Seaside 6: Six at the Beach

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch

"It's, uh, not that bad, I, uh, don't think. Just a, uh, blood sacrifice." That may or may not be a bad thing from Zabb's perspective. "Not even that much, uh, just a few drops."

[Purple Eagle]

[Silver Sand Beach]

Zabb goes very still as she mentions a blood sacrifice, then remembers that things work differently here. Still... "Tell me about the ritual, in detail." He says, after a short pause. In case she's spooked by his reaction, he quickly adds more. "I said I wouldn't hurt you, and that hasn't changed. I just want to be able to tell how much of a good idea it sounds... but then again, you and your husband are married, and are thus one flesh!"

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch
Sekhmet does look a little frightened, but she explains. "I, uh, put some of his blood and some herbs and incense in a shell, then uh, mix in my, uh, essence and burn it. Then, uh, when one of us listens in the shell, we'll hear, uh, each other, uh, instead of the ocean." She hopes that's satisfactory. "I need so many shells because, uh, they're fragile, and the, uh, ritual isn't, uh, gentle with them."

[Purple Eagle]

[Silver Sand Beach]

Zabb listens in silence, then nods. "I see... an unwilling demon and her human husband, married and have become one. You need a way to contact your husband that works in your demonic plane, if you're forced to go there... and you wouldn't do it if it'd hurt your husband, so I guess it's okay." He finally decides. "... buuuut what happens if your mother finds out?"

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch

Sekhmet looks confused. "Find out about what? She, uh, knows about him, and the shell is a, uh, personal thing. It, uh, wouldn't work for her."

[Purple Eagle]

[Silver Sand Beach]

"She can't use it to track your husband down and hurt him?" Zabb asks, a little worried. Nonetheless, he nods to show his understanding. "You thought of everything... now you can talk to your husband even if you're separated!" He says, continuing to pick out sea shells.

"In that case, let's pick up all the seashells! Want me to make it faster? Oo, and I could bring you more seashells from time to time! Yay!" He's eager to help ensure that their love never dies.

Then he starts to ramble out some questions, like kids do. "Were you born a demon? When did you become a demon? How? Did your mum sleep with a mortal?" He could just scan, but he wants to hear it from her.

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch

Sekhmet looks worried by that suggestion too. "I, uh, don't think so? I, uh, hope not." She has to think about the other question. "I was born, uh, sort of like this? It wasn't as visible, and I, uh, couldn't use most of my powers easily. But then some, uh, friends did a thing to, uh, awaken my magical potential and it, uh, released this. We weren't, uh, expecting it." To the last question, Sekhmet frowns heavily. "Uh, she did. I, uh, never met him, but I heard from a friend that, uh, she has him prisoner and, uh," the next part is hard for her to think about, "He wants to see me."

[Purple Eagle]

[Silver Sand Stretch]

"Me too..." Zabb says honestly, but it's obvious she didn't think of that, which has been his worry. "Just make sure, okay? So that you don't mistakenly lead her to him. You came from her, your essences oughta be similar enough."

He silently nods at the anser to his next question. "That must have been shocking... I'm truly sorry on behalf of anyone who might have treated you differently because of it."

And then the last question elicits a reaction that means he's touched on something personal, but he looks back innocently and listens to her answer. "Oh... and if you go and see him, you'd be within reach of your mother, and you'd have to escape from her yet again... and if he got rescued, she might come here searching to bring back her favourite 'toy'." He says, frowning just as heavily. "What're you going to do? What are your plans? Do you want to see him, or...?"

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch

Sekhmet looks indecisive. "I, uh, don't know! I've never, uh, met him. He didn't, uh, raise me. But, uh, I'm curious. And I, uh, feel like I should hear him out. I don't know what to do." She sits down. "I'm afraid. Uh, afraid of what I might learn from him. I don't know if I want to know where the, uh, mortal part of me, uh, comes from."

[Purple Eagle]

Silver Sand Stretch

Sekhmet looks indecisive. "I, uh, don't know! I've never, uh, met him. He didn't, uh, raise me. But, uh, I'm curious. And I, uh, feel like I should hear him out. I don't know what to do." She sits down. "I'm afraid. Uh, afraid of what I might learn from him. I don't know if I want to know where the, uh, mortal part of me, uh, comes from."

Silver Sand Stretch

Zabb sits there, letting her speak to completion. He might be a little kid, practically an embryo in angel years, but from the things he's noticed about mortals, her feelings make sense. To mortals, that is.

"On the one hand, I think you should hear him out. Since we celestials live eternally, I'm still so little. I can be an old man if I wanted, but deep inside... y'know?" He turns to face his new acquaintance/friend. "... buuuut I can tell you that if you don't, then it'll eat at you until curiosity gets the best of you and you seek him out, anyway. Thoooough..."

He rubs his chin, thinking seriously about the matter, and inadvertently looking quite cute, too. "... your mother's the problem. How can you seek him out without stumbling into your mother's clutches?"

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch

"I don't know." Sekhmet shakes her head. "If I knew where she was keeping him, maybe I could find a way to distract her from there long enough. But, uh, it would be hard. She can just teleport, uh, where she wants to be." She thinks. "I don't think I can go find him. Not yet. It wouldn't be safe."

[Earl of Purple]

Salvage Vessel Eupharynx

It's a small repurposed fishing boat, a fibreglass hull and a small grimy cabin at the front and a crane mounted on the back. A pair of guns are mounted on each side, a smoothbore swivelgun near the front and a light machinegun near the back. It's drifting at the moment, the engines dead and inert. There's some running lights on, but not much, and that's odd too- the lights that are on are some internal cabin lights, which really don't need to be on given it's daytime. It's drifting towards a beach, and at low tide it should be possible to board the derelict vessel, if someone desires. It might even stay put.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

With a splash, a young woman heaves herself onto the deck of the derelict ship. She sits there, catching her breath after a long swim. This place looks interesting, and it's not like she has anything else to do. "Hello? Anyone home?"

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

There is no reply to the young lady's call, and the vessel remains silent. Mostly silent; noise- it sounds a bit like voices- can be faintly heard from the bridge, at the front of the vessel, but there's nobody visible through the large windows of the control room. The door to the bridge is shut, splintered and riddled with what could be bullet holes, but it's not locked. There's also a large hatch in the centre of the deck, where the crane can lower things into the hold below, which is also shut. The crane has a little cab, which has a light on inside but no person visible, and there's a smaller hatch for going below just behind the bridge.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

The lady wrings some water out of her dress (apparently she swam all the way here in that restrictive garment, impressive) and heads to the bridge, slowly and cautiously opening the door. "Hello?" It doesn't seem like anyone's here, but they left the lights running. Weird.

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

Within the bridge, there's no one. There's a rather arcane bank of screens and equipment at the end, with the helm mounted in the middle. There's a locker just inside the door, which is closed and possibly locked, though the key is in the lock. Lying on the floor are a broken pair of spectacles, six brass bullet cases, a semi-automatic pistol and a prosthetic leg. There's also quite a bit of blood splashed about, mostly on the wooden deck, but also on the prosthetic leg. The leather straps of the leg, which held it in place, are ripped and torn, still buckled in place. The pistol has an eight-round magazine, so it should still have two bullets left in it.

The voices are coming from a cassette player on the navigation console, which has been turned down quite far without being turned off. "Run, get away. It's not safe here, the darkness hungers. Fear the children. This is not a safe place. Run, get away. It's not safe here, the darkness hungers. Fear the children. This is not a safe place." It constantly repeats the same short message, over and over.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

That's creepy. Selekhael doesn't know how to work a cassette player, so she leaves it on, although it's starting to get annoying. She goes to the locker. Since it's unlocked, she just opens it. Maybe it will answer some of the questions about the tape she has.

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

Inside the locker there's several things. Most notably, a wetsuit hanging up on a coathanger, with an oxygen tank and all the accoutrements that a diver would need- a pair of flippers, goggles, and so on. There's also a gas-powered spear-gun and three spears to go in it. There's also a battered notebook and another magazine for the pistol lying on the floor.

The notebook is a captain's log, though not complete. The handwriting is really bad, tricky to read. The most recent contents are from yesterday.

Spoiler: Captian's Log

Show

I herd a good tipoff in the pub and wil sent my ship off to get the tipoff and wat i herd is that it was a sight were a car transporter ship got hit inna storm and sum were nocked over bord. I got the coordnates here [this list of numbers likely means little to Selekhael, but denote a spot forty miles away] and wil go cee wat i can find.

I got two the sight and i was able to find and drej up three cars all lowded in the hold. I got a tuktuk and a black taksy kab and a van all good condyshun. Off now to cee what is inside might be good or not lets find out.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

Selekhael ignores the wetsuit and scuba geat. She can just breathe underwater. Likewise, she doesn't need more weapons, so she leaves the speargun be. She does flip through the logbook. The captain's spelling is atrocious, but she gets the gist. Whatever he found in those cars must have killed everyone on the ship. Hopefully not though. She'd like to talk to someone. She leaves the cabin and heads to the entrance to the hold. She could jaunt through it or cut it open, but she doesn't want that ability to be recharging when she encounters whatever it is on this ship, and she doesn't want to accidentally damage something, so she climbs up to the crane to take a look at the controls, which she most likely has no way of knowing how to operate.

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

Up in the cabin of the crane, there's a cracked window and a pretty uncomfortable seat, which has stuffing spilling out of its seat. There's a bit more blood up here, but the cabin isn't big enough to avoid standing (or sitting; the chair and the levers in front of it take up most of the space inside) in it. There's also a finger on the floor, with a ring on it.

From up here, Selekhael might be able to see the hatch she'd missed before, the one that leads into the vessel's living quarters.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

Selekhael looks around the crane. This is a... oh, what's that. Ewww! It's a finger! "I'm sorry." She focuses her power and rots the finger to dust. She picks up the ring, looks it over for any inscriptions, and slides it into her inventory. Then she heads to that hatch leading belowdecks. That seems easier than figuring out how to open the big door.

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

The ring is a plain band of brass, though there's one exception- a flat area on what could be the front, etched with a worn... symbol. Maybe a dragon's head? Or a dog's skull? It's too old and worn to be easily made out.

The hatch is not locked, though there is a padlock fitted to it- the padlock doesn't go through both the hatch and the frame, just the hatch. Beneath the hatch is a ladder into a cramped, narrow corridor. There's a door at the near end, marked with the words 'Captain's Cabin'. On either side is another door, and further down there's another pair of doors before the corridor ends with another door. There's no lights on, down here, and the corridor has no windows. There's a light switch on the wall, and fluorescent tube lights set into the ceiling, but they have been deliberately broken. The corridor's floor is covered in shards of broken glass. There's also a narrow locker set into the wall to the left of the ladder, which hangs open. Inside, there's a gun rack with space for three longarms, but only a bolt-action rifle, crudely cut down into a carbine form, is in there at the moment. Above it, on a shelf, is a small emergency kit consisting of a hand-wound electric torch, a bottle of painkillers, a roll of bandage, a magical healing potion and a flare gun.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

Selekhael grabs the potion. It's probably the only thing there that will work for her. She thinks the obvious place to start looking is the captain's cabin, so she'll very carefully open that door. Unless it's locked. Then she'll have to look somewhere else. This environment gives her the creeps though. She doesn't want to stay here in the dark too long. She could imagine any number of creepy crawly things coming for her.

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

Really? Not the wind-up torch to illuminate things?

Well, into the captain's cabin! There is more light here, fortunately. A thick porthole is letting the sunlight in. It's a small room, with a fold-down desk and a bench that serves as bed as well as seating. It also has a drawer underneath for clothing. There's some shelving, as well, with a collection of trinkets upon them.

Notably, a pile of bones has been set upon the bed, not articulated in any way. The bones are from one individual, humanoid but not human- an elf, if Sekhmet recognises the subtle signs of an extra pair of ribs and slender bones. Not all the bones are present; the left leg is missing the shin and foot. Mixed amongst the bones are scraps of cloth, some of it bloodstained, but there's not a lot of it.

On the shelves there's five books, two written in English- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Gulliver's Travels. The other three books include an Icelandic translation of the former, a cookery book written in Hindi and a French-to-Japanese dictionary. None of the books look as though they've been read in a while. There's also a bone disc marked with a symbol; the symbol consists of a half-circle, broken by a pointing needle with a circle just before one end, with a dot in it, and on one side of the needle the half-circle is duplicated, and it has prongs pointing away from the edges of the circle. There's also a green stone with an imprint of a leaf upon it. A glass jar containing a burning feather. A cog of a strange, bronze-coloured metal. Finally, a partial human skull with a steel spike going through the left eyesocket, the spike long enough the other end of the spike erupts from the back of the skull- and, if Selekhael can tell, it's partly healed around the spike.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

None of that seems useful to Selekhael. They're just weird. She looks at the shattered corpse and whispers, "Dust to dust," before releasing a burst of power to decay it to nothing. Then she searches the room, although not especially thoroughly, for anything that might provide information about what happened here.

[Purple Eagle]

Silver Sand Stretch

"I don't know." Sekhmet shakes her head. "If I knew where she was keeping him, maybe I could find a way to distract her from there long enough. But, uh, it would be hard. She can just teleport, uh, where she wants to be." She thinks. "I don't think I can go find him. Not yet. It wouldn't be safe."

[Silver Sand Stretch]

"I wish I could help..." Zabb says as he continues to pick seashells, and then deposit them in her bag. "You'll need to plan for it and stuff, to maximize success."

Something occurs to him. "If you were to get caught by your mother, how would you escape? Or will I have to bust you out?" He asks, in case that hasn't occurred to her.

[bc56]

Silver Sand Stretch

"Don't do that!" Sekhmet quickly protests, "Uh, she would destroy you, or worse. I have a, uh, plan with my husband and some, uh, friends who know how to reach her palace. But it's really, uh, risky. And I can't, uh, know the details, because she could pull them out of my mind."

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

The bones might have had clues, had Selekhael checked them. But it's too late now.

There's clothes neatly folded in the drawer under the bed, as well as a magazine featuring heavily muscled and scantily clad orcs. On the bookshelf between the cooking book and Gulliver's Travels there's a fifty pound note. There's mystic energies collecting around some of the trinkets on display, but I don't know if Selekhael can pick up that sort of thing. Some of it at least is nearly faerie nonsense- the whalebone rune at the least, as well as the metal spike in the skull. There's a little note tucked into the skull, hidden from easy view, but she'd have to pick it up and look inside the skull to find it.

[bc56]

Eupharynx

Selekhael isn't capable of noticing magic, so the oddities escape her. But she is going to check the skull, picking it up to see if anything's beneath it, and therefore hearing the note moving around inside. She carefully reaches in and pulls it free. That's an odd place to leave a note. Maybe it's important?

[Earl of Purple]

Eupharynx

The note is found! It's written in the same handwriting as the notebook, and the same atrocious spelling.

My contakt says the cars im goin to pick up was used in smugling but no klew as to wat was insid and bein smugled. Mite b more cash to get from if they got somthing gud in them lik a stash of guns or somthing lik that shoed b gud to cash if a litl ileagel. Wish me luk and gud feeeelings.

On the other side of the note there's more, in the same handwriting.

Feer the dark it hungers and is hom to childrn that aint gud and are dangrus.