Episode 10: Prisoner of the Blade

The bright and majestic seas of the Atlantic were enough to make the people from Edindale forget of the darkness that always gloomed over them. Malakai, Rhea, and Martinez along with the crew embraced the beauty of the day. A day profound with a fond hope that could seize the day for everyone on the ship. That alas unless someone conspired by the darkness within finally awoke from their slumber.

Below the ship right on top of the hull on the bilge of Martinez’s ship lied a man in chains. His dirty feet were soaked in the black fungus piling up on the lowest part of the ship, with black water dripping from a faucet spring on his nappy dirty blonde hair. He wore rags and dressed like a prisoner. His legs and hands were cuffed to metal shafts embusing with a fire magic that would activate if he moved. The entire lower deck flooded with this black water that weakened the man.

“Prisoner…?” A voice called out, following the opening of the door above.

The prisoner raised his head up. His eyes shut with a slight sigh humming out of despair. His body ached as he could feel the lumps and bruises from the hundreds of lashes and beatings piling up. He had a noticeable scar on his right eye. The scar lingered from the top of his forehead to his lower chin. The prisoner threw his hair back, so his other eye could see the crewmate.

The prisoner didn’t respond. He only glared at the buccaneer. The buccaneer carried a tray in hand, as the left shallow eyelid of the prisoner opened with no emotion.

“Gods it smells fowl in here!” The buccaneer moaned covering his nose.

The stench was so atrocious the buccaneer threw the tray down to cover his nose and returned to the staircase door. “Captain Martinez wants you fed. Truth be told I don’t give a rat's ass about you, so here.”

“What is it…?” The prisoner’s dark masculine voice questioned.

“Rats ass. Or should I say rat intestines? Enjoy… Kharon.”

The prisoner raised his open eyelid to the buccaneer that reflected the same obsidian cursed eye Malakai possessed. The lost spirit curse of the Diborn stuck with this man as well. The veins around his face were a putrid violet color the more his left eye opened. He examined the tray and not even the foul smell evaded him. His stomach growled and he noticed the bowl of water to the left of his chain prison was empty.

The prisoner quickly started to ingest all of the likely poisoned food. He scarfed it down like it was his last sitting. “This is it, isn’t it?”

No one else sat around the room. The prisoner asked himself the question, as a single tear fell down his eye. He sniffled as he could see himself for what he had become. His eye glared at the reflection of the pain and suffering he endured. This was his rock bottom and he accepted his fate as is.

“I only wish for forgiveness…” the prisoner frowned upon.

“So, thou shall be forgiven in thy new age…” A voice shattered the silence dawned upon the room. “Jericho Ryker of Brightfall, your calling has been heard and accepted.”

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The voice came from across the room. The prisoner dropped his leftover rat intestines on the ground and raised up on his knees. Both his hands bonded together like a prayer, as he looked upon the voice. The voice of reckoning and then forgiveness, for this was the thing he searched so long for now.

Jericho bowed to the voice, which was hung up like an accessory. A black obsidian blade, with red lighting surrounding a hollow eye in the middle of the hilt of the longsword. From the presence alone, Jericho or any other soul could feel the blade's power. Something that had been lost and long forgotten about through the tales of time, destined to stand before a Diborn falling. The aura of the blade wasn’t anything powerful or frightening, but ancient. Whether what contents lay inside of it, Jericho could sense the soul reflecting from it.

“What are you…? How do you know me?” Jericho in agony questioned. Every moment he turned and looked to the frightful eye he bare witnessed all the pain he endured.

“I know all Kharon. I know what you are Jericho. You are the soul we yearned for.” The blade called out. “The soul of agony.”

Jericho looked directly to the eye as it shifted its focus deep into the soul of Jericho. “Ugh.”

Jericho felt as though his body was captured and taken into a fiery pit of hell. A pit where everything haunting one person could be relieved once more. Jericho awoke in a burning village, where black, amber flames fell like raindrops on top of the villagers. People burned into the black flames that melted past their bones. The visage of Kharon the shard bearing reaper sat high into the sky.

In chains still, Jericho watched the reaper slash away at the villagers one at a time. The elderly, the mature, and the youth all fell to the reaper. It was not only a nightmare but a memory relieved as he could see the true horrors that awakened him.

“Stop. No. No. Stop this madness!” Jericho pleaded.

He begged for what felt like hours. Jericho raised his head to the once crescent moon that became the same eye of the blade that called for him. Kharon the Reaper held his scythe over a mother and a young girl, who turned to Jericho.

“Jericho!?” The woman called out.

“Father!” The little girl screamed.

Jericho’s expression gleamed with hopelessness. His heart drained of suffering as those once honey-colored eyes drained of color, back into the obsidian Diborn ones. Jericho only murmured the heart for a faint, “No…”

The blade magnified to a large tower pillar in the sky that never ended. Kharon swung his blade as blood split further. The fires fell and all that surrounded Jericho was a black abyss that never ended. Everything around him was pitch black as he fell to a feeble position.

“Stop.” He begged. “Please stop this.”

“Thy power lies in thy agony of the lost. Does thou search for redemption from the damage of Kharon?” The blade called out. “Does it search for a calamity end?”

“Yes.” Jericho teared up, as the power of the Diborn suddenly disappeared from his left eye. “Yes.”

The blade lit up in a bolt of red lightning. It muttered itself in a bold clap of humor. “Then thy power shall be suppressed.”

A faint black wind created a burst of wind that surrounded Jericho like a tornado. The tornado shredded the left black eye of Jericho back to his honey-colored eye. The feeling of a lost soul being revived spawned in him. He could feel the passion behind his emotion now, as the blade sucked away the powers of a Diborn. The winds disappeared and Jericho could feel his chest pounding with an aching feeling. A feeling that repeated every half a second. His heartbeat once more.

“What…?”

“The power of Kharon rests within me. His power is sealed if you obey thy commands of the Calamity Blade.” The blade called out.

Jericho desperately enjoyed looking to the power. “Yes?”

“Serve me. For one, thy will carry me in thou journey. Two, thou shall spill blood twice a day to restore the power of calamity. Three, thou shall destroy the shards of the blade to complete the cataclysm of thou Lotus Blade.” The blade commanded.

“You… you. You are a… Lotus Blade?” Jericho cautiousness asked in shock.

“The first of my kind. Given a power to restore this realm, unlike the other curses.” The Calamity Blade noted.

Jericho gulped. “So… I follow you. And I can be redeemed of these nightmares?”

“Correct…”

Jericho smiled with a sinister look in his eyes. “Then we shall slay all the evils before us.”