#but when it comes to dragon age they throw a half eaten bone to us like here you freaks

[lelianaslefthand]

no bc mass effect really is bioware's baby... they treat dragon age like the ugly step sister im crying

[theangrypokemaniac]

Since I rant enough about the wizening Ma and Pa received in Sinnoh it's only right to wreak bloody rhetorical vengeance elsewhere:

However harsh it may be, I'm glad Takeshi Shudo isn't alive to witness the hateful desecration of his legacy.

...

In a universe where no one's allowed to age, why are the modern Jessie and James so withered and decrepit?

Dragon Ball has been on for more than three decades. Its stars were permitted to grow up, because the head can cope with the opportunities this offers.

Yet Goku, Krillin, Bulma et al bear a greater similarity to their younger selves than these gurning invertebrates do to Team Rocket, wearing a papery approximation of their skin.

Akira Toriyama is actually concerned about his life's work, still coming up with interesting concepts, brand-new characters, and most importantly, values his audience by keeping to the established canon.

If a Dragon Ball fan reads this, I am so jealous of you.

Consider yourselves fortunate not to have seen the thing you loved the most pulverised and the resulting glutinous mass moulded back into makeshift sloppy cadavers.

Look at the state of that man! That's a good picture these days!

Why have the eyelid lines turned into upside down bags?

And why has she collected her lashes for this particular screen shot?

On eyes with a strangely feline slant...

Has she had a face lift?

Get yer money back on that one, love.

And why has he marks under his eyes and round his flapping gob to add the hint of exhaustion?

And why don't her lips reach the edge of her mouth anymore?

And why must he display Beaver Toof, as if he's only got six pegs left?

Giving it to him but not her implies she's lost the lot, needing to gum objects for a result.

And why do her low-slung ears consist only of lobe?

And why can you see his featureless lugs? Why does his barnet stand outwards in tentacles like he's taken to wearing a floppy Starmie?

What's that's meant to be, purple dreadlocks?

And why is her hairline curved and absolutely straight, like a bad wig, apart from the perfunctory bits to the side, which I guarantee won't alter their position throughout the run?

Hair used to move about, now by law there's a set pattern which cannot change. Stamp that life out immediately.

And what's that flaccid growth between his weary peepers? Is that meant to be fringe?

PFFFT!!!

And why are her digits just as thick and oblong as his?

It ain't fingers. It's trotters.

And why's he got a back to his throat, but she hasn't?

And why are we forced to witness it? You can see all the way to his dangler!

The great gaping pink cave looks like the end of Looney Tunes when Porky Pig pops up and stammers: "That's all folks!"

Remember a lack of Beaver Toof? And triangular mouths?

Remember when Meowth was a cheeky, spirited little cat, not a middle-aged human midget, an emaciated wreck bored of it all?

Remember when it wasn't deemed necessary to expose us to internal organs?

And when James was a handsome, hysterically camp dandy, not a creepy, snot-ridden science dweeb?

And when Jessie was a beautiful, stylish young girl, hot-tempered but loyal, not a sullen, cold, reptilian, Botoxed-to-the-gills gorgon?

Remember when Team Rocket were fun? And attractive?

Remember when they had joy in their hearts in spite of their poverty? And vim? And hope?

Remember them acting with flair and imagination?

Remember when their schemes had variety?

Remember when they had more than a single disguise per era?

Remember when they had many occupations? And were good at them?

Remember when they'd have a go at everything and weren't reduced to flipping condemned meat in a grotty burger van FOR THREE YEARS?!

Remember when those in charge didn't despise them, when they got happy endings?

Remember split screens? And face faults? And background tones? And purple streaks down your cheeks?

Remember big, bright open eyes, not shrunken, sagging and empty holes afflicted by glaucoma?

Remember when Jessie had eyelashes?

Remember when Pokémon was an anime?

And when James had a fringe, not a bent swelling like a balloon animal?

And when the artist could be arsed to draw Meowth's Charm properly?

Remember when the voices weren't nails down a blackboard?

When Meowth didn't sound like a wedge of coal grinding beneath an oil-deprived door?

When Jessie's dulcet tones had a wider range that just screechy, and weren't reminiscent of a cacophonous banshee clawing her way from a bog, using her own mug as a shovel?

When James speaking didn't suggest he was at best, suffering sinus difficulties, and at worst, constantly battling to swallow his own sick from looking at her?

Mind you, I'm grateful the 4Kids cast are no longer here. They deserve better, and their presence would only validate the crude bastardisations.

Every time the guttural howls reach my poor ears a chill runs through my system, and reminds me of The Pokémon Company sacking the real dub crew in preference for a job done on the cheap.

Remember speed lines? And Pokéball-throwing animation?

Remember a new motto performance in each installment, not the same stock footage reused again and again?

Remember when it rhymed?

It shows.

Remember remembering it?

Remember when Team Rocket would walk down the street in their uniforms and no one took a blind bit of notice despite the organisation operating there?

And they didn't fanny about in one scabby polyester costume every minute they were travelling, even when NO ONE KNOWS WHO THEY ARE?

Since Unova, whilst confronting Ash and this era's soon-to-be-forgotten companions, you get this exchange:

Moron-Of-The-Week: "Who are Team Rocket?"

Ash: "They're bad guys who steal other people's Pokémon."

EVERY SINGLE BLOODY TIME!!!

WORD-FOR-WORD IDENTICAL!!!

The writers have such deep appreciation for their work they're sending in cut-and-paste scripts.

Remember blasting off when something blew up, not an explosion from nowhere, or giving it the slip with a jet pack, or abduction by a Care Bear?

Remember when the eyebrows matched the hair?

Remember when he wore it long?

Remember blue shock? And sweat drop? And hammerspace? And comedy violence?

Remember her jagged hairline? And it being RED!!!

Remember proper highlights to it, rather than the odd white lump now and again, as if sweating like a pig, or their heads are infested with giant space ticks?

Remember when they were in all the episodes? And were main characters? And on the introduction sequence?

Remember when Jessie and James used to hug? And hold hands?

And bicker as only a couple can, but you knew they'd never cope alone?

Remember when they'd fly into each other's arms under the flimsiest pretext?

Remember when they meant more to one another than just being a pair of unconnected and disembodied wraiths coincidentally walking down the same road?

And they had more than civil interactions?

Remember when she loved him as much as he loved her?

And no one else could ever take his place?

And canon wasn't infected with the ruinous depiction of her as a hard, heartless bitch barely tolerating him until someone 'better' came along, at which point she'd fuck off without a backwards glance?

'Better', as in a scabby, satchel-mouthed, gormless cretin, just to add surly insult to merciless injury.

Never has such a life-long and hardcore defender of the faith flipped into an ardent Rumishipper as I did after that episode, once I'd swept up the fragments of my soul.

Remember when they were sympathetic?

Remember when they showed human warmth?

Remember when they cared about each other?

Remember when they weren't just a jangling, distorted mess of half-recollected traits?

Remember when they weren't really evil?

Remember Rocketshipping? That was a thing once, believe it or not.

Remember when they had a conscience?

Remember when actually wicked characters turned up, and Team Rocket ALWAYS sided with Ash, rather than the nauseating spectacle of suddenly being best buds with the Boss?

Remember when they had contact with the Twerps?

Remember when Team Rocket and the Twerps loved each other in secret and would endanger themselves to save their 'enemies'?

Everything that was once good and winning about them was sucked out, degree by degree, to leave the corpse, hollow and dead, strung up on wires as a grim marionette.

I'm sure most who see this will vehemently disagree, that I'm completely wrong, that THEY like them.

Yes, you like this three, but you don't like Team Rocket. This is not them. You have yours, and I have mine, but let's not pretend they are the same.

Why, if there is no difference, would I be so hostile, when they meant so much too me?

Did you ever wonder where the original fans went, why they all departed en masse? It's not because they 'moved on' or 'matured'.

They didn't leave Pokémon. Pokémon left them.

As the makers rely so heavily on repetition (sorry, nostalgia) they arrogantly expect us to still be here, having blithely welcomed our memories minced and our canon ripped up or ripped off, apparently.

We're intended to put up with watching them lay waste to ťhe series's body, clinging on for when a rotting bone is pulled up now and again and waved at us, before they chuck it aside to continue the dismemberment.

It's been eaten from the inside out, explaining the facial collapse. Behold the beauty on show:

You see what I mean, don't you?

Don't you? No, because otherwise you'd say the same.

How anyone feels able to describe three deformed freaks as 'hot' or 'cute' I will never comprehend.

The uniform collar protrudes like a solid pipe, emphasising the pencil necks.

It gives the impression of wrinkled, leathery tortoises peering out of their shells to secure a tasty lettuce treat.

Is that pretty? No.

Is it so surprising I don't care for my favourites to resemble melted waxwork skeletons of their own dæmonic counterparts?

S&M is a most fitting name, for this is torture.

In the film Death Becomes Her, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn vie for the attention of Bruce Willis, both taking a serum giving everlasting youth and slimness.

The catch is it confers immortality, but not invulnerability, so when pushed down the stairs Meryl survives but is dead, her neck broken, thus she's zipped up in the morgue fridge.

When Goldie is shot with a canon she too rises, internal organs blown out.

The rest of the adventure involves the pair losing the war against time, patching up and painting over peeling grey skin, holding onto loose limbs as their bodies fall apart.

This obviously is the case here. The trio lapped the potion up at the close of Sinnoh, experienced a fatal accident and are now steadily crumbling to mush before us.

According to grave-diggers the head always goes first, so there you are then.

I have a suspicion that Giovanni lured all three to his crypt, experimenting on them to engineer his ultimate super soldier, which explains their flat, plastic appearance. Those since Unova began are the cyborgs, the real ones locked in his cellar.

You may notice I have about the lowest opinion possible of the current writing team, as they deserve.

Why should I have any respect for vindictive halfwits like this, who hate Team Rocket so much they're going out of their way to distort and uglify them, expressing the resentment in celluloid?

Jessie, James and Meowth lost their only defender in Takeshi Shudo. From that point they descended from loveable, hapless tragic figures to self-parodies (Hoenn) whiney, irritating divs dumping one another at every interval (Sinnoh), robotic, amoral scum (Unova and Kalos) and now physically repulsive minor additions (Alola and Galar). Is that trajectory all accidental?

It not that it's a new 'style' (for want of a better word), as were that the case, this hideousness would apply to the entire cast, but it's only done to Team Rocket. How could that be unless motivated by malice?

Given the sub thesps are obliged to prostrate themselves in the dust, begging fans to make their appreciation known, it smacks of desperation.

They wouldn't need to ask that were the trio treated as an integral component. They must sense the objections and are thus drumming up support to avoid the dole queue.

Are those in charge so resentful of their presence it manifests in mutilating them, keen to do anything that may alienate the fanbase, so at the first sign of a dip in popularity they can leap upon it as the perfect excuse to write Team Rocket out?

Why be surprised? These are imbeciles who reject their own canon at the close of every generation, so why care about someone else's?

If people have to harangue the writers with grovelling praise of their retcons, rehashes and all-round twatting about, butter 'em up sufficiently, with the implied threat of deserting the franchise should Team Rocket be ejected, taking their purses too, all so the smug, avaricious berks deign to put the trio in the next generation, that proves they don't want them, so how can what they write for their characters be objectively of any worth?

Team Rocket would've departed by now, were there not a palpable worry their absence might ring the death knell of the whole thing, turning off the financial tap, which is what matters.

Therefore they are retained, grudgingly, and only so long as the clamour continues at its current decibel level. If that drops it's over, and don't expect a romantic resolution. Why should pleasing you be a concern when you're to leave with them?

Ask yourself: how much of your devotion is based on what they are right now, and how much is from who they used to be?

How long can they live off past glories?

The offences done in Unova and Kalos were bad enough, but remarkably Game Freak found further depths to plumb, therefore it can only get worse.

I have of course retained the loveliest for last:

Be still, my beating heart.

No, really, be still. Stop infact. 

Planet of the Apes.

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 36 - An Sgòrgann Aigeinn

Chapter 1 on AO3 This chapter on AO3 Masterpost here 

Twenty-eighth day of Justinian, 9:32 Dragon

The morning dawned grey and cold, though dry, with the last of the rain having swept over in the early hours to leave nothing more than an angry smudge on the horizon. Bundled up in furs, Alistair gathered on the terrace with Wynne, Mhairi and his valet and found Rosslyn already waiting for him with a silent, hollow-eyed smile that no doubt was meant to be reassuring, but the Storm Giant emerged from the depths of the broch before he could even greet her. the old man passed a cursory glance over them both before leading the way out of the settlement along the headland, to a collapsed hollow on the northern shore of the island.  

The place had obviously once been a cave, eaten away by the sea until the roof could no longer be supported. A wide, shallow pool filled with broken chunks of basalt narrowed to a lip of rock that, for the moment, sat above the sea, though the black tide marks on the surrounding walls proved it wouldn’t be long before the water covered it by at least half the height of a man. Along the far wall, a cave opened in the rock, a gaping black mouth with jagged basalt teeth and limp ropes of seaweed hanging down from them like bits of trapped food.  

That would be the Swallow, then.

He stood on the lip of a knoll of bare rock that jutted out of the back wall like a stage in front of a Tevene amphitheatre, a shivering spectacle for the clan lords gathered under a canvas awning at the base of the cliffs. As he stripped, he kept his mind on his task, repeating Mac Cinaed’s words to himself to drown out the patient, unending lap of the sea. At the closing of the Storm Age, a great hero of the Clayne fought a high dragon along these cliffs. Though he was slain before he could fell the beast, his last blow dealt it a mortal wound and it crawled away to die. Its remains lie in a sacred place, beyond that opening, in a cave that cannot be reached by sea. To prove your worthiness before the gods, you must retrieve one of the dragon’s bones and return it to us.

“They could have picked a better morning for it,” he joked to his valet as he handed over his shirt. “It’s freezing.”

“It’s the lowest tide we’ll have for two months.”

He jerked as Rosslyn came to stand next to him, but her eyes were fixed on the distant horizon.

“It means you’ll have more time,” she said.

“Rosslyn, I... thank you, for –”

She cut him off with a warning glance. “I haven’t done anything.”

Her dagger sat at his hip, a reassuring weight that fended off the worst of his nerves. When Tabris had knocked on his door in the small hours of the morning, wearing a sullen, embarrassed scowl, the sight of it in her hands had been the only thing that cut through his confusion and allowed her to step inside.  

“No, of course not,” he muttered. “Forget I said anything.”

“We’re almost at the ebb, you should get ready.” She turned to leave as his valet returned with the pot of goose fat Tabris had stolen for him from the kitchens, but halted, shoulders stiff, hands clenching into fists at her sides. “I don’t care about the dragon bone,” she confessed, without looking at him. “Just come back.”

“Your Highness, it’s time!”

He ignored the Storm Giant’s call and lifted his hand to Rosslyn’s cheek. Her skin was cold. “Don’t count me out just yet, my lady. I’m tougher than I look – and besides, you promised me we would talk when this was all over. I intend to make you keep that promise.”

The ghost of a smile touched the corner of her mouth, a retort half-formed as her gaze flickered over his bare torso and settled back on his face.

“You’d better get going then,” she told him. “Because you promised me more than just talking.”

“Wait –” He started after her. “Here, will you take this?” Confusion furrowed her brows as he unclasped his mother’s necklace and held it out to her. “I’d hate to lose it getting snagged on a rock somewhere, and since I’m meant to be going into a cave on behalf of the Alamarri gods, it’s not likely a Andrastian amulet will make me very welcome.”

“I’ll keep it safe,” she promised, and closed her hand around it.

“Your Highness,” the Storm Giant called again. “I wouldnae dawdle much longer If I were you.”

Startled, Rosslyn retreated, taking the last of the warmth with her as he stripped down to his smalls. He tried not to fidget as goose fat was slathered over every exposed inch of skin. It did help cut out the chill of the wind, but it stank like old ashes and the raw, claggy feel of it made the back of his neck itch. With a roll of his shoulders, he dismissed his valet, checked the dagger sat secure on his belt, and dropped into the pool.

The water was freezing. It only came to mid-calf, but even a moment of exposure was enough to chill Alistair’s blood, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from cursing as he picked his way across to the cave. As he approached, stumbling on feet gone corpse-white with cold, the mouth seemed to suck in air and then exhale. With every breath came a plume of brackish odour, salt and rot and stone, that brought bile rising up his throat. Rationally, he knew the effect to be nothing more than a change in pressure caused by waves rising and falling against the other end of the tunnel, but this was a trial for gods, and as he ducked to pass under the first hanging row of columns, the lurch in his stomach told him those gods were hungry. He felt again for the blade on his belt and did not look back.  

It wasn’t so bad inside, when his eyes adjusted to the light. The wash of the sea faded into a background echo, and after the first few steps the cave opened far enough for him to stand up straight, while the grey daylight at his back spilled around him to lead a path steeply down. Barnacles scraped his palms. He felt his way ape-like through the gully, not trusting the seaweed-slick columns under his feet, especially since they were now so numb the only feeling that registered was the dull impact of every cautious step. For a yard or so it felt like he hit level ground, but then the wall in front of him arced sharply down and he stumbled into a pool that deepened past his knees.

Confusion halted him for a moment as he groped for a turn in the path, a ledge, anything that might show him the way forward, but nothing presented itself. Finally, he reached under the water, crouching when he found a lip in the seemingly solid wall, and then a cavity behind it as far as his arm could reach.

“Of course,” he muttered to himself as he stood. “Of bloody course.” The light was behind him; he had no way of telling how far ahead of him the tunnel stretched, but to turn back now would only doom the elves, and Highever, and possibly the whole of Ferelden.

He shivered as the air in the tunnel grew colder. Life as a soldier had been far simpler than this, with no expectations, no pretensions, no one to disappoint when he inevitably succumbed to failure. He could have lived and died by the sword, ignoble and forgotten on some mass pyre without ever having affected the world. Who was he to think he could steal a dragon bone from the seat of the gods?

The last part he thought he must have said out loud. There was an echo in his ear, a susurration more ordered than the roar of the sea, but when he turned, the space behind him was empty.  

“Who’s there?” he barked. Cold cracked his throat. no imagined thing but a palpable drop in temperature that drew out his breath in a faint plume of white steam. “Show yourself!”

The whispering itched across his neck. He was going to let everyone down, he should have let Rosslyn take his place when she intervened before the moot, Rosslyn who was brave and strong and bull-headed to a fault. Her dagger sat at his hip, a little thing smuggled through the dark with words of advice she had been forbidden to give. If he gave up now, so soon, how could he face her again?

“I don’t have time for this,” he growled, and shrugged off the icy fingers sneaking purchase on his shoulders.

With one hand on Rosslyn’s dagger, he crouched again, stealing deep gulps of air as his lungs acclimatised to the cold, squeezed his eyes shut, and dived. The whispers returned, more cautious than before, wordless voices scratching the back of his mind over the dull echo of his heart. Fronds of seaweed licked across his face gentle as a lover’s touch. When his knee cracked off a rock, he grimaced but kept going, pushing his awareness out into his hands to compensate for his lack of sight, cursing every time his numbed fingers scraped against stone instead of air.  

There must be and end soon. Please tell me I’m nearly there...

He broke the surface just as his lungs started to burn. His head bumped against the low ceiling and salt stung his eyes before he could wipe the water away, but light reached him here, and the harsh, cold saw of air against the back of his throat was so welcome it left him giddy. Gulls were calling, beckoning him towards the end of the tunnel, which opened out into a narrow, vaulted cave with a slanted floor. It was split open down the middle, as if some giant had cleft it with an axe, and the sea raged foamy white in the gap, throwing up spray with every incoming wave. The tide mark on the wall stretched far above Alistair’s head as he hunched, shivering, and tried not to think about what had happened to all the people who had come this way before him.

“And of course the dragon isn’t here. That would be too easy.”

It helped, talking to himself.

He could see his way onward, where the cave narrowed again on the other side of the gorge, another low tunnel worried from a fault in the rock. Already the roar of the water was louder than before, a latent reminder that he would have to return this way, with the water rising and no knowledge of how much further he had yet to go. Licking his lips free of salt, he edged to the back wall, where the crack in the floor was narrowest. The ground was lower here than elsewhere; water already flowed over the lip of the chasm. It washed over Alistair’s ankles as he picked his way across, every wave like a living thing trying to trick his footing before it sank back sullenly into the white, churning body of the water.

As he reached the far side, he stumbled. Tabris’ warning about not lingering in the cold came back to him, and he chafed his hands along his arms, cursing when the still-present layer of goose fat robbed him of the friction needed for heat. The circulation in his feet was a lost cause, so poor he had to look down to check they were still there, and even then couldn’t quite believe it.

“Everything’s fine,” he told himself. “Just think of warm things. Roaring fires. Lamb and pea stew straight from the pot. Fluffy blankets.”

Being under fluffy blankets with Rosslyn to warm you up.

He growled at the wandering line of his thoughts. “Find the dragon. Fantasize later.”

The second tunnel was darker than the first. The ceiling hung low, and the floor sloped upwards, so he had to crouch, but there were no sudden dips, and even when the passage narrowed so far he had to turn sideways to fit through, it stayed dry. Alistair finally edged out into a cavern so large the higher reaches of the basalt columns were lost to darkness, while muted light came in refracted ripples from the cave’s entrance, a low, yawning mouth incongruous with the gigantic space it concealed. Some of the columns were broken off, chipped long ago by some powerful force the water had then eroded away. It lapped now only a foot or so beneath the cave floor, surly but assured that it would get its due.

Have to hurry.

The path, or what passed for one, led up to the right, deeper into the gloom, and once again he had to let his eyes adjust as he climbed. He hoped it wasn’t far. His breath grated in his throat and his head was starting to feel warm, a worrying contrast to the lack of feeling in his hands. Time was slipping away; Rosslyn’s words echoed in his mind: I don’t care about the dragon bone, just come back.

“Just a little further,” he grunted, and hauled himself up another step.

And then he saw it.

When it was alive, the dragon must have been enormous. He stood on the rim of a shallow pool wide enough to berth the Siren’s Call, with the skeleton curled around the far side, pearlescent in the low light. The skull was easily as long as he was tall, with fangs that outmatched the length of his upper arm and a crown of horns that swept up and back from the orbital ridges in what must have made a frightening display when the creature was alive. It was hard to imagine anyone with strength enough to kill it.

“Or get any part of it back up into the daylight,” he muttered, wading towards what had once been the dragon’s forequarter. Maybe he could pry one of the teeth loose? It would certainly be easier than trying to haul back a femur or one of the ribs – his mind conjured an image of one of the awkward shapes lodging in the underwater tunnel, trapping him along with it until he ran out of air. No, what he needed was something small, and streamlined enough to fit in his belt.

“Please don’t come back to life and kill me,” he told the skull. He had heard stories about corpses being possessed in places where the Veil was thin, and it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched that an eager spirit might claim the bones of an ancient dragon, if given the chance.  

“Nice and easy, I’ll just take –”  

The tooth didn’t so much as wiggle. He pulled harder, the dragonbone smooth as new metal under his touch, but even when he braced a foot against the massive jawbone and tugged with both hands, he only succeeded in cutting his hand on the tooth’s serrated back edge.

He ignored the sting and pulled the dagger from its sheath to use as a pry. “I’m not giving up that easily. Come on – Just – move!”

The blade slipped. The sudden jerk sent him backwards into the pool, his grip on the hilt lost as he threw out his hands to break his fall. And still the skull leered at him with its perfect, unbroken row of pointed teeth. Fuming, Alistair shook water out of his eyes and stood, casting his eyes over the rest of the skeleton, the most robust parts of which remained preserved in place, ribs and vertebrae and dactyl-phalanges sprawled just as they had been when the dragon had drawn its last breath. He could never hope to even lift most of those, but an idea occurred to him as he tucked the dagger back into its sheath and followed the folded remains of one foreleg down towards the water – the dragon must have had toes, right?

Behind him, the noise of the waves changed; no longer the dull, rhythmic slap of water corralled against rock, but the satisfied hiss of foam easing over a conquered barrier. Every surge counted down his time, ate away the light and his patience both, but he forced himself to concentrate beyond the growing lethargy clogging his thoughts. He realised he had stopped feeling the cold.

Desperation drove him now. He combed the bottom of the pool, eyes alert for the barest shimmer of bone under the surface, stirring up coarse sand and broken bits of shell with feet and hands both, even as his mind came to delayed conclusion that after ages of exposure, the currents that had brought in the detritus around the dragon’s corpse had likely been paid in kind and stolen back the smaller bones, taken them out to sea to depths where no human would ever find them.

“No. no, I won’t let it end like this,” he snarled. “I’m here. It can’t end like this.” His head dropped into his hands, covering his eyes. There had to be something, some clue he had missed or a place he had yet to look. If only he could think.

His ears caught something. A sound above the steady hush of the water, like small stones skittering down a hill or rain tapping against a pane of glass. It ran behind him, too ordered to be random, and then over that came a chirrup almost like a bird might make, questioning – and answered by a low, grating, angry hiss that that brought every one of his cold-numbed nerves screaming back to life. Steeling his breath, he turned. His way out was blocked by about a dozen strange creatures standing on their hind legs, each about the size of a dog, with long, feathered tails and glowing silver eyes that peered out over sucker-like mouths full of teeth. They regarded him cautiously, but with the same expectant air he had grown up watching in the faces of Arl Eamon’s hounds at feeding time, and they followed the movement of his hand as he slowly reached for the dagger at his waist.

Below, the sea reared back and slapped against the roof of the cave mouth and the world went dark.