Lightning flashed as the strong waves rolled onto the white sand beaches of the crystal city. A young man was prowling the beach, breastplate showing the insignia of the city guard, an angel holding a gem between her wings. The storm was making the night moonless. The guard kicked the sand, angry and disappointed at how he managed to get on patrol while the sea was raging and the sky was giving torrents of rain and lightning. A large boom filled the air as lightning lit up the beach in front of him. He gave a shout of surprise at what he saw.
Further down on the beach a woman laid unconscious on the beach, clothes and hair dark with the seawater. The guard paused in the pounding rain, unsure if he wanted to see if she was alive or not. With a heavy sigh, he ran towards the unconscious woman and knelt down in the pool of water and sand that was around her. He pressed two fingers to her neck trying to find a pulse. He couldn't see much because of the storm but he was sure he felt a faint pulse.
With a new sense of urgency to help this woman who was most likely alive, the guard picked her up with a grunt before carrying her through the harsh wind and slippery beach into the city. He didn't notice the giant gash wound over her right eye until he entered the small medicine shop on the edge of town. He called out for the healer who soon appeared from the back. The healer gave a sharp gasp at the sight of the woman.
They quickly took the unconscious woman to the back of the store, into better light to see the full damage. They finally took note of the large oozing gash wound that arched from her brow, over her right eye, and onto the top of her lip. The wound was bleeding heavily enough that her face was covered in the red viscous liquid. Along her hairline was stained a deep red and was quickly drying from the heat of the fireplace nearby. There was bruising along her neck where hands must've held her captive and squeezed until she passed out. The bruises were already a deep blue-purple in color and upon further investigation, the lady's clothes were slashed open in multiple areas along her abdomen, multiple jagged wounds appeared on the taut skin of her stomach, leaving the skin red and irritated.
"This was done by no cutlass, lad. Where did you find her?" the medic asked as he set to work on getting the wounds to stop bleeding and close properly.
"I found her washed ashore on the beach.." he recalled moments earlier kneeling down in the warm water that had surrounded the young lass, looking down at his trousers revealed deep red stains that had soaked into the fabric. Realization dawned on him and he went deathly pale as he realized he had knelt in her blood. He quickly turned to a small silver bucket in the corner and vomited up his dinner in large retching heaves.
The medic sighed in disbelief. Managing to stitch together most of the wound on her face and applied enough herbal medicine on her eyelid to hopefully save her eye. The stomach wounds had started to heal by themselves and had stopped bleeding by the time he managed to stitch them up and bandage them properly.
"There's not much more I can do for the poor girl. Hopefully, she will make a full recovery but I wouldn't doubt if this was done by a sinking ship or whatever made the sea this angry. Her eye might not fully recover but, it's the best I can do." The medic shook his head. "As for you, if your gonna keep heaving up your lunch because of a bit of blood, I suggest getting yer arse out of my shop and ditchin' the city guard." They slammed a damp towel down onto a counter, watching as the young guard raced out of his shop, most likely to not get on the worse side of the healer.
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Several days later, the young lass from the beach was up and moving around the city. Her hair stained a somber red from the saltwater, the humidity doing it no wonders as it just curled and frizzed more and more in this city of gems and glass. Her eye was bandaged and covered with a white eye patch, and she had decided that today she was everyone's problem.
After waking up and having horrible panic attacks about what had occurred what seemed like only hours ago, she was told by the tired medic that she had washed up on their shores with no way of identifying her to the city officials. Ova had thrown up not even two hours after waking and having the realization that her crew was dead and she wasn't shoved in her face by her own mind.
She currently staggered down the street, beer bottle in hand. She had swiped it while passing through one of the only port bars in the city, the ale was very very watered down and probably had a ton of illnesses in it after being watered down this badly. Her head swam as she drank her misery away. Survivors guilt had hit her hard. It was the number one rule that the captain always goes down with the ship and crew, otherwise, the captain was unfit. And oh how she took that to heart. The lass had spent the three days she was awake, stealing and drinking her life away. She had started at least four bar brawls, losing three of them and winning the latest after just smashing a chair over the burly man's head, rendering him unconscious.
Taking a swig from her bottle, she stumbled into an alleyway near the port, not seeing the lanky man rushing up to her. The man crashed into her shoulder, knocking her off balance and stumbling into the wall of the shop next to her. The slight impact had her reeling a bit but the man was already upon her again
"You little piece of shit! Watch where your focking going, I should bash yer head in right here and now for you knocking into me!" He screamed moving closer and closer to her in a drunken rage.
Without really thinking Ova brought the ale bottle down onto his head, she flinched when it shattered and cut his head but she quickly recovered. The drunk man yelped in surprise but quickly grabbed the collar of her white shirt and shoved her against the wall, pulling his arm back into a punch.
His fist connected to her face, causing a crunch from her nose. Her broken nose quickly started bleeding, and before she could react another punch landed on her bad eye, over and over until her gaze darkened and the eye patch fell off revealing a large ugly scar going from her eyebrow over her eye and to her lip. She snarled as her eye opened to reveal a silver unseeing mess. Her broken nose scrunched as she pulled her lip back to show teeth. Before he could land another punch, she lurched forward and pushed the broken ale bottle in her hand into his gut.
He stuttered backward, gasping as she twisted the bottle leaving broken glass in his now cut open abdomen. She pushed the man backward, his eyes wide as he fell onto his ass clutching his bleeding gut. Ova spit blood onto the ground and wiped her bleeding nose on her white sleeve. She glared at him as he muttered something about a silvereye. With one last good kick to the man's face, she staggered deeper into the port gaining strange glances from the ship workers and merchants on the docks.
With her oozing and unseeing white eye, she scanned the port for a ship. Still drunk she stormed onto the dock and snuck aboard a ship about ready to leave. The chaos of prepping to leave port stopped anyone from noticing as she slunk to the lower levels of the ship.
There in the low orange glow of the underbelly of the ship she broke every slave cage open with the butt of her rapier. And there she waited with a small rebellion of slave girls until the lurch of the ship on the water signaled they were far out on the sea. There she made a promise to the gods to get her sight back, whether that meant she down another 12 ships, or she had to fight the gods themselves.