Down here, where saltwater and freshwater mingle in an ebb and flow of tidal whirl, Vaine has lived out the last three years quietly. The walls that carve out this great cylinder of void in the earth are treacherous - sheer past a point that simply climbing out isn't often an option for the unprepared. Vaine has sustained herself on the exact sort of unfortunate whose lungs she now fills with breath.
She leaves her, webbed hands dragging a shape in the water, a bubble of air wrapping itself around the pitiable thing's features, keeping the drowning away before Vaine slithers away into the murk; the girl can choose her seat for the moment.
Her pursuers, up above the surface, bicker and moan as they descend, one more bravely than his other, louder, bossier friend. This nervous fellow's foot slips on the rock, dripping with the rainwater and ocean spray that so often slicks this side of this corkscrew cavern, and falls, past his hapless friend, and a sick shout of a bone fills the echo chamber with its crack and his anguished screams and baleful curses follow.
His friend, spurred by the cursing of his fellow, hurries the rest of the way down, slipping on the rocks as he rushes, but as he tends the other bandit's broken leg where it soaks in salty water, he spots them, two lights in the black of the pool.
When Vaine strikes, it's like a whipcrack, a horrible tail's sharp fin lashing open a throat and sending him face first and choking into the water, red ribbons oozing from his torn throat, his gear pulling him down to rest with the rest of the dreg and treasures that litter the floor of this cave. The shouts of his friend die similarly as he's dragged into the water, screams rendered little more than burbling, quiet bubbles. The pool will brine then, and soon she'll pick their bones clean.
The bright lights of her eyes twist in the depths, then, searching for the girl. When she finds her, Vaine is upon her quickly, pulling her up and onto the edge of the pool; there is not much space for comfort though, and so the landing is likely rough. Vaine, for her part, recedes away, out of the shaft of light that spotlights from the cave's entrance high above, staring from the dark water. Even voracious, she cannot eat three, but she is struck curious now. "Who's this, sitting in my home, bringing me food?" It's a whispered question, made clanging by the echo.
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
amandla
titsay
snowghoul
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
