Chapter 7 - Epilogue I: The Red Bay


Epilogue I: The Red Bay

He felt his head hit the sea floor as a great plume of his blood dispersed into the murky waters. He struggled, again and again, knowing that he wasn't going to make it, but trying nonetheless, until his brain felt it was going to explode.

Then, he died. He died, and felt the weight lift from my body. He saw the angels of the firmament--he remembered not what they looked like--coming down to retrieve him. They appeared warm and kind. But still he struggled. He looked at their visages, and shouted "No!" He said no, and darted off into the skies, for his revenge was not yet complete. For five days and nights, the angels chased his spirit across the land, unending, unrelenting. He knew not where he was going. Then, he came upon a man in the sunset who hung by the noose, his life nearly snuffed out. His body was alive, but his soul had given up. Within that brief period between his life and death, he took his body whose heart still pumped fresh blood. Its eyes—now his eyes--snapped open, and he tore the noose asunder with every ounce of his will. And when his new body tumbled to the platform, night had already fallen.

Given a second chance at life, he ran. He ran with the sole purpose of avenging his beloved. And should he lay eyes upon Rayleen again, he would tear her asunder so she would understand his struggle. Even if she was once his friend.

Now, Ian of the Red Bay, drenched in a deluge of blood, gripped her by the collar as he reminisced about a time long ago, when he first vowed to rip her to shreds. He knew his own survival was nothing short of a miracle, and no amount of telling the tale could ever convince him that it was true.

“Well, now, Rayleen, the chips are down for you, again. What say you?”

The Commander gritted her teeth in agony, a lance shoved through her shoulder and into the corpse of one of her men. Bodies lay strewn throughout, and only Ian’s naked torso, shredded with gashes, but nonetheless intact, stood within the chamber.

“Ian, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried. “I know what I did was wrong, but… you would have done it too! I know you would have!”

“Aye!” he shook her. “I would have, if only to spite you! My only mercy left now is not reserved for you, but for your children who shant grow up without a parent, like I did!”

“…children, what do you--?”

“Siblings, Rayleen? Fool, you never had any. Who is the father?”

“I—he…“

For a moment, Rayleen’s answer lay frozen on her lips. She could not bear to say his name. Least of all, to Ian.

“You know what? Nevermind. I no longer care.”

“Ian?” she sputtered. “Ian, are you going to kill me?”

“…No,” he replied plainly. “I won’t stand for more orphans, and I’m sure Aria still cares for you. I will respect her wishes.”

For a moment, Commander Rayleen felt a wave of relief despite the onslaught of pain, until Ian grabbed another nearby lance and remorselessly jammed it through her other shoulder, burying the tip in a nearby corpse.

“GAAHH!! Gods, bastard—“ she screamed.

“If you want to get out of here, take those out yourself.”

Trudging through the bloody sewage, Ian lumbered his way to the narrow passage through which his companions had gone. He relished the Commander’s colorful curses echoing all the way to the exit.



