Headed by a Snake

The illusion was gone, the curtains pulled back.

It was the only thing protecting Krysaos from that which did not want to be seen.

Reality began to crash in from his sides... and from below, like he was on a sinking ship.

Krysaos held his hand out, conjuring a ⌈Water Sphere⌋ to protect himself.

He stood fast... concentrating on the unbroken flow of his mana... watching the world around him change.

The clouded sky drained to black, emptying into a small, white, rapidly-shrinking point... as if he was at the bottom of a well, looking up.

Outside of his protective shield, the water level had risen to his shins... waters filled with thin strands of dark seaweed.

It looked almost like... a woman's hair.

The narrow stream of light from what was no longer a sky shone down upon that woman.

She laid with her face in the shallows... unmoving.

The black seaweed streamed from her head, stretching infinitely out into the waters... as much of the stuff as there was darkness.

There was movement in it... yet the icy pool of water didn't have a single ripple, keeping as still as death.

Krysaos' first instinct, however... was not to help the face-down woman.

Her face might have been pretty-- gods-damned beautiful, even.

However, judging from her form... no-- judging from literally everything that was going on...

That girl--

That... *thing*...

It... was. a. f*cking, monster.

Ten or twelve fulms tall, her arms were at least thrice as long as a human's-- or any gods-fearing creature.

The bones of her legs were bent into odd, uneasy-looking angles.

Her skin was pockmarked and discolored-- not quite like a dead girl, but someone afflicted with some kind of contagion.

And the smell...

She reeked... not of death, but of a musky, almost-familiar sweat that clung to the insides of his nostrils.

Krysaos closed his eyes as he sheathed his sword.

He had seen enough.

He began to turn away... to leave-- to go anywhere but where he was.

He... could not.

His palms were slick with sweat. His mouth was drier than the sea biscuits he had for lunch and he couldn't... stop... shaking.

He tried to swallow his saliva... to get at least that tiny bit of comfort that he was still in control of his own body.

He could not.

He couldn't breathe.

"G... gughhckkk..."

A voice pounded between his collarbones, trying to surge upwards out of his mouth.

With tears forming at the corners of his eyes, he choked a sob... and he spoke in a scratchy voice that did not belong to him.

"Are you here to save me?"

Krysaos winced... and he shook his head violently to regain control.

S...save her?

He was not.

That was absolutely f*cking incorrect.

If there *was* a hero chosen to save that... thing-- whatever it was, it would not be him.

He spotted a gleam in the darkness... two eyes each thrice bigger than his head. That gargantuan 'something' loomed over him like a Leviathan in the deeps.

Krysaos knew what he was looking at.

It didn't make sense, but he knew.

Dragon.

How... f*cking impossible was that?

"Tch hhhAH!"

Krysaos laughed out loud, the discordant noise the first to send ripples across the blackwater floor.

Why would he laugh, though? There wasn't anything remotely funny about his situation.

It was probably... that thought.

Dragon.

Hah.

"S-sorry, girlie," He whispered.

There was no response...

Awkward. Silent.

The eyes in the darkness had disappeared... so he quickly bowed his head toward the corpse-looking thing, "But uh... yeah. I uh... you're just somethin' I'm dreaming up. Yer... yer all... in my head-- that's all."

Dragons don't exist.

Even the bag of bones that Krysaos knew he'd seen on that undead island... was nothing more than a relic from a bygone age.

They don't exist.

They. can't. exist.

How the Realm was... how mana worked... an entire species of that kind of mana-monstrosity defied logic.

Krysaos furrowed his brows, remembering all the dangers that the LT were concerned about.

It'd be a different story... if that Gate from before had taken him to a different Realm.

Yeah.

Shite.

Wherever the hells he was... Krysaos had stayed for too damn long.

Not thinking much about it, he walked to the heavy wooden door.

A door? Had there always been a door?

Suddenly, a tall wave of fatigue washed over him... and he held on tight to the iron door handle to steady himself.

Something... felt like it was inside of his chest, trying to splay his ribs outward-- to burst him like a rotten, bloated fish.

He opened his mouth to scream... but all he got was a wracking series of dry heaves.

Krysaos closed his eyes to concentrate.

He thought of Mina.

He thought of her gentle mana.

He held onto that thought... begging in his heart for just a tiny bit of relief from the pain.

He sorely felt... how much he needed her by his side.

He felt... loss. He felt regret.

He felt... the loneliness of being abandoned to deepest, blackest depths of the hells' deepest lake.

⊰ LoNnnnngGG haaAAVve I waaAAaited... ⊱

⊰ forrrRR my PRINNNNCE ⊱

⊰ t O ⊱

⊰ a R R i V e ⊱

⊰  . . . . ⊱

⊰ i S . i T . y O u ? ⊱

Krysaos' head pounded in agony... pressed down from an invisible outward pressure. Not-enough-mana from the inside of it desperately tried to keep his skull in one piece.

Tears began to drip down his face. They felt... slick down his cheeks-- but with super-tiny fragments of glass or sand irritating his skin and eyes.

Krysaos hardened his grip... feeling the bones in his hand creaking to their breaking point.

"I'm... here... for... someone else."

At first, Krysaos had come for himself-- for his selfish desire of revenge. But that was nowhere near as important as trying to save Mina.

...He was going to come eventually. A badass crew deserved a Captain with a good name.

But Mina... that was the real reason.