"For how long did you think you deserved to remain here?"Ryuk asked, looking at the pair of crimson eyes that silently stared at him before replying.
"Probably until the Krakenoid Kingdom faces another threat and has to run to us, I guess," he said, with a boisterous laugh.
"You’re not mad that I didn’t release you?" Ryuk asked, a rumble echoing through the waters.
"Speaking to you has made me come to terms with my own errors."
"Evil cannot truly be excused, so I will remain here, hoping the longer I stay, the more my sins are washed away."
"I’m grateful to you for helping me come to terms with that, if anything," he said.
And now, Ryuk could see King Ourumunda had really calmed down.
While the suffocating evil aura still rippled off of him, the anger in his voice had considerably lessened, and now he had even chosen to remain here of his own accord.
It was an obvious change compared to when Ryuk had first stepped among them.
For that reason, Ryuk sat once more, his form changing into his sleeker dragon form.
His hands reached to the side.
King Ourumunda watched as a pink light suddenly coalesced around his palms.
Ryuk’s fingers folded upon the pink light, and in the next moment, a purple rune trailed over his draconic scales, while his snow-white hair instantly became fully replaced by a pink color.
When the light dimmed, all that stood before King Ourumunda was a being with pink hair, skin covered in pink runes, and holding onto a musical instrument.
It was a violin, covered in the same pink aura, and King Ourumunda’s heart skipped at the aura from it.
"A God Relic?" he muttered to himself in shock.
The violin moved to Ryuk’s shoulder, along with its bow.
Silently, his eyes closed, the runic purple in his hands flaring up.
In the next instant, he felt his own senses dull as his hands moved on their own.
When the bow struck the strings, a purple ripple of energy flowed forward from Ryuk, carrying an incredulous melody.
King Ourimunda observed silently as the violin played, and in the next moment, he began noticing changes.
It was said that if one stayed amidst destruction long enough, soon they would begin to reek of blood and death.
The Abyssal Krakens had done enough evil in the name of justice for their kind, and naturally, they rippled with that same evil aura.
Yet, when the pink ripple trailed over the skin of the thousands of Krakens around, King Ourimunda saw the pitch-black ashy strand of death around them lifting away.
The black ash that had covered their tentacles began to fade, revealing the skin beneath.
It was dark, but it was an alluring darkness.
A black covered in carefully drawn strands of crimson runic lines.
"A purification..."
They were the last words King Ourumunda said before he felt himself sinking into the peace of the melody.
It was a simple piece, with a simple wish, to make him dream.
And he dreamed.
Not of pain or the screams of those he had drowned mercilessly, but a dream.
A beautiful dream that could never have been farther away from a nightmare.
Ryuk’s playing of the violin was beyond his conscious control, but the Violin played his heart.
The Abyssal Krakens deserved their imprisonment; they were not innocent.
But in this world, the term itself was tricky in such a world.
Now, Ryuk knew that the Abyssal Krakens had come to realize their errors.
He believed they deserved a chance.
And that was why he had played, to give them a second chance, and that was what the violin did.
It tore away the ash that had obscured their true forms through ages of evil and destruction, revealing what lay beyond.
The darkness was washed away, and the evil aura banished.
But the ripple continued, far out from the abyss, rippling through the waters.
Soon enough, it found its way to the walls of bones.
When it touched them, the formation immediately flared up, protecting the walls.
Yet as the melody continued and the ripples wandered around it, the formation began to dim, and soon, it dispersed.
The ripple of pink struck the bones of the walls, absorbed by them, and in the next moment, light began to coalesce.
Lights that formed Krakens, but not fully.
They looked like manifestations of them, not possessing physical bodies, but spirit-like figures.
One by one, these spirits rose from the bones in the wall and swam forward, toward the source of the melody.
The more they rose, the more the wall of bones began to disappear, and silently, it faded away, never to exist again.
The water that flowed out from the other side of the wall was no longer cold.
It was warm, filled with purifying strands of pink.
And the scene of the wall’s breakdown was felt by the strongest of the Krakens, as auras burst through the waters, and hundreds of gazes turned toward the ripple.
"They finally forced their way through the walls?"
________________
The play continued, and even Ryuk was drowned within it.
The feeling of peace that followed, in a way, made him free.
The heaviness and the tension left, and when he opened his eyes, the piece had ended.
The Krakens were in slumber, but now, their forms had completely changed.
The stench of evil and destruction they once had was no more.
Instead, a somewhat noble aura surrounded them.
Their tentacles had shifted from the dirty ash color to a gem-like black, with runes upon their skin occasionally gleaming with crimson lights that trailed across their forms.
Fearsome they still were, yet regal they had become.
But then he noticed different presences and he turned his head up, his eyes widening in surprise.
He found them:
The spiritual manifestations of about a thousand Krakens hanging around.
"This..." he muttered at the bizarre sight, only for the words to echo from behind.
"They are our own... the ones who died by our hands."
_____
A/N:
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In and Out_SnowySmoos