The Princess of Wrath

Chapter 13 - Part II: Burial at Sea

132 days after Asura's escape – 14th Day of the 8th Month

For Asura, opening her eyes was an almost impossible task to accomplish; her eyelids weighed as if they were made of lead and invited her to continue sleeping even though that was the only thing she had been doing for a little over a hundred days.

The first thing she noticed was that the sailors had lit the lamps on the ceilings of the main corridor of the storage area, since the darkness to which she was so accustomed did not seem to have complete control of the environment: she could see, in the gloom, the walls of wood, ropes and black nets that surrounded her.

She was forced to squint her eyes as she felt so much pain on top of them and traveling the length and breadth of her head. The rocking of the Maiden of Mercy was much more violent than usual, and the brief increase in illumination inside accompanied by a resounding roar of nature let her know that there was a strong storm out there at the sea.

The promised three months were about to be fulfilled and Asura, unfortunately for her, was still there. Alive.

Her weak gaze, slightly hindered by a few strands of new hair, lowered to have a vision of her arms resting on top of her legs and immobilized as well as the rest of her deteriorated and consumed body as if it were mummified.

Her heavy and tattered clothes hid her slender limbs and deep, marked-by-starvation rib cage. Even with them, Asura felt the extreme cold coming from the Argent Sea against her dry and wrinkled skin, torturing her without stopping although she cared little about it: she was so weak and on the verge of death that she was already used to all that pain that had been hauling her.

But she did not die... She could not. She was not allowed to, and the reason was only one: the curse.

Near the opening that led to the small corridor between the boxes, Asura could see the small bones and bloodstains of the vermin that continually made their way to that precise spot. They were not summoned by the smell of dry excrement, urine, sickness and rot that surrounded her... No, the curse was the one calling them.

Just in that moment, a fat gray rat peeked out from the little mountain of bones and got up on its hind legs, shaking its head from side to side in certain frenzy. Like every one of its predecessors, this vermin began to claw at its neck so desperately that it did not take long to rip it open and bleed out right there, dropping dead before Asura's eyes.

Now she only had to wait. At the end of the day, after the curse slowly atomized the corpse of that rodent and transferred it by unknown means to its bearer to give her enough energy to live for another day, only a few bones would remain.

Asura did not even have the strength to think properly. She could not reason or debate with herself about the dire fate she was experiencing. Was she frustrated that she could not die thanks to the curse? Or was there a glimmer of joy to know that she was still there, in the realm of the living, paying for her sins?

Every time she thought of the fine line between life and death that she could not cross on her own, the only thing that came to her mind was the oldest building in Entrana, specifically two elements housed inside it: that incomplete map of the continent that occupied an entire wall, and that great throne of yore... Without understanding why, from the bottom of her parched throat escaped small harsh and muffled sounds that should have been little giggles.

The strong smell of the sea was the only thing that invoked in her mind something she could understand: those happy memories in which she fished with her older brother in the port, before his departure without return to the Forbidden Continent. She even could see very clearly his black hair blown by the wind and his proud smile.