*Halfmann Island, Crater Coast Collective.
-----
Today would be one of those days.
A day in which people would die.
It had become a normality.
It seemed as if every other tenday, this very thing would occur.
Another attempt.
Another incursion.
Another massacre.
In the past decade, Halfmann Isle would become known as "The Blood Crescent"
The sands along the bending, West-facing coast were a deep, crimson red.
The tide could only carry so much of the blood away before the next batch would arrive...
"Brave Adventurers"
"Loot-seeking Pirates."
"Ground-breaking Settlers."
One and all would chance the landfall.
None of them would ever make it past the shoreline and into the shade of the mysterious Willows that covered the better part of the island from the beaches on its West side, edge of the high cliffs that faced the East and the Shatter Sea.
From the water, to the edge of the forest -A variable stretch of approximately 30 yards- there lay Hundreds of pieces of broken and rusted armor.
Hundreds of both old and new weapons.
Hundreds of torn and tattered pieces of nonbiodegradable pages from loyal Tomes and trusty spell books.
Thousands of upon thousands of shards of bone.
Human.
Elven.
Dwarven.
Even Goblinoid, Orcis and the occasional Ogre.
One would imagen that such a sight would repel any other Human of Humanoid who sought these lands.
But it did not. It could not.
In fact, it was the sand itself that invited more and more unwary beings to the shores to court death...
It was the trees that whispered into the wind the promise of wealth beyond imagination, if only one could breach those depths...
It was the Thing that lived below the island that orchestrated it all...
It needed blood.
Pain.
Death.
In order to make it's return, the evil and undying creature needed souls.
More death.
More blood.
More pain.
It had been "asleep" for so many hundreds of years that it no longer knew the number.
But then it had felt it.
A great and terrible blast from above it.
It felt the seals that bound it to its Aetheral prison loosen as several of them were unknowingly destroyed...
It felt again the passing of time.
It had been conquered, bound, and sealed away by a group of powerful beings known as Spell Wardens.
It could no longer sense their presence, but it could sense the blood of their descendants.
Extremally diluted blood... but still.
It would draw more and more people to it's shore until it drew in one with enough of the blood it needed...
It was patient.
It was scheming.
And now that it could once again perceive it, it had nothing but time.
-------------------------
At the center of Halfmann Isle, at the center of the deep, dark, fog-laden forest, there was a singular and simple cabin.
At the back of that cabin, in a black-painted room, Akua sat on the floor in the very center of her carpet.
Dozens of candles burned around her.
Two dozen rose petals lay scattered about the room.
Mosswood sage burned in four bowls, one in each of the corners.
Before her sat a large, stark-black Catatakah -Cat to the unlearned- with bright, golden brown orbs of Aether for eyes.
Akua rocked slowly from side to side as the binding ritual began to take effect.
the rose petals began to glow faintly at first, and then they all flared at once, suddenly all were equally as bright as the candle flames that burned around them.
Akua's head rolled back and she let out a soft moan as she felt the warm and bubbling Aether and the spirit of the Catatakah that lay before her swirl and dance about though her veins, before it folded into her own internal pool of Aether.
Into her very soul.
It was both calming and jarring.
Tantalizing and terrifying.
Blissful and baneful.
The glowing petals floated and swirled around the two still figures, spinning faster and faster, enveloping them both in a column of brilliant white light.
With a flash and a gasp, the petals flared once more, then very suddenly lost their glow, stopping in place, and slowly falling to the floor.
Akua collapsed in an unconscious heap. Next to the prone form, the great and proud cat lay in very much the same state.
They had done it.
The Soul Binding was complete.
-------------------------
*Verlaplek Island, Carter Coast Collective. South-East of Halfmann Island.
On an island off the coast,
In the dead of night.
Sat two wicked witches
In a bog full of blight.
Said the witch on the left
To the witch on her right:
"Tonight is...
Tonight is...
Tonight is the night..."
With a snip and a snap,
A nip and a growl.
A clap, a pinch, and a pull.
They chanted softly to the moon,
Atop their mossy stools.
Their knobby, twisted fingers cracked.
Their eye balls dipped and rolled.
Their heads bobbed from side-to-side,
Their scalps covered in mold.
And as their chants grew louder still,
The trees began to stir...
A rotten thing below their roots
Of claws and fangs and fur.
And from his grave rose the Rat King,
His tail dragging his six dead kin.
A new soul had just arrived,
the hunting could begin.
-------------------------
She wasn't cold.
Yet she shivers and twitches.
She scratched at the scabs.
She picked at the stitches.
"She isn't quite done."
Said one of two witches.
Their voices danced dreadfully
in strange whistles and pitches.
She remembered a little
A part of her past...
The past couple days had all happened so fast.
She stole from a rich man.
Was caught the same day...
The corrupted knighthood just sent her away.
Shipped her to an island,
Forever to stay.
She never could know
what ahead of her lay.
The first night she cried as she lay on the beach.
the second, she ventured for something to eat.
The third, the rats came...
They nipped at her feet.
They hissed
And they bit
And the fought for their feast.
They ate at her fingers, her nipples, her eyes.
They ate everything from her neck to her thighs.
And on the forth night, her dead body did rise.
With orbs of deep red where there should have been eyes...
She was the third sister.
The newest to wake.
She sat with the others.
She took her new place.
They sat on damp stools,
Alone in their mire.
Forever to live here,
Yet never to tire.
One with no upper half,
One with no lower.
One with just a head,
This last, the controller.
He just needed four more
To get to his seven...
To free not just himself,
but all of his brethren.
His hunger was ravenous,
Hundreds more he would take.
To get to his seven,
To make his escape.
-------------------------
*Halfmann Island, Crater Coast Collective.
Akua sat up slowly.
The room spun steadily before her eyes.
Shapes, colors, and shadows all seemed to blend together.
"Fffffooocuuussssss."
A familiar voice spoke to her faintly from somewhere off in the back of her mind.
"Oooooh boy."
She said to herself as she shakily climbed to her feet. the room around her was dark. Nearly pitch-black. The voice came again.
"Fooocuussssssss."
It said again, this time with a bit more force behind the words. Akua closed her eyes. She needed to listen to the voice.
The voice?
"Midnight?!"
She asked, feeling foolish just as soon as the question left her lips. The great Catatakah answered with stanch clarity this time.
"Oh come now human child, who else would it be?"
He inquired rhetorically.
"So it worked!?"
She exclaimed a bit louder than she had intended. The doors and windows of the little cabin rattled with the force and volume of her enhanced voice.
"As I said it would."
Replied the Cat from his little dark corner in the back of her head.
"And for crying out loud, mind your volume women. My ears and yours are now one and the same."
Akua suddenly realized and remembered keenly what had happened.
The Soul Binding!
It worked! It really worked!
She had tried and failed so many times.
She had told herself that this was her LAST attempt.
She hadn't meant it.
She never did...
But it fackin' worked!!
Hundreds of times, she had gathered 9 skulls of owl,
9 tails of bush snake,
9 different colored beetles.
Hundreds of times, she set them in an intricate pattern along 9 lines spanning 9 rings.
Hundreds of times, she had set and lit 99 candles, after gathering and scattering 99 rose petals.
Of all of those times, it had worked tonight.
It had fackin' worked...
The binding was an ancient and sacred Catatakah ritual that Akua stumbled upon in the earlier months of her "awakening" on the strange and seemingly unpopulated island.
She has found the cabin. It was unlocked.
A fire lit. The fire that never went out.
There was food in the pantry.
Pickled meats and aged cheese.
Wine and clean, clear water.
It was always restocked somehow on every ninth day.
And always when she was not around to witness.
There was a bed, a room, and clothes that fit her a bit to well.
She had no idea who she was, nor how she had some to this island. No idea why everything seemed to be tailored to her any and every need.
But this much she did know: She was just fine not knowing.
What she did know was that the Catatakah had raised her.
The mid-sized, Cat-like Humanoids who could take the full form of either.
They had found her wondering the island after she had awoken.
They had made sure that there was always food in her stomach and in the little pantry.
They alone maintained the hearth in which lived the seemingly ever-burning flames.
They had made her clothing from the many pieces of clothes and fabrics that they had gathered from slain corpses over the years. They had gifted her the cabin.
That cabin that has once belonged to their...
Owner?
Master?
Creator?
The Catatakah didn't know that far back into their own history unfortunately.
For as long as they knew, they had always been on the Island. But they did know that for some reason they were drawn to the girl at first sight, unlike the other hundreds of Humans and Humanoids that they had killed for trespassing over the past century or so.
They has chosen to care for her, and in turn, she had learned to do the same for them.
Akua had no idea that she had saved them just as much as they had come to be her saviors.
She had no idea that just before her arrival, the Catatakah had been so very close to loosing all hope, for they had simply found no further reason to live. Without the now-grown-up girl to protect and care for, they had very little else to live for. The Island had been not only their home for as long as they could recall, but their prison as well.
With Akua came hope.
She was the only kind or caring Human that they had ever encountered.
Well... the only HONESTLY kind and caring human. Many, if not all of the Humans that they had yet to meet, had attempted to capture of kill them flat out.
And the Humanoids?
Sea Goblin Clans mostly who tended to drift to close to the bloody shores of the Island on their impressive little flotilla-style boat-villages.
A couple of roving bands of Orcis Pirates.
A handful of Elven Beast trappers even.
Sea Dwarfs seemed to be the wisest of those who had encountered the Catatakah and lived to tell the tale, as they simply avoided the accursed Island all together.
All had come.
All had died.
Well... MOST had died. The Catatakah had learned to leave a few survivors. A few poor and maimed souls were allowed to clammer back to their ships and pass along the warning.
The warning of a swift, painful, and immanent death should they or anyone else return.
Strangely, it seemed that the bloodshed only seemed to invite more of the intruders...
With all of that being said! Both Akua and the Catatakah needed one another.
She needed them in order to survive the often hostile and temperamental nature of the Island.
They needed her in order to not only have purpose, but to someday find a way to get them all off of and as far away from the rightfully demonized Island as possible. The Catatakah not only wanted, but needed a new home. They could sense the boiling rage and brewing dark energies growing beneath the Island with each passing year.
They knew that it was only a matter of time before that darkness found a way to the surface world.
They knew more, that they did not care to be on or near this Island when that day inevitably came.
And so they had entrusted the lone girl.
They had gifted her their power. Their attributes.
Their speed.
Their stamina.
Their strength.
Their durability.
It was all hers to utilize to the best of her abilities.
But the passing of said abilities required time and training... and a proper and successful Soul Binding ritual.
Today that had all come to an amazing end with the completion of that ritual.
Tonight Akua would be testing those abilities for herself.
Fully and truly.
-------------------------
Bon-Bon sat motionlessly atop the stump that was his post.
His fur was not unlike the seat that he made his own.
Deep browns, mossy greens, and sand-like patches covered his Cat form from head to toe. The camouflage had served him well this night as it had many a night before. This night was different. The poachers who stalked the beach just yards away from him were different.
Something was off...
Without moving, Bon-Bon drew forth his claws and readied himself for combat.
Hopefully Akua and the others would show up soon.
No one had ever made it this far up the beach...
Not till this night, and never alive.
He couldn't smell the obviously sweaty men.
He couldn't sense their life force as he could with anything else that made landfall here.
This was wrong. So wrong.
Bon-Bon tensed but held perfectly still as the men crept closer, closing the gap while unaware still of the lone Catatakah that sat just within arms reach of more than half of the group of eight.
"She will come... They all will come."
He thought o himself.
Don-Don (his twin sister) had run off to alert the clan with more than enough time for them all to have arrived by now to stop this newest group long before it reached the tree line.
But they hadn't...
Bon-Bon sighed in resignation.
He would do what he could on his own.
He squared his shoulder and slowly maneuvered his body into a low crouch.
He would kill as many of them as he could before they killed him.
Yes killed.
His resignation was not with fighting, oh no.
Bon-Bon loved to fight.
His was with death.
He wasn't quite ready to join the OTHERS just yet... But it seemed like the right time if any.
He would not be captured. That was a fate worse than death.
His yellow, feline eyes began to glow as he summoned forth his Aether.
His fur crackled and stood on end, electricity surged through his coat and over his extended claws.
Five of the man turned in unison, drawing their swords in the same motion.
Two of them held dirty, old, blood-stained fishing nets.
They fanned out around him in a half-circle.
Bon-Bon closed his eyes for a split second.
A quick prayer to whomever was listening.
Like a thunderbolt, he shot forward.
From the corner of his right eye, he caught several burst of light and movement.
The calvary had arrived.
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Hey all, welcome back to the gates!
I hope you enjoyed this latest entry, and our newest character Akua!
She, like the rest will be an intricate part of all of the chaos that is still to come!
Look forward to seeing... well, READING her in action with her range of wild and crazy-cool Catatakah abilities!
I look forward to our next outing, and I hope you al show up back here for the next stunning entry. We are getting closer and closer to the end of the introductory tales, and thus Part 2's will began to pop up lol
I hope, as always, that this short story finds you all well.
As always,
Stay safe
Stay healthy
Stay vigilant.
-Redd.