Osrik is a character from Emu777's story Guardian
Osrik is a character from Emu777's story Guardian. I have his personal permission to use Osrik, and have his approval on the interpretation of the character.
Chapter Sixteen
Unwanted Recollection
The departure of the Ocean Spider didn't go nearly as smoothly as it appeared from the shore. Though the sails were unfurled successfully, and the anchor was raised, that was all that went right.
In tying the line for the main sail, Deneve severely tangled the steering rope. It was a small miracle that the ship turned right, out to the deeper water of the bay rather than turning the other way to slam into the docks.
Unable to find a proper latch point, Helen tried tying another line to the stack of food crates. A gust of wind in the sails snapped the line tight and broke one of the cables holding the food together. The stack started collapsing, and it was all Helen could do to hold the tide of wood encased food back from scattering all across the deck.
It took Helen and Clare to push the hefty crates back into place, and Osrik to tie them back up. The sail wasn't taken care of so easily. Yura and Cyrus spent several minutes struggling and fuming, and in the case of Cyrus, swearing, to disentangle Deneve's mess. Deneve's attempts to help from the rigging acted counter to most of their efforts.
Miria stood at the wheel, a simple task, though it did little good with the sail angled to catch the wind and push the ship in a different direction from the rudder. The ship slowly, invariably drifted left, towards the rocky cliffs that surrounded the bay.
The tangled line eventually had to be undone at the top, and redone after the disentangling was taken care of. It was just in time too, as the jagged cliffs of the bay rim were fast approaching. The rope snapped tight, and the sail reoriented to take the Ocean Spider safely out of the bay.
Yura slumped against the railing with relief. "Well, one catastrophe averted. Good work Cyrus."
Rather than issuing any manner of polite reply, Cyrus quickly and properly tied off the rope, and stormed off to the cabins. "Damn amateurs," he grumbled beneath his breath. "Gonna get us killed at this rate. Why'd I sign on for this trip anyway? Just gonna get sunk off some sand bar or something dumb like that. Can't even bring my own liquor…" His grumblings trailed off as the door slammed shut behind him.
It was another hour before things were in good order. Most of the sails were arranged for a long voyage, and as long as the course adjustments were minor, which they should be by all rights, all that was needed was someone at the wheel.
"Well, that was fun." Yura yawned and stretched tiredly. "If you don't mind, I'm going to take a nap below deck."
"No problem" said Osrik. "We've got it under control. See you in the morning." Yura waved offhandedly as he opened the door and headed to the cabins.
As a fishing vessel, the accommodations weren't all that impressive.
The hallways were uncomfortable narrow, and there was the smell of sweat permeating every corner. "But that's what happens when you try and cram more than a dozen sailors into a small wooden room. They clearly haven't scrubbed this place down since it was put in dry dock." Yura scratched his head as he opened the door to his cabin.
The interior was lit by nothing more than a few cheap oil lamps fixed in the walls. The burning oil didn't help the stench.
Though a little bit cleaner, it wasn't much of an improvement. At least with the size of the crew they had, the room was all his.
Yura set his coat on the inner door knob, and crawled into the small bunk. He was never prone to sea sickness, and actually found the rocking of the ship soothing. Despite the poor sleeping environment, Yura quickly found himself drifting off to sleep.
Just before he drifted off to sleep, Yura found himself pondering the Yoma from Charrow, and the strange but uncomfortably familiar scent that clung to it…
As sleep claimed Yura, his final conscious thought of the day was pulled into his dreams. Rather than the mindless, random dreams that usually enter the sleeping mind, this one was much closer to a recollection, but deeper.
He found himself once more in Charrow, but not the one he had come from a short time ago. The Charrow that formed in his mind now was the town as it was many centuries ago. Back then, it was nothing more than a small castle town. The castle itself was well-built for the time, but the rock-and-mortar work would have been considered embarrassingly shoddy in the modern times.
As an outside observer, he watched a dream version of his old self walking the streets of this old town, called Burnsfeld at the time.
Wooden buildings, ranging from decent homes to simple lean-tos sprawled away from the castle in all directions, like a rash upon the landscape. That had been the first time Yura had ever come to Burnsfeld, and he hated it.
Yura recalled that it was the worst hub of human decay that he had ever witnessed. He liked humans, but sometimes they disgusted him. Human waste littered every alleyway, radiating its stench into the streets.
Vermin crawled everywhere, feeding on the detritus that the people just threw out. Farther from the castle, the homes were in the worst condition. The wood of some was rotting away, while others had countless rodent-chewed holes in them.
The quality of the castle itself clearly showed Yura that the man therein was rich, but the decay of the township showed how little he cared for his subjects. Though it was of little concern to Yura at the moment.
Out of respect for the human friends he had made in his first five hundred years of life, he tried to do what he could to improve the conditions wherever he saw the need, but failed miserably in this case. Yura recalled how hard he had tried, but the people seemed almost as if they didn't want to be helped.
As he watched the old version of himself, at the time appearing as a young man, walk through the town, looking for a road out, he recalled why he couldn't have stayed any longer. There had been killings in the town, by the hand of a Yoma.
It hadn't been him. He had tried to find it and deal with it himself, but his search had proved fruitless. This wasn't surprising. Yura was never very good at sensing Yoki.
Unfortunately, the search would have to end. The word on the street was that a Claymore was being called in, and Yura hadn't been willing to stick around.
He had been good enough to deal with common Yoma, as they fought on instinct, like animals. Once you learn how one fights, all of the others were very much the same. But though powerful, he hadn't been very skilled at fighting, even by human standards.
"Yes, I really was weak back then, wasn't I?" Yura thought as he watched his dream self wander the streets.
He remembered how he'd encountered a Claymore just a few months prior, and it hadn't ended well for either of them. The warrior was dead and Yura had just barely survived the battle. He had not been willing to risk another meeting. It was supposed to be a high ranking warrior this time too.
But as his dream self reached the edge of the buildings, and the stench of waste was blown away, a very different scent appeared on the breeze. It was familiar, yet the memory of it was very distant, hard to recall.
Yura stood there with his dream self for several minutes. At the time, he had wanted to follow that smell, so subtle that he would never have noticed it if it hadn't been for its familiarity. At the same time, he had also wanted to leave. Who knew when the Claymore would arrive?
Finally, with a glance at the rolling, grassy hills ahead, he turned and headed back into the festering pit of a city.
It was not long before the trail was lost to the odour of the city again. Yura had searched for the better part of an hour, guided only by the vague feeling that he was headed the right way.
Though utterly unskilled at sensing Yoki, he had not been completely oblivious to it. A rolling wave of it washed across him as he approached the castle. It was intense. The Yoki of the warrior he'd killed before was like a light breeze in the face of this hurricane. He had never felt such a strong Yoki before, or since, come to think of it.
Panicked, and even in those ages past, panic was a rare thing for him, he had looked behind him. Walking his way from the other end of the dusty street was a monster of a man. He wore armour across his shoulders, and had heavy bracers across his arms and legs. His chest was covered in a tight, white outfit, and from a sheath on his back hung a massive, silver blade.
The Claymore.
In desperation, Yura had jumped into the nearest dark alley. Ignoring the stench, he hid behind a mass of garbage, and hunched down as far as possible, trying to make himself as small as he could, less likely to be seen.
Yura looked at the dream scene contemplatively. "Even now, it seems like the smart thing to do. I'm a lot stronger now, and I still don't think I could beat that man."
He had imagined himself as a shell filled with water. He pictured the water pulling away from his skin, compressing inward until it was a small point within his chest.
This method was one he had developed to help him learn to tightly control his Yoki. As he imagined this, his Yoki was reduced, and as tightly controlled as it was possible to make it.
As hidden as it was possible to be, and with his Yoki as tightly restrained as he could make it at the time, Yura had calmed down, the fear fading into calm resolve. He hoped he hadn't been seen, but he was as mentally prepared as he could have been if he had been spotted.
He hadn't been the only person in the street, and of those, not the only one eager to get out of the way, so he shouldn't have stood out too much.
Yura had sensed it as the Claymore approached the alley, moving in slow, steady strides. From his darkened hiding place, Yura had seen clearly as that monstrous man passed across the face of the alley.
He stood a full head taller than the average man, with shoulders that were twice as wide as any man's Yura had ever seen. His skin was darker than that of most Claymore warriors and he had no hair atop his head.
His face was short and broad, with a large, angry mouth and a small nose that didn't extend far out from the rest of the face. His eyes were set so deep in their sockets that Yura couldn't see them from his angle, but he could still imagine their cold, silver gaze.
The man continued his pace without casting so much as a glance down the alley. Minutes later, the man's Yoki faded into the distance, and Yura's dream self breathed a sigh of relief and said "That was a little too close for comfort."
"Yes, it was." A cold, cruel voice spoke out from deeper within the alleyway. It chilled Yura like an icy wind.
A tall, thin man walked from deeper in the shadows into the dim light of the alleyway. He had a face like death itself. His skin was a pale, pasty white. His black eyes were sunken deep into the sockets, and his cheeks were the same. Even now, in remembrance, it sent a chill down Yura's spine.
A vicious smile crept across the man's face. "But now I can enjoy my meal in peace. And look, a second course has just walked into my lap."
The Yoma.