Billowing winds. Cold rain pitter-pattering on her skin. Booming thunder. Most of these she could hear, but she could see a bright flash of what she thought was lightning through her blindfold. Sharp iron prodded her back, forcing her to trod through mud and rocks lest she needed a harder reminder. March, march, march they did, until she could clearly hear the raging waves crashing against rock.
“Ah, a fine sacrifice for the Lord of the Seas,” a raspy voice said with a sinister chuckle. The woman barely flinched as she felt a bony finger trailing up from her neck to her chin. “No doubt a poor tourist, too early to see her beloved heroes.”
She rolled her eyes behind the blindfold. Of course they picked tourists. Lone tourists, wandering through the city on their own, unaware of the best spots to be, more than willing to listen to a kind stranger leading them through a so-called ‘hole in the wall’ restaurant before they were knocked out. It made it difficult to locate them, and by the time anyone had questions about their disappearance, they were lunch for whatever sea royalty they were feeding them to. It took so many months with no leads, no other common link other than all of them being tourists, for her to get annoyed with the case and simply take the bait. How could they resist dragging along a ditzy, clueless woman to meet their Lord personally?
Several voices began to speak, though it was difficult for her to hear. All she could clearly hear was the raspy voice asking, “Is everything prepared?”
“Yes, Reverend. The other sacrifices will be here shortly.”
The woman’s lip curled into a smirk. As she wriggled her wrists to make sure that the scratchy rope binding was still there, she couldn’t help but wonder when the signal would come. Oh, the sparks would fly then, or so she hoped.
A chorus of cries rang out. Screams. Panic. Chaos.
“The sacrifices, they’re escaping!” a voice shouted before the telltale gurgle of someone who just got stabbed in the throat. Thump. Another thump. She could smell the blood as she knew without looking that the battlefield was covered in corpses.
The raspy voice spoke again as he snapped, “Find the one behind this! Kill them, and bring the sacrifices back!”
The woman’s face wobbled, true darkness taking over her vision. Her body pulsed, something moving down from her neck down to her hands,and only stopped when her vision revealed the chaos happening behind her through new eyes.They moved again briefly to her neck, looking all around to make sure everybody was distracted with the sudden attack. No one was watching. Her smirk split into a grin, revealing rows of sharp teeth that was unbefitting such a delicate-looking figure.
Showtime.
Her body melted into a puddle of blood, blindfold and rope falling onto the ground as the puddle shifted and reformed.
“What?!? What’s happening to her?!?”
Ah, fear. Music to her ears. Or rather, his ears, as the blood shaped itself into the form of a broad, dark skinned man, golden eyes gleaming with murderous excitement.
“Me?” The man laughed before flashing his sharp teeth at the cultists in front of him. “I’m your worst nightmare.”
Steel blades and spears were quick to pierce his flesh, but he merely laughed in the face of them, wounds sealing themselves shut before the first cultist was kicked in the back in retaliation. The others hesitated when they heard the SNAP of a spine breaking, just long enough for their assailant to grab one of them and hurl them into their fellow men. A flurry of punches were enough to knock several of them right out. Those bold enough to try to attack his blind spot were quickly turned into pincushions as the rain turned to daggers and stabbed them before they could lay a finger on him.
The Reverend- a tall, thin man with dark blue robes reminiscent of the depths- shot him an angry look and snarled, “You’re Crimson, aren’t you?”
“Not Crim’s son, just Crim,” the man quipped back as he flung another cultist aside. “Surprised?”
“I thought you have abandoned thoughts of mercenary work, given that those makeshift heroes have taken many of your jobs.”
Crim snorted. “Wow, bold words for someone who didn’t realize those ‘makeshift heroes’ turned Annis to ashes!” He ducked underneath a spray of seafoam that shot from the Reverend’s hand. “Even bolder words for someone who thinks they can get away with shit like this when their backs are turned! How stupid can you get?”
There was a quick slice he felt before he realized a water blade took off his entire right arm. Not so eager to get sliced again, Crim dropped to the ground before the next flurry of blades could hit him, blood rising and congealing to reform his arm. Before it could take the form of flesh, he shook off some flecks of blood which lanced out and stabbed the Reverend in his palms. The sheer satisfaction of hearing the bastard scream was enough to put a smile on his face, but it wasn’t enough. He shoulder bashed the bastard too, slamming him into the cold, muddy ground.
“Nice try, but no cigar,” Crim chuckled as his arm took the form of flesh once more. “Was going to spare ya if you just gave up, but you threw that option out real quick!” He opened his mouth wide, eying the Reverend’s throat hungrily. Before he could lunge and take a solid bite, he tasted the seafoam the bastard managed to blast in his face. He gagged, spitting as much of the briny stuff as he could. The tides were high enough to splash him, and even through the rain, he could hear something rising from the water.
The Reverend cackled at Crim’s suffering. “The Lord of the Sea has come!” he said as he raised his arms high. “He graces me with his aid! Your time is nigh, Crimson!”
As much as Crim wanted to just tear the bastard’s throat out and drink every single drop of blood he had out of spite, he had bigger fish to worry about as he turned and saw a massive Kraken rise from the depths. That was a problem. A very big problem. More than Crim wanted to reveal to that asshole over there.
He let out a nervous laugh that he quickly masked with more boisterous ones. “Pfft, like an oversized squid is gonna actually hurt me! Now, where was-”
Instant regret washed over him as the “oversized squid” grabbed him with a tentacle and dashed him against the cliffside. Repeatedly. And the Reverend was laughing at him, his voice as annoying as nails on a chalkboard, more so when he was being pulped.
“Not even you can withstand our Lord’s power! He will do what The Voice did not, and sink all ye sinful land dwellers into the depths! You will become a feast for the fishes, your bones used as toothpicks for our Lord! Look upon his mighty visage and weep, for it is far too late to repent, Crimson!”
Crim was barely recognizable as a human being as the Kraken dangled him right above its beak. Even then, whatever mass of blood he could move, he shifted into a massive middle finger pointed at the Reverend.
Just as he was about to become the Kraken’s meal, the tentacle holding him began to shrivel, the sea beast shrieking as its prey plopped onto the cliff. Other tentacles tried to grab him as he crawled away, but they landed beside him, twitching for a few seconds before the severed limbs stayed still.
The Reverend gasped as the Kraken wailed in pain. “No! Who could, nay, WOULD do this to him?!?” He whirled around, Crim grinning as a white haired woman with a pink tourmaline embedded in her forehead approached them, the rain around her turning into daggers that hovered at her side.
“Took you long enough, Pearls!”
The Reverend’s face twisted in anger as he launched a flurry of water blades at her, but quickly drained when those same blades stopped short of her and turned back towards him.
“Your magicks are naught more than suggestions to water,” Pearls said, voice cold as the sea’s depths. “A farce as big as the kraken you call Lord.” Crim turned back and watched as the kraken descended back to the sea as fast as it could, its blood staining the seafoam. “It seems his spine is still back in the Glasteran mountains. Hardly befitting of a lord.”
“Who… who are you?!?” the Reverend sputtered, crawling back towards the cliff like a startled mouse. “How did you-” A wall of water daggers planted itself behind him, the man yelping as they pierced through his hands. “Augh!! You… You aren’t an Envoy of the Voice, are you?!?”
“I am no envoy of the Voice, merely a sea witch. Riza Helgasdottir, of the Three Sirens.” Crim couldn’t help but watch with utmost glee as the Reverend’s pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks. “For all the sins you have committed to please a false idol, I condemn you… to death.”
Thunder drowned out the Reverend’s scream and the sound of several daggers stabbing through vulnerable flesh. The rain slowed to a drizzle, the lightning and thunder fading into the distance as if the gods themselves were satisfied with the cultist’s punishment.
Crim wasn’t satisfied, though, so once he got to the body, he planted his teeth into the dead man’s neck and drained every drop of blood he had, leaving the corpse more like a raisin than anything else. He gagged as even the bastard’s blood tasted of seawater, but forced himself to swallow every drop as the multitude of plans held deep within the Reverend’s mind surged through his own. Several innocent people, tempted by the promise of a good time. Several people, screaming and crying for their loved ones as they were marched up the cliff. Several people, shamelessly tossed to the kraken like chum to sharks.
By the time these memories faded, Crim found the corpse turned to mush, guts dripping off his hands.
“Not even that is enough,” Pearls said as she turned away from the pulp that used to be a cultist. “Our job here is done, Crim. Let us return home.”
Crim heaved a heavy sigh, forcing himself back on his feet as he grumbled, “It’s done, but those tourists are still dead. If only we got to them sooner.”
“If only.” Pearls’ voice softened just a touch. “Let’s go. The least we can do is inform their loved ones.”
Though the storm was gone by the time the duo left the cliff, it still stormed, at least, in Crim’s heart, his hand clutching at his chest on the way home.
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