Unfathomable [Gate in the Deep]

[Gildarts]

Cooling molten iron streamed inches past her face. Inches. Had the massive ball of metal steamrolled into her, there would have been a massive splatter of gore everywhere, on the deck, on the crewman, all marked with her black blood. While Alex would be left with nothing, if not death in this mortal world where the elite Primes rule. Worst yet, when she imagined what could’ve happened to the beauty of her skull’s bones, her cheeks boiled red with anger. She liked this face. She’d taken it fair and square-as fair as a demon could get- and now it was hers.

Heat seemed to roll off the demon with steam while a sweep of chaos took over on the deck. The Fiendlord was a sorcerer, wielding magic powerful enough to slay her. She’d have to assess that later, though, since now, her body had smushed into its torrentially smoking form, and was bulldozing its way over wave and wind in a speed that one could barely track with sight. Her tongue tasted the sweetness of revenge to the steel ship that would’ve so carelessly broken her face. Had it been any others -even the Prime’s- she wouldn’t have taken it personally. But now, this was war.

The steel ship looked more like a battleship from the distance, colossal even over the grand expanse of never-ending ocean. It was tall, wide, and narrow, and looked like some sort of enlarged torpedo mounted with guns of all kinds. Her senses jumbled with every zig zagging move she made in the air while her trail left a smell of scorched wood and charred carcass. Finally, free from the sky, it took her body a moment to materialize, and she was slammed into the cold hard ground as she landed. Flesh again.

Her feet were heavy, legs stable, and the last of the smoke disappeared at her shoulders. The woman’s eyes were entirely black, accentuating the long and lovely lashes of the human suit she wore. The demon, fueled by rage, used her speed, and their lack of, to her advantage. Her eyes grasped the sword sheathed in its hilt on the man closest to her, while they grazed two men, on the upper deck, loading their guns with machine-like momentum. Next, smearing in lack of color, were five deck-hands who were loading canons, two over at a starboard station manning a very powerful looking machine gun, and finally, more crewmen coming from below, the haste of their stomping masking the telling vibration of their numbers.

To her, a demon hundreds of years old, infiltration was easy. However, more than just protecting the ship was on her mind, and the selfish side of the woman always tended to win. Her black eyes only saw the blood that would be spilt, and her calculations were more or less complete. She’d cover the entire place, and then, toy with the last man standing before sending him down with the rest of this damned ship. Damned, because she was now on it. A slow smile coiled on on her cheek before the lightning speed of her movements caused her to burst around the ship in a blaze of movement.

The demon’s lithe form lunged for the sword on the nearest pirate’s belt, as she lifted it upward, she angled it just so, and his own blade sliced away half of his abdomen. Alexandria’s eyes widened, as a splatter of crimson violently splashed through the air, in that moment, she realized she held the sharpest sword she’d ever touched in her hands. Her arms tingled with excitement, as her eyes slid to her next victim, and she was soon there.

Immense speed flashed through the batting of her eyelashes and she could feel the energy draining through her body, but still, she pressed on, she didn’t want to waste a minute that could’ve been used slashing some throats. The deck-hands shouted “Intruder!” and took up their arms, she wasn’t in the mood to give them a fair fight, but kept her legs grounded to the floor as the blade was grasped firmly in her hands, lifted higher by the might in her elbows. The movement began so naturally while the men now armed themselves with their semi-automatics and single-shot revolvers. The gleam of dark metal wielded by the even darker hearts of man was seen as a challenge to the woman who stood defenseless, with a narrow scrap of steel separating her from the bombardment of bullets.

The cascade began to fall, followed by the chorus of sound. Click, Ca-thum, Ca-chink, POW! Were the whispers of the gun’s mechanisms as the gunpowder ignited and rocketed through the air. The mini-blasts continued while the demon charged at them, before sliding as a baseball runner would to home base. The bullets rolled through the air above her, though even her eyes could not see them moving in a slowed speed, time continued to bare on, and with it, the slice of her sword.

The gentle swishing sound was dulled against the “Argh!” groans of her assailants and more silent when she tore through bone, albeit, with some effort. Cracks and slices and all the other grotesque sounds filled her ears as red painted around her eyes. The slash of silver caught one man in the leg, while her momentum kept going, with her two-handed grip, into the man who was also next to him. Both of them fell with pained screams and a thump, she could finish them, but her sword followed through to the next victim, one who had seen his allies fall, and aimed his gun right at her forehead. Click, Ca-thum-

The spit of his blood was everywhere, and she was grazed by the bullet which had caught a portion of her swishing hair off guard. Four and Five had fired too, but their eyes deceived them, for each of them saw the woman as one another. Each held the gun out at the exact same time, and fired. Click, Ca-thum, Ca-chink, POW! The echo of the mirrored shots was followed by their body’s steady decent to the ground, where a puddle of drooling blood filled the steel below their corpses. Two and Three were still alive, she reminded herself and quickly delivered the killing blow, while one was attempting to grasp for his weapon, and the other, had already bled so much, he’d lost his sight and his gun was wavering in his hand, his ears telling him there was firing all around, but nothing stuck long enough to tell him where he should aim his next shot.

Slice. Alex cut through the wind, and also their windpipes. Another blink, her body was moving fast, she liked the exhilaration filling her lungs, but did not feel a rush or thrill in the violence, only the victory as their motionless bodies fell. Her hair flicked, and she ran full force at the giant machine gun that had been pointed to her, of course, it had enough steamrolling bullets to destroy their own ship, so they couldn’t possibly be stupid enough-

Blood gurgled in the empty hole now a part of her thigh. Sizzling pain winced, but the heat of the gun had already cauterized the wound, huge bullets sprayed everywhere, enough to take down the armor of a tank, or a ship in the distance, but the crewman had seen what massacre she had brought to those loading their state-of-the-art canons and would rather abandon ship and defend themselves than fire aimlessly at a weak-looking ship far off. Priorities, she understood, but it was also partly betrayal.

She winced as she continued to pound her legs into a run. It was not the bullets that were slow, but the man aiming that particular automatic, which had a gentle readjustment delay, causing the bullets to just follow her heels as she ran. Another in the wrong place and she’d be just another body for them to clean up at the end of this. The taste of war filled her nostrils, mingling with her own demon blood, as well as the taste of their fear trickling in, carried by the saline wind.

“It’s not working, you have to-” one of their voices began, though it was drowned out by the endless peppering of firepower, and the gleaming piece of bloodstained metal sliding out of his throat.

Alex had ascended and covered the space between her and the turret. Next, she’d take his head before he could twist five feet to the left, and fill her body with lead. Her sword extended, faster than her wrist flicked it, and the man at the turret had been too slow to even pull his finger from the trigger. The peppering spray of bullets still continued with his lifeless finger still on the trigger, pouring downward, into the depths of the ship, and surely creating irreparable damage to the heavy ship’s steel hull.

Creeaaak! the steel door opened, the next fleet had ascended from the many depths of the warship, while she felt the lurch of a torpedo spiral below the waves, headed straight toward her own dinky little ship. “Damn,” Alex said, as she looked down to her wounded leg, maneuvering to use her sword would be much too taxing and she could feel the strength that fueled her fiery speed draining.

“Tch. I hate guns, but I guess it won’t hurt me, more than it will hurt them...” The pepper of the machine gun continued into and through the first deck of the ship, while the men who had come upward, tried to assess the situation. To their left, the deck-hands were slaughtered, to their right, another one fallen, and up above, a gun was still firing, though its sights still in one place. Where were the people that had done this though? It had to have been at least ten men, to slay their own with such ease. The spray of bullets were everywhere, holes in the deck, the sides, and even the doors they had just come out of. Now they were corralled, and with Alex’s finger on the trigger, she sent them all to the slaughter.

The power behind the blasting turret was significantly reduced as she wielded it, whatever battery charge it had was evaporating, and she too, noticed the many ribbons of bullets being eaten by the machine were dwindling. Still, nothing would stop her from aiming down the sights of the weapon, and bringing the bullets through the group of men in one swift slash. Some ducked, others ran, but no lives escaped that day.

Click. Click. Click. The barrel spun, but it was empty. A sigh, that had been fun, but it hadn’t lasted. The woman blew away a tuft of hair that had tickled her nose and tiredly stood up, hobbled with the sword down the stairs, and hoped she’d find a manual self destruct button in the lower and flooding section of the ship.

After venturing past a few corners in the labyrinth below, she did not find neither the captain’s quarters, nor any accessible buttons in the control room that warned of it. Of course, if it was her ship, she wouldn’t have put the option there anyway. One of the crewman got in her way, so his life came to an end before he could gasp and fill his lungs with enough air to apologize, or kill her.

Lazily, under the streaming lights of red and orange, telling her to evacuate the ship, she wandered to one of the fuel rooms, and struck her blade against the metal, igniting a spark. The flames chased her smoky form out, as the fire enveloped the ship, and filled the air with the sound of a volcano’s relentless eruption.