08-30-2015, 04:25 AM
Never did care much for swamps. Even the kind that didn't try to mess with yer blasted head. Just too much of a middle ground...not solid enough to really be 'solid ground', but too bogged down with muck and filth to make for easy sailing. And heavens forbid if you were tryin' to get anywhere in much of a hurry; that just wasn't gonna happen. Not when you were sunk shin-deep in swamp muck.
Or when you couldn't see five bleedin' feet in front of you.
This damn fog was a right mess to try and navigate through. And it was really starting to get on Crow's nerves, in more ways than one. He was confident enough in his sense of direction that he would have wagered gold on him not straying from his heading. He'd kept right on into the wind, right in line with his mates. He shouldn't have gotten separated from them as quickly as he had. Or really, he shouldn't have gotten separated from them at all.
"Avast, ye bleedin' swabs! You mean to desert an old sailor in the middle o' this?!" he shouted into the fog. Aside from a faint, eerie echo, his words received no answer. But a stark chill did envelop the air, and the atmosphere seemed to grow more opporessive, as if taking offense to the pirate's sudden outburst.
He was now really beginning to wish he'd paid more attention to things that had been said about this...Swamp of Sadness. Beyond hearing that it could dredge up hopelessness and stir up all sorts of nastiness that was -- for the most part -- all in your head, he had mostly tuned it out. Always too preoccupied with other things to lend the proper attention. And now it had come back well and truly to bite him in the ass.
But at least for the moment, he was merely a tad angry. The general sense of the place, with all of its mysterious separation of everyone, was rapidly wearing on him. Reminding him all too much of a certain trip into that blasted maelstrom. 'Heart of Doubt', indeed...that had been a right laugh once he'd pulled through.....even if Crow had sailed back out of on all but a ghost ship.
"Not every voyage can end as ship-shape as it began, eh, cap'n?"
The voice speaking up out of nowhere brought Crow to complete attention, whirling first this way and then that, trying to seek out its source. This place must have been getting to him...he was hearing things now. The sooner he found some way to get out of this place the better. Last thing he needed was to--
"No sense dwellin' on the past....that always was your motto. Keep it locked away in some dusty old book, to be called back out when you can dramatize and flair it up, turn it into a glamorous story to make yourself feel better and make things seem less bloody and terrible than they actually were."
This time Crow came to an immediate halt. His features clenched into a terrified, wide-eyed stare at nothing, locked on a point that might have been a thousand yards ahead in the fog. He recognized that voice.
"Thought you moight remember me, Cap'n...you always did have a keen mind for rememberin' things, once it gets jogged a bit..."
".....didn't expect t'run into ye out here, mate." For once since arriving in the Omniverse, Crow had been all but struck dumb, left at a virtual loss for words. The voice speaking to him from what he could only call everywhere at once was unmistakable once it really registered. Only one man -- no....only one thing he'd ever met in all his days had a voice that hissed like that.
A great rushing of wind, and a sharp stench hit Crow's nostrils, sending him recoiling and retching, staggering away from it blindly. "....blast it all...why'd ye have to show up now...why here...ghh...."
"Thought you might need a refresher that you can't run away all the time, Cap'n...you can't just go off on a wild chase like this one and die somewhere lost out in the woods, away from the sea....and think that just because you left on your own terms you get a free pass."
Icy cold fingers closed on the back of Crow's skull, wrenching his head up to face the sky. His spine felt liable to snap in half, and he was only dimly aware of the feeling and sound of his knees splashing down into the swamp crud. And then his face hove into Crow's view, leering down at him. "....didn't expect yeh to follow me all the way to this place....Jones."
"You made a deal, Crow. To sail out of that cursed pit alive and well. You got a run of luck and time to beat the Devil himself. But just how much did you think you had?"
In spite of himself, Crow let out a bark of laughter. In spite of the mounting terror rising in his chest, in spite of the uncertainty as to whether he was hallucinating because of something in this swamp, or if he had finally, completely cracked or not, or if his old deals had just picked the absolute worst time possible to finally come due...he laughed. He all but howled in wicked, macabre glee. "So, after all these years, it's in some accursed magic marsh that Captain Crow meets his maker, is it?! Never took you for one to have a sense o' humor, Jones!"
"You've gone fully cracked, Crow..." The sickening visage of the dread pirate cracked into an almost pitying grin. "Don't think I'd miss out on the chance to get you when you were least expecting it. But I didn't expect you to be so ready to let what's coming catch up."
"Heh...yeh really don't know muhc about yer clients, do ya, bucko? I been ready to go fer a while, now...just waitin' on yer sorry ass to finally come and collect."
"......oh, Crow, is that really the best you've got? I waited just for a time like this, you old fool. Just for when you were finally starting to....look forward to things again."
The laugh and amusement in Crow's tone died almost immediately. "W....what're yeh on about..."
"You can lie to yourself all you want, Crow. You can play the doddering, half-insane old pirate all you want for everyone else in this group you've taken up with. But you can't lie to me. You can't lie to the reason you came out here in the first place. It wasn't just to have one last story to tell. It wasn't just to have a convenient excuse for never showing up anywhere again."
Crow howled in more than just physical agony as he was wrenched up from his forced kneeling posture on the ground, and he could've sworn he felt very real blood running down the back of his head, a stark contrast to the icy chill that had all but numbed his clear thinking. The sudden spike of pain, combined with the insinuations of Crow's lying, drew a fight response from the old captain, and he struggled in the grasp of certain death, latching onto the offending arm clasping onto his head. The chill of death nearly sapped the strength from his hands, his arms feeling like lead and refusing to respond properly, but he persisted gamely. "I never did much like yer blasted way o' weavin' words, ye old sack o' bones..." Gritting his teeth, Crow pulled forward with all of his failing strength, letting loose with a heave of effort that sent him lurching forward into the swamp, free of any resistance.
He splashed down in the murky waters of the swamp, and with it, his mind snapped back to reality. Splashing about as he struggled back to his feet, he jerked his gaze one way and then another, searching for any sign of....well, of anything. He spit out a mouthful of swamp water, staggering back to his feet. "Bleedin' hell...never did much care fer that bastard....always tryin' to go and twist a man's words and thoughts like that..." Crow set his mouth in a thin line, his expression grim and cold. "Pullin' bilge out like he knows what he's talkin' about....lying to meself..." Running one hand through his now thoroughly soaked hair, Crow wrinkled his nose in disgust. "....scupper that."
"Richard Falthas Crow never says anything that ain't the truth, ye blasted sea spirit..." Running both hands over his face, trying to brush the entire ordeal away like a bad night's sleep, he squared his shoulders, readying himself to continue aimlessly trudging through the mists. "....me shadow ain't even back at full strength yet, ye addlepate....bit early to go collectin' on a debt when yer own terms're not even up yet."
Shaking his fist at nothing and everything at once, Crow snarled out into the fog, "KEEP YER BLASTED MOJO OUTTA ME HEAD, YEH BLEEDIN' SWAMP! CAPTAIN CROW AIN'T GOT TIME T'BE WALLOWIN' IN DESPAIR! I GOT ME A GOD TO FIND!"
For all he knew it might have been a few hours, or it might have been days. All he knew was that his morale, restored and burning bright after his shouting match with the swamp at large, had dwindled to an all-new low. He had trudged on ahead, muttering darkly to himself, keeping his mind focused on a firm goal to try and keep out the treachery of the swamp: find the rest of the crazy group he'd grown so fond of over the past months and get out of this alive to find Omni.
It was a simple goal. They were on the last step. They couldn't fail now.
But despite no more grandiose attempts to wrangle him into submission, the swamp had taken its toll on him. Crow's fire had been all but extinguished, leaving him to meander sluggishly through the mist, his movements sluggish and unsure. Frequently he would bring one hand to his eyes, forcing back another outburst -- whether of sadness or anger he had long since stopped being able to tell.
Sadness, perhaps, for the actual thoughts that kept creeping into his head. Worrying over this and that, what might be and what could happen.
Anger, of course, at himself for letting such thoughts take root to begin with. At fretting at all over something that shouldn't even be a possibility.
He was tired, on top of it all. Not just in a physical sense, or in the ready to have a nice lie down and nap for a few days way. It was a deeper tiredness, the kind that only came when you were at the eend of your rope. He wasn't tired in mind or body, so much as spirit. It was going to be a long, hard voyage...
"Blasted thing....never works when ye need it..."
In one hand, Crow had finally drawn his bloodied saber, having used it to hack apart and carve himself the hard way through vegetation and just about anything else in his path, his mood having deterioriated to such an extent that he was dead-set on a straight course being the best.
In his other hand there was a compas, held up close to his face, trying to see the needle. Thankfully, he could see it well enough, making it easy enough to follow whereve it might spin to point. Unfortunately, it was doing a whole lot of spinning and not a whole lot of pointing.
It had been staunchly doing an impression of a top, spinning about like a blur no matter how much Crow had cursed at it, closed and reopened it and made as if to hurl it off into the swamp. His focus on the compass would soon come back to take its revenge on him, as he found out when his boot was caught on something or other in the muck and he went pitching forward to land with a heavy splash in the cold, muddy waters.
He didn't rise immediately. Rather, he just layed there for a long while, half-floating, half sinking into the muck, until his lungs were ready to give up the fight and he was forced to come up for air.
And when he did, he was met with a scene most disturbing. Most disturbing of all, perhaps, was what he could hear. It was distinctly his own voice, raised in song, but it was a tune that sent a chill down his spine as he beheld the grisly scene before him.
It was the very same camp they had all just set out from, with one very major difference: it was full of the sight and stink of death, and wrapped in banks of dense, swirling fog. And the echo of that damnable sone, that Crow himself had only ever sung once before in his life. On his long, lonely trip out of the Heart of Doubt. On a ghost ship full of corpses and only grim tales of failure and death to relay. not the joyous, rowdy stories and overblown tales of adventure he had planned to bring back.
He sincerely hoped he was hallucinating, or that he was losing his mind. He had never hoped for anything more in all his days. Because what he was seeing now was too terrible for words. He'd sooner take a bullet from his own pistol in the head before he'd willingly do something like....like this.
One closed fist, still clutching his saber, smacked into the murky swamp water in a futile display of anger. "SHUT YER DAMN TRAP! I DIDN'T DO THIS! I WOULDN'T DO THIS!" He kept his eyes tightly shut, trying to drown out the image burned into his mind with his own anger if need be; drowing out that damnable song with his own grinding teeth.
He'd done it once before...sailed into hell with a full crew, sailed back out with only his own hide, barely held together with all the bleeding wounds he'd sustained. One hand barely holding onto his sword, stained with fresh blood that had never let itself be cleaned. The other barely having the strength to maintain a steady heading. And not a shred of shadow to be found under Crow's feet though the sun blazed high in the sky overhead.
And here it was looking to be the same story all over again....a different crew, on a different quest, and he wasn't exactly the captain this time around...but it didn't seem to matter. Much as he might like to ignore it, he could tell. That was definitely his saber pinning the poor girl to the ground...definitely one of his own knives he was so proud of his aim with stuck in mister Templar's eye...
It had been self-defense in the Heart of Doubt, but this time it looked like the exact opposite.
The faint echo of the sound trailed off into nothing as Crow finally gave up on the struggle. His deathgrip on his sword slackened, and the perpetually-stained blade fell from his fingers, splashing down in the water at his side. Both hands came to his face, one still clutching that damnable, useless compass, and covered his eyes, trying to preserve some measure of dignity, or just not wanting to see anything through blurred lenses...
And he wept.
He screeched and howled into the empty swamp, strength and determination abandoning him. Some dim part of his mind knew it was only an illusion meant to mess with him. That it couldn't be his sword he could see, once again stained red with the blood of a friend, since he held the blasted thing in his hand. It couldn't be real, any of it; they'd all left from camp alive, if not necessarily well, and hadn't been back for this grisly scene to play out. Plus, each and every one in the group would have been enough of a match on their own. If he'd snapped and truly had out and out slaughter on the mind, he might have had the chance to take down one...maybe two....but he wouldn't have won. He couldn't have. Which left only the sickening thought of murdering them in their sleep....that would have been much easier, perhaps...but even that wasn't guaranteed. And at least some of them had put up a fight.
He knew all of that, in the back of his mind. He knew it.
But it just didn't register. He just coulnd't piece it together. He was tired, and ready to quit, and this swamp was just too much for an old pirate out of his element.
Why had he even come on this damn trip?!
Grab the biggest story out there in this 'Omniverse' place...ask the big man a few questions, jot down the particulars of the adventure, and send it all into memory as his last and biggest quest, then find some nice quiet place to eat a bullet and go out into memory. That was the idea he'd kept telling himself from the beginning, refusing to acknowledge he was looking for one last try at an adventure that might mean something, hoping against all hope that there might be other people with the same goal in mind. Something to reinvigorate him and let him retire with a clear mind, having put his all into one last voyage alongside a crew with the proper spirit and mindset rather than just....fading away.
It was a nice thought...
His pitiful wailing and howling eventually ran itself dry, and Crow was left slumped forward on his knees in the water, eyes closed, looking as if he were either asleep....or dead. "One last run, eh..." His eyes cracked open, squinting in the dim light, and he was relieved to only see the expanse of chilly fog, dense as ever, swirling about him, the grisly scene from before having vanished. "....think I've got that in me yet..."
Looking down at the compass in his hand, he was startled to see it had resolved on a much clearler course -- still quivering slightly, unsure about where it might have been pointing to, exactly -- but holding mostly steady.
It was only a pale shadow of his usual cheerful, rowdy demeanor, but a grin cracked across Crow's muddy, tear-stained face as his cold-numbed fingers took hold of his saber again. "Can't let those scallywags think I've gone and given up, now...." It took him a great deal of effort, his entire body feeling sluggish and cold, and the muddy earth refusing to let go of his legs without a fight, but Crow finally managed to regain his feet.
And off he went, with as much conviction and renewed determination as his wearied bones could hold.
Or when you couldn't see five bleedin' feet in front of you.
This damn fog was a right mess to try and navigate through. And it was really starting to get on Crow's nerves, in more ways than one. He was confident enough in his sense of direction that he would have wagered gold on him not straying from his heading. He'd kept right on into the wind, right in line with his mates. He shouldn't have gotten separated from them as quickly as he had. Or really, he shouldn't have gotten separated from them at all.
"Avast, ye bleedin' swabs! You mean to desert an old sailor in the middle o' this?!" he shouted into the fog. Aside from a faint, eerie echo, his words received no answer. But a stark chill did envelop the air, and the atmosphere seemed to grow more opporessive, as if taking offense to the pirate's sudden outburst.
He was now really beginning to wish he'd paid more attention to things that had been said about this...Swamp of Sadness. Beyond hearing that it could dredge up hopelessness and stir up all sorts of nastiness that was -- for the most part -- all in your head, he had mostly tuned it out. Always too preoccupied with other things to lend the proper attention. And now it had come back well and truly to bite him in the ass.
But at least for the moment, he was merely a tad angry. The general sense of the place, with all of its mysterious separation of everyone, was rapidly wearing on him. Reminding him all too much of a certain trip into that blasted maelstrom. 'Heart of Doubt', indeed...that had been a right laugh once he'd pulled through.....even if Crow had sailed back out of on all but a ghost ship.
"Not every voyage can end as ship-shape as it began, eh, cap'n?"
The voice speaking up out of nowhere brought Crow to complete attention, whirling first this way and then that, trying to seek out its source. This place must have been getting to him...he was hearing things now. The sooner he found some way to get out of this place the better. Last thing he needed was to--
"No sense dwellin' on the past....that always was your motto. Keep it locked away in some dusty old book, to be called back out when you can dramatize and flair it up, turn it into a glamorous story to make yourself feel better and make things seem less bloody and terrible than they actually were."
This time Crow came to an immediate halt. His features clenched into a terrified, wide-eyed stare at nothing, locked on a point that might have been a thousand yards ahead in the fog. He recognized that voice.
"Thought you moight remember me, Cap'n...you always did have a keen mind for rememberin' things, once it gets jogged a bit..."
".....didn't expect t'run into ye out here, mate." For once since arriving in the Omniverse, Crow had been all but struck dumb, left at a virtual loss for words. The voice speaking to him from what he could only call everywhere at once was unmistakable once it really registered. Only one man -- no....only one thing he'd ever met in all his days had a voice that hissed like that.
A great rushing of wind, and a sharp stench hit Crow's nostrils, sending him recoiling and retching, staggering away from it blindly. "....blast it all...why'd ye have to show up now...why here...ghh...."
"Thought you might need a refresher that you can't run away all the time, Cap'n...you can't just go off on a wild chase like this one and die somewhere lost out in the woods, away from the sea....and think that just because you left on your own terms you get a free pass."
Icy cold fingers closed on the back of Crow's skull, wrenching his head up to face the sky. His spine felt liable to snap in half, and he was only dimly aware of the feeling and sound of his knees splashing down into the swamp crud. And then his face hove into Crow's view, leering down at him. "....didn't expect yeh to follow me all the way to this place....Jones."
"You made a deal, Crow. To sail out of that cursed pit alive and well. You got a run of luck and time to beat the Devil himself. But just how much did you think you had?"
In spite of himself, Crow let out a bark of laughter. In spite of the mounting terror rising in his chest, in spite of the uncertainty as to whether he was hallucinating because of something in this swamp, or if he had finally, completely cracked or not, or if his old deals had just picked the absolute worst time possible to finally come due...he laughed. He all but howled in wicked, macabre glee. "So, after all these years, it's in some accursed magic marsh that Captain Crow meets his maker, is it?! Never took you for one to have a sense o' humor, Jones!"
"You've gone fully cracked, Crow..." The sickening visage of the dread pirate cracked into an almost pitying grin. "Don't think I'd miss out on the chance to get you when you were least expecting it. But I didn't expect you to be so ready to let what's coming catch up."
"Heh...yeh really don't know muhc about yer clients, do ya, bucko? I been ready to go fer a while, now...just waitin' on yer sorry ass to finally come and collect."
"......oh, Crow, is that really the best you've got? I waited just for a time like this, you old fool. Just for when you were finally starting to....look forward to things again."
The laugh and amusement in Crow's tone died almost immediately. "W....what're yeh on about..."
"You can lie to yourself all you want, Crow. You can play the doddering, half-insane old pirate all you want for everyone else in this group you've taken up with. But you can't lie to me. You can't lie to the reason you came out here in the first place. It wasn't just to have one last story to tell. It wasn't just to have a convenient excuse for never showing up anywhere again."
Crow howled in more than just physical agony as he was wrenched up from his forced kneeling posture on the ground, and he could've sworn he felt very real blood running down the back of his head, a stark contrast to the icy chill that had all but numbed his clear thinking. The sudden spike of pain, combined with the insinuations of Crow's lying, drew a fight response from the old captain, and he struggled in the grasp of certain death, latching onto the offending arm clasping onto his head. The chill of death nearly sapped the strength from his hands, his arms feeling like lead and refusing to respond properly, but he persisted gamely. "I never did much like yer blasted way o' weavin' words, ye old sack o' bones..." Gritting his teeth, Crow pulled forward with all of his failing strength, letting loose with a heave of effort that sent him lurching forward into the swamp, free of any resistance.
He splashed down in the murky waters of the swamp, and with it, his mind snapped back to reality. Splashing about as he struggled back to his feet, he jerked his gaze one way and then another, searching for any sign of....well, of anything. He spit out a mouthful of swamp water, staggering back to his feet. "Bleedin' hell...never did much care fer that bastard....always tryin' to go and twist a man's words and thoughts like that..." Crow set his mouth in a thin line, his expression grim and cold. "Pullin' bilge out like he knows what he's talkin' about....lying to meself..." Running one hand through his now thoroughly soaked hair, Crow wrinkled his nose in disgust. "....scupper that."
"Richard Falthas Crow never says anything that ain't the truth, ye blasted sea spirit..." Running both hands over his face, trying to brush the entire ordeal away like a bad night's sleep, he squared his shoulders, readying himself to continue aimlessly trudging through the mists. "....me shadow ain't even back at full strength yet, ye addlepate....bit early to go collectin' on a debt when yer own terms're not even up yet."
Shaking his fist at nothing and everything at once, Crow snarled out into the fog, "KEEP YER BLASTED MOJO OUTTA ME HEAD, YEH BLEEDIN' SWAMP! CAPTAIN CROW AIN'T GOT TIME T'BE WALLOWIN' IN DESPAIR! I GOT ME A GOD TO FIND!"
* * *
For all he knew it might have been a few hours, or it might have been days. All he knew was that his morale, restored and burning bright after his shouting match with the swamp at large, had dwindled to an all-new low. He had trudged on ahead, muttering darkly to himself, keeping his mind focused on a firm goal to try and keep out the treachery of the swamp: find the rest of the crazy group he'd grown so fond of over the past months and get out of this alive to find Omni.
It was a simple goal. They were on the last step. They couldn't fail now.
But despite no more grandiose attempts to wrangle him into submission, the swamp had taken its toll on him. Crow's fire had been all but extinguished, leaving him to meander sluggishly through the mist, his movements sluggish and unsure. Frequently he would bring one hand to his eyes, forcing back another outburst -- whether of sadness or anger he had long since stopped being able to tell.
Sadness, perhaps, for the actual thoughts that kept creeping into his head. Worrying over this and that, what might be and what could happen.
Anger, of course, at himself for letting such thoughts take root to begin with. At fretting at all over something that shouldn't even be a possibility.
He was tired, on top of it all. Not just in a physical sense, or in the ready to have a nice lie down and nap for a few days way. It was a deeper tiredness, the kind that only came when you were at the eend of your rope. He wasn't tired in mind or body, so much as spirit. It was going to be a long, hard voyage...
* * *
"Blasted thing....never works when ye need it..."
In one hand, Crow had finally drawn his bloodied saber, having used it to hack apart and carve himself the hard way through vegetation and just about anything else in his path, his mood having deterioriated to such an extent that he was dead-set on a straight course being the best.
In his other hand there was a compas, held up close to his face, trying to see the needle. Thankfully, he could see it well enough, making it easy enough to follow whereve it might spin to point. Unfortunately, it was doing a whole lot of spinning and not a whole lot of pointing.
It had been staunchly doing an impression of a top, spinning about like a blur no matter how much Crow had cursed at it, closed and reopened it and made as if to hurl it off into the swamp. His focus on the compass would soon come back to take its revenge on him, as he found out when his boot was caught on something or other in the muck and he went pitching forward to land with a heavy splash in the cold, muddy waters.
He didn't rise immediately. Rather, he just layed there for a long while, half-floating, half sinking into the muck, until his lungs were ready to give up the fight and he was forced to come up for air.
And when he did, he was met with a scene most disturbing. Most disturbing of all, perhaps, was what he could hear. It was distinctly his own voice, raised in song, but it was a tune that sent a chill down his spine as he beheld the grisly scene before him.
Quote:"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike,
The bosun brained with a marlinspike,
And cookey's throat was marked belike,
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
It was the very same camp they had all just set out from, with one very major difference: it was full of the sight and stink of death, and wrapped in banks of dense, swirling fog. And the echo of that damnable sone, that Crow himself had only ever sung once before in his life. On his long, lonely trip out of the Heart of Doubt. On a ghost ship full of corpses and only grim tales of failure and death to relay. not the joyous, rowdy stories and overblown tales of adventure he had planned to bring back.
He sincerely hoped he was hallucinating, or that he was losing his mind. He had never hoped for anything more in all his days. Because what he was seeing now was too terrible for words. He'd sooner take a bullet from his own pistol in the head before he'd willingly do something like....like this.
Quote:"Fifteen men of the whole ship's list...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore,
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore,
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay, and the soggy skies,
Dripped down in up-staring eyes,
In murk sunset and foul sunrise,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
One closed fist, still clutching his saber, smacked into the murky swamp water in a futile display of anger. "SHUT YER DAMN TRAP! I DIDN'T DO THIS! I WOULDN'T DO THIS!" He kept his eyes tightly shut, trying to drown out the image burned into his mind with his own anger if need be; drowing out that damnable song with his own grinding teeth.
Quote:"Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head.
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red,
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes.
Looking up at paradise,
All souls bound just contrariwise,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
He'd done it once before...sailed into hell with a full crew, sailed back out with only his own hide, barely held together with all the bleeding wounds he'd sustained. One hand barely holding onto his sword, stained with fresh blood that had never let itself be cleaned. The other barely having the strength to maintain a steady heading. And not a shred of shadow to be found under Crow's feet though the sun blazed high in the sky overhead.
And here it was looking to be the same story all over again....a different crew, on a different quest, and he wasn't exactly the captain this time around...but it didn't seem to matter. Much as he might like to ignore it, he could tell. That was definitely his saber pinning the poor girl to the ground...definitely one of his own knives he was so proud of his aim with stuck in mister Templar's eye...
It had been self-defense in the Heart of Doubt, but this time it looked like the exact opposite.
Quote:"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest..."
The faint echo of the sound trailed off into nothing as Crow finally gave up on the struggle. His deathgrip on his sword slackened, and the perpetually-stained blade fell from his fingers, splashing down in the water at his side. Both hands came to his face, one still clutching that damnable, useless compass, and covered his eyes, trying to preserve some measure of dignity, or just not wanting to see anything through blurred lenses...
And he wept.
He screeched and howled into the empty swamp, strength and determination abandoning him. Some dim part of his mind knew it was only an illusion meant to mess with him. That it couldn't be his sword he could see, once again stained red with the blood of a friend, since he held the blasted thing in his hand. It couldn't be real, any of it; they'd all left from camp alive, if not necessarily well, and hadn't been back for this grisly scene to play out. Plus, each and every one in the group would have been enough of a match on their own. If he'd snapped and truly had out and out slaughter on the mind, he might have had the chance to take down one...maybe two....but he wouldn't have won. He couldn't have. Which left only the sickening thought of murdering them in their sleep....that would have been much easier, perhaps...but even that wasn't guaranteed. And at least some of them had put up a fight.
He knew all of that, in the back of his mind. He knew it.
But it just didn't register. He just coulnd't piece it together. He was tired, and ready to quit, and this swamp was just too much for an old pirate out of his element.
Why had he even come on this damn trip?!
Grab the biggest story out there in this 'Omniverse' place...ask the big man a few questions, jot down the particulars of the adventure, and send it all into memory as his last and biggest quest, then find some nice quiet place to eat a bullet and go out into memory. That was the idea he'd kept telling himself from the beginning, refusing to acknowledge he was looking for one last try at an adventure that might mean something, hoping against all hope that there might be other people with the same goal in mind. Something to reinvigorate him and let him retire with a clear mind, having put his all into one last voyage alongside a crew with the proper spirit and mindset rather than just....fading away.
It was a nice thought...
His pitiful wailing and howling eventually ran itself dry, and Crow was left slumped forward on his knees in the water, eyes closed, looking as if he were either asleep....or dead. "One last run, eh..." His eyes cracked open, squinting in the dim light, and he was relieved to only see the expanse of chilly fog, dense as ever, swirling about him, the grisly scene from before having vanished. "....think I've got that in me yet..."
Looking down at the compass in his hand, he was startled to see it had resolved on a much clearler course -- still quivering slightly, unsure about where it might have been pointing to, exactly -- but holding mostly steady.
It was only a pale shadow of his usual cheerful, rowdy demeanor, but a grin cracked across Crow's muddy, tear-stained face as his cold-numbed fingers took hold of his saber again. "Can't let those scallywags think I've gone and given up, now...." It took him a great deal of effort, his entire body feeling sluggish and cold, and the muddy earth refusing to let go of his legs without a fight, but Crow finally managed to regain his feet.
And off he went, with as much conviction and renewed determination as his wearied bones could hold.
Quote:Crow has used his compass.
![[Image: kUpgBYg.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/kUpgBYg.gif)