Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions-Chapter 361: The Wave that Stole the Sky

"CREATURE CALLS CREATION. Domain Expansion: Rod of Moses. The Ocean divider! Staff of Ur! Bowels of the deep rent asunder in the high arts of Caelestes."

[DING!]

[Domain Unleashed]

[ 50 000 souls | Grief of Pharoah rune ]

The great sea, frothing and gulping acres of Fort Glarkis as a watery python, rolled upon the isle in a wrath ascribed of gods. The beach was completely vanished into the seemingly omniscient mouth of the wave. It seemed the waters were a living, breathing, angry thing. Eotigan had seen psycho bitches less mad. He hoped to the blotted sky his [Domain Expansion] worked.

For the hurricane wave itself stretched up to the gray of the heavens, brushing the rolling darken clouds of the firmament, and at one point, Thyra—whom was closest to Eotigan as they clung to a sturdy pole—swore she could see a gigantic face made upon the wave's front.

A snarling face.

Deep green, bearing no similitude to mortal visage. Rather, resembling an octopus.

But what octopus was the size of an island? And commanded waters into a wave that stole the sky?

The heaven and sea were one and the same at this point; conjoined. Thyra agreed with the poor, unfortunate Ponytail—the epicene boy still clutching to her waist in fervency, that this might be the edge of the world really. Or the end of it. Perhaps, they had travelled so far out into the Cold Sea they'd angered some primordial creature of the trench by their boldness. But then good ol' Port Glarkis had been existing for decades on this latitude, and the small island had never once stood to witness the fall of a tide so great it joined with the sky. . .literally.

Eotigan though didn't stop suspecting foul play.

Although of great liquid mass, this sea's dreadful tongue still had a velocity that matched the Imperial naval racer-boats. In mere seconds of the initial cataclysmic blast, the Goliath flood smashed into town, crashing down old homes in but three seconds right after its shockwave.

Freezing, bone-numbing water gulped up the streets. The springs rose above the tallest edifices and inns. People floated about like corn grains in a water basin, tossed as leaves in the typhoon. Eotigan saw one dude have his head completely spliced in two when he was forcibly wheeled by the flood straight through a dismantled rice mill.

"Oh shit!" Thyra gasped.

The buildings that weren't demolished in the first quakes, sonic booms, and typhoons were just about erased by the cold water that smashed bricks harder that gorilla fists.

The lad, Ponytail took one look at the scattered life and cargo, and swiftly started again to name the reasons why the Martyr should forgive his soul: "I shan't have come into work today! I knew it. I just knew it! I shouldn't even be on this FUCKING SHIT island. Everybody knows Port Glarkis is a dump. A once-was-glorious turd of sand! The people living 'ere hate their goddamn lives as much the land. Oh! Martyr, forgive me for swearing. Let this not be added to my faults—" the fair boy dramatically put a hand over his mouth. "I-I didn't mean to, Holy Martyr g-god, I-I swear...."

"Shut your cock-sucking trap, sissy!" Eotigan angrily demanded the boy's silence. "Unlike your lil' mortal arse, I know gods...enough to know the Martyr doesn't give a shit about you.

He doesn't care if you die in a fucking sea apocalypse. I DO!" Eotigan's gravelly voice dropped to a nice timbre. "—so you might as well pray to me."

Ponytail opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again.

—because the very next second the collosal wave fell upon them.

CRAAASSH!!!

Ponytail shut his eyes, his lips pressed hard.

But then he felt nothing. He felt...not dead.

Sure! He heard the chaotic sounds of mighty drums of water beating the world around him to mud but it sounded around him, not upon him. Ponytail felt about his body; he was still alive. Only then did he part his eyes, to behold the auburn-haired hunk, Eotigan standing some feet away before him, his three beautiful dames at his arms. Ponytail followed the heroic moment happening in front of him, up Eotigan's solidly muscled back—he noticed—to the strange and humming wood-staff floating above the man's redhead.

The Rod of Moses.

A [Divine] relic so ancient and mighty of power it had never been summoned a second time... until now.

Ponytail's eyes widened, his eyes huge upon it.

The staff was Lunar-wood, impossible to find on the mortal plane.

As it floated above them, it single-handedly parted the waves crashing terrifyingly down from all sides. Above and around was deep darkness of water – a tiger shark even floated by, but under the luminous staff, the five of them were all safe. The Rod hummed and zinged with otherworld magic. Vibrating and giving off small sparks of [Etheria] every now and then, it divided the ocean in two, and no harm came to them.

Like a Turtleshell canopy, the Rod shielded them as raging, arcane waters passed above, around, and beneath them.

Eotigan's amber eyes witnessed dead men, crushed homes, worried fishes, and giant creatures of the deep pass over by their bubble in the floods.

Thyra could not believe this shit.

—that a demon divided the sea, summoning the [Rod of Moses]—sucessfully—risking his neck.

What a legend for the bards?

After a few moments of gathering himself and confirming he yet stood a living man, Ponytail eventually shut his slack jaw, gulping, and then moving forward to join the one man and three women that had become his heroes for life. "What a way to stop the sea." said he.

For forty long minutes of dread and apprehension the waves rolled over and upon them but the Domain stood a mighty rampart in the overwhelming tides. The rivers of cold waters could not break in. Eotigan stood tall in the face of it, his fire-bending hands ready to shoot down and burn any aberrant sea creature—hurtling past in the floods—that somehow broke through the divide.

The parted waters rose as walls of blue glass. In transparence, Eotigan and the others could see the terrors waiting just for the waters to come crashing in.

—which he'd never allow.

Not with his [Rank S] Domain Expansion.

Thyra stood with him, at his right, Inaia and Kambili at his left. Ponytail stood at the end of them all, beside Kambili. He had the hugest set of pupils of them. They all regarded the shield-shaped bubble currently keeping the marine force away and knew they were safe as long as the glowing staff stayed up. As long as Eotigan stood straight. They were separate and alive within, between the walls of water.

PHHIIISSSSHHHHHH!!!

The floods eased with a loud hissing that sounded both just like ordinary water slipping away or the dying groans of a rhino.

Eotigan was guessing it sounded more like the latter. Ponytail shivered and rubbed his arms.

"Is it just me or is that sea groaning?"

Kambili went feral red as half of her face contorted, her demon possessor Suratanï rearing out to snarl, "tis nut jah you, cute boi."

"I thought so." The lad squinted.

As the high waters fell and retreated, the [Rod of Moses] slowed in its vibration and the divine glow upon it began to dim. It softly burned out like a far-off star, releasing the light of [Etheria] like flowers of a Rhododendron. When it was all drained the staff dropped, but before it would clunk to the earth, Inaia snapped her fingers; Eotigan's [Helpocket] appeared under in crimson effervescence and swallowed it, burying the divine relic to storage for some other catastrophic occasion when its holy power would be summoned again. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

This time perhaps, not by a devil.

As if a veil, the transparent divide fell away. The waves drew back finally to the sea, exposing the barren shores. The air was wet. Smelled of salt, fresh fish, and ripe entrails. The heavens could be seen again. The skyline too. A blue expanse of absolutely nothing. No birds. No clouds. . . No shit.

Thyra didn't know when she let out a sigh. "Whew! I never thought I'd be grateful for sand," her moon eyes travelled the landscape before them, "...or mud I guess."

Then her gaze pored to the shores. And then she saw—

Scattered like blue rose petals on the moor after rain, bodies of the men and women of Port Glarkis, lining the roads from beach to the town.

A town that was no more.

Several other hundred corpses littered the streets and distant farmsteads, dotting the small isle in traumatic poetic style.

All the homes were gone. The trees, gone. The people...gone.

Since all the buildings were flattened in the wake of that sumabitch wave, Eotigan and his bond-in-life comrades stood upon the only surviving house in Port Glarkis—a sorry rubble of that neo-Grecian restaurant—and peered out at the new world washed of water and life.

Ponytail fell to his knees upon wet mud. "A-Am I the last son of Glarkis?"

He was. But no one answered him.

Eotigan hung his head. "Shite. Fuckin' shite." He mumbled, "—so much for peace."

Thyra took his right arm in hers. Inaia put her head upon his strong shoulder, and Kambili's hand found her own. "I can't believe everyone on this island is dead." Eotigan could—story of his life.

He'd not ruled out foul play though. After all the ocean had suddenly developed a face, and a mighty ugly one at that. Inaia curled deeper into him, saying, "only a handful of pirates on the Cold Sea can summon such mysterious and dangerous invocation." She paused, inhaling the stale oxygen of brine, barnacle, and drowned bodies, crinkling her nose, ". . .I can still feel the spike of [arcanum]."

"Me too, Subserviená. Me too." And Eotigan shut his eyes for a long time.