7 Frail Titan

5,610 A.S. 66th of Mando

Torn Cliffs above Shadow pass, Kingdom of The Storm Hunters.

East of the Crown capital of Cordaram

He could feel the clouds envelop him as he sat on the peak. Victoran came to this exact spot before every journey to hunt the leviathan on the Hydram Ocean. Victoran also came to this spot to pray to a long-lost god that he would not drown.

"Samcha, I know this is absurd, but I hope you can steer me and keep me safe on this hunt," Victoran yelled into the clouds. Part of him believed the others were proper in calling him crazy for climbing up into the clouds, so close to the barrier. It hadn't customarily been this way, once the clouds had been far higher on the barrier wall.

He recalled the boys jeering him for being unable to swim. Even his father had told him he had no business trying to get a job on a storm chaser. Victoran's mother had burst into tears when he told them he applied as a hunter.

"You can't even swim, how can you expect to survive during the nexus pass?" Carmil, Victoran's father demanded his son. The old man had come into his shop at a riper age and chose not to start a family until he was satisfied. That meant that Victoran's mother, Medy, was only thirty-seven. While his father was well past his prime at sixty-two.

"Father, the idea is to stay on the ship, not to fall off. If I were to fall off in the storms, no amount of swimming would redeem me," Victoran had said to his father before he had left that morning. "On top of that, Samcha shall direct me through the storms. The keepers that remain have shown me stories and records of an exceptional man. A man that feared no storm and thrilled in the hunt. He was a god, father, a god. Every time before we leave, I go up to speak with him at the highest point of the cliffs."

The clouds produced a damp dew on his body. Victoran stood on top of Torn Cliffs and stared at the grim looming wall. The wall cut down the rock and made it look like the blackness had swallowed the cliff. The Keeper's had read him the stories of Samcha.

"Samcha was the fourth to found his glorious kingdom, The most adventurous of all the mighty gods. His eternal love of the open sea naturally caused him to choose to carefully carve his mighty kingdom into the prominent cliffs of Cordaram to the west of Senj Crown. The Hydram Ocean contained massive monsters that prowled and storms that could tear a ship to splinters. None of this would stop Samcha from the open sea. He instructed his people to become stronger and smarter than any monsters and properly construct suitable vessels to brave the maelstroms of the limitless ocean. These people became The Storm Hunters," the Keepers had read to him from ancient texts they had saved and copied from over five thousand years ago. The temple had sunken to the bottom of the bay along with the Watcher, but the keepers possessed fragments of another text describing briefly how the gods were lost.

"The gods did not sit back ideally letting Senjoura murder their people. They embarked on a war that ultimately ended with the five gods and their armies forcing Senjoura and his followers back inside the mountain range of Senj Crown. Once the army had been pushed back inside, the five gods gathered all radiance and use everything they possessed to produce a barrier seal." That text was the reason Victoran came to the wall before every hunt.

He outstretched his hand out to the barrier to deliver one concluding prayer. As he did, he adjusted his footing and the condensation on the stone caused him to slip. Panic gripped Victoran as he began slipping towards the mist.

He flung his arms in a futile  attempt to regain his balance and his hand brushed the barrier as he began falling, and everything went black.

Grey's wings made gulling noises in the background, and the sound and smell of the ocean filled Victoran's senses. He opened his eyes to discover himself sitting on a beach in his brown vest and canvas shorts. Next to him sat an enormous man with a scarf and no shirt. This was him...Samcha.

Victoran rolled away and bowed on his knees to a chucking god. Samcha glowed with a blue light as he sat on the beach, still not moving from his relaxed position. There were towering cliffs behind them, and the beach was incredibly private. Before them stretched a green ocean, not the great blue Hydram.

"My fish with no fins, your love adventure and the will to stop at nothing to pursue the hunt brightens my heart. Of all my children only you, Victoran, have come to ask for my blessings for over five thousand years. For you, Victoran, I grant you my blessing of shaping. You shall never fear the water again, child of the storm. Seek the light at the bottom of the ocean." The god's voice echoed inside his skull and made his vision blur. At that point, it all went black again.

Damp wind...Victoran was back and still falling. He gathered in a breath, and something made everything slow. It didn't seem to matter though. He was already falling in the open air. His thoughts were muddled from the experience with Samcha, and he couldn't get his thinking straight. He was about to die, all his parents worry for him drowning would be to no avail. Victoran would start striking rocks that jutted out of the cliff wall any second now...Had the wind stopped moving?

Victoran opened his eyes. He was inert in the air, but he was sitting on something. Looking down made his stomach turn into knots. Still surrounded by clouds, two spires of rock ran straight down below him, one going down from where his feet were. While the other he sat on and it was no more considerable than his ass. Sweat started to trickle down Victoran's forehead. What was going on? How did he get on these two single perfect sized spires?

Testingly, Victoran grasped his hand out and tried to grab in the air. As he did, a small spire of rock shot into his hand. This made him jump and he reached back to support himself and another spire shot up into that hand. This was incredible, it was like the mountains themselves were preventing him from falling.

Finally being able to stand up after using handholds that he seemed to be able to summon at will, Victoran looked around himself. There was nothing but clouds, except he could perceive the outline of the sun that had presently risen. Victoran tentatively took a step forward to head towards the hazy image of the sun. As he did, rock met his foot allowing him to climb through the misty clouds.

Soon Victoran's head punched above the clouds. The sun immersed him in warmth as he walked above the clouds. Before Victoran was a magnificent view of Shadow Pass and the harbor bay, down below the city. Farther out he could identify a roiling black tempest the surrounded the mysterious island of Takcal.

No one had ever witnessed what the island looked like and even at this height, the storm was a black and undulating mass concealing the island. The perpetual Nexus storm ringed the island and making it difficult to even reach the hydram ocean. According to some faded texts the Keepers had found, the storm hadn't customarily been there. What was behind the storm wall?

The sun was gradually climbing into the sky, and the warming rays seemed to banish the more low-lying clouds. Below, revealed Shadows Pass, a gouge in the Senj Crown that leads from the barrier back to Cordaram. Looking down into the chasm was still hard since the sun rays barely reached the bottom even by lunch. The tear through the mountain was over eighty feet deep in some places.

Looking down made Victoran remember he was immobile sitting on top of a single stone spire, with no way to get down. Victoran closed his eyes and pictured himself sliding down the side of the hill and then he began falling. Maybe fall was the inappropriate word. It felt like he had started sliding down an invisible path, but when Victoran opened his eyes, it was a rugged path he slid down. So though, Victoran's canvas short, and his bottom was starting to get warm, so he attempted standing up. He instantly regretted this choice.

The second he tried standing up by placing his feet on the sides of the path he slid down to slow himself down. As he shifted his feet though, rocks shot up under them. Unlike Victoran, these rocks didn't fly down a slide and he was catapulted into the air. The rocks tried to aid him by placing themselves in his way to catch him. Unfortunately, the rocks were...rocks.

Victoran finally came to a stop and took in a deep breath. The world slowed down and birds froze in the air, of course after he had struck every rock in the mountain. He expelled the breath and got to his feet. His body was engulfed in bruises, and he received a few minor cuts. For the most part, he was in decent shape, after bouncing partway down a mountain.

Looking forward he noticed he had made it a fair distance and was already halfway down. Victoran decided he might just be most proficient to not think so hard about what he was accomplishing. The rocks seemed to transport him in the direction he wanted to go.

With this in mind, Victoran began walking, going slow at first. Once he was certain the rock responded the way he required, he started to run. Victoran started leaping as he ran and the rock met him every time, they even began to cushion his fall, enabling him to maintain his forward momentum. Within minutes he had reached the top of the cliffs overlooking Cordoram.

"I was supposed to be back already," Victoran thought as he looked up at the sun that was well into the sky, marking it past morning. He would need to get to the ship if he wanted to join the others. Looking down over the cliff, he could see the gardens below known as Second Cliff. "How am I supposed to make it below to the docks before they leave?" Victoran asked himself, but as he did, he began to sink.

Down he sank into the rock faster and faster. As he did, he dissolved through houses that were built into the rock face of the cliff. Miraculously, no one witnessed him as he passed down through the rock until he began slowing. The rock had closed above him, but as he stopped the rock in front of him opened up to the docks.

A few people jumped back in shock as Victoran ran out of a hole in the wall and torn out across the floating docks. They stretched like a long street that sometimes would disconnect to let smaller crafts and floating markets by. Farther out the more massive ships docked and a couple of them were preparing to cast off for the coming hunt. Victoran jogged down the docks towards the Frail Titan, a massive ship with three large sails. As Victoran ran along with the ship to the boarding ramp, a coarse voice called down to him off the side of the poop deck.

"Vic you finless fish, I was about to abandon your sorry ass here. You had better get up here or we will arrange you to be scrubbing pots with old Mort in the galley. Grab a crate on the way up you lazy bastard."

Captain Feltlock was a decent man if you could get past his swearing and the perpetual rank odor of pre drank rum. The captain had offered him a chance on his boat even though he knew Victoran could swim. Feltlock had been the one to mention that if he did fall overboard if the storm didn't dispatch him the leviathans would consume him. Therefore by fair means, when the captain phrased it like that, it practically felt like there was no mortal danger. Unless you fell in the water, then you were past the danger. You were gone.

Lunging a crate up to his shoulder, Victoran made his way up the gangplank and onto the deck of the ship. He placed the crate in a pile to be lowered down to the tween deck and noticed someone climbing down the mast above him. A scruffy youth leaped down beside Victoran. This boy had long, curly brown hair, gold hoops in each ear, and only canvas shorts on.

"Did you decide to throw yourself off this time?" Demin asked Victoran as he examined him.

"Feels like it," Victoran said with a grimace. "I went up to pray Demin, and something happened." Before he could say more the ship lurched forward as a tug towed them away from the dock and out of the harbor.

Feltlock began shouting order and Demin had to scramble back up the mast to the crow's nest before Victoran could tell him what had happened. Victoran was brimming with excitement to tell his friend, but a load voice directed at him brought him back to reality. Feltlock yelled that he had better hurry down to the cargo hold to help unload supplies in the cargo hold. If he didn't, the captain promised he would personally toss his sorry carcass overboard.