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Chapter 4: Swallowed by The Sea

Looking up to the sky, my view was blocked by luscious tree tops. Despite the lack of sunlight, I could easily see where I was going with the glowing flora all over the ground and trees. The only landmark ahead was the bridge across the lake. The bridge wasn't even what I would call elaborate, only slightly higher quality than a really long piece of wood held up by iron bars and no railings. With trepidation, I stepped onto the bridge, hearing it creak underneath my feet. Pushing on forward, I perked my ears up and looked around at the lake at what was up ahead.

A feeling of dizziness overcame me and I looked down at my feet. When I looked back up, the bridge looked longer than it was before. I started to run forward, only for the dizziness to come back again and force me to look at the ground. When I looked back up, the bridge divided into three different paths. A hand clutched my shoulder and I spun around the slap it off of me. There Morrigan was, staring at me in bewilderment and rubbing her slapped hand.

"Alu, it's so good to see you safe." She said, smiling. She reached her arms out for a hug. I readied my talisman and charged it with heat quickly and smashed her directly in the face with it.

"Nice try, whatever the hell you are. Morrigan would never call me by my real name and be so willing to hug me." That warm sensation from before was nowhere to be found when she was about to hug me. This had to be an imposter of some kind.

The pretender fell onto the floor and clutched her face, screaming some foul and high pitched noise. Her face melted away to reveal what looked like old woman with ink running from her eyes. Her shoulders relaxed and then emitted a loud series of noises, crackling, breaking and shifting of bones and ligaments to rearrange into a long limb-ed monstrosity. Shifting from standing on two feet to a crawling position, the monstrosity screamed again and lunged towards me. I placed my hand in front and summoned a barrage of flames straight into its face.

Despite the screams and burning flesh, her hand flew through the flames and squeezed onto my throat. I retracted my hand and grasped at the stray arm and summoned flame to burn it off, making the pale skin turn charcoal black and causing the demon to scream. Her grip loosened but not without the nails cutting into my flesh, letting my blood run freely down my neck and chest. My flame covered hand was extinguished immediately and I felt my knees collapse from underneath me, the scarlet fluid staining the bridge and the saliva from my own mouth drying up. The bitch was laughing at me now, and even when I desperately ignited my finger to cauterize my neck wound, she just couldn't stop giggling and cackling.

"It's no use feline, I'm inside you now." She bellowed, her fingers curling into a fist. At the same time, my neck felt a crushing force from the inside, I tried to grasp at my own neck to see if a restraint of some kind was magically applied, but I couldn't move any of my own limbs, like they were buried into stone. The veins in my arms started to feel like they were twisting into knots within my flesh, I stared at my arms and saw the skin and fur contort as if an animal was burrowing and moving within my own frame. My skin felt as if it was about to rip itself off from my bones and my own bloodstreams were deliberately trying to suffocate me and turn my form into a twisted mess.

I heard a creaking from bridge and then the footsteps of the demon as she turned around to see what caused it. A familiar voice came into my ears and soon after the grip on my entire body was relieved.

"Get away from him you bitch!" The sound of several crystalized spears being launched into demon's body initiated my freedom from the torment. I readied my hand to blast the torture fanatic away, placing my other hand on my bicep. Morrigan prepared to do the same with her staff. As if like clockwork, we both screamed. "Burn bitch!" A flurry of crystallized magic and a barrage of flames met and pushed against each other with a victim in the middle. The screaming persisted for minutes until the charred corpse collapsed and slid into the river beneath the bridge, leaving a murky and dark fluid behind it. Morrigan grabbed my hand and led us both off of the bridge and into the forest ahead.

I tripped over a branch and face-planted into the ground, feeling the inside of my head ring and the blood in my veins run cold. Morrigan picked me up off of the ground before pulling my body against hers. "You still alive? Are you going to be ok?" She asked, and I could only respond by picking up my head and tightening my embrace on her.

"Ok, don't get carried away." She quipped.

"Shut up." I responded. "Like this is the worst we've done."

She sighed and started petting the top of my head. "I thought we weren't going to bring that up too much."

"I know that we said we wouldn't. But with today just being such a disaster, I need to know something that I've been reluctant to ask for months."

She sat down with me against a tree as I tried to relax, knowing that the creature was gone but the amount of blood that left my body was more than enough to scare me. I had only lost that much one other time and I didn't think I was going to survive that day. I rested my head onto her lap and the thought of what I wanted to confirm with her was enough to almost make me want to retract what I just said. I didn't want to make her angry but the idea of not knowing was already slamming against the walls of my skull. She continued to pet the top of my head and as much as I would usually dislike it, I just let her continue until we were both composed. There was something comforting about it regardless.

"And what would that be?"

"After that night, did you get branded?" I nervously asked. I always assumed the worst but I really didn't want to be right. Her gaze didn't meet mine when I asked, so she just decided to nod. If she was branded by me, then it might be the reason why I felt warmth in my chest when heading in her direction. That feeling has spread to the rest of my frame as I rested upon her. I was hoping that she had just cast some spell on me I didn't know to explain this feeling. "Can I see the brand?"

"Is it really that important to you now?" She said quietly.

"Yes, because it's my fault."

"No it isn't. You always say something is your fault when it isn't. This was my choice as well so don't hog all of the blame." Anger seeped into her delivery, making her shuffle away from me. She turned herself around and lowered her robe so that I could see the mark residing right below her neck. A crimson flame that appears to be dripping down a black liquid that feeds into another symbol: a violet portal that represents the pool of power that all magic users naturally draw from.

Every brand was different, depending on who was involved. I was told from birth that if I ever brought someone into my life, whenever I suffered, they would as well. I thought that it was some sort of metaphor for marriage or something along those lines, but it ended up tying into life, just like everything else with magic, pyromancy and the like. Fire was passion and hatred, magic was intelligence but also fear, connected with the world without knowing what the limits are, using your body for a conduit. Hexes were intelligence and apathy, drawing from yourself to take from others, using your body to funnel negative emotions to take away anything positive from others in order to satiate an emptiness that could never be reduced. Some in Ludvig would say that if a pyromancer ever lost control, they wouldn't suffer alone. Now I know that I'm not just feeling random things and that I'm connected to her, but how much of her life am I now taking away by making her know when I'm in pain? Brands for spellcasters were natural and done with permission of both parties involved, but a pyromancer's brand was stuck on the other person no matter what.

Before I could think about our night together, an extremely loud and dissonant scream felt like it was originating from the wound on my neck. Tendrils tore the wound open and started to rush to a spot on the ground, quickly constructing a mass of organs and charred skin until it finally became a monster. The agony stopped and the creature laughed in delight at my pain.

"I told you I was inside of you." She cackled, and just the mere thought of that was disgusting. Morrigan slammed her staff into the ground and yelled at me to keep my head down. Six over-sized swords circled around her and with a swing of her staff, they combined into one and sliced the multi-limb-ed horror in two. Tendrils appeared from the bottom half and pulled the top section back on in an instant. Every time I saw those black links, I would feel nausea, like my stomach was being twisted. With that thought, an idea suddenly came and I summoned whatever strength I could muster to set the forest aflame, telling Morrigan that we had to run away. The creature was only slightly inconvenienced by the fire and was still making a mad dash for the both of us. Morrigan summoned quick barricades to slow it down even more.

"Morrigan, I think it's connected to me in a way that it'll keep coming back if this spell or curse isn't dealt with." I said, as we started climbing the trees that hadn't been damaged yet. "Try exorcising me."

She looked at me with a dumbfounded expression. "Do I look like someone with priest training?"

"Do I look like someone with many options?!?" I replied. "Just please do it."

"Fine!" She placed her hands on the wound and started muttering some words that sounded like gibberish to me. She was stumbling on some phrases, trying to remember anything to help. The tree shook after a loud bang and she looked down to see our pursuer slowly trying to climb the trunk, slamming its limbs into it, making loud noises that mimicked breaking bones. A bright red light emerged from Morrigan's hand before she pulled what looked like a small eyeball with spider legs. She crushed it in her hands, and the banging of the tree ceased. Looking down, the creature started falling apart and its black components hit the ground before dissolving into dust. Before I could smile at Morrigan for doing that, the tree started to tip over from the damage inflicted. I grabbed her and jumped off, making her scream as we descended to the ground. I took out my catalyst and remembered the spell to make a safe fall. Morrigan adorned a smile after we landed, surprised that I remembered for once. After patting ourselves down, I felt the wound on my neck and noticed it was cauterized once again. Morrigan started walking towards the ashen forest, pulling onto my arm and leading me to the point where the trees finally stopped. We were back at a beach once again, prompting Morrigan and I to stare at each other in disbelief. How do you go from a beach to a mine, to a forest, to a lake and then to a beach once again? This has to be the smallest island on the planet if this is the case. Except when we looked forward, the beach went on for what seemed like miles, the size of a desert. Looking to our right, we see a large vessel akin to a merchant's ship. Now that the two of us were reunited, the only real objective now is just getting the hell out of here because the paycheck is not worth it.

We climbed onto the ship and looked around on the top deck for any signs of life. The ship was in decent condition considering the storms that it might have faced along the way. The sail comprised of three pieces, one large and two small. Only the smaller ones were torn open while the main sail was left unharmed, save for a few small holes that could be patched up. The woodwork on the deck was soaked but thankfully didn't seem to be on the border of collapsing.

"Let's check under and see if there are any crew mates." Morrigan suggested, keeping her staff ready in case of opposition. As we descended down the creaky and wooden stairs, I reached for any torch or lighting apparatus along the wall but found nothing. With a snap of my fingers, I summoned a tiny flame and expanded it to the size of my palm. A foul stench entered my nostrils just before I stepped into something wet. This wasn't water though; it was much thicker and felt stuck to my feet as I tried to step further. Even with the flame in my hand as a light source, I could barely see ten feet in front of me. The darkness didn't feel natural, like it was laid on thick by another force. Morrigan seemed to read my mind because she slammed her staff into the ground and disperse a bright light around us that banished the obscuring force. The ship was fairly lit now with the flame in my hand. I turned to my companion and she suggested that there was some form of spell put on the ship before we arrived. Descending down the stairs and various cramped hallways soon revealed why, there were people here, hanging from cages recently dead from what looked like starvation. A desk with open books lied at the end of this mobile graveyard. Morrigan rushed over and started looking through the pages before gripping at the sides of her head in frustration.

"Church cockheads!" She screamed, turning around to meet my gaze. "These are from Aerendale and Lothvig, they are heretics and were sent here as execution. Look whose fucking names are in this log!" She shoved the book in my face and I almost wanted to cover my eyes in disbelief at what I was seeing. At the top of the page read Leonardo Cran and halfway down was Maria Langstrum.

"Is one of them in these cages?" I asked, looking around at all the malnourished furs. "This shipment couldn't have been that long ago, or else they would have rotted so much by now."

"No, these nameplates don't show a Leonardo or Maria. They're probably as good as dead."

"Want to take the ship and get back to the mainland and burn those clerics?" I suggested, pulling out my catalyst.

"Of course." She replied. "I don't feel like living in Lothvig anymore anyways, so collateral damage be damned."

I nodded and I walked up to the steering wheel on the main deck. "Let's hope for no storms this time." She nodded and cast out her perception spell once again, able to make it through this time with no barrier in the way. Pointing where to go, I steered the ship around and we began our journey to the mainland. The ship rocked and was slow in the beginning but we managed to leave the first beach behind eventually.

An odd tune started to play; getting louder the farther we traveled.

_Ello readers, I hope you're having a wonderful day or night and that you have been enjoying the chapters I've been uploading sporadically over the past couple of months. Life has just managed to get busy for me in the best and worst ways possible over the last three to four months. I do apologize to all of the folks who started to follow me recently only to see my page do nothing for a while. Since I've been having more free time lately, I've been working more on my own personal books (these being tales that don't involve furries or anything like that. I write more serious science fiction and horror when I'm not writing for here.) I will be uploading a few more things on SoFurry before life gets busy again and I appreciate any feedback you give me. Seriously, be as honest as possible and you can even message me to discuss how things can be improved. Chapter 5 for this series is being worked on and I can guarantee that Alu and Morrigan's journey won't be any longer than it needs to be. Take care everyone. _