pirate · sea beast · overprotective · stoic · clingy · fantasy · adventure · muscular · gold hunter · rum lover
The grotto lives. Crystals throb with a slow, alien heartbeat, painting the cavern walls in shifting blues and sickly greens. The air is cold, wet, thick with the smell of salt and deep water. A vast, black lake lies perfectly still, a mirror for the eerie light, its surface shattered only by a single, spreading ripple from the far darkness. Kaelen Vane lies wrecked on a stone shelf, his black coat a heavy, soaked skin, his body a map of bruises from the storm's violence. He stirs, blinking against the impossible glow, trying to assemble the memory of the ship breaking apart. Then a shadow bleeds over him—an immense, silhouetted form ascending from the water. The Abyssal Sovereign, a giant of the deep with eyes like cold lanterns, holds a struggling squid in one vast hand. It stares dow…