Rising Tides

[NLThomas 1225]

𝕽𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕿𝖎𝖉𝖊

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Darkness. Night had fallen over the northern regions and an unceasing blizzard chilling to the very bones raged on. The storm unending, like their march. The walls of lumbridge were not there to protect them from the wind. 

 

All the elf could ponder was. “Why am I here? So far from home.”

Soon they met. A force of Haenseni soldiers ready for battle. Black steel clashes against black steel, and soon the warrior of Xion was alone on a frozen mountainside. A shove, a parry, a stab to the neck and the warrior falters against his opponent. His glove, stained in blood, falls on the valiant soldier’s shoulder.

Faintly, that soldier, a human prince from far lands, whispers “You fought well” before the foul sound of the metal cutting through meat screams into the warrior's ear as the sword is torn from his neck.

Once more the thought rushed through his head. “Why am I here? So far from home.”

 

The red stained glove tightens at the prince his pauldron. A whisper of his own escaping between the sounds of him choking on his own blood. “C-Carry my… body to- to the sea..” 

His knee succumbs and he falls down. The crimson stained hand dragged down the prince’s pauldron, leaving a trail on it. “Let the ri- rising tide… wash over me..” A breathless voice spoke from under the helmet and he fell to his side in the snow, painted crimson red.

As a request was made, so too was it honored. The zealous soldier’s body was left at the shore, taken away by the waves with a final salute by the man who put him to rest.

 

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The rising tides came washing over him, staining it red and carrying his body far away, lost at sea. His flesh soon but rotting meat for the fish, yet his mind was carried away. Darkness overtook him, an unseen force dragging him deep beneath the waves. He gasps for air but only water fills his lungs, drowning him yet never dying.

Far away did his mind drift. Even after all this time he still felt like he was drowning like all those decades ago. Forever drowning in life with nothing to pull him to the surface. Was this his life? Is this all he remembers? Drowning forever beneath the waves of his own guilt and mortality. This was his life. An eternal struggle to try and surface.

 

Eyes open in the darkness. So deep beneath the surface that no light ever pierced that far, yet out there, there was a faint yellow light, so faint one could barely even tell it was there but it was the only thing there in the deep darkness of the ocean. Quietly he stares, wondering, is that a lighthouse with a dying light in the dark? Slowly it neared. Now, a monstrous golden eye, barely visible, but it became clear it was a reflection of his own eyes, golden. “Am I that monster of the deep?”. A creature sunken to the bottom of the ocean, beyond any saving grace.
 

So he lets the waves of his memories wash over him. Still as can be to let the water carry him away. As he surrenders himself to his thoughts, he awakens to his own screams bubbling awake in the fluids, his body floating in a tube. A fist reaches out and glass breaks. The water that drowned him spilled over the cold stone floor upon which he collapsed. New lungs breathing the cold damp air.

Born anew from the conflict in the frost. Born anew from the tides that took him away. Born anew from the darkness of his mind. This time, he was no longer drowning.

 

[Xergarok 811]

A Barrowlord of the Sixth Synod received news of the fallen. It quoted then a famous poem, as it pondered on the victorious dead. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

[Andustar 4143]

"Alas, this is not the end," John Casimir mused as he recalled the battle in Ailmere. "There will be more fights to come, and I shall press onward. For the love of Balian!" Still, his mind dwelt upon the warrior he slew in that frozen waste, who met an end by his ebony blade. If the foe they had yet to face bore as much spirit as their fallen comrade, then perhaps they would prove more resilient than he had previously imagined.