Vadar
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
In the gasp of a breath everything around Vadar shifts into a blur, then falls away. Hadn’t he just been with Eight in Pangea? He remembers the winged stallion urging him Up, in fact he’d been on the verge of saying something as well but … now he was here. His eerie red eyes glance around.
“-are in need of seashells,” One horse is talking, with others of the like milling around and listening. There wasn’t much to see outside of that; everything seemed obscured in a hazy cloud. Vadar could only make out one lone, hardy tree clinging to the rock surface that supported them all. Eight was nowhere to be found. “You must swim to the island” The talking one is saying and that catches his attention, making him turn around and face forward.
Others are already leaving. “To Island Re … across Beqa … on foot?” He mumbles aloud to no one. Even the fey have left now. “At least I feel better.” The black comments, winding down the goat-trail from the tip of the mountain. Probably due to whatever “Eight” did to him back in the wastelands. That minor healing even serves to get him as far as the borderline of Taiga and Loess before wearing off completely. Huffing along in pain, he realizes he should be grateful at least.
By the time he’s slogging across the shoreline of Tephra, however, Vadar is cursing the magician. “Should’ve just …” The stallion wheezes into the breeze, his knees teetering in and out of the ocean surf, “… let me die. Let me -” He pauses. Suspiciously his head twists around. Something on the land moved, or rolled. “Who knows what lies in the water below, very funny.” Erupts from him in a growl, water lapping against his bare, pink legs.
Vadar didn’t like the feel of this place.
He felt a prick - no, a sting - of pain and looked down to see the gleaming eye of a predator, it’s jaw locked securely around the meaty, exposed section of his foreleg and that was it. All the time he could’ve spent reacting was gone and Vadar was suddenly underwater, being drug down while he screamed out air bubbles.
He thought for sure he was going to die, but the light above hadn’t even faded when the tugging stopped, abruptly. Something, (to his increasing horror) something bigger was rising from below, three solid fingers of muck-covered stone grasping out at what Vadar now realized was a feral kelpie, closing in over it and squeezing tight until the creature let go of him.
Unthinkingly, the bleeding horse began to swim upwards. His light beam emission was useless, (light refracted in water) and the rock monster wasn’t curious of him. Yet.
It only shook the wild kelpie, lifted a stone paw, and pushed Vadar into a swirl of water that lifted like a wave towards Island Resort. He and his blood tumbled once or twice then washed ashore in a flare of bright red, painting the sand for a moment as he coughed a heaving breath. Seaweed littered his mane.
Seconds later, a smooth boulder rose from the ocean (something of a bald head interrupting the sea) and with lifelike hollows for eyes it peered at Vadar. Beside it, the dead kelpie bobbed to the surface and stayed; a warning for others. He felt as if he should say thank you, or nod, but as he looked on the rock monster fell to pieces. “A fever dream.” The sick traveler murmured.
Black swept his vision; Vadar fainted.
The 'rock monster' is Vadar's golem (though he's not totally aware it was his creation) that saved him from being eaten by a feral kelpie.