Starflame13
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The Captain snarled, muscles burning as she drove her slim dagger forward. Just before it plunged through the feathers, they parted. Crimson wings swept back to reveal the Parodist’s inhuman face. Nearly half a dozen eyes - wide and unblinking - bore into the revenant’s mismatched gaze. Her heart stuttered, breath freezing in her lungs -
- she choked on the smoke, gasping desperately for air. Raiders’ laughter echoed in the distance as the girl sprinted through the ravaged wharf, debris and wreckage painting unfamiliar angles onto the well-worn streets. Smog stung at her eyes, tears whipping free in the wind. Fire leapt from house to house, the encroaching blaze searing at her skin -
She growled, shoving panic aside as she drove the dagger forward. Her ship obeyed her will; her body would do the same, despite the bite of icy fear sinking its fangs into her soul. She glared at the demon, eyes locked on the steel of her blade as she plunged it deep into one scarlet eye -
- metal glinted in the thick smog, and the girl flung herself sideways. The raider’s blade carved through flesh; her scream tore her throat as steel ripped through her arm. The force flung her into a nearby stall, burning boards collapsing as she crumpled, sobbing, to the ground. The man laughed and moved on, ignoring the ragged, breathless retching as the girl choked on her own blood -
Scarlet ruptured from the punctured vessel, living flesh within the cracked porcelain yielding to the blade. A tide of blood gushed over her fingers, thick and warm, as her eyes widened and face twisted in horror. You bleed?! Unease boiled into dread and bloomed into terror; the Captain locked up in fear -
She screamed, raw and desperate. She screamed, furious and heartbroken. She screamed, her voice lost in the discordant cacophony of cries and wails. She screamed - unheard, and alone.
The Parodist shrieked, its shrill cry a constant churn of shattering glass, further driving the spikes of pain splitting through the Captain’s skull. Feathers snapped down to cover the devastation, blood staining the plumage and dripping down its exposed chin, scarlet teartracks against broken stone. It reeled backwards, massive club falling from its hands as it shoved itself away from the wraith. The Captain managed to stumble forward in its wake, unbalanced and shaking. Its shriek swelled, the demon raking its scarlet-tipped claws against its own face. It screamed -
And Miriam heard.
The woman staggered back half a step and pressed flesh fingers against her throbbing shoulder. She swayed in place, dragging air back into panic-stricken lungs and fixing her eyes on the sobbing demon. The surge of fear receded somewhat, her heartbeat still fast, but steadying. Phantom fingers loosened, blood-slick dagger slipping from her palm to clatter to the floor below. Tiles shuddered beneath them, marble rippling away from the epicenter of the battlefield as the great voices reverberated through her mind. Dismissed. The Parodist sobbed, its terror settling into horrified despair. It pressed its palms against its face and wailed, waves of pain and misery and fear - always fear - overlapping in bleeding and broken tones. Miriam knew those screams. They had come from her own throat. You’re… a child. She half turned, looking over her shoulder at the white orb, flecked with crimson, now falling from the scales. Dismissed. She swung back to face the weeping puppet. And now you’re alone. A flood of rainbow hues washed over them, Thorn’s own howl of anguish muffled behind the pillar of ice - but he didn’t matter. Not anymore. His life was spent.
The Parodist… hers could still be beginning.
Miriam took a limping step forward, foot brushing against her fallen cutlass, and pressed the swirling mists of her palm against a cracked porcelain hand. The puppet’s - the person’s - babble fell to an abrupt halt, and it - she - shivered at the touch. Carefully, gently, the wraith lowered their hands, using her flesh-and-blood fingers to push back the wings on the other side of the child’s face. Undamaged, glowing eyes blinked back at her.
This demon had nearly taken her heart. A soft growl built at the base of her throat, then softened away. The Captain had destroyed one of its eyes. A fair exchange. We’ll call it even.
“You called me beautiful.”
A storm was beautiful. A storm was also so much more - monstrous, terrifying, and destructive beyond measure. It ripped apart life and limb, drowned sailors and tore ships into shreds, but… none of that detracted from its sheer majesty. “All terrible things are beautiful.”
The Parodist stood before her, delicate porcelain chipped and cracked and covered in crimson stains. The heart - false or not - beat; uneven, sluggish, but alive. It was abhorrent and horrifying and wrong. Miriam snorted, looking from the false heart to her own swirling, ghostly limbs. Not so different after all, are we?
“That means you must be beautiful, too.”
Slim, ghostly fingers dropped from fractured ivory to the remaining pistols in her bandolier. She pulled one free, gradually, cautiously, her movements clearly on display to the child before her. Ephemeral whispers of white energy rippled along the barrel, thrumming and pulsing in time to the beat of her own heart. Miriam flipped the pistol in her hand and offered the grip to the Parodist. “Learn to walk your own path, child. There’s only so long you can copy mine.”
And she turned on her heel to face the remaining Knight of Chaos.
“Do you know what they call you in th’ ports, Captain?”
Miriam glanced over her shoulder at the sailor, his eyes sparking with admiration and a hint of awe beneath the flicker of his aura. Definitely the most energetic spirit she’d recruited in a while. She raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“They’re calling you a devil! A sea-devil! Th’ devil of th’ Crimson Sails!” He swung about on the rigging beneath said sails, thrilled to be serving on the ship of such a legend. “They say you’re gonna rule the waters one day! That no one can stop you!”
The Captain chuckled. “This sea already has a devil, boy. And I’m for sure not him.” She paused and blinked, turning away from the boisterous deckhand to gaze out over the horizon with a soft hum of thought. Could she be the devil? She’d copied his path, if nothing else. Followed in the footsteps of terrorizing the waters, of sinking ships and claiming sailors and calling storms for her own. But the devil controlled the sea in ways even she, with all her ships and storms, could not. Not yet.
The balance of power could shift. She’d proved that already, in binding sailors to herself rather than sending them to the depths. He couldn’t stop her from pushing it further.
The sea would only listen to one master.
Why shouldn’t it be her?
Miriam slid her hazy gaze across the shambles of the battlefield. Shards of ice littered the area about the pillars, and a few limping steps brought the goose into sight between them; its long neck bobbed dejectedly over the discarded shell of Thorn’s iron armor. Nothing left for you to eat, then? Crystal remnants surrounded the pair, their previous luminescence dulled to colorless stone beneath the scattering of snow-white feathers. Useless until the end. Fogged eyes narrowed to focus on the Knight of Disruption. Her lips tugged into a frown. While difficult to make out details, the avian looked ragged - more ragged than any seagull Miriam could remember. In some places it was almost bald, feathers drooping and dropping about it. A last gift from the behemoth after all. Her lip curled. He managed to tire you out. Still, it looked spry enough as it stretched its neck over the fallen armor, an icy mace swinging gracelessly in its beak. Some fight in you left for me, it seems. She bared her teeth. Good.
Fingers spasmed against her wound, a fresh wave of black blood seeping through wool and steel mesh as her frozen shoulder throbbed. Can’t trust the aim of either arm. Damn. Her eyes fell on the broken shards of crystal, and the ice threaded through them. A grin - pained, but solid, broke through her expression. But maybe I don’t need to.
Miriam dropped to one knee, reaching out her phantom hand to reclaim her cutlass. Fresh spasms shot through the aching muscles along her back and waist. She winced, curling into her side - and slipped her solid fingers from her shoulder to the grip of another pistol. Black ichor trickled down the side of her face as she raised her head, fixing the goose in the sight of her living eye. Looks like it's just you and me now, Ferdinand. The woman swung her pistol upwards, and a single sharp crack split the air. Whatever you are, I’m going to make sure it’s just me. The reverberations echoed, the only sound in the otherwise silent field, before the bullet slammed with a shattering boom into the pillar about the goose’s head. Ice groaned, fractures spreading in crackling webs along the structure before a great sheet sloughed off in a spray of snow and weapon shards, roaring down at the feathered form below. Miriam grinned even as the pillar mended itself anew. Let’s see if your soul is worth more than the one I let go, bird.
There were only a few left to collect, after all. She could afford to be a bit more selective.
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