"You can't be serious!" Galagor screams as Tristan walks steadilly, despite the ship's rocking, to stand before the monster.
"All right. We'll do this your way," Tristan breathes, his voice inaudible for the heavy rain. He curses the storm, for it will surely do terrible things to his clothing, but he knows what he must do. He has a duty to fulfill, and blazes, he intends to do it. He raises his sword and points it at the monster. "Prepare to meet thy maker," he states, his voice firm and steady.
The creature screaches and lifts some nearby tentacles. They come smashing down at him, but they miss and crash through the Ocean Mist's deck. Tristan makes quick work of them, slicing through them with his sword. They writhe in ghastly patterns before falling limp on the deck with final, meaty, thwaps.
"This isn't so hard, is it?" he wonders, hacking off some of the next tentacles. Then, however, the monster decides to make Tristan realize that it has claws, and it will use them.
Among the writhing mass of tentacles, Tristan begins to battle with a gargantuan, crablike claw. Cursing, Tristan finds himself losing whatever ground he had gained. He is, however, not alone in his fight with the monster.
"Stay where you are, noble Tristan!" Galagor shouts, and an arrow flies straight into one of the monstrosity's many eyes. A full volley of arrows, most of which hit the massive beast, comes next.
The monster, in response, screaches in agony. It retreats off the deck of the Ocean Mist and into the sea. The songs of the sirens increase in intensity and haunting beauty, but the monster does not return.
Tristan turns to see the majority of the fourteen other members of the Ocean Mist's crew with a bow in hand. He smiles and shakes his head, and is caught completely off-guard when the mass of tentacles springs up, off the deck and towards the creature from whence they came.
Tristan tries his best to resist their force, but burried as he is among them, he finds himself being forced back to where the monster had broken through the railing. Knowing his fate, he accepts it, but after issuing one further order, screamed above the storm so loudly that his voice hurts afterwards: "FIND RENI AND THE OTHERS!" he shouts. "TELL THEM OF MY FATE, AND LET THEM FIND SAFETY, BE IT ALONE OR WITH ANATON!" Those words said, he finishes his resitance and allows the force of the tentacles to shove him off the deck of the Ocean Mist.
The water is cold when he hits it, and Tristan sheathes his blade under the water. The sirens, perhaps scared off by the departure of their creature, retreat beneath the waves. However, more and more tentacles continue to fly at him, and Tristan finds himself shoved time and again beneath the surface. Regretting only his half-kept promises to Reni and Anaton, he allows himself to be sucked beneath the waves, knowing death to be the only true escape to peace.
"You're being melodramatic and egotistical again. Stop."
"Dendrik?" Tristan wonders, looking up and wondering what he is doing laying face-down in the sunwashed sand.
"Hardly. My name is not important, but you can call me Glar." The voice comes from a heavilly shadowed figure offering Tristan a hand up. He - or is it a she? - seems kind enough, but Tristan is uncertain as to whether or not he can trust him.
Pushing his elbows to hold his body off the ground, Tristan spits sand from his mouth. "Where the blazes am I?" he asks, noting his sword still hangs at his right hip, right where he had left it after the fight with the monster.
"You, good stranger, are on a fairly rarely charted land of Killagorth. Or, at least, that is what my people call it. Everyone calls it something else, but there is something waiting for you here."
"There seems to be nothing but pain waiting for me every time I set foot on land, ever since that night the bizarre vision came to me."
"You should heed visions and their warnings. Sometimes, they do not always end when they say they should."
Tristan sighs. "I just wish I knew whether it was Anaton's all-power who warned me, or if the similarities were merely coincidental."
Glar nods, or at least Tristan figures it does, for its shadows on the ground move in a manner that suggest such. "It seems that could offer a reason to question the very truth of a vision."
"But it came true, for the most part. Weldox, my homeland, did fall, as per the vision's warning, three days after the vision was issued. I only just barely saved my siblings. My mother, I don't know what became of her."
"She has returned to her kind, as per their rites."
"Her kind?"
"Sylphs - the wind nymphs."
"She said someth - but how would you know that!?"
Tristan glances up, shielding his eyes from the sun, just in time to catch the end of a glimmering, white smile. "I know much, Tristan Delacoré. I have engineered for you to come here. It had been my intervention that saved you from those infernal sirens. You really should thank me."
"Err... Thank you, I suppose, then."
Tristan is just about to ask how he could have been saved by Glar, exactly, when he had fallen into the depths of the sea, when Glar bursts out laughing. "Hah! I had you fooled! I didn't think you to be so dense as to fall for that one! No, it was your Sylphan side that saved you. I saw it, standing here on the shore, waiting for the flotsam that comes with a siren storm - which is what that had been."
"Excuse me, but what, pray tell, had you seen?"
"The most glorious flash of pure blue light I had ever seen. It was as if all the Sylphs in the area stopped dancing on the clouds and came to your aid. However, you are not a Sylph, which leads me to believe that your mother had been one, for Sylphan males are very rare and very ugly. Rarely do they come into the world out of their hallowed dens at all."
"I see," Tristan remarks, for want of something better to say, and turns himself to a more comfortable position, staring at the ground in front of him, rather than up at Glar's face where the sun is blinding.
"No, you don't. You don't see the half of it. For if you did, you would be suspecting something of me by now, but you aren't, so I suppose you're as blind as the rest."
Tristan nods. "I suppose I can live with blindness," he admits, shrugging. "But tell me, what is it that waits here for me."
"That, I can not do. However, I can nurture you until you are fit to travel and give you directions."
"I would be very honored to receive such help. I thank you for it, and I wonder if there is any way to repay you."
"Do not clash your sword with any similar one in a fit of rage, lest it unleash the gods from their bindings. Your father did not heed my warning, and you probably will not either, and the bonds of the gods are loosening with time. That will be my payment. Until I find need of you again, your debt is paid."
Glar nurtured Tristan to full health, despite his constant absences from the smallish lean-to that he called home. Tristan did not see much of the strange native, but he did see his attempts to rehabilitate him, and he accepted them with gratitude. Every morning, fresh fruits would be prepared for him on the flat rock that served as a table, freshly washed clothes - most of which came from the remains of some of the ships lost because of the siren storm - would lay across the hammock that served as Tristan's bed, and a pictoral list would dedicate the day's activities.
Now, at midday, Tristan is out cutting some reed-like grass, similar to the rare bamboo that had been sold at Weldox by strange merchants when he was a child, in a dense forest of the stuff. Glar had said something about teaching him how to cane furniture from the stuff today. He has worked up a significant sweat, and another slice of the machete brings down more of the reeds.
Tristan gathers them up and ties them together with a braided rope he had created earlier with more of Glar's ridiculously detailed pictoral instructions. It suddenly dawns on Tristan that he never actually sees Glar. He sees his - or perhaps her? - sillhouette in the sunlight and the darkness.
"Almost finished, Tristan?" Glar asks.
Tristan glances over his shoulder and stares right into the sun, again. "Just about. I've only two more bushels to tie."
"I'll finish them. It's time for you to go on your way, now before you get any crazy thoughts in your head."
"Crazy... thoughts?"
"Yes. Now then. If you do recall, I had said something is waiting for you here. Really, it's more like someone. I have carved a path through this forest over the years, and what you will seek is along it. Travel well and wisely, and when you reach the stone that splits the road, continue on the path on which your shadow falls. Then, when you pass the cliffs overlooking the desert, you will find yourself where you ought to be. Journey well, sweet Tristan."
Tristan blinks, trying to understand the strange instructions he has just received. He turns to look away from the sun for just a moment before turning back to Glar, saying, "But what if my sha-" But Glar is gone, as are the machette and the bushels of reeds.
Tristan sighs, for his sword is in their place. He takes it and hangs it from his right hip again, and continues as Glar had instructed. Down the path he heads, through the forest, and towards the rock that splits the path.
It is dusk on the third day of walking that Tristan comes across the road split by the rock. He sighs, because the rock is little more than a pebble, and the sun is really quite insufficient to allow for him to tell where his shadow falls.
"Maybe I'll just stay here until morning," he says to himself.
"I wouldn't suggest that if I were you," someone says from behind, and a light flickers long enough for Tristan to see his shadow fall on the right path. "Dangerous critters dwell among this area at night."
Tristan suddenly turns to see a figure with lanky limbs approaching him, brandishing a torch. "Oh?" he asks, setting a foot on the right path, lest he forget which one he is supposed to continue on.
"Very dangerous critters they are. W-They, the critters, like to eat the raw livers of hapless travellers, and you look pretty hapless, boy."
"Well, I thank you profusely for your concern, sir, but I think I can handle myself fairly well enough."
The man, or thing, or whatever, growled and grinned toothilly, showing off yellowish fangs the length of Tristan's hand. Tristan, not quite certain how to think of this sudden turn of events, kept his left hand on the grip of his sword, lest he need it more than he expected previously.
Suddenly, the man-thing-whatever drops its torch and leaps at Tristan, seeming to sprout several more limbs as he does so. He tackles Tristan to the ground, pinning his arms down so that he can not use his sword. His breath is hot and reeks of carrion, and the man-thing-whatever seems to be taking immense pleasure out of breathing deeply in Tristan's face.
"Get the blazes off of me!" Tristan shouts, kicking the man-thing-whatever hard in the stomach with both feet.
The man-thing-whatever goes flying off of Tristan, but lands with two quick backflips. It snarls and Tristan draws his sword, sighing that he has to fight some non-human entity again. The steel of his blade flashes in the moonlight, and the creature's yellowed fangs glint menacingly as well.
"Why do you want to eat my liver? Surely there's someone else's that would be far more satisfying, and far less dangerous to eat," Tristan attempts, trying to reason with the creature.
The man-thing-whatever simply snarls and leaps again at Tristan. This time, however, he is ready. In a silvery flash of steel, the man-thing-whatever is sliced neatly in half. It falls with two meaty thwaps to the ground before hissing away in a boiling pool of blood and bodilly fluids.
Tristan, absolutely disgusted as some of the gore flies onto his face, pulls out the handkerchief that the noble had never really wanted back after it was wiped with Carter's blood. He cleans his blade with it and sheathes his sword again, hoping to find a spring soon so he can rinse out the handkerchief.
Hoping that this is all the adventure there is in store for him on this journey, Tristan resumes walking along the right fork of the path. The moonlight illuminating his path, he finds it almost envigorating to plot one foot in front of the other. He is alive, and he has something waiting for him at the end of this pathway, wherever that may be. He finds himself humming a jaunty tune that the sailors used to sing, and he smiles, laughs, and then runs down the path in the middle of the night, laughing like a lunatic with relief for being alive.
Background by Ender Design.