10-29-2021, 11:40 PM
One boot on and one boot off, Sintra limps from the illuminated darkness of the mushroom-lit cave to the darkness of Pangea, filled with moon-bright fog. Everywhere he turns, the air is full of silver, bright enough to dazzle, but hiding the path and tricking the eye. The parrot is back on his shoulder with a whispered growl, minus a few feathers shaved off it by the amethyst cave-dwellers. The little beasts don't seem to be inclined to leave their home, which the bloody pirate takes to be a bad sign.
The taste of blood and vomit is still thick in his mouth and his pants so full of holes that they're more like the idea of pants than actual pants now, but he's still full of the incessant need to find Jack, whoever Jack is, somewhere out there. Out here in the brilliant obscurity of Pangea.
A series of clicks in the darkness gets his attention. There's a familiar tone to them, a scuttling, scratching, gurgling sound and the man turns his head this way and that trying to determine the directions but the fog hides even this from him. Hides the behemoth from him until he nearly walks right into one of it's terrible, great legs and Sintra recoils in horror from the thing.
Carcinus.
But how? How can it be? The giant crab was cracked and torn by the dead he was there to consume. The gods' dead, the mean and the horses and the hounds and the leopard that he came to eat had risen under the adulterated magic that dripped from Sintra's skin and ripped the great crab to pieces. He had seen it. He had seen Carcinus take his place in the sky with the twins, he had seen Hera and her thunderclap of anger that doomed Sintra to die again. And now, again.
The parrot trills into his ear and when that does not work, bites it, hard, wrenching a guttural scream from the dazed man. It wakes man and monster. The undead giant scuttles forward, raking the space ahead of it awkwardly for the man who caused its death and displacement. The sky is no place for a crab to be, crabs belong in the sea. It will eat him again. and perhaps, Hera willing, it will eat the man that was the mare again, and again, and again, as many times as it can, until it grows weary of its revenge.
"I'm so sorry," he murmurs gently, unsure the Beast even has ears to hear his sorrow. This isn't fair, not to either of them. Carcinus lunges but the motion is uneven. The creature's shattered carcass is missing more than a few legs and escape should be easy except Sintra has less determination to escape than the crab has to catch him up. He evades the sweeping claw, but not swiftly, much to the parrot's chagrin and the bright bird scolds him fully, turning the silver and the black of night blue with curses.
"I didn't know that would happen. I just wanted everything to be over."
But it wasn't, it would never be over, and Carcinus doesn't want his apologies. The great crab lurches forward again, hungrily, the memory of watching that stabbing claw pull away long shreds of his own entrails and drop them into the horrible slit of the crustacean's mouth is more than Sintra can bear but it rises up unbidden, playing in the darkness hiding behind the eyepatch, so he turns, near-blind in the dense cloud cover, and he runs, instead, his bootless foot leaving bloody prints to mark his trail.
Carcinus follows; his immensity more than his ability rushing him through the narrow corridors. Sintra turns, slipping in slick mud from an underground water source seeping upward, collapsing the ground underfoot. He falls and the crab lunges, but close sandstone walls catch him up by the carapace, leaving his remaining legs writhing helplessly in the air. A heavily spiked leg brushes close enough to knock the hat from Sintra's head and leave it clinging to the twisting leg as it seeks purchase to no avail.
Without waiting, without wasting any more breath on unheard apologies, Sintra clambers out from beneath Hera's creature and races to the places his heart tells him Jack is waiting.
The taste of blood and vomit is still thick in his mouth and his pants so full of holes that they're more like the idea of pants than actual pants now, but he's still full of the incessant need to find Jack, whoever Jack is, somewhere out there. Out here in the brilliant obscurity of Pangea.
A series of clicks in the darkness gets his attention. There's a familiar tone to them, a scuttling, scratching, gurgling sound and the man turns his head this way and that trying to determine the directions but the fog hides even this from him. Hides the behemoth from him until he nearly walks right into one of it's terrible, great legs and Sintra recoils in horror from the thing.
Carcinus.
But how? How can it be? The giant crab was cracked and torn by the dead he was there to consume. The gods' dead, the mean and the horses and the hounds and the leopard that he came to eat had risen under the adulterated magic that dripped from Sintra's skin and ripped the great crab to pieces. He had seen it. He had seen Carcinus take his place in the sky with the twins, he had seen Hera and her thunderclap of anger that doomed Sintra to die again. And now, again.
The parrot trills into his ear and when that does not work, bites it, hard, wrenching a guttural scream from the dazed man. It wakes man and monster. The undead giant scuttles forward, raking the space ahead of it awkwardly for the man who caused its death and displacement. The sky is no place for a crab to be, crabs belong in the sea. It will eat him again. and perhaps, Hera willing, it will eat the man that was the mare again, and again, and again, as many times as it can, until it grows weary of its revenge.
"I'm so sorry," he murmurs gently, unsure the Beast even has ears to hear his sorrow. This isn't fair, not to either of them. Carcinus lunges but the motion is uneven. The creature's shattered carcass is missing more than a few legs and escape should be easy except Sintra has less determination to escape than the crab has to catch him up. He evades the sweeping claw, but not swiftly, much to the parrot's chagrin and the bright bird scolds him fully, turning the silver and the black of night blue with curses.
"I didn't know that would happen. I just wanted everything to be over."
But it wasn't, it would never be over, and Carcinus doesn't want his apologies. The great crab lurches forward again, hungrily, the memory of watching that stabbing claw pull away long shreds of his own entrails and drop them into the horrible slit of the crustacean's mouth is more than Sintra can bear but it rises up unbidden, playing in the darkness hiding behind the eyepatch, so he turns, near-blind in the dense cloud cover, and he runs, instead, his bootless foot leaving bloody prints to mark his trail.
Carcinus follows; his immensity more than his ability rushing him through the narrow corridors. Sintra turns, slipping in slick mud from an underground water source seeping upward, collapsing the ground underfoot. He falls and the crab lunges, but close sandstone walls catch him up by the carapace, leaving his remaining legs writhing helplessly in the air. A heavily spiked leg brushes close enough to knock the hat from Sintra's head and leave it clinging to the twisting leg as it seeks purchase to no avail.
Without waiting, without wasting any more breath on unheard apologies, Sintra clambers out from beneath Hera's creature and races to the places his heart tells him Jack is waiting.