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| Food for the Sea | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:14 am (227 Views) | |
| Javin | Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:14 am Post #1 |
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Deceptively strong fingers massaged their owner’s ears until the ringing stopped. The pressure was eased. He twisted his neck, stretching the muscles, and looked up at the grate with renewed fervor. His eyes had not changed, and yet they had. His flesh had lost all colour, and so had his hair. But his eyes…his eyes held the same golden glow that they always did. It was even brighter tonight, fueled by something only the fresh corpse lying at his bare feet could have given him. His eyes lowered to the crate just five feet away as his thoughts shifted suddenly, recalling all that had led to this moment. It had been easy, really, once he had been changed…once he had been turned. He had been wild, manic, half-mad with a desperate thirst that could only be sated in a manner he would have considered heinous had it not been for his situation. And the gibberish-speaking fool that had turned him…he had somehow conveyed to him how to focus his hearing, how to focus his eyes, and how to focus his nose. Every tenth word or less that came out of that old man’s mouth was intelligible, and so it had taken him a long time to learn how to control his new-found sense and master his new-found physical prowess. The crate had been like nothing to him, nigh weightless, once he had drunk his fill. And opening it…that had been even simpler. He had kept them healthy. He had kept them strong. Yet they planned no mutiny, for they were more cowardly than the rats that had at first fled from his presence. But now…he looked up at the grate. As time had passed and they had become more comfortable around him, they had begun to flock toward him. As the carnage was wrought night after night, his power growing and his control improving, the rats had begun to recognize him as chief among them. The whole time, the fool continued speaking his gibberish until he managed to say something that his “fledgling” could understand, and then he went right back to speaking gibberish. That was the only word that he could come up with for it: gibberish. It was a language unto itself, one for which he had no frame of reference. But he needed none. He understood enough now. He understood what he was and what he could do. The healthier the other prisoners had become, the more he had been able to take from them. The more he had been able to take from them, the more he had been able to build himself up. It would be no trouble at all now to simply throw the grate above him open, tearing the lock asunder and possibly even wrenching the grate itself from the hinges that bound it to the deck of the ship. But no…he would wait… The silence was deafening. The long hours were infuriating, knowing he could do so much and yet having to wait…but he knew that his time would come. This had to be done carefully. He was immortal now, but not entirely immune to the sea. The sea was his enemy, just as it always had been. He enjoyed the idea of the sea, the eternal challenge of man against the ocean, striving to conquer it, struggling to understand it, free from the constraints of law and able to forge his own order by the turn of the wind and the shifting of the waves…yet that, he now knew, would never come to pass. He did not belong upon the sea, and now that he had changed, he was completely out of his element. Yet he had advantages…many advantages…the least of them was the element of surprise. His patience paid off. The food had come, scraps left over from the crew’s personal stores. The prisoners weren’t even graced with the luscious bounty of the captain; they were taunted with the inedible hard tack and stale water that the slaves ate and drank. But that would soon change. He didn’t need food any longer. He didn’t need water. He certainly did not need to fear wounding. Stretching his body as the grate opened, he waited until the food had been dropped. The man was lowering the grate; this was his only chance. He crouched like a tiger and leapt like a frog, launching himself into the air with blinding speed. The grate was thrown open and the gaoler was thrown back; he was on the man before he could scream, tearing his throat apart, staining the burning salt of the water that sloshed incessantly onto the deck a deep crimson hue. He was only the first. The other came quickly. The fool was behind him, but the prisoners - what remained of them - had no interest in escaping. They knew it would only lead to death. The pair sought the night crew first, the ones patrolling the deck. But he knew there was one more dangerous than any other, and he climbed the mizzenmast with his nails. He approached the man slowly, a shadow creeping among the shadows, drawing ever-closer…closer…closer still…he was at the crow’s nest…he slipped over the side. The man was before him, a looking glass dangling lazily from his hands as he leaned over the railing. The sailor’s back was to him. He didn’t hear him approach. The looking glass fell. It had happened so quickly, and by the time the looking glass clattered against the deck far below, it was over. He rose to his feet once more and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. Looking over the railing, he saw someone stoop to pick up the looking glass. By the time he looked up to see why it had fallen, he had only time enough to register the sight of a black shape falling upon him. His eyes were soon forever frozen in a perpetual gaze of terror that saw this world no more. One by one, they fell - and then two by two. And then the alarm was raised. Someone had found a body. The ship erupted into chaos: men running; shouts dancing upon the air beneath the starry sky; weapons drawn. The captain himself stepped outside to see what the commotion was, yet it was quickly lost in a sea of sailors all rushing for the monster that had begun slaughtering their brethren. He saw them coming toward him, yet he felt no fear. He knew only rage, and he bared his newly elongated canines at the men. They slowed, some of them, but they did not stop. That was their downfall. Now they did not fall one by one. Now, they came to him and fell in droves. He moved to fast, cast their weapons aside, and tore them apart with strength that they could not match. He tore bolts from his shoulders, his arms, his legs, his chest…and as he sank his lips into the flowing sea of red, he felt the wounds close and the pain recede. It was an ebb and flow of burning and cooling, like the choppy waters that surrounded him. He leapt over the first chunk of lead to be fired at him, and then something less substantial was loaded into the cannon. He darted to the side as he ran, feeling the searing heat pass him. It only spurred him on more. He was ravenous, half-mad, and unstoppable. When he tore a hole through the deck itself, he grabbed the captain and threw him down into it. Then he leapt after him. They were in the weapons room, where all of the ammunition was. The other followed him down, laughing like a hyena. Chaos reigned above, people desperate to escape the monsters that had assaulted them. But in this room, only one thing mattered: ending this here and now. The captain’s blade drew many deep lines of red across the flesh of the two men…yet they were not really men anymore, were they? No…they were something far worse. The captain finally got in a good, clean, slice with which to behead the other, much to the fool’s last-minute shock and horror. It did not matter. He kept coming. He got hold of the captain and sank his teeth into him; the captain cried out. He did not care. But the captain had to slice off a chunk of his own arm to get free, and he roared in pain as much as he screamed in terror now. He flailed wildly, desperate to keep the monster back, and ended up skewering the other’s severed skull upon his blade. The captain attacked still, striking a spark; something nearby began to boil as soon as the spark reached it. It burst into flames, and the momentary distraction was all he needed. He launched himself at the captain, taking all that he could from him as the room burned. And then everything exploded. He fought through the flames, burst out of the wreckage, and found himself amid an abyssal abomination of a ship. The fire was everywhere now, the scorched planks and flaming corpses moving about in all directions, violently and without pause. Chaos no longer reigned; now, it danced in merriment and cackled with glee. Another explosion, and he was thrown to the deck. Another, and he was rolling across it. A third, and all he knew was fire. Then he knew fire and water. He swam to the surface, yet he was pushed down by the weight of the hull. He escaped its burden and swam again, only to be pushed down once more. A final explosion reached through the water itself, boiling it - and boiling him. So much blood…so much fire…he rebelled even at the moment of his apparent demise, defying death with his new-found power, raging against his would-be end! How had so much gone so completely wrong so very quickly? He had craved freedom, he had sought power, and he had earned only eternal damnation. But no. No, he would not die, not here, not now, not ever! He punched and tore through the shrapnel, climbing his way through the piece of the ship as they collided with him, until at last his head broke the surface of the water. Before him, the destruction was absolute. Clinging to a fragment of the hull that had yet to become too heavy for the sea to carry, he watched as the two largest pieces of the ship fragmented into a third. Ablaze and crumbling, the thick smoke rising to blacken the night sky, the ship was a ship no longer. It was now merely a memory, as were the lives of those that had once been aboard. How long he watched, he did not know. But others had survived, few though they were. He made his plans, then and there. A piece of the foremast had survived, the half-burned sail wrapped about it. He knew that corpses would become engorged in death, rising to the surface of the water because of the building gas inside them; it was called bloat-and-float, though he knew not why. What he did know was that if the gas was released all of a sudden, it would propel the body forward. He had seen it happen, watched as the corpses of those the captain had murdered and thrown overboard sped by the ship from time to time after being hit with then-withdrawn spears from the laughing officers. His floaters were before him, waiting to be slain and used to send him to the shore of whatever land he was closest to. Perhaps they would only last so long. Perhaps they would never get him anywhere near land, wet or dry. But it was as much their karma as his own, and their time had come. One of them spied him staring, and his eyes locked with the mortal’s. There was no mistaking the looks that were exchanged: one of murder, one of terror. Their time had come…and so had his. Edited by Javin, Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:06 pm.
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7:31 PM Jul 11

