Closed A Massive Flying Fish

[Shadow]

Fall 61, 124 (edit)

The beach had been rather deserted for the better part of the day. There had been gentle waves, their sounds barely reaching the shore and the cries of the seagulls in the distance. The wind had been calm, apart from a gentle zephyr that had brought the smell of the sea and kelp.

But there on the shore the debris of a ship had told a completely different story. Shattered wood and tattered sails had covered the sand. Parts of the hull that was once strong and capable of withstanding the force of the sea had been turned into soggy fragments that the sea threw around with the slightest provocation. Cords, worn and severed, had swung from torn spars. Coconuts, barrels, and crates, most of which were burst open, had tipped over, and their contents including broken glass, wet cloths, and indiscernible merchandise were buried in the sand.

There had been no sign of survivors. No bodies, no cries for help. What had been left of it was debris, left on the shore as if the ocean wanted nothing to do with it. The sea had appeared to be especially calm in comparison. The surface had been almost glassy, the light of the sky fading with the sun setting. At that moment, something began to bubble right under the surface. Small waves had risen on the otherwise calm water, a sign that the sea was not done with taking what it wanted.

Suddenly the water had risen and gushed out in a whirlpool. Vaguely the amorphous mass resolved into a great semi-aquatic creature with a serpent-like body of massive scales gleaming with wetness. It extended above the water, writhing and slithering like a creature in hunt.

In its mouth it had seized a giant fish, a fish of a size which was almost equal to the size of the small ship. The fish had twisted in vain, the body of a fish wriggling as it were when alive but the secure grip of the leviathan had been tight.

Its head turned up and then it took off from the water into the air. The fish had stayed in its mouth, blood trailing behind as the creature had ascended. The leviathan let out a roar that carried across the beach and out into the sea. The force of it had shaken the sand beneath the wreckage, moving the few remnants of the broken ship.

Then, as soon as it had emerged, the creature had vanished into the air along with the prey. The beach was again as quiet as before. Rumor had it the Leviathan was moving inland.

OOC:

• Assume you are aware that the Leviathan has been particularly active recently and have reason to believe it is hunting the skies around the firelands

 

[Kage]

Fall 61, 124

Kage wasn't the type to care about animals in a general sense. He could quite literally create animals out of wood and have them obey his every command. Plus, they would live forever and could be relatively easily repaired. So, skills such as taming and animism never quite interested him. Still, there were some animals that did catch his interest. He was a collector at heart so when an exceedingly rare animal popped up on his radar, he liked to act.

He'd heard of a leviathan who had been making a ruckus off the western coast and supposedly it was expected to keep heading inland. And so, he thought going after it would be a good opportunity to put his treants to the test with the chance of obtaining some of its scales as a trophy.

He'd spent a good amount of time and Saol enlarging his treant dragon. It was 60' tall now, as large as an elder dragon and he'd integrated the head of a large wolf into it so that it could see and hear properly. Its wings had been fitted with luminpetal as well, so that it could more easily fly. Kage knew he had no chance at attacking the leviathan if it went into the water, but if it was flying… maybe he would have a chance.

Upon the dragon's back was a saddle where both White and Fluffy sat nervously. White was there because she was the 'animal expert' and was going to be helping to pinpoint the location of their prey. Fluffy was being forced to go along because Kage thought she might be able to help calm it with her beast tongue. It was a big ask to send them on this mission, but Kage was only semi confident that they would even be able to find the monster.

And so, he sent his dragon off into the sky where it flew slowly and awkwardly over towards the firelands in search of the magnificent Leviathan.

"Good luck," vibrated Kage's voice in Fluffy's ear. He had grafted a small treant into it which contained an array of small yet taught fibers of the haerpsi plant that he'd bound to. It would allow him to relay messages to Fluffy and even hear what was going on, but that was about it. In hindsight he ought to have prepared them a little more, but he didn't exactly have much notice. If he spent days preparing then the leviathan might be long gone.

[Note to self: Claim that he's bound to the haerpsi in the review. Also claim the grafted undead]

417

 

[Shadow]

The leviathan flew on and on, its massive form was maneuvering through the skies as if it was a shadow of the horizon. The sky was clear, the air was thin and Kage's treant dragon slowly moved further. Since White possessed a good academic's understanding of the creature's movement pattern, they would be able to predict the general location that the leviathan would be headed to.

As huge as the treant dragon might have been, it was not meant to move quickly. The leviathan did not have this flaw. It was massive AND quick. Kage's group had been flying for days, and still there was no sign of the leviathan. It was like chasing a storm one that is always there but always out of grasp.

Even in such conditions, it was during the third day of travel when something moved on the horizon. There was an extend long curve in the sky barely visible due to the fading light. Even from this distance it was massive, its shape morphing and contorting as it moved through the air. The leviathan.

It was still a long way away, no more than a faint pencil line against the grey of the sky, but it could not be mistaken. Its scales looked smooth and was shimmering while flying. They had seen it at last, but the gap was still wide between the two parties. It would be obvious that they would never be able to catch it if it wanted to flee. They would need to intercept its path or tempt the leviathan to attack.

OOC:

• It's far away, but fast

 

[Kage]

Kage was annoyed with how slow the search was going. He couldn't simply command his treant to 'go find a leviathan.' He had to check in every so often to give updated commands and tell it to fly in a certain direction based on suggestions that White relayed to Fluffy. So when his checked in and saw the leviathan on the horizon, he felt a sense of relief.

Fluffy turned her head to White and said, "he wants to know how we can catch up to it."

White used her best judgement and said, "it looks like it's headed due East. So, if we adjust our trajectory to north, slightly north west… we should be able to meet it. But it could change directions or avoid us."

Fluffy nodded, and Kage issued the command to the dragon-like treant to take the suggested course. It would fly to try to intercept the leviathan and was ordered to attack relentlessly if it was able to get close enough.

583

 

[Shadow]

The leviathan did not seem to be bothered by the treant dragon that was coming closer. Although the construct itself was the size of a large building, sixty-feet massive with wings, the leviathan did not find it to be a threat. It had fought with far more aggressive looking adversaries like giant sea worms, sea snakes and other strange aquatic monsters. This was a monstrous, plant-like being, a sluggard in its actions, and a thousand-foot-long monster considered it something of an average obstacle.

When the treant dragon started to make it clear that it wanted to attack the leviathan, the leviathan watched it with mild curiosity. Its eyes followed the creature, head lowering a little as if working out the range. When the treant's mouth gaped open for an attack the leviathan responded with deadly speed.

It moved forward, and opened its own huge mouth. The two clashed directly, but while the treant had a wooden head covered with vines and barks the leviathan had impressively sharp fangs. It opened its jaws and bit into the treant's chest, which made a horrible sound of cracking as it cut through the plant material. Popping sound of cracking wood could be heard as the leviathan crushed and tore through the treant's body.

With the force of a thrash it swung its massive body and chopped the treant in half. The construct which was once great and powerful was a mass of limbs, leaves, twigs and chunks of wood bonking helplessly downwards.

Its serpentine body was still spiraled in the air, stretching up to the skies as the two halves of the treant fell. Next, the monster began to fly downwards and its huge shape once again blotted out the sunlight. It moved directly towards Fluffy and White with its mouth opened. There would be no escape. The leviathan was preparing to swallow them whole.

OOC:

• Try to make the best of a bad situation

 

[Kage]

Kage gritted his teeth when his attack failed. He had been unwise to think that he could challenge the leviathan in the skies when his construct was so clunky. Treants based their skills off of their masters, and he didn't know the first thing about flying, so it was a doomed formula from the start. Still, even as the treant was torn asunder, he hoped that he might be able to come out with some sort of prize. The dragon's claws would scrape at the leviathan's hide in a desperate attempt to chip off some scales.

The aelf wasn't worried about his minions at all, not yet. White's life was entirely disposable, and if Fluffy was too pea brained to have a bird seeming form then she deserved to perish. As it happened, the inari did not have any useful forms to save her from this fate. So when the leviathan came thrashing down from the skies, she found herself with few options.

"Stop this at once!" she cried out in fairly decent beast tongue. She started canting saol, but she was either unable to calm it or perhaps there just wasn't enough time to properly pacify the leviathan. In any case, it looked like she was about to get eaten. So, she jumped from the falling treant, hoping that she might somehow survive the fall.

White ended up flying through the air on one of the treant's wings that had broken off. It was still a very fast and rough fall, but she had her wits about her and wanted very much to survive. She tried her best to steer, hoping to land in the trees somewhere where she might have a chance at seeing another day.

Meanwhile, many miles away, Kage shook his head in disappointment. He couldn't see what was going on anymore. He'd assumed his treant was destroyed because he had lost his tethers to it. He could still hear through the graft in Fluffy's ear and he could speak to her through it so long as she maintained her current form.

"Looks like I might need to start looking for another Inari."

940

 

[Shadow]

The treant's remains dropped like a calamity of splinters of wood and torn vines from the sky. White, who was catapulted off on one of the wings that had been broken off the wild ride, was likely well aware of the ground rushing up to meet her. The treant would do wonders to help cushion her fall but she would pass out immediately. Her body was crippled, her body battered, but she would survive if someone came for her in time.

Fluffy however was not as lucky. Her screams in the beast language were unheard as the leviathan came down with its mouth open. The ancient creature paid no attention to her cries, did not acknowledge her effort to appease it. The leviathan was a voracious beast and Fluffy was just some thing that the leviathan could consume.

The leviathan engulfed her and a portion of the treant's remains. Fluffy fell into the darkness of the creature's throat, and the environment around her was a mess and a little illuminated. She passed by the remains of large fish, birds and other animals that had gotten wedged into the sides of the throat.

The light from outside was gradually fading. Vision came and went in brief flashes when the leviathan opened its mouth but it was dark for the most part. She would eventually stop falling as the leviathan started flying parallel to the ground again. She wasn't in the stomach yet but she was probably not very far from being at risk of being digested, and there was a slow yet constant motion that pulled her further away from the mouth of the leviathan.

She would be able to move around and even head out the way she came, with great effort. The leviathan was 20 feet tall so she would even be able to stand up in some areas or find safe spots that didn't push her inwards. She would even be able to find some supplies that had been eaten from a ship not too long ago. It did not appear that she was at an immediate risk of death ~ for now.

OOC:

• Survive

 

[Kage]

White saw her life flash before her eyes as she rapidly approached the ground. The treant did a good job of cushioning her fall, but there was no escaping the potentially lifelong injuries that she would sustain. She lay there among wood and plant fibers in a veritable coffin. Kage had no way of knowing if she survived, but he did want to go fetch her. He'd have to go personally to heal her, taking time out of his busy schedule.

He walked out of his house in a hurry and created a spider-like carriage that would carry him like a mount. Once he was on his way, he finally took a deep breath and tried to focus on Fluffy. The last thing he'd heard was her speaking in beast tongue. Had it worked?

"Fluffy," Kage's words rang in her ears as he spoke through the treant graft in her ear.

"Y… yes. Hello?" Fluffy asked with a whimper. It was dark where she was and she was inside a leviathan. She had tried to fight her way out, but it was easier said than done. It was fairly likely that few things that entered a leviathan's mouth ever exited through it. The most she could do was claw at its innards, but she didn't know if she was making any meaningful progress.

"Where are you?"

"I am inside of it."

"Are you injured?"

"No."

Kage paused to consider their options. As peculiar a situation this was, he had seen quite a few fucked up things in his long life. This was hardly the worst. "If you are uninjured then you have a chance. We will stick to the plan – you must soothe the Leviathan as if your life depends on it, because it looks like it does. To do that, you must get back out of its mouth and pacify it long enough to bring you down safely."

He thought for another moment. The option of simply transfiguring the leviathan into one of Fluffy's other forms came to mind… but he was fairly certain that would spell out her death and possibly kill the leviathan as well. He did not wish to see her die, so he instructed her not to take such risks.

They each had their own jobs to do. [Can't afford to do this so I'm editing it out] Kage circled back around to Droplet and had some private time with her before sundering her for the imberite that he knew she would have for him. It wasn't how he wanted to have her killed, but the thought did occur to him that he would need a good amount of it if Fluffy was going to take a chance at saolbinding to the Leviathan. He went on to a market to purchase the rest of the dust that they would need.

Meanwhile, Fluffy tried to make the best of a bad situation. She used chimera to borrow her imprinted aelven form's lifesight ability. It would allow her to see so long as there was life around her, which ought to be a fairly simple matter what with her being inside a living creature. One of the benefits of lifesight was being able to see the vulnerable arteries, which might help if she eventually decided she needed to attack.

For now, she was content with wandering around and checking out supplies. She knew she wasn't going to escape anytime soon so she tried to find something to sleep on and to eat. If there were dead animals inside, she would try to find one that was the least decayed and try to eat a little of it. Then, she would try to get some sleep.

1548

 

[Shadow]

The time passed by as the leviathan flew. Its body undulated and constantly shifted, so anyone who was unlucky enough to be inside could never get any good rest. The walls of the stomach moved with the motion of the beast, and with each thud, it became nearly impossible to stand steady. But at some point the leviathan accelerated no more and its motions became less frequent as if it were flying in its sleep.

The quiet, the silence and the eerie deadness of the world brought with it a brief moment of respite. For the first time since Fluffy was swallowed the world inside the leviathan was calm. She slept for a time but that peace did not last. As leviathan started to tilt and go into a dive, the feeling of weightlessness would come back. The force of gravity changed direction and everything that was inside went along with it.

Then came the rush of water. It wasn't enough to flood the inside, but for a giant creature a simple gulp of water was enough to be an annoyance. Fragments of fish, and other marine life forms, and other large organisms began to enter the chamber along with the water. The salty water splashed up to the knees and with it were pieces of meat that would soon be processed.

The water kept on flowing in a cycle. With each gulp the water level began to rise gradually but steadily to the past the chest level. It would be very difficult to justify remaining in a human's form.

1604 words so far

OOC:

• I will make a new thread after your next post. There will be a time skip, so go ahead and assume several days pass with similar conditions. You may assume any normal sea creature is available to you so long as they are equal or less sized than a shark

 

[Kage]

Living in the Leviathan was hell. What with the constant motion and the less than ideal living conditions, Fluffy didn't know how much more she could take. When she couldn't sleep, she focused on practicing her beast tongue. She believed Kage – she had to somehow pacify the Leviathan. Even if she could escape out the mouth, she would just be falling to her death. If for some reason the leviathan went back into the water… she was as good as dead if she had to take the form of a fish.

As if her worst fears came true, she woke with a start and had to grab onto the creature's innards with all her strength to stop herself from falling further inside. She screamed and wished that her tail was strong enough to help anchor her. She couldn't help but lose grip when the creature hit the water. Everything was a whirl as the interior flooded and fish rushed past her.

"Fish!" she thought. She grabbed onto one and sunk her teeth into it, imprinting onto it. The creatures before hadn't been recently dead, but these fish had just been bitten. She looked for a variety of forms she could take. There was an octopus that she tore into which allowed her to hold onto things more easily. There was even a shark's head that floated by that she hungrily ate. It made her want to vomit, but she knew that she would need the biting force if she was ever going to survive in the ocean.

Despite her circumstances, Fluffy stayed in her base form for quite a long time. She chimera'd gills to be able to breathe in the water, but she was so unaccustomed to being a fish that she felt safer being able to use her hands. She also didn't want to lose connection to Kage. She couldn't speak if she was underwater and she didn't know how the treant would fare.

Over the next couple days she would slowly give up on trying to stay 'normal'. She would turn her legs into a disgusting series of tentacles which she used to grab food and stay put. Whenever she had the energy she would try pulling her way more towards the mouth. When she rested physically, she practiced her animism to try soothing the still-living fish that passed by.

Eventually she would stop eating fish and focus on turning her teeth into razor sharp shark's teeth. She would pick a spot and start trying to tear into the flesh of the Leviathan. She needed to consume flesh, blood, and bone of the creature in order to imprint to it, and the only thing she was missing was bone. This was more experimental than an actual attempt to eat her way out of the creature. She doubted she would ever be able to break through its scales, but she felt that it was a good idea to at least try.

2041

 

[Shadow]

Thread Title: A Massive Flying Fish

Thread Summary: Fluffy & White go after a Leviathan. White is in a coma, Fluffy gets eaten, and Kage is fetching White. Fluffy copes with her new scenario.

Expected Rewards:
Shadow: 16 dungeoneering xp
Abraia: 16 xp
Kage: 20 xp
Fluffy: Octopus and Shark imprints
Thread Link: https://antarok.net/threads/a-massive-flying-fish.410/#post-2255
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[Vicissitude]

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❀ Rewards ❀

Requested rewards granted!

❀ Comments ❀

Haha, I love how callous Kage is about his pets. Good thing Miss Fluffy is a Master of Seeming so she doesn't have to worry much about the Saol cost of her minor shifts & new Imprints.

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