Lightning Challenge: Pride Month | Cruor Joins Eureka
It’d been a hell of a lot of trouble bringing the son of the mayor to this remote, discrete location, but after the ransom was paid, it’d all be worth it. At least, that’s what Cruor was hoping as he threw the young teen to the ground. Cruor fought to catch his breath since he wasn’t exactly the strongest guy around and the kid wasn’t on the lighter side, being well-fed and rich and all that. Cruor took out a smoke from his pants pocket and put it in-between his lips when the kid underneath him spoke up.
“Uh, sorry to rain on your parade, miss, but my dad will be here any second with an entour-”
He didn’t get to finish his idea as Cruor kicked the toe of his shoe into the son’s ribcage with moderate force just to shut him up. He pulled a crude lighter from his inner jacket as he hissed, “I suggest you keep your disgusting mouth shut before I close it permanently.” He lit the rolled leaves and breathed the smoke in deeply before spewing it in the teen’s face.
“Yeah? Then you won’t get a single penny, then, lady. You’ll get shot, and arrested, and-”
Another sharp kick to the ribs for the boy caused him to cough up some blood. Cruor grated his teeth and knelt down in front of him. “One more word, child…” He pulled up a switchblade and set it across the kid’s neck. “...and you’ll never speak again.”
Cruor could see the fear in the kid’s eyes as he gulped. The mayor should be here soon, he thought, if only he could stay his hand and control his temper. He slowly pulled the knife away and put it back, standing back up onto his heels. His hands were a bit twitchy, waiting through the next twenty minutes in tense silence, before his sensitive ears could hear footsteps outside this empty barn.
He pulled out a wand from a couple loops in his jacket and held it in position as he stood between the door and the boy. A short melody was tapped on the door to knock on it. “State your name and business,” Cruor said in an authoritative voice, though it cracked with the stress balled up in his throat.
Without another word or moment for hesitation, the door snapped open at full force with a gust of cold wind following it, and in the doorway stood a woman in dark leather and lavender cloth, with a crystalline drakonid mask over her face. The first reaction Cruor had was to shoot, and so he did with his wand shaking, just barely missing her shoulder.
“You. Cruor. Don’t worry about this meaningless pawn.” Her voice was quiet but strong and without any sense of fear. She placed a hand behind her and her other hand on her mask, and within an instant switched into a new mask. It was a happier mask of a smiling woman with thick lips and thin lines like whiskers on her cheeks.
While amazed with the magic trick, the crackling sound of lightning startled him. Cruor looked down to see a bloodied iron rose in his hand where his wand once was. He knew this as the symbol of the goddess Ethami, and while he wasn’t religious, he was aware that her followers usually weren’t this imposing.
The woman had the wand in her hand, and the boy that was behind him was smouldering from the miniature yet overpowered lightning strike. She went to tuck the wand into her lavender robes and there was a brief moment where the wand became the rose once more. He closed his hand around where the rose was to feel the soft wood of the wand once more.
Cruor looked over the woman. She didn’t look horribly familiar, but she obviously knew him somehow. That, and was powerful enough to kill him and didn’t. “I don’t know who you are, but,” he started, swallowing hard before speaking again. “...I don’t exactly appreciate you killing who I was going to ransom.”
A soft chuckle came from her direction. “I said, worry not. I know of you Cruor. I know of what you do, what you’re good at… your condition. I can promise you a… fix for that. Take you… mould you into what you desire. Set you up with anything you could ever think of, if you promise to do whatever I say in turn.”
Cruor took a step back, nervous. He looked to the teenager, motionless on the ground. He could very much end up just as he had, but this woman obviously saw some kind of potential use in him, otherwise she wouldn’t be offering this. While this rang alarm bells in his head, if this lady was offering what he thought she was... “I… Anything?”
“Yes. Anything you wish, but only if you come with me now. The mayor comes for you, and I can see him on the horizon with his mercenary guard. If you do not follow me, I will give him more than just the means to kill you. Seeing what you did to his son, I’m sure he’ll do so without hesitation.” With that, she turned on her heels and left Cruor to think about things further.
However, he didn’t take too much time, not wanting to waste such an opportunity. He took one last look at the teen’s corpse, then took off out of the barn to meet up with her. He didn’t see her at first, but saw her figure close to the nearby forest’s treeline. She paused and turned to wait for him, but as Cruor got close, she entered through the trees. “Wait!” He called out, but she didn’t respond.
When he entered, an overwhelming feeling came over him, telling him he shouldn’t be there. It was almost enough to turn back, but he heard a familiar woman’s voice in his ear. “Anything you desire can be yours, if you only find the thaumite core.” He whipped his head around, looking for her, but no one was there. He was alone in this, and what he had to do was ahead of him- find the magic stone, assumedly in the centre of the woods.
He felt a rumbling from below as he tried to make progress, and roots and vines started to move on their own, trying to trip him and impede him. A more masculine voice he didn’t hear, but more or less felt in his mind. “I can tell you aren’t lost, but know what I do is to protect you.” Cruor looked around him, and knew the woodland itself was his adversary as the trees tried to close in to bar entry.
Great, so the forest itself was working against him trying to find this thing that mystical woman desired. He gripped his wand and started to book it as fast as he could without falling over, searching for a glimmer of a shiny rock. As soon as anything tried grabbing him or coming up under his feet, he shot it with a bolt of lightning, and he could feel the whole forest shudder in pain.
Cruor ran past roots and birds, branches and squirrels, trunks and bees, shooting anything down that got between him and his unknown destination. Anything he could desire, he thought. Too good to be true, but compared to the vagabond life he was living, any change of pace at this point was welcome.
Before long, the forest stopped trying to prevent him from continuing. How peaceful and calm the woods became once Cruor came unto a clearing with a large, rough, rainbow-coloured crystal covered in vines, moss, and tiny white-pink flowers. Vines that dangled down from ancient boughs glistened in the sunlight above, visible for the first time since he entered. The crystal was larger than even he was, likely at least two of him large, and impossible to lift. A small earthen ramp held it in place like a natural dais, and Cruor couldn’t help but to slowly approach it.
As he walked up the small ramp, the forest was quiet around him, and there was a faint hum coming from the large stone. So quiet, and so peaceful, the branches seemed to cover the sky as he got closer, letting just a bit of light through to increase the ambiance. He placed a soft hand on the thaumite, and as he did so, nearly instantly, vines thrust through his torso, his legs, arms, and feet, their strange roughness and thorny texture getting stuck within him.
The pain was more than Cruor had ever endured before. This must’ve been what the forest was trying to warn him about, along with the woman’s treachery. Before the sight faded from his eyes, he could feel the vines moving under his skin from where they entered, moving and contorting his already tense flesh.
Cruor didn’t expect to open his eyes ever again, but he did so, waking up on a plush couch, bandages wrapped around most of his body. He looked around, his vision still spotty, but he could see this was a small room, perhaps an office of some sort, but he couldn’t see the details. A figure sat in front of him with his back turned, sitting at a desk in a comfortable-looking chair.
Getting up was Cruor’s first priority, but moving was incredibly painful, especially around his chest and hips for some reason. He groaned as he tried to get back into a somewhat comfortable position, and the man in the chair turned around. “Ah, you’re finally awake. Marielle was hoping you’d make it.”
He came over to Cruor and set a blanket that looked like it had fallen on the floor back over his bandaged body. “Cruor, was it? Oh you’re probably not even conscious… If you are, try to remember who you are. That seems to be quite the issue for those that end up here…” He moved over to a far away counter and poured some blurry liquid into a blurry mug. “My name is Barry, by the way.”
Barry came back over, dragging his heavy-sounding chair over to where Cruor lay. “Do you think you can drink at all, Cruor? ...If that is your name, anyway…” Though he was thirsty, he could barely think, and soon after he thought about that, he closed his eyes again.
Awake once more, Cruor felt quite a bit more mobile than before, shifting a bit on the... bed. He was in a bed now, not the couch, bandages only covering his chest and lower hips, but his other wounds were seemingly healed. He heard snoring, and sure enough, when he looked down he saw Barry curled up on the floor, sleeping in light blue and white striped pajamas with a nightcap barely covering his eyes.
He pulled himself up, feeling a bit better, and quite a bit lighter and stronger than the last time he opened his eyes. Cruor ran his hands along his arms, seeing the entry points of the vines, and he traced the scars to his still-bandaged chest. It felt fine, but light, so he worked on slowly removing the wrappings, soaked in a yellow fluid. When he did so, he found a roughly flat chest and deep scars around his pectoral muscles, and his face flushed a dark red as he covered his chest with the blanket.
That woman really wasn’t kidding when she told him she knew him, huh? Thinking about that, he slipped his hand under the other bandages to find his lowers were also done up as well. He took a deep breath and shuddered, sobbing quiet, joyous tears into the comforter in his hands.
The crying woke Barry up, however, and he rose and looked over to Cruor. “I know it can be a lot to take in, and I don’t really want to know what Marielle did to you to get you to join… All I can say is that I’m sorry and I can have a licensed therapist come over if you need one.”
Cruor looked over at the man, who looked fairly bland and plain. “Barry-” Cruor coughed, his voice hoarse from not using it in ages. “Barry, I’m not sad, I’m overjoyed.” He smiled genuinely for the first time in the longest time, not remembering a time when he had ever truly been happy.
“Oh! Oh, good. Too many times have I seen that be quite the opposite case, so I am glad that she’s done some good for you, at least.” Barry stared off into the distance for a good half a minute, gears turning in his mind, surely. “Oh, Cruor, I washed and mended your clothes for you whilst you slept. Let me fetch them so you can get cleaned up in the shower.” Barry made his way out of the bedroom door, rubbing his tired eyes.
Cruor could tell that this was the beginning of a grand new life for himself, and he couldn’t be more excited to see where it would lead him.
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