Ripper

The smell of salt and damp sand infiltrated his senses as he breathed for what, once again, felt like the first time. A familiar sound of crashing waves came from behind, and the cold touch of the advancing tide drenched his bare feet, receding back momentarily. 

He opened his eyes, only to find himself back on the mysterious coast. When he came to his feet, the lost soul panicked briefly and clawed at his chest, but the wound he had sustained from the leaf-woman in the forest was gone, without any trace of a scar on his bare, chiselled chest. 

A glint of light caught his attention from the bottom of his peripheral vision. His curious stare landed upon a long, sharp blade, a bastard sword to be precise; a weapon that could be held in a single hand or two. As he did, it gazed back at him, seemingly with a mind of its own. It invaded his thoughts and released a plethora of visions. 

He saw himself, blade in hand, standing off against hordes of men and woman cladded in armour, none matching his skill with a blade as he tore into their weak points, removing limbs with every strike. Many battles and battlefields scrolled past his mind in a matter of seconds. 

A final vision presented itself. 

An unusually tall, bearded old man stood guiding the lost soul's soft hands as he practised with the same blade, which seemed larger than it did on the shore... Or had it been his hands that were small? He could not tell.

The vision faded as fast as it had conjured itself, leaving him staring into the shiny reflection on the, now familiar, blade. A runic inscription ran down it lengthways, just above its hardwood hilt. He could not read it with his diminished memory. Before he had a chance to try again, a word rushed to the foremost of his mind. Ripper. The word meant nothing to him, other than the fact it was engraved onto a sword he knew was his. 

 He grabbed the sword by its handle greedily, like a child would his toys if another had tried to touch them, only he was alone. The lost soul had but one lead. The forest on the horizon. Perhaps he would see his fair lady once more, he thought, and started off in its direction, Ripper held loosely by his side. 

 As he entered the forest, the lost soul kept his gaze set over his shoulder, remembering how it had swallowed the coast from which he had come from. After several minutes, a protruding root caught his foot, sending him crashing into the ground with a hefty THUMP. He shook himself off and swiftly spun around, only to see the coast had been swallowed once more. He let out a defeated sigh, his shoulders falling low with disappointment. 

After shaking off his pessimism, the lost soul knelt to grab Ripper off the ground, and as he rose, a chorus of loud wooden CRACKS sounded around him. Ripper raised instinctively and the lost soul gripped its wooden hilt with both hands. The tree directly in front of him began to move, but only part of it. An arm of bark ripped itself from the trunk. Then another to the right, until a disfigured, humanoid, wooden creature had emerged, bark chippings laying on the floor around it. With no sign of a mouth, the creature cried out in a savage gurgle and charged hysterically toward the lost soul. His heart skipped several beats, and his legs shook as he relieved himself in terror, an uncomfortable warmth growing from his loincloth and down his thighs. 

The creature petrified him solid... until the very last moment, when another abrupt vision swam through his thoughts, too fast to comprehend. 

With an autonomous, fluid movement, his body lifted Ripper with the power of one arm and drove it into the creature's chest. He embraced the living wood with his spare hand to further bury his blade. A warm, runny sap spewed from its wound as the monster shrieked in agony. The lost soul could have sworn his ears were bleeding as he gritted his teeth and scrunched his face with visible pain. 

 The lost soul removed Ripper from the creature's chest and confidently placed it back by his side, watching the living bark fiend drop onto the grassy floor with a muted thud. 

Before he had a chance to relax, multiple cracks resonated around the forest. Various trees from the surrounding area gave birth to more bark fiends, each slightly unique from the rest. With a steadfast glare, he clasped his bastard sword with both hands and rose it alongside his head: pointing the sword forward. 

 The ensuing choir of gurgling cries rang through the forest as the bark monsters charged at him like the first, caring little for the sight of their fallen brethren. The lost soul drove Ripper's tip into the first fiend's upper body, its runny, sap-like ichor spraying all over his face. He swiftly pulled the blade back out, and the creature collapsed onto the ground with an audible FLOP. 

A second and third were almost upon him when he swung back his sword and cleaved their thin waists with one, fluid strike. The upper halves fell back simultaneously – their lower halves spewing a clear, yellow liquid into the air - revealing another group of three fiends behind them. With an audible battle-cry, and little thought, he charged the creatures head on, ramming the first with his shoulder, sending it to the floor, and decapitating the second soon after. The third took no warning of the soul's skill with his blade, nor its fallen peers, mindlessly charging him in a feral rage. The lost soul rose Ripper above his head and cleaved it down the fiend's entire body with all his might, roaring in strain; the fiend's lifeblood oozed violently from the wound as the halves fell in unison. He turned and finished off the downed fiend by driving Ripper through its chest. 

His heart pounded with blissful content. 

This was his love. 

His passion. 

The blade was not just his weapon, but his way of life. He needed it to live, just as it needed him to kill. And he could feel its aching desire to kill as a deep compulsion in his veins, screaming for blood. 

He stood panting, his shoulders rising and falling with his breaths as the sudden burst of adrenaline began to fade... Then the ground trembled. 

To the lost soul's sides, two trees uprooted themselves and fell in the same forward direction: trunks bending, undisturbed and snaking into the soil below. Their branches gripped the ground like hands, and the earth between them burst open, scattering dirt, stones, and other debris. 

The lost soul, startled, fell onto his arse and scurried backward, Ripper still in hand and a terrified expression painted onto his stubbly face. A rotund, seemingly living trunk raised itself free of the ground: earth and rocks cascading down its rotting, wooden body. The trees that had fallen previously were attached like arms, and a set of similar legs helped it out of the crater it had blown open and emerged from. 

A split in the tree beast's central trunk cracked open to reveal a spiralling set of crooked, razor-sharp teeth, and in the centre, at the back of its throat, a furnace of flames crackled and popped: spitting out embers from the beast's mouth. 

The lost soul continued to back away from his downed position, until his back hit wood. The lost soul watched wide eyed, petrified once again after crashing from his burst of adrenaline, as the tree beast seemed to suck in a long breath. Then a brief moment of silence and nothing, before a swift stream of flames spewed from its maw. 

The flames wrung out every inch of breath the lost soul had in a high-pitched screech. His body was incinerated until nothing was left but Ripper, his loyal blade, laying red hot amidst a scattering of ash.