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Echos of Juena

First Retreat

Foreword:

The Sun Sea; a pretty name for a vile place. The ocean sulfurous and bubbling with vents just below the surface. The islands, rocky and steaming with fresh a gout of lava every day or two. The southern coastline a strip of black sand stretching lifeless for thousands of miles. To reach the coast though you had to first cross the deserts or go by way of ship from the north east.

When men first saw the sea, they named it sun sea after the yellow-orange glow they found after the sun had set. Fire burning below its surface, hot enough to boil the ocean. Few beasts lived there and even fewer animals. The water was poisonous to all but the hardiest of creatures.

A few incursions had been made to see what was beyond the sun sea but none returned. At the western most corner the, sea met the Sky Wall mountains. This far south there were no glaciers, it never snowed, and there were only a few small lifeless beaches. Everything else was sheer cliff and turbulent surges. The few who had tried to follow the Sky Wall south turned back when stores became too few or never returned.

On the other side where the green sea met noxious yellow great storms frequently formed. Heat from the boiling sea met cool water from the green sea. Any ship who dared sail out in to deep water there were dashed between huge waves and eventually sunk. Years later wreckage would wash up along the desert shore or even as far north as Quonai. Yet no bones had ever shown up from those doomed wrecks.

People of the Sea

Seven days without storm, seven days in to the deep. Blue-green sea to port, sickly yellow to starboard; they followed the water line by day and stars by night. No ship had been built like her before, no ship as strong. A hull of oak sheathed in welded copper, every deck was reinforced with iron and bronze. Every door and hatch could be sealed water tight. She had standing five masts and ten spares, she had two hundred oars and enough men to pull them; strong men, beast men.

Her captain had been bidden to find a land far away from the beasts and far away from the old world. A new land to find peace. They had stores for two hundred days; stores that made her keel run low. It was mid winter, when the seas were coldest and the fewest storms raged. They set out from the ruins of Boarpike Port, the last of the humans with the last of the supplies. There was no where to go in the old world, no food to feed them, no land to house them. It was beyond the sun sea or death.

Early morning of the eighth day they came upon shallows. Nothing new in that, there were islands volcanic and otherwise strewn far and wide throughout the sun sea. What drew their attention however was what they saw at the bottom. Upon golden sand of the green waters sat buildings, an entire city stretching as far as the eyes could see. They were ruins, stone work buildings, ancient and forgotten.

No one knew when the city was built, nor by whom. There had been no record of land this far from shore, nor of a civilization that could have constructed it. It was even larger than Sea Stone Bridge and Boarpike combined.

As the sun rose in to the sky, it illuminated the beautiful architecture below the waves. It looked almost new, as if it had only been constructed a few years prior. The life that grew upon it however suggested otherwise; coral and oyster, muscle and limpet; every surface was covered below a certain mark as if it had sunk another few feet only recently.

By afternoon they came upon a citadel that still rose above the waves. It had been washed over many times for sure, but the tallest towers were yet dry. Carefully they dropped anchor and a handful of men scrabbled through windows and in to the structure.

Andal was the first of them, a man of the arctic with winter wolf blood or so his family claimed yet he dared not breathe a word of it in these dark days. He stepped through the window and found himself knee deep in sea water. There was a stair, made of the same basalt as the rest of the tower. He climbed it. The water cast ripples upon the walls and ceiling, reflecting and refracting the bright sunlight. He felt strange, tredding upon such an ancient place, the first eyes in unknown centuries to see its sights. The next room up was darker, with no windows of its own but light from below and light from above let him see. There were barrels, or what was left; rusted bands in water logged and rotten wood. There were remnants of chests; with nothing left but molding debris.

He climbed higher, seeking, and three floors up he at last found something not eroded by sea and time. An ancient book of stone leaves, laying open upon a pedistal. He had to brush bird leavings from its surface and crack a crust of salt from its edges; but it survived. Of course being a man of low birth, Andal could not read, but the words upon those stone pages were a beautiful script, flowing and graceful, each inset letter gilded with gold.

"Take this to the captain." He ordered of three men, then he climbed higher, seeking something of value or interest. A book would be well worth the interest of learned men, but he was a simpler man, he sought riches.

Higher up, near the top of the tower he found what appeared to be a bedroom. Furniture still resembled furniture, though no one would ever sleep in that bed or eat at that table nor sit upon the worm eaten chairs. The shutters had once hung, bolted over the windows but ages ago they had been done in by the storms and sea water came in with the highest surges.

Another floor up and he was at the end, a collapsed roof. Once a peaked cone of copper tiled wood; it had given way and collapsed inward, burying the top floor in shards of green and heavy logs. He stood in that debris strewn room, shafts of sun spears illuminating a patchwork of rotten and worn rubble. He took a step and the floor shifted; a glint of shiny metal caught his eye. He dropped to his knees and crawled over the rubble until he found the spot.

Old bones, pitted and worn. A torc of gold and obsidian laid between cracked ribs, just below where the skull should have been. He took it in hand and pocketed it before anyone else could see. Then with a final glance around, he climbed slowly down the stairs and returned to the ship.

To the west the sky was black as night with pillar clouds that seemed to reach all the way to the stars. They twisted and churned and scraped south as darker clouds came from the northwest to take their places. Men were scurrying about, trying to secure the ship before the storm surge reached them and with it the powerful waves.

Andal rushed below decks and dragged his rain gear on. Oiled leather belted tight, thick gloves that would keep him from blistering as he hung from rope and wood. It would be a cold storm he was sure, winter storms were never warm. Fully dressed he returned to the deck and listened to the captain's shouting. There was much to do and only few minutes to do it in.

The anchor was drawn up and they tried to set a course for deeper water; but before the surge the sea sank. There was a deep groan as the keel of the ship landed upon the roof of the citadel and all around them the city was exposed. Roof tops and towers, domes and spires. It was a strange sight to behold, thousands upon thousands of buildings rising from the sea.

The ship lurched sideways and began to fall toward the second tower, the one they hadn't yet explored. He grasped ahold of a line and dangled helplessly. The ship was a deep narrow hull for better stability in deep ocean; it was never designed to stand upon itself. As it swayed he could hear the death of its spine, splintered wood cracking and shattering as sheets of copper were stripped away.

Death. With the storm coming seconds away and the ship up on its side, spine broken; they were dead. Andal could hear the sobs and screams of fellow sailors as they tumbled, fell, and clung to the ship. The mast struck the base of the tower and Andal climbed towards it. The ship settled as he scrambled along the rigging and the mast swung away, then back toward the tower; the whole ship shuddered as it struck, then was still.

He climbed atop the mast and ran it length wise until he reached the tower, then leaped in through a window, in to the damp darkness beyond. Crabs and muscles, coral and oysters; his feet were tough from years of barefoot upon the decks but even still they tore against the hard shells of sea life. He cried but climbed as fast as he could, two steps at a time. He had only seconds before the surge would reach them, seconds before nearly the entire tower would be submerged.

Room after room passed by, higher and higher. His muscles screamed at him to stop and his feet left bloody trails behind. He reached the drier parts with no sea life to speak of; but still he climbed, past rotting and broken store rooms and three bedrooms until he reached the highest point in the tower and huddled there.

Only seconds after his rump hit the stone, the tower was hit; like a hammer to an anvil it shook and rang. The storm darkened the skies, rain rushed in through the tattered roof and the room just below him was flooded as a deluge of sea water rushed through the windows. Then the initial wave passed and the water ran to a lower room. From here he could not see, but all around him the wind howled the rain pounded and the sea rushed by. The tower vibrated like a reed in the wind.

With the storm came a stench of sulfur, the sun sea was pouring through below him. The highest waves crashed over even the peak of his tower and water came rushing down through the tattered roof. It wasn't enough to wash him from his seat, but it did leave him shivering and damp every time it passed. For what felt like days he laid there, trembling, unsleeping as the watery world outside rushed on. But sleep eventually did come with dreams as horrific as the storm.

When he woke it was still dark, though the sea was quiet. He could hear the gentle lapping of waves against stone, far below him but nothing else. He had survived the storm, but what would he do now?

-

Andal came up with a handful of oysters and settled himself upon the tower floor. He wrenched one open with his knife and ate the flesh inside. It wasn't much but it gave him strength enough to hope. Water was running short though, another two days and he would be dry. The sea was green not yellow, but even still drinking it would bring madness.

Top to bottom he had searched the tower, even going a few floors down under water. There was nothing he could use, no wood strong enough to make a raft, no container unbroken. Of his ship and mates there was no sign. Whatever debris there might have been had been washed far and wide. Even if some how the ship had survived breaking its spine; they would not have returned for him, just another lost soul upon the sun sea.

It had been madness that had driven him to the tower. What safety was here, an island of stone in the depths of the sea? Perhaps the ship had survived and they were sailing now back to Boarpike to make repairs; he could have been on it, safe and sound. He paced the tower up and down, stared out windows as the sun set and another chilly night began.

When the moon came up he drew out the golden Torc he had found and moved it back and forth in his hands. It caught the light with a glimmer of black and yellow. It was a regal thing, beautifully crafted, but utterly useless to him now. He wore it anyway, fastening it about his neck and letting it lay heavy upon his breast. And there he sat, staring at the moon lit sea, king of his tower.

By morning depression tore at his heart and he gazed down in to the dark sea. Under the twilight it looked almost as black as he felt. The sun broke over the sea and lit it to an aqua marine, jeweled peaks of waves shimmered over deeper dark water. To the west another wall of clouds had formed and was inching its way towards him, far... far away.

"I might survive another night and day." He told the waves scornfully, "But to what end?"

He lept then from the tower window and plummeted in to that dark sea. The water was bitterly cold and he sank, dragged down by the gold upon his neck. He did not fight, simply opened his eyes and gazed out upon the city under the waves. How many died here, he wondered, how many people were burried under the sea. He would join them and drink amongst their watery halls.

He opened his mouth to breathe in the cold ocean... and did not drown. Slow watery breaths came between his lips, down his throat. Ice chilled his chest as his lungs filled; yet he felt no shortness of breath, no seizing clench in his chest. He had nearly drowned before, he knew what to expect. The panic, the inability to breathe, the slow darkness. None of that happened.

Down he sank until his feet landed upon the citadel's roof. Above him the two towers reached towards the darkening sky. He was confused, terrified even, but also elated. Perhaps it was a dying dream he thought as he swam to the edge of the building. He could see evidence of his ship here, pieces of ruddy copper like great fish scales, scraped away. The stone was broken where the keel had cracked.

He let himself drift over the open courtyard below and stared in to the dim depths. There, a lamp from the ship; over there a rigging pin with a tatter of rope still attached. He let himself drift downward, following the wall of the citadel to the ground. Windows gaped as he fell past, a balcony strewn with broken coral, evidence of where the anchor had landed.

His feet touched the floor and he gazed about. It seemed like any castle, set black stones and cobbles underfoot; windows and balconies overlooking the courtyard. Yet it was not; every surface was taken over by sea life as if some brilliant mold had been allowed to grow. Above him the sea sank and the surface exposed again the top of the castle. He could feel the water rushing about him, over him. The walls were exposed and he was in a tide pool, quickly draining away.

He swam against the current, toward the main door of the keep. He caught the edge and held himself for fear of being washed away. Then came the surge; this one greater than the last and he could see the tops of both towers, drowning. Bubbles rushed along with the surface, spilling from every window and crack. Yet at the bottom where he stood, water was still and calm again.

It was so dark he could barely see, yet his desire to explore had grown fiercer. The depression he felt was long gone, replaced by a sense of wonder. He had volunteered for the voyage for that same reason, he was curious, he wanted to know what was beyond the sun sea. Perhaps now he would never know, but at least he would know what was here, below the waves.

The citadel was mostly a ruin, little was left of furniture and feature within. There was less in the way of coral inside though, a few muscles near open windows, but little elsewise. The floor was pitted marble, likely once polished to a shine, now dull and rough as the waves ate away at it. There were passages leading lower, deeper in to the place and he followed them. Here there was darkness, yet even in that dark he could make out room after room.

Somewhere in the dark a fish tangled about his legs then darted away. It was the first fish he had seen. That more than anything gave him pause. Where were the fish? As a boy he had dove in the bay near his home; it was the wrecks that drew the most life, the most fish. The city should have been teeming with them, great schools and hungry sharks. Yet he had found nothing of the sort. Perhaps this close to the sun sea... but no the coral, muscles and other such life survived; even thrived.

Deeper in to the dark depths of the citadel he swam until he could see no more and explored by touch. Where once he might have been afraid of the dark, afraid of drowning, afraid of what he might have found; he felt none of it, only curiosity. It was warmer here too, trapped water heated by the earth, far away from the northern winds and western storms.

Suddenly he could see again as he passed through a passage and in to a larger room. There was a throne at one end with a few high windows where once the sunlight had cast a beautiful glare. At the other end it opened on to dark seas. The throne itself was untouched by coral, gold and jade, obsidian and marble. It seemed worn and old. He sat himself in it and relaxed, waiting for the storm to pass and morning to come.

-

Andal's eyes opened upon golden sun. He sat in a ray of light upon that throne and gazed out over the court... For a moment he felt a confused sense of joy; there were the people he had known. Old Sam with one eye, captain Jerum, a peaceful smile upon his face.

He snapped awake then and realized it WAS them, their bodies littered the hall, nearly two hundred of his thousand shipmates with clothes drifting in the currents. He tried to scream but the sound came out as a hushed choke. His voice had never been meant to work under the sea.

Something came through the open door of the citadel, blocking the light from it. Then it swam through a shaft of sun and Andal made out something beautiful and strange. She was a maiden, young and gorgeous from the waist up with heavy breasts and flowing black hair. From the waist down she had the body of a dolphin or shark, gray skin and thick fins and a dolphin's tail. It kicked toward Andal and he scrambled up from the throne until his back hit the wall.

She came forth and hovered a few inches before him, her black eyes glimmering in the sunlight. She stared in to him, through him, piercing his soul. Then she reached out and deftly began to unbind his oil skin cloak, shirt, and even reached for his pants... He stopped her, a hand upon hers, and pushed her back. He shook his head no, but she didn't seem to understand. A moment passed and she tried again, this time he let her though stared with wary eyes.

Others came then, male and female, curious as the first. They poked him and stroked his arms and legs. They tickled his toes and he squirmed. He felt like a beast in a grotesquery, displayed for the masses. When his clothes came away and he was displayed for them, naked, he blushed and covered himself with a hand. They tried to take his Torc; but the moment it was unlinked he felt himself choking for air and he snatched it back. A moment later he breathed deep and shuddered as the panic passed.

A small girl came up with a wrap of kelp, then opened it to show skewered fish meat. She offered it to him, then at his hesitation she took a nibble of the fish then offered it again. He took it that time and ate. It was raw yet he was starving, so he ate as wary eyes glanced from creature to creature. Some had lost interest, though two of the older females seemed to be fighting or bickering. Their hands moved quickly and sharply, gesturing toward him occasionally. Obviously a finger language, though one he had no hope of comprehending.

The first one though, the one that found him gestured at the other two sharply and they stilled and swam away. He was finished with his food, so she took his hand and lead him from the throne room, out in to the open sea. They were on a hill overlooking what had once been the main road of a city. The walls that surrounded the citadel met here at a gate; though it was over grown and choked. The Mer folk had no need for silly things like gates when they could simply swim over the wall.

In the streets he found many people, swimming to and fro. Children played and elders worked. They lived in the ruined houses, clearing out growths and keeping their beds clean. There was a world here, a civilization; long after the city had sank. Andal stared, more curious than anything. As he passed an open walled building, he saw piles of copper sheets, obviously taken from the ship. A Mer man came by and dropped off a dozen more, then swam back out to sea.

They went further, down that street then another until they came upon a low but large building. Here he found more of his friends, dead. Mer folk were bringing them one by one and letting them rest. Others searched the bodies, stitched clothing, stitched wounds and made them all presentable. Then still others came and gathered the bodies up and lead them back to the citadel. He wondered if this was their way of honoring the dead but had no way to ask.

Inside he was taken and presented before an elder Mer woman. She was heavy set with tired eyes and laugh lines. The skin of her tail was wrinkled and she had a multitude of scars criss crossing her body. She rose from where she sat and came to him. Her hands traced the outline of his face, caressed the muscles of his pecs and stomach, and even rather rudely gave his maleness a firm squeeze. Flaccid at first, then suddenly alive in her hand. She released him after that and he just blushed with an embarrassed glare.

His guide and the elder spoke for a while though he had no idea what was said. It was not the sharp gestures of the younger women before, but slow deliberate signals with care and choice behind each. Eventually the elder made a sharp thrust and gestured to him, the younger lifted her palm and smiled; then she looked to him with that smile, radiant and beautiful.

Afterword he was lead to a home and he settled in to a soft bed of sea grass, woven in to something like a pillow. Back and forth his keeper swam, making a figure eight in the small room. It seemed almost like pacing, especially with her brow knitted the way it was. He held up his hand to her and she glanced at it, expecting it to mean something perhaps; but she just stared. He must have been like a child trying to speak.

He rose and moved to an overgrown window, then peered out across the city. It seemed not unlike a city above the sea, each roof of each house was well maintained, some recently repaired. He could even find a few where plates of copper from the ship were hammered in to place like patches. His ship was lost, but at least it would be be put to use. He felt pity for the men he had known, kind and cruel, wizened and foolish. None of them would ever see beyond the sun sea.

A hand laid to his shoulder, then he felt breasts press in to his back. He turned away from the window to find his keeper pressed so close. She stared at him, still with that knitted brow, then she pressed her waist against his groin and her tail curled up behind his back. He blushed again as he felt his penis rise against her stomach and she smiled.

Her sex lifted until it settled over his head. The outer folds were tight and rubbery, like the skin of a dolphin and muscular, held tightly closed to keep the ocean out. She sank upon him, impaled herself, and he shuddered at the contact. He was no virgin, though he had no wife he had paid for more than his share of dock side whores over the years and even wooed a maid or two. But unlike many of his kind, he had never taken to bed with a beast.

His arms encircled her waist and he pulled her belly to belly with him until his shaft hilted inside her. Her arms encircled his neck and her fingers clutched at his back. He leaned up and kissed her, suddenly, and she jerked back in confused surprise. His hand lifted from her spine to the hair at the back of her neck and curled in to a fierce grip. Her eyes winced but he pulled her down and kissed her again. His tongue thrust between her lips, tasting the bitter salt of the water and the soft warmth between.

He kicked off the wall and pressed her back to the pillow of sea grass. She laid under him and he hooked his ankles behind her tail, giving him purchase to thrust. She had offered herself up to him and he claimed her, powerful thrust after thrust in to her hot tight depths as her muscles shivered and clenched along his length. Eventually she surrendered to the kiss and let her own tongue explore along his teeth.

His breaths came quick and sharp, though water was difficult to breathe, it made his throat and lungs ache. Still that was a small price to pay for the pleasure she gave him. When he was done, the water about them was cloudy with remnants of his release. He pulled away from it, and her, repulsed by the thought that he was breathing in his own semen. He could taste it on the waves and smell it with every breath he took. She didn't seem to mind though and stared up at him with a confused and hurt expression.

The next day it was another who claimed him, then another the day following that. He was sore, tired and spent. His stomach ached and his balls felt bruised, yet even if he tried to thrust the next Mer woman away, eventually she would sink herself upon him to get at his seed. Every day he was fed but once, a breakfast of fish that barely satiated his appetite and every day he felt weaker.

By the end of a week he couldn't resist as some unknown woman came to claim him. He was lead off to another house, where he was held down and rode hungrily. They had begun to kiss him as well, not just his lips but us chin, neck, ears, chest; anywhere that seemed to excite him. Two days later he didn't have the energy to even rise, yet a spike of pain and fire seemed to spear his belly, from groin to throat. Though the mer woman tried to steal his seed, his penis never rose enough to penetrate her and in the end she left with a bitter glare cast his way.

The day after more food came and he was carried from that home to the large low house of the elder woman. Her claw like hands gripped his face, a thumb traced through the hollow of his sunken cheek then dragged down his withered chest and aching stomach. She did not like what she saw it seemed and followed up with sharp gestures and glares towards the women and men that filled her hall.

A few minutes later he was brought another meal, then another following that. He ate until his stomach protruded, then slept in the elder's own bed until well past midnight. When he awoke, the city was quiet and still. She slept only a few feet away, coiled up like a snake with her head upon her tail. He rose and made his way outside in to the night. He could see stars above and the silvery light from the moon gave a strange dream like quality to the underwater city.

He swam up, slowly, until he breached the surface of the sea. The waves were low and slow, the wind calm. He coughed up a lung full of water and breathed in the clean salty air. At the surface he felt alone and lost. He knew there was an entire city below him, and he could see the towers rising from the waves not far off; but upon the surface there was a strange sense of isolation. So many years at sea where waves would lap at the ship and his only companion were the few others living aboard. He couldn't break that sense of loneliness up here.

His voice was hoarse and harsh, unused and damp, "Good bye.." He said to the sky, then dove again under the sea. He inhaled once, then exhaled with a rush of bubbles; then it was done and he was once again breathing the salty brine. He returned to the old Mer's home and settled again upon the bed of grass and stared out through a window, toward the moon lit sky.

-

The pain in his stomach had grown to an intensity that he feared for his life. But one morning he woke with blood in the water around him. His stomach had split and below it was gray skin with a stubble of fur just beginning to grow. Every part of him ached and his skin was going dark in places. Day after day more split and pealed away, exposing the new skin and slowly growing fur of silver gray. Every time he mated, he changed a little more a few weeks later.

Andal spent an age feeling like the town whore. After the first week they fed him thrice a day, in payment he felt, for his services rendered. They also gave him a few days off every week, but once it was over he returned again to bedding every tight dolphinian cunt that came his way. A half a year in and the first few children were born, then more and more every week. He was there for the first, the woman who had found him in the citadel. He still felt an odd affection for her that he felt for no other but the elder. She never seemed to notice or care about his changing appearance.

In his arms, her body writhing and bucking. The water stained red with blood, then the head came free followed by the rest of his daughter. She was unlike either of them; with a heavy coat of silver fur and yellow eyes over a lupine muzzle. Her lower half was still the same dolphin shape, but it too was covered in a thick coat of fur. She was like a sea lion he thought; no, a sea wolf. He held her in his arms as the mother slept, and stared down in to those strange eyes. His grandfather had been right, he did have wolf blood in him.

By now it was summer and nearly every day was dark with storm. The water was warm and occasionally sulfurous waves would wash murky yellow water their way. The Mer folk avoided it, but always returned to their city when the danger had passed.

The water then began to cool again and with it the storms lessened. By now there were hundreds of his sea wolf children hanging at every breast and some even playing alone or with others through the streets. He had settled down with his woman, essentially claiming her home as his. Still others came to be sired, but every night he came back home to her. He had filled her womb again and had accepted him as part of her life though he doubted these people had any concept of marriage.

When he first arrived there had been maybe ten or twenty children. Just swimming through the city he could tell, passing a house, when a man and woman made love; the taste of his seed and her musk would drift from the windows and door on the current. They were impotent, though sex was almost daily for many, only his seed was assured to quicken. By years end the only births to be seen were of his blood.

Of the finger language he learned some, though he spoke it worse than his own one year old child. He had it harder, he thought, trying to unlearn the tongue of his parents. His tongue was useless underwater anyway. The elder was the only one who bothered to teach him, and only at his insistence. She thought it a waste of her time, yet he persisted until he could at least understand the basics of a conversation.

His daughter was three and his son two when he decided to leave. They had stayed with him when the mother left, to find another home. They hunted and ate like other children their age; yet better than the original Mer folk. The Sea Wolves were born to the hunt, with vicious teeth and keen senses of smell. The three of them, he and his two children could understand each other best with their own finger words that others did not comprehend. To them it was a silly joke, renaming things so their father could sign it; he was not nearly as dextrous as the rest.

They would come with him it was decided; and for that he was thankful. They could hunt far easier than he and he wouldn't have to be so lonely. Together they went to the elder's home and he bid her farewell. She seemed sad to see him go, yet what he could make sense of her words was that she understood his reluctance to stay. He had spent three years here, swelled their numbers greatly with his seed, but he felt no kinship or familiarity with the people of the sea. Of the children she was even more reluctant to let go, but they insisted that they belonged with him. Andal thought it might have been some sort of pack mentality, left over from his winter wolf kin.

Andal returned to the citadel and found his friends and shipmates. There was only cloth and bone left to them now, but of the cloth he took a moment to find his old oil skin cloak. It was worn, yet still supple, the oil having protected it from the sea all these years. The kids seemed nervous, yet he felt no fear of old bones. When at last they left he turned back only one final time to look upon the towers, then he cast himself off, south, to find what was beyond the sun sea.

End

Afterword:

No knowledge is known to us of what happened to Andal and his children. The story of he was passed down through generation and generation of Sea Wolf and Mer Folk until they again met human kind during the advance.

It was told to us also, that of all the ships that came that way, every one of them sank and the men were buried at sea by the Mer Folk. They too remembered their roots. A handful of them in the early days after Juena's touch first blessed the world settled in to the sea, escaping the hunt of the untouched. They had found the city under the sea and settled it; already old when they arrived. The stones themselves seemed not to age and to this day the Mer Folk still live there.

Of the Torc it is unknown where it came from. It is said there was writing upon it, but Andal, as an unlearned man, had at no point learned to read it, nor had any of the Mer Folk thought to copy it down. Since the Torc was lost with Andal to the south, it is unlikely anyone will ever know. The book of stone leaf on the other hand was recovered by the Mer and they have graciously lent it to us. Though many of the pages are broken; it seemed to be a mixture of meaningless chants and genealogy, telling of a family tree and deeds done by each. Some of the more sensible chants indicate lives of thousands of years and deeds great and small.