Author Games: Dungeon Brawl

Odette Rainmaker SEMIFINALS

Here is how the bards will tell it: Thus, a girl became a ghost.

Here is how the pirate will tell it: Do I not haunt you?

Here is how it happened:

Odette Rainmaker dreamed of demons. She'd slept only twice since her encounter with the blood drake, and each time had been fitful at best. Her mind was an echo chamber for the souls she'd lost at sea, for the lives she had not taken. It wasn't her fault, she had cried at the dragon in her dream. He'd called her a liar, and she'd woken with a start, hand against her mouth to stifle her screams.

The voices seemed to creep out of her head and into the tunnels around her: Liar, liar, liar. She ran from them now, reckless and shaking with something shadowing fright. Her movements were desperate, thoughtless, which was why she was hardly paying attention as she flung open a grandiose oaken door and promptly stumbled over a pile of bones and ash.

It took her a silent, wretched moment to realize the pile of soot was actually a body.

The body was charred beyond recognition. Victims of fire looked nothing like victims of water, Odette realized. This one was diminutive, curled upon itself, and shrunk to little more than a lump of still-smoldering flesh. It was a far cry from the bloated, floating corpses she'd so often seen at sea.

Despite the temporary horror that flowed through her and passed over again, Odette's eyes were drawn not to the body but to what lay beside it. A scroll, glowing a gentle sapphire blue, was strangely intact and seemed untouched by the thus-far-invisible fiery tongues.

Odette brought the collar of her shirt over her mouth and nose in an attempt to keep out the crispy human smell as she crept closer to the body. She was losing track of it as dark smoke slithered in around her. Gods, there was so much of it. Where was it coming from? Was a fire still burning within the room? She'd have to leave to avoid it as soon as she picked up--

--the scroll. There it was. She quickly tucked it into her pack with its companions before unsheathing her sword. It would do very little against the smoke or the unseen flames, but holding it made her feel bigger, more confident, more like the fearsome pirate she liked to think she'd once been.

"Hello?" She wasn't sure if the echo that answered was her heart or a war drum. Odette cleared her throat and choked slightly on the smoke forcing its way between her lips as she spoke. "Anyone else here with me?"

"I'm always with you, Rookie."

The voice was horrifyingly familiar, and Odette recognized it before she'd even spun around to face the figure. Bile rose to battle the smoke in the back of Odette's throat as she faced her old captain. Captain Rainmaker stood mere inches away, dark skin ashen with death, hat slightly askew atop wild curls, and mouth quirked into a menacing half-smile that Odette had never quite perfected.

"Did you miss me?"

"Not really," Odette replied, lashing out with her cutlass before she could think better of it.

Fortunately--or perhaps unfortunately, a part of Odette would remain ever unsure--her sword passed straight through her Captain's body as if it, too, was made of smoke. With a grin and a salute, her Captain dissipated, fading into the black.

Odette's brow furrowed as she tried and failed to track the specter's remains. Captain Rainmaker's disappearance did little to ease her mind and she turned, still trepidatious, toward where she thought she'd left the door. It had been this way, she was certain of it. But the smoke had caged her in. She could barely see an arms-length ahead of her now.

The dense smog was coalescing again. Odette could see it melding together to create another wretched figure--or perhaps to grant said figure passage into this world. She wasn't sure which would be worse.