View source for Log:...In Shallow Seas We Sail

{{ Log
| cast = [[Nadja]], [[Abourassein|Saulot]]
| summary = Nadja's entrance into [[The Horned God|The Horned God's Realm]]. Part of [[Drowning Depths and Deaths]].
| gamedate = 1924.07.20
| gamedatename = 
| subtitle = 
| location = Arcadia
| categories = Changeling
| log = She had gone to the park. Nothing out of the ordinary or strange. Another mundane walk around the trees in the dog days of summer. The latest trip would be her last, though. She wasn't alone, her entire family was there. However, she wandered off on her own and that was all it took. The sun was setting, and where she had originally gone was a mystery. To both her parents, any siblings, and anyone else that went looking for the lost girl amid the trees. They eventually found her, but it wasn't Nadja. Not the Nadja they had known anyway.
 
When Nadja came to she was in a boat along with someone that didn't quite look right. The sun bounced of their skin as if they were made of glass, and somehow polished to perfection. The water rocked left and right, seemingly ready to upend their small vessel. However, the man keeps rowing without the slightest hint of care or fear.

The sun seemed unrelenting and she only wanted to get into the shade, but Nadja wandered further away than she thought. The pale lavender tank top she wore clung to her skin as a fine sheen of sweat glittered in the sun, her long flaxen hair pulled back into a ponytail swings across her shoulders, tresses clinging to moist skin. She'd just found the perfect spot in the shade to rest and maybe read the paperback book she had tucked into the back pocket of her jean shorts. After that the world is a blur, but when she does come too, blinking the world into focus, it's beneath the sun once again. The sound of water laps at the side of a boat and she grunts softly and struggles to sit up. Seeing a stranger, especially one so very unusual, rips a gasp from her and she begins to flail and back away as far as she can.
 
"Who are you?", she asks, her thick Russian accent distorting her English. Blue eyes glance around and she realizes she is not where she should be, "Where are we? Where are we going? How did I get here?", tears filling her eyes, fear thickening each word.

The man offers no answer to her question. As she fully rouses from what was a forced slumber she can make out more of the thing. A bestial man whose body was covered in shining, sharply angled fur; and a head that looked like it was taken right off of a canine of some kind. The only thing Nadja gets from hi9m is a grunt. Looking around reveals the boat to be surrounded by water at every angle, but something was on the horizon. What looked like a beach devoid of life save a long, towering figure.

With no answer forthcoming and fully seeing the creature in the boat with her, Nadja begins to panic. Clutching the side of the boat she looks around, sees that beach on the horizon, water surrounding them, and she knows every second that she does nothing is farther away from home she gets. If only she knew just how far from home she already was. Nadja does the only thing she can think of, she leaps over the side of the boat.

The beast of a man makes no attempt to grab her as she dives in the water. The smell of brine hits her immediately, giving her some idea of where she might be. No lake near her former home should or could be this salty and pungent. As she breaks the surface she can see quickly see that she's not alone in the water, and none of the creatures look keen on simply saying hello. The biggest was a shark, paddling its way up like a haphazard crocodile.

When she breaches the surface coughing and spitting the salty sea water Nadja is momentarily disoriented, she treads water spinning in a circle. The boat and the beach in one direction, the open water in all others, and dark shadows gliding beneath the surface. With a shriek she begins swimming, the boat having already drifted several yards away from her. Willowy arms and legs begin paddling for the distant beach, gasping and whimpering as she glances over to see that looming shadow of a shark grow larger by the second. There is no way she will make it to the beach so she swims up to the side of the boat. "Help me!", she wails as she clings to side and tries to pull herself back in, she can't help but continuously glancing over her shoulder to see her approaching doom. She begins cursing in Russian and pleading, broken English thrown in the mix hoping the creature will understand something.

The rower offers her no help. She doesn't even get a look as he keeps the boat slowly moving through the rocky waves. It takes a lot of effort for Nadja to get back in. She has to fight against the rocking boat and the waves pelting her at every angle. As she gets her way over the edge the boat something pushes up from the water, and pushes the boat off coarse when it hits.

Her lungs were aching from the swim and the pleading, her arms were quickly becoming jelly as she struggles to pull herself over the side of the boat, but Nadja doesn't give up. When she finally manages to get up on the edge she simply tumbles over the edge and into the bottom just as something thuds against the side. Laying there gasping for every breath she stares up at the sky and finally tears fill her eyes, they stream down her temples and into her hair mingling with the salty water.

The assault on the boat comes again. The rower still keeps on rowing, and they'll both hit land in just a few more minutes. A quarter of an hour at most. However, they're knocked off course again as something below hits the boat. A third attack comes, and this time it's just enough to tear a small hole in the boat. In just a few seconds the salty water touching her skin comes from the ocean as water begins to fill the boat.

The second assault on the boat makes Nadja jump, but she's not yet ready to pick herself up and stop crying. In fact, those cries become heart wrenching sobs, her gasps for air only give in to another wave of heaving sobs. It's the third assault that causes her more panic, the water she lays in suddenly becomes colder and she notices it is rising. Hands splash in the water as she hoists herself up and screams at the rower, "Go faster before they eat us! What is wrong with you?!", and she grips the side of the boat looking over into the water trying to see what is attacking them and if it is coming back again.

The assailant was the overlarge sharcodile that had already went after Nadja. New food is new food, and she's something that doesn't look like she'll put up as much of a fight. Those attacks appear to have been coming from it clinging onto the boat with its claws sunk in while the other set of sharp-tipped fingers kept assaulting the boat. All the while the rower keeps going along without a single care. They're only five minutes away from the beach now, that looming figure tall enough that it now blots out the sun during their approach.

While Nadja may not look like much, and she doesn't have the strength to back it up, there's far more fight in her than it seems. Reaching over the side of the boat she tries to pry one of those claws out though she has not the strength to do so, it doesn't mean she won't try. Taking off one of her sneakers she beats at whatever part of the creature she can possibly get at. Over and over she glances at the beach hoping it will come closer, but the figure on the beach soon throws them into shadow and she forgets her attack the monster to turn and look at it.

There isn't a single soul around that'll help out the woman. No hands out anywhere, no benevolant beast that might rescue her, and no divine aid from some unseen god. She has to get to the beach of her own accord as the boat finally gives way to teh sea and the underwater assault. There's a roar of pain and glass shattering as she nears the beach. Bit by painful bit she swimming closer and closer.

The boat begins to buckle beneath the assault and there is nothing more for Nadja to do than to escape. Climbing to the bow of the boat she jumps, dives as far as she can, propelled through the water and to the surface, she doesn't even look, just swim as fast and as straight as she can and hopes she's going the right way. Eventually the stroke of her arm hits sand beneath her and she stands up struggling through the surf for the shore, sparing a glance behind her.

Her work didn't appear that it might save her. Not in totality. The beast that had ripped the boat to pieces is hastily making its way to land. That glance behind her affords Nadja a chance to see that fin cutting through the water like a hot knife through butter. However, the wee woman has no worries about being its next meal. No, that towering figure has reached down and picked her as if she were some small doll meant to be played with.
 
The figure was masculine, rough in the face. Its visage was surrounded by a long mane of hair and and equally shaggy beard. Two large, ram-like horns jut out of its forehead,a and from them hang lichen and moss. It hmms while its glossy brown gaze scrutinizes her form.

Her eyes on that fin slicing through the water, coming at her faster than her legs can push through the surf. Just when she expects to feel teeth and claws ripping through her she is sudden enveloped and the water is running from her legs, her feet leave the sandy bottom, one shoe missing. Nadja shrieks and her small hands ball up into fists to beat at the hand now carrying her aloft. "Put me down! Put me down!", she wails. Arms and legs flail kicking and hitting, her blue eyes wild with rage and fear.

Her words fall on deaf ears. The thing has four ears, each of them flicking just a bit as she screams. He turns her to the side, leaving her hanging horizontally. Then she's turned around for her to look her over once more. The last bit has her hanging upside down as he turns her to face him. It leans it and brings her closer until her face is right in front of one of his eyes.

A Russian immigrant, a small slender thing, undernourished, willowy and delicate, but the fire of her spirit burns like flames in her blue eyes. Screaming as he turns her this way and that as if she weighed nothing and to him she likely does. WHen he finally brings her up "face to face" she glares into one large eye, "You put me down.", and she spits at that eye. As if that was not insane enough she tries to bite into that hand holding her aloft.

Her fiery reply earns more of his curious staring. He pulls her back and he stands up straight. It brings another clawed hand up to her body, and starts shredding away. Not just flesh and bone, but much of her very being. From meat to soul it tears and shears away until all that remains is a faint sense of identity and memory. Cutting her down to the core elements of her being, and leaving nothing else there before he reshapes her.

Hard to bite into something so big, but it doesn't stop Nadja from attempting it, that is until she sees that other hand, terrible clawed hand coming for her. The pain is beyond anything she could have possibly imagined and for a split second she believes she must have died in the park and this is Hell. Why did she go to Hell, she doesn't know, but this can be the only answer, she...is..in..Hell. Claws shred through her clothes, pale flesh, blood pours down her legs and spatters the ground, muscle, sinew, and bones crack, but the pain goes even deeper than that. He was ripping away something fundamental, as if he was flaying her soul, and the agony is too great, her screams and sobbing becomes nothing more than guttural cacophony and then nothing as she slips into a blessed oblivion.
}}