Day 2 Morning

[Ada Wong]

Weird light-shows in the sky, a few odd voices booming over the island, it was all rather spectacular. It really was too bad that Crowley wasn’t in a position to appreciate the particular vein of masterminding behind this whole unpleasant twist of fate, because he just might have enjoyed it otherwise.

The rain had let up several long hours before, a fact which Crowley was very glad for. A few chance droplets of rain lightly peppered against the sand, mingling easily with the lathery, cotton-white folds of sea foam washing against the shore, but it was nowhere near the scriptural deluge it had been before. The rainstorm appeared to have lifted, at least for now, and was surely moving off from his little patch of visible shoreline.

When he looked out to sea, the fallen angel was able to see how, in-keeping with the beliefs of centuries long past in Earth years, the world simply dropped off into an abyss of climbing vapors and pale, indistinctly flowing fairy lights. They flickered and willowed through the greenish-blue surface shine of the glassy waves, almost as if there were hundreds of ships signaling to the island through the curtain of fog. The intermingled, shuddering sounds of pattering rain and coursing saltwater was almost deafening.

With his head bowed and his eyes swiveling this way and that so as to better scan every inch of the sandy dunes around him, Crowley swiftly began to grow bored. If there was a guardian of some kind here, looking after one of Hero Teucer’s relics, then surely he would have encountered it by now. Yet, wherever he looked, not a single stone had been notably disturbed and the telling impressions of footprints were nowhere to be found.

“This is ridiculous,” Crowley sniffed, overturning a rock with his shoe. A tiny sand crab skittered out from under it, pinching ineffectually at the open breeze. “You’d think there might be a teensy hint around here somewhere, but no. Unlessss……” he trailed off, staring out at the choppy, dark-tipped waves.

Could there be something lurking out in those abyssal depths? A kraken, perhaps, or some other colossal cephalopod? Leviathan?

No. No, of course not. Crowley shook his head as if to clear it of such preposterous thinking. There was absolutely no conceivable way that would work. He didn’t recall Teucer passing out diving equipment, after all, and it would seem like a pretty enormous oversight not to mention some gargantuan aquatic beast skulking along the island’s shores.

An irritated huff slipped past his lips as his trusty weapon let out some absolutely unearthly wail. He had stopped nearly leaping out of his skin every time that happened, but he could certainly tell that the gun was still trying to get a rise out of him. At every passing moment, Crowley steeled himself for any unexpectedly loud blares.

Something further along the peninsula and leaning into the cliff-side’s dreary shadow caught his eye. It was a shack, loosely thrown together and with all manners of seaweed and dried-up oceanic matter clinging to the wooden planks in abundant, nose-rankling heaps, sitting with a most inviting gap in its southernmost flank facing the sea. Wary in his approach, Crowley wandered towards it to get a better look and maybe to find some much-needed supplies.

The interior of the slapdash arrangement of planks and congealed mud was bone dry, but not in an entirely pleasant way. Arid salt trickling down from the rafters stung at his eyes as the demon shouldered his way in, a single shaft of soft, weeping indigo shadow drifting in after him, silent as a ghost.

It was tall enough that an adult human of average height could stand comfortably inside, and so Crowley straightened smartly up and took a quick peek around. He sought to snoop around the edges of the room first, for there wasn’t much of substance in its drafty center. A few discarded, rickety benches sat propped against the wall below a porthole through which the tossing sea could just barely be glimpsed.

Crowley scratched lightly at the underside of his chin. It was awfully dusty, that shack. Cobwebs crawling all over the place, dribbling icy blue strings of dew— a soft crrnch alerted him to a few scattered pieces of broken glass underfoot.

“Someone has a lot of cleaning to do.” Crowley murmured under his breath, the few words unspeakably loud in the quiet twisting around him, and then shuddered. It felt like a dozen spiders crawling down his spine, that wind. The whole house seemed to sway with it, light patters of rain strumming against the timber like the plucking of a harp’s strings.

Suddenly, the firearm in his arms practically leaped with sound and motion as it let out a sharp, synthetic whoop, prompting Crowley to perform a masterful pirouette far better than any dancer could ever hope to pull off. A beam of soft, dust-laden light wafted down from above, and at its focus stood a little old lady.

“Oh,” the demon said, looking only somewhat apologetic. “I’m terribly sorry; I hadn’t realized anyone lived here.” He appeared suitably embarrassed, his proud posture wilting and a courteous deference lowering his guns barrel towards the floor.

He received no immediate reply as the night waned, the last vestiges of moonlight struggling to pierce the shade of foggy gloom wavering out in the open air. A moment flitted by, soft like moth dust, and then the old woman seemed to mumble. No sound trickled out from her wrinkled, prune-colored lips, as if she were contained in a silent film.

“What’s that?” the demon tested the waters, head tilted inquisitively to the side.

Her lips twitched, appearing to almost form audible words before a widening sickle of blue-black sluiced its way directly through the center of her locked jaws into a cavernous, dripping maw. Long, curved pincers adorned with wickedly sharp tips dropped from the ceiling, covered in hundreds of fine, silvery-hued hairs in the waxing moonlight. Eight gleaming fragments of pale light, deceptively sly like a butcher’s knife, glinted from the spindly, voluminous curves of rounded shadow streaking down from above.

“Nnngk,” Crowley stammered, back-pedaling faster than an Olympic cyclist 'til his shoulder blades struck the wall.

Thankfully, his gun was not so unresponsive in the snarling, long-jawed face of mortal peril. It fired off two quick rounds into the beast’s hairy mandibles and pear-shaped abdomen, a corona of bluish-gold fire flaring up in an earsplitting whine of devastating, hurtling rhythms that reverberated against the trembling walls with terrifying command.

With an absolutely unholy shriek that sent a bone-chilling shimmy through Crowley’s limbs as he took off at a dead sprint, the spidery creature hoisted itself back up into the rafters. Harsh scuttling noises like nails dragging across a chalkboard chased at his heels all the way out, right up until he was out on the damp sands, wheezing like a steam engine, and then not much further than that as the demon simply kept on running.

Twenty minutes later saw Crowley once again wandering the marshy floodplain from before. He dropped to his knees with a sharp wheeze, shuddering waves of adrenaline coursing in his blood. He didn’t even know he still had that much energy to run from things with, at least not since the Apocalypse That Never Was, when the Duke Hastur was looking to turn him into maggot meat.

But the most credit for his continued survival didn’t rest with himself alone. After several moments of pawing around blindly in the mud and stickily wet grass, Crowley heralded the true hero of the hour.

“Oh, honey,” he almost sobbed, pulling the gun into a tender, heartfelt embrace. “I take back every wrong thing I ever said about you. You’re one of the best things that has ever happened to me, you better believe it.”

Hzzzzznn, the musical contraption buzzed, its insides blazing briefly up into a cylindrical plume of bluish-white shine before receding again into coy smugness.

Regaining his composure quite abruptly, Crowley shuffled to his feet. “Don’t get cocky, now,” he warned, giving a derisive sniff as he dusted off his pants. “I might have stood a fair enough chance on my own.”

Dzzzzzzrrng. Yeah, right.

“Yes, well.” Crowley looked around, his chest still heaving in little rabbit-y kicks. The morning air was muggy and a distinctly olive tinge painted the grass in deep swathes of oily color. Crickets and various birds called into the dawn air as the last of the dreamily dusky-hued shadow receded over the horizon.

There didn’t appear to be much to do but keep on walking, although he still wished for nothing more than a brief nap. Not a dirt nap, mind you— just a regular old nap with a horizontally-aligned surface for Crowley to make sweet, sweet dreams to. Perhaps he could have slept a wink an hour or two earlier, when nightfall had settled in and a little brushwood could easily serve as a pillow. Now the sun was sitting high and proud in the sky, mocking him.

Yes, Crowley thought, setting off at a brisk, somewhat drowsy tread. That’ll do.