
Getting free required a lot of wriggling as he tried to swim backward, but eventually he slid clear and dove away.
(The lack of arms was really inconvenient)
The ship wasn't sinking though. He swung around and rammed it again, this time aiming to make a long slice instead of a hole. Presumably the water would pour in more easily than through a small hole, just like a long cut bled more.
As the ship started to sink, the three men leaped into the water and tried to swim to the other ships that were circling around to get a shot at the murderous beast.
The narwhal twisted away from a harpoon and his horn pierced through one of the men before he dove away beneath the ships. The other two sailors made it to a rope ladder and were starting to climb when the beast burst out of the ocean and body-slammed the ship, knocking both of them back into the sea. Conveniently next to each other, the predator opened its jaws wide, grabbed both men, and dragged them down to drown.
Stay Beneath The Ships
Don't Let Them Target You
The not-so-little narwhal startled at the voice that seemed to echo through the sea. It wasn't whalesong, though it was similar.
It was good advice. He chose a target and aimed along the keel, shredding the plating. Getting free from the longer cut was easier too, helped by the ship's forward momentum that dragged them apart.
A harpoon grazed a painful cut into his side near his tail so he targeted that ship next. While the sailors were focused on the water, he leaped like a dolphin and slammed his massively increased armoured mass into the foremast he passed over the ship. With a terrible cracking sound, it bent and broke, and fell into the mainmast, collapsing the sails.
While the sailors panicked and scurried about, he rammed another ship, narrowly avoiding another couple of harpoons, but not the third, which plunged into his side.
He dove deep, using the crippled ship for cover since it couldn't turn and the fallen masts were blocking other ships' proximity.
You Must Transform Into Water
So That The Weapon Falls Away
Reforming Your Body Will Heal The Wounds
≠But I don't know how!≠ The pup was seriously hurt and distressed and was terrified that he'd failed his family.
You Have Been Very Brave, Young One
Do Not Fear: I will Teach You
Simply Follow My Instructions…
Healed and back in the supersized form, the narwhal powered through the ocean to return to the fight. In the interval, the three gutted ships had sunk and the crews had been retrieved and were upon the two remaining vessels.
They were retreating to the safety of their harbour. That wouldn't do.
He came up under a keel to tear it open and dive away again before the crews could react. He went deep while he circled around, waiting until the ship sank before he struck the last.
He could hear the humans panic as their last refuge shuddered under the impact and the cold sea poured in. Deliberately, he circled deep, giving them time to lower a lifeboat. A very human feeling of malice suffused his emotions. He knew he'd won – this was about tormenting the sailors.
They began to row – and the narwhal burst from the waves to crash down on the boat. His weight broke it in two, spilling men into the cold ocean. Shark-like, the pup swam in circles, letting them see his horn and dorsal fin, taunting them with the finality of their struggle.
Come To Me Child
Join Me In The Endless Reaches Of The Void
< 3 >
A boy fled from rifthounds spilling from a forest rift and fell into Darkness.
He fought and bled and consumed corruption with every bite of flesh and breath of air.
He changed, adapted and survived.
Died.
But the Abyss does not loosen its grip on those it claims. The boy was reborn as something other – more than the human boy and more than the twisted beings of the Abyss.
He wasn't a cursed, condemned creature with limited autonomy chained to the Abyss. He had changed and adapted before his rebirth and so, no matter that corruption would have killed his mortal body, now it preserved him.
He learned and fought and grew stronger.
His teacher showed him how to use the corruption that maintained him to toughen his bones and muscles and skin and to armour himself against the greater dangers. She gave him the tools to reach beyond mere survival.
The stubborn drive that had filled his spirit long before his childhood ended in Darkness guided him to ever-more dangerous opponents because from each one he gained more skill, learned more techniques, grew stronger.
Her Master watched the seeming of a human boy race around in wild pursuit of more and saw what his apprentice had: There was no end to the boy's hunger. In that, he was equal to the greed of the Abyss which could never be sated.
"Give him to me. I will put him in the path of a greater entity and we will see what he is capable of."
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Master's Master took Ajax beyond the territory he knew to some more distant region. It was darker here and the touch of the Abyss was far weaker.
He could see stars as though through a thin curtain of water.
Another Child
Abyssborn; Already Awakened
Ajax looked around. The Voice echoed through the Darkness but seemed to have no source. He shivered, unnerved. He was small and skinny, standing barefoot upon cold black stone, wearing only the ragged remains of his trousers and a rough tunic made from the skin of some creature that Master had used to teach him skinning, tanning and the basics of leatherworking.
Then he lifted his chin because he was too stubborn to give up no matter what new eldritch horror awaited him.
Come, Child
My Child Would Like A Companion For A Time
The curtain of water seemed to part, revealing the same black stone rising in broken steps that ended in a platform of sorts. Beyond…?
Ajax was always curious and hated to be constrained. It was that adventurous desire to see what lay beyond the limitations of sight that ultimately brought him to the Abyss. This lure was no different to the village palisade or a tall mountain.
He climbed the steps and saw clearly the vast Void speckled with tiny spots of light, scattered widely at the edges of the panorama but swept into a tightening swirl towards the centre like milk in coffee.
He felt his jaw gape and his mind shut down, horrified by the awful unending vastness and his miniscule existence in the face of it.
…?
…!?
…?!?
A shadow that reminded him of the shape of a large fish beneath the ice swept by below his perch.
His damned curiosity was caught again. Ajax leaned forward to look, seeing only more of the Void beneath his perch – then his eyes caught the movement of something against the backdrop. His eyes flicked, Abyssal enhancements picking out the shape, seeing the purple-black-grey patterns that decorated the skin of a large whale, and the metallic glint of its horn…
Narwhal
They were rare in the waters beyond Morpesok – had been hunted almost to extinction several years ago, so papa told him. He'd never seen a real one before, no matter that the priest had told him it was the shape of his destiny.
(The priest had refused to explain further. Papa told Ajax that the old man was a drunkard and not to think about such things)
The creature swept around as though swimming through water, leaping like a dolphin before a flick of its tail brought it close to the perch. Obedient to an instinctual urge, Ajax reached out, careful fingers touching the horn before he leaned dangerously forward into the Void to pet the beast's face.
The narwhal made an eerie sound, haunted and longing; as though seeking something long lost.
His Abyssal senses were trying to tell him something but it made no sense… He leaned closer, letting the Abyss flow through him, and trilled a question. ≠What do you need?≠
Brother, come swim with me
≠How? There's no water≠
The Infinite Sea has no need for liquid
You are already Changed. Trust me
Ajax frowned. ≠My transformation can survive even here? Are you the Child the Voice mentioned?≠
I am the Child of the Void
The Abyss is lesser kin of sorts, like an aunt
You are my brother
Suddenly he understood what he was smelling.
Home
Blood-kin
He released his grip on the Adaptation and let the Change take him.
Double the size, he was still tiny against the narwhal's bulk, but his power expressed outward as Master Skirk taught him, into reinforced flesh and bone and plates of armour, scales and claws. Easily, he climbed upon the broken railing that edged part of the perch – and leaped into the Void.
"That… was unexpected. I thought he would seek to steal its power core."
Skirk glared at her Master's back. Of course the feral imp leaped into the Infinite to swim with a giant bloody whale! He's a true-born explorer! How in the Nine Hells am I to retrieve him now?
< 4 >
On a rocky outcropping two boys laid side by side. The shared features marked them as siblings, although the graceful tail was new.
"I was about eight when you vanished, Anthon. I think you must have been six. We thought you were dead."
"Mother gave me power, Ajax. I turned into a narwhal pup. The pod loved me far more than the humans did so I stayed with them. And when the hunters started killing us, I sank the fleet with Mother's advice and guidance but I had changed again into my big form so I came here to be with Mother."
"I don't know what to do, Anthon. The Abyss has made me a monster. I can't go home."
"Stay with me then. Mother can help you find a swimming form and we can be together forever."
Ajax smiled. He was overjoyed to have found his little brother. He knew he'd miss home, and Tonia and Teucer but he wasn't really Ajax any more; he'd become something else and he doubted Morpesok would be able to accept him.
(He was fourteen; in the five or six years since Anthon vanished, he'd seen how the villagers avoided the Edge. Worse; he'd seen the way his parents tried to forget they'd ever had a fifth child)
(He knew they were already trying to forget their fourth too)
He felt an upwelling of contentment that drowned out the bitter resentment. Clearly, this was the destiny the priest had mentioned; he only had to look out at the vast sea of stars to feel the compelling desire to explore he wonders that lay beyond the limitations of sight.
"I'll stay," he assured his little brother. After all, family was the most important thing in life. What sort of evil villain would he be if he abandoned him now?
Another Child
How Delightful
We Will Seek More Companions To Join Your Pod
Mother was very pleased.
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