Do Not Seek Absolution 𓇼 Seungin

10 𓇼 Cursed? Skill Issue.

When the morning sun rose, they were given a clear view of the true amount of destruction done to the port city's docks in the fresh sunlight.

Jeongin had never felt so shell shocked.

He and Changbin stood off to the side watching. Sent off by Chan to properly evaluate the damage done to the docks. The trouble being? There was no dock. There was no dock anymore. What used to be a docking bay for ships sized small and large, narrow and wide, where merchandise was transported or shipped off from the wooden planks that the ships moored off to to not float away, there was nothing.

Chunks of broken sheets floated in the water. Pillars that marked where the docks they had been walking on the night before once was laid, but now laid exposed the foundations driven into the harbour's shallow bottoms. Drifted jetsam that washed along the shores with debris jutted in clandestine warning and floatsam that bobbed in the waters waiting to be carried by the current out, crates of merchandise from ships that the citizens of the port rowed out to in their attempts to salvage what was left of their livelihoods. Food, clothes, weapons, armor, silks, rare trades, anything on those ships were now gone. Almost every ship that was docked had been affected. Their masts knocked down, the hauls snapped in half, decks bombarded to nothing but splinters, the hints that perhaps there should have been a vessel there once now obliterated to corks of wooden planks strewn where metal fastens held them together, ripped sails being cut up by knives and fished from the waves.

Sure, it was horrible that the harbor was destroyed and he was lucky to have escaped with his life along with minimal scrapes or aches to prove he lived to tell the tale. But, for the people of Port Vitória, that harbor was everything. Their means of work, their way to survive in their world, their blood, sweat, tears, time, everything that a person could pour into the guarantee of their longevity. To support themselves, their families, the future generations for centuries to come, their progress had been lost in the span of a few minutes in one night. It could be rebuilt but, what about those who couldn't afford to keep the progress? Those who put their everything into those ships, what was on them, the trading routes they took, what about them? Or the people who worked on the ships, what would happen to them? What do they do now that everything they owned was gone?

Supposedly, this wasn't the first port city attacked like this by the leviathan. Supposedly, the King knew exactly what was happening. And, supposedly, the King neglected to do a anything to help. To dispatch the leviathan. To send aid to the cities. To help in any way a King was supposed to.

Bullshit.

Was the only word Jeongin could think of, while he watched the tired group of salvagers haul another sail onto the sandy beaches. Defeat on their exhausted bodies. A man that sat on a nearby bench who stared at them, before his head sunk into his dusty hands and he disappeared within his palms.

This is such bullshit.

So anyway, Chan came up with the genius idea to infiltrate the fortress and everyone else was more than eager to participate. Because. Why not. Jeongin decided to go along with it. Couldn't turn out that bad, right? Sneak over the walls in broad daylight (As per Chan's suggestion, if the leviathan appeared at night then the best time to get hints would be during the day while that cloaked figure was away, low key seemed counterintuitive but it's not like Jeongin was an expert on Breaking and Entering like the others seemed to be), split up into groups, look around the grounds for a few hours, collect information about the leviathan and why it has suddenly become a hazard to the ports of Miroh, disappear before anyone knew they were inside. Simple, really.

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT DO ANYTHING JEONGIN DOES IN THIS STORY.

Hence, there they were. At the end of the afternoon. Under the boiling heat of the sunlight wishing to set within hours beating down against the impenetrable stone walls that barricaded the inside of the fortress away from any nosy bitches (Them). Jeongin following after Chan and Minho as they crouched low with their backs pressed flush against the blocks of rock unforgiving to their touch. Trailing along the same pathway that Seungmin and Changbin had taken only minutes prior before them, a route that Jisung had whipped out his pelt and flopped around as a seal for a few hours in the early morning to find that weakness. An opening on the coastal side, facing the juttied rocks the fortress butted up against. Large enough to slip their bodies through one by one as long as they didn't alert the guard patrols to what they were doing. One by one, Minho slipped through. Then Jeongin. Finally Chan, checking their quarters.