As dawn trails its rosy fingers across the sky, Peleus' son Achilles sets out aboard a fisherman's boat across the wine-dark sea. When he heard news of the fearsome beasts terrorizing the waves, he did not hesitate to come forth as a volunteer. The gods of this land brought him here for a purpose, which daily he seeks to understand — moreover, his life is already forfeit, his death decided by Fate, the day drawing nearer with every breath. To one such as him, the taste of fear is all but forgotten.
"Take courage!" swift-footed Achilles says, laying a strong hand on his comrade's shoulder. "These beasts that have conquered the cutting waves and struck terror in every fisherman's breast, we shall conquer them in like."
So speaking, a pulse of energy warms under his palm. As when a man imbibes wine, and the sweet buzz of it sinks into his blood, so too does this energy move through Achilles' companion. Rather than dulls the senses, however, it sharpens them.
Back in the Primary Settlement, Achilles joins in the preparations for Winifred's funeral with all the solemnity demanded of such a noble sacrifice. Into the forest he journeys, armed not with the bow and spear he favors for hunting, but with an ax, with which he shall hew the sacred wood for Winifred's pyre.
He holds his tongue as he treads the trail, for such silence seems only proper when he approaches the sacred trees of the gods. But in his throat hums a dirge, and in his mind the story of the late Head of the Council forms.
Nanaue has left Baby to tend to itself by the shore, where it makes little mounds in the sand. Rather than join his companion in his little boat and certainly cause issues of weight distribution, he has taken directly to the water, swimming at pace for now. Despite his size he barely disturbs the water's surface, displaying a predatory grace in his (presumably) natural habit.
As the hand reaches out to touch his fin over the edge of the little boat he makes a chortling sound.
Teddy hasn't ever been on the ocean before. They know how to swim; their dad wouldn't have let any child of his lack in a basic survival skill (or, more practically, end up missing out on the occasions he and his brothers scraped together the same weekend off to take all the cousins to the lake). Teddy had learned particularly young because there was a creek out back that sort of challenged the categorization when it rained much.
They've gone tubing and rafting on rivers, fished, been out in boats; they've jumped off the edge of stupidly high embankments into reservoirs with friends. They wouldn't categorize themself as afraid of water.
But none of those are the ocean. It's beautiful, and so big, and also, obviously much, much more deadly. It would have had their respect already, even if recently they hadn't watched it turn into a building-high wall of water out of a monster movie and simply swallow up one of the most respected elders in Solvunn, for no reason other than all of them decided sea, not forest. (Teddy is aware, obviously, that if they'd gone with forest just as large a sacrifice would have been demanded, or could've been. It just...)
He's been quiet, a little, with that on his mind, as they headed out in search of sea monsters. It's a small boat, a little dory type thing, and he can feel the spray on his face as the waves settle down from crossing the storm wall.
Achilles' enthusiastic encouragement is hard to ignore, though, and when Nanaue laughs and dives, Teddy can't help but laugh. She isn't sure what he means but it's comforting to have a shark on their side -- he really is pretty intimidating in the water. Besides, she just likes both of them: if you had to pick a team to battle Leviathans with, this is a pretty good one.
Achilles claps Teddy's shoulder in turn and they feel warmed and almost defiant in that last thought. They'll be fine. "I feel like we should be singing sea shanties," Teddy laughs, and then pauses, thinking about the few times they've sung in the last couple of months and how well everyone took to it. "Actually. Do you want to? It could help keep us synced up, if nothing else."
Achilles, who learned the arts of music, medicine, and war from Chiron, the wisest of the centaurs, is hardly bewildered to keep company with a man who is half shark. Indeed, Nanaue's singular gifts seem to him a great boon on this adventure that carries them into the heaving sea.
Thus bolstering the courage of his companions, by way of the blessing the gods of this land have bestowed upon him, the son of Peleus again seizes hold of the oars to guide the boat across the salt-sharp waves. With the strength of three ordinary men packed into his great limbs, he grants a swiftness to their craft that few could accomplish alone.
"Very well! Let us sing, and perhaps our voices will lure from the sea one of these beasts that we are to slaughter."
So speaking, Achilles launches into a song about the old man of the sea, Nereus, who ruled the waves in the days before the three deathless brothers, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, drew lots to determine each one's domain. And as he sings and smites the sea with his oars, the boat draws ever toward the storm-wall that shields Solvunn from their enemies to the north.
Nanaue does not get to hear the singing. He dives down a few dozen meters, not so far into the depths that the light of the sun can no longer penetrate, continuing to reveal the dark shape of he little boat above him. A school of fish scatter in a silver burst of fear as he opens his maw, lazily catching stragglers between his rows of teeth as he slams his jaws shut again. Tasty!
But it is quickly a far larger shape is the foreboding dark below that catches his flat black eyes as they scan for movement. Nanaue has fought a leviathan before, albeit a small and young one. This shape is roughly the same size, or at least appears so as it starts to surface from the depths. It opens one, very large golden eye in his direction, tentacles lined with hooks whipping in his direction.
From the surface, the adventurers in their little boat may see a massive, cone-shaped head rise - a creature similar to a colossal squid or octopus, only with a circular maw of teeth in place of a beak. Nanaue rises with it, wrapped in its tentacle and eating his way free, nearly severing the tentacle in three quick bites and dropping straight back into the water.
Teddy feels a little like they should be helping more -- with the singing, or the hunting, or at least the rowing, but it's not terribly hard to see that Achilles is much stronger and thus moving the little boat faster than Teddy can.
It's not the sort of sea shanty that Teddy's used to; those are simple call-and-response songs meant to keep the beat for rowers or those with ropes. It is fascinating, though, keeping his mind off of the danger and on the melody, catching some repeated lines to come in on harmony.
Then the leviathan rises, Nanaue wrapped in a tentacle. Teddy barely has time to shout for him, though he looks perfectly content gnawing his way out, inky blood darkening the water as his teeth shred the tentacle. "We need to come alongside," she says, thinking fast -- if they keep going straight into it, it's going to just grab at them next, and much as he seems in his element, she's not about to watch this thing with too many teeth devour her friend.
Without considering their own safety -- if they wait too long, the thing's going to come up underneath them anyway -- they rise to grab for the ropes on the dinghy's single sail, currently secured as oars are a better means to get straight out from the beach. "You've got a spear, harpoon, something you can throw?" they call, clinging to the rope and swinging dangerously close to the side as they tie it off. The wind from the storm's perpendicular to them, which should keep them sort of staying still if they can keep it like that. "Switch with me."
Teddy ducks under the beam, grabbing onto Achilles' shoulder for balance. "I can keep us level, if you can aim from here. Otherwise I've just got a big fucking knife in the front, and we're gonna have to get closer for that. We can't let Nanaue do this by himself."
Even as she says it she's trying to think of a new song. It doesn't even have to be one that makes sense, just something, if she can keep them all on the same page and emboldened.
Teddy's been letting the children, dutifully, teach them how to weave garlands for the pyre, and in turn -- when they seem a little too restless or a little too sad to keep at it -- sharing stories or little games about those wildflowers and plants that overlap with their own world.
He'd poked his head into the kitchen just to be sure they're not struggling: it's not Teddy's strongest suit, but he can follow a recipe or instructions and lend a hand, and it's familiar. When someone's laid up or passes on, you make food; a family has enough to do without making decisions about food at a time like that, and bustling over the top of complicated loss and acceptance is a thing Teddy recognizes.
There are already too many people with their hands busy, though, and they're quietly a little relieved that whatever Abraxas' version of Things In A Casserole Dish (probably: things in something not terribly unlike a casserole dish), it's not going to involve them. Teddy has the last-minute forethought to hunt down an ink drawing of Winifred's arcana and Vagn's sigil so that they can carve it into the wood, and starts off toward the forest to catch up with some of the others.
It's quiet, and cooler, as forests are, and she walks quietly to let herself listen to the birds, to the crunch and crackle of twigs and the whistle of the breeze. Teddy can tell Achilles is lost in thought as well when she spots him not far ahead at a fork in the trail, and she clears her throat a little. Probably unwise to startle someone holding an axe.
From the hull of the boat Achilles produces his great ash spear, tipped in pitiless iron — a skilled craftsman from among the goat-herding Solvunnites made it for him in exchange for the cleaned pelts of twelve deer, soft and speckled white. He stands from the rowing bench, leaving the oars to Teddy.
"No, magnificent Nanaue will not brave the bloody jaws of battle alone, not when I am here. Among the bronze-clad Achaeans, no man was my equal, not in matters of war.
"I in all my great strength could not save my dear comrade, Menoetius' gallant son Patroclus, whom I loved above all other men. Blinded by the rage that smoked in my breast for Agamemnon, lord of men, I let him leap into battle alone, and when he met man-killing Hector far from the hollow ships, I was not there to defend him. Death loosed his limbs, and down he went to the house of Hades. Never again will any companion of mine be felled because I abstained from the fight."
So speaking, godlike Achilles hurls his long-shadowed spear at the fierce golden eye of the beast. The shaft sails over the frothing waves, and the iron tip strikes home in the center. The leviathan looses a roar from its maw. Raging in pain, it heaves one of its mighty tentacles toward the boat, and Achilles dives into the dark of the sea. Bent on retrieving his weapon, he swims toward the beast with swift, sure strokes.
He turns to see Teddy several paces behind him on the path, and he gives them a kind smile. As when clouds, gathered by mighty Zeus, shroud the sky in iron grey, and the sun peeks out as if through a veil — the light it throws is weak, but still it gives some warmth — so too does Achilles' smile seem.
"Teddy, gifted by Apollo, golden-throated — will you join me in gathering wood for the pyre of Winifred, shepherdess of the people? I did not know her as a friend, but her brave sacrifice — delivering herself to the gates of death that she may defend the god-fearing Solvunnites and us god-chosen Summoned too — must be honored by all who still breath and stand firm on the nourishing earth."
Nanaue is only vaguely aware of the efforts of his companions - he has worked on teams before but he is not always the best at coordinating. Especially with so much blood in the water. But a second tentacle lifts him into the air again, this time right over Teddy and Achilles just before the spear is thrown -
"BLESS YOUUUU!"
It's possible he thought Achaeans was a sneeze.
As the weapon impales the leviathan it loosens its grip and he slips back into the water a second time, and now it's he who grabs the beast first before it can thrash him again, latching onto another tentacle jaws first, somewhat oblivious to the one that's heading toward the boat.
musing on too-young military losses; gross cutting up of squid?
Teddy slides down onto the seat, impressed by the spear but hasty to take over the oars. He watches Achilles as he speaks. Achilles is always a compelling speaker, his choice of words and intensity easy to pay attention to. In this moment, though, the determination and grief and fury battling in his expression aches somewhere deep in Teddy's chest.
Teddy knows the story already, not that they're prepared to address that with Achilles. A lot of people do, of course. They've always been a reader, eager to read the sources of adaptations or find absolutely everything out on a new topic of interest, ordering things from other libraries when they had to. They'd used Ancient Epics for one of two pre-1700s requirements; the first day of class, their professor, head of Classics and extremely pleased with having a class every year packed half full of lit majors, had walked in and intoned Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles instead of opening with making sure everyone was in the right room, calling role, saying hello.
But it's different to hear it from Achilles. Sure it's not the sort of anecdote she might hear from a friend from home -- though it makes Teddy think about how many of the kids from her town join the military from high school, how it's maybe not that different at all from feelings they might share -- but the loss and regret is fresh in his tone, not filtered through retellings of retellings and compared between translations.
And then Nanaue goes flying over the boat, shouting BLESS YOU and despite the terrifying closeness of the leviathan and Nanaue's predicament, Teddy can't help a slightly hysterical laugh. It's cut off as Achilles' spear hits true, straight in the eye of the giant squid-like animal. It makes Teddy's stomach roil even as they know it makes absolute sense.
The leviathan roars, a deep gutteral sound that turns Teddy's blood cold, and flails, tentacle whipping toward them. Or...him, because Achilles is already diving into the roiling water.
"Achill--" she shouts, trailing off with the uselessness of it, instead scrambling on feet and hands toward the prow and the long knife -- which she's pretty sure is really meant for cutting rope or nets free of tangle, or maybe gutting fish. The tentacle misses her as she tumbles flat with the waves the creature's creating, but it's not trying to get herm; it's trying to wrap around, or maybe just submerge, the boat. Teddy turns, any remaining bad feelings about killing these things wiped from her mind in the need to survive this, and just hacks at the tentacle, dark blood spurting from it and splattering her; it fights her for a moment but finally withdraws, the end nearly severed and hangign uselessly.
Teddy looks around desperately, grabbing for the oars and throwing all her weight against them, charging the skiff toward the body of the beast, searching the water. "Achilles? Nanaue?"
They do sing, then, partly to distract themself, partly to get the oars on beat; partly in the hopes that it really will help everyone work together. It might be the most gritted-teeth rendition of The Bonny Ship The Diamond anyone has ever heard, but it gets them moving.
Achilles' smile is a little terse, but it's still friendly, and his words are flattering as ever. Well no, not flattering: Kind. He always seems like he means what he says when it comes to Teddy's musical skill; it makes Teddy duck her head a little, a little uncharacteristically shy in the face of it for no special reason. She thinks it's a little bit the way he speaks in general: it's so much more descriptive to be told you're gifted by Apollo than being told that your singing is good or even beautiful.
"Of course," they say with a little incline of their head and fall in beside him, taking a long breath, inhaling the smell of cedar and oak. "Golden-throated," they say softly, smiling a little at the ground. "I like that. It makes me sound like a sort of a bird." They lift a hand, mimicking a tour guide. "Ah, yes, up on your left, the golden-throated Theodora, rare in this country."
Teddy doesn't use his given name very often. That is to say, at all. But if it's the name of a bird, it's sufficiently distant, and it sounds a little more official. Somehow he doesn't think Achilles will go around telling everyone. If he asks, he'll explain.
"They tell me it's better to carve the trees first with the sigils of her arcana and Vagn's sigil, and I'm handy with a knife, so I could help with that bit, too. I used to burn designs into wood, at home, and that's easier, in a way, than carving, but I don't think it'd be too easy to do here. Not without dragging along hot coals or something."
Teddy falls quiet again for a long moment afterwards, squinting ahead down the trail in the name of scanning for these sacred trees. "I didn't -- " She glances up at Achilles and back, uncertain. "When they told us to decide between the forest and the waters, I -- likely none of us -- knew this is what would happen. But I keep feeling like we were asked to decide on a woman's death."
Achilles takes Nanaue's winged words for an invocation to the gods, which in the heart of deadly battle is altogether fitting. As when a fish glides through wine-dark waves, finding by instinct the best path — all its life it has known nothing but the water — so naturally does swift-footed Achilles swim through the heaving sea. The leviathan thrashes its tentacles, churning the water into a raging froth, but Achilles dives and rolls to avoid getting struck.
The son of Peleus — and of Thetis, silver-footed daughter of the sea — then launches himself at one of the beast's mighty arms, where it is thick as the trunk of a tree which has spread its branches over three generations of men. This he grips with arms and knees, that he might climb up the beast's body.
Still the leviathan rages, howling for the spear-point lodged deep in its eye, which it tries to pry out by snaking a tentacle around the shaft — screeching for the pitiless teeth sinking into its limbs. And Teddy's song carries over the water, fluttering like a sea bird, faint in Achilles' ears as he focuses on his fight.
Achilles understand that Theodora connects to Teddy's own name, as do branches of the same tree, but he does not know their tongue so well to grasp that this is a woman's name. In the time he has known Teddy, sharing the rich fabric of song and honey-sweet mead, he has in turn thought them a beautiful man one day, a handsome woman the next, both and neither at once. It bemuses him, who hails from a country where the roles of man and woman are rigidly defined and divided, but it does not bother him.
Presently, Achilles' countenance warms.
"It is true that many birds too are known for their sweet singing. Then will you use your beak to carve the sigils, such that the gods may bless our plan to fell their sacred tree?"
His eyes twinkle with merriment too momentary, before silence again shrouds their walk through the wood. In answer to Teddy, he speaks winged words.
"Noble Winifred would have sacrificed her life, offering herself on the altar of the gods, whether we had supplicated the deathless gods for their protection of the heaving sea, or for their defense of the forest with its waves of trees. She made her choice, as we made ours."
Tentacles beat across Nanaue's flat, empty head as the beast thrashes, the water turning dark with its blood - and the manshark begins to lose himself to his animal nature, to the feeding frenzy. It may be up to Achilles to strike the killing blow, because his aquatic companion is busy severing limbs one by one and taking the time to consume them. The leviathan's cries becoming those of a creature that feels its own death approaching swiftly.
Other sea beasts have caught the scent of blood as well. A small shark - small compared to Nanaue, at least, darts by and catches in its jaws an end of a tentacle discarded by the manshark. Two more arrive, circling the dying leviathan.
Nanaue, for now, is oblivious to their presence, and does not call out to warn his companions.
(Has Teddy mentioned she's never fucking seen the ocean until relatively recently? She has? Oh.)
It's only briefly, wryly through her mind, along with a brief and also not half aquatic?; neither of which is entirely fair. But also, it's pretty shit to be alone: meanwhile Nanaue is starting to just eat the thing, while Achilles cuts through the water -- right, mom was a sea goddess or something -- and starts to climb the kraken-like thing. The water, already churned up into a foam with the leviathan's attempt to take them all down with it if nothing else, has gone from dark to crimson with fresh blood.
It makes them want to gag, the blood the ocean's turned into, this giant, weirdly beautiful, awful thing being hacked apart and consumed alive. It doesn't put them at cross purposes, not really -- they are logically well aware it has to be fought off for both them and the Tertiary Settlement to survive; and it's not a choice, at this point: it will drown them if that's all it can do. But it is terrible.
Teddy tries to recalibrate, row the skiff back a little further away. If he isn't going to be able to deter Nanaue or Achilles from getting themself right into danger, maybe they need to just be -- alive at the end of this.
That's when they see the sharks. Circling like vultures, fins they've seen in movies, dark shadows in the water slimmer and smaller than Nanaue, feeding on scraps. Teddy's song stills completely along with their breath. (It should be working better, should be urging them to work in more awareness together: maybe it's just not strong enough to fight a shark's feeding frenzy, or maybe they're not thinking hard enough about teamwork and the setting of a whaling song is exactly what they all are, after all, doing--)
One of them dives right under the skiff, fast, but the bump that nearly unseats Teddy isn't its goal: it's making a wide loop to swim straight at the leviathan at full speed. It's right under where Achilles is scaling the thing's trunk to, presumably, get to his spear. The thing might be trying just to injure the leviathan further, but it doesn't really matter. If Achilles is dislodged, if he were to fall -- in this blood bath, with the sharks -- it wouldn't matter at all who his mother was or how much swimming he's done.
"Achilles - stay still!" she calls, on her feet and narrowing her focus, taking a breath. And then she throws the big knife with all her might, and prays to whoever's listening.
It flies forward, flipping over and burying itself in the shark's body, like an ax into a tree. The shark flails backward and forward, crashing with slightly less momentum into the leviathan, but the knife doesn't unseat; the movement only sends new blood into the water.
The other sharks turn, drawn; the wounded one dives, but they rise snapping and writhing at each other a little distance away. Teddy does a tired thank you gesture at the sky and dives back to the oars, trying to get the boat between the sharks and his teammates.
"Let's try one about getting back on a boat," she mutters in tired wryness, trying to focus on Nanaue and Achilles, on knowing they do want to help her help them, on them aiding each other; on all working towards getting this done with. She leans into rowing to the beat. The tingle she's felt with the power before registers at the edge of sensation as they lift their voice into the wind. Rise again, rise again! Let her name not be lost to the knowledge of men...
Achilles only looks thoughtful for a moment, not at all confused or troubled. When he just teases back, leaning into the joke, Teddy's not exactly expecting it, but it makes their chest feel warm and light, despite the setting.
"Oh, of course," Teddy rejoins, deadpanning, eyes meeting his in bright amusement. "Though, I think to carve wood I must be a songbird with a very sharp beak. Voice of a lark, beak of a -- woodpecker, or something."
When he answers their fear, rational but comforting, Teddy nods, rolling it around in her head. "I know. Or -- I think I know there always would've been a test. But I do know that if there was, she would have stepped forward. That's just who she was, and I respect that as her choice." She pushes her hair back from her face and lets it fall. "That's the sort of person I want to be, too, really. Someone who'd give their life for other people, and -- in a way that has meaning."
Teddy falls quiet for another moment, glancing at Achilles, who he thinks must understand that bit, at least.
"It just feels...strange, I guess. Being trusted so wholly -- down to choosing whose lives or lands are protected? Or to collect this wood for her, even though we didn't know her that well, because we're -- supposed to be closer to the Gods." Teddy shrugs helplessly. "Maybe we are. Even after that whole -- other Abraxas -- I don't know. I don't feel like I'm any better than anyone else."
The sharks cut through the wine-dark waves, Teddy's knife sings through the air to strike its mark, and Nanaue makes a feast of the fearsome beast's limbs — but godlike Achilles sets his gaze upon the haft of his spear, which from the leviathan's eye protrudes like a mighty splinter. Reaching for his weapon, he wrenches it from where it is lodged, taking no care to exit the wound cleanly. Again, the beast lets loose a howl of agony, a great cry that quakes the air like the crack of thunder.
No sooner has Achilles dislodged his long-shadowed spear than he is raising his arms to strike again. The pitiless iron pierces the leviathan's soft temple, sticks deep in its brain. Black blood bursts from its head as the son of Peleus shoves his spear in with all his great strength.
The terrible beast's cries collapse into silence, and death darkens its eyes. As when the waves carry seaweed aloft on their current — limply the plants tumble along, lacking any will of their own — so now appears the leviathan. Into the sky, Achilles looses a cry of triumph.
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task 1: leviathans
"Take courage!" swift-footed Achilles says, laying a strong hand on his comrade's shoulder. "These beasts that have conquered the cutting waves and struck terror in every fisherman's breast, we shall conquer them in like."
So speaking, a pulse of energy warms under his palm. As when a man imbibes wine, and the sweet buzz of it sinks into his blood, so too does this energy move through Achilles' companion. Rather than dulls the senses, however, it sharpens them.
task 2: funeral preparations
He holds his tongue as he treads the trail, for such silence seems only proper when he approaches the sacred trees of the gods. But in his throat hums a dirge, and in his mind the story of the late Head of the Council forms.
no subject
As the hand reaches out to touch his fin over the edge of the little boat he makes a chortling sound.
"NICE HAND FEEL!"
He dives then, disappearing beneath the waves.
no subject
They've gone tubing and rafting on rivers, fished, been out in boats; they've jumped off the edge of stupidly high embankments into reservoirs with friends. They wouldn't categorize themself as afraid of water.
But none of those are the ocean. It's beautiful, and so big, and also, obviously much, much more deadly. It would have had their respect already, even if recently they hadn't watched it turn into a building-high wall of water out of a monster movie and simply swallow up one of the most respected elders in Solvunn, for no reason other than all of them decided sea, not forest. (Teddy is aware, obviously, that if they'd gone with forest just as large a sacrifice would have been demanded, or could've been. It just...)
He's been quiet, a little, with that on his mind, as they headed out in search of sea monsters. It's a small boat, a little dory type thing, and he can feel the spray on his face as the waves settle down from crossing the storm wall.
Achilles' enthusiastic encouragement is hard to ignore, though, and when Nanaue laughs and dives, Teddy can't help but laugh. She isn't sure what he means but it's comforting to have a shark on their side -- he really is pretty intimidating in the water. Besides, she just likes both of them: if you had to pick a team to battle Leviathans with, this is a pretty good one.
Achilles claps Teddy's shoulder in turn and they feel warmed and almost defiant in that last thought. They'll be fine. "I feel like we should be singing sea shanties," Teddy laughs, and then pauses, thinking about the few times they've sung in the last couple of months and how well everyone took to it. "Actually. Do you want to? It could help keep us synced up, if nothing else."
no subject
Thus bolstering the courage of his companions, by way of the blessing the gods of this land have bestowed upon him, the son of Peleus again seizes hold of the oars to guide the boat across the salt-sharp waves. With the strength of three ordinary men packed into his great limbs, he grants a swiftness to their craft that few could accomplish alone.
"Very well! Let us sing, and perhaps our voices will lure from the sea one of these beasts that we are to slaughter."
So speaking, Achilles launches into a song about the old man of the sea, Nereus, who ruled the waves in the days before the three deathless brothers, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, drew lots to determine each one's domain. And as he sings and smites the sea with his oars, the boat draws ever toward the storm-wall that shields Solvunn from their enemies to the north.
cw: sharkman tries to eat the giant squid
But it is quickly a far larger shape is the foreboding dark below that catches his flat black eyes as they scan for movement. Nanaue has fought a leviathan before, albeit a small and young one. This shape is roughly the same size, or at least appears so as it starts to surface from the depths. It opens one, very large golden eye in his direction, tentacles lined with hooks whipping in his direction.
From the surface, the adventurers in their little boat may see a massive, cone-shaped head rise - a creature similar to a colossal squid or octopus, only with a circular maw of teeth in place of a beak. Nanaue rises with it, wrapped in its tentacle and eating his way free, nearly severing the tentacle in three quick bites and dropping straight back into the water.
cw: uh, squid hunting
It's not the sort of sea shanty that Teddy's used to; those are simple call-and-response songs meant to keep the beat for rowers or those with ropes. It is fascinating, though, keeping his mind off of the danger and on the melody, catching some repeated lines to come in on harmony.
Then the leviathan rises, Nanaue wrapped in a tentacle. Teddy barely has time to shout for him, though he looks perfectly content gnawing his way out, inky blood darkening the water as his teeth shred the tentacle. "We need to come alongside," she says, thinking fast -- if they keep going straight into it, it's going to just grab at them next, and much as he seems in his element, she's not about to watch this thing with too many teeth devour her friend.
Without considering their own safety -- if they wait too long, the thing's going to come up underneath them anyway -- they rise to grab for the ropes on the dinghy's single sail, currently secured as oars are a better means to get straight out from the beach. "You've got a spear, harpoon, something you can throw?" they call, clinging to the rope and swinging dangerously close to the side as they tie it off. The wind from the storm's perpendicular to them, which should keep them sort of staying still if they can keep it like that. "Switch with me."
Teddy ducks under the beam, grabbing onto Achilles' shoulder for balance. "I can keep us level, if you can aim from here. Otherwise I've just got a big fucking knife in the front, and we're gonna have to get closer for that. We can't let Nanaue do this by himself."
Even as she says it she's trying to think of a new song. It doesn't even have to be one that makes sense, just something, if she can keep them all on the same page and emboldened.
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He'd poked his head into the kitchen just to be sure they're not struggling: it's not Teddy's strongest suit, but he can follow a recipe or instructions and lend a hand, and it's familiar. When someone's laid up or passes on, you make food; a family has enough to do without making decisions about food at a time like that, and bustling over the top of complicated loss and acceptance is a thing Teddy recognizes.
There are already too many people with their hands busy, though, and they're quietly a little relieved that whatever Abraxas' version of Things In A Casserole Dish (probably: things in something not terribly unlike a casserole dish), it's not going to involve them. Teddy has the last-minute forethought to hunt down an ink drawing of Winifred's arcana and Vagn's sigil so that they can carve it into the wood, and starts off toward the forest to catch up with some of the others.
It's quiet, and cooler, as forests are, and she walks quietly to let herself listen to the birds, to the crunch and crackle of twigs and the whistle of the breeze. Teddy can tell Achilles is lost in thought as well when she spots him not far ahead at a fork in the trail, and she clears her throat a little. Probably unwise to startle someone holding an axe.
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"No, magnificent Nanaue will not brave the bloody jaws of battle alone, not when I am here. Among the bronze-clad Achaeans, no man was my equal, not in matters of war.
"I in all my great strength could not save my dear comrade, Menoetius' gallant son Patroclus, whom I loved above all other men. Blinded by the rage that smoked in my breast for Agamemnon, lord of men, I let him leap into battle alone, and when he met man-killing Hector far from the hollow ships, I was not there to defend him. Death loosed his limbs, and down he went to the house of Hades. Never again will any companion of mine be felled because I abstained from the fight."
So speaking, godlike Achilles hurls his long-shadowed spear at the fierce golden eye of the beast. The shaft sails over the frothing waves, and the iron tip strikes home in the center. The leviathan looses a roar from its maw. Raging in pain, it heaves one of its mighty tentacles toward the boat, and Achilles dives into the dark of the sea. Bent on retrieving his weapon, he swims toward the beast with swift, sure strokes.
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"Teddy, gifted by Apollo, golden-throated — will you join me in gathering wood for the pyre of Winifred, shepherdess of the people? I did not know her as a friend, but her brave sacrifice — delivering herself to the gates of death that she may defend the god-fearing Solvunnites and us god-chosen Summoned too — must be honored by all who still breath and stand firm on the nourishing earth."
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"BLESS YOUUUU!"
It's possible he thought Achaeans was a sneeze.
As the weapon impales the leviathan it loosens its grip and he slips back into the water a second time, and now it's he who grabs the beast first before it can thrash him again, latching onto another tentacle jaws first, somewhat oblivious to the one that's heading toward the boat.
musing on too-young military losses; gross cutting up of squid?
Teddy knows the story already, not that they're prepared to address that with Achilles. A lot of people do, of course. They've always been a reader, eager to read the sources of adaptations or find absolutely everything out on a new topic of interest, ordering things from other libraries when they had to. They'd used Ancient Epics for one of two pre-1700s requirements; the first day of class, their professor, head of Classics and extremely pleased with having a class every year packed half full of lit majors, had walked in and intoned Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles instead of opening with making sure everyone was in the right room, calling role, saying hello.
But it's different to hear it from Achilles. Sure it's not the sort of anecdote she might hear from a friend from home -- though it makes Teddy think about how many of the kids from her town join the military from high school, how it's maybe not that different at all from feelings they might share -- but the loss and regret is fresh in his tone, not filtered through retellings of retellings and compared between translations.
And then Nanaue goes flying over the boat, shouting BLESS YOU and despite the terrifying closeness of the leviathan and Nanaue's predicament, Teddy can't help a slightly hysterical laugh. It's cut off as Achilles' spear hits true, straight in the eye of the giant squid-like animal. It makes Teddy's stomach roil even as they know it makes absolute sense.
The leviathan roars, a deep gutteral sound that turns Teddy's blood cold, and flails, tentacle whipping toward them. Or...him, because Achilles is already diving into the roiling water.
"Achill--" she shouts, trailing off with the uselessness of it, instead scrambling on feet and hands toward the prow and the long knife -- which she's pretty sure is really meant for cutting rope or nets free of tangle, or maybe gutting fish. The tentacle misses her as she tumbles flat with the waves the creature's creating, but it's not trying to get herm; it's trying to wrap around, or maybe just submerge, the boat. Teddy turns, any remaining bad feelings about killing these things wiped from her mind in the need to survive this, and just hacks at the tentacle, dark blood spurting from it and splattering her; it fights her for a moment but finally withdraws, the end nearly severed and hangign uselessly.
Teddy looks around desperately, grabbing for the oars and throwing all her weight against them, charging the skiff toward the body of the beast, searching the water. "Achilles? Nanaue?"
They do sing, then, partly to distract themself, partly to get the oars on beat; partly in the hopes that it really will help everyone work together. It might be the most gritted-teeth rendition of The Bonny Ship The Diamond anyone has ever heard, but it gets them moving.
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"Of course," they say with a little incline of their head and fall in beside him, taking a long breath, inhaling the smell of cedar and oak. "Golden-throated," they say softly, smiling a little at the ground. "I like that. It makes me sound like a sort of a bird." They lift a hand, mimicking a tour guide. "Ah, yes, up on your left, the golden-throated Theodora, rare in this country."
Teddy doesn't use his given name very often. That is to say, at all. But if it's the name of a bird, it's sufficiently distant, and it sounds a little more official. Somehow he doesn't think Achilles will go around telling everyone. If he asks, he'll explain.
"They tell me it's better to carve the trees first with the sigils of her arcana and Vagn's sigil, and I'm handy with a knife, so I could help with that bit, too. I used to burn designs into wood, at home, and that's easier, in a way, than carving, but I don't think it'd be too easy to do here. Not without dragging along hot coals or something."
Teddy falls quiet again for a long moment afterwards, squinting ahead down the trail in the name of scanning for these sacred trees. "I didn't -- " She glances up at Achilles and back, uncertain. "When they told us to decide between the forest and the waters, I -- likely none of us -- knew this is what would happen. But I keep feeling like we were asked to decide on a woman's death."
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The son of Peleus — and of Thetis, silver-footed daughter of the sea — then launches himself at one of the beast's mighty arms, where it is thick as the trunk of a tree which has spread its branches over three generations of men. This he grips with arms and knees, that he might climb up the beast's body.
Still the leviathan rages, howling for the spear-point lodged deep in its eye, which it tries to pry out by snaking a tentacle around the shaft — screeching for the pitiless teeth sinking into its limbs. And Teddy's song carries over the water, fluttering like a sea bird, faint in Achilles' ears as he focuses on his fight.
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Presently, Achilles' countenance warms.
"It is true that many birds too are known for their sweet singing. Then will you use your beak to carve the sigils, such that the gods may bless our plan to fell their sacred tree?"
His eyes twinkle with merriment too momentary, before silence again shrouds their walk through the wood. In answer to Teddy, he speaks winged words.
"Noble Winifred would have sacrificed her life, offering herself on the altar of the gods, whether we had supplicated the deathless gods for their protection of the heaving sea, or for their defense of the forest with its waves of trees. She made her choice, as we made ours."
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Other sea beasts have caught the scent of blood as well. A small shark - small compared to Nanaue, at least, darts by and catches in its jaws an end of a tentacle discarded by the manshark. Two more arrive, circling the dying leviathan.
Nanaue, for now, is oblivious to their presence, and does not call out to warn his companions.
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It's only briefly, wryly through her mind, along with a brief and also not half aquatic?; neither of which is entirely fair. But also, it's pretty shit to be alone: meanwhile Nanaue is starting to just eat the thing, while Achilles cuts through the water -- right, mom was a sea goddess or something -- and starts to climb the kraken-like thing. The water, already churned up into a foam with the leviathan's attempt to take them all down with it if nothing else, has gone from dark to crimson with fresh blood.
It makes them want to gag, the blood the ocean's turned into, this giant, weirdly beautiful, awful thing being hacked apart and consumed alive. It doesn't put them at cross purposes, not really -- they are logically well aware it has to be fought off for both them and the Tertiary Settlement to survive; and it's not a choice, at this point: it will drown them if that's all it can do. But it is terrible.
Teddy tries to recalibrate, row the skiff back a little further away. If he isn't going to be able to deter Nanaue or Achilles from getting themself right into danger, maybe they need to just be -- alive at the end of this.
That's when they see the sharks. Circling like vultures, fins they've seen in movies, dark shadows in the water slimmer and smaller than Nanaue, feeding on scraps. Teddy's song stills completely along with their breath. (It should be working better, should be urging them to work in more awareness together: maybe it's just not strong enough to fight a shark's feeding frenzy, or maybe they're not thinking hard enough about teamwork and the setting of a whaling song is exactly what they all are, after all, doing--)
One of them dives right under the skiff, fast, but the bump that nearly unseats Teddy isn't its goal: it's making a wide loop to swim straight at the leviathan at full speed. It's right under where Achilles is scaling the thing's trunk to, presumably, get to his spear. The thing might be trying just to injure the leviathan further, but it doesn't really matter. If Achilles is dislodged, if he were to fall -- in this blood bath, with the sharks -- it wouldn't matter at all who his mother was or how much swimming he's done.
"Achilles - stay still!" she calls, on her feet and narrowing her focus, taking a breath. And then she throws the big knife with all her might, and prays to whoever's listening.
It flies forward, flipping over and burying itself in the shark's body, like an ax into a tree. The shark flails backward and forward, crashing with slightly less momentum into the leviathan, but the knife doesn't unseat; the movement only sends new blood into the water.
The other sharks turn, drawn; the wounded one dives, but they rise snapping and writhing at each other a little distance away. Teddy does a tired thank you gesture at the sky and dives back to the oars, trying to get the boat between the sharks and his teammates.
"Let's try one about getting back on a boat," she mutters in tired wryness, trying to focus on Nanaue and Achilles, on knowing they do want to help her help them, on them aiding each other; on all working towards getting this done with. She leans into rowing to the beat. The tingle she's felt with the power before registers at the edge of sensation as they lift their voice into the wind.
Rise again, rise again!
Let her name not be lost to the knowledge of men...
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"Oh, of course," Teddy rejoins, deadpanning, eyes meeting his in bright amusement. "Though, I think to carve wood I must be a songbird with a very sharp beak. Voice of a lark, beak of a -- woodpecker, or something."
When he answers their fear, rational but comforting, Teddy nods, rolling it around in her head. "I know. Or -- I think I know there always would've been a test. But I do know that if there was, she would have stepped forward. That's just who she was, and I respect that as her choice." She pushes her hair back from her face and lets it fall. "That's the sort of person I want to be, too, really. Someone who'd give their life for other people, and -- in a way that has meaning."
Teddy falls quiet for another moment, glancing at Achilles, who he thinks must understand that bit, at least.
"It just feels...strange, I guess. Being trusted so wholly -- down to choosing whose lives or lands are protected? Or to collect this wood for her, even though we didn't know her that well, because we're -- supposed to be closer to the Gods." Teddy shrugs helplessly. "Maybe we are. Even after that whole -- other Abraxas -- I don't know. I don't feel like I'm any better than anyone else."
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No sooner has Achilles dislodged his long-shadowed spear than he is raising his arms to strike again. The pitiless iron pierces the leviathan's soft temple, sticks deep in its brain. Black blood bursts from its head as the son of Peleus shoves his spear in with all his great strength.
The terrible beast's cries collapse into silence, and death darkens its eyes. As when the waves carry seaweed aloft on their current — limply the plants tumble along, lacking any will of their own — so now appears the leviathan. Into the sky, Achilles looses a cry of triumph.