Some ships sail further than thought, and this was no leviathan.
It was no great beast with a luminescent hide to store millions within,
to see nothing outside of it but through these many gills, as fins rend
through stars. Instead, there was a time when normal ships, but so
much more grand, could tear through the very confines of waters and
set themselves into the skies. Never would they be these great celestial
serpents, but they swam among them. Cloth set high as it grasp these
invisible winds, and the crew orchestrated as they work in unison to
keep their great beauty afloat. For with serpents was there always
poison, and poison attracted much crueler things in their wake.
Angels had not woven themselves into this tale, not long lasting as
Kutiel and Sorath and their steady fractures. Ever still, the forces at
work among the heavens was comparable to the magic bestowed to
them by the Gods and Goddesses.
It took a great crew to man these ships, and to brave these parallels
among the maw of Death and its very self. As hulking beasts of
contorted shapes and skin dance to and fray, coaxing the ship into
her very ruination. Leviathans were seen as familiars, and while
massive to their sliver of fleeting wood, tides easily turn, and it can
turn hostile. For the races of the Echoes had chosen to tame such
savage things, as they did with the rest of the Seas of all Stars.
Manning the sails were not only but the strength of Sailors, but
there too, soldiers and excellent archers that a galaxy has to offer.
Their arrows built of the remnants of a fractured sun that burned so
brightly when the Dragon was at its birth. The steel cooled of the
finest waters, but corrosive that with the slightest alteration it may
fracture, and imbed its metal traces into woven blood of beast and
Familiar alike. Not to be trifled with, and all the while still elegant.
Faceless warriors, or perhaps deemed so for their armour and their
eyes unseen, embarking upon the heavens where the heavens do
reach their end. Where there is a wall of mountain made only of rubies
and the Power’s finest stones. Things the Echoes have no use for,
and had been forgotten and left for the rarity of other seekers to draw
them to their homes. While their grotesque creatures circle the Seas
in their many abnormal features, the skies hold home to much more
beautiful but fierce things. With many heads, many limbs, and beaks
that tear a hole in the most perfectly forged armour. Yet, there was
something about these sails that did not break. For this ship was
more than what it appeared, and within the wood was the crews very
souls. They had sold themselves to this travel, and to abide by the
ventures they partake was their only solace in the Grand Universes.
The most notable was their captain by the name of Fallone, following an
some old map and dubbing it the Atlas of which they rode. It was a
clumsy attempt of the heavens, and it had not lead them directly to this
particularly rewarding wall. Instead it had brought them into the depth of
these many beaks and the shrill call of things indescribable by a single
man’s words. She had brought her crew faithful and full with as much
passion as their very ship, into these lands above the Star Seas itself.
To places where the Gods had forbidden them to go aside from their
beloved Echoes. Where the land itself threatened to devour them whole,
and the Time Goddess herself had set chase upon her dominion being
tainted with the scent and presence with something so foreign as
themselves. An obscure odyssey, of where they had reached the very
top, only to be caught by something older than leviathans themselves,
if not their very source and origin herself.
Her armour glimmered of the things that the Echoes hoarded, if not had
been crafted carefully by them for their serpentine Goddess. Only just,
they felt as this was the very thing that had kept watch over them and
had assured their immortality. While these plundering crews merely
come to pirate and threaten the lands of which they reside, when in
the past they had saved the Grand City and Centre itself. Each race
falls to its folly, and repeats the mistakes the other makes, and that
woven of time knows this well. She is not of space, but her maw opens
as her tongue flicks out to taste the familiar presence of what has
been here before. Fallone tries to negotiate with the serpent, and her
men abide well to her very words. Yet she is no silver-tongue, and while
she had won many wars and had travellled many travels, this was not
her place. So quickly did diplomacy fall back to savagery, and still their
sails held against the violent onslaught these intruders invoked.
They find themselves plummeting, and in plummeting do they lose their
Atlas. Descending into the ramparts of even more peculiar things than
that which fly in their once so familiar skies and their seas, their
soul-borne ship now sets itself upon magma. She and her crew are
willful and wise, and they allow falter not, and so this anti-Space of
where they once embarked does not anchor them. They slowly clamber
from this new-found core, and they search for this lost map which is
held in high belief to be intact. The Time Goddess has preserved it, as
it had been caught within her very being, said to have swallowed it as
she had set them back in time with a singular roar. The monsters in
these depths, they do not cower from. For they are marksman, and
Fallone has led them through worse hells than the Gods themselves
can conjure, and continuously will they ascend. Never will they leave
until these rubies and parchment is within grasp, and upon Home
would they be heroes and tales will speak of them past.