| Twelve - Final Fantasy 5, Faris
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| "Into the pit with him!" "The pit!" "The pit!" The jeering cries echoed
off the cavern's walls and ceiling as the ring of pirates kicked at a bound
and bucking form in the center of their ring. Dirty hands grabbed at Faris
and threw him hand over hand deep into the back of the cave, his hair flying
everywhere, decorations (and one sleeve) ripping off his clothes, the ropes
that bound his arms to his body biting into his stomach. He cursed them
as loud as he could, but the cries of "The pit!" drowned him out.
The last pair of hands slung him over a low retaining wall. With his hands tied behind him and his feet tied together Faris couldn't catch himself before he hit the ground, and his impact with the sand cracked at least one rib. "AAAAAAAAAGH YE SLIMY BASTARDS I'LL KILL YE ALL!" Faris bellowed, thrashing around furiously until he managed to roll over onto one side. His only answer was derisive laughter and retreating footsteps. Breathing hard Faris fought against the ropes and studied his situation. The pit was only about ten feet deep, and the walls were rocky and pitted. He could climb that no problem if he could just get free... half a dozen skeletons in varying stages of decomposition shared the tiny sandy beach with him, and good steel glinted from the decaying scabbard strapped to the waist of one not five feet away. Good enough. Better than good enough. Too good. The rush of something breaking through the surface of the water behind him was very loud. Frantically Faris kicked at the sand with his bound feet and managed to roll more or less onto his back--and he froze. The head of a huge lizard--kraken's nuts, was that a dragon?--loomed over him, dripping salt water everywhere, its jaws cracking open to show a mouthful of cracked and yellowing fangs. They stared at each other for a moment. "All right," Faris breathed. Beneath him his hands spread out, digging into the sand. "All right, damn ye, I see how it is." Moving slowly he brought his legs up onto his chest, curling up into a ball. "C'mon, then, damn ye. Ye jus' come an' try." The dragon--no, it was a hydra, Faris was pretty sure now--studied its balled-up prey curiously. A dim intelligence flickered in its tiny eyes. But it must have been hungry, because all of a sudden its jaws gaped wide and its spade-shaped head darted forward. Faris thought Now! and pistoned his legs out straight. The heavy heels of his boots exploded against the hydra's snout with every ounce of force Faris could muster. The resulting shock numbed every muscle in Faris' legs, but the hydra snorted out a pained sound of disbelief and reared back again, its snakelike tongue flicking out over its bruised snout. "Aye, well, mebbe ye better not be tryin' thet again, ye think?!" Faris bellowed, pulling his legs up onto his chest again. "I ain't precisely unsympathetic, ye mind, but I ain't ye dinner, neither!" The hydra snorted again and shook his head, showering Faris with salt water. "Aye?" Faris grunted, rolling back over onto his side and wriggling towards the exposed cutlass at a groaningly slow rate. He left tracks in the sand like a sidewinding snake. "D'they keep ye pinned up here, then? Only feed ye when they ketch some poor bastard like me, eh? Thet ain't precisely fair..." The hydra watched Faris go, but didn't make another move towards him, for which Faris was desperately glad. Finally he more or less fell on the skeleton with the cutlass. "Y'know, this here's likely t'be kinda embarrassin'," Faris said, glancing from the skeleton to the hydra. "Ye min' maybe turnin' ye back f'r a sec?" The hydra just blinked snake-like down at him. "Oh, aye, well..." Sighing, Faris began to buck against the skeleton, trying not to think of it as humping the filthy thing. Old bones snapped and scattered everywhere and the remnants of the scabbard flaked away, leaving the cutlass blade more or less exposed--Faris' shoulder became a patchwork of thin bleeding lines, but the ropes around his arms were starting to shred, too. The hydra watched, fascinated. Finally the rope around his waist fell away and Faris was able to bring his hands up, scraping at the ropes around his wrists with slightly more grace. "D'arr, an' look at ye," he told the hydra, cutting his forearms and biting his tongue. "Ye got cuts all over ye. Don' they take care o' ye at all? Y'poor thing." The rope around his wrists snapped and Faris wrenched his hands around, grabbing the cutlass in his right as an extension of the swing. Half a minute's sawing freed his ankles and Faris staggered to his feet, cutless in his right hand, bleeding profusely from several places on his left side. "All right," he said, looking up at the hydra. "All right. Now, the way I see it, ye an' I, we c'n do this one way, or we c'n do it the other. Either ye rush me an' I try an' kill ye, or ye an' I, we team up." Flexing his shoulder, Faris glanced up the wall. "I be thinkin' that they ain't treatin' ye right, an' well, I know they ain't treatin' me right... so. What d'ye say?" The hydra made a confused honking noise. Faris sighed. "Oh, barnacles. Lemme put it in a way ye c'n understand, aye?" And digging in his beltpouch Faris fished out a potion and tossed it at the hydra, a flash of blue light healing its shallow wounds and the bruise on its snout. "There. Ain't thet better? Aye?" The hydra was silent, the water around it splashing as it shifted. Faris slung the cutlass over his back and started patting his fingers over the wall, looking for good handholds. Halfway up the wall the hydra's head bumped up under his feet, giving him a boost, and Faris--after an initial near heart attack--grinned a bit. "Oh, aye, thet's right. Ye an' I, we'll show 'em all, won't we?" |
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