Jonas
There was something different about his ocean today. An older quality to it than the norm. Like he was looking at an ocean a thousands years older than it should’ve been. Which was unnerving. Old things, as he had come to learn, were often the worst of things this side of the veil, and his ocean was already old.
He didn’t like it. Pacing across the sand, walking closer to where water and sand met, he confirmed it again. There was something stirring through the air, bringing with it a fragmented bit of time from somewhere both before and later. It’s edge ground itself against his skin. A warning, letting him know that whatever this thing was it could kill him but hadn’t. Which meant it wanted something from him.
That was always the worst part.
It was one thing when something old and powerful found amusement in you, another when you actually had something it wanted. That meant pacts and bargains, deals signed into blood.
Jonas couldn’t help but look at his arm. Past the muscle and the scars, past the wounds deeper than that, and right at the Mark. It was thing hidden from sight, impossible to see unless one was marked by the veil as well, one way or the other. This mark had been with him all his life, a gift from some profane thing beyond. A link and tether both, binding him to a fate everyday he wished to escape. Always dragging him further into this mess.
Today was no exemption. It was glowing to his eyes now. Pulsing with a soft sickly green radiance. Shaped like an intermingling of alien scars.
It begged him closer to the water. It’s silent cry scratching at the walls of his sanity, a threat he had long learned not to ignore. So, reluctantly, he went. Stepping past the line in the sand that kept the darker things out and allowed him to sleep safely - safer at least - whenever night came. Down and up to where the sea lapped at the shore. It’s siren song pulling at the strings of his heart, whispering a lie.
That it would be so much better if he jumped in.
Jonas ignored it. He had heard it’s song and saw what it did to those who trusted it too many times to even entertain it by now. Well, except for when he actually contemplated putting an end to it all that is. But right now wasn’t one of those times.
Right now was the stare into the black without flinching time. Which was almost worst. But at least it wasn’t slow.
An eye, gargantuan, impossible, beautiful, hated, resplendent, deeper than darkness, benign, less than true…
All of it stared back. But it didn’t tear at his mind like the other in fact there was something almost kind about it. Like it cared. Like it might seek to hear what he had to say. Maybe even break his curse if he just asked.
A thought so anathema to how Jonas operated that it snapped him out whatever mind taint he had almost fell in to. Snarl escaping him as he took a step back. The thought of violence lapping at the waters. Which was also wrong. Jonas knew better than most that you didn’t just win a fight against things like this.
He purged his consciousness. A not-death taking him in seconds. Everything going black before he came back himself sane, and whole, and so much closer to death than he had been when he technically did kill himself.
His guest "spoke" then.
"My mY. IT wOUld SeEm NEpHew Was right AbOut HIs little PLay ThInG" It commanded his mind to know.
And know it did. Each verse of its sentence speared his sanity like a bolt from the sky. Corruptive toxin beautiful. A near shattering blow to his psyche that he wasn’t prepared for. But Jonas had heard worse.
"You need to tone it down some." He grunted. "A bit more force and you might’ve killed me there. At least for a little bit."
The giant beyond giants, instead reacting like some sort of tyrannical beast that destroyed things for fun, it flinched at his words. Genuine regret leaking from it for a moment.
"Oh, my apologies. I thought that was good enough, please forgive me."
"You’re good. I’m, uh, used to a whole lot worse."
"Again you my apologies, I’ll make sure to have a talk with my nephew about that. Anything else I should mention?"
For a moment, Jonas was legitimately taken aback. In all his years trapped here he’d never once met a Beyondling that was truly polite. Until today, that is.
At least for now.
"Nah. And you don’t gotta mention that to your Nephew either. I’m fine, but you had business to discuss?"
"Oh yes. How rude of me to waste your precious time! Again forgive me. But I was wondering if I could employ your services in surveying a potential seed of mine. I believe you may have already met her."
Jonas almost said no. Almost stood up for the girls autonomy, almost defended her from the worst possible fate he could imagine.
But that Jonas had died a long time ago.
"I mighta."