(№6.6)

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I actually wanted to post this on Halloween, but simply didn't find the time to edit. Anyway, Happy Halloween (in retrospect) to all those reading it, and I duly hope you enjoyed the story so far! By the way, this is the last part of Ballad number 6, and I will try to post asap Ballad 7, my favourite of all 9 Ballads. 

Well, enough talked, now let's get back to reading. ;)

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He stared back at her, unbelievingly stupid and incredulous, taken aback and deeply surprised how she had negated his wish in such offending manner.

His tantrum was worse than ever.

Her father howled, his scream declaring the start of a blood-earned fight, his thirst for violence and hard-felt revenge boiling over, much like the trumpets are drawn before the fray as well as the spears and the string of the bow aiming an arrow is tightened, as the battle, between his fuming daughter and his minuscule cohesion of struggle of keeping his vile emotions together, commenced.

But she was equally as ready and as eager, she wanted him to hit her, the thirst imbued in her bones to tear skin with barren teeth, the thirst to have pearls of sweat sink into her skin from the exertion to circle one another.

And there he came running at her, all screams and violent brutality hitting its target unerring like a wrecking ball, flatulent paunch wobbling and moving franticly up and down, as a storm of a tornado, a raging, gasping monster would meet his spitting image, adrenaline rushed through her body like the most addicting drug, making her strong and keen on showing this obese bully, happened to be her father, his places.

He swung at her but she ducked, her based instincts better tuned for a fight and struggle than she was and she let them guide her, water in a current, fish in the water, effortlessly gliding and knowing more than each of them, deeper plunged into perceiving signals and signs unpicked by her mind. After all, her father was the one who initiated her to the chase, the bloodshed, what it was to put both her hands on the point of the warm, pulsing pump of a neck and squeeze tightly; He, the father, had acquainted her with killing.

She panted in the rhythm of her fierce heart, the burden and eyes of all the woman on his consciousness, spending her strength and stamina in the one final battle.

He was a brutal swarm of wasps, all big and loud, terrifying, when in reality being small and of almost no worth, but she was a swift, fast arrow, untouched by air, exactly meeting her mark.

She connected her petite fist with his face, the impact sending a pinprick of anguish along her arm, meeting his nose and feeling it break under her touch, smiling as satisfyingly, blood spurted how geysers dived out boiling hot water and he yelled in agony, as she doubled the pain further by kicking him euphorically in the gut. The mortal quantity of his patients run out, he stormed back with gushing blood running down his face and proceeded to grab her hair and pull out a few strands, causing her to squeal at the sudden burst of hurt, but she used carried momentum to kick him with his own tricks right at the knee, resulting in him letting go of her and edging away, teeth gnarled out and growling like a reduced, wounded animal.

She sweated and gasped for air, exerted by fatigue, wanting to fold up in anxiety, slowly understanding this was not only a fight for honour, but a fight for survival, yet trying to live for the moment of this thrill, when hurting him exactly how he had hurt her, luck like fluid gold, all chances pointed at her, as she accosted him from his left, tippling him down and using her knee to hit him right in the stomach once again.

Unfortunately for her, the fat layer of years-cultivated worth under his skin acted as a puffer and it was now for his hand that rained down at her face from all different angles, scratching her forehead, a cascade of blurry fat fists raining, having her taste blood and rattling to breath as he bulged on her head on and on, until the pressure was edge-near to burst and implode, his eyes mad and rabid, incessantly stopping, hitting ceaselessly, moving to the wall and pressing her on, until his disgusting hot breath hit her bleeding face like a smelly brick wall.

Her eyes swelled dramatically how only the boys would look when coming home from a scuffle, looking dirty and feathered and she blinked in panic and discomfort, the blind gaping veil of nothingness menacing to swallow her into unconsciousness and the clear, purposeful ending how after this dance, she would not get up. Moving her arms restless, praying to find something, cadging blindly, begging to feel the comfort of an iron stick or even...

Her hand collided with the wooden kitchen table close to the wall, sensing a cold and metal hilt.

A blade. New-possessed resolution filled her spirits and she kicked him off with her two legs, catching him off-guard and slicing his wrinkled, old forehead open, watching how the blood would run in his eyes, which he desperately tried to wipe away in disdain, yet to no avail, still screaming and wailing every curse word, every fatal profanity one would never scream at their worst enemy, but naturally against their family, his own daughter, in a struggle.

Bile rose in her throat and she coughed and panted whilst unbearable pain radiated off of her head and clutched her fist with her other hand, from when she had punched him, bleeding and sweating and feeling how she couldn't keep on, she had to go, to flee, dash away from his brute figure, before he'd manage to kill her for good...

She stumbled to the door, groans and moans and sobs filling the new silent cabin, when the roaring sounds produced by her father seemed to come right from behind her, like a bull drawn to the infamous red shroud, seductively and provokingly fawned right in front of his nostrils.

Her father seemed much like a disfigured demon, with his red eyes and wry nose, an entire bleeding face, as he jumped at her back, missing her figure for she stumbled in dodging barely, having him collide with a sickening crunch against the wall, with the precise force to chime a human femur, cracks spiralling delicately away such as the spider spins her dangerous net awaiting most patiently to catch the beloved flies. He aimed blindly for her arm, and pulled her closer.

"Enough", he whispered in her ear, eyes still too trenched to see like her, what was about to happen and unfold. Her mother was right after all: Their wrath mixed would be the end of their family.

They both gasped and fought for air, her trying to get out of the steel-tight, knife-hard grip of her father, but there was no escaping this time.

The dark, dooming cracks reached the rooftop made out of provisional dried hay and clay, aching and puffing with what would be their last breath.

The girl closed her eyes, as her father whelped looking up and the cabin collapsed just like her life had and was always doomed to be, because what future would lay in listening to pretty music, playing with fire and daring devils to take her away from home, having no responsibility and wanting not one to fill out, crafting stories and bidding to have another life when that was the only one she ought to get. Pathetically begging fate and destiny to award her future of tales and fables, when really all that would prevail her was a long, shambolic pile collecting her life torn to pieces. It had been childish and irrational, and perhaps marriage would have been a great call to see to her true duties, to grasp how eventually everything that was dear to her was destined, designed even to crumble and tumble to her feet with no earthly ties at last tying her to this place and the world after all.

Her father leaned forward, pressing her body to his, as the masses spilled over them not unlike how the sea conceitedly had its waves close over the drowned and desperate faces of shipwrecked folk, right when their boat tipped over bulging, rolling waves and capsized below the surface. The endless, circular walls of a dark, dank well raised from the ground as if they had always lingered with her, stayed close by just to embrace this window of opportunity, gulping her fully.

The groan, the ache, the crumbling was a noise she would never forget, how steady, trustworthy materials could give out just like this, dissolve to nothing but dust and crumbs.

The world went silent from a hundred to one second, at the snap, secret signal of someone to run the concealed threads, to have the cut made by shears and beguilingly watch the pieces tumble down in the dark.

Her face was pressed to the smelly earth, blood trickling down as she didn't move for several crucial seconds, heart beating amplified by the echo chamber of a ton of lofty air and her father's massive belly pressed into her slim back.

She was tired, really tired and internally secluded with everything; How marvelling and compelling the option in front of her was, to just rest her eyes and stay buried under her life, the substantial matter of her up-bringing. She once was close to death, why not let it have her anew?

But fright and fear singed her heart and made the decision for her, crawling out under the protective human coat of her limb father and climbing onwards to the streams of cool, clear air, rinsing through the narrow furrows, as being reborn all once again, coughing and suckling for precious air, as her hands cut themselves, by shoving shambles of the wall and pieces of the clay from the ceiling away.

Withering dusk awaited her, when she made it out of the wreck, coughing and trembling, slick with hearty blood, angsty sweat, concentrated dust and purely soil tattled in her face still swollen and contorted.

She turned around, heart paining and twitching with the abnormality to not find her beloved home towering over her in familiar sheepish manner, but only trees and bushes and a weirdly assortments of piled up irrelevant materials.

She froze in her tracks, stopping all that nonsense thinking and realising as if stung by an adder.

Where was her father matching in all of that?

"Father? Father!", she hoarsely whispered, seized by terror, her voice as if rubbed by bark, completely dried out from all the screaming and howling, tired and bled of all enthusiasm by this pointless fight that ought to take even the last bit of her.

Her desperate fingers didn't obey various thoughts of her head to terminate, quit, and run as fast as she could muster from the village built on lies and deceits and her betrothed probably stalking the grounds, eagerly seeking the glimpses of her usually beguiling figure.

But the sheer possibility... She had to make certain, she needed to be certain.

She pulled and faltered under the sickening weight of the walls, cringing at the sight at the small combustible stock that were the bases of a house, the rot of grass in the air, her ceaseless coughing by the dust she swirled spreading, while searching through the wrecks to find the human she hated most in the world. It gave an eerie feeling, that whirling, that billow of white cinder, risen breath of powder obscuring the view, as if the imminent apocalypse was finally near.

Her breathing hitched as she kneeled down and ripped fistfuls of the hay away, finding an awful amount of sprawling blood shockingly everywhere.

She had felt his body limping and still as a leaf over her, yet hadn't paid much attention for she prioritised her survival first and wanted to crawl out as soon as possible of that constricting space stealing her breath, no matter what of that confining shell, cocoon of demise, made out of her home, perverse to reveal the finitude of life.

Her heart broke and tears flooded when she grabbed his dirty-brown, thinning hair, kicked off clay shards and broken twigs, revealing a bobbling, brewing head wound, how the edge of a wall had met with her father's head and tore it open into a deep, gushing wounds, bits and pieces of a strange pink substance everywhere, coating his neck and hair. It dawned on her like a knife cutting her throat, that this bit of flesh might be essential for rendering one alive, for attaching one to the mere threads of human existence and when she took his unmoving, still composure finally into notice, and his death so long wished upon and conjured, struck her heart and opened the eternal gates for tears to appear.

Her sobs and tears were real, and very knowingly, she haunted herself for crying over him, hated her with absolute ferocity for violently shaking and gagging, when pulling and straining herself to get his fat-ruined, alcoholic body out of the shambles, his eyes wide and void of all emotion, even of the anger that constantly marked his doomed existence, but skin all warm and still rosy, as nothing had happened, she let go of him and watched him simply collide with the shambles, expecting him to rise and scold her from dropping him unceremoniously like a bag of onions, though of course, she could wait for such a reaction now, until she choked on it. She crawled backwards, hands over her mouth, shaking and muttering idiocies, the blood she was eager for minutes prior in the past staining her hands, her gown, her hair. The curse for murdering the father clinging to her for all eternity.

Her anger mattered null when being confronted with his actual limb corpse, never twitching, unmoving body, with blood pooling out of his head, such a never-ceasing source of crimson dye, eyes staring back at her, with no emotion, as death would have gently had truly wiped away all grudge, all fierce intensity, all rage, and yet even the small scraps of affection he could gather, leaving her with an object, resembling somewhat the father who had terrorised and loathed her, with a broken nose she had added in raving furore.

He was the thing she hated most in this world, but also the only one who had cared for her enough, feeding and clothing her until a respectable age, tolerating her gloomy presence in his house, attempting to carve a future out for her, when she had refused to comprehend her own fortune.

It was abstruse to her in retrospect, that she had scrambled up shivering, screaming and cursing, wining and sobbing, kicking and ripping everything still sort of intact into a thousand little pieces, floating behind her like the veil of perdition, destroying the walls, their table, their one stool with certain desperation to cause they could never be repaired again.

She wanted to kill her father, yes, the desire had been undeniable there, but then why was she reacting that way, with troubling and babbling uncertainty what goal to reach next, what next thing to do, when the deed was done, her wish fulfilled! All need for hesitance gone, replaced, by her so adored, long inspired freedom!

Oh, what a true hypocrite, in vividly ferocious colours...

She turned hastily and violently around, stomping onto a plank of wood and jumping up and down, down and up, square and perpendicular until the crushing under her soles hurt to her core and satisfied her disoriented smashing and scattering thoughts racing and circulating against mind-shattering frenzy.

She was going to be mad and lose her mind, that is. How could the world keep spinning around and about, the empty, meaningless light of day fade and replace it all with darkness, as nothing had happened? As all was normal and routine, when it was anything but. The world was going too slow, and her mind was too rapid. Tears threatened to spill, when acceptance hadn't even trickled in.

Burn the body, yes, this is which must be done, get rid of this blot, a sore to her eyes only more, before the town would see the shame she had fabricated.

Impatiently, she came to the conclusion, when packing his clothed legs, that nightfall had donned its veil upon the world to detrimentally ruin her goal, no sun to speed up that process, offer her a spark of simplicity, and she had absolutely no nerve to start one by the mere rubbing of a stick or the usage of a fire stone she possessed none of.

He would be clothed because she couldn't bear to have his disgusting, clammy skin touching her, not even dismantling his ego, because he was gone.

No, not gone! She thought teeth clenched, shins gripping and pulling him to the forest, he was dead. Just dead.

That's right. No euphemism needed to emphasise what the living wanted to be distracted from. His body would soon begin to stiffen and then inevitably rot, how they all would do, one way or another. They were all born to die, so why would any of that matter at all? Her laughing turned abrupt and shaking, cackling even, while she laughed and laughed incessantly. Why should it matter if one lived or died? In the end, they all shared the communal tomb of oblivion.

The darkness around both cover and veil was horribly, enabling equally to impeding, squirting through her purple eye sockets into the night, every other branch clinging to his clothing, making it almost impossible to carry it.

Since he was an object now, no longer a human, even though it was debatable if he ever behaved as one, if they should ever consider him as one, better a demon donning the disguise of one. But no foul talk of the dead must be issued of course, even to all the monsters who had been slayed.

It was painful, even causing more anguish than her screaming arms and fatigued legs, rippling wounds, but for her head, her mental body in a revolting, sick way.

She almost wished his form would be peeled and cleansed away like the Skeletons on the market place, so she no longer had the need to stare into his darkened eyes or gaze at his still face. It wasn't also a great deal of help that he cultivated himself to the size of a full-grown whale and his bones sure would be much easier to manoeuvre.

But the mere thought of carrying his skeleton and having the singular bones all spread and tumble down to the soil was a comical picture, how she had to gather them in her skirts and...

The laughing without intermission took a brutal hold of her again, feeling only void and hollow echoing in this still landscape of a world where she was finally alone and vulnerable, laughing and giggling in miserable shudders and harsh tremors, without feeling happy, her head feeling too heavy and hollow of all sentiments, emotions.

She felt numb and a little crazy, as her laugh didn't subside and only grew stronger, more maniacal as she dragged his body over the known flora, rolling over several bushes and small-trees.

She was really going to be insane, close to enter the grounds of irreversible, irresistible insanity at this point, and she knew it.

Her laughter turned quickly to sobs to full-blow cries finally, ultimate resolution kicking in and telling her the truth, the most detested verity, she tried to avert, scaring birds with huge wings away and even the most hungry predator.

She moved faster when she could hear the familiar splash of waves against her cliff, desperate to throw this heavy burden into the Sea.

When the dense thicket cleared, she let go of the body, disgusted and tired, breathing the prosperous, refreshing salty clearance, grains of salt consoling her, as much as they could. Burning her frayed, crusted face also, but the hurt was welcome, these small scissors of minuscule pain against the terribly, unimaginable one she had to face.

She held her arms in front of her, swallowing at the blood caking and seizing her sleeves, staining her favourite gown forever, topped with dust and mud, flaky and mixed with her sweat to a thick, itchy crust.

Her appearance gave the idea she had just slaughtered a pig.

Literally.

She felt light-headed and her extremities pinching and smarting, heaving her down. How hard she just wanted to sink to the ground and disappear in a hole, but she couldn't before dispensing the body of half her flesh, that seemed to be visible in every corner of her eyes, disregarding how much she wanted to forget, involuntarily edging in front of all thoughts, all actions, every view, she only saw his slumped, slacked body, laying feebly there.

Throwing it in the sea was a humble solution, but everyone sometimes would hit the shore and she couldn't risk it coming back to be discovered by his fisher pals.

Burying it was.

She fished out a short knife with a broad blade out of her robe pocket and head over heels sought a non moss-covered place under the pine trees, throwing herself on the ground for her robe was already shamed and ruined beyond washing and couldn't possible contribute more to her disgusting reputation and the girl started digging, grabbing and pulling out as much earth as she could.

It was tiring work, but she couldn't wait to have it six feet under and be officially orphaned and alone in this god-forsaken world.

The soil was heavy and thick with roots and young stems, troubling at any chance to stay together, to not reveal the dark secrets within the earth, but she was also endearingly troublesome, stubborn and ignored the damned density, rather judged herself for flinching every other second, as the corpse of her father had seemed to move, to get up and strangle her from behind, already commencing to disintegrate, rot and take her with him.

When she had dug knee-deep a pit, a burning sensation clasped her stomach, wiser  omniscience advising her to stop, but she didn't.

Bugs, dark soil, light soil, sand, rocks the size of eyeballs and roots clattered all behind her, her skin as stained as the night and even with earth in her undergarments, she would not give up.

The corpse sometimes would position itself on all fours, with fangs as long as her neck, lunging at it to break her in half, or her father would rise and grow a pair of bat-similar wings, skin falling apart.

Though he did not move and would never.

It was her guilty mind punishing her for her crimes and rightly it did.

When she could barely hop out of the grave herself, the stars seemingly shining from another plane, another planet, the world of the living, she abruptly and suddenly found a lot of odd firm shards, laying all around her, the material too light to be rocks, still to dense to be of any kind of soil.

Her eyes were very well adjusted to the darkness, in her mind being long a part of her, as it seeped into her body when she should have already fallen asleep, but clung to these all kinds of roots and particles of dirt, it was impossible to tell what these were for certainty.

Curious as the north wind, her normally inclined nature was, she could spare herself from another horror experienced tonight.

Well, at least until her blade connected with a muffled sound against a huge, dirty-caked chunk of rock, unlike the smaller ones having the audacity to not sprawl to the sides.

She carelessly threw the knife to her left, encircling the big object the size of a ball and pulling it out of the Earth resolutely, her strength and stamina unmatched, exhaustion scared away, for as long as this burying would take.

She couldn't believe her eyes at first, her heart leaping and skipping a few beats, racing harder than the wind of the eye of a hurricane, of a born sea storm in horror and shock and terror and callousness and irrationality, wanting to faint from the dreading dawn, the cruelty of probability.

She held a human skull in her hands, as long and wide as hers, the one she stared at her literal past, present and future.

Her scream went through her own body like she had been punched and over and over again, hit against a wall. Nerve-wracking, bone-splintering, brain-fragmenting, infant-killing, maddening and truculently true, she felt her flesh would part, bursting on the high notes of her, a bones splintering and her soul splitting.

This grave was already occupied.

She let go of the skull with an angered cry, shivering uncontrollably as she somehow managed to scramble out of the tomb before going unconscious, stumbling towards the corpse of her own to rid off, twitching under her manipulated view, obscured by dirt crumbs caught in her eye.

She grabbed his leg and miraculously managed to haul him over to the shared grave, closing his eyes with a swift and butterfly wing-light motion to let him rest in peace, to not... have him go with any regrets, throwing him into his grave and watching him fell face first on the other skeleton, quickly shoving the more or less collected pile of soil on top of both, panting and tears running down, at last having her legs relinquish of her halt and laying on top of the freshly-dug earth, looking at the lighting sky, her own frightened uproars over and over playing in her head, soil and blood and bone now too attached to her every fibre.

It was a warm, beautiful summer night, but she was viciously, bitterly shaking.

She had united her parents at last in peace, unknowing but known to her to some extent.

The last thing she listened to was the clattering and hurrying of many steps, rattling right towards her, but she had already fallen asleep at the sound of waves singing her to sleep, trembling and hoping her heart would just give out and kill her.

Unfortunately, things are never this easy and all consequences must be faced with a punishment.

The angry, scandalised village found her on top of the scandalous attempt she had made to hide the committed sin; Killing her father, the crime of fratricide. Truly, this could only mean this family was irrevocably cursed, beyond redemption and must be eradicated.

Shaking in agitation their heads at one glimpse of this tainted, untamed, horrendous, cruel creature, even a woman at that, who killed in cold-blooded desire, a stench on Zalmoxis wonderful rule.

Blackened and shamed by the Earth, aligned with all evil, smeared by the holy blood of her father, who was devil-born just like her and it would be their greatest pleasure to have them both cast off, even though their sorrow was only the greater that the nefarious battling of demons hadn't concluded with both laying still, one halfly breathing, albeit what wasn't could still become.

The sacrifice would be at noon, on their most deferential boat, far from the shores, for no more blood of this grim and smudged family should touch their grounds ever again, a disgrace not even presented to those partaking in cycling manslaughter.

Her almost-spouse cried the most about it, wanting to join with the collection of grown and serious men, but they forbade him, solacing him how his wife had turned out to be a demon.

Her golden hair and angelic features were quite lovely though...

She would die by hanging, disposing of her body in their beloved Sea, a sacrifice so fine surely meaning to calm all enraged gods.

Filthy and bloody and injured as she was, they hung and attached her wrists and ankles to a wooden pole at the marketplace for anyone's flaunted exhibition, to show what would happen to murderers and monsters, even stashed in the skins of an innocent girl.

They poured buckets of their effluent water over her head and feigned disgust, when she would frantically pull at her restraints, smirking and screaming and laughing at them, switching from second to second, truly possessed by the devil.

Everyone threw their rotten and overripe vegetables at her face, hit her with fly-reeking meat, but couldn't get the laughter out of her, as somebody would have humoured her with a silly joke and she couldn't control herself over to frankly enjoy.

Women don't have honour, they would speak in horror at their epiphany, preparing the noose and the sharpest, tautest rope, as could be mustered on such short notice.

Her assumed spouse claimed she should at least be deflowered to have her coat even stained more, for her ethereal beauty really would go to waste for nothing and being a virgin could potentially privilege her and he kept his position in defiance, when they rejected his request, especially since he was the one to volunteer.

He hadn't seen the shagged house, uprooted and far from any humanity destroyed, which only could be the work of a devil in disguise. They had even recoiled from touching her cold, stained skin, tremors arising, as they felt splinters of her monstrous, bestial nature penetrate their innocent, deferential beings.

At noon, she was released from the pole and brought in more portable bindings, every muscle, every pint of fight drained away.

The demon must have been scared and intimidated by the rightful villagers, as it should. Grey clouds painted the far horizon, which they deliberately ignored. They would long be home, when the storm was to hit, while the lifeless shell, a wench so rotten, would be towed and drenched in the conniving pool so cold, drowning with her sins.

The girl only smiled knowingly with a sad aura lulling around her and almost pulled to her circling end the person whom she was attached back to shore, who was to lead her. He hit her square in the face, to his shock seeing only the eyes of a monster staring back at him, a laugh deeply in her throat.

Murder of one's father was not something he would ever attempt, and she did not daunt him, he was not afraid of her but her courage, her brazen madness, her depravity were to say the least indeed intimidating, how one could sink so profoundly.

They hauled her in their swift sail's boat, oars ready to go back with muscle power, and over the sea they would drift.

The waves were not black today, but rather a mourning, tinted grey mixing with the illusion of blue to appear somewhat a compromise.

The sky was rather sooner more progressive, as the dull white of the quick morning was replaced by a sickening, teeth-shuddering grey with draggling black vines flittering over their heads. The wind also had a spirit of its own, more and more blowing outside of the unforgiving sea and even being crewed by ten men, they had their big trouble controlling the boat and slow their pacing.

The men constantly observed the girl out of the corner of their eyes, tied to the mast, head tilted and eye's closed, as she wanted to listen to the hissing breeze in all its intensity, as she received corespondency from the depths of hell the man could not comprehend. At least she had stopped with her creepy grins, knowing too much.

Thunder and lightning beckoned them to safety ensuring measures, the hanging and punishment could wait, since the waves greedily practically thrice succeeded to tip over the boat, and the storm was coming faster, dashed closer than anticipated.

Noon faded from afternoon to early evening, with no comforting light of the sun for guidance and utterly lost of all orientation.

Crests of waves always towered over the boat and dared to subdue the ship, the sea already mouth-watering, panting for the possessions of the experienced fishermen and what lovely trophies they'd add to the brought collection.

The wind was another pain, blowing dust and grains of salt in their irritated eyes, playing with the golden hair of the girl.

Lightning rushed closer, seeming more green than purple and more frequent to strike in their boat, the wind in addition to companionship of a fortune's attributes sounding like a grumbling roar from the underworld.

They were thrown to one side and the other, hastily and rashly yelling commands to control the ship over the elements which were impossible to overhear. Their coming was arrogant and boastful, completely forgotten the want to kill the girl now when they feared for their own lives, arrogantly as only man rendered able.

The waves would lick over the planks, the boat slick with slimy seaweed and slippery with a film of salt water, nacre form tickling their feet and making it a slippery case indeed.

It was now as dark as the night, impossible to distinguish if already fallen or the hoax of the sky and sea was complete and perfect in its deception, but it was either way macabre. A somber prospect turning almost impossible to escape the hungry tendrils of the sea wanting to claim the boat.

What only was left was to pray for a miracle, when the men could have sworn to hear horse's neighing and a woman singing, of course immediately turning to their captivated girl, who hadn't said a word and apparently didn't intend to, observing the tempest coolly as forebode.

Waves as high as mountains would overbloom and crash and flood through their ship, the sea having its fair share of fun and amusement, while they suffered yelling, before it eventually would tire of its toys.

Every time the sky was illuminated for a short flicker of time by light, as the unusual green lightning bolt would strike, the men saw wrapped-up riders on horses with decaying skin, encircling the ship with a fierce intensity and certainty, gone when they'd blink and trying in failing attempts to conjure the picture of horror again.

It is rumoured only the ones close to death might perceive them for a during heartbeat.

The whole ordeal of catastrophe and distress seemed complete when the alienated, serenading, out-of-this-world music resounded all over the surface, booming and flourishing with the intensity of the storm, enhancing the crafts of the wind and the power of the waves only further, the music as clear as if it had been a windless, wondrous evening morphing to dusk, a faint blue glow accompanied by heavy rain drops, making the symphony and doom full.

The girl smiled when the music began.

And she stopped when a groaning man approached her sides, bitterness and anguish marred in his countenance to please at least Zalmoxis one last time before his passing and he proceeded to slash her throat with a quick flicker of his blade, happy to know she would die by his hand, happy to feign lest she would somehow survive.

She looked at him in disbelief, wet hair pinned to her head, dirt all washed-out by the rain, cheeks rosy and blue eyes like a glowing ice floe. Her mortal bindings were cut and she slumped down.

When the blood gushed out, the sky split with a cracking sound and the mighty sea parted the ship into two, gone the wood, gone the mast and the girl in the matter of a heartbeat, submerged by water and the outcome undetermined.

Sky and Sea would long battle after this, a winner yet to be crowned.