Rungholt

Poseidon's Horses

Nightmare was beyond pissed.

What Dream had told him had been the straw that broke the camels back.

They did it.

The land dwellers really dared to hurt and catch not one but FOUR of the merfolk.

When Dream had been watching the port and the piers he just couldn't miss the gloating fishermen which were showing off the shark mer they caught.

Poor things had obviously gotten desperate enough to try to steal from the fishermen to not starve to death.

Dream heard how the land dwellers decided to prove that they were not afraid of anything, be it the sea itself or some higher beings the old fools were still praying to.

Dream decided he had to tell Nightmare. And quick.

When he was a distance out at sea he turned and saw the land dwellers put up some kind of scaffolding to hang the four shark mer by their tails, put on display for everyone to see.

They were pulling up the small Thresher when Dream looked back again, before turning around and heading for the deep, where Nightmare was sleeping.

Dream was crying when he returned to his brother and Nightmare immediately sent his feelings to Dream to find out the reason. His brother rarely cried. This had to be serious.

"Night, you have to wake up and help me! The land dwellers caught four shark mer and hung them by their tails. They'll die if we don't do anything. You said you would act when the mortals dared to touch the merfolk. I can't do this on my own, i'm not a punishing god."

While Dream talked and rambled, Nightmare was already waking up.

Over the decades and centuries, he had been asleep, his giant body hand gotten half buried under accumulating silt and sediments.

He yawned and stretched his arms before, one by one, pulling his Tentacles out of the ground.

He left his hideout and rose to the surface, stretching his limbs and calling out for his magic.

He immediately started to brew up a storm.

He was determined to leave no stone unmoved. This would be an example to the other land dwellers, to not disrespect the gods and other deities.

He called for Poseidon's warhorses. He would use them to trample the whole island into the sea ground.

To get the storm started would take some time. Nightmare hoped that the captured merfolk would hold on long enough.

Over the hours of the day some of the elders left Rungholt for the Mainland after hearing about the caught shark mer. They saw the darkness out at sea and knew that nothing would be able to calm the angered gods this time.

Rungholt was doomed.

Even if they were to release the four mer, the fishermen had crossed a line that was never meant to be crossed.

So, some of the elders left to get as far away from Rungholt as possible before the storm unleashed its rage.

Not many went with them, too stubborn to acknowledge that this storm was not like any other.

The other elders, those who decided to stay, prepared to face and accept their fate. They felt that they failed in teaching the younger ones the right way and that they therefore deserved to die with everyone else.

The sky turned dark in the evening, packed with clouds. Not long after, it started to rain, water pelting the island, the town, and the sharks.