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[PR: Ash]

The roaring flames and the screams and howls coming from the temple tore apart the silence of the night, and a pillar of crimson charged into the skies. The flowerbeds of the temple were overturned, the flowers crushed underneath the feet of the pirates. Some of the priestesses fell before the temple’s entrance, drenched in a pool of their own blood.

The blood soiled their white robes and the marble ground, the last scream of terror forever etched on their faces. Fires licked the golden curtains of the temple’s buildings, the light illuminating the messed up hall. A group of men were charging around, pillaging whatever resources they could find.

The beds, candelabras, tables, and chairs were strewn on the ground. Greedily, the pirates scooped all the silver and gold items into their bags. Even the coins in the donation box were not spared from their looting.

They tore the scriptures and tomes that recorded the holy words and acts of the goddess. These torn papers were tossed into the air and gleefully burned into cinders. Some of the invaders were cruelly violating the defenseless priestesses in the corner, smiling delightfully at their screams.

A dozen priestesses were trying to escape the pirates in the garden, but the pirates were playing the game slowly, as if they were lions trying to hunt a few gazelles. They relished in the screams of terror and despair coming from the ladies.

***

Morkvarg stood before the freshly-dead body of Ulve, scanning his surroundings. The once solemn and peaceful temple was brought to its knees, turned into a shadow of its former self. An’ all because o’ me. A sense of pride swelled within him. “Freya, the Great Mother, nuthin’ but an insect before me, the great Morkvarg!”

He whirled and glared at his remaining crew. “An’ what are ye just standin’ there for?” There were five of them who didn’t join the pillaging, and all stood behind Einar.

“Stop this, Morkvarg! We ain’t complainin’ if ye tell us to fight Nilgaard or the seven families!” Einar held his battleaxe, staring at his captain fearlessly. “But this pillagin’ ain’t right! Didja forget? We pray to Freya every time before we set sails. She protected us! She’s the mother o’ all Skelligers, an’ I ain’t gonna blaspheme ‘er like ye did!”

“Cap’n, the priestess just showed us the power o’ Freya!” The pirate with a scar shook his head. “Blasphemers will be punished! Freya ain’t gonna let sinners go free!”

“Ye fools! Even a Skelliger woman would fight back against an invader, but what did the goddess do? Look at her priestesses!” Contempt and disdain welled in Morkvarg’s eyes. “They ain’t nuthin’ compared to even a landlubber! The strong rules, that’s what I believe. Freya has no right bein’ a goddess for these isles. I can do a better job than she did.”

Morkvarg looked at his erstwhile sailors. None of them would charge ahead. They were holding their weapons and shields tightly, ready to defend themselves. An icy glint flared in Morkvarg’s eyes, and he tensed up. “Arr, so be it, ye cowards. Get off me drakkar after tonight. Ye ain’t the toughest pirates ’round these isles no more. But if ye like it, ye can stand ‘ere like some fools while I raze this place to the ground.”

Morkvarg raised his bloodied sword and charged into the resplendent hall of the temple. The crazed pirates were destroying the candelabras on the sides, trampling the overturned flowerbeds, and ruining the statues of the sacred animals.

The only thing left standing was the statue of the Great Mother. Morkvarg strode up to it and gave it a stare, and then he felt the statue blink at him.

A storm blasted away in his mind, the roars of thunder ripping through his head. Pain flared in every cell of his head, and Morkvarg wobbled. He held his hand to his nose and felt something warm trickling down it.

Blood.

The pirates stopped their destruction at once. “Y-Yer bleedin’, cap’n!”

Morkvarg shook his head and roared in laughter. “Whatcha scared of? Keep it up. Don’t stop!” He wiped the blood off with his sleeve and sneered at the serene goddess. Unafraid, he leaned closer to the statue. “That’s all ya got, Freya? Ain’t enough for me warmup. C’mon, hurt me more! Show me what ya can do!”

The statue did not respond any further. Morkvarg’s attention was grabbed by the thing hanging from its necklace: a blue diamond cut in the shape of a rose. It was the size of a fist and shone as brightly as the blue summer skies.

“Ah, the legendary Brisingamen. Freya’s treasure.” Morkvarg narrowed his eyes and licked his lips, staring at the diamond greedily. “Mine now.”

And he kicked the statue down to the ground. Morkvarg pointed his blade at Brisingamen and tried his best to pry it out.

***

“What now, Einar?” Back at the temple’s entrance, a pirate with a gray bandana glared at his pillaging comrades with fury. “Should we stop ’em?”

“Ye gone outta yer mind?” Another ashen pirate shook his head. “There’s only five o’ us and fifty of ’em. An’ they’re feral! Yer crazy if ya think we can win! We should leave. Wasn’t us who defiled Freya. She’s generous enough to forgive us. Einar, it’s now or never.”

Einar rubbed the wolf fang necklace hanging around his neck. It was his family heirloom, and the necklace had the power to curse. He hadn’t used it even once. “Leave just like this an’ Freya’s going to look unkindly on us. Ain’t gonna let us live our lives easily. We need to do sumthin’ to repent. Can’t kill these foolish blasphemers, that’s for sure, but their leader, Morkvarg, must be punished.”

The pirate on the lowest rung of the staircase looked back, and his eyes went wide. ‘Oi, laddies, look there. There’s someone, there!”

“Will ye quit it with the shoutin’? It’s in the dead o’ the night. Ain’t no way anyone’s here for a pilgrimage!”

“There’s a guy in a black cloak comin’ closer!”

A breeze brushed across the pirates. One moment ago, the silhouette had just stepped onto the staircase, standing twenty yards away from then. And then, they saw something blur past them, and the silhouette was already standing before them.

It had a black cloak that shrouded it in darkness, and a pair of unique longswords were crossed behind it. The figure’s eyes had different colors, and they flickered with a shivering chill.

“Einar?” Roy wondered what the pirate was doing here, and then he remembered why. He understood what was going on now. It’s the night Morkvarg invaded the temple of Freya. The pirates were split into two factions. One went ahead with the plundering and pillaging, but the other stayed away from it. And this guy’s the reason Morkvarg was turned into a wolf. I think I know who that voice belongs to. So I’m here to help a goddess, huh?

“W-What are ya? How didja know me name?” Einar bristled like a cat and unsheathed his weapon, pointing its edge at the witcher.

“I am Freya’s emissary, here to cleanse the temple of the taint of sin,” the witcher said with righteous fury, staring at the pirates.

A powerful pressure rained down on the pirates, and they felt their palms getting sweaty, their throats held by something invisible.

“Einar and his comrades. Since you have never laid a finger on the goddess’ priestesses, you shall be spared. Stay here and let no one escape.” Roy pointed a finger ahead, and a frost atronach leapt out of the gates of Oblivion, standing before the temple’s entrance. It put its hands on its hips, standing sentry, its eyes devoid of any emotion.

Roy fired off a bolt, and the air itself rippled, then the witcher disappeared without a trace.

The pirates gulped.

“Hear that, lads?” Einar looked at the frost atronach, his eyes flaring with hope, and he raised his arms. “The goddess’ emissary is here! We shall stand our ground an’ atone for our sins!”

***

“Keep runnin’, ladies. Oh, why can’t ye run anymore? Haven’t had enough fun.” A burly man in brigandine armor sneered, swinging his blade around as he closed in on the corner of the yard.

The curtains hanging under the roof crackled as flames licked it up. Sigrdrifa opened her arms and stood before a petite, shivering clergywoman. With a trembling voice, she cursed the pirate. “Halt, you sinner! You are impugning the authority of the goddess yet again! You shall be punished for it! Touch us, and I shall curse your soul to fall to hell!”

“Well, don’t stop. I be waitin’ for yer curse. Music to my ears, ya see. Makes it more fun for me.” Delighted, the pirate’s face scrunched up from the grin. “Perhaps one day Freya’s curse will be a mark of glory like me scars. Come on, then. Give me glory. Your goddess ain’t gonna help ya. She’s useless. Now come to me, lassie!”

The pirate grabbed Sigrdrifa’s robe and tore the fabric off, revealing the priestess’ shoulders. “Get off!”

And then something pierced through the flesh of the pirate. Something splattered everywhere. Sigrdrifa and the girl behind her stopped breathing for a moment. The pirate’s grin froze. A sword had pierced through his neck, its ivory blade glinting coldly under the light.

The silhouette pulled its blade out from the pirate’s neck in one fell swoop, and blood splattered all over the clergywoman’s face.

Gurgles escaped the pirate’s bloody mouth, and he fell to the ground head first, his legs twitching.

Sigrdrifa clutched her hands to her chest, and then the silhouette before her blurred. She saw something horrible happening right before her eyes.

The pirate who was assaulting a priestess in the left flowerbed froze as a blade pierced through his lower back. Like a mouse that was speared, his limbs tensed up, and he drew his last breath.

The silhouette darted across the temple, and the burly pirate chasing a horrified priestess in the western corridor shivered. A moment later, his head flew high up into the air and rolled away. Blood spurted from the stump like a fountain, and the headless corpse took a few more steps toward the clergywoman, driven by the last puff of its momentum, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

The body then fell to its knees and lay on the ground.

The golden-haired girl who escaped the ordeal fell into a stupor, and all she could see was the glint of a blade dancing across the garden like a star. A black silhouette pirouetted and fluttered across the grounds, bathed in the light of flames. Its cloak billowed in the wind stirred by its dance, flapping like the wings of a garuda.

The silhouette would crash like a meteor and take flight like an eagle, filling the air with the buzz of its blade and the music of its bowstring, playing a symphony for the pirates who would die by its hands.

Everywhere it went, a pirate would fall before they could even scream for help. In just mere seconds, a dozen pirates had fallen without knowing what hit them. The priestesses quickly gathered in the corner of the garden, standing back to back like little animals searching for security.

A crying priestess asked through sobs, “Are you alright? What happened? Who saved us? Is it the goddess?”

“The goddess is saving us! She’s punishing these evildoers!” a priestess with swollen cheeks hissed.

“But Ulve’s dead! And so many have died! We’re the only ones left!”

“Don’t you cry! Their souls are in the goddess’ kingdom now!”

The priestesses clenched their fists, their faces laced with sorrow, fear, and excitement.

The pirates pillaging the temples noticed something wrong. Their comrades had gone eerily quiet, which was something that shouldn’t happen. They charged into the yard, but the moment they did, a gale howled across the grounds. The roof creaked, and the windows slammed.

The pirates’ hearts thumped.

A black cloak tore through the air, and a phantom appeared out of nowhere. It bent down a little, holding the hilt of its sword with both hands, and the phantom drew a line across the pirates, the blade cutting through chainmail and brigandine.

Crimson flowers bloomed as flesh fell apart.

Another team of pirates came charging out of another house, holding weapons and shields. The phantom disappeared and rained down on them, heralding their death.

It held its blade high up in the air and swung it down. A red crescent moon zipped ahead, tearing the pirates apart. Like firewood, the pirates’ bodies were cut in half. Their guts spilled to the ground, drenching it in red.

The people behind them had their faces splattered with blood. Before they could do anything about it, the witcher pulled the trigger, and something whistled over to one of the pirates. He froze, and his eyes lost focus.

His head had a hole in it. The pair of pirates behind him had holes bored through their heads as well, the ghost of their last snarl etched on their faces. Somewhere behind the hole, a bolt was buried in the wall, the feathers on its end quaking.

A gust of breeze blew across the grounds, and the pirates fell.

The witcher took the lives of six pirates with a single blow and a single shot. Not one pirate was left standing in the yard, and the air distorted by the heat of the flames saw itself tinged in red, a silhouette standing within it. The silhouette held an ivory sword, blood trickling off its edge and seeping into the ground.

The priestesses could finally see the face of their savior. He was a young man with a deadpan look, but he was handsome, and his eyes were like whirlpools that shone silver and gold. Their savior was wiping the blood and flesh off his blade with the clothes of the dead pirates, the crescent moon hanging in the skies behind him glowing crimson.

Noticing the look of the priestesses, Roy gave them a reassuring look. “It’ll be over in a moment.”

A burly man with a big beard came charging out of the great hall, holding a big sack over his shoulder. Parts of a golden pot poked from the sack, and the man looked delighted, as if he’d just been smoking drugs.

He raised his head and saw the man standing among the sea of corpses. Their eyes met, and the witcher stepped into the pool of blood with his sword held up.

Then he appeared right before the man who came out of the great hall.

The pirate swung his axe down at the witcher’s shoulder, but the attack was stopped by the witcher’s blade, and the axe shattered into pieces.

The witcher went past the pirate and swung his sword at the pirate’s neck. He tore the pirate’s neck open, cutting the pirate’s artery. The pirate’s head was hanging on by an inch of the nape’s skin.

He fell with a sickening thud, and his head rolled away like a ball. The sack of coins and valuables fell from his back.

The witcher dragged his bloodied sword and charged into the great hall like a dragon swinging its tail.

Einar and the defected pirates stood before the temple’s entrance, battling alongside the frost atronach. Four bodies lay underneath them, and the fifteen clergywomen in the corner slowly followed them.

***

The once beautiful and resplendent great hall was now torn down and pilfered. A dozen pirates were destroying it, and a muscular man with a star-shaped tattoo on his arm was taking off his belt, trying to piss on the statue of Freya.

“Morkvarg?” The witcher looked at the man in the middle, and he was filled with disappointment and curiosity. This is the legendary, infamous, and arrogant pirate? He’s just a little better than regular humans in terms of fighting skills. You’re telling me that Freya, the goddess every Skelliger believes in, can’t do anything to a dozen regular humans? She could only watch as her own priestesses got slaughtered? And she even had to ask a nonbeliever like me to help out? Why?

“Who the fuck are you? Where’s me crew?” Morkvarg quickly pulled his pants up and pointed at Roy angrily.

The pirates glared at the witchers and whipped out their weapons. They snarled and came closer to the intruder, but Roy only waved and smiled warmly at the pirates.

“They’re in hell right now, where you’ll be soon. Shall I send you there?”

“Cut ‘im up, lads!”