All manner of swords, axes, hammers, and polearms rained down from the sky. All of them oversized, falling like meteors. Trailing crimson plasma as they sailed through the sky. Landing with enough force to make the earth groan. Effectively flattening the last standing structures of an ancient city, as well as the bandits that had called the dead city home.
The few survivors scurried off, like insects crawling out from under a lifted stone. Fleeing the light and seeking security of the shadows. The monolithic weapons began to rapidly rust, their black metal turning red and crumbling into dust. Building up into a great red heap that soon become a great red cloud.
The red cloud congealed and became a great red sea. A sea of blood that hung above the ground, flowing in a spiral. Briefly churning, as if communicating with itself before sending portions of itself after the surviving bandits.
Eventually the split off portions of red sea all returned, each of them having grown by a fair bit, bloated with the blood of their victims. They rejoined their source, and the sea began to spiral and circulate, spinning faster and faster, humming softly as it hung above the head of its host.
A metal giantess of dark red iron. Tall enough and strong enough to rest the world on her shoulders. She was the Lady of the Blood Iron Sea.
With eyes that burned hotter than the stars she watched for any signs of life, letting a few last dregs of her molten blood drift through the wastes in search of survivors. Once she was sure that there were none she called them back to her. Adding them to the churning red sea.
Then with footsteps that were soundless, but still made the world tremble the red lady turned and walked off. Allowing her red sea to subsume her and carry her off.
*****
Elsewhere, several tens of millions of miles away, a certain woman would find herself unceremoniously deposited in a castle courtyard. Dropped on her rear by a fluffy pink rain cloud.
Alessa groaned feeling much put upon, rubbing the small of her back as she stepped out from the small crater she’d made when she landed. After seeing the crater she groaned some more, knowing that the damage to the courtyard would be docked from her pay. Wanting to avoid such troublesome outcome she closed her eyes and concentrate.
Focusing on channelling the celestial energies around her. She leaned on what she’d been taught before being set loose in the heavenly plane and what she’d been taught after, to try and repair the damage she’d done to the courtyard stones. Reminding the stones of how they used to be and using raw power to lean on reality till that memory became the stones current state.
Opening her eyes, Alessa couldn’t help the shy smile that spread across her face. The stones were supposed to be impervious to magic, fixing them despite that was proof of how far she had come. Beads of sweat rolled down her brow, delicate work like this generally took more out of her than instinct driven use of her powers that allowed her to form weapons from her blood and morph her flesh into iron.
Having said that, Alessa thought she liked fixing things more, than she liked breaking them. While her efforts weren’t the most elegant, relying her full-step ranking more than anything else, she found herself gaining insights on the true nature of matter and mass, almost every other day.
After fixing the courtyard stones she headed into the castle itself. Respectfully greeting a few of the castle’s stiff faced staff as she made her way to her room to bathe and change.
Her new garb was more or less identical to her old garb, plain plain pleated, navy breeches, and a simple frock. Before she left her quarters she covered it all with heavy, leaden apron.
*****
Alessa wasn’t entirely sure what to think of her new life as an immortal. On the one hand, she appreciated the strength. She appreciated the very real sense that the only thing holding her back from doing, nearly anything, was her, and her admittedly lackluster imagination.
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While she could have done without, the extra cup size that the change had given her, or the fact that her breasts now seemed to possess a slight gravitational pull, she found she actually liked her true-self. There was a very simple, very... “Aria clan”...part of her, that took satisfaction in knowing that she could literally hold Monde in the palm of her hands, if she were back home. She hadn’t thought that that part of her existed, but apparently it did.
Another part of her that apparently existed now, or maybe always existed, was whatever aspect of her being or personality, that had created the blood sea. The roiling sea of red that sometimes appeared above her head, troubled her. It flowed, sloshed, and flared along with her mood, yet there were often things in her undulations that didn’t come from her. Sometimes she’d look up and see the shadow of something...immense, some unfathomable, unnamed something that moved beneath its surface.
If she was being honest, Alessa was pretty sure she was a little afraid of it. Everytime she dived into the blood sea to transition herself to somewhere else in the heavenly plane, there was a moment of hesitation where she wondered if this was the day, that whatever it was, decided it didn’t like her diving into its sea.
Which was silly, and a bit mad, since she also knew that whatever it was was a part of her.
Thinking on this, and a million other things, Alessa made her way to her place of work.
A kitchen, a king's kitchen, outfitted with all manner of accoutrements and equipment. It was actually a bit like their kitchen back home, which should have been surprising because the owner of this kitchen was a god.
The only real difference was the fact that there a broad disparity between the ages of the tools and appliances. The stove was a big stone seated in the middle of a caged flame. The oven had a holographic interface. The fridge looked like a stainless steel coffin, and the sink was small lake with some tentacled creature living in the drain. Though the knives were all uniformly sharp, they varied from being made of shards of hard light, to being made of silver, to being made of bone.
Making her way through the kitchens entrance to the storage rooms at the back, Alessa passed mounted plates and pictures of meals that were both enchanting and ghastly.
More than a few featured a table with something disturbingly humanoid lying on a platter in well-glazed, expertly spiced repose.
Alessa entered the storage room that lay at the far end of the kitchen, shivering as she was almost immediately struck by a chill that would turn a mortal girl into an ice statue.
She wandered through the a deep freezer and pretended that she didn’t find walking past the myriad carcasses that hung from the ceiling, slightly eerie.
“This student greets Master.” said Alessa. Bending at the waist as she came upon a figure that sat with its back to her. Hacking at a body that might have been loosely defined as that of an inverted mermaid. Peeling away the skin and scales to reveal the rich, red, flesh beneath.
Three massive slabs of meat were sliced away from the body and deposited onto a tray, before the man stopped and looked at the girl who remained bowed at his back.
“...You’re late, girl.” said the man, glaring at Alessa with eyes of churning gray-blue.
She laughed, nervously. Making sure that her answer didn’t come across as an excuse. If there was one thing the old sea god hated, it was excuses.
Lord Shui Kai was a former fisherman, turned sailor, turned soldier, turned martial saint, turned actual Saint, turned god, turned fallen god. According to the itinerary Billy provided before sending her and her grandmother flying towards his castle, none of those experiences were very easy, or very positive, yet he’d still managed to do them, and do them well and with grass. Meaning he wasn’t very understanding of those who tried to give excuses.
“My apologies, I ended up taking longer than I intended to clearing out that city of bandits, sir.”
Shui Kai grunted and picked up the tray he’d deposited his meat onto. He handed her the tray and and walked passed her without any word to indicate that she should follow. And while common sense would say she should, the old man also had a thing about assumptions, and was just off enough to ensure that Alessa would sometimes get yelled at for making quote-unquote “meaningless actions.”
She only moved when a moment later the old man looked behind him and glared.
“Are you going to make me wait all day?” said Shui Kai.
“No, sir.” said Alessa. Her pace speeding up just a little bit more as she hurried to follow him out of the freezer. Following the man out to the kitchen where she’d be expected to set down the meat and begin the prep work.
Shui Kai, was a mean old man, which was understandable because he’d likely been a mean young man as well. However he wasn’t completely terrible. He was just very weathered and hard like the light tan skin that pulled tight across his bones. Like the crags of a rocky shore.
Though they’d needed Billy’s letter of introduction to get through the gate, He’d all but demanded that Alessa and Alma stay with him and his wife once he realized that they were cousins to his wife. Taking them in as guests instead of as servants.
Now she was his student, his apprentice. He alternated between teaching her how to cook, beating her senseless as he taught her how to fight, and sending her on errands that she assumed had to contain some educational value.
The old man was tough and strong, besides Billy and the green granny he was pretty much one of the best teachers she’d ever head.
Which was was somewhat troubling, a bit confusing, because she’d come here with the understanding that “she” was supposed to be serving as the man’s bodyguard. What was even more confusing was that she couldn’t help having the feeling that this too, was also part of Billy’s intention when he sent her here.