Insatiable ~ { Open }

[Kor Teithanti]

On an open shore, his eyes oozed away the sand and brine and flinched at the unfiltered harshness of the day’s light. He could not look directly at it, and barely so upon the pale beach or lucent waves that eagerly crashed nearby. It was his first time so exposed, with former sojourns up to the ether kept brief under the starry night’s watch or the gray gloam of a pelagic tempest’s clouds. Far from land on those ventures, he went unmolested by the violent wake of water on rock or the aromas of earth and industry. Now, beneath the hot bleak eye of mid-morning, it—the sensation—struck him as vastly different, and he felt confused and uncomfortable.

“What is this?” he wondered in awe.

Sefosifer’s gaze timidly lifted from the blanket of his shadow. Even so, he begged his tail tighter, for the tactile impression of it against his limbs carried a certain comfort. Before him was the sea, and he beheld it with ambivalence. Although he longed to flee into the gentle press of its depths, he could not dispel from his soul a weird revulsion, as though some unnameable atrocity were committed against him in its name: an innominate horror impaled within the back of his mind with force greater than his will to draw it forth.

A noise ruptured his reverie. It did not jar him nor was it loud, but it certainly perplexed him. Were it not for that, with sublime distraction, he would likely have submitted to fear, allowed it to conquer his disgust, and fled back into the sea. Instead, the maidensong beguiled his ears and was, to him, a bewildering deviation from the apoplectic rumblings he recalled as music. Varied, melodious, formed by intent, and ripe with emotion. Possessed by its spell, he rose to his belly and stalked its architect through a curtain of willow fronds.

Shade enveloped him as he passed from the beach into the forest. Sights unfamiliar, odors queer, and even the crackle of twigs and leaves under his clawed feet alarmed him. Excitement readily built in the pit of his belly. Yet, for all that, he was a consummate predator, and stealthily transitioned through the obstacles of brambles and rills, the verdant darkness of his flesh enveloped by forest’s natural palette. Only a small amount of time swept by before he crept behind the source of the song unaware.

It was young, pale, covered in strange dull fabrics, and blessed with a long black mane that shifted with as sensuous an ensemble as the tentacles of a male squid eager to attract a mate. Splayed upon her chest were two swollen vessels, which encumbered her as she knelt before a plant and plucked the fruit therefrom, only to, rather than eat, place it inside a peculiar wooden hollow. Neither her concentration nor the melody wavered as he looked upon her.

Then Sefosifer’s stomach rumbled.

Immediately, her mouth stilled and the wondrous noise ceased. With nervous motions, she glanced about, unsure of herself. Sefosifer, meanwhile, remained perfectly still, his mouth shut and his eyes focused. Tension filled the forest. Very badly, he longed to devour her—to leap from the shadows, sink his teeth into her pristine flesh, toss his head back, and send her tumbling down his gullet. However, such unprecedented action struck him as unwise. For, after all, she could lead him to many others like herself and, rather than one meal, he would find himself a ready source of sustenance.

As it so happened, she chose to leave and he chose to follow.

Not long thereafter, the forest thinned and he came upon a collection of mud and beams which he took to be her abode.

[Ennis]

The oceanic incensed breeze whelmed his nostrils with its temperate wisp, waking the seemingly conked feline from his literal midday catnap. Emerging from the luxurious litter box the khaki grains of the beach was, he too became aware of the mysterious blare, wincing a bit to the salient sounds his sensitive ears managed to catch. Even through his brimmed cap Liaison heard the apparent song that was done in a tone he wasn’t particularly fond of.

Folding his arms over his bent knees, this odd fellow remained parked in the sands, veiled by the umbra of protection the canopy of leaves gave him. He was feeling quite lazy having had slept through the morning portion of the day and for a while he mulled returning to just that yet again. He had a bad habit of extending what normal people would consider a “snooze” to something much longer.

Liaison was a misunderstood being; beneath his lazy demeanor and sardonic mouth he knew the value of hard work, which is why he enjoyed the most of this dubbed “vacation” of his. For those who knew him they had every right to assume he was M.I.A. but at this point he didn’t really care. He’d get back sometime soon but ever since he arrived in this world his abilities were severely limited. It was even to a degree in which he was a shade of himself and “who would want to see that” he thought.

He was gone just like that from the lives of many; some even depended on him more than he perhaps gauged and somehow he was idling on an alluring shorefront. How he got here was even more of a mystery and asking him would probably get a hate inducing response from the cynical cat.

Finally mustering enough strength to get up, Liaison shook off the pleasant lassitude of the humid afternoon, slowly ridding his businessman etiquette attire of sand with his sweeping hands.

[Kor Teithanti]

Camouflaged by brambles and leaves at the edge of the forest, Sefosifer beheld the banal tribulations of the maiden and her family. She no longer sang and, with such monotony, his interest waned. This was not home, not to him. Far too orderly were the beasts as they roved from trough to pen, too quiet their keepers, and too coherent the exchanges thereof. While he neither knew nor cared what they said, it was obvious they were tame. Nothing to fear, to respect, or to enrapture his conceits. Not anything like the depictions on the monument of Mentes, which contained all he knew of worldly tongues and proudly echoed humanity’s greatness in all its sanguine glory.

Night fell and opportunity slunk from the shadows, for the air was warm, the breeze a soft caress, and the windows of the hovel thrown open. Imperceptibly, he crept across the yard and peered through the hole in their home. Although replete with odd trappings, few interested him, for he recalled many such mundane things in the wreckages of ships. Instead, he intently watched the family as they slumbered together on a pile of course furs, hay in their hair and their chests undulating to the syncopation of their sire’s snoring.

Six, he tallied, one of them very small.

The last and nearest he noticed when a blade of moonlight cut through the clouds and raked a white scar across the babe’s nude flesh. Intrigued, he pressed in close. His nose nearly touched its tiny face. So peacefully it rested in the crook of its mother’s arm. Sefosifer just had to know. Then, fatefully, its thumb slipped and its bottom lip lolled in pursuit of air. It inhaled silence—a malefic brume that melted its tongue, corroded its vocal cords, and seared its lungs. Unable to scream, its eyes opened wide in confused terror. Each breath was a spasmodic struggle, any whine too weak and soon too distant for its mother to remedy. Otherwise helpless as it was hastened into the darkness of its doom, a final instinct exploded from its bowels and cascaded in a torrent down its captor’s throat and through his fangs.

Disgusted, Sefosifer burst upon the beach and flung the babe into the ocean.

Blood and filth raced murkily across the moon-dashed waves. Plunged ever deeper, the child’s flesh was flayed over and over by the reef’s keen spines and rocky skewers. Soon it drifted haphazardly in a lurid mist of its own gore, but by then it was relieved of its crude expulsions, of the air in its frail little lungs, and of the milk-tinged vomit that once gurgled so profusely from its belly. Likewise, Sefosfer spat, and happily rid himself of the tang of feces that lingered thick and vile in his mouth.

Anticipation mounted, and Sefosifer’s forked tongue struck his muzzle. Bestially, he stalked his quarry until wet sand cooled his footpads, waves teased his thighs, and his loins were swallowed by the intimate sting of salt water. Shoulder deep he descended, then his right fore-claw clamped down on the babe’s back. Barely palpable, he felt its fatally-choked inhale. He also felt a presence, and his gaze briefly shifted toward the shore. Brow lowered and eyes narrowed, he exposed his fangs in a challenge. Then turned and sank his fangs into human flesh and bone.

Distinct from the flaky and briny fare of the sea, the flavors his tongue scooped from the ruptured skull were rich and sinuous, like the flesh of tortoises and whales. Greedily, he carried the remains out of the restless water, settled his belly on the warm sand, plopped the corpse between his claws, and suckled its interior. Every glob of flesh and chunk of meat, he relished. Each eye, immaculately plucked from its socket and crushed into jelly, he savored. Each thigh, stripped down to the still-yellow bone, he shamelessly slid down his gullet.

His meal drew to an end, and he again grew wary. That creature was still nearby. Although not brazen enough to confront him, it was curious enough to observe. As he scraped a dismembered finger between his teeth, he lifted his brow in its direction and wondered with whom he shared this mortal … liaison. After a second finger, and a third, and a lazy fourth, he discarded the disfigured corpse and growled,

“Who are you?”

To one unacquainted with the language of the Cetea, it was an ominous and incoherent screech.

It melted beautifully into the cry of shock and despair that resonated through the forest.

[Ennis]

A distant splash could be heard and Liaison wouldn’t pay it much mind. Little did he know a nearby sea monster just ingested not even a toddler but a baby. Fortunately for Merse he had the luxury of not seeing the atrocity take place. In fact he was honestly hoping that what ever was near strayed away from him. It just didn’t pan out that way. Who or what was approaching was going about it rather slow. Something even he wasn’t comfortable with it.

He turned in a multitude of directions but his focus was more geared to his adept sense of hearing. With that alone he could figure out where exactly this beast was and just before he put his finger on it words of a tongue even foreign to him were spoken and even developed into some type of beastly cry.

“Who are you?”

Normally through Liaisons omnilinguistic skill set he’d understand the foreign tongue in which the monster spoke but it was apparent that ability had escaped from him also. Remaining calm he pulled yet out another cigarette, walking closer to the sea demon. Part of the reason why he was so revered was because of his lackadaisical façade he put up. He’d doubt the beast would react to it however. Merse showed indifference but to be honest he was quite interested, enough that he’d even reach into one of his inner coat pockets, pulling out a rod about a foot in length.

It may not look like much but that was his weapon for this bout. Maybe he was wrong to think the beast wanted to fight but things that walked out of the ocean more times than not had a habit of razing everything.

Upon site he began to size up the creature. The rod he wielded in his hand magically grew to about three feet. Simply enough he brought the weapon over his head before bringing down its tip towards the monsters cranium with a force that would certainly do damage. If the monster noticed the length of the rod was getting somewhat shorter, almost as if it was meant to just miss him if he moved slightest bit backwards.

In this instance Liaison was doing nothing he considered worse than killing a wasp. Of course it was on a much higher scale but he would argue a wasp was far more menacing in a small room than this odd creature he had stumbled upon.

[Kor Teithanti]

Sefosifer lunged!

Blood-soaked fangs bared and nostrils flared, he barreled the reek of complacent aggression back into his foe’s snout. Between them, it joined with the stench of tobacco, saltwater, and recent death. From that crude orgy emerged an apparition as palpable as any flesh-formed beast. Unseen, neither in the harsh glow of Liaison’s cigarette butt nor the eerie luminescence of Sefosifer’s teeth, still marred by infant gore, the odoriferous union nevertheless manifested as readily and as dastardly as a fist in the throat or a sword through the chest.

Inevitably, his assault embroiled him in the noxious brume. It flowed around his wet flesh, clung to him thick and sick, yet the time to contemplate its repulsiveness diminished with the distance between them. His eyes narrowed in tandem with the gap while his mouth opened. Still ravenous from his inadequate meal and incensed at the insolence of an assault on his noble self, a member of the greatest race of the seas eternal, Sefosifer’s muzzle careened into Liaison’s groin—even as the metal rod soundly struck.

Pain lanced through his wing stub and ravaged the length of his spine up to his skull. In spite of that—no, because of that, his mouth slammed shut, full of fabric, flesh, and bits of bone. Whether such belonged to the babe or his adversary, he did not note, for exquisite agony aroused from the inchoate mass of his precognition a recollection that writhed forth and splayed itself across the forefront of his thoughts. He saw nothing else. Fury, as a film of translucent red, dominated his view. Upon that crude canvas, in a shadow play that reprised the events of his first hunt, roved caricatures highlighted in black streaks of broad-brush calligraphy and burning polyps of rage.

Younger, smaller, and much more fearful, Sefosifer nervously glared into the den of a colossal squid. He despised it, already. Not on its own merits, but because he was doomed to be its butcher. That was what was required, he recalled, and timidly glanced upward. Far above loomed the mighty presence of his father, whose bulk obfuscated any tenuous bands of starlight that dared filter down to such depths. In comparison, he felt frail. Unequal to the task. Even so, he feared the wrath of a grown Cetea far more than that of a mere squid.

With a snarl, he peered back down and set his jaw.

Instants and uncertainties fomented within him, until finally frustration mated with determination and Sefosifer drove himself forward. He crossed the threshold, littered with minuscule fish bones and sea spiders. Darkness swallowed him. Unable to see, the sinuous folds of his mind instead grasped a black compulsion forged out of arrogance and hunger. It whelmed his intellect in instinct. He felt famished and desperate. Wildly, he clawed ever deeper along crumbled rock and soon, wreathed in a sinister twilight of silt and screams, met his first trial.

Nameless horror! so oft that appellation of indefinite terror wracked the minds of mortals so as to bud, puerile, in an eponym few now dare say. Sefosifer did not believe in such things, those fables of elder gods; yet, blinded by ink and murky currents, their nebulous forms balefully and preposterously rallied as a mantle around the animal he mercilessly ravaged—like a cacophonous banshee that crashed into his thoughts even as he was scourged over and over again by reality’s barbed tentacles and haunted by his victim’s lidless and accusatory gaze. Vainly, he retreated inward, but there rose before his mind’s eye the cursed monument of Mentes and the numerous engraved wreckages of Thonis, which he with wonder read and imagination roused the eons that preceded Lemuria and the dawn of man. Hewn there, harbinger of his coeval plight, was the lore of virgin stone crushed in Tathāgata's nether wake.

How long he was overcome with madness, Sefosifer did not know. Only that, eventually, he hauled the carcass out of its burrow, crudely spat it to the ocean floor, and collapsed.

Again, it happened. That infamous madness.

Were it not for the impudence of that fur-covered creature who presumed to attack him, events might have developed otherwise. Might, for that infant was light of meat and merely served to pique his insatiable hunger. Each drip of saliva that spattered the midnight sand beneath his muzzle was rife with blood and gristle. Combined with the tang of battle, it made him all the more ravenous, and his bellies roared for large quantities of flesh to quell his profound hunger.

Yet, as he shook the bloodlust from his vision and gazed down at Liaison, pinned to the beach by his cyclopean claws, Sefosifer’s voracity faltered. Something about this fight was different and he did not want to play the part of the mindless monster.

[Ennis]

Apparently attempting to bash the creature’s skull in was a bad idea. Yes, it was one action Merse regretted but it was a situation he could worm his way out of nevertheless. The bellicose monster had taken a blow from the cat man and a powerful one at that. That said despite having dealt the blow he was suddenly at a disadvantage when the larger beast jolted forward. Trying to end a sea monster more than two times his size might have been easy for his regular self but Merse was not at his usual. Not by a long shot. For now he’d have to use the current tools he had, which at this moment he was actually unsure of.

As a reflex he held his own breath in response to getting a whiff of Sefosifer’s musk. With a watchful eye he kept a close look on its closing mouth, sliding back as far as he could at the last moment to avoid the erratic chomp. His reflexes weren’t up to standard but at least he escaped the monsters powerful jaws. What he did take was a blow to the lower gut. The hit taken caused Merse to take an unplanned, snot filled and abnormally loud cough. Still in possession of a cigarette in his mouth at the time, it along with a sprinkle of spit splattered onto Sefosifer’s face and eyes. He was winded but he remained strong in his counter the only way he knew. A counter which ironically was off the top of his head would place him on just that the creature.

Even with his claws he could not stop his feet from sliding backwards due to the grainy sand. Because of his last second backwards shimmy the beast hit him low enough to the point to that he would fall not backwards but forward. He seized the opportunity to grapple the beast’s head. This was done in a fashion that could be considered scrappy, but considering that he was not familiar with the sea dwellers anatomy it was the best he could manage.

Gripping apparent ears, fins, horns or whatever parts of the monster he felt was sturdy enough; Merse set the foundation for his reversal. Quickly planting his feet to the right, he lifted his body off to the right and over the top of the beast, almost as if he was attempting to get on a horse. As comical as it might have seemed he was actually trying to ride it or at least get into a rodeo like position. Like a bull he’d expect the monster to react aggressively. Using his tail as an extra appendage it’d extend while attempting to grab hold of its wings. Derp faced Merse was in for a crazy ride.

“Woah nelly!!!” he said teasingly.

Yes, “Woah Nelly.”