89 Landing Day (1)

Two days after the end of the month, Seran was sitting on a railing, watching the people living like it was any other day. Further down from him, a couple of large cargo ships were moored, two of them being loaded and another two unloaded. Smaller ships, like fishing boats and short-distance travel boats, regularly launched and anchored from a smaller area of docks set aside from the heavy-duty ones. Behind him, Seran could hear citizens engaging in everyday chat, salesman hawking and children running with excitement through the area. All-in-all, a normal port city having a normal day... sort of.

Off in the cove that was once the first harbour of the port city, the least normal thing was occurring. A large nine-headed serpent waded in the shallowest parts, raising his heads high above the city so the children sitting on top could see the whole place. Sounds of giggling and wonderment came from the children as they viewed their world from above the rooftops. A few of the children's' parents worked nearby, occasionally looking over to check on their little one before returning to work. This was a common occurrence now, as the hydra had carefully practised balancing barrels and such on his heads, along with controlling water in case of a slip to catch anything that fell softly.

Seran had arrived in Savicche two days before, on the day that the Juneau expedition was supposed to arrive. Unfortunately, they had a setback on that day that forced them to detour a very large area of the ocean. The Juneau Clan's ship had encountered one of Aregard's few remaining legendary beings, and one of its most terrifying when they almost capsized when passing a small isle. It had not been an isle at all, which they had discovered when they got closer, as the ocean around them suddenly swelled when the 'isle' rose from the water. After several harrowing minutes of frantically stabilizing their watercraft, the team and the ship's crew took in the sight of an enormous snakehead the size of which could swallow most of Earth's Korean Peninsula in one bite, with eyes severalfold the size of the enormous eye sculpture in Dallas, Texas, USA. As the first and only member of its species, and said to be one of the few deities to have never left the mortal world, this enormous snake was the great World Serpent, Jormungandr.

As a deity said to have existed as long as the plane of Aregard itself, Jormungandr was impossibly large and understandably slow in motion and speech. However, due to his age, and potentially due to his status as the most ancient known deity, there exists no mortal that can converse with him. Even among the deities, only two can do so: Demeter, as Jormungandr is still a living creature and therefore she can speak with him to some extent, and Chronos, who is omnipresent in time and therefore old enough to be fluent in the World Serpent's lost language. The World Serpent also had an extremely flawed sense of time, as he could sleep for millennia at a time and think of it as only a moment, and thus did not care enough to learn anything about Aregard.

After the great serpent tried and unsurprisingly failed to speak with the mortals upon the Juneau Clan's ship, it sighed long and low, causing a horrendous wind to tear at the seams of the ship, even making pieces of it come flying off, before slowly sinking back into the ocean. This caused a great tsunami that came very close to capsizing, and then annihilating, all those on board, and any in its wake. Thankfully, Poseidon was always aware of the World Serpent's movements and reacted quickly, suppressing the great wave until it eventually stilled. This did cause the Juneau Clan ship to move several hundred knots away, requiring another two days before they could arrive onshore. Seran briefly received an oracular message from the God of Water, as he felt it necessary to make sure those involved were aware of the World Serpent's unintentional delayments.

This just gave the demigod boy more time to enjoy the city as he waited. As he played with children, spoke and dined with locals and enjoyed the views, Seran was quite happy that he was given the opportunity to do nothing. That didn't mean that he actually did nothing, but he enjoyed the thought. Whenever he was bored, he went about having William aid him in experimenting with spell designs. One, in particular, was an overhauling of the shapeshifting spells intrinsic to the rare Druid class. This was mostly for fun, as he didn't plan on using it for anything other than for minor enjoyment. When he had completely finished altering the shapeshifting spells into something far less painful than the originals, and improved them in terms of capabilities, William told him to just give himself a shapeshifting ability if he wanted one so badly. After grumbling a little, Seran did eventually do so, though he made sure that his shapeshifted forms were far more limited compared to his human form. He was also incapable of shapeshifting into humanoid forms and anything related to a deity.

For a day, Seran took the form of a chubby but very healthy Maine Coon cat and wandered through Savicche. The altered senses he had in this form gave him a new perspective on the world, and some of the feline behaviours seeped into his actions. For example, he ended up sleeping several hours of the day away in various sunny spots. The few times he wasn't perched high above the ground, he would end up being pet by civilians, especially children. Cats were an integral part of Savicche's culture, just as fishing was, so everyone at the very least liked cats. Kids almost always love animals, especially the cute ones, so Seran had expected it too. Also, being given free food was a great bonus.