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Usually, he was enticed by the sea, tempted by the siren waves, intoxicated by the relish of the ocean. His mother’s blood ran through his veins in a constant cycle of breathless wonder and adoration for the power, for the prestige, for the pernicious slate of the blue undulations, the rippling core, the sheer domination of its force. Most days he’d stand amidst its splendor and pretend to be its ruler, its titan, its monarch, pressing down on the current, bowing to the leagues of fish, to the ruminations of sand and silt – but that had been amidst the Endless Blue, where he could run rampant for hours and never see another being, where he could pledge allegiance to the skies, to the heavens, to the clouds, where he could nearly see the ghost of his dam in the droplets of rain, in the clashing haze. This wasn’t Helovia now, and there was too much dragging beneath the surf, a prison, an oubliette, a dungeon built for the foreign trespassers. He’d sought the scope of land simply to search for Enyo, to say he looked, to say he tried, because he didn’t know what else to do – his backup plans were always fueled and invoked by perseverance (eventually something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be him).
The arena was lined with too much sand and hardly any fish. He stared at its churning waves, at its bellowing surface, and narrowed his eyes, almost thought to sneer, to raise his hackles, to offer a glinting challenge to the world (you’ve already taken enough from me, he thought, what more can you do?), to the realm, to the stretch of beach and barriers. The spires reminded him briefly of the rotting, rusting Sentinels, gleaming in promise of bloodshed and ruin, grown static and forlorn, into nothing but particles of metal, by the weights of time – who was to say these towers weren’t the same? Boldness cut through his core, a relishing proposition, better than the hours he’d spent in mourning, in brooding, in languishing every single piece of his soul because he’d had enough, enough of being a pawn in this parade, enough of standing by and letting unknown forces or fallen Gods or hellholes drag him any further down into their clutches. The youth’s gaze focused on the waves again, the suspended torment, the weightless world spiraling amidst the glamor, the decadence, and reckless endeavors pierced into his skull; he smirked, he sneered, he glimmered, alive and renewed by the challenge, by the crusade, by the notion that he couldn’t fall any further.
He stepped inside the gates.
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Akvo City
