*Mark*

Darkness pervaded everything, while a luminescent fog rolled across an endless expanse. By this I could see, if only barely, the shadows that moved through it….

I don’t know where I am, but it feels as if I’ve been here before….

My forehead has had a constant ache, and at random moments begins to heat up before cooling down in rapid succession….

The first time I had tried to examine my body for any injuries, had confounded me beyond the abnormalities present the past few days.... Thinking back already made me shudder in anticipation as all I could see was the white ash that had replaced my skin… This revelation changed my perspective completely as the empty world of fog revealed itself to be nothing but ash….

Interestingly enough, most of the ash seemed to come from my own being as I watched it slowly flake off while others joined with me…. Off in the distance I could see more ash, the distance between us separated by unfathomable miles of inky black space. Walking towards them only seemed to exasperate the distances, as I never grew closer, always forced to watch their shapes from afar.

From what I could tell, this ash formed giant birds of various colors, blue, greens, reds, some even had all the colors…. Some were piles, completely inert unfortunately… A few piles being the only ash that had a similar white color as my own…. What this meant I had no idea, although they were the most beautiful things I had seen from the system, only second to my Aiyla….

Thinking of her caused a secondary pain to form deep within my chest, while a green light painted my surroundings…. The only other source of color I could see in my vicinity, as the deep green briefly illuminated my hollow chest cavity, casting an eerie pattern through my outer ashen skin.

Focusing on it made the entire world shake and shatter until I was forced to stop. In that time, all the ash flaking off my body had swarmed, and overwhelmed me as I watched in silent revelry as an outline of Aiyla formed from the congregation… The more it solidified, the more I struggled to focus on that green light until eventually I lost the ability to do so…

The ash that had congregated had taken on a green hue, but as it returned to flowing around me, it regained its pure white form…. Trying to shape my own body’s ash had even greater affects as the space around me distorted, as if asking if I truly wished to continue… It was impossible to explain in words as a feeling of permanent death settled over me… From which it was easy to intuit that changing my body of ash the way I was, would undoubtedly kill me…. Until that moment, my thoughts had no consistency as my mind quickly latched onto whatever it could see.

And with those thoughts, came the memory of something surging through me, something that forced me to come to this place.

The more and more I thought about it, the faster the space around me vibrated until the ash that had flaked off began to be pulled inside once again….

I began looking inward, almost forced to…. reliving the past 18 years of my life, while the recent weeks began to slow down and felt like I was actually in them rather than being a distant observer. The weeks slowed into days… Which slowed into hours…. Which began to drag on longer than seconds as I watched lightning crawl through the air towards me.

By now, everything was in slow motion… Lightning normally invisible but for a brief instance, to the point that I could see as the strike forked down to meet me.

This was before I had lost my senses to the ceaseless barrage of lightning, so as the lightning neared….

I saw everything....

Smaller sparks of electricity bounced off it to meet with my skin, as if it was trying to form a connection. Through one of these smaller bolts, the main bolt traveled through until it was mere centimeters from my skin….

Every inch of my ashy skin felt raised, something similar to goosebumps as I watched the lightning connect with my body….

And the inky darkness finally swallowed my world of ash….

*Solomon*

The elders once again had the youngest of our people practicing writing, the sound of them crushing ink into stone reverberating through our jungle alcove….

It's not that I am opposed to the subject- explorers have also taught me many languages besides our own primitive one….

No, the problem with our peoples’ writing was that we have no way to keep our written word. Writing on stone and wood would quickly be washed away in the constant floods that fell from the skies...And we frequently moved through our history, never staying in one area for more than a few generations. This led to many issues, as oral tradition only worked for as long as we could remember the finer details… Time has slowly eroded those that could remember until only fairy tales are left of what were once our greatest achievements….

Then, one of our great elders had the idea of keeping our text on our own bodies…. Surprisingly, this worked well. Even after death, our records were kept, typically on the bodies of our breeders who ignored the call of the wild. Those same mothers bear our entire histories, while also helping spawn the future generation.

The only history our warriors can carry, is that of war and strife. It is within their bodies that all hatred and malice is to be housed, so that our regrets and anguish can be buried. Allowing the next generation to make their own decisions, without bias.

Should one of our mothers die, it is the duty of their daughters who are able to remain unmarked until the age of choosing, to uphold the mantle of knowledge. Some males choose this route as well, usually they are the scholars and witch doctors that will allow an entire generation prosperity from the knowledge they are able to amass within their lives.

My father was the previous witch doctor, a man so intelligent that even elders twice his age had bowed to him for some of his own insight….

Normally, the current generation’s researchers would be forced to bow to everyone, as anyone could easily overpower them…. They had to, as without their tribemates they would starve and be unable to continue their work. My father was different. Unlike the others, he continued honing his body and mind, creating a balance that would have let him live well past even our most ancient elders…. Or at least he would have, had greed not taken my people.

From birth, we are taught that we are all a family. No one is a stranger, and anything you can do to help the community would also help yourself….

Those were shallow words…. Words easily disregarded when it came down to something everyone wanted and yet couldn’t have…. My father continued making breakthrough after breakthrough, advancing our people by years at a time. He did this so frequently in fact, that when he began to find less and less, our people suspected he was holding out on them….

My father being a benevolent man, despite his enormous size, kindly told them he had nothing left to give… Even his own soul mate, my mother, had been given to further the tribe.

When the settled ones came with guns and machines, she had been the one to fend them off. She was the only reason all these people were allowed such peaceful lives, and they were ungrateful.

They continued to hound after my father's work, and this translated to stress the likes of which no one would understand. I was forced to watch as his sculpted body withered, the light constantly shining in his eyes dim, and his hair fade to grey prematurely….

The people began to withhold food and other necessities if he did not provide them with what they wanted, leading to more stress as he would barely eat, letting me have all the food.

This spiraled out of control until we were kicked out of our home, forced to sleep on the dirt and rocks, yet even then my father persisted.

Sometimes I wonder if he did it for my mother's sake… She had always loved our people, and died protecting them… So perhaps that drove an infallible love inside himself for others that didn’t deserve it…

In the end, he died in my arms, while MY people watched from their homes….

I was left alone to fend all for myself…. Barely half of age, which for our people came after 12 cycles….

I spent several nights clinging to my father's corpse, his tattooing tools the only thing allowed in our time of isolation… The ink was easily acquired from plants in our jungle as well as some squid if our fishers were lucky… This ink could be inserted into our flesh through any means, though most people chose a strong rock with a weathered point. My father though, had prefered to keep my own mothers bones for this specific purpose. Burning her body in a great pyre, he had harvested all her bones, whittling each into a sharp point to allow for an easier time inserting the ink.

And so I took up my mother’s bones and my father’s philosophical life blood, and began copying his notes.

There was a reason we waited until of age to begin our flesh transcriptions, and I could feel why…. Every drop inserted sent spikes of pain through my entire body… I still never stopped…

Every piercing made with the bones caused my previous markings to ache, my flesh bled and tore as my weak strikes caused unnecessary damage…. On the third night, I finished transcribing everything… My body broken, my stomach empty, and my mouth dry…

I crawled throughout that night towards the ocean waters… Every howl, hoot, and hiss making me shiver at the endless possibilities of death. Our people had long learned to not go out at night, our ancestors would call them cowards as they had boldly wandered the night’s jungle.

Luckily, or unluckily, nothing ended my suffering… I made it to the rocky front, from which I was able to pick up clams and eat them raw for their water and meat. Although salty, it gave me the energy to stand despite my self inflicted injuries….

From there I simply had to find one of the many fresh pools of water that were refilled every rain….

I continued to feed myself, quickly learning the best ways to catch fish and finding out the hard way what plants were poisonous and not….

For years, I would live on the outskirts of the village, unable to truly venture off on my own due to the uncountable dangers that lingered in the dark jungle…. Constantly would the others harass me for how much of a failure my father was…. And so I waited….

I sharpened my own harpoons that turned out far better than the weapons my people had been gifted when they came of age….

I learned from explorers, who had wandered across us in their travels…. They taught me many things I would never be able to repay.

I fought the local wildlife, each battle being life or death until one of us succumbed.

All this experience built on me until I had become the strongest in the village….

Unlike my father, I knew of their hidden evils. I never trusted them, not even hinting at the secrets I kept. They could burn for all I cared.

The day the god granted us the Gift was the blessing I needed….

The God said I was a pioneer, and even better I was placed at 214th on the rankings….

That's the day I was given Riptide, my glorious harpoon. He promised me power....

.....

...

...

And I took it....

A bloody aura seeped from Solomon’s skin as he stared at the tribesman playing happily with their children and friends… His eyes seemed to swallow light, while the patterns of waves on his skin seemed to curl as if they were alive…. And beneath those waves of despair, sharks were waiting…. And they cared not for anything other than their victims suffering….

Solomon was waiting....

And his time was almost here....