Scarifar
Eviledd1984
Suicharte
MaeB
Echotech71
medalliah
The Death of Cawuio-Zast
Cawuio-Zast had spent his previous payday of 100 Magus the night after he had gotten it, some payments he remembered, some he didn't. His life from then scrapping by until the next score and this was one for the history books. The treasure of Don Cojones was surely an ill-gotten marvel for the ages and would be remembered for years to come. Zast had decided to take this treasure for his own and disappear of the earth, leaving the riches a vague memory in the minds of others. How long would this hoard last him? Two, three days? He needed it.
Waist-high waters meant Cazenax-high waters and even worse for a particularly short Cazenax like Zast. There was simply not getting around it, he couldn't touch the ground and keep his head above water. So instead, he was swimming around the deliciously swampy and rancid water in a bright yellow inflatable pool ring with a rubber ducky head. The under side of it was blackened in the filthy water.
With purpose, Zast made his way to the site of rotted plant matter where the smell would dissuade lesser men. The place had a good feeling about it and the cowards must not have looked in this area yet.
A foul mass of decomposed organic matter accumulated like a large pile of very juicy garbage in the middle of a Virangish Dorrad. If it weren't for Zast's unique characteristics as a walking little piece of trash himself, he would have to fight off the odours and instinct to avoid such wretched air.
Interestingly, there were multitudes of openings in this nine-foot-tall structure. A hole on its surface, so inviting and dank. And if Zast reached out with the gift, he could sense a distinct opening in its underside too. Where they led was hard to say due to the excessive plant life muddying (literally) any sort of precise sensory.
He did pick up one thing among the magic static: Something round. Something powerful.
Zast's famed fortitude and constitution were all he needed to face the challenge of the rotted spire. Few people could follow in his wake and therefore few would have preceded him. And oh what a treasure there was, he could just about sniff it, the money, the power, it had to be his. But he did not want any hidden onlookers to know he had caught the scent so he avoided the obvious entrance in favour of diving under and swimming up through the submerged opening. Regrettably, the rubber ducky inflatable was left behind.
Under it was. Murky waters and alien plantlife did not dissuade the true. Zast found himself in a tunnel within the accumulation of decomposed matter. At this point, the reeking had gotten so bad that a normal nose would simply be deprived of the sense. It was dark, barring any light source from the Cazenax himself. Except, of course, the beacon that was the mild glint in his senses that promised a treasure like none other.
He was so close. Almost there. Its shape so round. Its green-ness palpable. No less than five days of satiation for the legend himself.
With a small conjured light to illuminate his way, Zast finally looked upon the treasure of the wretched structure. The Greedstone. He didn't know its name, but he knew what to call it by instinct. He reached his hand out to quickly snatch it.
Within his grasp, just dangling there among the detritus. Now just inches away from his palm in the mist of the most putrid of places. He could even see it. All his. Only his.
"He, he, he, they make it too easy for me."
Cawiuo Zast’s green palms cupped the perfectly spherical orb. It was warm. It was welcoming. It did not satiate anything. He wanted even more. He tugged upon it, that shining bauble that attracted another tainted soul - a wide eyed fish to the angler fish’s trap. A light snapping sound was heard to the right. And then to the left. And then all over.
Eyes. Red, mucus-covered eyes all served as audience to the cazenax’s victory. And it all writhed.
The high pitched scream of a voice they would barely recognize. As more eyes laid upon the imminently gruesome sight, they would discover it belonged to none other than Cawuio Zast. Dangling high in the hair with a thick and long vine-like appendage impaled through his abdomen. The thing stemmed from the pile he had been diving in, lured in by a stone, and now he in turn dangled as bait.
Tremendous pain was in his screams. Endless. But the auditory horror would very quickly come with a visual one: The pile of rot shifted and churned, until ripples in the water became waves that splashed onto all those within its area. Appearing first as a large, muddy lump that pushed out, they would soon see where all the organic matter had gone - where the bodies were taken.
The unholy monster of the Bog emerged with its many red eyes lined inside its multi-layered maw. A single swing of its tree-sized right arm, its only arm of such a size, prompted a second tremor that awoke its dormant appendages. It stood at the same height as its appendages, although its width was prodigious to say the least. Most of its features remained veiled by the vegetation and mud, but more and more limbs could be seen protruding from the monstrosity.
Zast flailed around helplessly, barely hanging on to life. If it hadn't been for mender, he might have died only a few seconds after the initial blow. Now his blood type only served to prolong an inevitable fate. A steady and unnaturally plentiful stream of coins rained down from his coat as he was flung every which way in the air. Every coin that dropped coated in the wretched blood of the Cazenax.
But Zast was a gambler. He had been in worse situations before and come out fine. He had a plan.
Reaching for his flintlock, he unlatched it from his belt, tried to take aim, and missed his shot.
"Help me! First one to kill this thing will be rich beyond their wildest dreeeaaaaa..." His final word was cut off as the creature flailed him once more.
Before Edyta lay Cawuio-Zast, begging for help and mercy; begging, effectively, for Edyta Laska to risk her own death in order to save him. While that was not something she feared, she also honoured life, and it had been this vile little goblin's own greed that had gotten him into such a situation. Choice comes from Mother Dami, she reminded herself, just as judgements come from Father Dami.
She was just above him, hovering in the air on a gravity loop. This was an alarming place and she had no wish to touch down. Consequences are Mother Eshiran's to hand out, though.
Sister Laska looked upon him not-unsympathetically. "And what, pray tell," she asked with a soft coldness, "shall you give to Mother Eshiran for not taking you up in her embrace?"
On account of being thrashed around by a gigantic swamp monster, Zast's keen ability to focus was a little inhibited. Sure, he had been in similar situations before, at least five times, but none with a nun lecturing at him calmly from about.
"What the hells are ya talking about lady? I'm not dead yeeeeee..." A big swing robbed him from finishing the words. "Cut this damn vine already." The Cazenax was beginning to cough up blood. With a mustering of his meagre remaining strength, he weakly tossed some blood-soaked coins at Laska. It would undoubtedly stain her robes if they weren't already the perfect colour.
The coins scattered as they flew, a handful rebounding off the Rezaindian's robes of the same colour. "Hmm," she murmured, "so you do bleed red." Edyta Laska looked up and, with unsettlingly fast reflexes, snatched one of the sailing coins out of the air.
This, she flipped nimbly across her fingers, examining its bloody golden surface as the cazenax thrashed and moaned. All at once, she brought it to her lips and slid it through. Her eyes narrowed for a shadow of a second as she pulled it out. She spat, then, very much like a peasant, and made a face of distaste. "And you couldn't even pay me real gold." She shook her head. "You've placed your faith in the VOID, Cawuio-Zast. Let it save you." She turned away.
As Caiwuo-Zast’s eyes met Edyta Laska’s, he knew. She did not have to condemn him with her words, her mere aura as not Ahn-Eshira but as an envoy of the Judge sufficed. His eyes veered slightly, offering a novel experience of elevated height. A final spectacle of horror all for him. He watched as the many eyes opened behind him.
"Tommy, did I ever tell ya about my time in the Ensollian? I was under the command of a Belzaggic pirate captain, can't remember his name for the life of me but he always wore a red shirt. Funny reason for it too, but that's for another time. We made a name for ourselves raiding Revidian ships on the strait between Bozan and Medrilan. Got a lot of Magus doing that and caught ourselves a reputation in the process. In a short time, not a single Revidian could go that way without fearing a blade to their throat."
"It made for easy work Tommy. They would see our sails and give up without a fight. No merchant values gold over their own blood, ex-naval officers maybe, merchants no. It was easy work, but they started to catch on and the Revidian's slowly favoured other routes. With the work drying up, we coulda gone to those other routes but the captain had other ideas. With the Belzagg traders being plentiful in the straight, why not just steal from them? So we did. It was a slaughter Tommy, a profitable profitable slaughter."
"But the Belzaggs didn't like that one bit. They mobilized far quicker than the Revidians and they were on our tail before long. A ship weighed by endless spoils doesn't travel very fast and we knew that a battle would come by morning. That's when the captain let me know the most important words I had ever heard in this life. 'Listen boy, as long as blood spills on these waters and Magus is taken over bodies, I will never die. Merchants in this straight will always be scared of me and fear the blade I hold.' I thought he was an idiot Tommy, to this day I can't even remember his name. But he was right."
"Come morning I saw him staggering on the deck holding three blades in the torso and his right arm blown off. He smiled as he dropped to the deck and finally passed. That's when I realised that he had never died because I was him and he was me. It's hard to explain, Tommy, but you'll understand it too one day."
Magnificent Green saw them all fight for something other than themselves - for someone else. Some sacrificed a lot, others nearly died. But most got to keep the most precious thing in the world …
The red, monstrous eyes drew closer. Irregular and loud breathing sent ripples through the water.
The vine twisted and tangled deeper into the Cazenax's ribcage as he saw Laska, his final hope, reject him. The monster's appendage slowly drew him back toward its maw. Blood began pooling in Zast's throat and trickling over his body. His energy gave out, the trickle of coins tapered to a stop and he fell back with his arms slacked behind. The coat he wore slowly slipped from his shoulders and off his arms and it gently glided toward the ground. He had no weapons, he had no coat, just brown slacks and a red shirt once white.
He wondered if he regretted how he had lived, or if anything he regretted his reckless action here.
The massive external maw riddled with writhing life within opened wide, letting out a foul gust of air.
No, not really. It was never not worth it. There was no more begging. Nothing was coming for this greedy little man. A man of many riches, but with nobody who ever truly cared about him.
Cawuio-Zast began to smile a truly sickening, vile smile. He would die here randomly, absent from the eyes of judgement, absent from the eyes of those he had wronged. Anthal, along with a long line of others, would never see justice for what he had done. He danced with Lady Eshiran, he had escaped Dami's hands, now the ride had come to an end and he would die without note on the world. What a wild ride it was. In that moment, with no other motor functions, Zast began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, a gurgle of blood from his mouth. He smiled at Laska with reddened teeth as the jaws of the beast began to close around him.
A sound.
The faint tolling of a bell rang in Zast's ears. He knew that the sound had come from no earthly phenomenon. It was a simple, understated noise that told the Cazenax one thing. Something was watching, someone had judged his actions from beyond, and, wherever he was going, they would be waiting for him. The gods sat waiting to cast their sentence down upon him. The laughing stopped and his smile faded. But before he could process anything else, the jaws collapsed on him and ended his life.
CRUNCH
Cawuio-Zast's coat billowed gently to the swampy surface and floated on the water. The cazenax's epitaph would read: 'Here lies Cawuio-Zast. The man who ran from the eyes of justice so much that he forgot to build anything to be remembered by.' If only there was anyone to write it. Who would be there to shed a tear? Who would know where to go to piss on his grave? Did he ever really exist?
An unmarked tomb of filth and muck was the perfect resting place for a man such as Cawuio-Zast. His coat floating on the water was the only evidence he was ever really there.
