Erza Lost [M]

[Erza Scarlet]

Continued from Claraina Arrives (Open).

It was pitch black. The only audible noises were the crunch of feet on gravel and Erza's body, slowly pitching back and forth in the darkness, colliding with the walls of her prison. She opened her eyes. Nope, still nothing. Whoever had put her here, whoever had snuck up on her in her addled state and trapped her in this bothersome box, had certainly done a good job making said box. No idle voices traversed its thick walls, and her cries for help had, so far, gone completely ignored. There had to be an air hole, somewhere, because she was still alive after all this time. But it was small, and Erza couldn't retain consciousness for more than a few minutes at a time before passing out again for who knew how long. Each time was the same futile cycle - Wake up, verify the blackness, verify that nobody was coming to help, verify that her limbs were bound tightly enough so as not to let her get at her Dataverse unit for a light source, or requip into anything useful. Verify that she was stark naked, and didn't have her dataverse unit on her anymore anyway. Realize some pervert must have undressed her in the middle of the nexus, for all to see, for this to come about. Faint again.

That same pervert that had been carrying her, sloshing her back and forth in this box for so long now. What had it been? Hours? Days? Weeks? Erza had no way to tell, for sure. There seemed to be some sort of waste removal system in place, but Erza knew now how it functioned and the stench of human excrement was still overwhelming. Perhaps that was what was keeping her awake longer each time - a sort of natural smelling salts. But ultimately, not worth the sensation of utter defilement.

She had spent quite a while in this box - Longer, she imagined, than in the rest of the Omniverse combined, or at least it felt that way - but there was still no end in sight. Not once had she seem the dimmest light, or heard the slightest peep of a human voice. Not once had the box stopped moving, onward and outward. She imagined her "travel party," as it were, must have been quite small, moving slowly and making sure not to damage the box. It was certainly an unpleasant way to travel; Erza would have much preferred to simply take the magic-powered carriage. More fun, less passing out amidst the sickly sweet, honeyed and perpetually staling scent of human piss.

She'd tried, on a few occasions, to simply focus all of her magic power on pushing the walls of the box away at all angles and bursting out upon her kidnappers. It never worked, and in retrospect, that was probably a good thing; She'd have been out of stamina to actually fight with.

Damn. Damn, what did I do to deserve this?

She began to focus her attention on those few parts of her body she could move - Her fingers, ankles, neck and abdomen. The smooth, polished granite texture of the box's floor was as well-ingrained in her mind by now as it was into her skin. She organized her movement with the swaying of the box, letting herself be pushed a bit to the side before pushing herself even further. It seemed her only recourse was to find that air hole and dig through it. She twisted, yanking her whole body as far left as the constraints would allow, feeling with every finger, every toe and every inch of her lower back for any existing instance of roughness.

And, in the darkness, it appeared. Right in the corner, on the floor by her right foot, there was a tiny, tiny scratch in the otherwise perfect walls. A sharp breath pierced her lungs, a short moment of invigoration before she gagged, coughing up what little somehow remained in her stomach. It sat there, half covering her lips and half still in her mouth, as she dry heaved for a moment longer.

Regaining what remained of her composure, she spit what she could out into the box to the side of her head. It would slosh with the box, too, and eventually she'd be laying in it, and it would quickly become caked in her hair, and THAT was unlikely to be detected by that ineffective waste removal system.

Better get to work on that crack, then, or I'll REALLY give up...

She waited for another leftwards turn of the box, then swept left herself, using her sweaty skin to stick to the floor in the only convolution of her body that would allow her pinkie toenail access to that minuscule imperfection. And, with a newfound determination, she breathed as slowly as she could make herself, scratching at the crack with the sharpest thing she had at the moment, before inevitable passing out again.

Waking again, she immediately twisted into position and began picking at the box again. Her nail was encroaching on becoming a useless stub, and the vomit was encroaching on her face. But, it would have to do; There really was no other way out.

She continued to scratch, and the box continued to sway.

[Erza Scarlet]

It wasn't often that Erza welcomed the coppery musk of blood. In the past, that scent had been accompanied only by suffering, hatred, and death. But now, its brilliant metallic overtones served at the very least to mask the ever-present perfume of vomit and human waste.

It was a small comfort, considering its source. Her now-ragged toe, nail ground to the quick and skin flayed off to the bone, continued to dig doggedly at the sole imperfection in her current prison. The box jolted suddenly - Not for the first time, but that didn't make it any less unexpected - And Erza Scarlet's infected, mistreated foot collided with the granite floor. This time, she passed out not from lack of air, but from the pain.

Mere minutes passed, but Erza had no way of knowing that. Then again, she never had. When she came to, it was in a flurry of curses. The pain that had sent her under had not disappeared with time. Her toe was now, apparently, actually broken - the joint had been severed clean, and half of her toe was hanging on by a mere thread of tendon. She no longer had a chisel with which to escape her prison, and it seemed unlikely that one would be dropped in for her any time soon.

But that crack was her only way out. And there was only so much longer she could deal with the vomit caked in her hair and on her cheeks before giving up completely.

"Dammit, where the HELL is Gildarts when you need to break something!?"

Erza lay for a moment, unmoving - One can only fly in the face of propriety for so long before succumbing to grim reality - before letting out a resigned sigh and getting back into position. There was only a single remaining solution, excluding the possibility of rescue.

Erza shifted once more time to the left, bringing the side of her foot down on the now-slightly-enlarged crack. She winced, straining her face to keep from fainting again. She ground her teeth for a moment before clenching them together, hard. What must be done, must be done... She began to rub her foot against the scratch. The skin flayed, bit by bit, off of her foot -And not long after, the muscle, tendons, and blood vessels under it.

It took a few waking sessions, but the bone was now exposed. And it could be sharpened.

She continued scraping her foot against the cracked floor. Blood was pooling not only by her feet, but in the whole container now as Erza's foot gushed from the abuse.

Bleeding to death or drowning at this point would be... Unfortunate, and quite unpleasant, but a welcome escape from this torment. Better to just break the box.

Erza continued to scrape.

[Erza Scarlet]

The carpenter's hands fell to his sides, stinging. They'd been skinned raw by that damn box, and running them through his scratchy beard wasn't helping. He turned to his companions on duty, raising his head and opening his mouth before catching himself and turning away. Right. Bullshit rules. No words within 10 feet, nothing but whispers within 20. 'S pure bullshit.

He caught the eyes of the two others in the wagon. There were six beefy woodsmen, secondaries, on box-duty rotation - Two hours per shift, one per break. The man in the wagon was his shift partner, and the girl at his side was his daughter, along for the ride. Though, such a gruesome journey hardly seemed fit for one of her stature and mentality.

Really, there was no reason he couldn't be sitting in the wagon too. He had been on his feet for the better part of a day. These days, though, with all the traffic for that tournament nonsense, it was better to have a somewhat aware guard at hand, and the girl seemed to appreciate what time she could spend with her father.

Now, though, he was bored out of his mind, and needed someone to talk to. The sitters were engaged in quiet conversation, whispering with their heads together, as per the rules. The bullshit rules. He slowly sauntered over, taking up stride beside the wagon, and leaned over the bespectacled man.

"Why the hell are we doing this again? Seems to just be more trouble than it's worth," he mumbled as quietly as he could make himself. He knew the answer, of course; It'd been repeated to them so many times on the way, and this certainly wasn't the first time he'd asked over the course of the trip. The idea was to bring the magic chick back to the town, suck her dry of Omnillium, and then, uhh... Profit? The ringleader was never super clear on that front, but he was quite the influential speaker - probably because of his own status as a wielder of magic. And so here they were, keeping a 20 foot ring of silence around a Shcroedinger's Chick-in-a-box. He cursed himself under his breath for succumbing to the pressure and coming along for THIS hellish ride.

Don turned his own head up after a moment of reflection with a chuckle and a halfhearted "I don't even know anym-" before freezing, eyes glued to the ground. "Uh, man, look at this..."

It took the carpenter a moment to realize what Don was looking at - After all, it did blend in pretty well with the reddish dirt of the road - but as soon as he saw it, it became painfully obvious that he should have much, much sooner. There was a slow but steady stream of bloody, foul-smelling liquid dripping from the back corner of the box. It seemed none of the pallbearers had noted the disturbance, but turning back, he could see that the trail continued back a good hundred meters. How had they not noticed sooner? If the barrier was in any way broken, the spell would also begin to fail. That was what the sorcerer had said, but nothing had changed yet. Was she unconscious? Or, had she given up? No, if that were the case, there certainly would have been be no breach in the box. It had, after all, been painstakingly checked over and reinforced during the planning stages.

In any case, nothing else had changed. The girl in the box didn't seem to be struggling for the moment, and Don had calmed down a little bit. He turned back to his companion. "Er, you wanna break it to the others, or...?"

This elicited little response. The man in the wagon still had his eyes trained on the leak. He hopped up from his seat as quietly as he could, and began jogging forward to inspect the box.

"Wai-" He began to call out, cutting himself off. Sound rules. Damnit. He squinted his eyes, watching as Don approached the box to the confusion of the closest corner-holder. He crouched, slipping under the box to look for the leak. The carpenter watched with bated breath as Don's eyes quickly widened and he burst out from under the box, nearly taking down the men holding up the right side. The four carriers' heads turned toward their crazed companion, and he began to mouth words at them that the carpenter couldn't make out. The carriers turned to eachother, shrugging in confusion, before again facing the wildly gesticulating madman to their side. Don silently growled in frustration, and out of his mouth came a deafening "There's a goddamn hole in the box! How the HELL didn't you even -"

The carpenter fell backwards, shielding his eyes and the girl at his side as the box shattered, millions of tiny black shards whizzing through the air on the back of a nausea-inducing gust of pure, vile stench. A pale demon floated from the rubble, enshrouded in a cloud of half-frizzy, half-matted hair and the ever-encroaching perfume of weeks' worth of collected blood, vomit and fecal matter. The five pallbearers close enough to feel the full effect of its spectacular aroma had fallen to the ground, vomiting and crying out as the black shards embedded themselves deep into their bodies. The demon's sticky, stained body spun in the air, glowing and revealing to the world its depraved nakedness before covering itself with... A cheetah suit?

The carpenter met her eyes, then. They glowed not with the energetic curiosity they'd seemed to before her capture, but with an aura of vengeance. He found himself paralyzed as the woman's hand flicked and landed a dagger in his forearm, pinning it to the wagon. He cried to the sky in agony, turning to the girl at his side. She had been lucky to avoid most of the initial explosion, but it seemed her leg had been stuck with a single shard, and her eyes were brimming with painful tears.

"Go! Get away!" the carpenter cried. The girl hesitated, looking for her father in the midst of the maeltrom of blades the scarlet devil had procured on those surrounding the box. Catching a glimpse of his mangled, disembodied face, she gasped in fright and shock, then dragged herself off of the wagon and into the nearest concealing-looking patch of grass at the roadside.

He turned his gaze back to the fight - Or at least, what was left of it. One final body remained screaming, switching, and the escaped warrior promptly silenced it with a dagger to the heart before again locking eyes with him. She paced rapidly but steadily towards the carpenter, barely visibly wincing each time her left leg slammed into the ground but never letting it slow her pace. She stopped at the wagon, thrusting forwards a bloodied, foul-smelling blade to rest on his trembling neck.

"Why have you done this?" Her voice was commanding, but weaker than he'd expected. He supposed it must have been because she had been stuck in the deprivation box for that long. The carpenter found himself surprisingly calm in the face of this viciously odorous assassin.

"I- I- I- He just told us to! We were going to take you back and use the Omnilliium for... For..." Well, and he still wasn't quite sure, was he?

It didn't matter, anyway. The blade ran through his throat, and he was no longer able to speak, for blood and steel had blocked his airway. His neck bubbled and his eyes popped as he stared at the clear, blue sky. What terrible last words. And what a fine final view.

[Erza Scarlet]

The rush of battle ceased, and the birds resumed their chirping.

Erza allowed her skintight armor to dissipate, dropping the twinswords at her side as she surveyed her surroundings. There lay 6 mangled bodies, entrails strewn about the road and blood swirling together with settling clouds of ruddish brown dust. Regardless, the scent of the air was cleaner yet than any Erza had ever before experienced. Her nude body, caked in excrement and blood, hardly even recognizable as human, crumpled to the dirt at her feet.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She awoke, groggy, an unknown amount of time later, pulled out of a deep, exhausted slumber by the clattering of hooves and rattling of wagon wheels. Bolting awake, she scampered off the road into the deep grasses at its side, doing her best to conceal her crimson hair and brown-mattled body from the open thoroughfare. 

Though she could not see it, Erza knew the instant the caravan turned the corner into view of the mess she'd made because of the gasps, retches, and single scream of panic. The wagons stopped, as did all noise but for the continued retching of those civilians unused to the horrors of death. Erza was surprised that the bodies were still present - she was sure hers, the time she died, had faded away to regenerate elsewhere. That's what death WAS, in this place, right? Temporary?

A very long hour passed, during which some members of the traveling party tended to the dead. Religious folk, maybe? Or just impractical? The wagons were then on their way, and Erza re-emerged from her hiding spot. The dirt road was heavily stained crimson, and small chunks of still-fresh flesh remained scattered about the area. Chips of wood, obsidian, and all manner of strange materials from her containment vessel were spread throughout the visible landscape - she could see small splinters of dark stone stuck into trees fifty feet away. She was lucky not to have stepped on any in her mad dash for cover. 

The bodies were gone, but the general stench of the area wouldn't be gone for weeks.

Erza sighed heavily, allowing her armor to re-form on her body but quickly dismissing it. She remained caked in all manner of things unsanitary, and it felt sacrilegious to allow her prized Heart Kreuz armor to make contact with such filth. Idly kicking a chunk of disembodied liver, she began walking the same way her captors had been traveling. Need a bath. And to find out what the hell that was all about.

She didn't allow herself to think about it, but the power over life she'd held as she sliced the last man's throat open... It was unclean. It was uncalled for. It was unnecessary loss of life, an overreaction, just because of adrenaline, a strange fluke. It was evil.

It was the best she'd felt in years.