“A bloodline deprived of Prometheus’s blasphemous gift. All to befall this child like an abominable avalanche masqueraded as heavenly showers. The Untamed God, the malignant parasite he be, commands his serfs – Us – to perform his wicked, trifling maledictions. The First Kin, he calls that blood, managed to venture into the throneplace of the divine; Mount Olympus. That Untamed God moves feignedly as if reliant on our work for his purposes, but we know better. However, we learned the lesson far too late. Chained to his games or be thrown to the eternal void to drift aimlessly and deprived of freewill, unable to perish in its absolute coldness; eternal suffocation; its emptiness.

Our hope can only rely on a few of our subjects, great faith put into the final one of the First Kin: blood of Korrustal. Korrustal; thee lost in lostness’s chaotic, magic-tainted body. ‘Korrustal’ our great elders cry; ‘Korrustal’ their ancestors rage. ‘The creation of magic mustn’t wither for it is the Flamed Fool’s comeuppance,’ he tells us with a grim grin. And with proper hecatomb, we oblige like the disciplined little serfs we are. Perhaps the First Kin shan't be our salvation, but this new victimized offspring ma– I hope the tale kept you on your toes, Pyrei. Try not to drown in my blood,” the red titan smiled. With a self-inflicted gashing of his arm, the vermillion titan allowed a cascade of red juice to flood over the fallen Pyrei, drowning her beneath its viscous sludge. It twirled in its uncanny, eldritch prance and its throaty laughs reverberated like a hundred echoes from every particle in the air simultaneously. In an abrupt cease of its twirls, a bony finger coated in a flesh-leaking, barely liquid mess, crushed her.

"Yazzalo!" she cried in bursting awake from the dark slumber, finding only familiar thatch walls and arbitrarily hanging ropes of colored attachments. The floor-bound mattress had been soaked in Pyrei's sweat, as was the blanket. She threw it off herself and rose too quickly for the lacerations about her body, stiffening her to a painful and slow sit up. But with some determination and patience, Pyrei soon made it to a seated form where she sat for some time in loose pondering. Her teary face fell into her hands — but she was reminded of the terror when only one palm was able to hold her head. Her arm ending at the wrist was wrapped in a cloth. Judging by its bright white, she concluded it to be not only newly applied, likely in her outage, but thankfully clean. She sat in silent grief for some time until her eyes fell onto a stack of folded clothes besides Yazzalo's sleeping area - the majority being blue shirts and brown shorts. A stack of clothing was beside her mattress too, but she only took some ankle-reaching baggy pants from her side, and opted for a shirt from Yazzalo's.

Made simpler given the plentiful amount of rips and tears, the old sleeveless, brown jacket and black undershirt was removed. But then came a bit of a trial. With her right hand, she pulled the shirt onto her head while attempting to keep space with her left arm. She guided the arm of wrappings for the opening and successfully found it through the sleeve. Next, Pyrei moved onto equipping the pants, appearing a smidge grudged. "Noticeably inconvenient but I’ll manage… At least I'm lucky enough to even be able to put these on — lucky to even be breathing…" she murmured. She fell back onto the mattress with a stressed exhale freeing itself. Her attention fell at the center of the hut’s ceiling, finding it odd. Her throat felt tight and her chest began to ache – it felt as if the world was imploding. With the walls of the hut closing in on her and making each breath more tiresome, Pyrei took herself outside to rest at the edge of the highest stone pillar. The Light user let her feet dangle atop the pillar of a hundred or so feet with her drowsy attention on the sea.

A fleet of seacraft sailed across my vision, a mix of sailboats and ketches, though the sailboats were outnumbering. My legs couldn't help but jump as if on searing rocks and a beaming smile stretched across my face. "Is that Pa? Is it Pa, Mama?!"

Before the Sun with her jet black hair, she looked down at me with a warm smile. Then it became dark. I could no longer see her face for it was now beside mine, on my shoulder, as was mine for she was now holding me tightly in our lightless, clay-bricked home. My eyes were lifeless, not from apathy, but from confusion. From the void in the back of our home's nightly darkness, a blinding light flashed. Mama's sobs were not interrupted by its sudden appearance, but my eyes could not turn away from the angular luminance, as if a room of a thousand spiritual torches sat mere feet before me beyond the corridor. The light's bright white spurred a jarring contrast to the darkness containing it, but I felt as if it was making me wait for something. Soon, it revealed its shadow-silhouette delivery: some humanoid figure drenched in eternal blackness. It stood there for some time, I presume simply watching or listening for me. My mind ran uncertain for I could not see any eyes. Alas, there was an omnipresent voice that spoke one command, "Stand."

And my eyes opened.

Ants ran across its face, some doomed to floating in its pool of slumberborn drool. Its face was burnt red from the Sun's beating – the rage of the Renegade, who was standing over the fallen beast with a fiery glare. Upon finding the body of a human before him, he lept into aggression, but a swift kick to the throat quickly tamed him. "Oh?” the heated Renegade user voiced, “Still being foolish? I instructed you to prepare for this interrogation! Need I humble you again?"

The animalistic man had his hands around his throat as dry, guttural heaves of agony forced themselves up. Whilst crushed by the weight of torment, the adamant bloodseeker lunged with a second attempt at accomplishing some draw of blood. Instead, he was sidestepped and the Renegade's leg, like an axe to lumber, came down on his back with air-cracking force. Yazzalo then kept the man of his once-tarnished-now-incinerated clothing creature down with a firmly held right foot on the back. A mere sandal prevented the two's skin from making contact. "Remind me of your name, now" the beastly one was commanded of. Instead he squirmed in pain, desperately swiping at Yazzalo's shin and calf, sometimes even attempting to bite at him. “Gouge you out, Venator will! Gut you!” it rambled.

Yazzalo peered annoyed and somewhat lost. He pressed down his foot, spurring some cracking and a pained howling cry from the pain. The master awaited some coherent response, receiving only more agonized wails, convincing him to ease up. Luckily, it seemed to subdue the man some. Yazzalo pondered some, I was gone for maybe three or four hours after bringing Pyrei back home, yet he has healed so remarkably. I left him a burnt crisp, returning only to find his head… healed to the state it was when he first ambushed me – minus his hair burned into the wind. His legs also seem to have healed enough to appear relatively normal. Until I arrive at the center body; still blackened and hardened by the heat – but I can see the skin around that area slowly repairing… Does he wield a Curse? Is that why his blood has such a metallic scent? The regeneration? And if it isn't an act – that could explain his madness… No, it can't be - because he still had been physically damaged in some way. Unless… it isn't some sort of elemental curse? It could also be a matter of slow reflex. Why do I ponder on this when a readily available test is on the shore? However, if he is a curse user he’ll die. Very well be it, he does not wish to cooperate and has forced my hand this way; I’ll leave fault on him.

Yazzalo took the man by his torso with one arm and secured him close to his torso. Venator kicked at him, bit him, clawed him, and even began slamming back his head against his bester in desperate pursuit of liberation. “You’ll give yourself a concussion. Perhaps that’s fine, at least I’ll have a clear conscience.”

The master took stiff steps moving through the island. His demeanor was cold and unsettled, but judging by his portrayed ignorance to Venator’s aggressions, something else was on his mind. He started, “I’m giving you this time to speak. Do not squander this opportunity.”

Again, Venator slammed the rear of his head against Yazzalo’s ribcage, causing the back of his skull to spit some blood. “If you insist,” Yazzalo murmured and closed large gaps with a few leaps.

In a drastic change, the seemingly infinite span of water sat before them now. To Yazzalo’s curiosity, Venator froze with an empty-eyed gawk at the sea. Yazzalo kicked his sandals behind himself and pulled back his legs with his free arm in a stretch. “Am I to take this mimicry of a dead animal as an admission of something?”

Venator did not respond.

“Hmph, very well,” Yazzalo lowly omened. As he began to pace into the ocean, the manimal went mad. Venator screamed and spat, thrashed violently while shouting a plethora of fiery tongued vulgar threats. While Yazzalo was unbothered by this, his face contorted with concern by the man causing his shirt to be painted in more blood from his own madness. “I’ll give you one final chance, ‘Venator,’ where did you come from and what spurred your murderous attempt?”

“Your eyes will be crushed beneath my palms and I’ll bite into your intestines until those tubes of feces spray across the sand and I will rub your crushed heart in it until it runs with piss in your veins clogged with plaque and plague when the m–marrow! M–m–Get it away from me! Get it away, now!”

Yazzalo strayed his eyes aloft with a mix of awkwardness and thin patience carrying them. With the release of his arm, Venator plunged into the water beneath him. “Why! Why! Why! I’m sorry, Father, why! Father please, Father please! Father, no!” the rambler cried in violent squirms and frantic flails. With crossed arms, Yazzalo stood about knee-deep in the sea. He observed the shattering of a mind and simply waited. After some time, there was nothing but the mad man stunned and occasional twitching. “No explosion nor repulsion. I guess that mystery is solved. What's with all of this chaos then?"

Yazzalo reached down to pull Venator from the portion of water three or four feet deep, but he paused for a moment. Then, he retracted his arm and trudged through the water until arriving at the sandy shore. He stood there with crossed arms, observing the fear-frozen body float and drift slowly in the calm sea. Venator's eyes were pointed to the sky, wide and empty as the water uplifted his pointless being. But then, Venator blinked.

After his eyes opened, he found himself back on the beach. His heart relaxed more when he found some vaguely familiar houses of sun-hardened red clay upon it. The little coastal village was barren; not a person in sight; no noise besides a beach's ambience. That was until a sudden leak of sobs flowed to his ears. It came from one of the homes - strangely one that had manifested just before him. He peered through a hole carved into the sunpaled residence, finding three people on a large brown mat taking up much of the floor. A woman of bushy, brown-yellowish hair and skin matching that of the sand's pigment sat at the left. A white blouse befell her with contrasting black pants. To the far right of her, a man with a scalp just barely dusted black by lowly cut hair stood with tensed fingers about his eyes. He stood in a sleeveless, tattered shirt that was barely anymore white, and black shorts similarly tarnished. Sitting between this man and the lady of the white blouse, was another woman. Her features were similar to the white-bloused woman, except a head of hair blacker than some brown. It was troubling to see her face for grief had hid it away in her tear-flooded hands. “Shut up…” He breathed the warning with such weak enunciation he was not sure if they came from his mouth or his nose. Then he found himself being studied, a sudden shift in mood from the three adults. They were all watching him with wide gazes without a trace of ever being in consolation, grief, or frustration. “I–I’m sorry, I didn’t mean i—”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

A force collided with him from the side. He looked to the cause of his stumble, finding a boy in a blue shirt that poked at his memories. “Sorry! Mama said we should stay outside! Want to play ball? We can use mine!” the child eagerly invited. His beaming smile melted into a horror-struck grimace and his body froze. Then a sharp, wet crack in the wind sent a surge of formication through the veins and across the body. And the kid’s head fell from his shoulders, rolling to the feet of the man now finding himself in a new, smaller body. Until he realized this flesh was old – and he screamed high.

With hollers so great, they transcended from his panicked unconscious into the world – where he found himself drifting in an infinite vastness of blue, fueling his howling cries more. The shore of the island was far more distant than before, but Venator’s eyes could still make out a man standing solid with crossed arms on its sand. His bones were stiff, muscles made tense with rigor mortis borne of trauma, and his optical organs paralyzed. “Father. Father, why? Eternal comeuppance – do I deserve it? Do I? Its throat is to be crushed for trifling with me! Comeuppance? No, Venator deals punishments! No… No! Venat– Venator is the dominator! The most renowned hunter! That is Venator – me! That is…”

A splash of water adding to his already soaked face cut his words short. Not only did a mental muzzle choke him, but his joints once again stiffened, and just in time to accompany him, something gray poked through the sea’s surface. It pushed through, causing a wake in the water in its patient approach. Alas, in a sudden, violent push, a gray-finned beast breached the surface with jaws of teeth by the hundreds. The brightness of day soon began to be shadowed as fleshy pinkness began to take over the view. But as it became dark, Venator’s petrification began to burn away. To the hunter’s misfortune, his rage was not quick enough to save him from the Carcharodon’s serrated grip. Its teeth ripped into Venator, dragging him down into the dark depths. A release of bubbles from his water-muffled screams were overshadowed by the great thrashes in the sea. Yazzalo’s arms fell from their cross to his sides as he observed this change from peace, to madness, to concealed chaos beneath the surface. Perhaps he wasn’t feigning that illness of the mind. I am not entirely pleased with this sympathy tainting my blood. I know that I shouldn’t be, especially not for this scum. Being devoured by a shark seems like a… slightly less than tolerable comeuppance for the terror he committed, but a comeuppance nonetheless. However, considering the punishment dealt to him not too long ago, I’m sure…

A grotesque thing breached the water just before the Renegade Art master, bringing a foul stench with it. Many shades of red, pink and brown coated the humanoid figure. It crawled up the sand with flesh, fish bones, and teeth falling off its body. Engulfing its left foot, the body of a large great white. Yazzalo broke his pause, “...that he’ll easily survive such an inconvenient thing. Well, at least one question has been answered here – he definitely does not wield a sea curse.”

Venator shuddered violently, similar to that of a rabid cur, sending off much of the guts and liquids of his aquatic devourer. The sand, soaked by both his close proximity to the sea and plastering of fish innards, rose some around his hands and knees. Each breath was deep and heavy, made much more visible from his bony back rising and settling in synchronization. A coughing fit corrupted him, becoming more violent and gnarly subsequently until a load of saltwater – amongst other, organic things – poured from his throat. Yazzalo, with his arms folded once again, looked down at the man who rose from the sea. “Well aren’t you a tenacious one,” he partially commended.

Venator looked up to him with a bloodlusted seer, a surreal blackness in his irises that seemed to be… seeping into his sclera. A surge forced an attempt from his body to lunge at Yazzalo, only accomplishing a reach from his arm, but he was weighed down by the grand shark’s guts which his leg was still stuck in. “Let go of me!” his voice erupted, “Get off, get off of Venator now!” His body quaked and nostrils squalled as rage boiled his blood and turned to assault the splayed carcass with a sole fist. Each blow sent chunks of meat, bone and blood aloft, coating Venator from head to toe just after he shook much of its mess off of him — but blooded blindness would not quell his rage. Soon enough, his foot was freed from its fleshy prison but instead of ending his assault, he swung both fists into the carcass. Left to right, right to left, up down and all around Venator flung the chunks, recoloring the immediate sand into an eldritch red scape of shark blood and flesh. With time, the parts became too small to destroy any further. He searched for more of the corpse, spitting as he screamed at what was left of it. His mania frenzied in his voice, “Fleeing from Venator – Fleeing from Venator?! Give me a good hunt! Good! Run from the fury of Venator! Where did you go?!” His animalistic mimicry of speech began to weaken into that of a more human tone. He fell to his knees in the reddened sand, a trembling signifying an onset of profound grief growing in his tone. “Where— where did you go? Where did you go…”

“Young man,” Yazzalo called, awaiting Venator’s eyes to align with his, soon earning sight of Venator’s sclera, now of dark veins running through them like void cracks. “Are your eyes wet from the sea? Sweat? That animal’s body? Or are those truly tears?”

Venator, in his silently sobbing and messy state, stared at the well-built, old fighter. The, rather viscous and slightly off-colored, tears of his eyes fell slowly down his cheeks. Yazzalo’s tensed muscles relaxed some. His stoic face lost a bit of that hardness, growing about an ounce of some compassion. He questioned, “What trials have you endured?”

Venator’s worn out dog of a demeanor appeared frozen in time. He looked to Yazzalo’s direction, though his eyes were a bit off from the Renegade master’s own. However, in some abrupt change in the wind, sand was ejected to the air following his sudden bursting lunge to the master, but a quick strike of the elbow to the back of his head returned him to ground level. “I’m giving you the opportunity to receive aid, ‘Venator.’ I can’t help you if you don’t at least speak. What has your father done to you? What such trials could have caused this destruction of the mind?”

Venator spoke with broken words muffled by the weight of his breath, “Stop – stop talking! No… stop talking. Move – forward. I– you will be ridden with it too! Litter your blood and bones! Aloft in a – a world of red. A world of — why are you still here?! Do you think we can’t gut you alive?! Impeding on my divine trail?! My— my next evolution?!”

“Who else will aid you in gutting me alive?” Yazzalo probed.

Pause met Venator. His surreal eyes shrunk and, with a determined second attempt, threw himself at Yazzalo, but a much weaker one it was. Instead of dealing another blow, Yazzalo opted to grab the chaotic man by his wrists. The Renegade Master’s hands began to radiate its omen of red with his stoic mien. “You’ve made this necessary – I apologize.”

Venator, deaf to Yazzalo’s warning with his mania crashing like a thousand shards of metal clashing together, jumped into a ninety-degree angle. He positioned his feet against Yazzalo’s shirt and kicked off the man's chest in a reversing flip, a maneuver that would surely result in broken bones. However, despite the inhumane rotation of his shoulders, the mad man seemed apathetic to it. To put an end to his backward tumble, his arms plunged into the looseness beneath him, digging up trailing gutters in the sand as he stabilized himself with the impromptu, human form of brakes. He prepared to throw another assault at his better, but mystification befell him when he discovered the muscled man standing before him mere seconds ago had vanished. Then, a terrible, stunning pain at the back of his neck pressured him. A thumb and index finger of the left hand clenched the sides of his neck, cemented his joints, bringing him to his knees. Dry, guttural hisses from his throat made way as his body twitched beneath the pressure. “Now for what I previously apologized for,” Yazzalo warned.

Yazzalo brought his free hand and placed it on Venator’s shoulder. Both hands flashed white for a moment ever so brief, and returned back to a red glow. He let go of his grip, allowing a Venator of thin and ghostly skin to collapse forward into the sand. Yazzalo turned him over on his back, checking for signs of breathing. “You’ll live. Unfortunately it came to these measures, but it’s not the worst you’ve been through. I’ve simply lowered your blood pressure for some time – something to bring you tranquility for a little bit. Can you tell me about your father now?”

Venator’s mouth relaxed in a stupefied hang. His fingers were gray, but at ease in an unbothered curl. His arms and legs, while positioned in a way that clearly revealed a free fall, showed no signs of impending aggression and, too, lacked color. He murmured, “Why do you always do this… why won’t you just kill me instead of doing all the torment? We don’t like the torm– I don’t — We… We don’t like the pain… except — no. That isn’t true. The pain helps us gr– grow! A — steroid? If only we had ascended that peak long ago… We would have long torn out your intestines and made you drink meals through it for the rest of your days. Father would be so proud of us.”

“Who would he be proud of?”

“Me and the querulous pansy— the bastards— those two … how long has it been since I joined them? Father please, don’t disregard me any longer. I want an answer now. Where have you gone?”

“Did your father bring you here?”

“No, he fathers us… me, but his father is dead — good… no. We mean, no. It is – it is bad – and… dejecting. Father sent us here to advance The Dream. It seems we just aren’t good enough for it… No! You are the one who has failed it! I am the one who will become divine; a god of the– silence yourself, babbling rabid flea thing.”

Yazzalo stroked his beard, remembering its fiery fate when his hand was swiping air before his chest. “Interesting, ‘the Dream,’ you say? What is this?” he inquired.

Venator went silent for an extended moment. Then, without the movement of his head, his eyes shifted over to Yazzalo and he spoke, “Wouldn’t you like to know, you filthy fucking worm. Bring your neck closer so I may tear out your throat with my teeth. If nothing else, break mine so I no longer have to listen to this. Better make it hurt. It best makes me shriek. Spur a great cascade of tears just like I made that bitch you so dearly care for. Allow me to meet her again, and I’ll do my damned best to assure that, forever and to the end, you only feel regret.”

Yazzalo’s searing glare locked onto the ailed Venator whose own had returned back to lifelessly watching the sky. He raised a red hand before balling it into a fist. To a great burst, he slammed his fist into the sand. “I am approaching my sixth decade of being in this corrupted world – do you really believe these little traps and tricks haven’t tested me plenty of times in my day? If I really and truly wanted to kill you, I would have saved myself a lot of time, and you the experience of being in a great white’s gut. I have no reason to execute you right now, so I won’t. Instead, you can cooperate or I’ll leave you here for now and come back later to do it all over again. Understand?”

“We’ll kill yourself for you.”

“I’m sure. I see you’ve – or this ‘all of you’ – has made a decision,” Yazzalo sighed, “It is clear a great misery has poisoned you, however mysterious it is. A long and arduous journey it will be, but the spiritual cleansing, which will begin upon my next return, will do both of us good. I do not expect it to be quick, especially considering your temperament, but this is simply another trial of life. Don’t you agree?”

Venator’s skin had regained its pigment and his bones were once again under the order of his mind. All before the eye could shut and open, he moved from his grounded, incapacitated form on the sand into a charging stride with saliva dripping from his mouth in his deranged hunt. He slid low, dipping his hand into the sand beneath his feet, ripping up a chain of a hundred rusty barbs. “Desecrate! Desecrate, do you recall?! Desecrate – spill your sanguine guts for a– all…”

In an abrupt, shambolic deceleration, Venator tripped into the sand, taking much of the impact to his backside. His optics were frozen, unchanging, refusing to blink. His chest beat like a mad drum and the breath broke through his caging teeth. “I can also help you conquer this,” Yazzalo said as he stood a mere ankle-deep in the sea. “However,” he chuckled, “unfortunately you’ve put me in the position where that will have to be… Well, I’m sure you’ll pick up on it in due time. Likely after we weaken the storm that’s raging in your mind and teach you how to construct barriers for such a hurricane – in other words, teaching you restraint like the rest of us... or should I say the majority of us. And those chains you’ve positioned I presume all around my island – this is not the place for that. That is another problem we’ll have to rectify, but it is the perfect task for our first lesson.”

“Stop mocking Venator. We – I, will have your tongue as a tender delicacy – destined to be satisfactory… no, the tongue of the knight?” he groaned with the rise of a palm to his head, “I’m not a child, you rancid bald ape! Fight us! Fight us, now!” Venator spat.

Yazzalo grinned. “Take this opportunity to learn patience – I’m sure we’ll quarrel again later, dogged one.”

The sinewy, gray-bearded man paced down the shoreline as Venator trailed him as close he could without entering the water himself. Then Yazzalo moved into a jog, increased his pace into a run, before bursting into a sprint and diving into the water where he entered powerful strokes across the sea. Venator, with flame polluting his blood, hurled the spiked whip into the ocean and unleashed a scream that echoed across the sea.