The storm had come, and something else, a monster, unimaginable; a boneless, shifting thing had pulled itself from the seafloor. Had the storm dredged it up, or had the wind and the waves merely been summoned by it?
He stood before the storm, a watcher blinking against the rain. I saw him stepping out onto the dock and walking to the end of the pier. Rain fell from his long, black coat in streams, and as he approached, that unnamable thing gathered its massive bulk together like a mountain to touch the sky. All the stranger did was stand there, prayer beads in his hand. If he was praying, we could not hear for the howling wind and roaring waves what magic words he used.
The storm and the monster railed, but he stood and withstood the gale and tempest.
Then it was the light broke through the sky, and that chaotic compilation of slime and rot screamed and burned and finally sunk back beneath the waning waves. The storm broke, and the man, that stranger in black, walked away.
I know not who he was, or how he did it, but he beat back the storm and battled whatever abomination it was that had come against this land.
Tale Told 