The Road of Salt and Spray

[Narthok 9213]

 

The Road of Salt and Spray

---

 Rain.. 

 

There was always rain

 

The man exhaled as the prow of his battered vessel slid slowly against the sand laden shore. The path had been long and arduous, but the old man’s word was law. It was not a question of where he would go, or if, but when, and go he had. 

 

Not even the storms, those ferocious shepherds of the salt and spray could bar him from his quest. But the cost had been dear, of the retainers the old man had sent, most had been claimed by the black foulness of the deep. Of the old man, tragedy; The long decades of banishment had bent the unbreakable, leaving a once proud lord of iron and blood a shadow of his former glory. His hallowed boots, caked with the viscera of his stomped foes remained unwashed; Relics of a time long past. A time forgotten. 

 

Yet the past had passed, the steady march of eons exercising a callous disregard for the vanities of the elderly. There was holy work to be done, and so few to do it.

 

The man remained on the prow peering out into the dark expanse before him, shaded by storm clouds and the coming night. About him the crew went about their labours, praying rhythmically as they worked, each stanza punctuated with the collective heaving of ropes.

 

“Father on high”

“My Protector”

“Have mercy on me”

“A sinner”

 

At last the gangplank was lowered and with an ordered silence the man proceeded to the shore, behind him a procession of men bearing a grand brazier, a hearth. Despite the rain it roared defiantly, nigh dismissively. 

 

The way was dark, the road harsh, but so long as the Father’s light still burned his work must be done. “Let us be about it then” the man would say, his voice quiet and low. With naught but a tossed torch the procession would trod into the night. Leaving behind nothing but a burning ship and footprints in the sand. 

 

---

 

[rukio 8910]

Spoiler

First; you smell bad

From a land beyond this mortal plane, somewhere beyond Aerial's soulstream, a Purifier, known once in the land of Atlas as Elle Noctuid, watches over the man's journey. As his boat strikes shore, so too does her boot land against the doorway of the All-Father's hall. She looks to the legends and warriors of old, some before her time and many after. A cig is set to her lower lip, drooping there as a spark forms from the metallic object in her hand, soon thereafter a plume of smoke floating from the end of it.

 

"And so it begins." She'd say, a tinge of her old accent lingering to her voice. 

 

And what was to begin? Only time could tell, for even the All-Father was not all powerful or omniscient.

Edited April 21, 2021 by rukio

[drfate786 1639]

A robed keeper in tattered black robes watches the procession from a nearby hill.