The Antediluvian Oracle:]And so it was written, that rage would carry him like a howling wind, leaving only frozen corpses,Their bones rattling in hollow armour, to tell their tale in his wake.[The Black Mariner:]Behold, my blackened, grim and gory axe, the searing glow of trenchant steel.I’ll notch another widow to my haft, and wreak red vengeance ‘cross the waves.Tales of black-sailed argosies, bedeviled by base treachery![The Antediluvian Oracle:]His gaze is as fire, his words are as spear-points, his voice is as thunder, his touch as the plague![The Black Mariner:]Storm-prow cleaving, dragon rending, nighted deeps far, far below,Hail-scur scouring, sea devouring, sunken realm’s ethereal glow.[The Antediluvian Oracle:]And one night, there came a storm, a storm with searing red winds.Fire and steel rode within it, and vengeance writ in thunder and blood![The Black Mariner:]Down sixty fathoms, from stygian coral-clad tombs, the pitiless abyssal sea disgorges its shambling mold-mottled dead,Dank innards blackly acoil with nests of slithering things!Ghosts aglide upon the eldritch seas, unfathomed voyage to ascendancy,Traitorous blood, the surf roils red, churning crimson, thrice-cursed dead.[The Antediluvian Oracle:]’Tis enough that men might dream of being kings without aspiring to the power of gods.[To be continued in « Arcana Antediluvia Act II: The Demon in the Dusklight Crystal. »]