[center][b][h3][color=red]The Blood Devil[/color][/h3][/b][/center]

[i]What. The. Bloody. Hell. Is. That.[/i]
 
Saria barely had time to answer her own question before the horrid thing rushed towards her like a wave. She dodged out of the way, the black mass missing her by less than an inch, its black appendages grasping for her legs as she hit the railing, stopping her from falling overboard. 
 
Now on full alert, Saria drew her blade and tried to slice the heads apart, but her blade simply chinked the monster’s rough hide; minimal damage being inflicted, if at all. It was too late to try and dodge this time, and the nightmarish creature slammed into her full-force, bending the railing behind her. 
 
She felt something in her torso give, and a sharp pain shot its way through her body. Blood found a way up her throat. The heads were all over her, grinding their multitudes of teeth onto her armor, the groan and shrill of razorlike teeth upon steel bored into her ears. Luckily, sharpness meant nothing when dealing with armor. 
 
What wasn’t protected from the assault however, were the gaps in her armor, the tiny spaces that allowed Saria to move her arms and legs freely. Those tiny spaces were all the teeth needed, and so they began to gnaw at her flesh. Great ripples of pain radiated all throughout her limbs, and she forced herself to move, to do something. 
 
[i]I will not be consumed by this… monstrosity.[/i] 
 
Saria felt an urge rise up from the bottom of her soul. A bestial ferocity, a feral rage, the insatiable impulse to kill. She wanted to let go, she wanted to give in, to let the blade control her. In vain, she tried again and again to cut the nightmare’s rock-hard scales, but to no avail. Over and over, her Red Blade simply bounced off of the creature’s hide, and eventually, more heads erupted from the nightmare’s skin and took a hold of Saria’s wrist. She felt something in her arm crack. If she hadn’t been wearing as much armor, her limb would have been entirely crushed. Even so, she refused to let go of her blade.
 
Pinned against the railing, Saria could do nothing, the heads chewing through her flesh, the tendrils pinning her sword arm, and her entire body slowly being crushed by the nightmare, which wrapped itself around her like a constrictor. An inner voice whispered to her.
 
[color=red][i]Give in. Give in. Just let yourself go.[/i][/color] 
 
Saria resisted for a good while, but many more fractured bones later, her mind surrendered and the blade took over. 
 
For a second, Saria felt nothing. Everything was in slow-motion, and she wondered if this was what death was like: The victim reliving their last moments, eternally.
 
But then a spark ignited within her, and a blazing inferno was born. 
The worm retreated, scorched by the erupting fire that now surrounded the Blood Devil. The Red Blade now fused to her hands, she felt her blood forcibly siphoned into the blade, sharpening it, but such a small thing only made her angrier. She wanted violence, death, gore, bloodshed; She wanted to rip the world open by the belly and yank out its entrails. 
 
The Blood Devil awakened, and let out a scream; not a human scream, not even an animal’s scream, but a shriek of something… otherworldly. Some say that such a raw, violent noise would make both angels and demons cower within their own realms. 
 
The Blood Devil charged forward, as animalistic as the worm itself. Her only instinct was bloodshed, and her sword was her tool. With a single swing, the sword collided with the worm’s armor, cracking the previously thought impenetrable shell and throwing the thing across the ship, which was now on fire due to her flames. She walked over to the stunned thing, and swung her blade down, breaking its scales and causing the worm to shriek in both pain and fear. 
 
Saria brought her blade down onto the worm, slicing it in half. It screamed and hissed at her, but she simply didn’t care. Its cries for help were music to her ears. Successfully incapacitated, Saria cut the worm again, then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, eventually reducing the beast to a pulpy mass of sludge and unrecognizable flesh. She grabbed it by the handful and began throwing chunks of it overboard in a fit of rage, though her frenzy was settling down now that her enemy was obliterated. 
 
After all traces of the thing were gone, Saria lit a burning torch and forcibly cauterized her wounds, gritting her teeth so hard she could’ve cracked a tooth. Limping back down to her rowboat, she pushed it back out and climbed in, her body sore and shaking. She remembered her phylactery, how she was connected to her opponent. Suddenly, everything; the tournament, the contestants, all of it came back to her. Back there, on the ship, she forgot everything about who she was, and cared for nothing but primal rage. It was not a feeling she liked.
 
She coughed, chuckled, then spoke into her phylactery, her voice raspy and hoarse, but still carrying a certain force along with it. 
 
[color=red]“Whoever you are, wherever you are, you bastard, I’m coming for you. And I will not stop until one of us is dead.”[/color]