The sinking feeling grabbed hold of Anselm, slow at first as if inevitable sinking sand. There was nothing any member of the boat could do, outside of perhaps Feira, who if more skilled would have found herself just as captured as Anselm had. Ancient as he was, having witnessed the unthinkable more times than an average man could boast seeing the mundane, still Anselm had never in all his years of Auristics stumbled upon such a sensation. It gripped at his soul, with the despair of loss. A feeling Anselm had shed long before, if indeed he had ever felt it at all. A feeling so frigid like the water's depths that it seemed akin to death. Not from the side Anselm knew, the ethereal bodiless side, but instead a very attached mortal grieving. Had Anselm been one to cry, it very might have well happened.
For, the slow sensation began to accelerate alarmingly, before long he felt as if there were a rock tired to his throat, ripping him downward into the depths of the ocean. Pressure built around him, increasingly painful, though no more than he had felt before. And then, in the haze of overwhelming stimuli which possessed itself somewhere beyond him there came that familiar bonfire. Intense waves of conflicting, and primarily aggressive energy came at him with a sudden force. And there was instantly no seduction in the power, but instead an unstoppable threat. The light collided with Anselm, his mind, and ripped painfully through him.
So hold and icy was the seering hunger Anselm suddenly felt. As if an animal ripped apart, and delivered back into the wild with no food. As if, perhaps, Anselm himself needed food. And how bazaar the sensation was, to need such an archaic sustenance, that his body crumpled over painfully onto the base of the boat. Had he more control Anselm would find himself in a frenzy, but instead pitiful and painful whimpers fell from him, as he had done to him what could not be stopped. The beast shot painfully to his core, then passed, with an eery release.
For a moment it seemed finished, concluded. However, when Anselm attempted to break his connection to the djed connection he found himself in another place. Opening his eyes, he was surrounded by water, and bazaar corals. They were alive and flushed with color. Some glowed to give a florescent appearance to the surfaces of the domed constructs around him. He found himself in come natural room, carved of coral. He could feel the life pulsing around him, spread about the coral with nothing less than a true, and unbridled love. One that again struck Anselm harshly to the core.
As the feeling rushed relentlessly through him the water before him began to condense. First the specter before him appeared much as the shark has, almost transparent, with pulsing veins, but then a thicker layer of skin covered the humanoid shape, and finally large dark eyes came forth from within it. The amorphous specter quickly shaped itself into another waterfolk. At first seeming like the one that had been devoured by the monster, it quickly revealed itself to be another. Anselm could feel the charoda, her blood, and how it coursed the same through hers than it did through the devoured charoda. They were sisters. This semi-tranparent figure before him was the sister of the one that was devoured.
She reached out to Anselm, a pleading and pained expression in her eyes. One much a mirror of the emotions forced upon Anselm in that moment. How cruel a state of being it was. Pained and desperate, mourning. And then, guilt. A deep red liquid, blood, began seeping from the charoda's mouth into the water within the lively coral home. As the blood touched upon the walls and ceiling the coral died, growing grey and fragile. Massive amount of blood lefts the petite charoda, and then through the parted mouth came teeth protruding, then further deformation. The charoda warped and grimaced as the audible effects of popping cartilage came, and her mouth turned to ferocious jaws, familiar enough to Anselm who had witnessed the sister's death first hand.
More and more that Charoda flexed and altered between this monstrous seeming, and the humane. And, the conflict of djed made perfect sense to Anselm. The creature was not of one soul, or body, but two. The way in which two forms could be combined lay beyond Anselm's understanding, however, in some way two living essences had bound, warped and forced into a single being. One captured between overwhelming hunger, and an intense reluctance to feed upon the living. They conspired to destroy one another, and ultimately destroy themselves.
The rest of the crew found Anselm, huddling in pathetic shivers and cries. His hood fell loose in a particular thrash outward at nothing, rocking the boat dangerously, and from his ear could be seen life liquid of the nuit seeping out. He was in pain, and hurt, as if put under intense pressure. Whatever magic worked upon him was beyond the metaphysical, lapsing to the physical. Still in some bazaar state of deliberance his arm forcefully continues reaching out toward the beast. No longer pointing, but sprawled almost desperately, and fearfully, toward it. As if beckoned.
Still the beast circled slowly, allowing the crew to prepare. Poole, without question, tied easily accessible rope to the spear, knotting in an expert fashion. He gave an almost respecting look to Tallis as he gathered his sword back up, and moved back to his post. His compassion for Anselm was little, and he made a silent vow to be the first to shove a sword through him if he got violent. Mages.
Poole had no practice with the spear, and so it got neglected upon it's original conqueror, Leigo. It seemed the plan was following together as intended. The blood soaked the waters around the ship, but no other beasts seemed to wish to approach, and their beast still circled patiently. The blood would not trigger it's rage. There was something else.
Tallis' djed clung easily to the thick blood surrounding the boat, more so than the salty water. But still, it reached out, draining him slowly. He would have one decent shot at this, and even then would risk his own restrain in the process. With luck the djed would save them, however without luck it could claim them utterly. Tallis knew this well, that if unchecked he could destroy them all in madness. Perhaps only himself, but likely them all. One shot...
Feira felt an itching at her skin after pulling Tallis back up. There was a unity in the boat, finally after the foolish selfish hustle at first threat the crew had found there footing, and with it their wits. All except Anselm who had found himself crippled under the weight of something that seemed somehow familiar to Feira. In a way she couldn't explain, in a way that almost seemed clairvoyant in nature. Something odd was pulsing out of him, something that tickled at the natural strands of auristics that hung from her without focus, it pulled on her, but not as hard as it had the more experienced aurist. Instead a soft whisper seemed to run across the wind around her. At first it fell drown behind the clatter of and shifting of her crew, and the lapping of bloody water on the wood, but then became louder and louder. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to. I fought it. Yandra, I couldn't. Please, save me. Please, stop me. Please, stop me. Please," the sound grew strong and strong in Feira's ears, pounding unforgiving like her heart. How much the voice sounded like the Charoda which had been devoured before them all.
Just as the mantra met it's peak a sudden change came forth, one the whole crew could perceive. Anselm arched his backed, rising his decrepit face upward to the sky and yelled forth, "End me!"
The outburst pulled the Nuit forth, a sudden disorienting crack of Djed, forcing him back into his body. And he knew, it was time. The Charoda spirit could hold the wild beast at bay no longer. It was time, the beast was coming. The tragic prisoner was coming...
He had enough time to state what he would to the crew before the waves explodes in a piercing , transparent fin slicing threateningly through the water toward them. In moments it would meet with them. within spear distance first, and then it would be upon them. None knew how it would strike, weather it would try the small ship with it or not, but all knew it had forsaken self preservation. He wanted death. Both of them, and itself.