Surviving The Chosen

Surviving the embodiment of god, even a minor one, isn’t something just anyone can do. I did, but that was because of my skills and strength, no matter what anyone says about me. Understood?

Sure, I was born in August where the Celestial Leo ruled and with it came a variety of gemstones I could empower and draw from, but one's birth doesn’t guarantee anything. I still needed to train and hone my skills to reach the deepest connection with every sliver, shard or stone I needed to find or win to be able to do any of the great feats attributed to me. It wasn’t like I had the wealth to purchase anything larger than a shard, let alone a cluster or my obelisk. 

Heh. Those naysayers knew nothing about Darius’ life, my life. They knew nothing of the struggles I endured to rise up to become the apex predator of all the seas. Their jealousy ran rampant all during my time as the captain of the Ruby Chain and all the while I gained infamy. And yet, those fools still followed me.

But I digress. You see, it started about fifteen cycles ago, when I sought after the fourteenth Celestial Geode Obelisk of legend–the Larimar. Yes, it did exist and yes, like so many others, I sought it with my own crew of five-hundred. 

At the time, I was but a gentle soul acting as a captain in search of a better future– one not filled with the ashes of my past. The ghosts that haunted me never truly let me rest, so I made sure that the world shook whenever I was near. If there was to be no rest for me, then no one should get that opportunity. But in the most gentle way possible. 

I had it all. Fortune, power, and even infamy. My name was known all throughout the twelve seas, in every cardinal direction, on every continent and every island. It was unlike anything you could have imagined. Unlike now, I still held my saber of legend, inlaid with stones from all six of my birth gems on the hilt while the blade held shards and slivers. I wore all teh jewelry needed to empower myself, each with varying sizes. These were how I kept myself strong.

On that clear, sunny day, I ordered my crew to return us to the Chosen Isles, where some wayward sailors we relieved of some heavy cargo swore they saw a Larimar peeking out from the sea foam. Given my lack of desire to risk anyone else claiming that blue obelisk, I followed the lead. My five-hundred men followed me faithfully and without question. Well… almost without question.

###

“Captain!” My first mate, Noemi, shouted from the other side of my cabin. 

I was spending time polishing all one-hundred of my empowered gemstones, now that the moon ritual had been completed the night before. It’s usually something I would do without interruption, but with the way Noemi shouted, I, as the great captain of the Ruby Chain, needed to respond to any issues. 

“Come in,” I said with a tone that commanded respect and held power.

“Captain, a storm is rolling in,” Noemi said before she finished opening the door. Her short peppered hair glistened with sweat.

I scoffed. “Nonsense. There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky and the Astral Seer predicted clear skies for our journey.”

Noemi adjusted her eye-patch and stared at me with her sole, good, emerald eye, something of a remnant of her time in the Emerald mines as someone born in the month of May. “Well, things have changed.”

With a sigh, I stood from my captain's chair and grabbed my amazing coat–a red and black coat, embroidered with twenty of the shards I owned, primarily Sardonyx. I walked out from my quarters, assuming Noemi would be wrong as she has been many times in the past.

She wasn’t. Clouds, darker than Onyx, rolled in with flashes of lightning outlining them and a wall of rain coming towards us. The winds didn’t pick up and the sea remained calm, but I didn't have time to dwell on that– it was not something we could avoid. Even if we turned now, the rain would sweep over us and….

“All hands–”

Before I could even shout, I noticed that everyone was already working double time to prepare for the bout with the storm. Incorrectly, but still working.

Noemi held a smug look as she said, “I’ve already informed the armada. We will be moving using the spear formation with us at the helm.”

I rubbed the stubble on my chin and nodded. She always did try to make me look like an incompetent fool. I could have called out all of her errors, but instead I spun my index finger ring and said, “Good. Good.” 

The ring held many moonstone shards and as I spun it, I allowed the power to flow through me while I drained them to make sure my voice carried to every sailor and every ship under my command. Noemi may have started the process, but she had never battled a storm like this one– a Chosen Storm– and her orders were too hasty. “Masts down on all fronts! Be prepared for a battering unlike anything you’ve faced.”

I sucked in a breath and continued to drain my spare moonstones. “Batten down the hatches, douse all flames, and strap yourselves into something sturdy.” My stones were empty after my instructions. It didn’t matter that I had more to say, the sheer amount of distance my voice needed to cover while also battling a raging storm, meant that my secondary stones may well have been decorative with how little I could actually generate. 

“May the Celestials above grant us passage,” I whispered. I then said, “Alright Noemi, let’s get to work. Use what you can to get us through at least some of the storm and I’ll do my part.”

At that moment, wth the masts down, the Ruby Chain slowed to a crawl. I glanced to make sure the other ships of my armada followed our lead. I was comforted that at least one thing had gone well and now, only the tides moved us.

Lightning flashed in the sky like veins across an onyx obelisk.

I grabbed a rope and tied myself to a mast as fast as I could manage.

The wall of rain rammed into us, risking to shake us off. Droplets of water slammed onto our ship like stones falling from the sky, exploding on impact. A second later, a thick darkness devoured us and the waves crashed into our ship as though they were fists trying to knock us off balance 

It was then that I realized it wasn’t raining. The sky was dropping shards of ice, some the size of coconuts and others the size of stones. The exploding ice struck the deck and sent a spears through one of the masts at my head. 

I lost my ear, but I moved my head and tapped into the power of my Sardonyx shards. The injury stitched itself together in a way that burned more than the sun. “Noemi!”

Noemi was already on it. From the crows nest, she extended her hands and allowed a green energy to pierce through the darkness and surround her. It seeped into her skin and a thin, empowered, barrier of stone, clay, and mud formed over the ship and all of my crew. 

On each of the ships, the other May borns did their own, weaker, versions. All the water affinity borns, though strapped in, stood at the ready to calm the seas at my call.

“Now!” I shouted. 

The water affinity months on my ship went to work. They collectively weakened the waves that struck us from all sides. My royal crew held on as long as they could, steadying us and keeping us from capsizing. Once the waves started to pick back up, the rest of the ships started to do the same, but their control was lacking and the waves hit us in what felt like seconds of them even trying.

I started to imagine the worst possible outcomes. It was almost like once the rain hit us, we entered a domain with its own ruled. 

I shut my eyes to the world and took in a breath. In that time, I drained the energy from my Spinels. It burned in the best way possible while it removed all aspects of fear from my mind and gave me clarity. I let the burn grow into a fire that licked up my arms like cracks in my skin. The heat burned through me and exploded upwards in a torrent to cut through the storm.

Light poked through the crater I created and my heart sank. All of my ships, every one from the others in my armada, were nothing more than splinters. The clouds crept in to plunge us back into a sea of darkness, but I couldn’t stop staring at the new ship graveyard created by the gods.

If I can get the Larimar Geode Obelisk, it’ll have all been worth it, I reminded myself, but I barely believed it.

The wave of darkness overtook my remaining ship again and the Chosen’s voice echoed around me–mocking me. “You will crumble beneath my heel like all the other pirates who have come through my domain.”

The fire inside my body burned brighter with my rage. The Chosen.

The man who controlled the powers of Ophiuchus… the myth who lived a dozen life-times… the legendary Chosen appeared as a sole beacon of light as he had for the past millennia. The god in human form floated with golden clouds strapped to his back and silver clouds floating around his bald head. “The voices of the world have informed me that today is actually your birthday. To think, the date of your birth would match the date of your death. Isn’t life interesting?”

My heart sank. I hadn’t been paying attention to the placement of the stars with all my travels and I hadn’t noticed the passage of time. It didn’t feel like the date of my birth, but dancing death probably impacted that.

“Today isn’t my day to die,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “You may be a legend, but you are no god! I’ll avenge all those you’ve taken from me.” I spat into the air, but it went nowhere.

The Chosen laughed in my face even from his distance. “You’ll have to be more specific,” he said even while he floated above the wreckage he created. To make matters worse, he extended a hand and the darkness knocked me back a few steps. Not something in the darkness, but the actual darkness itself. It was like a fist of pure force striking me in the stomach.

I gritted my teeth and drew on the power of the Peridots and Sardonyx gem stones I wore on my body. Then, I extended my will towards their proper elements. 

The clay and mud that littered the floor followed my commands and surrounded me like armor. Fire blazed through the cracks in my armor, securing my defense. The rest of the flames were used to create a blade of pure fire. I refused to use my real, gem encrusted scimitar when a flame blade would do the trick– it had incinerated plenty of enemies in the past when I held less gems and my anger only reached a simmer.

I smiled and threw the blade at him. It thinned and elongated with my toss into more of a spear and, with its path, it lit up the darkness and showed me the horrors upon my own ship. Every crew member that was still alive was held in the air by tendrils of pure darkness. The lucky ones had been killed, though the method looked anything but painless.

“You’re no god!” I shouted, exertiming more force and putting it behind the spear. All my anger and frustration of my past and present coalesced into that fiery inferno.

At least it would have.

The Chosen’s teeth shone through the darkness that enclosed us like stars in the night sky, only more terrifying. He clicked his tongue and my spear froze mid air. It then split into two and changed direction to stab Noemi twice.

She barely let out a scream. Or maybe that was all she could let out at the time. I never got the chance to know more since the scream lasted seconds and was followed by a splash in the ocean. 

The Chosen cackled and continued to slaughter my crew while he berated me with the darkness. I struggled to fight through it, even using my scimitar’s help to empower me, but to no avail. I was literally just slicing through the air.

“Fight me like a man!” I growled. It was at that moment that I noticed that all sound had stopped around me. Not only the screaming, but also the sounds of the storm and the ocean, so my voice rang out clearer than it should have. 

The incarnation of a god cackled louder with lighting flashing behind him. “A god does not bother fighting against insects. I have merely been toying with you.”

In that moment, my armor, the very thing I created and commanded to protect me, stabbed into me from every direction. I tried to fight it, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Pain shot through me and nearly made me pass out. I couldn’t think. I could barely breathe. I think I screamed, but I couldn’t tell you if it was in my throat or in my mind. All I knew was that my feet had suddenly left the ground and a burning laced through my entire body.

The Chosen pulled on the air like it was a coil of rope and raised me towards him. “You were a fun toy,” he hissed as he pulled me closer. “But I’m done playing now.”

With the control exerted to bring me closer, I could actually move my arms. It was almost like there was less force focused on it, so I tried to call on more power to tear the armor off or call upon a weapon, but there was nothing left on me to use. All of my slivers, shards, and stones were depleted and I was nowhere near my geode or obelisk to draw on anything. Plus, I was out of time.

The Chosen held me tight and forced me to stare into the diamonds he called eyes. “You and your filthy pirate scum shall never bother me or my isles again and that Larimar you sought?” His face split into a grin that chilled me to my core and sucked the air from my body. “Yes, I was aware of your plans the entire time. The spirits told me everything and since I’m a generous god, I’ll let you know, in your last moments, that I already shattered it beyond repair. Everything you did and everyone you gave was for nothing. In your next life, if my Celestials above would bless you with that honor, remember to think twice before going against a god.”

He threw me overboard and I sank into the deep.

###

How did I survive, you ask? Well, since my scimitar remained at my side with full Peridot shards and stones, I was able to regenerate all the damage I had taken. I wasn’t about to drain them knowing what they could do for me. Unfortunately, I woke up after Celestials knew how much time had passed, on some island with my left arm trapped between two boulders and no other gems to draw from. The bone had been shattered above the elbow, so I had no choice but to cut it off. It was either that or death.

Yes, it did hurt, but I’m strong and made due. I vowed to survive and survive, I did.

It took me two days of checking the coast with no water or food before someone spotted me and brought me to shore. By then, I had salvaged the rest of my arm, thanks to some minimal first aid I had learned, but everything past the elbow was gone.

I know the story sounded like fiction, but it’s all true and that was at least two decades ago. Plus, I’ve moved on. At least, I had until I saw that comet streak through the sky. I couldn’t explain it if I tried, but my gut told me it was a Larimar. I can’t explain it, but I know in my heart of hearts that this is the perfect time for revenge. 

Yes, I’m letting you go, I only needed your ship. But, remember this story and remember me when I’ve let you go. Everytine believes I have died, because that is what they’ve been told to believe. I’m coming back and with it, I’ll change all of history. The Chosen made sure to fabricate our fight. He tried to be a hero so he wouldn’t cause a fright. One day soon, as the Celestial Leo is my witness, I’ll travel and claim each of the twelve seas. None of my enemies shall be shown any mercy. Tell everyone I’ve returned and make sure it reaches the Chosen.