Blood upon the Sands

Sands Run Red

Ossari and those left behind were no more.  All that remained of them was a charnel house of horror.  The white sands ran red with their blood.  Their bodies had been reduced to shreds, of hands and limbs and heads and organs strewn along the length of the beach.  Eyes and tongues had been torn from heads, and even fingers had been rippled free.  The boats that they had been guarding had likewise been destroyed, reduced to shattered splinters by a swirling cyclone of death and destruction.

More than one of the Corsairs retched at the scene; for this was savagery such as none had beheld before, or had had contemplated in their darkest imaginings.

Amongst all the butchery stood the grey skinned Xoacanan, studying them with unblinking white eyes.  Across its ashen features existed a smile both cruel and capricious, mocking their efforts at survival.  It spread forth is lanky limbs, gesturing at the devastation wrought before pointing to the still living corsairs.  The message given was obvious; first these, then you.

"This place will be the death of us," Vaspari said with almost fatalistic acceptance.  "Xaotolan's curse shall claim yet more victims."

"Hraega's Tears!" Fianna snarled, stepping to the fore, her cutlass whistling through the air as she spun it about in a blur before her eyes, loosening up her arms for battle.  "Curse or no, I shall face this foe.  If he can bleed, then he shall."  Hers were a people for whom surrender was a seldom heard concept, who would meet any odds with defiance upon their lips, even certain death, for it was a fear that held no power over them.

With a fearsome cry she sprang forward, bare feet running across the surface of the sands, straight for the ashen Xoacanan.  Her cutlass arced a glittering, swift path through the air, crashing full well into the creature's head - and shattering.  Not a mark had been left on its head in reply.  Just the hilt and a hand length of broken blade remained in Fianna's hand, the rest reduced to metal splinters that lay across the sands about them.  The force of the blow all but tore what had remained of the cutlass from her grasp, and had sent cruel jarring pains shuddering the length of her arm.

The creature turned its colourless gaze upon her and opened its mouth.  From its lips came a hooting laughter, alike to that of a gibbering monkey.  Fianna snarled and tossed aside the useless, broken hilt of her cutlass.

"Disconcerting," Carse noted from behind.

The corsairs cast troubled looks about, for from the jungles, as if in answer to the call of the Xoacanan, out onto the beach came monkeys gambolling, slithering serpents and great cats on the prowl, alike as to the birds they had seen earlier.  Not a one of these was ought but in the shades of death; pallid, ashen or ebony.  The corsairs sank back into a tight packed ring, nervously grasping their weapons, their fears sharpening to strength sapping terror.

"If we can not end this one way, then it shall be by another," Fianna proclaimed, defiant to the end.  She knew of no other way.  With a shouted challenge, she launched herself, unarmed as she was, at the grey skinned Xoacanan.  For a moment it appeared taken back by the audacity of the assault, as if it had never countenanced such a rash response.

She barrelled bodily into it, her arms encasing its body and locking shut tight.  It shrieked and hooted and hollered as she roared and, straining, bore it aloft.  It beat at her with hands and lashed out with feet, each blow landing with the force of an iron bound cudgel.  Only her innate vitality kept her standing as he head rang under the blows, her senses spinning and vision blurring.  She half staggered, knees starting to buckle beneath her, but of the grip she held, she did not relent.  Far beyond the weight of a creature of its size it massed, and she strained as she held it off of the ground.  Slowly, painfully, her teeth set tight, she stumbled forward, towards the waters of the lagoon.  Blows split her lip and opened up her eye until blood flowed like a red mask down her face.  Hard as her flesh was, the force of the blows brought welts and bruises to the fore.

At the cries from the Xoacanan, the beasts upon the beach surged forward, rushing upon the cowering corsairs, leaping with snarling fangs and slashing talons.  From the corsairs, shouts and cries rang, for they defended themselves with the desperate fury of cornered animals with naught left to loose.  Pikes stabbed forward, impaling beasts that had lunged at them, while axes and cutlasses carved vicious strokes through the air, to crash down on heads and cleave them in twain.  Monkeys leaped to perch upon the shoulders of the corsairs, gibbering as they clawed and bit away at faces and necks.  Panthers raked with razor sharp claws, disembowelling the unlucky with terrible mauling strikes.  Men screamed as snakes struck with blinding speed, pumping venom into the bodies of their victims.  Those thus afflicted fell back upon the sands, there to thrash and convulse, their feet kicking up sprays of sand while their hands clawed futilely at the air.  Mercifully, the death agonies of those bitten were short lived, as the venom was toxic beyond that of a normal beast.

Fianna remained but part aware of the fighting raging on behind her, in as much as she ever was instinctively aware of any danger at a subconscious level.  It did not threaten her direct, and thus could be set aside for the moment, all concentration focused instead on the grey skinned creature in her arms, whose blows were coming near to sending her reeling into the dark of unconsciousness.  With furious determination, and all the strength of will that came from her wild, primitive heritage, she waded out into the water, the lagoon lapping higher at her legs with each step.  The screeches and howls of the Xoacanan creature locked in the vice like grip of her arms sounded louder, and its attempts to break free grew yet more desperate.

A blow crashed down upon her head, so hard that it rattled her teeth and her senses, and she could taste the coppery tang of blood in her mouth.  Staggered, at last her fingers weakened, and the creature slipped from her grasp, landing up to its knees in the clear waters of the lagoon.

It tried to run, yet Fianna, even reeling from the blow as she was, still was too quick for it.  With the instincts of a cunning predator, she swept her foot through the waters, entangling her leg with those of the Xoacanan's.  It stumbled and tripped, falling headlong into the lagoon.  Fianna pounced upon it in a trice, forcing it down beneath the lapping waves.  She thrust her knees full into its back, pressing down with all of her weight, while her hands sought purchase on its head, preventing it from raising it up from out of the water.

The Xoacanan struggled, thrashing with desperate fury in an attempt to try and break free, but grimly Fianna held on, every last sinew and fibre of her being straining with the effort.  For an eternity it seemed that the Xoacanan fought on, but at last its efforts faded, and a last few bubbles escaped from it before it lay still.  Fianna released her death grip and looked up at the beach.

The beasts that had beset the corsairs were fleeing, the influence the Xoacanan had over them broken with its death.  Back into the jungle they disappeared, leaving behind a beach strewn with bodies and soaked in blood.  Fully half of the crew lay dead or dying.

Vaspari shook his head before spitting a mouthful of blood upon the sands.  His hat had been torn off and his scalp opened up by the flailing claws of an enraged monkey.  "I have partaken in many escapades of dubious certainty, boarded ships in the teeth of the howling storm, braved monsters of the deep and risked life and limb more times than I wish to recall, but naught has unmanned me or frozen the blood before this day.  Horrors such as this come to life are more than a man should see.  We may have but part of Khaladin's treasure, yet I am of the mind that the rest can stay where it fell.  What remains is still enough to make us wealthy.  For me, I mean to retire to seeming respectability, to find me a couple of Cahadian wenches to keep me company, and give up this reckless life."

Fianna laughed as she waded out of the water, by the shattered remnants of their boats.  "You will soon grow bored of that life, I fear."

"Aye, for a time, perhaps, and when I do, I shall look back on this day and remember, and count myself blessed to have emerged from it alive."  Vaspari looked across those crew of his who had survived, and then out at their ship that gently swayed at anchor out as sea.  "Come, you mutinous dogs, we have a treasure to return to our ship, and then we are done with this accursed place.  Black Mardouf is still out there, and he will be well vexed with our success.  For all that we have suffered, it will be as for naught should he happen upon us.  So let us be away, for tomorrow we shall drink to the dead, and wench and carouse to celebrate our wealth."

The End