Chapter Four: The Storm Still Rages
Written by Ethan
The crimson woman stood silently in the cold water, blinded by an all-consuming darkness that stuck to her like ink. She took a few slow, careful steps forward, her heart beating so hard she thought it might burst from her chest. She blinked several times, desperate for her eyes to catch the faintest bit of light and guide her away from the chamber. Was it truly that dark, or had the intensity of the vision actually blinded her?
The curiosity that had propelled her toward the carnelian sphere had dissipated, and in its place came an overwhelming sense of dread...Fear. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be afraid, but now it seemed to fuel her every thought and action. The sensation was simultaneously uncomfortable and comforting, like a dislocated shoulder being popped back into place.
Throughout her many journeys her body had always been protected, but it had come with a price. She had been the lone survivor in too many horrific events, emerging unscathed...untouched. When such an outcome occurs once, it’s considered good luck. Twice: a miracle. But after dozens of unexplainable survivals, rumors began to cast shadows on the fortunate one. The crimson woman went from being a sought-after travel companion to a bad omen, then a pariah, and finally, a recluse. As she retreated further and further from society, her emotions followed suit. She eventually found solace in separation, but had lost much in return. Friendships. Commiseration. Even basic sensations. Fear had now reintroduced itself into her life, and she couldn’t help but wonder what else the vision had shifted inside of her.
The crimson woman did not know how much time had passed since the prophetic vision had brought her to her knees, and she feared what she might find when she emerged from beneath the Aquine statue - if she was able to emerge at all. She found it increasingly difficult to concentrate, to imagine herself retracing her steps back out of the cavern. Her mind whipped back and forth like palm leaves in the incessant storm up above on Koa. She stopped moving and slowly inhaled, letting the damp air of the cavern fill her lungs, then blew the air out deliberately through her nose, repeating the steps until her brain corralled the panicked fragments that whirled within her head.
Once her mind calmed and breathing became controlled, her resolve followed suit. She recreated the image of the room through her memories, aided by her newly re-functioning senses, until each detail came into focus and she could approximate where she was and where she needed to go. She continued moving forward, slightly adjusting her direction to align with the barely perceptible flow of air that could only come from the passageway that had led her to the sphere. After a long series of over-cautious steps, she reached out and felt her finger tips dance along the surface of the ornate, arched exit of the chamber. Relief washed over her as she stepped forward and began to ascend the long tunnel that would lead to the outside world.
It wasn’t until the crimson woman was roughly three-fourths of the way through the cavern's passageway that her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, aided by the softest glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Seeing it, she was pleased to discover that her vision was still intact, as was the barrier protecting her body. These were small reassurances though, as the reality of the dying world above and her foretold fate still plagued her every thought.
Eventually, the crimson woman arrived back at the mouth of the cavern and crawled through the same small gap in the rocks where she had originally entered. It seemed surprisingly bright outside - surely a side effect of having been submerged in complete blackness for so long. But as she looked toward the sunken Aquine city, she realized that the light actually was more intense than it had been when she first arrived, with distant details and structures coming into focus much more clearly than before. She looked up towards the sky and saw that the dark cloud cover had receded and the sun was breaking through, a dwindling shaft of light faintly illuminating her surroundings. The storm had passed, at least in her current location.
This was a promising turn of events, though a brighter day didn't make her journey back to Koa any less urgent. She quickly moved to the Shelf's edge, just behind the statue, and began stepping upwards, her ascension far quicker than her descent as she practically bounded up towards the top of the cliff. The crimson woman had never really doubted herself before, but the vision of her death and the loss of her powers had felt so real, so tactile. She found herself flinching a little with every step, worried that her powers could give out and send her back to the sea floor in a broken heap.
Once she reached the top, the crimson woman paused to take in her surroundings. The storm had in fact receded, but not entirely. Above her the sky was still partly cloudy, but clearing extremely fast, as if something was pulling the clouds through the sky on a fishing line. She followed the direction they were moving and realized that the storm was now concentrated far to the east, in the direction of Koa. The distant clouds were a shade of dark gray spiked with purplish veins. They seemed to sprawl out across the sky, pulsating like a spider slowly moving in for the kill. This sky was deeply ominous. The crimson woman feared there would be nothing left of Koa when she finally arrived.
She hoped the villagers had thought to move inland, towards the mountainous terrain dominated by boko groves. A primordial tree, the boko was a robust species that could survive even the harshest weather patterns. It was hearty enough to persist through fire and could even grow through rock. While each tree was an individual life form, the boko grew tightly packed together, their branches and root systems intertwining to create a sort of colony which allowed them to support younger saplings or allow older trees to live well past the age of similar plants. This benefited the people of Koa, as they could collect wood and nuts from the trees without killing the individual plant, as long as they were careful. The boko also acted as a natural barrier from storms and invaders in the north and west. It protected the people of Koa, fed them, and supplied them, and thus was deeply revered. Boko trees were there before the first Callans arrived, and they would still be there whenever they left.
Unfortunately, most Koans had never traveled much farther inland than the outer perimeter of the jungle, as the denseness of the tree cover meant that natural pathways created by boko groves were the only means of traversing the area. It was futile trying to make your way through any area the boko didn’t actively permit you to travel. Perhaps these reinforced pathways would protect the Koans from the storm, but no one on the island - even the crimson woman - was entirely sure of which creatures called the deepest boko tunnels home. Rumors of strange horrors had circulated the village since settlers first landed, half-truths birthed from hearsay and the crude etchings of peoples long forgotten.
The crimson woman hastened her pace, her feet gliding just above the sandy surface of the ground, eyes locked on the monstrous force swirling above her home. As she drew closer, the boundary of sunlight began to fade, and a few droplets of rain began to streak off her barrier. Instinctively, she reached out her left hand to block the rain from her line of sight. A single drop struck her fingertip and rolled languidly and unimpeded down to the palm of her hand.
She stopped, frozen, glaring at the raindrop as it made its way to her wrist before finally breaking off and falling to the ground. She held out her hand again, feeling the drops hit, the cool sensation of water against bare skin. The fear from the cavern rushed back, seizing her; the sensation of drowning from the vision. It was beginning. Something inside of her had shifted in that cavern, and her power was compromised.
She looked down. Her feet still held her above the surface. No drops struck anywhere else on her body. She held out her hand again, and this time the drops pattered off the invisible field as before. The crimson woman had never known her barrier to behave in such an erratic way, even in times of exhaustion or illness, though those instances were rare and even more rarely concerning.
There is no time for this, she thought, pushing the fear to the edges of her mind and continuing towards Koa again at newfound speed. Her pace quickened as she plunged herself headlong into the unknown. As she moved, she focused her mind on her steps, counting each one aloud as if concentration was a means of guaranteeing their functionality. But before long, she began to feel the sort of fatigue one experiences after reading an interesting but overly-dense tome for too long, and without warning the field below her right foot gave way, sending her tumbling into a sand dune. As she fell, the barrier covering the rest of her body protected her from the impact, though the force sent her sailing through the air and onto her back a few meters away.
She heard a sound like cracking glass, and suddenly the ground fell out from beneath her and she was plummeting into the darkness below. This time she felt the impact squarely across her back, the breath rushing from her lungs the moment she struck a hard, metallic surface.
The crimson woman lay motionless, watching sand cascade through the opening her body had just burst through the ocean floor. The falling sand hit her body's barrier and slid off until there were small, equally-sized piles on either side of her. She moved her hands through each pile and the sand repelled off without touching the tips of her fingers. As she did this, the barrier on her torso seemed to disengage, and the sand that had been bouncing off her body now began to pile up on top of her. She switched her focus from her hands back to her body again and the field reacted accordingly, causing streams of sand to slide from her chest. She tried to silence her mind completely, focusing in on her breathing and heart rate as she had done to calm herself in the pitch-black cavern. The barriers disappeared entirely.
Pulling herself out and away from the ever-growing sand mound, the crimson woman scuttled back but found her movement impeded by a firm-but-soft object a short distance back. The initial pain from the fall had dulled now, as her body was robust even without the invisible fields, but she was still breathing heavily, finding it increasingly difficult not to slip back into the pool of dread that had consumed her just a few hours before.
Aside from stepping through the air, the fields that covered her body were always involuntary reactions. Perhaps she'd grown so accustomed to them that they were like breathing, activating and deactivating with such minute focus that she simply didn't notice. Regardless, the process had never been anything so cumbersome before; the strain now seemed to grow more intense every time she attempted to activate them. When she had left the island to try and find the edge of the water, she never could have imagined the journey might be dangerous. Not for her. And yet, brushing that clotted sand from her chest, the crimson woman was slowly but surely being forced to come to grips with the reality that her barriers could no longer be relied upon. Not until she had a better understanding of her current condition.
The sand had finally stopped pouring in through the opening, which she now recognized as a window. She’d fallen through glass, into the interior of a vessel that had been claimed by the ocean floor. She looked around, the scant bit of light coming through giving her a limited view of her surroundings, and realized the object she was leaning against was a chair with heavy leather straps. There was another chair situated just above it. The vessel had come to rest on its side, and from her perspective the chairs appeared as if they were attached to the wall, not the floor.
She turned the direction the chairs were facing and found a console with an array of gauges, buttons, and a large wheel covered in animal fur. She stepped forward, noticing a switch in the off position with the word Auxiliary in faded white paint. She flipped the switch and the vessel puttered, popped, and then whirred to life, illuminating the interior in a bright yellow light.
With this, the crimson woman immediately recognized that she was in a military scout vessel - a mid-sized craft she was surprised to see this far away from the Central Isles. It was an older model, repurposed and introduced back into service after the latest technology restrictions were voted upon by the Capital Islands council. Explained to the populous as a means of stifling the trade of illegal relics, it was a vastly unpopular decision, one that further alienated the people's ability to live beyond the main grouping of islands.
Regardless of where it had crashed, the scouting craft was in surprisingly decent condition. She assumed that the pilot must have landed during the storm or just before, the wind perhaps catching the slowly deflating canvas balloon and dragging the vessel onto its side, where it was sucked beneath the sand. For a crashed ship, everything looked normal inside, save the missing crew. She found supply packs still attached inside the small shelving units, as well as a wall of lockers filled with uniforms and body armor. This place was fully stocked.
As she continued exploring, the crimson woman noticed that the ground towards the rear of the ship was littered with what looked like petrified wood of varying colors, sizes, and shapes. While most of it was of a dark-blue-gray color, she also saw chunks of black, brown, peach, and deep red. Some pieces were a combination of all of the colors; others seemed to lack color altogether, a dull, lifeless grey. The walls and floors also appeared to worsen in condition the further back into the vessel she walked, with dark scorch marks, scratches, and dents pockmarking the surfaces.
The crimson woman knelt down to inspect one of the large, strange chunks that was situated near the rear door of the craft. It was dark shade of brown, roundish in shape and split down the middle, revealing an ornate pattern of pink and maroon like a geode beneath stone. She picked up the object and turned it over, recoiling and dropping it the instant she realized what she was holding. The petrified head fell onto the ground with a thud, breaking into four pieces, one of which stared up at her with a cold, frozen eye. The mouth stayed intact, forever releasing a muted scream.
This vessel was a tomb. The crimson woman rose to her feet and started back for the opening she'd fallen through, but stopped before exiting to rummage through the lockers and supply shelves for anything useful. As she expected, bags she'd noticed before were filled with essential supplies: food, medicine, flares, and an assortment of tools. She pulled one onto her back and started to leave, when four large containers caught her eye, each marked with a black chevron. She walked over and opened them up one by one. Three of the four still held suits of lightweight body armor used by Isorropia units, but the last locker was empty. This ship wasn’t on any routine scouting mission if an Iso team was on board.
The crimson woman debated pulling on one of the suits for added protection, but stopped when she recalled that they were designed specifically for the individual soldier, and would merely slow her down. Instead, she decided to put on a normal scouting uniform under her cloak, though doing so made her feel weak - and worse still - mortal. She didn’t like it, but with all her current second-guessing regarding her powers, she appreciated the peace of mind. The flame- and cut-resistant material ought to give her a bit of added protection until she could figure out what was happening with her barriers.
As she made her way up the pile of sand and out of the vehicle, the crimson woman noticed the sky above was clear again, completely absent of cloud cover. The air itself felt drier, the sun hotter, as if she'd emerged into a desert. She looked to the east. The foreboding storm was still visible over the horizon, though it had retracted and concentrated considerably since she'd fallen into the ship.
She hurried forward, her eyes locked on the violent clouds that threatened the place she called home. The closer she got, the more the crimson woman noticed the peculiar movement of the storm and the sudden glimmers of pale, purple light that peaked from breaks in the turbulent chaos. The storm looked as if it was swirling around a central object, like a snake slowly sliding up the trunk of a tree. Objects of varying sizes, too distant to make out with any real clarity, followed the serpentine storm along this path until they disappeared into the sky, awash in oily darkness.
At the edge of the island, the crimson woman found a shimmering barrier surrounding the entire perimeter, obscuring its view from the outside. What had seemed from a distance like heavy, concentrated rainfall was something else entirely; almost the opposite in reality. The rain had stopped falling and instead hung in the air and slowly lurched upward, creating a wall of water. She plowed through a liquid curtain, holding her breath and getting more and more soaked with every step. After several slow meters, she broke through the other side and was greeted with a panorama of sheer devastation.
The long pier where she'd begun her journey - or what was left of it - came into view, and the landscape around it was unrecognizable. The storm had shattered the shoreline: obliterated bits of fishing huts, boats, and trees strewn about in all directions. But this seemingly natural destruction was punctuated by a force that was entirely unnatural. Across the horizon, gaping holes in the ground that glowed like amethyst were slowly pulling in everything around them and spewing debris into the sky to be consumed by the storm overhead. Koa was being torn apart from the inside out.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the odd phenomenon encapsulating the island was that it was unnervingly quiet; the storm above quaking and churning and distant rumbles were the only sounds that could be heard. The great purple holes themselves, despite their slow consumption of the world around them, were disconcertingly muted, buzzing softly like a bulb left on for too long.
Before moving forward any farther, the crimson woman tested her barriers again. This time she was able to activate her entire body at the same time, though the effect wore off after only a few seconds. She tried again, aching to sustain the effect, but it faded in moments. She'd have to time her usage carefully, and there was even the chance that she could use up whatever stores of energy she had entirely; there was no way to know until it was too late. With the waters receded, Koa sat well above the ground where she now stood. Hesitant to ascend used her powers, she decided to climb up the old-fashioned way.
Using the remnants of the dock, the crimson woman was able to make it halfway up quite easily. A boat, still hanging to a mooring, aided the rest of her climb. She pulled herself up onto the harbor and slowly walked towards the main gates of the village, scanning for survivors and any immediate signs of danger.
The Aquine hovels that lay between the harbor and village were decimated, and the sight of it made her heart sink. A lone upright building near a spacious herb garden was the only indication that anyone would have ever called the area home. She hoped the Callans had opened the gates for them, but as she ventured further inland, the Aquine’s fate became gruesomely clear. Beneath the collapsed roof of their makeshift temple, the largest and sturdiest building they had constructed, a large number of motionless green forms could be seen amongst the rubble. Her head dropped as she passed, realizing the building was now a mausoleum for the last Aquine of Koa.
The Callans themselves were outcasts from the mainland - how could they not see their own plight in the lives of the Aquine? Her mind raced with alternate pasts: If she had been there, she could have done something! Maybe she could have changed the outcome...but for how long? This island was coming apart at the seams. Perhaps a quick death was better than living on borrowed time from the demonic storm that raged above.
Movement near the herb garden caught her attention, and she looked up to see a small form peeking up over a broken fence. She called out to it.
“Is someone there?”
They poked their head up, and she immediately noticed the soft shimmer of light reflecting off green-hued skin.
The figure darted off towards the main village, keeping a wide berth of the otherworldly wounds in the ground. The crimson woman followed in pursuit, her natural speed no match for any being on the island, with or without the aid of her barriers. She caught up to the stranger right before they reached the great boko wood wall that surrounded the main area of the Koan settlement. As she put her hand out, the stranger squealed and dropped to the ground, covering their head and face.
“Please, don't hurt me!” the Aquine boy shrieked, shaking uncontrollably.
“I am not going to hurt you young one.”
“I don't believe you! You hurt the others! Please, leave me alone!”
The crimson woman knelt down beside the boy and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The skin beneath his shirt felt unnaturally hard, then she noticed his forearms and face had formed patches of hardened, bark-like growth that slowly crept across his skin.
“I am sorry child, but I don’t understand what you mean. I have just arrived back to the village...I am not responsible for what has happened here.”
The young Aquine looked up at her through misty eyes, anger building behind bright, golden irises.
“I saw it,” he said, sniffling. He sat up, placing his head into his hands and sobbed uncontrollably.
“Saw what?”
“I saw you destroy the temple, you and the other Touched.”
“Wait, the storm did not do this?”
He shook his head, “No, the rain and winds stopped days ago, though the sky is still scary and dark. The red people did this.”
“You must be mistaken,” she said, shaking her head. “I am alone in this world. There are no others like me.”
“Not anymore.” He pointed towards the main gates of the village, then stood up and scampered off.
She watched the boy as he moved away, his movements growing stiffer, his speed slowing until he stopped altogether. With his last movement, he glacially turned towards the crimson woman, sadness glinting in his eyes as his body froze into a sculpture.
That same sadness welled up inside the crimson woman with a potency she had never experienced, but it was quickly subsumed by an equal measure of rage. Her body shook, heart beating in a frenzy as breath passed violently through clenched teeth. She looked to the sky and released a primal scream loud enough to be heard across the island.
The barriers beneath her feet suddenly activated like cannons, forming a crater a meter deep and three meters wide. As she moved forward, the field around her body shredded the scouting uniform and supply pack she had been wearing, leaving little on her skin but the frayed and dangling ends of her cloak. As she walked towards the village, each step tore the ground asunder. She put her hand on the heavy wooden gate to push it open, but her fury had begun to flow into her fingertips, and the door shook violently enough to shake it from its massive hinges. She pulled back in an attempt to stifle the uncontrollable energy that coursed through her body and tried again, this time holding her hand back just far enough that the extended perimeter of her force field came into contact and not her hand. Even with this added precaution, the door exploded open as if struck by a battering ram. Behind it, the fate of Koa was revealed.
Two guards stood crumbling at its entrance, their limbs lying in chunks on the ground, weapons still readied for attack. The village was in a state of frozen pandemonium, villagers petrified in place or broken in pieces across the dirt. While the buildings were mainly intact, most of the doors had been pulled off hinges, and some of the smaller homes were smashed apart like the Aquine hovels.
Sputtering like an engine low on fuel, the crimson woman suddenly felt faint and collapsed to the ground. Her rage, however intense, apparently wasn’t enough on its own to power her destructive momentum.
I must keep control, she thought, trying her best to shield her mind from the horrific sights that surrounded her. She’d seen devastation before, but it had never been so affecting. Her experience in the cavern had unraveled aspects of her psyche that had been fortified for years. Vulnerability was such a foreign and terrifying way to exist. She understood this now in a way she couldn’t comprehend before.
She pulled herself up to her feet and continued forward. The state of the village only worsened the further she traveled. As she turned down the road towards the village square, she was met with puffs of purple smoke wafting into the sky from behind a row of shops and homes. Chunks of stone pavers, thatched roofs, and broken bodies floated into the sky with it, the soft buzz reverberating through the streets. The square and the main council house were completely gone, and in their place a massive purple hole like the ones she'd seen before. Debris was slowly being pulled towards the hole by the smoke, functioning like the formless tentacles of an unknown beast. On the edge of the hole stood an unknown being with skin of crimson and hair as white as bone.
The crimson woman froze, watching as the creature slowly dragged pieces of petrified villagers and other rubble and tossed it into the hole. She had never known another creature that bore her physical characteristics, and she found the doppelganger’s sudden appearance bewildering, muddling her mind intensely. She wasn’t sure whether to call out, to hide, or to run away. Her breathing intensified again, loud enough for the being to perk up its head, detecting her presence.
It turned towards the crimson woman slowly, its eyes large and unnaturally round, mouth locked in an impossibly wide, needle-toothed grin. It cocked its head, observing her intently as it began to approach. There was something off about its skin and shape that felt wrong, like an over-sized man trying to squeeze into the clothes of a child. As it grew closer, she could see long, bloodless wounds across its body, like tears in a piece of canvas. It skittered across the ground, limbs moving like a marionette.
“Stay back,” she warned, holding up her hand.
The creature cocked its head again, but it did not heed her command. The closer it got, the more perverse its appearance became. Its nose sat at an awkward angle, too close to its right eye, which itself was situated lower on its face than the left. Its bottom lip flapped loosely below its chin like a piece of old meat and one of its ears had torn completely, revealing a deep hole bordered by dark flesh.
It suddenly jerked its arm upwards, driving one of its long fingers into her palm. She felt pain like a bee sting, then sensation like clay drying on the surface of her skin.
“I said STAY BACK!”
The barrier around her hand finally activated, catching the hand of the creature in its area of effect. As the crimson woman pulled her arm back to her body, the creature’s appendage was severed and sent flying into the street. It cried out in pain, dark purple smoke spilling from out of the open wound. The skin of the arm had ripped up to its shoulders, revealing a bony, grey appendage.
The doppelganger reared back, its crimson skin pulled tight and then tearing as it stretched its upper body to a height greater than it had been before. Its panicked rage finally forced it from its crimson facade, massive round eyes burning bright green, skin sloughing off onto the ground like a spent husk. Without the crimson suit, its facial features were even more exaggerated, though only dark slots remained where its nose should be. Its gray skin bubbled beneath the surface, with tufts of dark hair covering its head, shoulders, and upper arms like porcupine quills.
It quickly leapt back to the edge of the hole where it was enveloped in purple light. The creature motioned towards a pile of petrified corpses, long wisps of smoke moving from the wound and enveloping the bits. They slowly floated up into the air and towards the crimson woman on a pillow of purple, the pieces glowing and rattling violently until they exploded into a shower of fragments once they were within range.
The crimson woman recalled her barrier again and was barely able to cover her face and chest before being struck by the volley of shattered Koans. She felt a sharp pain in her left shoulder and realized that she'd been unable to protect herself fully. Her upper arm and shoulder were shredded. She gritted her teeth and deftly wrapped a bit of her remaining cloak around the wound while the creature readied a second attack.
The crimson woman rushed forward just as the creature began to emit its smoke again, transitioning the barrier from her body to her fists and striking the creature in the chest with as much strength as she could muster. It recoiled and dropped to a knee, smoke pouring from its abdomen. She lunged forward again, striking the creature with frenzied blows, causing chunks of its face and body to disintegrate with each hit. She reared and swung again, contacting the hard part of its skull, and her hand shattered into a thousand pieces.
She staggered backwards, staring down at the jagged stump where her right hand used to be. She felt the anger building again, an uncontrollable surge that emanated from the depths of her soul and erupted through every limb. The creature shrieked as the crimson woman’s barrier struck its body with maximum force, sending tiny chunks of the monstrosity flying across the ruined square.
Hobbled, the crimson woman continued to lumber down the street, the creature’s petrifying venom unmistakably crawling up her arm. She reached up with her remaining hand, placed it on the shoulder, and closed her eyes. With a sigh, she summoned a barrier and severed the infected limb, watching woefully as her mangled bicep fell into the dirt. The pain was immense but she stood resolute, pressing the barrier against the wound to block the blood loss as best she could, though sprays escaped intermittently as her energy dwindled.
The crimson woman continued forward aimlessly, her vision blurring with every step. She stopped to lean against the wall of a battered building, focusing her mind on the gory stump until she was able to pull her hand away completely. The wound was already starting to heal; her body’s exceptional regeneration, long untested, was still thankfully functional. The limb was gone for good, but at least she wouldn’t bleed out.
The devastation on the other side of the village wasn’t nearly as severe as where she had entered. It was a small relief, but she still hadn’t seen any signs of survivors, and based on the account of the Aquine boy, there were more of “her kind” around.
As she turned a corner, a strange scene unfolded before her: Two petrified figures stood in front of a large cellar door. Unlike other victims she had found, they were mostly intact, frozen in the last moments of their lives though with visible wounds on their abdomens. On the left, a male Callan warrior extended a spear outward, its tip coated with purple ash. His eyes were locked in a ferocious glare, teeth gritted. He had not wavered until the very end. To the right, an Aquine woman held a small wooden totem, a device commonly used when performing religious rituals. Her other hand was placed on his shoulder, face stoic and eyes absent of color. The crimson woman had seen that look before. It is the look one gets when mana begins to flow from within...the look of a Magi.
From her recollection, the cellar door behind them led into an underground dry storage area that the Koans filled with smoked fish and other goods during the winter. It was sturdy - capable of withstanding even the most severe weather. Perhaps it had withstood the phenomenon that had erupted across the island.
“So you’ve come back to finish the job, Untouched?” The crimson woman turned to meet the voice. Formless shapes slowly came into focus.
The chieftain stood before her, battle-weary Koans flanking either side. With them, an unfamiliar man in a tattered suit of Iso armor.
“I should have known better than to trust you. My sons warned me...and now they’re dead.” The chieftain’s eyes burned as he spoke, his voice cracking at the mention of his children.
“This is a mistake...a misunderstanding.” The words came out muttered and mumbled, and she wondered if her explanation could possibly sound coherent given their current circumstances.
The chieftain closed his eyes, gripping the large knife in his hand so hard she thought the hilt might snap.
“Your presence on this island has always given me concern, though I never saw you as a threat. I allowed you to exist in your dark, little corner, but I know now that I should have exiled you long ago. I won’t make that mistake again.” The chieftain held up his hand and the Koans to either side readied their spears.
“Stop this!” the crimson woman yelled. “You do not understand!”
“I understand perfectly.” His hand swiped downward.
The Koan warriors hurled their spears at her one after another. Though exhausted, the crimson was still adept at dodging and blocking the blades, but there were simply too many for her to escape entirely. The tip of one brushed her unshielded right thigh, forcing her to side-step after another had bounced off the field she’d redirected from her missing arm to her face. Blood spurted out, the wound still far from healed.
She stumbled to one knee as another spear sailed towards her chest. She held out her remaining hand and the spear lodged into the palm before she could activate a field there. Immediately after, another pierced her side, then another through her shoulder.
Once the Koans had exhausted their spears, the man in the tattered Iso suit walked forward brandishing an ancient service revolver. She recognized the markings immediately: Magi craftsmanship. He was an older man, once-golden-brown beard and long hair streaked with grey and white. His face was heavily scarred, both eyes gone, and in their place technic prosthetics that had been outlawed more than a decade prior. His armor was badly damaged, and through jagged puncture wounds she could see where the flesh had begun to harden. On him, the process seemed to have been halted. He stood over her and spoke.
“This is not the way I hoped we’d meet.”
Before she could respond, he sent a glowing bullet into the center of her chest.
The crimson woman collapsed on her back as an icy sensation began to emanate from a gaping hole in her sternum. Her vision began to fade, the last bit of fight flowing out of her. She looked up to the sky one more time; far above the island, the storm still raged. The black that followed was nothing like what she had felt in the cavern. It was nothingness itself.
Fate Index:
1. Kill co-writer’s protagonist
2. Character loses a limb and has it replaced with an unexpected alternative
3. Protagonist has/develops some incurable urge they must sate daily
4. Protagonist has great power but loses it
5. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
6. Flashback episode
7. Protagonist learns unsettling information
8. Protagonist joins or befriends powerful creature
9. Protagonist leaves home for the first time
10. Something consequential turns out to be an illusion
11. Shift in power
12. Betrayal
13. Protagonist finds powerful item or treasure
14. Protagonist discovers great power
15. Semi-permanent transformation
16. Goonie squad
17. Protagonist takes up cause of beleaguered
18. Protagonist becomes antagonist
19. Protagonist becomes famous
20. Protagonist becomes infamous
Outcomes used:
1. Kill co-writer’s protagonist
20. Protagonist becomes infamous
Added outcomes:
Ancient deity decides to walk the mortal realms
(thanks to Joe ThatGuy on Jeff’s D&D Slack channel)
Antagonist gains immense power
(thanks to @spazzio_mazzio on Twitter)
