Achilles began walking the beach.
The obsidian sand shifted under his weight, fine and dark and faintly warm, and he moved along the shoreline with his perception spread wide, taking in everything THE Strand of Broken Scales had to offer a being who had crossed eons of effort to stand here. The golden light from the distant flower-suns drifted across him in patches as he walked, lighting him and then leaving him in shade and then lighting him again.
He was not alone.
Source Beasts moved through the region, and the first of them caught his attention as it came down toward the water from the tree line. It was a large thing, four-legged and scaled, its hide carrying the same faint glow he had seen in the ancient bark, and its power pressed against his awareness with the unmistakable quality of THE Primordial Source running through living foundations. It looked at him as it approached the shore.
