Ever Searching [Past]

[Castor Phecda]

He listened to the girl speak but was caught completely off guard by what she said. He had understood everything up to this point. Perhaps she had had a rough childhood, growing up with just her father. Then she was talking about hearing voices, being a vessel and not showing mercy. These were not the words of a little girl. What the hell was her father teaching her? He himself came from a religious family. His father had some ideas that were considered strange to most. But this was on another level of strange. 

He decided to stand up at this point, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable. He took a glance again at the mound. It had sounded strange to him. He hadn't noticed it before but there was definitely something wrong with the voice. Namely that it could only seem to grunt. 

He felt a desire to walk away but his sudden discomfort came with a concern for the child's well-being. He wasn't one to come between a father and daughter or anyone's religious teachings. But if the scars and stitches on the girl's face gave some indication of the treatment she was receiving, he had to at least find out more. 

"He sounds special." He agreed, trying really hard not to say the word 'special' with a tone of sarcasm. "Could I meet him?" He asked.

[Cassie]

"Huh?" the girl looks back towards the mound. "but I didn't make a castle yet... Cassie ponders the problem before her. How to.. ahah! "Can you help me make a castle?! You can meet papa then!" The girl hops a bit in excitement before dashing over to the mound.

[Castor Phecda]

He laughed. "Alright." He followed the girl, walking at a much more subdued pace than her. The mound was quite large. She must have spent quite a bit of time burying her Papa because he was completely covered in sand. There seemed to be pieces of crab shell, or something, in the mound. Was she using them to build her castle? 

He couldn't remember the last time he had built a sand castle. His family had visited Tiburon on occasion, visiting the various beaches, possibly including the one they were on currently but he couldn't recall. He remembered it being quite fun and found himself suddenly excited. 

He loosened a few buckles on various straps and relieved himself of his armor and weapon holsters, setting them in the dry sand. He kicked off his shoes and rolled up his pant legs. "The tide's coming in, so we're going to want a wall and a moat to keep the waves from washing it away while we build." He said, kneeling down in the moist sand on the ocean side of the mound. He began digging a moat with his hands around the mound and using the sand for the wall.

[Cassie]

Cassie copies Castor, taking off her (already sand-filled) shoes and rolling up her pant legs before digging into the sand alongside him "You can do that?! Papa says everything gets washed away." the child takes a mound of sand from the moat and quickly pushes it onto some of the exposed crab shelling. "But stuff can come back!" The cheerful girl shapes the mound into a little tower before moving back to working on the moat. "I stepped on a tower earlier." she explains.

Cassie soon decides that turning Castor's dug up sand into a little wall on the ocean-facing side of the moat is what most needs doing. It definitely needs to have little spikes and guard birds on top too. All the very best walls have spikes and guard birds on top, after all. Her new friend probably knows that, she surmises, since he already knew about the tides papa had talked about."Why do the tides wash things away? Do they have permee-permiz.. did someone say they could?"

[Castor Phecda]

"He's right. The wall will only hold it back for a little while." He responded to her first question. It seemed like a fun challenge to try to hold the tide back with a little wall while they built the castle. He glanced over at the girl as she intricately built towers and guards on the wall. He chuckled. The wall would stop a wave or two, but the guards and towers would be gone with the first wave. It was her castle though. He wouldn't say anything. 

To her second question he gave a little thought before he answered. "I don't know. Maybe." He wasn't sure if he should share his religious thoughts on why the world worked as it did with a little girl. Not that it would answer this particular question. "Maybe it's trying to clean the world but can only do a little bit at a time." He decided to throw out a random but entertaining idea instead.

Satisfied with the size of the wall, he moved to the front and pushed the sand into a point making the entire wall a V. When the wave hit, it would hopefully split and ride along the wall away from the mound.

[Cassie]

"Like fire!" the girl moves on to putting spikes and birds on the tip of the V formation. The first wave isn't very high, and the walls sustain hardly any damage at all. The way the V parts the water clearly captivates the girl's attention, however. "The tide's going to have to try harder~"

The second wave rears towards the castle, tall and strong. Cassie readies herself behind the tip of the V with a wild grin. "I like dirt! Clean is boring. People ..are...fun!" The girl forms a shield of force, propelling and expanding it to beat back the larger second wave. Castor may have underestimated the life expectancy of the noble bird-guards of Castle Papa. The triumphant girl sticks her tongue out at the defeated sea. "I did it! I bet the tide won't ever clean the world. People won't let them!"

[Castor Phecda]

Castor laughed. The girl was certainly enthusiastic. He had considered doing the same thing if the tide seemed to be coming in too fast. He wasn't sure if it would be cheating though. The girl didn't seem to think so. With the waves at bay for another moment, he looked to the mound. He really couldn't see any part of the girl's Papa. "Is he okay under there? How can he breathe?" He knew he had heard some sounds from this pile of dirt earlier, but there didn't seem to be any holes or pipes.

[Cassie]

The girl gasps, rushing over to the mound to re-open the hole she had made earlier. "Oh no! Papa, did you die again?"

The mound slightly shakes with a grunt, followed by the sound of a hoarse, faintly echoing voice. "No." Castle Papa suddenly falters, the bird-guards helpless against the awakening of the giant once sealed within the sand fortress' catacombs. Its limb, a monstrous appendage armored with bits of crab-like shelling that appear to be fused to its flesh rather than merely worn, tears a hole through the eastern tower. The beast moves to further free itself, but is quickly pushed back into place by the great wave-defeater. "Not yet Papa." The beast, soothed by the land's champion, becomes still once more.

The flesh golem, still largely buried beneath the castle, turns its head towards Castor. the mesh of shelling recedes around the creature's squinting eyes, revealing stitched, almost corpse-like flesh. The right eye likewise looks like it was borrowed from a grave, while the left is made of a blackish metal. The hoarse voice speaks again, emanating from the metal eye. The orb glows a greenish gold, its level of intensity matching that of each spoken word.

"All live once. Some, many times."

(while this is going on a third wave makes a mess of the V guards, prompting Cassie to quickly dash back to her post. She accidentally kicks the north east wall in the process, which in turn prompts her to quickly pile it back together, which means the fourth wave is largely unhindered, which in turn allows it to make a mess of the V....)

[Castor Phecda]

Castor's ongoing confusion was compounded when the girl asked her Papa if he died again. He answered with a strange voice. The man shifted, the sand falling to reveal his arm. It had a carapace like a crustacean. At least, he was wearing it over his skin. Was it some sort of costume? Or maybe the pieces of shell that were part of the castle were simply covering him.

But then the man's face was uncovered and the shell moved as if alive, revealing a gaunt, colorless face covered in stitches. The eyes were different. One seemed to be made of metal. It glowed as he began to talk. The voice was not coming from the man's mouth but from the glowing eye. 

Castor took a step back, trying to understand what was going on. There was clearly something very different about this girl's Papa. He thought back to everything she had said and done, trying to put the pieces together. She had used magic earlier. One of them was a... Body Magic spell. There were, of course, three Aspects to Body Magic. He had studied all three before choosing which one he wanted to follow. This was a Flesh Golem. It had to be. It seemed to made partly of man and beast, which fit. What he didn't understand was why the girl called it Papa. Did she not create this creature? And the eye... It spoke directly to him. 


"This is your Papa? Your father?" He asked, hoping for some clarification on the usage of that word. He was asking both of them, looking first to the girl, then to the metal eye.

[Cassie]

Cassie glances back towards Castor. "Yeah!" She further settles the matter with a quick nod before returning to her increasingly rapid attempts to fix and protect the walls.  The tide was a strong foe, but it would not win this day!!

Her "papa" opens its left eye wider. "I precede this shell." The right, deader eye glances towards the rushing girl. "She was chosen.  She survives. I guide her." The eye swivels back towards Castor, left and right narrowing together to form a piercing gaze. "All are guided."

"What guides you?"