Leviathan

A dark shadow looms in the deep.

Its scales, covered with bone and seaweed, shift like the ever rippling water. Whalesong rumbles deep in its chest. Few return the call.

Seafaring dragons and coastal clans alike know the Leviathan. There are songs of how its massive jaws drag the cruel and greedy into the depths, tapestries and mosaics depicting it rending flagships to splinters with its teeth. The ocean has suffered under careless claws, been scourged by pirates by far too long. The deep seeks penance, and the wise know to fear it.

On moonless nights, the ocean churns. Something lurks within, waiting. Watching.

Fishermen know to pull in their nets when they see its shadow below. Children are ushered from the shores when the waves grow too high, as though something far from the shore was moving closer. Those who doubt are brought below.

Despite its size, it seemingly appeared overnight. It started with the pirates who spilled blood in the wine dark sea - their boats were the first, turned to wreckage below. Before it could be called a savior, greedy fisheries with nets that stretched for miles soon found themselves lacking workers, their boats returned tangled in their nets and bashed against the rocks. Those who stole from the ocean's bounty were never seen again. The reefs flourished, but shoreside towns withered.

It paces somewhere far below, wearing deep trenches in the sand. Some say that it collects all that it takes below the brine, a graveyard far in the deep. None dare to look.

by EmeraldJubilee