Casdannik the Left Hand
You think I wander down here to watch the leviathan hunters come in, hey? To see them nose up to the docks, all thrumming with their catch, sending out the ripples, holding tight to that blood trying to force its way back into the sea? Hah. No. No, I’d sooner watch a seagull feed her young by yakking food into their outstretched beaks.
No, I come down here because I know summat that these crews don’t know, that you don’t know. Nobody knows it. Death is a song to the leviathans. They sing it, they listen for it. If you know what you’re doing, you can invite them in close. Invite them up out of the water, even, if you have a pretty enough song.
That’s how my people used to do it. Human sacrifice, that’s right. By the dozen. Blood flowing in runnels to the ink-black water, plumes swelling into it like demon artwork, scenting the surf. You say the right words, sing the right songs, use the right knife. Get it right, and all that screaming and begging and weeping turns into seduction, into power. You snare the curiosity under those tons of water, and it glides in close. It wants that suffering and death, like you want that barmaid’s hips. It wants to enter, it wants that warmth—it lusts for it.
So the greedy demon would haul itself up onto the land, panting through the surf, churning it to fog. Then my people would attack. We took cross-cut saws, hatchets, blades sharpened like you’ve never seen. We attacked those demons where they interrupted the skyline with their breathing evil and their wood-hard flesh, their shiny deep armor. We used drag harnesses to pull limbs away, and cut at their connections.
I remember it like it was yesterday. That living blood coats you like fury, squirming on the skin, invasive and cold and screaming. Your heart changes. Your lungs freeze. But you don’t slow what you’re doing, there’s too much energy to hold still, and you’re in the clouding fog of undeath and raging life.
You cut at the leviathan for tentacles, leg stumps, rudder fins all stubby and scarred. Whatever would stick out, different for each. Then you’ve got the leather, and the bone, and the meat, the rune-stitched sinew. Keep it all, use it to make your own music in the dark, to print the Back of the Mirror where the leviathan weakens its dividing surface.
See, I never saw a leviathan up close. I never had to. My great grandfather was a limmer, a sacrificing warlock harvester. What happened to him soaked into his bones and blood, into his past and future, and poisoned all of it. I can see the Back of the Mirror because of what he did, and what it did to him.
My mind’s eye tells me the song this damned and forsaken city sings. I know there will come a time when one of those leviathans they hunt will follow them home. Then will be a beaching like this city has never known, those ships torn apart, that full load of blood crawling through everything.
That will be the end of my lineage, and my family has known it for four centuries. But today? These ships? No. Not today.
Maybe next time.
~Casdannik the Left Hand [1]: 160
Home: The Docks
Profession: Lunatic
Adjectives: Insane
Description:
Acting Notes:
[1] Harper, J., Acimovic, S., Nitter, S., Arden, V., Figueroa, D., Green, D., Nittner, D., & Shields, A. (2017). Blades in the Dark (v8.2). Evil Hat Productions.
No, I come down here because I know summat that these crews don’t know, that you don’t know. Nobody knows it. Death is a song to the leviathans. They sing it, they listen for it. If you know what you’re doing, you can invite them in close. Invite them up out of the water, even, if you have a pretty enough song.
That’s how my people used to do it. Human sacrifice, that’s right. By the dozen. Blood flowing in runnels to the ink-black water, plumes swelling into it like demon artwork, scenting the surf. You say the right words, sing the right songs, use the right knife. Get it right, and all that screaming and begging and weeping turns into seduction, into power. You snare the curiosity under those tons of water, and it glides in close. It wants that suffering and death, like you want that barmaid’s hips. It wants to enter, it wants that warmth—it lusts for it.
So the greedy demon would haul itself up onto the land, panting through the surf, churning it to fog. Then my people would attack. We took cross-cut saws, hatchets, blades sharpened like you’ve never seen. We attacked those demons where they interrupted the skyline with their breathing evil and their wood-hard flesh, their shiny deep armor. We used drag harnesses to pull limbs away, and cut at their connections.
I remember it like it was yesterday. That living blood coats you like fury, squirming on the skin, invasive and cold and screaming. Your heart changes. Your lungs freeze. But you don’t slow what you’re doing, there’s too much energy to hold still, and you’re in the clouding fog of undeath and raging life.
You cut at the leviathan for tentacles, leg stumps, rudder fins all stubby and scarred. Whatever would stick out, different for each. Then you’ve got the leather, and the bone, and the meat, the rune-stitched sinew. Keep it all, use it to make your own music in the dark, to print the Back of the Mirror where the leviathan weakens its dividing surface.
See, I never saw a leviathan up close. I never had to. My great grandfather was a limmer, a sacrificing warlock harvester. What happened to him soaked into his bones and blood, into his past and future, and poisoned all of it. I can see the Back of the Mirror because of what he did, and what it did to him.
My mind’s eye tells me the song this damned and forsaken city sings. I know there will come a time when one of those leviathans they hunt will follow them home. Then will be a beaching like this city has never known, those ships torn apart, that full load of blood crawling through everything.
That will be the end of my lineage, and my family has known it for four centuries. But today? These ships? No. Not today.
Maybe next time.
~Casdannik the Left Hand [1]: 160
Home: The Docks
Profession: Lunatic
Adjectives: Insane
Description:
Acting Notes:
[1] Harper, J., Acimovic, S., Nitter, S., Arden, V., Figueroa, D., Green, D., Nittner, D., & Shields, A. (2017). Blades in the Dark (v8.2). Evil Hat Productions.
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