The white snake slithered in and out of the skull as if it was running for its life; such was the power of the wind hammering at the flag.
It hadn't taken long for Kai to guess why no one had come behind them.
They had already been warned about the coming storm. The strangest thing was there was no talk of this storm among the sailors when they had left the harbor. It was almost as if someone had put the storm over the Narrow Sea just for Actaea alone.
The Red Woman!
Kai had realized bitterly. Melisandre must have seen this storm using her sorcery. That's why she made the freeriders and the bounty hunters delay their pursuit, thinking that by the time they caught up to the ship, the crew would have already died or been on the brink of death.
A reasonable assumption.
Cog was a ship that wasn't built to survive the storm. Not a storm like the one Kai was seeing, at least. The bulging clouds had brought darkness with them, and within that darkness, white-purple thunder was booming, the crack resounding in the crew's ears like whips of death. They wouldn't live to tell tales, the crew must have thought, for now, they were shivering like naked men walking on glaciers.
The best course of action was to steer the ship back to the nearest landmass and beach it, praying the storm would show mercy on it.
Well, there lay the problem.
The nearest landmass was Dragonstone.
An even bigger problem was that they had come out way into the sea for them to avoid the storm with only 12 men on board. None had anticipated this storm's arrival, despite this crew's frequent voyages between Pentos and Westeros.
"Lower the sail, damn you!" Andrik bellowed, blood dripping off the stump left behind his pinky finger. "Go see to the fastening of the casks. You there! Secure the rigging already, bloody hell! Helmsman! Steer the ship downwind. Now! Helmsman! Motherfucker…"
Kai's face was pale. He looked at the ironborn and heard him cursing as both of their eyes landed on the bald helmsman lying on the floor, blood running dry from his cut-open throat.
Then their eyes met. Andrik looked down into Kai's hazel eyes but didn't order the captain of the ship. Nor did the ironborn ask anything of Kai. But they were both seamen, and Kai had learned to decipher the looks.
Kai ran for the ship's helm and then, controlling the rudder, fought against the monstrous wind to put the ship's stern against the incoming storm, hoping against any possible capsizing.
It was then the first bolt of lightning cracked near them. It hit the sea, blinding them all. The ensuing boom rang in their ears like someone was clapping inside their heads.
Kai fared the worst of them all.
Whatever was causing his headache had got an unknown signal, riling up even more. His face became ugly, and it kept becoming uglier with every pulsing sensation of unbearable pain within his head. There was no common medicine for it, Kai knew.
The origin of this pain lay not in the physical but mystical realm.
Otherwise, he could have used Selene's Soul Chill to ease the pain already.
Hours or minutes had passed as Kai struggled his way, the ship's hull getting bombed by small but thorny waves.
"Brace yourselves!" Andrik roared with the voice that found the distant corners of the ship, and the first gigantic wave marched over, holding a shield of water twice the size of the ship.
Kai felt the salt in his mouth as the wave went over them, wetting every dry piece of wood if there was any left. He held onto the helm, continuously maintaining the ship's course downwind. The gales came next, bringing with it a hailstorm. Loud thudding sounds engulfed the ship, drowning the men's voices and pleadings for help. The pellets of frozen rain stung Kai's skin, and he had nothing to thwart this calamity.
No Skill, no Item, and not even his Blood Essence could match the might of the purest fury of nature.
The storm was alive, Kai felt.
"Oh, Drowned God!" Andrik gasped and looked beyond Kai, a horror sweeping down his fierce looks. "What is this?!"
Clutching his head with his left hand and the helm with his right, Kai turned around, and his eyes widened. The hailstorm had become a shower of arrows, and it bruised and cut him, but even that couldn't prevent the terror that had run across his spine, making him shiver.
A monstrous tsunami-like wave was coming for them, darkening everything over and behind it. Only once had Kai seen a wave bigger than this, and it hadn't been that long, either. The tsunami in the Random World of Pokemon.
Andrik fell, his knees striking the wood with a dull thump. "Storm God's fury! Mercy, Drowned God!" Kai heard him mumbling through the booms of the thunder. "Mercy!" The crew had given hope along with the mate.
It wasn't supposed to be like this, Kai thought for the first time, his mouth opening wide in horror. How was this natural? How could a wave of this size come for them this early in the storm? No. What was wrong with this situation? This…
Was this a natural calamity?
This wave would kill them, Kai knew, his heart pounding. -/Meg!/- Kai screamed, knowing well that she was about to erupt out of the captain's cabin. -/Don't come out. It's beyond you, now./- No paper or metal wall could stop this wave. He looked at the crew. Dead men looking at their death. Then Kai looked at the ironborn, who was waiting for his divine death.
-Run, you fools! Go below the deck.- Kai wanted to shout, but only a hiss escaped his mouth.
The ship rocked, purple lightning striking all around it, caging it in, and the unrealistic wave seemed to tower above the ship's stern like a God's wrath taking a substance into the material world.
Maybe it was God's fury.
The absurd thought crossed his mind, and strangely… Kai chuckled. He feasted on his own fear as his heart shuddered. Yet, there was no end. The more he sucked, the more it oozed out of him.
"Hehe… Hehe… Hahaha!" He giggled, and then his giggle became a strange maniacal laugh that caught the crew's attention. The boy had gone mad, they thought. They didn't blame him, though.
Kai had truly gone mad. But he had approached this madness quite a few times in his life. Then, he had no means to suck the fear out of himself. It was the madness of seeing death coming for him. It was the madness of suddenly figuring out a puzzle; an unsolvable puzzle that had tormented him for long enough to make him think of giving up on it.
So this is it, Kai thought, the veins on his throat popping like a hundred gurgling rivers. I've wondered what the third line of the Cosmic Authority Lore meant — The Unforgivable Cursed One! So this is it, isn't it? The retaliation of an entire timeline has come to haunt me, crossing the multi-dimensional gap of the Multiverse. Interesting! Very interesting!
The first line, The Devastating Despair, represented his actions in a Random World, Kai had concluded this in the last two weeks. The second line, The Blue-skinned Demon, represented how the denizens of that world had perceived him.
But it was the third line that had befuddled him the most. Now it got cleared too.
Action, Perception, and Reaction.
These words rang in his mind, untangling the threads of doubt that had been troubling him for quite some time. But never could he have imagined that the fury of a timeline could seep into a different timeline and a different world. It surpassed the wildest theories and known facts.
And in this moment of unavoidable crisis and death, the realization dawned on Kai like a high-voltage shock. The shock brought with it the understanding and jolted him awake.
It also pushed him beyond the realm of men and pain.
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Yesterday Power Count: 49 (?... not interested in Bonus Chapters anymore?)
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