Arcana Antediluvia

Act I: The Argosy on the Eldritch Sea

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]

And so it was written, that rage would carry him like a howling wind, leaving only frozen corpses,
Their bones rattling in hollow armour, to tell their tale in his wake.

[The Black Mariner:]

Behold, my blackened, grim and gory axe, the searing glow of trenchant steel.
I'll notch another widow to my haft, and wreak red vengeance ‘cross the waves.
Tales of black-sailed argosies, bedeviled by base treachery!

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]

His gaze is as fire, his words are as spear-points, his voice is as thunder, his touch as the plague!

[The Black Mariner:]

Storm-prow cleaving, dragon rending, nighted deeps far, far below,
Hail-scur scouring, sea devouring, sunken realm's ethereal glow.

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]

And one night, there came a storm, a storm with searing red winds.
Fire and steel rode within it, and vengeance writ in thunder and blood!

[The Black Mariner:]

Down sixty fathoms, from stygian coral-clad tombs, the pitiless abyssal sea disgorges its shambling mold-mottled dead,
Dank innards blackly acoil with nests of slithering things!
Ghosts aglide upon the eldritch seas, unfathomed voyage to ascendancy,
Traitorous blood, the surf roils red, churning crimson, thrice-cursed dead.

[The Antediluvian Oracle:]

‘Tis enough that men might dream of being kings without aspiring to the power of gods.

(To be continued in “Arcana Antediluvia Act II: The Demon in the Dusklight Crystal.”)