by Eric Vall
The minting on the coin was like none I’d ever seen, and the language written around the sides was one I wasn’t familiar with. The coin was minted only on one side, and the other was completely smooth as I ran my fingertips over its surface. The single stamped side held a swirling mass of what looked like tails, ones similar to Rana’s but from the tiny details, I couldn’t exactly tell. The inscription and words held no meaning to me, but I felt the need to find out what they meant. I stared down at it for a long time as if the answer would magically reveal itself to me. The power coming off the coin was strong, but it felt alien to me, not a god’s but not a human’s presence either.
“Strange,” Morrigan whispered over my shoulder, and I glanced up at her as I held the coin out to the elven woman.
“You feel it too?” I inquired as she took the coin and flipped it over in the palm of her hand.
“What is it?” the pale-woman asked as she lifted the coin and examined the pressing on the one side.
“The power coming off it feels dulled somehow. It resembles a god’s, but it feels…off.” I thoughtfully said as I reached out and stroked the smooth back of the coin in Morrigan’s hand.
“What does the inscription say?” the elven woman asked while she squinted down at the letterings. “I’ve never seen this language before.”
“Lemme see,” Rana stated as she held out a paw for the coin and Morrigan dropped it in. The redhead studied it for a moment, turning the small copper object over in her paw then shrugged. “Dunno, I know a few snippets of other languages, but this one is bizarre.”
“Hey!” Carmedy cried as she peered over the fox’s shoulder and grabbed at the coin. “That’s Old Nekolian! I know how to translate it!”
The redhead handed it over to Carmedy, and the feline turned it over in her paws as she scanned the words. Carmedy’s eyebrows furrowed as she mouthed the words then looked to me with confusion written all over her face.
“What does it say?” I questioned as I stood from my kneeling position and came to stand in front of the petite alchemist.
“It’s pretty archaic and doesn’t make any sense,” Carmedy started as she handed back the coin. “But it says, ‘An old fox understands the trap.’ What does that mean, Master?”
I thought for a moment, there were infinite meanings behind this single saying, and I wondered in what context this would fit. It could mean literally or figuratively, either of those was possible in this situation. I leaned more towards the literal sense, this coin and the strange power pouring from it were probably a hoax, or even worse a trap. I flipped the coin in the air, and it turned three times before it landed in my open palm. I closed it in a fist then brought it up close to my face as I let the strange power wash over my whole being. It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on and why the person had placed their magic into such an insignificant object.
“Wait, did you say fox? An old fox understands the trap?” Rana asked as she perked up.
I opened up my hand and stared down at the insignia on the coin. I’d been correct to assume that the sigil placed in the metalwork were fox tails. I raised my head towards the cowering pirates tied to the mast and quickly crossed to them. I knelt down beside one of the pirates and held the coin tightly in my fist. The man looked to be about thirty, his face sunken in and sunburned, but the green eyes that stared out from his thin face were sharp and alive. I flipped the coin once then snatched it out of the air. I held it up in front of his face, and he glanced between the copper coin and me as he raised his eyebrows.
“Where did you get this?” I questioned, and the pirate looked at the coin for a long moment before he answered.
“You’re not gonna want to go there,” The pirate answered in a hoarse voice, and I blinked at him slowly. “Your women might be safe, but you, no, no man can enter into that beast’s lair and survive. We lost twenty-five good men in an instant to that creature.”
“Good men?” Rana scoffed as she went back to the trunks full of gold. “My ass!”
“I’m not afraid of any man nor beast,” I told him in a firm voice. “Where did you get this coin?”
“I’m warning you now, matey; you don’t want to go there, in fact, you may want to sail in the opposite direction in case its powers git ya.” The pirate spat as his lip curled in disgust, and I felt my patience wearing thin. I could easily read his mind for the answer, but I didn’t need to and would not tolerate his insolence
“If you won’t tell me,” I growled as I stood and looked off to the side of the ship’s hull where a small rowboat was anchored. “Then you will die.”
The pirate’s mouth hung slack as I growled deep in the back of my throat. I slammed both hands forward. My thumbs pushed into the sockets of his eyes, and the pirate howled in pain as he tried to wrench my hands free. I pressed even harder as my thumb flattened the outside of his cornea and sunk into the body of the eye. His screams rose higher in my ears as my fingers encircled his head and pressed in the hard shell of the back his skull. I pushed my thumbs in deeper and felt the tips of them hit the back of his eye socket then smash through into the brain cavity. His skull cracked under my hands, and blood poured from his eyes and down my hands.
His voice was hoarse, and his breath smelled like rotting flesh, but I ignored it as I tensed my hands and pulled. The sounds that came next were the mixture of wet squelches of his flesh tearing and his bones cracking. Droplets of blood flecked my face, and the tied up pirates around us screamed in horror and attempted to wriggle away.
The skin of his forehead stretched and pulled as the bone underneath splintered and cracked from my unearthly strength. More splattered up onto my face as his scalp tore like a seam, and the bone underneath split in half like a cored apple. I let go finally and pulled my thumbs out of his eye sockets. In one swift movement, I gripped his membrane encased brain and ripped it free of the spinal cord. The organ tore free, and I held it aloft for all of the pirates to see. Their yellow eyes stared up at it with gaped mouths, and I let the brain fall to the wet, dirty deck. I stamped on it with the heel of my boot, and the grey matter squished out underneath the sides as I stalked closer.
I leaned in close to the pirate that looked to be the new leader of the group, and he pulled away from me in fear. His wide eyes were huge, and his mouth stammered for words. The lead pirate’s back slammed against the mast they were tied to, and he searched for any means of escape from me, but there was none. I gripped the coin in my hand and held it up in front of his face.
“Show me where you got this from or face a death worse than his,” I snarled as I pointed towards the slumped over corpse tied next to him. “Can you do that?”
“Y-yes, we will take you there!” the leader cried shakily as he nodded his head. “P-please, we’ll do whatever you ask!”
“Good,” I grinned wolfishly, and the lead pirate closed his eyes frightened and pressed himself against the wood of the mast. I stood and turned towards the captain and the portly man reeled back. “These fools are going to take one of our rowboats and lead us there, we are going to follow.”
“Yes, Master!” the captain shouted in a frightened voice as he hurried away towards the helm.
The crew of the charter ship lowered a small rowboat into the water as I’d ordered them. It was large enough for all of the pirate prisoners, and they would lead us to the cove where they’d found the coin. I personally hauled the leader down by his bound wrists and placed him directly in the bow. When I slammed him down in the front bench, he hadn’t glared at me as I’d expected, but instead, his eyes were filled with immense fear.
He didn’t break the contact the entire time I tied off his hands to the bench, and as I listened, his heart beat wildly. This man was petrified by what he’d seen in, what he’d described as, ‘the cove of the demon spirit.’ Lucky enough for him, I’d once been the god of the Underworld and demons were no match to me, but I could tell from the power emanating off the coin, we were dealing with no de
mon.
I stood on the deck of the charter ship and glared down at the five pirates in the tiny bobbing rowboat in front of us. I clamped onto them with a steel grip and forced their bodies into motion. The pirate’s limbs lifted from the benches where they were tied and grabbed onto the oars of the small boat. I urged them forward in motion, and the boat slowly took off as I concentrated on the place in the leader’s mind. I caught snippets of it, a place that I didn’t recognize bathed in swirling royal blues, magentas and the burning amber of lanterns bobbing in the night. I pushed their bodies toward it, and the boat and our ship cut across the water faster than ever before.
The sky was the color of cornflower, and if the white clouds dotting across it weren’t there, there’d be no telling where sky stopped, and the ocean began. The journey across the sea was quiet for the most part, and I could tell that all of the pirates on board were terrified of me and the powers I wielded. My minions spoke to each other in quiet tones behind me on deck, and their voices comforted me more than I ever knew. I glanced back at them and smiled to myself to see Rana reclined herself back so that her head lay in Annalise’s lap. The swordswoman softly stroked the redhead’s ears and hair as she talked to her sisters. Morrigan sat next to Annalise with her pale hands folded in her lap, and for a moment, I wondered how her colorless skin hadn’t burned under the hot sun yet. The elven woman caught my eye, and she stared at me for a second as she thought, then her plump lips spread into the smallest of smiles as she tucked a strand of her white hair behind an ear. Carmedy crouched precariously on the wooden railing of the helm and riffled through the small box. The feline muttered to herself every once in awhile and only lifted her head to interject in the conversation.
“Oh, what do we have here?” the feline giggled to herself as she lifted a black coil from the box. “Oh-ho-ho, looky here.”
The petite alchemist unfurled the coil in her hands as she gripped the leather handle. Her emerald eyes widened once she realized what the instrument was. A wicked smile passed over her lips as she jumped from the railing and raced towards the front of the ship. The cat-girl pressed herself against the railing, threw her hand back, and launched the whip forward. The crack resounded in my ears and the long tail of the whip licked at the backs of the pirates. The prisoners jumped and peeked over their slumped shoulders at the feline. From the glint in her eye, I could tell that deep down, Carmedy enjoyed that sadistic feeling. The alchemist’s hand came back again and brought the whip down, this time it hit the back of the closest pirate, and he yelped in pain.
Carmedy’s short black hair blew back from her face as she smirked and brought the whip down for a third time, I noticed a difference in the speed of the pirate’s rowboat that wasn’t caused by my power forcing them along. The pirate prisoners were afraid of the petite woman, and in a strange way, it aroused me to see her like this. Her lips were pulled back against her teeth as she lifted a mighty cry into the air and let the whip fly, this time it hit a prisoner in the shoulder, and he howled but didn’t let go of the oar in fear. Her huge, emerald eyes sparkled and glowed as she leaned into the next crack of the whip and cackled as it made contact again.
“Row faster or else there’ll be no dessert for the lot of you!” the feline cried into the open sky, and Rana snorted and rolled her eyes.
“I don’t think these guys need dessert, pussycat, maybe some oranges and some good moisturizer.” The redhead laughed to herself.
Rana’s words didn’t deter the cat-girl. In fact, Carmedy didn’t react at all, just kept whipping and shouting at the pirates to go faster and surprisingly, they obeyed. I had no sense of direction out here, but I knew we were close to the islands. I sensed out the memories of the lead pirate and I followed them like a bloodhound on a trail. The closer we got, the more vivid the memories became, and soon, I felt like I was fully submerged in them as if I were the one reliving them.
I sunk into the body of the lead pirate as he steered a group of four boats into a darkened cove. It was night, but the watery space was lit by bobbing lanterns pressed into the walls and rock. There was an eerie sense of comfort there, and it immediately set me on edge. The rock tunnel we traveled through opened up, and I felt something come over me, or the pirate leader at least. A wave of warmth and affection, the same way I felt around my minions, but this was different, this feeling felt forced, imposed upon me. The leader’s eyes went blurry around the edges, and it took me a moment to realize that he was crying with emotion. I wagered that all of these pirates hadn’t felt this way in a very long time. I could barely make out the structure in front of me through the leader’s blurry eyes as he tried to choke back sobs but failed miserably. The other pirates didn’t seem to mind or notice because they were also struck by the overwhelming emotion as they rowed closer.
I couldn’t see the actual structure, but from the shadows and shapes, I could tell that whatever it was, it was massive. The cove was rounded and completely closed off to anything else, and the building in front of us floated freely through the deep, black water. Part of the rock above our heads had eroded away and exposed the velvety blue-black sky dotted with twinkling stars, and it only added to the oddly romantic aura that wafted around our group.
Lilting laughter reached my ears as the boats floated over to a small wooden dock, and the men around me stood and got up onto the walkway stiffly as if they were being controlled. I followed after with unfocused eyes as the scent of black currant and violet assaulted my nostrils.
The smell was cloying and heavy here, and as we got closer to what seemed to be the entrance, it only got thicker. The amber lights in the water were merely fuzzy blobs of light almost like fireflies dancing in the darkness, but as I passed through the broken and jig-sawed boards of the entrance, the lights went out with a mad cackle of laughter.
His memories veered off, broken by some strange blackness that I attempted to break my way through but only shredded in my desperation to see. What came next was even blurrier than the ones before. I was breathing hard and running in choking darkness.
In the distance, I heard the voices of my comrades, and though they laughed loudly, it sounded forced and saturated with madness. My boots slammed against the wooden floor, but the journey down was steep and uneven as if the entire structure was hastily built. The feeling that permeated this place was like hands grabbing at my back and pulling me to the nexus I’d just been trapped in.
The leader pushed forward and stumbled on a jarred step. His descent was fast and painful, and I felt it all throughout my avatar as he fell. He landed and slid at the bottom of the steps, then crawled towards the dim light on the other side of the entrance. Some of his men followed after, and their boots clattered against the wooden stairs just as fast and precariously.
I could feel the presence chasing after them, the body may have been small, but the being inside was massive. The leader finally got his feet under him and scrambled towards the closest boat as he panted for air. He glanced over his shoulder, and I caught a glimpse of flashing red, then it was gone.
I pulled myself away from the memory and blinked in the bright sunlight. I raised my head and made eye contact with the lead pirate as he stared over his shoulder. His eyes were still wide and sharp with fear as he pleaded with me silently to turn the boat around. From the wear and tear on his face and body, he’d seen and done a lot of violent things but whatever he’d witnessed in that cove shook him to his core. His eyes were watering even now, but I felt no pity for him. He was a pirate, and he’d attempted to kill us, and I was going to personally hand him to the beast he feared the most in that cove.
Chapter Six
We traveled most of the day with the pirates guiding us closer to the cove I saw in the leader’s mind. Right as the sun began to set and streaked the sky different shades of yellow and orange, we spotted an island in the distance. The island wasn’t very large, and from our distance away, I could make out the smooth surface of the tan beach and the high olive-colored lea
ves of the treetops. The entrance to the cove was a large cave mouth and made from eroded volcanic rock.
I was able to see faraway lights in the darkness of the entrance and knew that we, or any other lost traveler, were meant to find it. It was a beacon of some sort, and even from a distance, that strange warm feeling washed over my being in waves. The pirates in front of me shifted uneasily, and I knew that they felt it too. I glanced back at my minions, but they didn’t seem to sense it. The lead pirate told me that my women would be safe there, and I understood that whatever creature waited for us inside wasn’t out for women but only men.
I didn’t smell the salty air of the sea anymore, but instead the same scent I’d smelled in the leader’s mind. The fragrant black currant and violet were heavy in the air, and I felt like it was choking me off, but that wasn’t an accurate description of what it was doing. Whatever waited inside of the cove was desperately trying to get into my mind like the illusion goddess from so long ago. It’d worked on the lowly pirates, but it wouldn’t work on me. If they wanted to take over me and my avatar’s body, it would have to try a lot harder than that.
The pirates rowed slower the closer we got, and Carmedy’s whip came down harder as her expression soured. We’d traveled at a break-neck speed most of the way there, and now we were barely above a crawl as we cut through the azure water. The lead pirate turned halfway in his seat, his hands still tied and holding the oar with white-knuckles.
His eyes pleaded with me even from our distance apart, this time with more desperation than ever before. I felt the fear deeply rooted in his soul. I flicked my eyes away from his as I gripped tightly onto the minds of the pirates and forced the oars into the water once again. I pushed them harder, and I could feel the strain in their arms and backs, but I ignored it. Their pain was nothing to me, and if anything, I wanted them to feel as much agony in their limbs before we reached the cove.
