Jackie watched the man fall, perfectly cut in two halves.

His intestines, covered in blood and goodness knew what else, rolled out of the opening and fell on the ground with a wet THUD.

It was superhuman. Whitebeard simply kept stunning them again and again with his astonishing strength.

Eddie had his eyes glued to Boudicca. She had been tied to a wooden pole with a chain, and had clearly been beat up quite a bit. Her black dress had been torn to shreds, revealing her bruised and battered thighs. She was fortunate that this, along with a ripped sleeve, was all the clothing she had lost.

Elma looked around, and saw opponents everywhere. About fifteen on the ground, and maybe fifty or so on the first floor. She couldn't see how they could have possibly made it out here alive without someone like Whitebeard on their side.

"Weapons! Weapons!"

"Hey, we're under attack!"

The bandits began to scramble around the barn, collecting pitchforks and swords and pistols and anything else that was a weapon. It didn't take much to knock them back into their senses.

Whitebeard began to move again, walking towards the upper floor. Behind the wooden railings, people ran back and forth, several arming themselves with shotguns and taking aim on him.

"You three. Can you handle the guys down here?" He asked the three pirates behind him.

"Yeah. We've got this."

He nodded, and continued walking forward.

As the men took aim nervously, Dracul completely lost his composure. "What the hell are you waiting for?! OPEN FIRE!"

They did as they were ordered, and immediately pulled the trigger on Whitebeard. Or at least, where he had been standing.

Because now he stood right next to them.

"H-Huh?"

What little light left was suddenly all gone as the flame disappeared from the lanterns, enveloping the barn in almost complete darkness. But it wasn't dark enough. The moonlight from the small windows would light up the following battle.

Instantaneously, the two men firing at Whitebeard lost their lower jaws. They flew off into the darkness, disappearing from sight.

Their screaming was cut off as their throats were slit with frightening speed by the man hidden in the black curtain of night.

Screaming and hollering. Yelling at one another to spot Whitebeard, all the while straining their eyes uselessly. Even if it were daytime, they would not have laid eyes on him.

Another yell of pain, this time from behind the large group of thugs.

As several of them spun around, they found the source. Or what was left of it. Three halves of a man lying in a spreading pool of blood was all that was left. His legs had been cut in two perfectly, and his severed head rolled around uselessly.

Mere screams of confusion had now turned to pure, undiluted horror. Some men were running, trying to find the stairs. But when they approached the staircase, they discovered they were not the first to try to leave.

At least four people had been butchered trying to leave, judging by the remnants of their heads on the ground. They had not been simply severed. Some had been cut in two pieces right across the eyes, while another head was divided neatly into four pieces.

Now those who tried to escape downstairs tried to jump off the railing, only to be cut in two the moment they tried. Their blood splatter decorated the aging wood of the platform as they collapsed, lifeless.

The braver men had now begun to fire without aiming, without regard for their fellow bandits, some of which got hit in the reckless maneuver. Killing others didn't matter as long as they survived.

That is, until they didn't.

First, they lost their arms.

Next, they lost their legs.

Finally, they lost their heads.

Three swift strikes from a shadow of blood and death. With their severed body parts smoking from heat, the three men collapsed soundlessly.

"Help us, help us, HELP U-"

SPLAT.

"KEEP FIRING! KEEP F-"

SPLOSH.

"God, save me! Oh God pl-"

It was not a battle. Not in the slightest. It was a massacre. Body parts and increasing amounts of blood now filled the floor. Hands. Legs. Entire torsos. Intestines. Eyeballs. Teeth. All covered in blood and severed tissue.

Eyes were beginning to adjust to the moonlight now, but it offered no help. All it did was show to the helpless scum swinging their weapons in desperation an approaching death, clad in a black cloak.

"LEAVE US ALO-"

Another head flew, engulfed in flames.

"I have a fam-"

A stab through a thin, gangly man's sword, right into his heart.

Dracul, along with two other spies, was now desperately trying to open the locked door as the bandits dropped dead one by one. They weren't even slowing down that thing. That shadow.

He tugged pushed forward with all his might, but the iron door did not budge. "Dammit all. Dammit! This...this can't be how I die!" A swift kick to the iron surface only sent a sharp jolt of pain up his leg and spine.

"GAH! Fuck...no, no, no, NO!"

Out of his mind now, he began to punch the door again and again, slamming his bare knuckles against the immovable iron barrier. Behind him, he could hear his men fighting. It meant the bandits must all have been killed.

"I can't die like this! I can't! Let me out! LET ME OUT! NO, NO, NO! THIS ISN'T HOW I DIE! THIS CAN'T BE!"

Something round hit his back. Trembling with fear, he slowly turned his head to look at the object that had fallen beside hit foot.

A human head.

He could still hear the screaming from his fellow spies as they fought. Did the head belong to one of them? He could not tell, with his vision blurred by terror and limited by darkness.

Again and again and again he hit the door with all his might, ignoring the growing splatter of blood on the surface. Through the rush of adrenaline, he barely felt any pain from the loud cracks that came from his knuckles as they were crushed against the door.

"Why? I'm rich, I'm famous...I can't die in a place like...like this. I can't." Tears ran down his face as he lowered his bloody hand to his side. His knuckles had been shattered and pushed into the rest of his hand.

"You order the death of others without being prepared for your own?"

"Huh?"

He suddenly realized the first floor had now fallen into an eerie silence. Not a shout, scream or cry could be heard.

With his knees shaking and feet unsteady, he spun around. In the moonlight, a lone figure stood in the darkness, rising above the dead bodies scattered beneath him.

"You. I know you." The man said, and lowered the hood of his black cloak.

Dark hair and a chinstrap that ran just below his ears. A scar on his left eye. Dracul had seen that face a long time ago.

"You're Whitebeard!" He cried, and his voice echoed in the empty floor.

His cloak, Dracul saw, wasn't just black. It was covered in blood from the tip of the hood to the edge at Whitebeard's feet. The thick, red liquid dripped slowly onto the floor from the soaked cloth, and from Whitebeard's face. The blood, of course, was not his own.

When he took a step forwards, he felt a shiver travel up his spine.

"I should have known you were behind this. Spanish spies, working together with immoral bandits, trying to first poison and then sell a woman...your stench was everywhere, and I got careless." He muttered, slowly approaching the cowering spy.

Another step forward. It was as though he were watching the embodiment of death approach him.

"It was an a-assignment. I had no part in touching her or a-anything. I w-was just-"

"THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE? TO WATCH THEM ASSAULT HER?" The tip of the blade was before his eyes in next to no time.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't speak. Relief washed over him as he felt a sharp pain stab his chest. Maybe...maybe I'll die of a heart attack before he can kill me. He thought, his hand tightly grasping his chest.

"Dracul. I'll make you feel every bit of pain you deserve to feel. Every bit of pain she experienced back then."

She? He's not talking about the princess. He must be talking about her! But why? Why would he-

He was still trying to think when he felt another, even more painful shock pierce his body. Huh?

He looked down, and saw Whitebeard's sword has been pushed into the right side of his chest. A slow stream of blood flowed down the red gash as it was pushed even further, slowly and painfully.

He couldn't make a sound. Nor could he move a muscle. His body has simply frozen up in fear as he helplessly watched the blade stab through him. The pain of the tip exiting through his back was unbearable, and yet there was no yell of pain.

With shallow breaths, he somehow managed to find the strength to look at Whitebeard one more time. His eyes were those of a beast. An inhuman monster.

"You-"

FWOOOOOSH.

He hasn't expected it. The entire blade was suddenly engulfed with flames, immediately igniting his body on fire from the inside. As the heat of the fire began to eat away at his bloody lungs, he found his voice at last.

His scream was the last to be heard in the barn. As the Jackie Pirates looked up to try and find the source of the pained yells, they could see a silhouette of a burning man, waving his arms and cursing his attacker.

Dracul, one of the most famed spies within the Spanish military. One of the most hated Señores within the spies. And yet one of the most favoured men by the nobles. A man respected by most younger than he, and a man who had lived his life to the fullest, with all the riches one could desire beneath his feet.

He died as any lowlife would. His death unseen by those who knew him, his name relatively unknown to the general public. Hated and criticised by those who knew him well. Burned to a crisp slowly, painfully. Feeling every shred of his skin burn and dissolve.

For ten minutes he burned and burned, and screamed till his lungs gave out. For ten long minutes that could well have been ten years, he suffered.

His skin nonexistent and his flesh burned black, he raised his charred hand towards the grim reaper that had brought his death to him. His blind eyes frenzied and wild, he cried out one last time to his death.

"Kill...me. Kill...me...White...beard.""

With dull, lifeless eyes, Whitebeard moved forward to sink his sword through the skull of Senior Dracul. The shriveled skeleton of a man gave a grotesque smile, enjoying the pain of death, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed.

Once more there was silence.

But this time, there was no enemy left to interrupt it.

The Second Ascendant

Sentinel of Flame

"Whitebeard"