Raging waves.
The angry waves that have followed him since he was a child.
He hatched the angry wave from Dragon Egg with his own hands. He fed it bite by bite, wiped its scales one by one, and taught it to understand his every command.
The angry waves that flew with him under the stars on countless nights, the angry waves that fought alongside him in countless battles, and the angry waves that rested their huge heads on his shoulders in countless lonely moments, purring like a cat.
dead.
Not defeated, not driven away, not temporarily retreating. But dead.
The head was torn off the body, drained of blood, and lay on the blood-soaked beach, turning into a pile of rotting, worthless pieces of flesh.
Tormund's brain chose to shut down at this moment.
It's not a coma or a syncope, but a more active and almost instinctive self-protection mechanism than either of them.
His brain closed all perception channels, compressed and packaged all emotions and stored them in the deepest corner, and labeled all memories as "deal with it later".
His body is still alive, his heart is still beating, his lungs are still breathing, and his blood is still flowing. But the person named "Tormund" is no longer in this body.
Redd walked up to him and looked at him condescendingly.
The morning light shines from behind Redd, casting his figure on Tormund's body, like a black, expanding tombstone.
His boots made a squeaking sound when he stepped on the wet tidal flats. Every step squeezed the sand and seawater out of the soles of his feet, leaving deep watermarks on the sand.
He squatted down.
This movement was very slow and deliberate, as if he was observing a creature that was washed ashore and was still alive. His right hand reached to his waist and pulled out the bone knife that he had snatched from Tormund.
Water-blue light circulates on the blade, and the blade glows with a cold luster in the morning light. The light beats more violently as it approaches Tormund's body, as if responding to the aura of its former owner.
Redd used the tip of the knife to lift Tormund's chin and turn his face over from the mud.
The face was even paler than before. It was not due to blood loss - Tormund's blood loss was not much. Most of the injuries on his body were concentrated on his fingers and wrists. Although the kick on his abdomen was heavy, it did not cause any open wounds.
His paleness is at the spiritual level, the instinctive and reflexive withering of the body after the soul is taken away.
His eyes were as empty as two dry wells, his pupils were dilated, and the color of his irises became extremely light, so light that it was almost impossible to distinguish between the original dark brown and black.
His lips were chapped, with debris of sand and seaweed hanging from the corners of his mouth. There was a small gash on his chin that was ripped open by the tip of a knife. Blood seeped out from the wound and flowed down the jawline.
Redd looked at his appearance and frowned slightly.
"Tormund." He called.
There was no response. Those empty eyes had no focus. They didn't know where they were looking, or in other words, they weren't looking at anything.
Redd patted his cheek with the blade of the knife. The force was not heavy, but it was enough to make a conscious person react.
Tormund's face tilted slightly under the slap of the blade, and then returned to its original shape.
His eyes were still empty, his mouth was still slightly open, and his breathing was still steady and slow, like a machine that was still running but no one was operating it.
Redd pondered for a moment, then reached out and grabbed a handful of wet sand from the nearby tidal flat, and smeared it directly on Tormund's face.
The mud was stuck from his forehead to his chin, stuck in his nostrils, stuck in his ears, and stuck in his empty, unfocused eyes.
Tormund's eye twitched.
It's not a violent, obvious twitch, but an extremely subtle muscle tremor that would be almost undetectable if Redd's eyesight were not good enough.
The twitching started from the corners of his eyes, spread along the cheekbones to the cheeks, then to the corners of the mouth, and finally disappeared at the base of the ears.
Then those empty, unfocused eyes turned slightly under the stimulation of the sand - no, not turning, but focusing.
Those two turbid, gray beads began to slowly and difficultly find focus in the void.
Redd wiped the dirt off the knife on Tormund's clothes, and then put the tip of the knife against his Adam's apple again.
The aqua blue light danced on the blade, reflecting Tormund's pale skin a strange blue color.
"Did you hear that?" Redd's voice was not loud, but every word was like a hammer driving a nail into the wood. "Tell me, how did you contact those fish people?"
Tormund's lips moved slightly. The movement was so slight that if Redd hadn't been staring at his mouth, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.
His lips were trembling, as if he was using all his strength to squeeze the air out of his lungs and turn it into sound. But no sound came out.
Only a weak stream of air, carrying the fishy smell of sea water and sand, escaped from his lips.
"Say." Redd's knife tip pressed down slightly, leaving a shallow white mark on Tormund's Adam's apple.
The skin was not broken, but the cold, sharp threat that could cut the skin and trachea at any time was real, concrete, and could not be ignored.
Tormund's eyes were finally fully focused.
The two dark brown eyes slowly moved, pulling Redd's face out of the blurry, distorted light and shadow into a clear world.
He saw that the face - without the black hair - had been burned away by the flames, but the facial features still had the look that made the entire Eastern Free Cities fearful.
There was no emotion in those black eyes, no anger, no cruelty, no mercy, or even patience.
There is only a calm and unquestionable sense of oppression of "I'm asking you a question, and you'd better answer it."
Tormund's throat rolled.
He knew that he would not survive. This was not a guess or a premonition, but an undeniable fact that was already in front of him.
His fleet is gone, his men are dead, his dragons are torn to pieces, and his own hands are maimed, being trampled under the feet of a man who is more demon than demon, with the tip of a knife at his throat.
He is not one of those stupid people who takes chances and thinks he can still escape.
He is Tormund, the "Friend of the Deep Sea", the person in this sea who best understands the boundary between life and death.
He knew that he was already on the other side of death. The only thing he was not sure about was when he would cross over.
But the question is - how does he want to cross?