Bloodsword: War of the Leaf

Landfall

With a surge of foamy water, the Meridian slapped and grabbed at Kuosh’s stony cliffs, seeking to find purchase on the gray rock in the hopes of dragging this forbidding piece of land down into the Meridian’s bosom. But, as it had since the birth of the eastern Meridian millennia ago, the questing hands of water fell back in failure, leaving spray-lashed rock behind, seemingly untouched and unmoved by the surging foam, scoured clean by the constantly pounding surf.

But, on this day, so nigh the first days of spring, the sea did something it had never done before on Kuosh’s shores: it left something behind! As the waters retreated after this most recent aquarian assault on the rocky cliffs, a bruised and battered body was hooked around a jagged spur of rock and was left behind as the surf made a dash back to the safety of its parent. For a long moment the body lay perfectly still, unmoving as if Life had left it, its skin blue with cold.

Then, just as the surf began another run at Kuosh’s unmoving bulk and battered face, the body shuddered and drew in a deep breath, ended suddenly in a great bout of coughing and retching.

Groaning, Tev Bloodsword, the human pirate late of the Dawn Princess, raised his head with a stiff and cramped neck and slowly looked around with bloodshot eyes. What greeted him left his numbed and sluggish mind puzzled: cold, gray rock, sea-lashed, jagged and bare. ‘Where am I?’ He wondered dully as something began to push at the edges of his awareness. Blinking out the cold water that dribbled down out of his soaking wet hair and eyebrows, he tried to focus his blurry vision even as he cudgeled his frozen brain back into action. As he did this, that ‘something’ that had pushed at his awareness became insistent, . . . much more insistent. Finally, when he was getting enough warm blood to his brain, the ‘something’ registered as a sound. ‘The sound of the incoming surf!’ He thought wildly, looking about himself with quick, jerky motions.

It was in a swing around the top edge of the spur that held him against the cliff face that he caught sight of a wall of water, foam-flecked and filled with visible chunks of debris, climbing up the cliff towards him.

“Kadasa!” He managed to rasp then twisted his body hard in an attempt to free it from the spur’s wedged-in grip. But his muscles, still frozen from their prolonged exposure to the Meridian’s rough embrace, refused to work and he found himself wiggling ineffectively as the water continued to advance! ‘C’mon, C’MON!!’ He mentally screamed, willing strength and warmth to his frozen limbs. But, by the First, he couldn’t even feel his fingers and toes and didn’t know if he had lost any during his sojourn in the water!

Then the surf crashed into him and Tev found himself clinging to the spur for dear life as the sea buffeted him about like a rag doll. With claws of steely water, it sought to tear him away from his precarious perch to drag him back into the Meridian’s bosom, repenting of the mercy it had shown in stranding him on Kuosh’s rocky shore. With the last of his rapidly waning strength, the human held on, clinging like a giant barnacle held fast to the very rock itself.

Finally, with a ‘whoosh’ that left him both deaf from the water in his ears and sputtering with the water in his mouth and nostrils, the surf once again retreated down the cliff base. Shuddering from the cold, Tev took a long moment to suck precious air into his lungs as he silently thanked the Maker and the Seven Dragons for giving him the strength to hold on. Then the realization that the surf would soon return, again and again to pummel his already battered body, made him start.

As the thought continued to fill his mind, he set to with a will to get his legs and arms moving again in the hope of pulling himself out of harm’s way. It was that, or face being swept out to sea, and certain death. ‘And I think I’ve swallowed enough sea water to float the entire Solavar Navy!’ He thought as he raised his right arm off the rock to inspect it for damage. Most of it was too numb to feel pain so he had to check it out visually. ‘Bah! Nothing more than a club of bone and muscle now.’ He thought bleakly as his eyes ran over the pale, bluish flesh, now festooned with long scraps and gouges, still mostly unresponsive to his will. Just then the sound of the approaching surf began to enter his ears.