Descent To Asphodel.

[Nir'wei]

Ymiden 8th. The Beyond.
Continues from here.

The Gateway, the one marker of the edge of the Untold, dwindled slowly behind them. It was difficult to explain how he could tell the borders between the different dimensions, but it was something one could feel more than they could ever see. If the Veil had been wild and frantic, and the Untold utterly overwhelming, then the Beyond should have been incomprehensible. Perhaps it was. To him, it felt like the eye of a storm. A place so deep in the wild, it turned eerily quiet and peaceful once more. Perhaps it was the Stream, that Tio's boat didn't so much as float upon as a traditional boat might, than sit directly in the middle of. The wild energies that made up the Stream created a bubble aboard the deck, stopping just short of brushing the crow's nest, while wisps caught the sails and hull to force it along its winding path. Before, every time he inhaled, his nose would be assaulted by wild and varied combinations of scents that often contradicted one-another; on some occasions becoming such a foul concoction that it made his eyes water, though most times he could never pick out the one thing in particular that caused it. Here, there was something dark, wet and metallic in the air. Like a cave, ancient and mysterious, but without a drop of life.

"So now it's just a straight shot to the Great Beyond, right?" Squeak asked the gathered circle of animals, sat at the prow of the ship facing inwards.

Greyhide, to Nir'weis left, pursed his lips. "Tio said that it should get us where we need to go, but it's not exactly direct." Which could mean anything, in a place like this. However, it also made it the best shot they had. Well, second-best. Sage had grown a pair of deer-like antlers, only the branches swept in elaborate and perfectly-mirrored curls, creating a surreal headpiece that seemed to bend and flex with every turn of his head. It was one of those ways that he knew was a trick of the light, and yet his eyes kept seeing it anyway.

"It's still the safest and the most secure bet we have at the moment, so there's no point trying to debate a way out of it. No matter how you might feel about the ship's captain," Myrth said dryly, aiming most of her barely-concealed mirth back at Greyhide, and the leftovers at Nir. "Unless you have an ulterior meaning behind calling this."

Cold and Greyhide both opened their mouths to respond at the same time, but it was Nir'wei that responded personally to that. "This isn't just about where we go from here. One way or another, at the end of this will be the Great Beyond. And... well, we still don't even know what we're meant to be doing when we get there. If anything." Vri had given them no other objective than to 'find the Great Beyond' and then, presumably, something would happen - but surely they'd need to do something to allow him access once again? Or were they supposed to go inside? Or...

"And sitting here and talking amongst ourselves is supposed to resolve that? I don't see Vri here," Myrth said, earning a barely-concealed chuckle from Squeak.

Couldn't they see why this was important? Did they not get it?"Okay. You got me. I have absolutely no idea what we're about to meet and I have no idea how to prepare for it but oh, goodness, how terrible of me to want to at least do something to prepare for it, because last time this exact thing happened, you know exactly what happened." The venom in his voice surprised even him, and the deadly silence that followed only amplified the impact of the statement. None of them could meet his eyes. Least of all Myrth.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that," she replied in a soft voice.

"It doesn't matter." He stood up from the circle, passing one last glance over the eight others that made it, only seven privy to the conversation when he excluded Sage. "Greyhide, I'm taking over the bow seat. Have a break." The others slowly broke off, finding their own little pockets for hushed conversations. Despite their muted quality, like hearing them underwater, the gentle din of conversation followed him wherever he went, even as he hopped up to the front of the ship and sat on his haunches, like a furry figurehead.

After a few moments, he became aware that not everyone in the audience had dispelled. "Nir'wei, you know you could have said something," Cyshe began to say in a small voice filled with concern, but quickly edging its way to a more stern and matronly voice that he knew was on the cusp of telling him to play nice with the other boys, before he cut in with a sharp note that reduced her to silence. "Please. I'd like to be alone with my thoughts, for now." The little water-spirit nodded and zipped off to find someone else to pester, but he knew that she'd be listening in on him. They all were, always. There was no such thing as being 'alone in his thoughts' when there were seven other beings able to feel them too.

"Lavender." Emea was a place of untapped and wild possibility, like a whole dimension of unformed clay. It waited for someone or something to shape it... and he'd found that by thinking, imagining what it was he wanted at that moment - not just the generals, but everything he knew, the way the individual petals layered over one-another, that one memory several arcs ago in the heat of Saun, walking along a dirty track with several sprouts poking from between the cracks of an old stone wall... he could almost... there. The scent of lavender filled his senses, so close he could almost feel the pollen tickling the pad of his wet nose.

It was the one thing that eased his aching, homesick heart. Worn in many invisible ways by their trial at the Gateway. All those memories of Idalos, of his life up until this moment. All the memories of his home; a place he couldn't return to. Perhaps not ever. He was a wolf now, wasn't he? And dead, to boot. He didn't even know how long it had been since he died, was it just a few days? A season? More? How much would have changed if he returned? If he returned. What could he even return as? The thoughts were spinning, reeling, squeezing deep in his chest with a cold, heavy hand until the breath wheezed from his lips and the dog slumped in place, tears streaking down the bridge of his muzzle while he choked back helpless sobs. Who could he call for? Faith? Karem? His mother? No, there were none that could hear, none that could answer. None that mattered. Soft, muffled sobs racked his body until his lungs burned for air, and tears dripped over Tio's deck as the wolf took the only comfort he was left with. The sweet scent of blooming lavender.

[Tio Silver]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ship, the mood was very different.

"There is absolutely no way at all this could possibly go wrong." Tio said to himself without a hint of irony, as he stacked yet another glass upon the tower of wine flutes that now rose up to at least fifteen foot high. Long waits and people with the power to conjure objects out of the dream world at will did not mix, and Tio was not exactly to most patient of people. The ability to float allowed him to stack things up to heights way above his own quite easily, but each time the ship so much as swayed a little bit the whole tower wobbled precariously, threatening to come crashing down in a blaze of noise and glory at any second.

As strange as it might have seemed this immature behaviour was actually a good sign. Tio only did this sort of thing when he was in a good mood, and right now he was feeling better than he ever during his years trapped in Emea. He had company other than his own delusions, had build some sort of I-trust-you-but-still-think-you're-kind-of-a-prat relationship with Nir'wei, and if all went well with this journey might be able to return to Idalos soon. There really was very little to feel bad about besides the whole dooming humanity to never reach the afterlife thing.

Even so it had been a while since they'd passed the gateway, and Tio's boredom was starting to reach critical mass. Surely they must be close by now right? Deciding on a whim that he was tired of stacking glasses, Tio gave the tower a gentle push and watched with satisfaction as the whole thing can tumbling down with a cacophony of high-pitched shattering, like an avalanche of colourless snow.

"I'm boooooored! Are we there yet?!" He called out like a petulant child to whoever else around was listening, dismissing the pile of glass shards into dust with an absent wave of his hand.

[Basilisk]

It was perhaps indicative of Tio's more optimistic nature that he felt safe enough to complain of boredom, when a more jaded traveler would have kept their mouth shut. Perhaps those more jaded travelers would have been right to do so, as it was almost immediately after he spoke up about his boredom that all their moment halted as the ship came to a dead halt. Not only that, but the scent of lavender that had been comforting Nir'wei disappeared, and those aboard the ship would find that Emea no longer responded to them. At was if the dream realm had gone still. Then a chime sounded from behind them, coming from the bridge that they had so painstakingly repaired. A second later, a shockwave coming from that gateway hit their ship, and while it didn't affect the ship itself, or most of the people aboard, it did affect Tio, who would feel as if his very being had been set ablaze, burning with a flame hotter than any he could imagine.

The sensation would only last a few seconds, but when it passed, he would find that he could no longer call on his magics, and the curses that Delroth and Syroa had given him were gone as well. The changes to his sight remained, however, and he feel that the flame had settled into his very nature, taking a form more unique to him. It was immense, but there was a limit too it, like he couldn't access all of it. However, he didn't have any time to try and figure out this new phenomenon, for just as the pain passed, the group would notice that they could feel a strong wind, and in that wind, they could taste salt.

That was the only warning they had before the ship was suddenly knocked upward, the passengers lifting off the deck for a moment before crashing back down onto it again, their ability to hover in Emea now gone as well. A wave of salty, oceanic water washed over the deck as every crashed down, and when they looked around, they'd realize that they were indeed in an ocean. However, any respite they might have felt at the water was short lived as the ship angled downward and entered a very fast, downhill current, rather like the rapids of a river. It appeared that they had a bit of a rough sail ahead of them.

[Pegasus]

The Watchers

"Do you think it hurts?" he asked her, casually. As he did, he passed over a small, rather roughly-made bowl in which were small and plain-looking berries. Of course, being who he was, she knew better. She lifted one tiny sphere up, caught between thumb and calloused forefinger and she raised it to her nose. The scent was enough that a mortal would have been unable to function, but instead, she simply smiled. Her eyes turned back then, to the two of them. Ashan's son and Cassion's would-be-killer. What an interesting thing mortal lives were.

" I'm not sure," she replied, but her attention was never far from the ship, from the two of them. " Probably. Creation tends to. Every moving over comes with pain, from birth to death." She popped the berry into her mouth and breathed in savouring the flavour of it and relishing the sensation. "Seems to me," she added, thoughtfully. " if someone isn't screaming, then something's wrong."

His laugh was hale and hearty and, for Nir'wei and Tio, the thunder which reverberated suddenly around them was charged with energy, filled with .... something. Something unlike anything thus far. What it might be, of course, was unclear and in truth? Well, it was probably their imagination.

"What about Vri?" He asked her, interest sharp on his face. Her answer was important to him, for reasons which he did not speak. Her part in this, after all, was with Ashan's son. That was why she was here. Yet no such thing for him, he bore no allegiance. It might, of course, be more appropriate to consider whether he bore a grudge, but no one spoke of such to him. At least, not to his face.

"Vri?" She asked, and she let out a snort of laughter, spitting some tobacco on to the "ground". "It had better hurt him, the idiot. He was nearly the undoing of us all". Taking back his bowl and grabbing a handful of berries which he ate voraciously, he grinned at her.

"On the contrary," he said wickedly. "He nearly made things very interesting indeed. Still, probably best that it turned out this way." Leaning forward, his eyes trained on the two mortals and his expression was one of almost childish fascination. "Look," he said, sounding rather like he was talking about his approaching prey, "It's beginning" The two of them watched, carefully observing and, with a wolfish smile, the man chuckled.

"Almost time." He said, hungrily. "So very nearly time..." Cassion grinned in delight and Moseke looked at him rather like a mother watching a naughty child.

[Pig Boy]

A dark-haired man looked on with intent as his son sailed the streams of the Untold with the madman Tio Silver. He was stood at the edge of the scene, only watching for now. It wasn't his to interfere or to take away his son's agency in this quest. But he still worried.

"Oh! Would you look at that!" Said the winged one beside him. "Cheer up Brother! They're almost about there. Only a short way to go."

Ashan heaved a sigh, his voice like a breath of spring, "Whatever happens..."

"It'll be fiiine." The winged one said, stretching his golden-white wings. "Now... watch this dive!"

Before Ashan could object, Delroth dove from the clouds that hung over the streams of the Untold. He hurled himself toward that vessel with all the speed of a peregrine falcon. Once he made it to the edge of where Tio stood against the boat, he reached with a taloned hand through to the madman's very soul. Out came four of his sparks, which Delroth deposited into a small, transluscent flask. They clinked around in the flask, shining like multi-colored diamonds. Neither Tio nor Nir'wei could see Delroth and Ashan, however. They were beyond their sight.

"Ohh, mine! How very beautiful!" He only smiled once at Tio, before fluttering by Nir'wei, and showing him the flask. His face shone in happiness at his new acquisition. "Look look look! My new trinkets, my new friends! Mine now! Look Nephew, WILL YOU LOOK!?" Delroth pouted when his nephew failed to see him, then shrugged.

Then, as fast as he'd swooped down on the vessel, he darted off back toward the clouds, to stand beside Ashan once more. "What have you done?"

Delroth flashed a smile at his brother, "He wasn't using them! Besides, it gives me something to remember him by, since he's molted off my curse."

Another sigh from Ashan, as he watched his son's journeys. Delroth, meanwhile, was busy admiring the sparks he'd acquired from Tio Silver.

[Nir'wei]

So soon after the hectic mess that had been the repair of the Empyrean Gateway, he thought he at least deserved a brief rest. A moment to collect his thoughts and prepare for the untold challenges that awaited them further down the Stream. For just one brief glimpse of time, he wished for nothing more than a moment of peace. Instead, as if they had suddenly beached themselves in the middle of the Stream, the boat ground to a halt so suddenly that it nearly flung the wolf straight from the deck and into the chaotic miasma that surrounded them. Seven more animal bodies were sent flying in exactly the same fashion; Archailist barely finding purchase on the ballast of the crow's nest, Vabina sliding comically across the deck and spinning on the smooth wood as she did, wolves tumbling and collapsing into one-another as their blunt claws scraped across wooden planks.

"Regroup!" "Everyone to the center!" "GRAB HIM!" A pure, resonate chime, like the harmonic chime of several bells in unison - or perhaps the striking of hollow crystals - rang out from behind them. It almost completely drowned out the sounds of several voices all clamoring at once to be heard over one-another, before sharp teeth bit into the scruff of his neck and hurled Nir'wei backwards until his back struck the foremast before he could even find his feet. Vabina wasted no time at all, did she? "You just had to say it, didn't you Tio. You just HAD to say it!" he yelled as wind started to pick up around them, ruffling his fur and pressing his back even further against the mast.

Wind. It was the first time he'd ever felt it on his new form. Despite his thick coat of fur, the fresh salty air cut through his body like steel and he found himself huddling against the crowd of wolves out of more than just fear as the wind grew stronger, louder... until the boat began to rock and sway, picked up by the currents and nearly sending the crowd of animals skidding comically across the decks yet again. Oh, if only he had hands to grasp onto something. Instead, he bit one of the dangling ropes meant to hoist the sails and strained to hold on for dear life as the boat tumbled and span out of control. Were they in the air? Were they even in Emea anymore? From the feel of cold spray and foam collapsing over the decks in walls of stinging water, and howling winds threatening to tear him into the sky, it was anyone's guess.

"We need to get below decks!" someone yelled. "Great idea, and then if this boat goes down, we're trapped. Just like last time." There was too much motion, too much activity, too much of everything. He needed to float, he needed to escape! In the cacophony of his own mind, he barely heard the gleeful sounds in his ears, and busy using his teeth to grapple for dear life, he couldn't have replied even if he wanted to. "Get inside the captain's room. Towards the back!" That was also where they'd last seen Tio. It was as good a place as any to hide from the storm's fury. As every wave crashed over the decks, soaking them with saltwater, it became harder to find purchase with his claws, even digging them between the boards with all his strength, but he inched, step by treacherous step, and the wolves hesitantly followed, Vabina bringing up the rear with her eyes cast everywhere for hidden shadows and mysterious voices.

[Tio Silver]

It took approximately a single bit for everything to go to hell.

It started quite suddenly with his ship abruptly coming to a complete halt, despite Tio having given no such command for it to do so. At the same time Tio suddenly felt gravity hit him like a ton of bricks, and with a startled cry he fell out of where he had been floating in mid-air and landed flat on his backside.

"What on Idalos..." He began to mutter, rubbing the small of his back with a grimace, but cut off as he felt something was wrong. Panic began to rise in his chest as he held out a hand to form something out of the dreamscape, and yet to his surprise nothing happened. He couldn't float, he couldn't create, he couldn't control his ship; had his connection to Emea been cut somehow? But how was that possible? He was literally an Emean being, how could anything sever his control over his own dreamscape like this?

Before he could figure out an answer to that question the sound of a chime rang out across the vast expanse of nothingness, and Tio screamed in absolute agony as raw, unhindered pain rushed throughout every inch of his body. It felt just like it had that day when Syroa had turned him into a human; like every cell in his body was being ripped apart, set alight and scrambled up into a completely different shape. He fell back and clawed madly at the deck, unable to do anything but scream and writhe in torment as whatever malady had taken hold of him ran its course. By the time it faded he was left gasping for breath in a messy heap, clutching at his face to wipe away the tears streaming down his face.

Wait... his face?

Tio's hands gently pressed against his face, feeling the soft bounce of flesh rather than the unyielding toughness of his bone mask. He could feel his nose, his cheeks, even the prickle of the tiny hairs on his unshaven chin. Pushing himself up despite the protests from his aching head, Tio held his hands back and allowed his vision to pool through his palms, allowing him to see his face. At it was his face, his real face! The mask Syroa had cursed him to wear had fallen off and clattered to the floor, allowing him to see his own features again! It was just like it had used to be, except that his unscarred eye was now missing and he'd grown quite the scruffy looking five'o'clock shadow. Not only that, but unless he was mistaken he could also feel a stirring in his pants he also hadn't felt since the day Syroa cursed him.

Tio pushed himself up to his feet and tried to push his senses out with Omnivision so get his bearing back, only to find that his spark wouldn't respond. None of them would! The burning sensation inside his flesh seemed to be blocking them out! Like a drunken monkey Tio tried to stagger over to his cabin, only for his feet to trip up over themselves and send him flopping back to the floor again. He'd been so used to floating about these last twenty arcs and using his Omnivision to perceive depth that without them he was almost incapable of walking! As his face collided with the hard wooden floor a terrifying though struck him.

His dreamwalking powers were gone.

His magic sparks were gone.

His curses were gone.

"Oh gods no! I've turned back into a regular person!" He wailed, hysteria beginning to creep up on him. This was awful, just simply awful! Without all his strange magical quirks he was nothing more than a blind, sexy weird person! A blind, sexy weird person who can't even walk!

And the calamity still wasn't over! Suddenly his now out-of-control ship plummeted down from the sky and crashed down into what sounded like an ocean, spraying Tio with a torrent of salty ocean water. In the blink of an eye they'd gone from trailing merrily down a stream on calm green energy to being dropped slap bang in the middle of the worst storm Tio had ever seen, upon an ocean that was somehow sloping downwards!

"What it going o-" Tio began to cry, was once again cut off as his chest exploded in agony once again, like someone had stabbed a hand into his chest from behind. But there was nobody there! There was a terrible wrenching feeling as the invisible hand took hold of his very soul and ripped the sparks straight out of him.

It was pretty fair to say that this had been the most painful, scary and confusing sixty trills of Tio's life, which was saying something considering he had literally blown up an entire dimension before. His powers were all gone, his body was roasted from the inside, and it seemed like he could die at any minute, all of which had happened in such rapid succession that his brain just couldn't keep up. It was perhaps understandable at this point why some part of Tio's mind decided "you know what, I can't be dealing with this right now," and promptly shut down. His damaged eye rolled back into his head as Tio fainted.



"Nom... nom... nom..."

The first thing Tio registered as consciousness returned to him was the feeling of something sharp digging into his foot. Blearily he raised a hand to see what it was. Sage, Nir'wei's new pet shapeshifing blob thing, was gently chewing on his shoes for some reason without a care in the world.

"Oh Sage, it's just you." He yawned tiredly, absently noting that the ground felt like it was violently swaying beneath him. Had he gotten terribly drunk or something? "You know I just had the worst dream. I dreamt I was stripped of all my oddities, lost control of my ship and was dropped in the middle of a stor-..."

The realisation suddenly struck him that Sage was a creature of the dream realm. He was a creature of the dream realm. He didn't sleep anymore, as his waking moments were dreams now, which meant...

Tio looked around, only to find that yes, he was still on his renegade ship out in the middle of the storm. He hadn't imagined it, everything was still happening.

"Well f**k." He whispered to himself.

Hysteria began to grow inside him again as the reality of his current situation came back to him, but Tio stubbornly refused to let himself start thinking about everything that'd just happened again. If he tried to make heads or tails of what the ever-loving s**t was going on right now he would probably have a mental breakdown, and he was currently the only one who had hands capable of actually gripping the steering wheel.

With walking not working out for him Tio had no choice but to scoop up his fallen mask and stagger haphazardly over towards his cabin, where the steering wheel awaited him. If he could get to that he might be able to get some small measure of control over his ship again the good old-fashioned way. Of course since he saw through his hands he wouldn't be able to both steer the ship and see where the hell he was going at the same time, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

[Basilisk]

The four Immortals that observed the little ship and it's occupiers were indeed given the show they were expecting, but it quickly became apparent to at least two of them that there was a guiding force to the events that were playing out, as no sooner had Delroth landed next to Ashan that a wave reached up to crash against the Immortal of Greed. Evidently, his intrusion had not been a welcome one.

However, the passengers of Tio's ship likely wouldn't notice the oddly behaved wave, as they were more busy just staying on the ship. It was a chaotic, downward rush in the ocean, but it seemed that the ocean wasn't done with them yet. As the group headed for the cabin, wave after wave started to crash against the side of the bow of the ship. It likely wasn't obvious at first, but it didn't take long for the effects of this to become apparent. The ship was rotating in the water, turned by the waves crashing against it.

However, just in case some unwise individual on the ship was under the impression that things couldn't get more erratic, when the ship had turned all the way to the side, a great gaping abyss came into view. A great, swirling, gold and white maelstrom that the ocean they were riding appeared to be draining into. As they got closer and closer to the maw at the end of the ocean, they group would notice two more things. First, they were picking up speed and second, the ship hadn't stopped rotating. If they didn't do something, they would be drawn into that abyss. Of course, how much could they hope to do without control of Emea and without Tio's magic.

[Nir'wei]

In desperation, and on instinct, Nir'wei tried to reach out to a point he remembered, all the way back at the surface of the Orb he'd started at, and pull himself towards it as he'd practiced. Nothing. Maybe his memory wasn't clear enough? Three more times did nothing but waste time. Why couldn't he move, why wasn't he able to rise above the ship, what was this force constantly pulling him down and holding him in place, like shackles? Why was there wind constantly pulling on his fur, like it was trying to hurl him into the sky? The sky? "Come on, we need to keep moving!" someone yelled at him, but the chaos of his thoughts made it impossible to tell who it was. Move where? They were trapped. They were trapped, just like last time, and there was no hope in escape. No jumping overboard. No hiding under the decks to wait it all out. The boat would be swept away to who-knew-where and if they were lucky, they'd all die together, swiftly and somewhat-painlessly. Everyone else was panicking around him, engaged in shouting matches of utter gibberish, or fighting, or trying to warn them all that they were apparently heading for some giant gaping hole of some kind. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't panicking as well. Actually, he was downright terrified. But... well. He'd been here before, hadn't he?

Vaguely ahead of them, through tears streaming from his eyes, he could just about make out the blurry shape of Tio, heading for his cabin, and the wheel inside currently spinning madly out of control. Sage, also grounded and forced to use its legs in what was likely the first time in its life, scuttled after him with curious churring noises. The danger of the situation seemed utterly lost on it, for some reason. Or perhaps it just lacked self-preservation instincts.

"It's getting closer!" Cyshe's shrill voice screeched, and for the first time he turned to look at where they were heading. Sideways. A huge, gaping pit that the rolling waves seemed to swirl into, creating a well of gold and white energy that sparkled in the furious waters like imminent salvation. Or destruction. No; hiding in the captain's quarters and waiting for this to all blow over was no longer an option. If Tio was going for the wheel, then they needed to make themselves useful.

It took another heavy wave crashing over the bow of the ship and splashing Nir'wei with salty spray before he remembered what else was used to steer a ship. "GRAB THE SAILS!" He had absolutely no idea how one worked a ship, but since nobody else had a better idea, it seemed like the thing to do. "Everyone needs to run to a different mast, grab the ropes and pull as hard as you can, use the sails to steer us away!"

Greyhide, in the middle of a furious argument with both Cold and Myrth, stopped in the middle of a sentence and suddenly turned to him with a look he'd never seen before. Outright fury. "The boat is going sideways. We're being pulled by the water, and the wind, and nothing makes sense. To hell with trying to do the right thing. To hell with trying to do the logical thing! To hell with it all, if it means we get to live another day." It was as if his outburst had suddenly polarized the fragmented huddle; their priorities united under a single banner of self-preservation. Together, caution abandoned, they made a sliding dash for Tio's cabin at the same time, with Vabina bringing the rear and carrying a confused Squeak by the scruff, as the only one apparently still unable to comprehend the situation.

Whatever happened next seemed to be up to fate. Six spokes meant there was still enough room on the wheel for each wolf and Vabina to bite a section each and turn in unison - if Tio added his strength to it too, there was no doubt that they could turn the wheel. The real question swiftly became if it would be enough to pull them from their deadly path.

[Tio Silver]

With his legs acting more like jelly than limbs, Tio half-opened half-collapsed on top of the door to his cabin and fell inside, rolling halfway inside as a large wave swept over the bow of his ship and washed him across the floor. The freezing ocean water did at least do a little to cool the burning sensation within him and sharpen his still addled mind, but at the same time ruined his beloved jacket. Crawling the last leg of the way over to the steering wheel, Tio grabbed a clear bottle of rum that'd rolled off his desk in the chaos and was now half filled with ocean water. He may have lost most of his weirdness, but there were still a few tricks left up his sleeve he had to play. He focused his attention on the seawater inside the bottle and clicked his finger.

There was a quick flash of light that soon faded to reveal a mackerel inside the bottle. It was just the right size to turn around if it absolutely needed to, but it was undeniably a tight fit. The mackerel looked around, quickly taking in the extreme surrounding.

"Tio? Wha' the bloody 'ell is going on?!" It cried in a thick cockney accent.

"No time to explain Mick! I need you to be my eyes!" Tio replied, hanging the bottle of a chandelier above him and then grabbing hold of the madly spinning wheel. His muscles strained with effort and he struggled to still the wheel. "I can't see as long as my hands are on the wheel. Keep an eye out for anywhere the storm might be weaker."

"Ya do know ya going sideways right?"

"What?!" Abandoning the wheel for a second, Tio raised a hand up to see out of the window in front of him. The ship did indeed seem to be facing sideways now, having been knocked into a funny angle by the waves. More worrying however was the titanic whirlpool starting to come into view in the distance; the plug that all the surrounding ocean seemed to be draining into. There was no way to escape the currents dragging them towards the maelstrom, and the swirling vortex would almost certainly destroy them if they entered it sideways.

The door of the cabin burst open behind him, and in came the patter of claws on wood that signalled the arrival of Nir'wei and his pack. Tio's hands shot back to the wheel once again as he struggled to take control of his ships crazed spinning. "You lot help me with this wheel! I don't have the strength to do this alone!" He commanded urgently, unable to waste time being polite. "Mick you're in charge of navigation! Guide us so that we're pointing towards the right side of the whirlpool! There's no way we can escape the vortex, so the only shot we have of surviving it is to match the flow of the water and spin around the epicentre as much as we can! If we can slow our fall to a more manageable speed the bulk of the ship might be able to protect us from the worst of the damage!"

Notes

Ability used: Mick the Magic Mackerel
"Whenever Tio is on - or near - the water, he will realise that his friend Mick the Magic Mackerel is there. Mick is a magic talking mackerel - only Tio can hear him talk, and Mick's conversation is limited. However, should Tio ask Mick to find out things, listen in on conversations on boats etc - then Mick is more than happy to comply."

Also in case it isn't clear what I'm trying to do to survive the Maelstrom here's a picture of what I'm going for.