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Present

The captain of the Tiburon came to his senses from the sweet memories of his beloved when a gigantic red lightning bolt pierced the blue sky obliquely. It did not happen from top to bottom, it seemed rather that the lightning had risen from bottom to top, coming from a point of the horizon unreachable by sight.

It was sudden, unpredictable, frightening.

The roar of thunder that followed was so powerful that it violently vibrated the surface of the sea and shook the entire ship.

Deniz slipped but recovered instinctively grabbing the rudder. “What the hell… what the hell did just happen?” he shouted to the best of his voice to an indefinite interlocutor.

Ilker ran up to him on the quarterdeck. “Have you seen that? What was it, for all the Divines? What was it, Deniz?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know? Cursed Plagues!”

The sky seemed to have absorbed the reddish electricity of the lightning bolt and from that point small scarlet thunderbolts spread in all directions.

Then, it all happened at frightening speed.

The blue of the sky began to change colour, to darken. The whole area, as far as the eye could see, was filling up with big black clouds. The wind, which was already blowing strong, became stormy and violent like the mistral in the middle of winter, perhaps even much higher than sixty knots, given the not at all reassuring struggling and creaking of the ship’s boards that seemed to have to crumble at any moment.

Deniz and Ilker looked up at the same time.

Red lights were seen shining rhythmically under the mass of black air. The tremendous roars that accompanied those flashes led all the men on the ship to pray to the Divines Ten or Aonghas. Each of them, in their own way, indiscriminately prayed different deities, hoping to obtain protection from the impending cataclysm of impossible, unnatural colours.

It was panic on the Tiburon. Nobody held their position, nobody did anything to straighten the course of the sailing ship which was now at the mercy of the severe currents and icy gusts that, like razor cuts, were tearing the flesh of men.

“There is no doubt, that’s a storm. Ahrr! How does such an absurd storm appear out of nowhere? What’s the matter with those lightning bolts? They’re red, Deniz, do you see that? What the hell is going on? What is that?” Ilker yelled increasingly panicked.

Deniz didn’t answer. He hadn’t even heard the boatswain utter any words. He couldn’t think because in over forty years at sea, he had never seen anything like it. It was something he had never even heard of. It seemed to him a terrible and at the same time frighteningly beautiful witchcraft, beautiful in a twisted and unnatural way.

Suddenly a burst in the sky that almost broke the eardrums of everyone present.

At the same moment, Deniz perfectly saw a crimson lightning flash hit the deck. It had been extremely quick, faster than the blink of an eye, and therefore the captain was waiting for nothing but to see the planks crumble under that fury of nature.

It did not happen. Only a curtain of dust rose from the wooden floor, not a splinter.

Impossible. No. No. Impossible. A flash of lightning has hit the wood in full. It’s not possible that the ship is still intact. No. Not a spark, not a flame, not a plank out of place. No. Impossible, thought the old man who for the first time in his life knew the fear of the unknown, of the incomprehensible.

Little by little the dust cloud began to thin out. Deniz was bewildered and incredulous when he saw what had arrived on the intact bridge in conjunction with that lightning flash.

Bare feet with fingers painted alternately in red and black. The colours then rose towards the narrow ankles joining in indistinct patterns. Not a child’s feet, they rather looked like the feet of a small young woman. Higher up, smooth, thin white legs. Narrow hips, flat abdomen and chest. With lean arms, and hands even more, she brought the thick crimson hair along her face, hiding it. She wore a short black dress of an almost transparent fabric that let glimpse her graces evidently not yet fully developed.

“Ruined” she said slowly in a girl’s voice. She let her extremely long scarlet hair fall across her chest. Her face was thin, delicate, beautiful. Her narrow lips were tinged with red, her nose small and upturned.

What shocked the old captain, however, were her eyes. Sharp and surrounded by a heavy, glittery, dark purple make-up, they were of two different colours: the right iris of the same as the pupil; the left iris was as red as blood.

She was not looking at any of the men on the deck, her sight seemed blurred, lost in an unspecified spot. She brushed off the dust and smelled her hair again. “Ruined” she repeated with the same slowness of the first time.

“What the hell happened, captain? What are we doing? The flows drag us to the bottom! There are some eddies ahead!” shouted Doffre, a faithful sailor who had been part of the crew for more than thirty years. He joined Tiburon around the same time Deniz married Syradis.

She raised her face and looked at the captain of the sailing ship who in the meantime had descended the steps of the quarterdeck towards the deck. Her face, young and handsome, was impassive, as carved in stone.

The captain was afraid of that look.

Doffre saw the slender figure covering her face with scarlet hair. He saw her and started running towards her, ready to shout at her who knows what words.

All around the ship the situation did not seem to calm down but now it seemed no longer to interest anyone, neither the eddies that could have dragged the Tiburon to the seabed, nor the tornadoes that incredibly and without logic had formed as vertical bridges between the black clouds and the surface of the sea, ready to smash the sailing ship.

It was quick. Damn quick. Quick to the point that Deniz could only see indistinctly, in a veiled, surreal way.

She pointed her small open hand, with the fingers also painted red and black with the same patterns of the feet, at the sailor who was running to her. The latter initially seemed to stop breathing and, to the raising of her thin and apparently delicate arm corresponded the fluctuation of the man’s body in the air. “Noisy. Bas sa bhad” was what the girl said coldly, while her hand clenched into a fist.

Someone could be heard screaming in terror, others chanting prayers, and still others falling on their knees like a dead weight to the floor. Doffre had burst into a thousand pieces of an internal flame, blood splattered everywhere, as well as his guts. What a moment ago had been a man, with a wave of the girl’s hand became a stain coloured red of blood and black of coal on the surfaces of the ship. It looked like fresh paint that was beginning to fade erased by the black, fearless, and foamy waters of the waves that reached the deck.

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What’s going on? What’s all this? Am I dreaming? Yes, no doubt. It’s a nightmare. Wake up, Deniz. Wake up, stupid old man. Wake up!

A dozen men began to scream at the top of their lungs in true terror. Absolute terror. The thing that most of all scares man: the inexplicable. A part of sailors approached the parapet. They looked at the motionless slender girl, then watched the foamy waves crashing with unprecedented violence against the hull.

They tried their luck by throwing themselves into the stormy and swirling sea of whirlpools and tornadoes, in a combination of imprecations and prayers. Certain death, one way or another.

They did not touch the surface of the water.

She, that being, made the same movement as before, but did not utter the same verses, did not clench her hand into a fist. The sailors floated through the air to the surface of the Tiburon and, three feet from the deck, fell back onto the planks. If it was the work of that being through some spell, this Deniz could not explain. The movements of her had seemed those of a puppeteer intent to play with their puppets held in mid-air by invisible strings.

“Where Taghté? The Chosen One” she asked without taking a step or change expression, maintaining the same tone of voice. Her arms were along her sides and her scarlet hair, wet from the thick drops of water that had started to rain in the gale, looked like rivers of living blood.

No one answered as no one knew what she was talking about.

She gave a shrug to her shoulder, from which thin drops of rain and sea water splashed and brought her soaked hair in front of her face. “Ruined” she said softly. She raised a hand to chest level and, like a magnet, seemed to draw another of the sailors, Pwikke, to her. “Taghté?” She seemed to ask delicately, smelling him.

Deniz did not have time to stop her.

Almost immediately, that being pulled her nostrils away from the man with a grimace, made a sudden movement of the arm and Pwikke found himself in mid-air between the surface of the sea and the black and red sky. Defenceless.

A gigantic scarlet lightning flash struck him in full and not even the ashes of the sailor remained.

“I beg you!” Deniz yelled, placing his hand on the golden sabre. He did not extract. He felt shortness of breath, trembling limbs. “Please, stop! We don’t know what you say, what those words mean. Stop! Who are you? Why do you do this?”

“Taghté, the Chosen One” she said, motionless, terribly peaceful after that horror.

“We’re only merchants! What’s that you just said? Who’s the Chosen One?”

That being made a strange grimace, as if some electricity had hit her in the neck. She made a big negative nod, then another grimace. “E-Eth-Ethan. Taghté” she stammered.

Ethan? Are you looking for Ethan? Ethan as Chosen One? What’s going on? Who’s this girl? What is she doing? Magic? Only questions on Deniz’s mind. Only questions that were struggling violently and painfully, without being able to find any answers. “What do you want from Ethan?”

Another strange grimace, as if struck by a vibration that from an indistinct point of the neck branched out into the rest of the body. She brought her hair of blood to her face. “Ruined.” She brought them back up his chest. “Beatha air a Taghté. The life. Chosen One’s life. Beatha air a Ethan. Chosen One’s life. Ethan’s life.”

Ethan’s life? Does she want his life? Kill him? “What do you want to do with this Ethan’s life?" asked Deniz, who felt a pain in his chest spreading up to his temples. He fell to one knee and for the first time the white giant of Tiburon really looked like an old man in his sixties. He felt weak in the face of what looked like a little girl, but was evidently a monster, a demon, a Plague.

No one helped him because no one, after seeing Doffre’s fate, had the spirit and the courage. No one tried to jump into the sea because no one, after seeing Pwikke’s fate, had the spirit and the audacity.

“Beatha air a Ethan. The life. Ghabhail beatha air a Ethan” she said before being struck by another of those shocks. “The life. Chosen One’s life. I… I want it. I want it. I want to… take it. Chosen One’s life. Ethan’s life” she stammered once more.

What’s going on? What’s all this? I don’t understand. I really don’t understand. It can only be a nightmare because these things don’t really exist. It’s impossible. No… No, it’s not just a nightmare. Damn demon. Do you want Ethan? Are you dumb, maybe? Do you think I’d ever hand him over? Whatever you want from him, you’ll get less because I’m just an old man, my life is worth nothing compared to a boy’s. Ethan… why this being is looking for you? Ethan… who are you? “I am Ethan, the Chosen One. It’s me”, the old man finally said.

“Are you crazy? For Aedan! What are you…” Ilker tried unsuccessfully.

“Silence!” Deniz yelled as loud as he could, standing up and smiling, his beard drenched in rain and seawater. “It’s me Ethan.”

She was struck by another shock. She widened her terrifying heterochromatic eyes to Deniz’s grey ones. She hadn’t moved a step since landing on deck. At that moment she did.

Deniz couldn’t follow her with his eyes. It almost seemed that she had disappeared where she was, only to materialize in front of him. The old man jumped and fell backwards.

That being came closer and closer.

To Deniz she looked like a real demon as she didn’t blink and didn’t seem to breathe or give off heat.

Suddenly the being stopped as if blocked by a superior force. Another one of those shocks. Her eyes widened even more. “Bheir thu mi thuige. You will take me… Bheir thu mi gu Ethan. You will take me to him. Bheir thu mi gu Taghté. You’ll take me to Ethan. You will take me… You will take me to the Chosen One.”

“It’s me! I’m the Chosen One!” The thought that crossed Deniz’s mind was quick and he himself never expected to be capable of that. He put his hand on the gilded-handled sabre and, drawing it out, struck a horizontal swipe as hard as his arms allowed him towards the crimson-haired girl.

Thus it was that he lost all hope.

The blade struck full on the very thin, and apparently delicate, wrist of the being and broke into a thousand pieces of red steel, not by the blood but by the light of the flaming electricity that vibrated on the point hit and reflected on the shards.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Nobody thought.

“Bheir thu mi gu Taghté” repeated the beautiful and terrible being with the scarlet hair. She opened a hand and Deniz began to float. She looked at him, looked at the Tiburon, and then look at him again. She too began to float gracefully, at the same height as Deniz, at the same speed. Not an expression, not a single emotion permeated his beautiful stone face. She raised her other arm and swept her free hand. A huge red lightning struck the mainmast of the Tiburon.

The ship shattered into two parts, much like Deniz’s heart.

“Bheir thu mi gu Taghté” she repeated once again.

Deniz couldn’t move, wriggle, scream. There was nothing he could do with his body immobilized in mid-air. He couldn’t even think. He could only cry. He could and he did, as he saw the ship ablaze, some of his friends burning alive amid the chaos of screams, thunder, the lapping of eddies and the screeching whistle of mighty tornadoes.

“Thrust as àirde” the being said in a delicate and chilling voice, moving a hand towards the stormy waters. A blood-red lightning bolt struck the open sea two hundred feet from them, and a giant wave rose unnaturally out of nowhere. It was the highest wave Deniz had ever seen. It set off furiously towards the ship, imposing and inexorable. “Bidh mi a'toirt ionnsaigh air teine ann an dearg, buidhe is orains. Is dòcha gun toir slighe lasrach nan lasraichean mi chun an amas agam” pronounced the creature with powers that to Deniz seemed demonic in a cacophony of sounds incomprehensible to the captain. Above them two, a circle of red, orange, and yellow sparks began to swirl faster and faster.

In the eyes of the old captain, everything around him was indistinctly dyed with those colours, but only after seeing the immense column of water crash against the Tiburon, definitively decreeing its end. That had been its last journey.

Yellow, orange, and red started to merge. More and more intensely, more and more darkened, until everything turned black.

I’m coming to you, Syradis, my love…