| Behold, my blackened, grim and gory axe, the searing glow of trenchant steel.
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| I’ll notch another widow to my haft, and wreak red vengeance 'cross the waves.
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| Tales of black-sailed argosies, bedeviled by base treachery!
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| His gaze is as fire, his words are as spear-points, his voice is as thunder,
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| his touch as the plague!
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| Storm-prow cleaving, dragon rending, nighted deeps far, far below,
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| Hail-scur scouring, sea devouring, sunken realm’s ethereal glow.
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| And one night, there came a storm, a storm with searing red winds.
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| Fire and steel rode within it, and vengeance writ in thunder and blood!
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| Down sixty fathoms, from stygian coral-clad tombs, the pitiless abyssal sea
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| disgorges its shambling mold-mottled dead,
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| Dank innards blackly acoil with nests of slithering things!
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| Ghosts aglide upon the eldritch seas, unfathomed voyage to ascendancy,
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| Traitorous blood, the surf roils red, churning crimson, thrice-cursed dead.
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| 'Tis enough that men might dream of being kings without aspiring to the power
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| of gods. |