New Memories (Kavala)

[Sarshassilivoss]

New Memories
45th of Fall, 514 A.V.

Hesitant bare feet walked down the streets of Riverfall, observing those of the city. From what he could understand it was in a moderate amount of chaos since his people's arrival, but today was still a day of celebration, at least as far as he could tell. He saw glints of crimson wound into a pair of Kontis' hair as they knelt before a constructed alter, a small brawl breaking out, most of the participants having the same ribbons in their hair or around their arms. When he asked a rather sheepish looking cobalt Akalak, he explained the holiday as a day of memories of those gone.

And he found the sea beckoning him for more than one reason that day.

He found that his determination and focus gave rise to the other side of him...the 'true' personality of Voss that now lingered deep within, the one born deep beneath the sea that had become transformed and hidden as he had arrived in Riverfall. Part of him didn't miss the more aggressive, stubborn, head strong Iyvess, but of course this new Voss that had emerged in the wake of the curse wouldn't care for those things. Though the strange magic that had settled over the city still had a grip over him, his desire was giving wake to a brief sliver of what was left from before, transforming his calm walking pace to a jog, then a run, into a tilting full on sprint. He found himself on the docks, running headlong past workers, sailors, and fishermen. He could find himself, the real self back below the surface of the water and that is where he went, taking a leap propelled with both feet off of the pier, twisting upward and arcing his body so that he landed headfirst, his hands guiding him in an arrow beneath the cool embrace of the water.

As soon as he touched the surface of the waves his mind was already drifting into focus on releasing his human form. He couldn't hold his strange human breath for the 30 ticks it would take to transform, but he did get a good start, his mouth releasing bubbles as an unheard sigh of pleasure was released, his joints rolling and popping, legs fusing together and making him a singular whole.

Partially transformed Voss broke the surface with a gasp just as slits began to form themselves into his neck, next he was below the water again, shifting his powerful tail and shooting out into the deep.

His moment of clarity was over as soon as it begun, sunk back into the depths of his soul before they had truly had a chance to re-surface, and his anxious mind so eager to return to the sea was replaced with one that wished to find a quiet spot away from the strangeness of the city, one to himself. His webbed hands moved through the water, pushing it out and away from him as his tail rippled and coiled, propelling him at great speeds to a secluded bit of shoreline, as he swam prayers left his mouth. He was not well versed in Char, but their language made everything sound beautiful beneath the waves.

"Memory of Sarshass, great sserpent, great mother, Vosss remembersss will alwaysss tell the storiesss."

Sliding into the shallows, Voss reached down to grab a handful of sand, soil, and mostly eroded rocks, clutching the earth and letting it trail out of his grasp into the sea as he approached the land. Surely if any Charodae had been around they might have winced at the sound of his mangled Char, the tune and pitch of his voice leaving much to be desired, but it was not an ugly sound either. Poking his dark head above the water, Voss settled into a comfortable position submerged save for his upper torso as he gazed at the great Waterfall which gave the city its name. He wondered what his mother would have thought of it had she been there...

Word Count :

672

[Kavala]

The Plunge Pool Bay was busy as the tide turned, keeping Kavala on her toes as she maneuvered the Dreamcatcher through some of the boating traffic and out into the bay proper. Shed been tied up at Alements delivering some supplies to Caelum. Normally, the bay wasn’t difficult to maneuver, but it must have been a festival day of some sort because it was crowded with seacraft at least towards the east end of the city.

Running the sails, tacking back and forth with the catamaran, caused the Konti all her concentration. She could feel her brain doing advanced math as she stared out across the bay, note the trajectory of the vessels around her, and plotted a course to avoid them. She also had the wind coming straight into the bay, which was a problem trying to sail out of it. Under wind power, that meant she had to tack north and south crossing the wind, and anticipate boom changes and direction changes along with every other vessel trying to leave. It got hairy a few times, but releasing taught sails to slow the vessel and loosening cloth to catch more wind helped. The Konti was no veteran sailor. She was just learning, and that process merited time at the Catamaran’s wheel and watching the weather and activity around her. Fortunately, she was with other veteran sailors on the water, for most of them watched out for her and got out of her way if possible. That was a lot easier with the inbound under wind power vessels than it was for crafts like hers heading outbound.

All Kavala really wanted to do was get to The Sanctuary and tie the Dreamcatcher up at the dock there. The ship was riding high in the water, empty and light, just like Kavala liked to sail it. It was often harder for the novice sailor to maneuver the vessel when it was fully stocked. And for that Kavala was grateful. There wasn’t much wind blowing the right way today, so that meant that she had to work hard at what she was doing to even get under power. And that meant that while she was paying attention to the other vessels, she wasn’t paying any mind to people who were floating in the water like Voss was.

Truth be told, she didn’t stand a chance of noticing him due to her concentration on other things. In fact, she cut close him, too close, only seeing him at the last minute. Most of that was due to the Dreamcatcher being light, riding high in the water, and thus allowing her to cut close to the land to get free of the bay. She yanked on the wheel, cried out a warning as the figure surfaced, and threw her weight into steering the ship to the leeward side to void colliding with his head. At the same time she reached up, pulled a belaying pin that took the tautness out of her mainsail, and lost her propulsion so she could coast and throw out the anchor to check to see If the swimmer was alive.

Once the craft came to a halt due to the anchor catching the channel bottom and tugging the catamaran to a halt, Kavala jumped off the back, ducked under the water, and swam towards the figure she thought she might have hit.

Quickly, with worry in her eyes, the frantic Konti began to search the water, scanning right and left as she swam behind the ship, tracing its last few feet of propulsion and diving to the bottom. Was that a Charoda? A Konti? Even an Iyvass? Kavala wasn’t sure. She just hoped one of her hulls hadn’t hit the bobbing head she saw in the water. As she searched she even wondered if maybe she was mistaken and it wasn’t a person at all but maybe the bob of a sea lion or otter floating in the shallows.

[Sarshassilivoss]

There were a lot of thoughts tumbling in the Iyvess's mind that day, the strange stifled personality struggling to resurface, his mind drifting to memories and tales of his mother in semblance of celebrating the city's holiday, a familiar desire beckoning him to swim deeper into the water, to leave all the boats and strange land dwellers behind for longer than an afternoon swim.

He felt the weight and presence of the boat behind him a moment to late. Though dark eyes flicked backwards, long snout turning up ever so slightly to see the shadowy weight of a boat bearing down on him, he had only an instant to react. He rotated, his tail tightening into a closed 'S' shape, preparing to propel him wherever he need go, but as his body rotated, the coiled muscle releasing to push him anywhere but beneath the hull of the ship, the side of the boat clipped his shoulder knocking the arm out of its socket entirely.

His wail of pain was silenced by his head disappearing under the water, his right arm jutting out to clutch his limp left arm, but that only increased the pain as his tail jutted and pushed fervently to create more distance between him and the catamaran.

He pushed himself down below, a bit frightened of increasing speed only to put him in the way of another boat, and dipped his head down, darting down, left arm hanging uselessly at his side as he propelled himself through the water, right arm awkwardly trying to maintain the grace and poise lost by his other appendage.

He noticed the ship slow, and then watched as a dark shape sinking swiftly to the bottom of the ocean, indicating the individual had dropped anchor. Dark eyes narrowed, waiting, mind pensive and curled up in preparation like his tail.

Then the form dropped into the sea, and without bothering to try to identify the form, Voss shot towards it like a torpedo, his tail undulating powerfully, his mouth pulling back in pain as the weight of the water and force of his speed pulled at his left arm. For a brief clear instant the old Voss had returned, throwing the calm, agreeable Iyvess to replace him with the underwater predator that had lived for decades without glimpsing a boat, hearing the stories of the pretenders of Laviku that sat upon the water instead of living in it. He wanted only to exact revenge on damages done, even though the deed had not been entirely the entities fault, but the fault of a wandering mind.

He approached from beneath the Konti's legs, diving down and putting himself directly beneath her before shooting up through the water and surfacing behind her, his yellow and cobalt black tail seeking to wrap tightly around her, the brightly striped tip of his tail, one clawed hand reaching out to grab her shoulder, then drag her beneath the water. Thinking only of most of the land dwelling races that could not breathe beneath the waves, Voss did not properly study nor identify the Konti for what she was, nor see her face to identify her as Kavala, and his mind was only bent on a strange enraged attempt to drown this entity.

[Kavala]

She’d been looking for someone or something possibly injured in the crowded bay, not someone who was angry and more than willing to kill her. The attack took Kavala completely off guard. Her eyes weren’t studying the water beneath her, but were busy scanning the water around her, near the surface, looking for signs of a collision or injury, perhaps even blood in the water. But when a hand grabbed her hard, surfaced, and coils wrapped around her, the Konti was at an immediate loss. Her instinct was to struggle, to thrash, but the rope-like body surrounding her was dragging her down. Strong fingers dug into her shoulder and because her attacker was behind her, she could only see the golden and cobalt coils around her.

Kavala would have liked to have prided herself on being combat ready. She would have liked to have said that any situation she could have remained calm in. But being squeezed and held firmly by the coils terrified her in a way that completely killed off any ability she had to concentrate to utilize reimancy or even to speak. Her fear was so overwhelming in that moment that it paralyzed her and allowed the monster to drag her under.

She didn’t drown though. He’d failed to coil his body around her head or neck and that gave her gills a chance to flare, filtering precious air out of the very water itself. And just the act of having cold seawater pouring over her gills calmed the Konti. She could see. She could breathe. She could come herself enough to figure out how she could move.

The first thing she did was try to see who was attacking her. When her senses returned to her and she stopped struggling, she took a good look. Snake? Serpent? Eel? Leviathan? Hand on her shoulder? The Konti could move her head, but not drastically or it would interfere with her breathing. She stopped struggling as her senses came back and went into full on assessment mode. She was too far from The Dreamcatcher. She couldn’t move most of her body except her head and a bit of her toes which seemed to be free only because there was space between coils. Something was either going to eat her or drown her very soon if she didn’t get away. And magic was out of the question because her thoughts were whirling as rapidly as her fear was spiking.

The hand took longer to register, gripping her shoulder with actual fingers. It seemed so out of context for her… a hand, coils…. two things she wasn’t used to seeing together. And while it wasn’t a certainty, her subconscious recognized it might be a Dhani before her consciousness did. And she started speaking, plainly, clearly, forcing water out of her gills distorting the words underwater like they always were. “Let me go!” She said firmly, fear turning slowly to anger as they sank. She had meant the words to be calm, forceful, authoritative, but instead they fell short and drowned in her fear. She tried again, this time trying to shake her whole body as she did so. Her fear building, she tried a third time… “LET ME GO!” and then bending over she sank her teeth into the scales and flesh wrapping around her chest, biting as hard as she could with her flat unsatisfying Konti teeth. Razor sharp fangs would have been better, but again, if she’d been calmer she could have summoned reimancy. There was none of that here… no concentration and access to djed.

When her teeth connected, she didn’t immediately dig into flesh. Instead she hit scales and felt them rearrange painfully under her maw. Some scales flipped up, one even dislodged, while her pearly whites found purchase in the cracks between. The Konti knew reptile scales were not as tough as they seemed. They were protective, but if one could pry between them, even a little, they had a chance. And that’s what Kavala’s bite tried to do. Kavala clamped down, animalistic, and tried even harder to break flesh. In places her teeth bumped scales, but in others they slide right through to the flesh beneath. It was satisfying to the Konti… hugely satisfying. See how he dealt with that.

In that moment, drowning in her fear, Kavala simply wanted to hurt the thing that was trying to hurt her... and get away before it could make the kill.

[Sarshassilivoss]

Feeling his muscles tighten around the form, dragging it beneath the waves, the Dhani basked in the exultation and power, washing over him like a fresh spray of seawater on a cold clear day. It felt like a fog had cleared, that he had been half asleep, or dreaming for far too long and in this moment of wrath and violence that he was finally free. He wanted to drown this thing, to make...her...yes it had to be a her, so slim, with long flowing hair, make her suffer. He felt a pang, a faint fear and shame claw its way into his mind, but in this moment of clarity he had stumbled upon, he was able to bat it away easily, and wormed his body further down into the deep with his newly found prey.

Slowly he became aware of a few details. Firstly there was no struggle form the individual, at least at first, though after a moment he felt something approaching resistance. Secondly his head craned down and realized that the female had gills, and his mind instantly locked with the knowledge that she was a Konti, and that his gleeful murder was not going to be as simple as he had originally intended. That was when she began her demands. The first one quailed, and filled Voss with a euphoric rush. She was afraid, and so should she be. The Konti? They had the ability to live their lives beneath the waves, but yet their bodies were still shaped like the pathetic land dwellers. Iyvess were made for the sea.

By the third reincarnation of the demand for release, it seemed the female had gathered her nerves, which Voss realized when a powerful bite, dull, but strong tore at least one of his scales asunder and dug into more of them, and into his flesh beneath them. A watery howl escaped his maw and his hand which had gripped her shoulder shifted, grabbing for her neck to try to wrest it away from his scales, sharp nails digging into her scales and flesh.

He did not speak, simply gave an enraged hiss, his tail uncoiling from her form so that some of it was available to propel him and his captive belly up towards the floor of the bay. The nagging feeling returned when the Konti's voice registered some modicum of familiarity in his mind. He had no idea what he wanted to do, but the true Voss did not want to let go of this moment, his greatest fear being that he would return to that complacent being...that he would lose himself again, an idea that he could not bear.