The Tale of Sir Ramics

A Song of Silence

"Get them!"  The roar subsumes the sound of the sea, a guttural primality to it.

The branches bow toward the sea, the ship listing with the weight of them sprouting from its deck, sailors crowding the rail...  Ama cowers in the rowboat, clutching Siv to herself, whispering urgently to her daughter, who's gone still with fear.  The knight stands tall before them, ready.  There is no sword to be drawn.  The footing is unsteady.  The sailors are not untrained townsfolk, made mindless by the living death.  The knight stands tall, regardless.

"Why are you waiting?" growls Beni, but the sailors shy from the unnatural growth, and she shoves them roughly aside.  Moonlight glints unevenly from her cutlass' blade as she climbs the bending boughs, eyes of fury locking on the knight.  "You found it," Beni says in a low rumble.  "Don't know what isn't yours, eh?"  The branches creak beneath her steps.

The knight hesitates, then raises two gauntleted fists in an uncertain guard.

Beni grins, as sharp as an unnoticed reef.  Something drips from her cutlass.

"We don't have what you're looking for!" cries Ama.  "Siv, please," she says, unable to return to a whisper, anxiety sending tremors through the words, "just put us in the water."

"Siv?" Beni asks, drawing the syllable out into space enough for three.

Ama whimpers, holding her unresponsive daughter closer.  The knight shifts to block Beni's view.

"She's the one?" asks Beni, and the whispering waves echo her question.  "She's the one who slipped past my useless guard"—Ama jumps at the shout—"and took it?"

"She's the one," whisper the waves.

Beni lunges.

The sea echoes her roar, the waves swelling beneath the ship, Ama clutching at the side of the rowboat and the knight ducking low to do the same as Beni's roar turns to a scream as she lunges too far, now, sailing over their heads and tumbling off into the yawning depths.

Her scream lasts too long.

The ship teeters on the brink.  Its sailors cling to the rails.  The waves whisper their laughter, louder and louder, until it echoes around them, rolling away across that barren expanse.

"So she's the one," the sea whispers in distant thunder.  "She's the one who dares."  That laughter rolls from the empty darkness below and before them, and abruptly halts, the ship creaking its protest as the waves tighten their grip on its hull, and the darkness rises up, some semblance of a face staring down at them, an unearthly glow serving as eyes.  "She's the one," hisses the sea, pulling the ship closer until her unblinking eye is beside the rowboat in its leafy berth, "to send me such insult?"

"We mean no harm," sobs Ama.  "Please.  I don't know what we did, but we're sorry!  We meant you no—"

"Silence," roars the sea, washing over Ama.  "Insult requires recompense."  The wave recedes, carrying an unconscious Siv with it.

"Siv!" Ama screams, and would have leapt after her if not for the knight grabbing her around the waist and hauling her bodily back.  "Let.  Me.  GO!" Ama roars, slamming her elbow into the knight's helmet, sending it snapping backwards, but the knight doesn't let go, and the sea begins to move back, away from the ship, away with Siv.

"Bring her back!  She hasn't done anything!  She—"  Ama's eyes go wide, her struggles ceasing.  "The ship!  They have something—that's what you want, isn't it?  Whatever Beni was after!  Please!  We don't—"

The sea rushes in again, glowing eye inches from Ama.  "The sailor was witless.  Worthless.  She would disrespect me, speaking earthen powers in the sea.  Cease your incivility and—"

The knight is standing.  Ama is still too shocked to move, but the knight holds out an open palm toward the sea.  The sea looks at it.  The sea looks at the knight.  "What is this?" it whispers, water shifting, swirling as she moves to look from one side and another.

The knight waits.

"No speech?" asks the sea.  "No insignificant pleas?"

The knight reaches up with the other hand, and lifts the helmet's visor.

"What is this?" the sea whispers, curiosity shifting to incredulity as it stares through empty space to the back of the knight's helmet.  It lifts a hand as big as the ship, and brushes the tip of a finger through the knight's arm—and jerks back.  "Mortals," spits the sea.  "Thinking one is all the same as another.  She insulted me."

The knight's arm falls—but only a little before the knight presents it again, more forcefully.

"Something else?" the sea whispers with a voice of scorn.

The knight waits.

At last, the sea relents, sending a thin wave washing over the knight.

"Oh," says the sea.  "You," says the sea, equal parts wonder and condemnation.

The knight nods.

"Accepted," murmurs the sea, and the knight knows no more.

※

There is music in the sea, for those who know to listen.  The sea is in no hurry, and neither is its song.  The notes linger beneath the waves, filling so much water, so much space devoid of anything but.  It is the song of whales, and drowned men, and a silence so vast it becomes heard.  It is the song between heartbeats of the world.  There is music in the sea, for those who dare to listen.  It holds a beauty so hauntingly deep, it draws you in and swallows you whole.

A cavernous note of tarnished brass begins to swell.  A slow and dissonant rumble rolls through the sonorous tone.  Its fade is hardly to be noticed, so gradually does it slide away from existence.

"You do not drown," says the sea.  Her voice is softer here, without the interruption of air.

The knight is silent.

"You do not...end," says the sea.  And then, some time later, "We are alike, in that."

A current flows across the knight, a gentle nudge and pull.  The silence deepens, lengthens, until it cannot be fathomed, and the mind gives it voice.

"Do you like my song?" asks the sea.

The knight has no more words than the drowned.

"All things must end," says the sea.

A light grows in the distance, dim and ethereal; a pale, green glow.

"I began with the world."

A low rumbling fills the space, a thousand riders over hard-packed earth.

"You...did not."

The glow fades to nothing.

"I cannot keep you," says the sea.  "You wish your freedom.  I am never still, but I never move.  You move too much."

The rumbling is subsumed by a heavy note, the sound of wind blowing past the window of a house built in the wall of a mountain gorge, if the wind were made of water.

"What price has your freedom?" muses the sea.  And some time later, "Tell me how you began."

The song of the sea is a dangerous thing.  It ebbs and flows ever the same, ever different.  It draws you in with the chorus of whales echoing across an untold distance, and holds you in a soft embrace until you join the drowned, in a silence so vast, so utterly complete, it swallows sounds, and life, and memories.

※

Based on HalosAndHellfires' prompt:

The gates of hell stand ajar and out steps one of hell's most cunning creatures.  Your character stares it in the eyes.  This hellcat can bring you to your knees or grant you your one deepest desire.