by SlyOkami
Suddenly frost formed over his skin, as the wind starting to pick up around them. Winug glanced around as each of the three Orcs grew spooked, confused at the sudden cold. They looked around but saw nothing.
Yet far off, over the hills nearby a figure stood watching them.
“This is problematic.” Said a chilling voice, as a cold breeze blew past her. A woman, seemingly human.
She wore a white-furred coat, her skin just as white and pale. She lowered her hood, revealing a chilling beauty beneath. Her hair, like crystal and a deep blue, her eyes a pale cyan. She gazed down at the Orcs, like small specs from this distance, watching the dozens of other ships making shore.
“Indeed it is, that chieftain is Hell’s pawn.” Said a haunting voice as the earth nearby rose, forming a skull. It spoke, “He is your first target, stop him.” Grim said.
The pale woman nodded, “I know my place, I will do as you say…Just don’t forget your own words, don’t forget your promise.” she said, looking down at the earthen skull.
The skull smiled, a haunting show of teeth, “My word is an unbreakable oath. Do as I say, and Faetera’s future is guaranteed. With comes your pride, with comes redemption.”
The pale woman turned to stare back at the Orcs, “What has this world come to?” she asked.
“Hell is at work.” Grim said, “This is why I chose you, where Alan is too afraid, and Erikathyr too blunt and stubborn. You, Blue Dragon, are wise.”
She sighed, “Those two fools…”
“Forget them, for now.” Grim told her, “You have work to be done, this world’s fate rests in your hands.”
…
“Findri”
Ch 34 - Shizuka
Alan rested his palm over her head, a white mist forming about his fingers and entering her skin. The healing magic rejuvenated the poor woman, her dried up skin expanding to the norm, her scars also fading away.
Her dark eyes draining of blackness, refilling with the green that was hers.
Alan stepped away as the woman woke from unconsciousness, taking in a sudden breath.
He glanced around at the dozen others he had just healed, fear making up their expressions so well it was as if they had worn that guise since birth. Their bodily beauty completely deterred by their ghastly faces.
He’d look away, but everything else around him was just that much worse.
Bodies lay scattered about, ripped, broken and squashed together. Pools of blood as if it had rained red, slowly leaking off the ship’s side as Dark Elves moved around cleaning the ugly mess.
They had long left the other ships behind, the mess above them so much worse to clean up. Since, ash was easier to blow away than blood and flesh.
Alan cursed Erik beneath his breath, the drake’s merciless ways hadn’t changed one bit. And as the portal opened from which he and his party came out from, Alan turned to face him. “Your path might be righteous now, Erikathyr, but this…This is why we called you demon.”
He met the drake’s gaze, seemingly weak as Thea and Makaela held him up, but his eyes fiercer than ever before. “What? Cannot handle a little death?” Erik asked with a smirk, pulling himself out of their hold and weakly walking past Alan.
Over to the only survivors.
“The pirates were vampires, what would you have me do? Waste my time purifying each and every one of them? The disgusting sods made their choice when they sold their bodies to that Blood Lord.” Erik then said, stopping before the freed slaves as they gazed at him in fear.
Alan grimaced, “You’re right…They deserved death, but you cannot deny it, you enjoyed it. I bloody know you did.” he said harshly, glancing over at Makaela who’s expression lay pale and eyes wide. “I can see it in her eyes.” Alan said, “You sense them, don’t you? The stench of fear oozing out as their souls still lay about.”
Erik chuckled, “Of course they still do, their souls are damned for the actions they made. Heaven denies them access, Grim ignores them. But, Hell won’t take them either, not while that staff lays there.” Erik gestured at the white staff as it lay hovering in mid-air above them, golden energy rushing through its carvings.
Alan sighed, he knew Erik had trapped the pirate’s souls nearby but he didn’t know why. “So, who was that stranger that seemingly had access to your Lair?” he then asked, not even wanting to know what the drake was up to with dozens of trapped souls.
“A God,” Erik answered as he glanced in between each blood slave, “A divine not from this realm, apparently.”
“A divine? That creature? I felt more darkness than holy within it.” Alan argued.
“Gods aren’t all bright and light, hero.” Erik warned, “The vilest of beings are Gods, why do you think we Dragons do not fall for their petty lies? This one though had an interesting offer to make.”
“I bet, I could sense that draconic core inside you the moment that portal opened. All I want to know is…How? Grim claimed both our souls and bodies. How powerful is this divine if it can steal from a God of Death?” Alan asked, his tone disturbed.
“Does it really matter? They freed me from Grim’s clutches and gave me what I need to stand as a drake once again. What matters, mostly to you, is what they told me after.” Erik said, glancing back at the adventurer.
“What?” Alan asked as he saw the pity in Erik’s eyes, “What did he tell you?”.
“Findri, she’s back.” Erik answered.
Alan’s eyes widened as he stepped back, a brief chuckle his response before he fully processed his words. “No…she can’t be.” He said, turning around to gaze off into the distance.
“Well, according to that God’s words she is. After both of us failed to meet Grim’s expectations, it summoned her in our stead. For some reason or other, she sold her soul to death, why is beyond me.” Erik said, turning away to study the slaves before him.
“Findri? The Ice Dragon?” Thea asked as she stood by Erik.
“Blue, The Blue Dragon.” Erik corrected as he carefully crouched down before one woman, ”Colour determines clan not element. In ancient times colour determined the schools of magic too, water and ice were all Blue Magic. While light and lightning were all White Magic. Findri though is a half-blood like me, more of a cold breeze than straight frost.”
“Half-Blood?” Nerick repeated in question, watching as Erik went through each woman, revealing a black pattern over their shoulders and studying it carefully.
“My mother is pure White but my father is half-blood therefore so am I. We Dragons numbered little already, breeding in between clans was required to survive and retain. My grandfather is a Red Dragon, who mated with my grandmother, a White.” Erik explained as he backed away from the last vampiric victim.
“Which makes me more of a blazing lightning strike, which is my name in translation to common, than a blinding flash. Enough chit-chat though,” Erik then said as he turned around to see Alan holding his own face, clutching his chest with the other hand as his gaze drooped to the bloody floor. “Alan, I can’t say I’ll enjoy having Grim see every move I make, but I won’t lie either. I know you wish to go see her, and I can send you there, but the truth is? I need you at Sinbeni.”
“See her?…” Alan whispered, pain clear in his voice as he looked away from them. “If she’s back…If she’s truly back…I dare not cross paths with her. My…my mistakes ended her life, my mistakes branded her as a betrayer alongside you.” He chuckled coldly, “If she were to find me, she’d end my immortality short.”
Erik suddenly stepped to him, pulling Alan’s hand away from his face before clenching his own hand into a fist. Erik punched Alan, his fist moving faster than the eye could see, sending Alan tumbling back several times until he crashed into the ship’s cabin.
“Erik?!” Thea exclaimed in surprise grabbing the drake by the shoulder as Alan groaned.
“Snap the hell out of your pity, Findri is a Dragon, and unlike you humans we Dragons know when to take responsibility for our action
s and failures.” Erik reprimanded harshly, pulling away from Thea and approaching the rising adventurer.
He grabbed Alan by the collar, looking the man straight in the eye as he spoke, his own surging with a fierce gold as he met Alan’s frosting blues. “If anything, Findri blames herself for your mistake. I know I would.” He told Alan, pushing the adventurer back and into the wall before turning away.
“Now if you don’t mind, I have a dark spirit to vanquish.” Erik then said as he faced the marked women.
“The vampiric mark? You can remove it?” Nerick asked in surprise.
Erik chuckled in response, “I’m young, but I know the Dark Arts as well as the most eldritch of creatures. I did say I delve in magical knowledge, I never said I limited myself to just one or two fields of it.” he explained before gesturing at a dark elf who unlike the rest had been waiting nearby, her hands held forwards and holding a cloth covered tray.
The xilfir stepped forth at Erik’s indication, forwarding him the tray. “As you ordered great master, all the items you listed. I found each, at which hall of your lair you sent me to.” The dark elf said in elven.
“Good, I was wondering if I still had all that.” Erik mused as he raised the cloth and uncovered the tray’s contents. A black wooden bowl with strange runic carvings, a mortar, pestle, and an assortment of bottled up ingredients one stranger than the last.
Erik glanced at everything briefly, “Yes, that’s everything.” He said before grabbing the mortar and pestle, emptying a bottle of green sludge alongside a bottle of red pearls into it. He began to crush the pearls along with the sludge, the ooze slowly turning brown. He turned around and walked over to Nerick, handing him the tools. “Ground that up till it’s all brown, right?” he said before quickly turning back to the dark elf.
“B-Brown…okay?” Nerick said as he continued to crush the ingredients, Ivara taking a quick sniff of the stuff before suddenly shaking her head and backing off. Her eyes briefly turning a shade of red before she sneezed and it disappeared.
Erik returned to the tray, grabbing two bottles as he glanced inside, “Phoenix ash, Troll bone marrow…” he mumbled out the ingredient’s names as he emptied them into the bowl.
“What are you doing?” Thea asked as she watched him work.
“Old magic,” Erik said, “Very old, as old as the bloody vampires themselves. Dark Arts met with the same is how you fight off curses. What I’m doing here is ancient Orcish shamanism alongside good old Fae witchery. Everything in our world has a specific magical make, races older than humans who had peaked at the bending of mana knew this well, and mixed certain items to bring out a specific event their mana could not.” He explained whilst emptying several other items into the bowl.
“Will this do?” Nerick asked, showing the mortar and the slimy brown ooze within.
“Perfect, hand it here.” Erik said, taking the mortar from his hands.
“So…what exactly are you doing though?” Thea then asked, her eyes widening as Erik downed the ooze in one breath. “Uhh…”
Erik’s eyes flashed a bright crimson for several moments before gold took over, he glanced at Thea with wide eyes. “I’m setting up a protection charm on my human vessel first and foremost so I don’t accidentally curse myself.” He said, then turning to the bowl with one last ingredient laying unadded.
Erik grabbed the bowl full of different dusts, a barely liquid yellow goo among them and two long black fangs protruding out. With his other hand, he grabbed the final item, a skeletal bat’s wing. Dropping the wing inside he then turned to the still hovering staff.
“Stand back.” He said, moving to stand beneath the staff.
Everyone stepped away from him, they watched from a safe distance with curiosity in their eyes.
“Lost and damned souls hear me now, this voice with which I command and control.” Erik exclaimed, raising the bowl up towards the staff. Its contents suddenly lit on fire. ”Your sins lay bare before me, and your time has come. Retribution lays before you, but the cost is hellish. You who wander and take, giving nothing back. You who delve into greed, gluttony and lust. You waste of space, you who would dare once breath the same air as the victim.”
As he spoke, a green mist formed around them, it spun in circles around them with Erik and the staff at its centre. Ghostly expressions of fear, fury and sadness forming within the mist, as it flowed faster and faster.
“What time you had left, I take, I reap. Your life, now energy. Your existence, fruit for my words.”
The souls screamed in agony, anger and horror. Then staff began to suck them in, its golden light turning a bright green as the mist flowed inside.
“The time which you abandoned, I now order. The time which you left behind, I now own.”
Erik spoke the last words as the final bit of green mist entered the staff, as it now glowed green in its entirety. He dropped the bowl, letting it shatter on the ground into a small explosion of ashen smoke. The smoke surrounded him briefly before dissipating.
Erik raised his hands up, the staff lowering down into them. He held it, as the staff screamed in many voices, the souls bound within begging to be released.
“Is that…what I think it is?” Alan asked, snapping out of his daze as when he saw souls enter a physical object.
“A reaper’s weapon, yes.” Erik answered, grasping the staff tightly as he approached the terrified women. “Fear me not, the ones who hurt you lay within here, broken and bound.” He said, as he raised the staff before him. “What you should fear is their master, who will resurrect into one of you if nothing is done with your marks.”
“It’s fine, he’s going to help you.” Thea assured them with a warm smile, yet she stood as far away as possible alongside the rest. (“You…do know what you’re doing right?”) Thea then asked.
Erik grinned as he looked the staff up and down, “You know, I’ve never actually wielded death magic before, guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Thea watched the women’s eyes widen in further fear, (“That didn’t help.”) she noted.
Erik turned to face them all, changing the staff to a one-handed hold as he held out his empty palm towards them. “Don’t move,” he said before starting a new chant, “Darkness beyond life, I humble servant of thee call upon thy. The end, the fall, the door, the passing, the ascent, the descent, the crossing. Your names I call, O’ death, and these souls I offer for your power!”
Erik closed his hand before them, green energy flowing out of the staff and into his fist.
“To this offering, I ask, break the immortality before me!” He exclaimed, tendrils of dark green mist forming out of his fist and piercing into each of the women where their vampiric marks lay. “Cleanse these hopeless souls off the perversion of life which plagues them!”
They screamed, fury passing through their expressions as darkness flowed out of their gaping mouths, forming into a cloud above them. The dark marks that lay over their necks and shoulders dissipating with the green tendrils of deathly mist.
Erik slammed the staff down and a wave of invisible force blasted outwards, dissipating the dark clouds into the sky above. “There, your souls are free now, don’t waste your time thanking me.” He said, turning away from the confused women.
“As for you,” he then faced Alan again. “Think it over, you have two weeks before we reach Sinbeni. And don’t underestimate what’s coming, this is no common crisis you adventurers face every other week.” Erik said harshly, “Faetera could be on the brink of war once more, and this time it won’t just be my kind that slips into the night never to be seen again. Ask yourself, ‘Hero’, how would you like to go? Crawled up within a tavern? Or blade in hand, grit on your face and blood rushing through your veins?” he asked.
Then turning away from the adventurer, as Alan returned to gazing into the distance, towards Druvia.
“You and Nerick watch over these, make sure they don’t go running off and causing problems.” Erik said,
raising his free hand forwards and opening a rift. “Thea, Makaela, with me. There’s still one more mark to deal with.”
“One more?” Thea asked as she stepped behind him.
“Your little rogue.” Makaela answered, stepping through the rift first.
“Shizuka?” Thea said in surprise.
“Yes, and what I’m about to do is for you, my and her own good.” Erik said, glancing back at Thea with stern eyes. “Thea, I’ll trust you to watch, intervene if you deem fit. But remember that this will be her choice.” He told her, then waiting for a response.
Thea met his gaze briefly, then nodded. “I’ll trust you, Erik.” She said, as they both stepped through.
-
* * *
-
Shizuka lay balled up on the bed, hugging her legs to herself. She trembled, her entire body shivering in fear as the memories haunted her mind. His face, his voice, his words. They reminded her of the horrors she had to live through, the things Renwick had put her through for years.
Plaguing her dreams, day and night.
The games he’d play, torture to her mind and body.
The way he’d use her, less than a tool, nothing but a resource for him to abuse.
Weak, useless she always felt. Not a speck of hope, nothing but cold darkness within her each day that passed by his side.
She missed the time before, the mild fear of strangers filling the streets she called home. She missed the starvation, even as her stomach lay empty she preferred it over the forced feeding, kept like an animal.
Like a pet.
She missed her freedom, even at the cost survival. (“Maybe death is better…that this?”) she thought as she waited for him to come.
She knew she couldn’t escape, she knew there was no hiding.
Every time he had found her, every time he had almost caught her, and several times she had escaped at the cost of other’s lives.
(“What’s the point anymore?”) She asked herself, (“I cannot run forever…”) she thought, pressing her forehead into her knees. Her feline ears hiding within her hair, also shivering, as her tail lay coiled up around her waist. The hair on both spiking up, like electricity was passing through her.