Whoever said the beach was a tranquil place to live was probably deaf as well as damaged in the thinkpan. The waves swish and crash, the wind whistles through the slats of your wooden hive, the daybeasts are relentless in their calling, and the creatures at night are no better. It's a lonely life out here compared to the ships you used to command, the powerful hunters that named you as friend and leader and enemy, the sweet things you used to lure to your block. Out here's it's nothing but you, your shack-hive, and the occasional fish on a line.
That's fine by you, it means you get to keep pulling salt air through your lungs.
If you were to do nothing but fish all night long and only punch a sea monster every other night, it would still be better than moving inland. The trips for supplies are dangerous enough as it is, simply walking into town knowing there are religious nuts after your horns is enough to deter long stays.
When the dusk takes hold of the land and hushes the sky screamers, you emerge from slumber, carefully wiping sopor slime off your body and back into the rubbery vat you've been using as a 'cupe. Already a chill is beginning to settle in through the wood and sand, marking the decent into another cold season.
Another sweep still alive.
This freeze is going to be rough, when ice takes the banks and reaches out across the sea in cobweb strands your very bones will complain and betray you. Already your body is mutinous, threatening to give out on you in as many ways as there are stars under command of the Empire. Your skin sags something fierce, your left leg is beginning to stop working altogether, your joints refuse to twist and bend to their true extent, and your sleek hair is falling out. Your hair now resembles pupa hide while your skin recalls the depths where no light reaches, and you can't help feeling just a little bit of regret that you never managed to find life's end choking on your own blood on the wooden deck of your ship. To have died strong, fast, bested by a true enemy instead of being bested by time.
You stand up on creaky knees and shuffle into the only other room in the shack, and start a small fire in the stove. There's clean water in a barrel just outside the door, and from it you fill the kettle for evening slake. When you see the woman standing a few feet nearer the shore you nearly drop your kettle and fall over, having to grab the threshold and dig your claws in splinter-deep.
She smiles at you, eyes an unnameable color that shifts and flickers like shining a light onto a predator. Her dress has no end, and yet does not drag or trail into the distance as she walks near enough to murmur.
"would you invite me in, Elder?" something about the tone suggests a joke, but everything about her is too off putting to be made light of. You clear your throat and shift towards the water barrel, filling the kettle with water for two.
"Aye maiden, enter at will. Ain't a place to sit proper but I got a feeling you're more'n prepared for that if ye be comin' up to a seaside ramshackle." She leads you back inside and simply stands out of the way as you set the water to boil and pull down a jar of evening pick-me-up, a finely ground concoction of meal worm and various spices, filling the hive with the smell of something more comfortable than cold wooden planking.
You turn and grab a staff leaning against the wall, something you regretfully had to acquire now that your body simply doesn't wish to comply with reasonable standards anymore, and you hold yourself up while taking her in.
"To what do I owe the pleasure a yer company, fair one?" She smiles to reveal dull teeth, though she seems no less threatening somehow.
"I've come to judge you, in a way. The time has come, your life is reaching it's completion. You will not last to the final natural breath, however."
You bark a laugh and grin, showing a still very shark-like maw. "Have you come to murder me? Have an old man atone for crimes committed adrift seaways? Strange lass you are indeed, but you won't have an easy go at me regardless of my elder bones."
She shakes her head, the fluff of her hair whispering against her horns while her long, delicate bangs sway about. "Not I, Elder. The church has found you and has all intent to do as they made to a hundred sweeps back. You have yet to outlive them, even as you are. The Grand simply does not fade into eternity as he should."
Her words bring the frost early to your innards and nearly bring you down to kneeling. "So they have hm. Pray tell strange one, why tell me now? Ye could simply let me die by the painted hand and yet you come with warning."
"... I have one last job for you, Cronus."
The breeze is harsh and bites in deep, whipping the thinning suncoat around your ankles and threatening to remove your hood. You're darker now and your skin so chitinous that you could stand direct sunlight for a few minutes without trouble, but that don't make it hurt less. You slip into the shadow of The Vodnar and hear her frame groan. Still in commission, that's strangely warming to the thoracic blood sifter. She's sturdy and strong, always good for harsh weather or rough conditions. You run your hand along her siding and lean in to smell the old wood, not likely the original beams put in place for her maiden voyage. Hell, you think you remember this bit being blown clean free into the drink in a bout with Spinnerette even.
You smile as you haul yourself up the hard way and limp along the deck. It's mid afternoon, late enough in the day the dock master should be well asleep and you'll have a good few hour's head start as long as no one is too keen on keeping the relics at port. You unfurl the sails by yourself, feeling your bones and back ache, strain, stretch with the effort, breath deepening with the work. Once the sails are blown outward with caught wind you huff to the wheel and bite down on a thin, cracked lip to keep from barking out orders as you once did in your prime.
The ship groans, wood popping like someone realigning their vertebrae, the bow splitting waves like a sigh. You watch the dock ease back and grow farther away as a stiff breeze takes you out into the swells.
It feels like a benediction when the dust scent of land leaves you, allowing the chilly salt spray to cleanse grief like tar from your soul. It's been entirely too Empress-be-damned-long since you've been any farther out to sea than the nearest sandbar. It's easy to get caught up in until you try to move around and remember your age, and your purpose.
You run sidelong to the setting sun and once it sinks fully you shrug the coat off with a wash of relief that lasts about as long as it takes you to see the little boat zipping up from the dockside horizon. You feel something wild awaken inside your core as you hobble to the sails and help your darling sea beast along. When the dock master hails you with a shot of sand over the deck you snarl and launch yourself down the stairs to find a weapon. What you wouldn't do to have your gun back, but Spin took that when she figured who had the jadeblood slave murdered.
Under a sheet is a small blunderbuss, terrible in long range combat like this, obviously a raiding weapon. Demoness only knows why such a shit weapon is on your ship. There's also a harpoon style blaster, similar but weaker than Ahab's Crosshairs. It's perfect. You grab it and sling it over your back while pulling yourself top deck again just in time to have more sand rain over head. You snarl and go up to the railing and kneel to aim, thumbing the power switch and shivering as it sucks in electricity through your skin, temporarily making your eyes cross and your heartbeat stutter.
You're too old for this.
With a sound like glass shattering you shoot a burst of hot light across the bow of your puny foe and hear the distressed chittering of the dock master. Laughter bubbles up in your chest and you just hang over the railing to wheeze mirth as she turns tail and leaves you be.
Minutes drag into hours as the waves spray good salt up to your legs. You kick your boots off into the ocean and let yourself feel the rejuvenating sensation of deeply cold water being absorbed into your body. The wood is smooth and thinly glossed under your palm as you caress The Vodnar's deck, the sound of clickswimmers echoing over the water's surface like a gentle serenade.
You're doing this for your descendant, she said. He's going to have a issue with his gills, but he needs to survive anyway. He needs to stay alive for the end times.
For your descendant. You're gonna have fuckin' spawn, oh god it's gonna be Spin's, it's going to be absolutely batshit. You feel a little nauseous as you lurch to your feet and bring the ship to bear, then look down your eyeglass towards the atoll. You need to wedge your ship there in the central island without sinking it entirely, but secure enough that time won't drag it back out.
Your spawn's gonna live in your old ship, and it's gonna be crazy. Maybe you should write it a last memoir.
You don't got time. She's only given you this one chance and you aren't meant to survive it, and slowing down isn't an option. You don't got the time, and it makes something heavy settle inside your weathered carapace as you line up the ship. You've long since lost your tail, pesky authorities with naught much else better to do than pail the fishertrolls as alternative fee payment and tug the sails to catch anyone out to have a little fun too close to land.
The atoll draws nearer and a sickness takes hold of you, a sickness of self preservation. You're old and failing, but still the thoughtful organ betwixt your horns wishes to keep you in one piece. Fighting the urge to steer free of danger or pull the sails so they no longer catch is harder than fighting the urge to scratch a pox, but starkly similar.
You ease the trajectory so you'll skim the top of the reef and be slowed majorly, but when your ship comes up on it you think you take more damage than anticipated. Either the reef grew or the sea shrank since you were last out here, and you feel the blood drain from your face as The Vodnar begins to sink into the lagoon. You rush to the sails to help them catch yet more wind and surge forward into the island before water can take her too deep. The whole damn thing can't go under, that would defeat the entire purpose and leave your time here wasted.
You start dislodged the canons and shove them so they roll to the aft and give your ship more lift as she starts to take on sand, digging in and groaning with the effort. She shoves her way a good few meters through the island, burying herself in tight and sound. The effort expended from running and working and sheer excitement drags you to your knees to beg breath from the deck planking. When finally it doesn't feel like you've taken a canon to the gut, you scoot slowly across the deck to the hatch and lower yourself down, leaning heavily against the tilted wall as you search for your old quarters.
The door opens easily and let's you in, and of course it doesn't look the same. They've reorganized, moved things around, all but the port hole and the desk bolted to the floor. You open the closet and pull out the captain's dress hat, smoothing your fingers over the thin fishscale lining and perfectly round pearl buttons holding its folds in place. Fitting your horns through the holes proves it's the right size too, thank the stars for this last little nod. You settle into the plush chair now nestled in the far corner as a sharp stab of pain finally registers in your abdomen.
Blood wells thickly from your gut and stains your armor like liquid amethyst around a large chunk of the railing, splintered surgically sharp. It got right between the hard slats of reinforced bioplastic.
A small hand presses against your cheek and turns your head to see a slightly older version of your strange maiden. Thick blackness shrouds the room as starlight bursts through your veins and the empty After stretches behind her horns.
She smiles.
You smile back.
Your name is Eridan Ampora, and the nights are the longest they've been this sweep. The freeze keeps waves off your Island for the most part and wind blows solidified sea foam up against the ship hive. You don't mind really, you're built for the cold, lightless depths and besides you wear enough clothes to keep what little heat you do need inside your body.
You've been waiting.
The cold means shrinkage in the wood, and you've grown strong enough maybe you can bust into that block down below. You've grown far too old to be bested by a fuckin' door leastways.
There's a spring in your step as you saunter up to the pale wood and try the handle. When this of course fails you snarl and drop your weight onto one leg, sending a hard kick right below the handle, sending the door off its blasted hinges and clattering into the room.
Something grips you for a moment not unlike fear but not quite as nameable, but you shake it off before pulling Ahab's off your back and turning on it's running lights. It's pale glow fills the block and reveals two lightening bold horns attached to a hulking figure of bone, salt, and cloth. Your heart skips a beat while your eyes mist over.
All this time of you searching for whispers of your forbearer's legacy, reading his journals like a page starved wordworm, using his weapon and name in childish battles. All this time and here he was, below your feet while you ate your meals and grew stronger, grew angrier, grew older.
There were no records from after he went to the Mirthful Citadel, but here was hardcore proof he made it out alive. God he was huge, when you trail a finger down his calcified skull your hand is dwarfed by his gaping mouth, bottom jaw resting on a hunk of wood in his dressage. Feeling along his teeth found sharp rows that nicked a drop of blood to the surface.
You shove your finger into your mouth and blink tears into cold tracks down your cheeks, and wonder if he would have been proud of you.