Shapes, distant or not. Chains, dots of light swirling about, voices screaming in the distance. Words that seemed to utter themselves, even structures that morphed from man to building. Implicitly blinding.
But familiar.
Within it, Merrin reached for those intimate weaves--the winding weaves that yielded themselves to his control. The wind. With that, feeling their fervid state across his wholeness--a figuration of the nature of the world's weather, he marshaled their obedience.
They whispered.
Suddenly, the boy who glided towards the beast was thrown back, rolling through the air, back smashing into the rim of the ship, pain-filled, but alive.
Good!
But not enough. Something burned within Merrin like kindling fed on the driest of wood. Again, he stood in that narrow cave, watching the bodies of his friends scattered across the walls and darkened earth, bloody. The fallen munching on the flesh of his Brother--leim.
That was still the matter for vengeance!
He screamed, perhaps an obvious mistake as the creature, the Fallen Beast, as was its rank, being eyeless, turned, maw, blood-stained around the edges, legs unstable atop the raven-stained floors.
It had noted him, and Merrin, blade in hand, poised.
"Come!" He drowned the fear--a Caster could achieve such things, the world narrowing around his ocular perception. The sounds fading, even the maddening crackle of the heaven's judgment went mute before his ears.
There was only the blade and its mark!
The creature floundered, maw contracting in opened and closed stages. It closed in, the sky flashing with a bright whiteness. Not thunder, no, the sound was like the blaring of a mighty trumpet. Loud. Distracting. The beast launched, Merrin stepped to the side, the inky waters nearly stealing him of his balance.
Annoying really.
He gritted, the monster slapping to the side of the ship's edge, eyeless face woobly from some obvious disorientation. Good. Merrin lashed, the wind curling through his feet. Upwards, he went, drilling down into the unsuspecting beast.
His blade sank into moist, warm flesh, murky blood fountaining onto his face. More black atop the inky waters. He panted, mist escaping his lips in hard wheezes. Below him, pinned under his knees, was the Fallen—a rank one Fallen Beast. Weak. Useless.
Merrin clenched around the stoneknife. "You couldn't have struggled more?" He mouthed. "MIST YOU!"
The boy, trembling by the side, pointed, his free hand cupped around his lips. "You killed it!"
"Anyone could have."
"You flew!"
"The wind is easy."
"How..."
Mentation blurred the boy out from his awareness, his eyes locked feverishly on the black, bloodied corpse of the fallen. Lying there, twitching. In it, Merrin saw his witnesses. Their bodies scattered across the floor, steaming. In it, he saw the countless infected by the Selunn plague. In it, he saw ruin.
Just like you!
Light beamed across the sky, a flash of whiteness illuminating the form of the dead thing. A useless carcass...But instead, lying there, eyes wide, staring back at him was a face of utter familiarity.
A narrow jawline, sharp-edged eyes, taut skin, blackened hair, but odd as though sprinkled with ashes. It was himself...Staring dead at him.
This is me if I die!
He panicked, legs kicking off the wooden floors, back smashing into a ligneous mast of the ship. There, he panted, heart banging hard within his ribs.
Mist the hypocrite in me! He tightened his fists.
I don't fear death.
Am I ready to die?
Tears flowed down his cheeks.
I don't want to die!
Something hammered into the side of the ship, wood flying off into the air. Waters. Black, splashing into its form, staining the already murky woods with deeper blacks. Alarming. The ship.
What is happening?
The ship tipped. Left side dipping into the surface of the vast ocean, sinking, tenebrous waters rising into the half length of the vessel. But more, there, in the darkness of those waters, was a shadow. A flowing thing that reached up for the ship.
A tentacle!
Merrin shot up into the sky!
Abruptly, he pierced the wind, the screams of the boy below assaulting the inmost senses. It was too much. The rain battering across his skin, the wind screaming at the little man who dared defy its storms. It would claim him.
Everything sought to end him!
Merrin gulped, above, floating 8 meters above the waters...Above the largest ships. There, eyes wide to all of Eastos. Merrin saw it all. Then came the curse of his ocular prowess.
It was an unnerving closeness--to see them. The boy being dragged into the waters, that large tentacle wrapping around his form, pulling him into the depths of the unknown. He was gone. Just like that. Without any true witness that counted, a life was no more.
And there was more...The waters were filled with boats, Men paddling hard towards some invisible crack or land that marked their freedom. The large ships, some at least filled with cohorts that barked orders at each other. One, he noted, cupped his palm around a candle, another throwing balls of flame into the air.
Futile.
Anyone could grasp that trueness. Even if the rain did not kill the candle flame, the sheer storm doused every ball of redness thrown out. There was a woman on that ship, though, seemed the leader...She was missing an arm, blood seeping out from the current wounds. A missing limb. Beside her, dead on the ground was a fallen. Eyeless, same with the one he had killed.
She had done that.
Merrin's heart slowed.
That woman, blade in hand, the living hand, screamed orders, eyes burning with that singular determination to exist. To survive. To make it out of this horror with her cohort. Even though some of them were littered across the deck of her ship, dead. Yet, even with that, she pressed on.
Twenty minutes....that was all she had in mind.
Twenty minutes to safety!
So little time.
Something flipped off the sea--a dark mass. Large, body sleek, glossy like the shiniest metal.
Merrin felt cold.
It crashed into their ship--the whole vessel exploding into shards that sank into the waters. Some floated up after the descent. All wood. Not a single body. Impossible, he thought. A whole ship--humans that gritted and thought themselves the chosen ones. The ones that would survive.
All had died!
Shouldn't people like this be the ones to live? He looked down, beams of white firing out from the Nightfell wall in the distance. None really hit their marks, emptying instead into the vast ocean.
Nothing was helping!
The storm churned up in higher defiance...screaming! Merrin could hear it...In the distance, another blast of the tempest was coming. By the heavens, what would that bring? More death. More chaos?
Does the Almighty allow for such things?
Why?
Something caught his eye down below. A single mast that fell slowly into the inky waters. On it, legs coiled around the wood, was a girl. Dark, shortened hair, dressed in all black. Her dark cloak clinging softly around her skin. She was persisting! Panting, eyes closed against the coming storm...By the almighty, she was persisting!
Should someone like that die too?
A rumble filled the heavens, bright flashes of light casting fervent radiance across the world. It was coming. The grandfather of the storm. Prime and ready for the desolation of life. And yes, it would end them all. The ships, the boats, the living, and the dead.
All fell to the storm.
Merrin looked down at that woman.
But...
He dropped from the sky, the screeching loud across his ears. It was speaking. Perhaps, be it in the weakness within, he could hear the resistance of the air. Don't go. Save yourself. You have done enough. It wouldn't even work regardless.
But...
Merrin stilled them all..
Just one...He thought. Just one!
The second wave of the storm was drawing closer; he could taste it, could hear it. It would clash into her, and toss her, shred her into unrecognizable pieces. It shouldn't. A thing of the creation of God should have no right to harm His children.
There, he saw it, the tip of the pole. There. He reached for it, fingers gripping around the wood. It swung him, body rounding the stake, legs kissing the topest layer of the raven waters.
He arched, legs coiling around the staff, eyes looking out to that wall of second storm...Coming. The sky darker, the air louder, the sea chaotic. All of it.
Merrin reached for it, felt their resistance. Their will to churn harder.
Mist it all!
Mist all of their desires!
He swung up!
And the world screamed to his order.
The storm parted, a bright whiteness erupting out from his body. Massive. The thunder bent in their strikes, the wind stilled in their push, even the foamy blackness above trembled for a moment.
All was made calm.
Thus, on the edge of the nightfell Walls, Tyrion Driftpoint from Clan Driftpoint of the Driftpoint island stood with his braided hair, wet around his neck, and saw then, a wall of whiteness erupt at the horizon of the sea. It expanded like an orb of radiance, brightening up the oceans, the skies, everything.
What was that?
Recorded from the personal words of a surviving Nightsailer from the specified run