The Mariner’s Lament
Where tempests carve their wrath across the sky,
A vessel frail, by frothing waves embraced,
With timbers groaning, to the depths chased,
There drifted one whose fingers once had strummed
The chords of peace, ere war’s grim drum had drummed.
A lute, his sole companion, slick with brine,
Whose strings now wept a dirge for love’s decline.
Canto I: The Oath Upon the Silent Shore
In days when youth wore summer’s golden cloak,
Two souls did forge a bond no steel could broke—
Alaric, lion-hearted, sword unbent,
And Orphean, whose melodies besprent
The twilight fields where crickets hummed their tune,
And willows wept above the silver dune.
“By sea and stars,” they vowed, “though fate may rend,
No tide nor time shall break what we defend.
Should storm-clouds rise to shroud our brother’s gaze,
We’ll meet where moon and memory retrace.”
A lute-string snapped—the omen none divined—
As shadows stretched their fingers o’er mankind.
Canto II: The Drums of Distant Thunder
The war came swift, a raven-winged despair,
Its breath corrupting harvests, scouring air.
Alaric marched where iron banners flew,
While Orphean, adrift, the wild winds drew
To cliffs that loomed above the churning deep,
There plucking strains to lull the waves to sleep.
Yet sleepless phantoms haunted every note:
The friend who lingered in his final mote,
The pledge engraved like runes on ancient stone,
Now drowned beneath the trumpets’ blaring drone.
One dusk, a missive smeared with ash and rue—
“To Blackcliff’s Isle! Our oath demands thy due.”
Canto III: The Voyage Through Fury’s Maw
No compass steered his bark through hell’s own gate,
Where Leviathan’s brood did congregate,
Their jaws agape to swallow moon and mast.
Yet Orphean played, though hands were numbed and chapped,
A requiem for mariners entrapped,
Each note a shield against the crashing spite.
The sea, it seemed, grew still in wan moonlight,
As though the gods leaned down to heed his cry,
But lo! From depths there rose a strangled sigh—
Not wind nor beast, but cannon’s ghastly roar,
And spectral ships aflame from shore to shore.
Through smoke, he glimpsed the banner of his friend—
A lion, gilded, torn at journey’s end.
Canto IV: The Ghosts of Blackcliff’s Keep
The isle emerged, a carcass picked by gulls,
Its towers cracked where rot and ruin lulls
The bones of those who perished in their prime.
Upon the beach, a figure steeped in rime,
Alaric’s armor, rusted through with woe,
His blade still clenched, though half-devoured by snow.
“You came,” he rasped, a voice like autumn’s last,
“Though all my sentinels lie cold, surpassed.”
“Our oath,” wept Orphean, “could I forsake?”
Yet as they spoke, the earth began to quake.
From trenches burst a legion, dead yet dire,
Their hollow eyes aglow with phantom fire.
Canto V: The Choice That Tore the Sky
“Fly, brother!” roared the warrior, stance prepared,
“My debt to death cannot by thee be spared.
Take yonder skiff—let music’s breath sustain—
And bear this truth beyond the mortal chain:
No vow outlives the heart where it was sown.”
But Orphean stood fast, his lute outthrown,
A final chord to cleave the shrieking night,
A blaze of sound, a sacrilege of light.
The spectral host dissolved like morning mist,
Yet as they fled, Alaric’s fist unclenched,
His form succumbed to time’s unyielding thirst,
And in his palm, the shattered lute-string burst.
Canto VI: The Sea’s Eternal Dirge
Now lone he sails, the minstrel crowned with frost,
His lute a husk, its silver gleam embossed
With salt and blood—the relics of his creed.
No landfall greets his eyes, nor friend in need,
For tides, once calmed by song, now rise to claim
The breath of him who dared to play fate’s game.
The waves, they whisper secrets none may keep:
“To break an oath is but to wake from sleep.
All bonds are tempests—fierce, yet fleeting too—
As transient as dawn’s first drop of dew.”
He sinks, his arms around the lute’s remains,
While far above, the moon her vigil reigns.
