The Feral Dog Adrift - Chapter 2: Washed & Wax

An unknown shore
An unknown time

He awakens in confusion. He isn't dead?

Then the pain comes back.

Liam's eyes squeeze shut as it all comes rushing in. The pain of sunlight burning through his closed eyelids. The agitation of the salt, grime, and sand that cakes his face and skin. The dull numbness of his beaten and bruised body, aching with the memory of burning, searing agony. He remembers the fire spreading quickly as the barrels of gunpowder began to cook, his body being consumed as his lifeblood gushed and poured to the wooden hull of the Osprey.

He squeezes his left hand – Hand? His hand's returned? He clenches, gnarled fingers digging into the sand beneath him. It's real. He didn't imagine the gunshot that blasted it off, but it's intact?

Liam unclenches the sand, and grits his teeth as he forces his left arm up to wipe at his face and eyes. The light that scorches his pupils through those tightly-squeezed eyelids fades and darkens ever-so-slightly, and his skin feels the chill of a breeze. He forces his hazel eyes open.

The sky is blue, with foul dark-grey clouds drifting across the deep ocean-like expanse. The sun's rays stab his pupils like white-hot knives, even as the foul daystar itself is increasingly choked behind an oncoming storm. Liam pushes himself up onto his elbows with a huff and a groan, as that gulp of air sparks a fresh wave of misery.

He looks first at that largest mystery: His left hand. That's his hand, but... not. It's a dull white, almost grey, except for a ragged line along his wrist where it immediately shifts to sunburnt tan. The tattoos he remembers getting on this hand and these fingers are absent, as are the scars. His eyes trail down along the rest of his left arm; Scars he remembers wearing with pride are also filled in with that dull white tone, and his skin is spider-webbed and splotched; In many places, the discolorations break up and cut apart his skin's tapestry of tattoos. Almost like melted wax was haphazardly flung around, then left to sink in and cool just under the skin.

Once more, he remembers the flames that were licking and eating at his dying body.

His mind slowly unhinging, Liam turns his head away. His shaking hazel eyes look around him - The shore is like any ordinary beach he's been on. Beige sand being washed a dark brown by the ocean waves. Trailing between him and the ocean's edge was a line of charred wood and warped scrap metal. Here, a span of canvas and cloth once flung to the shoreline, now being dragged back to the sea. There, a tangle of rope and seaweed. And nothing but the sound of the ocean and the wind echoing through his-

The once-dead pirate perks his head up at the trill that drifts in. A deep voice, singing in a strange tongue, drawing closer. From where? That deep tune draws close from nowhere, yet everywhere around him at once, echoing and ringing in his head. Already reeling from his circumstance, Liam falls back, his breath drawing fast like an overwhelmed bellows.

He hears that singing voice grow louder, and louder. Its song cuts abruptly, as does the echoing beat in his skull, and a shout rings out from his right. Liam, eyes widening with shock as his breath continues its horrified rhythm, slowly turns to look.

A large figure crests the sand dune, bearing a large staff of driftwood and vine, with bones and small animal skeletons hanging from it like charms. A pair of immense antlers branch out from its head, with a massive shroud of green plant-life draping from its shoulders. Liam's eyes grow blurry at the sight, refusing to focus as he feels his consciousness fading out like a light. The immense green shape starts shuffling forward, faster and faster.

He faints, his mind choosing oblivion over comprehension.