Doll making

By the time Krage left the captain's quarters he was soaked head to toe in blood and guts

After what had seemed to be days of constant torture Curtis had utterly given up on life, simply dying on the spot as Krage had been mid-dissection. The man's heart had just… stopped beating, not from blood loss or lack of neural activity, it had just stopped due to the sheer hopelessness he had been feeling

After Curtis had lost his concentration and by proxy his protection granted by his spell Krage had set to work, cutting off pieces of him, one at a time. First, the fingers and toes, replacing them with pure bone that he grew out of Curtis with his mana, and then his wrists, penis, ankles, elbows, and knees. Cutting off each piece and then replacing them with grown bone, slowly but surely turning the man into a chunk of pure calcium and marrow. And once he had replaced every limb with bone… he began to carve

It was honestly enjoyable, he had spent a large portion of the night sculpting Curtis's body into an artwork, delicately turning the crude column and chunks of bleached bone into recreations of the limbs they replaced, almost creating prosthetics, gifting them to the man whom he hated

Not that Curtis appreciated it

Apparently, as his mana had grown the bones it had also grown the pain receptors in them (yes bones have nerves in them) causing his subject immense pain when he had begun to then carve them

And finally when Curtis had become more bone than should be possible, looking like a grotesque doll of ivory he had moved on to his own experiments

After all he had a perfect test subject for his mana, why not use it. He had already known that due to the purity of his mana, things like healing magic did far more harm than good, due to the overgrowth of bones and tissue

But what about other magics? There were of course multiple practices and forms of mana and spells that mana users had access to, depending on their mana type, which changed depending on the individual according to journals of Curtis.

So what mana type did he have?

Krage had thoroughly tested each type and element

When he tested light magic, casting a rudimentary [flash] spell nothing had happened, except Curtis had begun to scream as he was burned alive by an unseen form of energy

When he tested fire magic, which was a variant of light magic, using a basic [fireball] the fireball appeared, small as a marble yet white hot, causing the entire room to heat up like a sauna and passing through the target, Curtis as if he had never existed and left a tunnel in the stomach

Earth magic, which he had apparently been using already as the earth was what healing magic used as a base had the same effects of extremely growth

Concerning the water magic spectrum, directly connected spells such as [Waterbolt] shot water at a high enough speed that it pierced through solid steel and less connected spells such as the [Clean] incantation just erased the target, or at least the target chunk

All this carving and experimentation took all night and resulted in one direct breakthrough, one death, and one problem

The breakthrough was that Krage found that he had a connection to all main forms of mana, be it fire or water at the expense that his mana was so pure that most spells had an entirely different effect than expected

The death was of course that of Curtis

And the problem was that people now knew he was on the ship

In all honesty, Krage had been so blindly centered on hurting Curtis that he had never considered disposing of the body, so when a crew member walked and found the broken doll that was their captain the alarm had of course been set off

Now the crew were constantly on the lookout for him, searching for the person who was on board the ship, they knew it was a stowaway and now they had to find them

Krage found himself unable to get his way back to the lower decks, instead stuck, trapped on the deck, hiding in the receding fog of the morning and carefully avoiding the increasing number of crewmen who were searching for him

So could it get any worse?

Yes it could

It appeared that during his time in the captain's cabin. Alice had gotten restless and now she had gotten loose shortly after the alarm was raised… meaning the boat was now on fire

As the flames raged and crewmen screamed Krage found himself running and hiding between barrels and posts, dodging the crew and weaving towards the stairs that lead to the lower deck, now realizing that the boat was likely done for and trying to get to the only two people he cared about

Beasty and Alice

Breaking into a run he sprinted towards the stairs, ignoring the shouts of outrage and surprise as the crew spotted him and jumping down the stairs, only just catching himself with his hand as he landed roughly

Letting out a brief grunt of pain he made his way to the anchor room, towards Beasty. Coughing as the snake-filled his lungs he pulled up the collar of his shirt, placing it over his nose and mouth. Already knowing the exact directions he had to take he sped through the lower decks, using both his footsteps of himself and his pursuers to echolocate any obstacles

Only to slam into the chest of a crewmate who had hidden behind a corner, slamming onto his ass as he fell backward. Immediately trying to get to his feet KRage scrambled to his knees, only to feel his cheek suddenly erupt with pain as the man in front of him, punched him in full force

"So you're the little rat!" the man mocked, his voice sounding warped by the smoke "you killed the captain!?"

Even unaware of his full surrounding due to both the smoke and the punch that had rattled his senses Krage felt his pursuers surround him

"We put out the fire!" someone yelled from the background " the bitch ran out of mana!"

"Time for a keelhauling boys!"

{author note: sorry for not uploading, I had covid and couldn't get up!}