The boundaries between the seen and unseen fractured beneath the presence of Kinslayer's metamorphosis. Darkness pooled across the scorched battlefield like spilled oil, creeping through shattered stone and molten fissures before swallowing the wasteland beneath a blanket of living shadow.
The air trembled into gales.. Space warped like stressed fabric.. It seemed as though reality itself recoiled from the thing standing before the wounded Executioner.
But Rao did not care..
The dying Mazoku warrior stared into the abyssal silhouette before him with eyes devoid of wonder.
Devoid of fear.. hesitation.. or even reverence for this glorious battle.
Only rage churned within those ivory voids.
In this state, Rao was little more than primal instinct given flesh. He could not comprehend cosmic truths.. nor could he understand or recognize the significance of Kinslayer's transformation.
All his instincts understood was failure.
Despite his desperate efforts, his prey still drew breath.. refusing to die. Refusing to yield before the extent of his might. A true testament to the resilience of his foe, as well as an egregious insult..
A low growl escaped his ruined throat.. A subtle effort that alone shook the entire wasteland.
Rao's mangled fingers curled into trembling fists as the muscles along his ruined body tightened.
Then he inhaled, and the atmosphere physically convulsed.
The terrain ruptured for miles in every direction as Rao used Shinjutsu to seize hold of the world itself. Naten surged upward through unseen channels beneath Vescrutia's crust and poured toward the Executioner in endless torrents.
The shattered remains of forests bent inward. Clouds twisted into spiraling vortexes overhead. The air itself seemed to collapse toward the Executioner as though reality had become trapped within the pull of an invisible singularity.
And as Rao continued drawing breath, the wounds across his body began to twitch and mend. Although, incredibly slowly.. It was significant .
The same energy he was pulling into his lungs from the world around him was simultaneously stitching ruined flesh together strand by strand. Fractured bones creaked as they realigned.. Torn muscle reattached itself. Damaged organs struggled toward function once more.
Even his soul began to mend the wounds carved into it by the Crimson Orchid.
This was the true purpose of this trance. It was a restorative, hibernative technique geared toward repairing spiritual lacerations by using the planet as an engine.. which in turn, allowed his body to heal as well. He simply needed to rely on his primal reflexes until the process was done.. but his rage wouldn't allow it to reach that point.
Entire fault lines widened beneath Rao's feet as he continued to inhale.
Molten rock erupted from fissures stretching across the horizon as Vescrutia itself groaned beneath the burden of what was coming. Kinslayer's aura pressed against him like a furnace of gravitational force. But Rao persisted through the vibrational barrage from his voice.
His jaw slowly became wider.. and wider.. until it seemed impossible that flesh and bone could withstand the strain. And he compressed every joule of energy he amassed into a single point held behind his fangs.
Then Rao roared, but this time, the otherworldly attack was different.
The first wave had been a cataclysm.
An indiscriminate detonation that sought to annihilate everything unfortunate enough to exist within its reach. This time it was more focused. Like a personal execution. Rao released a piercing pillar of incandescent doom from his unhinged jaw that crossed the wasteland in an instant. And the beam itself was massive— large enough to dwarf entire Kingdoms in its shadow as it ripped bedrock into the darkened skies enroute to Kinslayer.
The Throes of Prophecy [End]
-
The Bhalian Empire
- War Herald
- Posts: 95
- Joined: Sun Jan 14, 2024 4:09 pm
Re: The Throes of Prophecy
The canopy of Kinslayer’s black locs swayed, not in the wind, but in response to the rhythmic, hypnotic pulses of his own aura—a tide of obsidian shadow that clung to him like a second skin. Beneath those heavy locks, his eyes—hollow, ancient, and utterly indifferent—remained fixed on Rao.
Rao was an anomaly. To watch the mortal pull life from Vescrutia, to witness the planet itself mend his wounds and soothe his burning spirit, was to watch a dance of divine synchronicity. For a moment, Kin had almost felt the stirrings of a question he had long buried: Who are the true villains here? B’halia or humanity?
But Kin’s empathy was a cold, distant thing. Rao’s power was formidable, drawing from realms Kin understood only in abstract terms. The Mazoku’s connection to the planet ran deeper than mere magic; it was symbiotic, spiritual, almost divine. Where Kin drew from the void—the origin of all things—Rao drew from life itself.
And yet despite its prominence, its power, it was...
Limited.
Kin felt the foundations of reality like a seasoned sailor felt the tides. Where Rao manipulated the planet's energy, Kin commanded the very seams that stitched existence together.
Time.
Reality
Space.
The black canvas upon which all creation was painted. These were not powers to be wielded; they were extensions of his being, born from the primordial chaos that predated light itself.
Rao, the Mazoku, stood trembling with the exertion of his craft. He was a testament to persistence, a collection of scars and stories earned through blood. Kin could see it all—the tapestries of struggle, the endless hours of discipline etched into the young warrior’s soul. It was impressive. It was, in any other context, worthy of honor. But Kin’s anchor was not built on respect. It was built on the defiance of the mortal condition.
"I must thank you, Mazoku," Kin’s voice drifted, resonant and devoid of warmth. "You have helped me come to terms with things that I have been fighting to accept."
Rao did not answer. He was channeling, his spirit raw and exposed as he prepared a Primordial Roar. The air grew brittle, fracturing under the pressure of his intent.
"Earlier," Kin continued, his shadow-coils slithering in the air like predatory serpents, " I asked your fellow what mattered most. The form of a thing, or its nature. But now, I have my own answer."
The Primordial Roar erupted. It was a torrential column of searing energy, a blinding defiance that threatened to scour the very earth clean. It tore toward Kin, a golden sun manifesting in the dark.
Kin did not move. He did not brace for impact. He reached out with his mind—and the manifested night beneath his feet erupted in several coils of black that shimmered like moving serpents.
This was space itself thickening, turning from an opaque barrier of absolute density. The roar hit the barrier without piercing it. Instead, the beam suffered the indignity of bending. It swirled, curling like liquid gold around an invisible, swirling vortex. Kin wasn’t blocking the attack; he was rewriting the geometry of the immediate area.
Rao’s expression shifted from ferocity to dawning, hollow terror. He felt it then—the heavy, suffocating pressure of his own technique being folded back upon his reality. Kin was not just a fighter; he was the master of the seams. He captured the roaring energy within a sphere of finite, isolated reality.
"My form matters not," Kin whispered, though his voice boomed within the collapsing pocket of space. "My nature matters not."
The trapped beam pulsed, frantic and trapped, reflecting off the warped planes of reality like a dying star in a mirrored box. Kin tightened his grip. The sphere shrank. The roar, once a weapon of cataclysmic liberation, became a volatile, compressed burden that turned inward. It did not explode outward to level the landscape. It imploded, a gravitational suicide that drew all light into a singular, agonizing point of collapse.
Reality screamed as it snapped back into alignment. The correction was absolute.
A sudden, towering eruption tore upward, a pillar of force so focused and intense it punched through the sky. Clouds were shredded like lace, and the higher atmosphere groaned as the shockwave pierced the asteroid belt, shattering leagues of stone into celestial dust.
Then, silence.
The dust settled, and the last vestiges of Kin’s technique dissipated, bleeding back into the unseen seams of the world. Standing amidst the scorched, obsidian ruin, Kin watched the empty space where the Mazoku had been. There was no victory in his gaze, only a lingering, cold clarity.
" I am darkness itself," Kin murmured to the empty air, his black locs finally coming to rest. "I am void. I become what I must to achieve what I must. I am the arbiter of change, the agent of chaos, and its architect."
He looked up at the stars, those distant, mocking pinpricks of light that governed the destinies of lesser things. He felt no tether to them, no debt to the dogma of B’halia, and no kinship with the mortals who bled for status or salvation.
" While others may cling to fate and destiny," he said, his presence fading until he was little more than a shadow cast by the dying embers of the battle, " I am the reflection of the before—the silence from which such notions were sired."
Rao was an anomaly. To watch the mortal pull life from Vescrutia, to witness the planet itself mend his wounds and soothe his burning spirit, was to watch a dance of divine synchronicity. For a moment, Kin had almost felt the stirrings of a question he had long buried: Who are the true villains here? B’halia or humanity?
But Kin’s empathy was a cold, distant thing. Rao’s power was formidable, drawing from realms Kin understood only in abstract terms. The Mazoku’s connection to the planet ran deeper than mere magic; it was symbiotic, spiritual, almost divine. Where Kin drew from the void—the origin of all things—Rao drew from life itself.
And yet despite its prominence, its power, it was...
Limited.
Kin felt the foundations of reality like a seasoned sailor felt the tides. Where Rao manipulated the planet's energy, Kin commanded the very seams that stitched existence together.
Time.
Reality
Space.
The black canvas upon which all creation was painted. These were not powers to be wielded; they were extensions of his being, born from the primordial chaos that predated light itself.
Rao, the Mazoku, stood trembling with the exertion of his craft. He was a testament to persistence, a collection of scars and stories earned through blood. Kin could see it all—the tapestries of struggle, the endless hours of discipline etched into the young warrior’s soul. It was impressive. It was, in any other context, worthy of honor. But Kin’s anchor was not built on respect. It was built on the defiance of the mortal condition.
"I must thank you, Mazoku," Kin’s voice drifted, resonant and devoid of warmth. "You have helped me come to terms with things that I have been fighting to accept."
Rao did not answer. He was channeling, his spirit raw and exposed as he prepared a Primordial Roar. The air grew brittle, fracturing under the pressure of his intent.
"Earlier," Kin continued, his shadow-coils slithering in the air like predatory serpents, " I asked your fellow what mattered most. The form of a thing, or its nature. But now, I have my own answer."
The Primordial Roar erupted. It was a torrential column of searing energy, a blinding defiance that threatened to scour the very earth clean. It tore toward Kin, a golden sun manifesting in the dark.
Kin did not move. He did not brace for impact. He reached out with his mind—and the manifested night beneath his feet erupted in several coils of black that shimmered like moving serpents.
This was space itself thickening, turning from an opaque barrier of absolute density. The roar hit the barrier without piercing it. Instead, the beam suffered the indignity of bending. It swirled, curling like liquid gold around an invisible, swirling vortex. Kin wasn’t blocking the attack; he was rewriting the geometry of the immediate area.
Rao’s expression shifted from ferocity to dawning, hollow terror. He felt it then—the heavy, suffocating pressure of his own technique being folded back upon his reality. Kin was not just a fighter; he was the master of the seams. He captured the roaring energy within a sphere of finite, isolated reality.
"My form matters not," Kin whispered, though his voice boomed within the collapsing pocket of space. "My nature matters not."
The trapped beam pulsed, frantic and trapped, reflecting off the warped planes of reality like a dying star in a mirrored box. Kin tightened his grip. The sphere shrank. The roar, once a weapon of cataclysmic liberation, became a volatile, compressed burden that turned inward. It did not explode outward to level the landscape. It imploded, a gravitational suicide that drew all light into a singular, agonizing point of collapse.
Reality screamed as it snapped back into alignment. The correction was absolute.
A sudden, towering eruption tore upward, a pillar of force so focused and intense it punched through the sky. Clouds were shredded like lace, and the higher atmosphere groaned as the shockwave pierced the asteroid belt, shattering leagues of stone into celestial dust.
Then, silence.
The dust settled, and the last vestiges of Kin’s technique dissipated, bleeding back into the unseen seams of the world. Standing amidst the scorched, obsidian ruin, Kin watched the empty space where the Mazoku had been. There was no victory in his gaze, only a lingering, cold clarity.
" I am darkness itself," Kin murmured to the empty air, his black locs finally coming to rest. "I am void. I become what I must to achieve what I must. I am the arbiter of change, the agent of chaos, and its architect."
He looked up at the stars, those distant, mocking pinpricks of light that governed the destinies of lesser things. He felt no tether to them, no debt to the dogma of B’halia, and no kinship with the mortals who bled for status or salvation.
" While others may cling to fate and destiny," he said, his presence fading until he was little more than a shadow cast by the dying embers of the battle, " I am the reflection of the before—the silence from which such notions were sired."
-
The Yaarou Clan
- Drifter
- Posts: 141
- Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2024 6:42 pm
Re: The Throes of Prophecy
The battlefield had finally grown silent..
The celestial echoes of Rao's voice had faded into silence..
And the spatial distortion left behind Kinslayer's final blow dissolved soon after..
What remained was just an endless ocean of ash drifting across the ruined wasteland, obscuring the horizon beneath curtains of gray and crimson dust.
And somewhere within that graveyard... A wet cough broke the silence.
Then another, splattering black blood across scorched stone.
Slowly, Hiroshi Yaarou dragged himself from beneath a mound of charred rubble.. and the sight was almost pitiful.
Almost..
One of his arms had been completely torn from its socket, and his remaining hand shook violently as it pressed against the ground for support. Most of his flesh had been stripped from his boned by Rao's Primordial Roar.
The left side of his face was little more than exposed sinew scorched to his skull, with one eye swollen shut beneath burns so severe that even Shokotsu struggled to recognize where the damage ended and his body began.
He tried his best to draw breath, but with every haggard attempt, he could feel fragments of his shattered ribs shift beneath ravaged muscle. So he wheezed quietly.. and painfully.
By all reasonable measures, the man should have been dead.
And yet, despite all odds, the sorcerer decided to laugh.
A low, ragged sound that sifted through the holes in his throat before it rapidly devolved into violent coughing fit.
Again, blood poured from his mouth.. but still he laughed.
Shokotsu crawled sluggishly through his body, desperately attempting repairs with what little slivers of Naten remained within him. The technique stitched ruined flesh together millimeter by agonizing millimeter, but the process was pathetic compared to its usual efficacy.
His reserves were exhausted..
His body was ruined..
And still...
The sorcerer laughed.. The sound carried across the barren lot like the maniacal cackle of a fiend who found humor in his own failure.
But then the laughter stopped as his expression twisted beyond what seemed to be the onset clutches of madness.. and what replaced his devilish smile was a ghoulish scowl one would expect from a man with half a face.
"You..."
The word emerged as little more than a growl as he forced himself upright on mangled legs. But as Hiroshi's remaining eye found Kinslayer in his new form.. every ounce of restraint left him.
"Have you.. ANY idea of what you've done?"
His voice cracked. Overwhelmed by cascading waves of pure vitriol..
“..you fatuous.. ignorant fuck..”
..and tides of excruciating of pain
"I was there."
He mused, staggering forward toward the arbiter of this nightmare. Toward this cosmic.. petulant creature.
"I was RIGHT THERE."
His remaining hand fell into a trembling fist that he could hardly hold firm..
"Do you understand what you've taken from me? Do you—?"
His voice trembled.
"I had done it.. I solved all of it."
The words spilled from him now.
Years. Centuries. Millennia of obsession pouring from a shattered man who could no longer contain himself.
"I had them."
His eye widened.
".. the Executioners.."
".. the city.. The council.. The throne.. All of it!"
Every word came louder than the last as hjs lips peeled back into a grizzly, broken grin.
“..I even had you.. the Nether Serpent..”
He exclaimed.. no longer able to control the volume or fury in his voice.
"I was going to become Xhi'on!"
The declaration echoed across the ruined wasteland. Not as arrogance.
But conviction.
Absolute conviction. Hiroshi genuinely believed his destiny had already been decided.. That after years.. centuries.. millennia of work and planning, that victory had already belonged to him.
"..it was my destiny."
And now, he'd merely been robbed at the final moment. By this.. child wielding power beyond their imagination.. and undoubtedly beyond their control.
It was in that instant something became horrifyingly clear in Hiroshi's mind.
"..it IS my destiny."
Despite his injuries.. Despite his missing arm.. Despite standing literally one step from death's door.
Hiroshi still believed he could win.
"I should kill you where you stand.. for your.. impudence.. "
His remaining eye narrowed, burning with a faint vermillion hue.
"..no.. Perhaps I.. tear your soul apart.. and bind it to my own.” He hissed as blood spilled from his lips. And slowly, this angry husky closed the distance between him and Kinslayer.
"I should make you watch while I build my kingdom from your filthy Shi bones.."
His body nearly collapsed, but hubris and spite pushed him forward.
Shaking. Bleeding..
The irony was almost tragic.
For all the fury pouring from him… There was scarcely enough Naten left inside his body to keep his heart beating. Yet Hiroshi continued forward anyway, because surrender had never been part of his nature.
Even now, as the dream he had spent a thousands of lifetime chasing was fading reduced to ash before his remaining eye.. Hiroshi would prefer death than submission.
Because If destiny would not kneel before him willingly… He would toil through hell until he found a way to take them by the throat, and bend the fates to his will. As he had always done.
"..you are nothing..to me. To.. thr Xhi’on. "
The celestial echoes of Rao's voice had faded into silence..
And the spatial distortion left behind Kinslayer's final blow dissolved soon after..
What remained was just an endless ocean of ash drifting across the ruined wasteland, obscuring the horizon beneath curtains of gray and crimson dust.
And somewhere within that graveyard... A wet cough broke the silence.
Then another, splattering black blood across scorched stone.
Slowly, Hiroshi Yaarou dragged himself from beneath a mound of charred rubble.. and the sight was almost pitiful.
Almost..
One of his arms had been completely torn from its socket, and his remaining hand shook violently as it pressed against the ground for support. Most of his flesh had been stripped from his boned by Rao's Primordial Roar.
The left side of his face was little more than exposed sinew scorched to his skull, with one eye swollen shut beneath burns so severe that even Shokotsu struggled to recognize where the damage ended and his body began.
He tried his best to draw breath, but with every haggard attempt, he could feel fragments of his shattered ribs shift beneath ravaged muscle. So he wheezed quietly.. and painfully.
By all reasonable measures, the man should have been dead.
And yet, despite all odds, the sorcerer decided to laugh.
A low, ragged sound that sifted through the holes in his throat before it rapidly devolved into violent coughing fit.
Again, blood poured from his mouth.. but still he laughed.
Shokotsu crawled sluggishly through his body, desperately attempting repairs with what little slivers of Naten remained within him. The technique stitched ruined flesh together millimeter by agonizing millimeter, but the process was pathetic compared to its usual efficacy.
His reserves were exhausted..
His body was ruined..
And still...
The sorcerer laughed.. The sound carried across the barren lot like the maniacal cackle of a fiend who found humor in his own failure.
But then the laughter stopped as his expression twisted beyond what seemed to be the onset clutches of madness.. and what replaced his devilish smile was a ghoulish scowl one would expect from a man with half a face.
"You..."
The word emerged as little more than a growl as he forced himself upright on mangled legs. But as Hiroshi's remaining eye found Kinslayer in his new form.. every ounce of restraint left him.
"Have you.. ANY idea of what you've done?"
His voice cracked. Overwhelmed by cascading waves of pure vitriol..
“..you fatuous.. ignorant fuck..”
..and tides of excruciating of pain
"I was there."
He mused, staggering forward toward the arbiter of this nightmare. Toward this cosmic.. petulant creature.
"I was RIGHT THERE."
His remaining hand fell into a trembling fist that he could hardly hold firm..
"Do you understand what you've taken from me? Do you—?"
His voice trembled.
"I had done it.. I solved all of it."
The words spilled from him now.
Years. Centuries. Millennia of obsession pouring from a shattered man who could no longer contain himself.
"I had them."
His eye widened.
".. the Executioners.."
".. the city.. The council.. The throne.. All of it!"
Every word came louder than the last as hjs lips peeled back into a grizzly, broken grin.
“..I even had you.. the Nether Serpent..”
He exclaimed.. no longer able to control the volume or fury in his voice.
"I was going to become Xhi'on!"
The declaration echoed across the ruined wasteland. Not as arrogance.
But conviction.
Absolute conviction. Hiroshi genuinely believed his destiny had already been decided.. That after years.. centuries.. millennia of work and planning, that victory had already belonged to him.
"..it was my destiny."
And now, he'd merely been robbed at the final moment. By this.. child wielding power beyond their imagination.. and undoubtedly beyond their control.
It was in that instant something became horrifyingly clear in Hiroshi's mind.
"..it IS my destiny."
Despite his injuries.. Despite his missing arm.. Despite standing literally one step from death's door.
Hiroshi still believed he could win.
"I should kill you where you stand.. for your.. impudence.. "
His remaining eye narrowed, burning with a faint vermillion hue.
"..no.. Perhaps I.. tear your soul apart.. and bind it to my own.” He hissed as blood spilled from his lips. And slowly, this angry husky closed the distance between him and Kinslayer.
"I should make you watch while I build my kingdom from your filthy Shi bones.."
His body nearly collapsed, but hubris and spite pushed him forward.
Shaking. Bleeding..
The irony was almost tragic.
For all the fury pouring from him… There was scarcely enough Naten left inside his body to keep his heart beating. Yet Hiroshi continued forward anyway, because surrender had never been part of his nature.
Even now, as the dream he had spent a thousands of lifetime chasing was fading reduced to ash before his remaining eye.. Hiroshi would prefer death than submission.
Because If destiny would not kneel before him willingly… He would toil through hell until he found a way to take them by the throat, and bend the fates to his will. As he had always done.
"..you are nothing..to me. To.. thr Xhi’on. "
Re: The Throes of Prophecy
The air hung thick with the reek of pulverized stone and burnt flesh, a testament to the nightmarish collision of Edo and B'halia. Where once proud spires pierced the sky, now only jagged teeth of concrete clawed at a bruised, smoke-choked firmament. From the very heart of this apocalyptic canvas, a figure stirred.
Hiroshi Yaarou, architect of a millennia-long destiny, crawled from the rubble. He was a mockery of his former formidable self. One arm was a mangled ruin, a shredded sleeve clinging to nothing but raw bone and sinew. Half his face was a grotesque landscape of raw, weeping tissue and splintered bone, a stark contrast to the singular, burning eye that remained, alight with an inferno of rage. He scurried, not walked, his movements closer to a broken, desperate scuttle. Like the vermin he was, innovative, hard to kill. Even now, despite suffering from an amalgam of afflictions and wounds that struggled to heal, he remained… teetering, but alive.
Each step a tremor of agony that wracked his body. His breath came in ragged, hacking gasps, each exhalation a cloud of dust and spittle. Yet, his voice, though hoarse and grating like stones grinding together, found its venom.
Hiroshi’s tirade was a symphony of sputtering rage and grandiose self-pity.
It was not until Hiroshi was a bare few feet away, his remaining eye blazing with a desperate, incandescent hatred, that Kin finally acknowledged him with words.
“Come then, Hiroshi…” Kin’s voice was a low hum, a resonance that vibrated through the very air, calming the inferno around them for a fleeting moment. He opened his arms wide, a gesture both inviting and terrifying, challenging Hiroshi to unleash whatever arbiter he could think of, whatever final gambit he could bank his victory on, to unleash it now while Kin was defenseless.
The Warlock snarled, a grimace distorting his mangled features further. With a final, guttural cry, he struck with a fist balled as tightly as he could, using his body weight, every last shard of his dying strength, to unleash a haymaker towards his jaw, and lost his footing. Coliding into Kinslayer.
A dark tendril of shadow snaked from Kin’s open palm, delicately touching Hiroshi’s ruined face. “Do not be so hard on yourself, Defiler…” Kin’s voice was soft, laced with an ancient, weary pity. “After all…”
His touch lingered, then withdrew. “You are only human.”
The words were a hammer blow, crushing Hiroshi’s millennia-spanning hubris, his dreams of divinity, his every carefully constructed lie. Only human. The ultimate dilution of the grandeur he inspired to obtain.
Kin first considered devouring Hiroshi’s soul, keeping it for himself, a trophy, a source of power. But one thing he understood was that Hiroshi’s level of cunning, his relentless, insidious ingenuity, was probably the closest thing to a divine trait he possessed. He would not risk this pest finding a way to return, or worse, to overtake him, to corrupt even his boundless power. No… what Hiroshi deserved, what Kin would grant him, came to complete and total oblivion. An end so absolute, so profound, that no trace of him would ever remain.
“Kiss the void…”
With that final statement, Kin, wreathed in Malice, plunged his shadowy hand into the Warlock’s chest, not through the withered flesh, but through the very fabric of his being. And from that gaping, ethereal wound, a pulsing orb of light, no larger than a child’s fist, emerged. It was Hiroshi’s soul. Manifested within the palm of Kin’s hand.
It was a crude, decrepit thing, saturated with sin ungimable. Things that caused even Kin to shudder. The atrocities Hiroshi had committed against his own family, children, had been whispered through the ages, crimes so heinous they transcended mere human depravity. Between the two of them, Hiroshi was the more deserving of the mantle of Kinslayer. His hands were steeped in the blood of his kin, his heart a tomb of betrayal. He deserved nothing less than total discretion, a complete erasure from existence.
And that is exactly what Kin granted. His clawed hand, amassed with vast, cosmic energy, compressed around Hiroshi’s spiritual essence with a terrible vehemence, a fearsome vice grip. To Hiroshi’s dying perception, it felt like the weight of the world itself compressing around him, a python around his neck, an anaconda crushing his torso, squeezing the very air from his lungs. His decrepit soul pulsed, flickered, tried desperately to resist, but could take no more.
It was obliterated. There was no scream, no final gasp, only a silent implosion of light and malice, a sudden, blinding nothing where a soul had been.
Kin’s violet gaze, hitherto obscured by the swirling shadows of his power, was revealed, and for the first time since this fray began, Hiroshi truly saw his eyes in his last, fading instant of awareness. They were… beautiful, hauntingly so, like peering into the starlit seas of the skies, vast and indifferent.
“I will concede to your beliefs, Hiroshi.” Kin’s voice, now devoid of all malice, was a quiet, resonating sorrow. “The moment you decided to make me your prey… this was always meant to be your fate.”
As Kin spoke those final words, he felt a fierce pain deep in his chest; it spread through his neck, spiderwebbing along his face. Crackles of burning light began to seep from those filigree lines, brilliant against his shadowy skin.
“Dammit… this… is as far as I can go.”
His transformation had reached its capacity, cracking like the carapace of a crustacean before shattering entirely, revealing his original humanoid form. The coiled shadows recoiled, dissipating into the ruined air, leaving behind a man. Extreme exhaustion overwhelmed him, forcing him to his bended knee. His breath was ragged, but at the very least, his most troubling wounds had healed. Yet, he could scarcely move, his muscles screaming in protest. An adequate price to pay for the victory he had barely achieved today.
This… power was something beyond anything he might have ever imagined. If he learned to truly master it, to wield it without such devastating personal cost, there would be nothing… no one that could stop him from achieving Stellar Supreme. The dead city lay around him, a monument to the price of conflict. And in its ashes, a new, greater ambition began to take root in the heart of Kin.
Hiroshi Yaarou, architect of a millennia-long destiny, crawled from the rubble. He was a mockery of his former formidable self. One arm was a mangled ruin, a shredded sleeve clinging to nothing but raw bone and sinew. Half his face was a grotesque landscape of raw, weeping tissue and splintered bone, a stark contrast to the singular, burning eye that remained, alight with an inferno of rage. He scurried, not walked, his movements closer to a broken, desperate scuttle. Like the vermin he was, innovative, hard to kill. Even now, despite suffering from an amalgam of afflictions and wounds that struggled to heal, he remained… teetering, but alive.
Each step a tremor of agony that wracked his body. His breath came in ragged, hacking gasps, each exhalation a cloud of dust and spittle. Yet, his voice, though hoarse and grating like stones grinding together, found its venom.
Kin’s gaze sat upon Hiroshi as the wounded sorcerer waddled towards him. The Nether Serpent stood amidst the devastation, a dark, silent sentinel, his form a coalesced shadow against the infernal glow of the burning landscape. He offered no immediate response, allowing Hiroshi his cathartic release, his furious lamentations about the master plan that had taken centuries to weave, the conquest of the city he had meticulously orchestrated, the very throne he had envisioned himself upon as "Xhi'on.""You..."
The word emerged as little more than a growl as he forced himself upright on mangled legs. But as Hiroshi's remaining eye found Kinslayer in his new form.. every ounce of restraint left him.
"Have you.. ANY idea of what you've done?"
His voice cracked. Overwhelmed by cascading waves of pure vitriol..
“..you fatuous.. ignorant fuck..”
Hiroshi’s tirade was a symphony of sputtering rage and grandiose self-pity.
Kin said nothing, not at first. He understood something that Hiroshi, in his deepest, most primal fear, finally did as well. He could not kill Kinslayer. The tragic irony was palpable. Even now, so close to the end of his life, his very essence bleeding out onto the desecrated ground, he still spouted this nonsense. His pride was greater than his fading heartbeat. His proclamation felt hollow, empty, as if he was trying to convince himself rather than Kin, to somehow will a different reality into existence through sheer force of ego.But conviction.
Absolute conviction. Hiroshi genuinely believed his destiny had already been decided.. That after years.. centuries.. millennia of work and planning, that victory had already belonged to him.
"..it was my destiny."
And now, he'd merely been robbed at the final moment. By this.. child wielding power beyond their imagination.. and undoubtedly beyond their control.
It was in that instant something became horrifyingly clear in Hiroshi's mind.
"..it IS my destiny."
Despite his injuries.. Despite his missing arm.. Despite standing literally one step from death's door.
It was not until Hiroshi was a bare few feet away, his remaining eye blazing with a desperate, incandescent hatred, that Kin finally acknowledged him with words.
“Come then, Hiroshi…” Kin’s voice was a low hum, a resonance that vibrated through the very air, calming the inferno around them for a fleeting moment. He opened his arms wide, a gesture both inviting and terrifying, challenging Hiroshi to unleash whatever arbiter he could think of, whatever final gambit he could bank his victory on, to unleash it now while Kin was defenseless.
The Warlock snarled, a grimace distorting his mangled features further. With a final, guttural cry, he struck with a fist balled as tightly as he could, using his body weight, every last shard of his dying strength, to unleash a haymaker towards his jaw, and lost his footing. Coliding into Kinslayer.
A dark tendril of shadow snaked from Kin’s open palm, delicately touching Hiroshi’s ruined face. “Do not be so hard on yourself, Defiler…” Kin’s voice was soft, laced with an ancient, weary pity. “After all…”
His touch lingered, then withdrew. “You are only human.”
The words were a hammer blow, crushing Hiroshi’s millennia-spanning hubris, his dreams of divinity, his every carefully constructed lie. Only human. The ultimate dilution of the grandeur he inspired to obtain.
Kin first considered devouring Hiroshi’s soul, keeping it for himself, a trophy, a source of power. But one thing he understood was that Hiroshi’s level of cunning, his relentless, insidious ingenuity, was probably the closest thing to a divine trait he possessed. He would not risk this pest finding a way to return, or worse, to overtake him, to corrupt even his boundless power. No… what Hiroshi deserved, what Kin would grant him, came to complete and total oblivion. An end so absolute, so profound, that no trace of him would ever remain.
“Kiss the void…”
With that final statement, Kin, wreathed in Malice, plunged his shadowy hand into the Warlock’s chest, not through the withered flesh, but through the very fabric of his being. And from that gaping, ethereal wound, a pulsing orb of light, no larger than a child’s fist, emerged. It was Hiroshi’s soul. Manifested within the palm of Kin’s hand.
It was a crude, decrepit thing, saturated with sin ungimable. Things that caused even Kin to shudder. The atrocities Hiroshi had committed against his own family, children, had been whispered through the ages, crimes so heinous they transcended mere human depravity. Between the two of them, Hiroshi was the more deserving of the mantle of Kinslayer. His hands were steeped in the blood of his kin, his heart a tomb of betrayal. He deserved nothing less than total discretion, a complete erasure from existence.
And that is exactly what Kin granted. His clawed hand, amassed with vast, cosmic energy, compressed around Hiroshi’s spiritual essence with a terrible vehemence, a fearsome vice grip. To Hiroshi’s dying perception, it felt like the weight of the world itself compressing around him, a python around his neck, an anaconda crushing his torso, squeezing the very air from his lungs. His decrepit soul pulsed, flickered, tried desperately to resist, but could take no more.
It was obliterated. There was no scream, no final gasp, only a silent implosion of light and malice, a sudden, blinding nothing where a soul had been.
Kin’s violet gaze, hitherto obscured by the swirling shadows of his power, was revealed, and for the first time since this fray began, Hiroshi truly saw his eyes in his last, fading instant of awareness. They were… beautiful, hauntingly so, like peering into the starlit seas of the skies, vast and indifferent.
“I will concede to your beliefs, Hiroshi.” Kin’s voice, now devoid of all malice, was a quiet, resonating sorrow. “The moment you decided to make me your prey… this was always meant to be your fate.”
As Kin spoke those final words, he felt a fierce pain deep in his chest; it spread through his neck, spiderwebbing along his face. Crackles of burning light began to seep from those filigree lines, brilliant against his shadowy skin.
“Dammit… this… is as far as I can go.”
His transformation had reached its capacity, cracking like the carapace of a crustacean before shattering entirely, revealing his original humanoid form. The coiled shadows recoiled, dissipating into the ruined air, leaving behind a man. Extreme exhaustion overwhelmed him, forcing him to his bended knee. His breath was ragged, but at the very least, his most troubling wounds had healed. Yet, he could scarcely move, his muscles screaming in protest. An adequate price to pay for the victory he had barely achieved today.
This… power was something beyond anything he might have ever imagined. If he learned to truly master it, to wield it without such devastating personal cost, there would be nothing… no one that could stop him from achieving Stellar Supreme. The dead city lay around him, a monument to the price of conflict. And in its ashes, a new, greater ambition began to take root in the heart of Kin.
-
The Yaarou Clan
- Drifter
- Posts: 141
- Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2024 6:42 pm
Re: The Throes of Prophecy
Meanwhile..
Far beneath the smoldering corpse of Qiyoto, the citizens of the Yaarou clan held tight to their loved ones within the final bastion of hope they possessed.
The subterranean fortress stretched deep beneath the ruined city, carved into bedrock over countless generations as a final refuge should the unthinkable come to pass. Such as it has today..
Its vast chambers teemed with displaced citizens, wounded Kurotori soldiers, exhausted sages, and frightened children who clung desperately to their families in what was perhaps their final hours.
Barely a sound was made among the sea of dread filled faces. Nothing.. not a prayer or comment. Only silence. An eerie, suffocating silence as every eye fixated upon the hundreds of hovering projections suspended throughout the fortress via the AION sentinels.
Though countless of their units had been destroyed during the battle above, enough remained operational to maintain a live relay of the devastation unfolding across Edo.. And devastation hardly felt adequate.
The entire city was completely gone. Purged down to the finest particulate.
The proud capital of the Yaarou Clan was now a wasteland of molten crust and drifting ash. Entire districts no longer existed. Ancient landmarks, monuments and statues that stood for centuries.. vanished beneath explosions powerful enough to scar Edo to its mantle.
Many within the fortress struggled to even comprehend what they were witnessing.
A pair of Mazoku Executioners.. The Fabled Avatar of The Black Sun.. And the Defiler himself..
The collision of those three separate legends had transformed their homeland into a hellscape. Though not before exterminating any and every effort put forth in resistance.. All but one. Him.
The despised one.
The Defiler..
The monster who had betrayed them all, murdered his kin, and spent centuries cultivating horrors in vain efforts of immortality.
It was truly nightmarish irony that he remained their last hope. He was the furthest thing from a hero, but he was the last, and apparently, the only one of them strong enough to hold a candle in defense of the Yaarou Clan. Those who knew of his notorious past either feared the ghoulish reverent, or abhorred him entirely. But for the moment, or for however long he lived, those atrocities and vile acts of treason would be suspended indefinitely.
For he alone was the last vestige standing between the Yaarou Clan and certain doom.
..and they watched on in horror as he failed.
Across the projections, Hiroshi's broken body staggered toward Kinslayer amidst the ashes.
The citizens watched his final desperate outburst..
His final declarations, the subsequent spiral toward madness, and that pathetic final act of defiance. The Nether Serpent ended him in an instant— with a twisted smile that branded itself into the psyche of every pair of eyes that watched.
Several of them averted their gaze while others lowered their heads. Several more openly wept, filling the once solemn room with waves of ensuing dread. However, one man never broke his focus.
High above the fortress floor, standing upon the highest observation platform, Sevrin remained motionless with his blindfolded gaze pointed toward the surface. And though he could not physically see, he perceived the entire battle through telepathic means. And he too watched on with crushing despair as Kinslayer tore Hiroshi's soul from his chest and cast it into oblivion before returning to a more humanoid form.
And despite seeing the child look both exhausted and injured, Sevrin felt no relief.. If anything, what he had seen today exhibited had only reinforced a horrifying truth.
The Nether Serpent was everything the legends claimed. Perhaps worse..
He had survived.. everything they threw at him. Powers capable of rewriting landscapes, or twisting fate itself. And still, he remained standing like some defiant demon.
Sevrin's hand slowly tightened into a fist. So tight that his nails punctured straight through his palm and trickled blood down his fingers. But he scarcely felt any pain.. The weight of his failure had numbed him to anything other than shame.
He truly believed Hiroshi would prevail. Not merely on account of his strength.. But his cunning. No creature in history had embodied malice, tenacity, and ingenuity quite like the Defiler. He was a worm who grew to hunt titans and dragons. Titans like the Stormbringer.. the strongest warrior many of the Yaarou ever knew.
Sevrin envisioned many futures where Hiroshi was victorious.. and in his glory, he overthrew Hitomi reign. And from the shadows, Sevrin would guide the future of the Yaarou Clan through a puppet king whose ambition rivaled the heavens themselves.
But now that future lay dead in the ashes beside its arbiter.
“..a fool.”
He lamented under his breath, sickened by his own hubris. For the first time in many years, the old man found himself without a plan, leverage, or direction.
Only dread.
Their military was shattered..
Thousands of their finest littered the dead city, and thousands more were wounded. Only the AION Sentinels remained in meaningful numbers, their replication protocols persevering despite the devastation.
Yet even that felt insignificant..
No machine could comfort the reality looming before them. For Sevrin knew the moment that the Shi demon recovered his strength, that he and every surviving member of the Yaarou clan would be next. And the boy would scorch all of Vescrutia in his path of vengeance.
Still, Sevrin refused submission.
“Hmph..” He turned from the projections and leapt from the observation platform.
His robes billowed behind him as he descended several stories before landing beside the remaining elders within a courtyard.
Ayune knelt beside Keiko, healing the grievous injuries she had suffered during her failed assault against Kinslayer. Mitsuko stood nearby, her body suffering from exhaustion. All while Jhun sat completely motionless.. nearly lifeless with his legs folded in a meditative position. Four hexed artifacts hovered around his limbs—ornate bracelets engraved with ancient seals that radiated a calm, yet immense pressure.
Sevrin approached immediately.
"Is it ready?”
Ayune sighed immediately.
"You know he cannot answer." Her eyes never left Keiko's injuries. "A spell of this magnitude patience.. and time."
Sevrin's jaw tightened. “.. time. One of the many luxuries we no longer possessed.”
“Yeah.” Keiko winced. “..in no small thanks to your brilliant scheme.” The old warrior forced herself upright just enough to glare toward Sevrin. “..Is this what you saw in your vision.. Elder?”
Sevrin said nothing in response. He had no defense to offer, no clever retort. Only shame.. And Keiko knew it. Ayune knew it. He knew it. In the absence of their Xhion, whom he constantly lamented for her short sighted impulsivity, Sevrin had gambled everything—and lost. But further discourse would only divide them further. Now, his focus and all of their hopes lie with Jhun. And the man was attempting something truly unprecedented.
Jhun was priming a spatial displacement ritual large enough to transport the entire subterranean fortress across the world to the Yaarou Western Compound upon Madeira.
But to teleport thousands of civilians across hundreds of thousands of miles unharmed, while under such duress.. The effort bordered on madness. Even now, with Jhun amplified by his artifacts, the spell demanded more concentration, power, and Naten than he had ever wielded before. And age was no longer kind to him.
But they had no alternative.
Sevrin found nothing but cowardice in this decision—their decision. It sickened him.. as it did all of them. Retreat was nothing short of humiliating, but the Elders agreed that if the Yaarou legacy were to survive, then their pride would have to perish in its stead.
Sevrin opened his mouth to speak again, but several nearby projections began to violently flicker. This immediately drew Mitsuko's attention. “Something's happenin’..”
“What is it?” Sevrin asked as both Ayune and Keiko looked as well.
“The AION relays are tracking somethin’.” Mitsuko narrowed her eyes and continued. “A rapidly approachin’ energy signature.. and its big one too.”
The battlefield filled the screens once more.
Something was moving toward Kinslayer at an alarming speed. All at once, confusion began to sift among them before suddenly—
“ELDERS!!” The voice of a Yaarou sage stumbled through a nearby doorway, breathless and pale. He nearly tripped over his robes before catching the wall for support.
“Great Council! Forgive me—” He exclaimed, panic consuming his face as he struggled for air. "—But the Xhi'on!"
The room froze from the implications as the man swallowed a large gulp of air.
"Lady Xhi'on is gone!"
He exclaimed with his chest still heaving from his sprint through the subterranean corridors. But despite the absurdity of his news, not a word was said in response. Not even a breath drawn in shock. Just absolute silence as his words lingered in the air.
But soon.. eyes widened and jaws dropped once his declaration made impact.
"...what?" Sevrin finally asked.
The sage swallowed. "Her room is empty. And I-I've searched the entirety of the rejuvenation chamber but —”
“Impossible.” Ayune retorted sharply. “..just a few days ago she could barely walk. How did you lose a cripple?”
“Um, forgive me, lady Ayune.” The Sage bowed before responding. “I do not discount your wisdom, but from what I've seen while caring for her, I have reason to believe that our Xhi'on is far more capable than she's been letting on.”
Sevrin's eye widened slightly beneath his blindfold.
Hitomi had only recently awakened. Even with her absurd constitution she should have remained under observation for days. Weeks, perhaps. Her body had suffered catastrophic trauma.
But somehow… Perhaps out of sheer desperation, Sevrin believed it immediately. Because if there existed a single creature capable of ignoring such limitations—
It was her.
Then the AION relay screens flickered again, and every head in attendance turned to witness an impossibility.
The battlefield appeared once more.. a charred canyon of ruined land stretching endlessly across the horizon. There, a visual of Kinslayer resting in the ashes of their dead city came into view. And the man was surrounded by corpses and pieces.
Then, target acquisition runes flashed across the projections as an object entered visual range.
The feed magnified and the citizens leaned forward with drunken expressions.
The Elders rose from their seats, including Jhun whose concentration had been shattered completely by what he was seeing.
..At first there appeared to be nothing there. Only clouds of drifting ash whispering against debris. But then—there she was. Proceeded by the murderous, crimson glow of her gaze piercing through the smoke.
A collective gasp swept through the fortress as Hitomi's silhouette came into view—floating about a dozen feet above the battlefield like a spectre of war. Her bare feet hung motionless above the ruins while her medical gown drifted gently against her body.
She surveyed the ruins of her kingdom. The piles of dead and wounded. The destruction.. their failure. Hitomi's gaze lingered on none of it. Their ineptitude did not shock or surprise her, because she knew they would crumble in her absence.
No, her gaze settled upon Kinslayer. And for several seconds the entire world seemed to pause between heartbeats as Hitomi studied the figure before her.
The Nether Serpent. The legend that had haunted the Yaarou for generations. Today, that child's story had become a flesh and blood calamity that had just shattered her entire military, slain several Mazoku Executioners, destroyed Hiroshi Yaarou, and reduced her homeland to ruins.
His was perhaps the only existence alive, capable of standing alongside her own legend. And the thought irritated her to no end.. but only because it was probably true.
“...”
Regardless, her expression remained unchanged. Neither fear nor admiration reached her face. Only certainty.. The certainty that this creature standing beneath her was just like everything else that dared approach her. Beneath her.
Slowly, Hitomi brought her hands together and formed a single Ava with her fingers. And the gesture triggered an immediate response.
The atmosphere shuddered into quickening gales as something impossibly vast took form overhead.
Shadows swallowed the clouds beneath an enormous veil of black, dimming the skies like a cosmic eclipse. Every gaze then felt drawn toward the suffocating presence in the skies, and what they saw pulled the air from the lungs.
An enormous black obelisk materialized high above the battlefield, and hovered above Edo like a second moon.
Reality trembled beneath its weight.
The fortress below fell completely silent.. The Elders in particular were left breathless, for each of them knew exactly what they were looking at. This was Hitomi's Supreme Art; The Hideous Construct. Without question, this was their Xhi’on's most infamous weapon. Her ultimate declaration that she had no intention of testing her opponent, or measuring their strength.. No, she intended to kill him. Immediately. Right here, right now.
This was perhaps the greatest, indirect compliment she'd ever given to an opponent. If nothing else, it was the ultimate gesture of recognition considering the boy had barely caught his breath. For as much as she loved to play with her food, demean and humiliate her foe.. Hitomi would spare Kinslayer nothing.. He had earned her relentlessness.
“Behold, Shi dog..”
Her voice drifted across the wasteland, soft as silk and cold as winter.
The enormous obelisk loomed behind her like the shadow of an approaching apocalypse.
"...the face of your true God." The crimson glow of her eyes intensified.
And all of Edo seemed to tremble beneath her gaze.
"...for she has returned.”
Far beneath the smoldering corpse of Qiyoto, the citizens of the Yaarou clan held tight to their loved ones within the final bastion of hope they possessed.
The subterranean fortress stretched deep beneath the ruined city, carved into bedrock over countless generations as a final refuge should the unthinkable come to pass. Such as it has today..
Its vast chambers teemed with displaced citizens, wounded Kurotori soldiers, exhausted sages, and frightened children who clung desperately to their families in what was perhaps their final hours.
Barely a sound was made among the sea of dread filled faces. Nothing.. not a prayer or comment. Only silence. An eerie, suffocating silence as every eye fixated upon the hundreds of hovering projections suspended throughout the fortress via the AION sentinels.
Though countless of their units had been destroyed during the battle above, enough remained operational to maintain a live relay of the devastation unfolding across Edo.. And devastation hardly felt adequate.
The entire city was completely gone. Purged down to the finest particulate.
The proud capital of the Yaarou Clan was now a wasteland of molten crust and drifting ash. Entire districts no longer existed. Ancient landmarks, monuments and statues that stood for centuries.. vanished beneath explosions powerful enough to scar Edo to its mantle.
Many within the fortress struggled to even comprehend what they were witnessing.
A pair of Mazoku Executioners.. The Fabled Avatar of The Black Sun.. And the Defiler himself..
The collision of those three separate legends had transformed their homeland into a hellscape. Though not before exterminating any and every effort put forth in resistance.. All but one. Him.
The despised one.
The Defiler..
The monster who had betrayed them all, murdered his kin, and spent centuries cultivating horrors in vain efforts of immortality.
It was truly nightmarish irony that he remained their last hope. He was the furthest thing from a hero, but he was the last, and apparently, the only one of them strong enough to hold a candle in defense of the Yaarou Clan. Those who knew of his notorious past either feared the ghoulish reverent, or abhorred him entirely. But for the moment, or for however long he lived, those atrocities and vile acts of treason would be suspended indefinitely.
For he alone was the last vestige standing between the Yaarou Clan and certain doom.
..and they watched on in horror as he failed.
Across the projections, Hiroshi's broken body staggered toward Kinslayer amidst the ashes.
The citizens watched his final desperate outburst..
His final declarations, the subsequent spiral toward madness, and that pathetic final act of defiance. The Nether Serpent ended him in an instant— with a twisted smile that branded itself into the psyche of every pair of eyes that watched.
Several of them averted their gaze while others lowered their heads. Several more openly wept, filling the once solemn room with waves of ensuing dread. However, one man never broke his focus.
High above the fortress floor, standing upon the highest observation platform, Sevrin remained motionless with his blindfolded gaze pointed toward the surface. And though he could not physically see, he perceived the entire battle through telepathic means. And he too watched on with crushing despair as Kinslayer tore Hiroshi's soul from his chest and cast it into oblivion before returning to a more humanoid form.
And despite seeing the child look both exhausted and injured, Sevrin felt no relief.. If anything, what he had seen today exhibited had only reinforced a horrifying truth.
The Nether Serpent was everything the legends claimed. Perhaps worse..
He had survived.. everything they threw at him. Powers capable of rewriting landscapes, or twisting fate itself. And still, he remained standing like some defiant demon.
Sevrin's hand slowly tightened into a fist. So tight that his nails punctured straight through his palm and trickled blood down his fingers. But he scarcely felt any pain.. The weight of his failure had numbed him to anything other than shame.
He truly believed Hiroshi would prevail. Not merely on account of his strength.. But his cunning. No creature in history had embodied malice, tenacity, and ingenuity quite like the Defiler. He was a worm who grew to hunt titans and dragons. Titans like the Stormbringer.. the strongest warrior many of the Yaarou ever knew.
Sevrin envisioned many futures where Hiroshi was victorious.. and in his glory, he overthrew Hitomi reign. And from the shadows, Sevrin would guide the future of the Yaarou Clan through a puppet king whose ambition rivaled the heavens themselves.
But now that future lay dead in the ashes beside its arbiter.
“..a fool.”
He lamented under his breath, sickened by his own hubris. For the first time in many years, the old man found himself without a plan, leverage, or direction.
Only dread.
Their military was shattered..
Thousands of their finest littered the dead city, and thousands more were wounded. Only the AION Sentinels remained in meaningful numbers, their replication protocols persevering despite the devastation.
Yet even that felt insignificant..
No machine could comfort the reality looming before them. For Sevrin knew the moment that the Shi demon recovered his strength, that he and every surviving member of the Yaarou clan would be next. And the boy would scorch all of Vescrutia in his path of vengeance.
Still, Sevrin refused submission.
“Hmph..” He turned from the projections and leapt from the observation platform.
His robes billowed behind him as he descended several stories before landing beside the remaining elders within a courtyard.
Ayune knelt beside Keiko, healing the grievous injuries she had suffered during her failed assault against Kinslayer. Mitsuko stood nearby, her body suffering from exhaustion. All while Jhun sat completely motionless.. nearly lifeless with his legs folded in a meditative position. Four hexed artifacts hovered around his limbs—ornate bracelets engraved with ancient seals that radiated a calm, yet immense pressure.
Sevrin approached immediately.
"Is it ready?”
Ayune sighed immediately.
"You know he cannot answer." Her eyes never left Keiko's injuries. "A spell of this magnitude patience.. and time."
Sevrin's jaw tightened. “.. time. One of the many luxuries we no longer possessed.”
“Yeah.” Keiko winced. “..in no small thanks to your brilliant scheme.” The old warrior forced herself upright just enough to glare toward Sevrin. “..Is this what you saw in your vision.. Elder?”
Sevrin said nothing in response. He had no defense to offer, no clever retort. Only shame.. And Keiko knew it. Ayune knew it. He knew it. In the absence of their Xhion, whom he constantly lamented for her short sighted impulsivity, Sevrin had gambled everything—and lost. But further discourse would only divide them further. Now, his focus and all of their hopes lie with Jhun. And the man was attempting something truly unprecedented.
Jhun was priming a spatial displacement ritual large enough to transport the entire subterranean fortress across the world to the Yaarou Western Compound upon Madeira.
But to teleport thousands of civilians across hundreds of thousands of miles unharmed, while under such duress.. The effort bordered on madness. Even now, with Jhun amplified by his artifacts, the spell demanded more concentration, power, and Naten than he had ever wielded before. And age was no longer kind to him.
But they had no alternative.
Sevrin found nothing but cowardice in this decision—their decision. It sickened him.. as it did all of them. Retreat was nothing short of humiliating, but the Elders agreed that if the Yaarou legacy were to survive, then their pride would have to perish in its stead.
Sevrin opened his mouth to speak again, but several nearby projections began to violently flicker. This immediately drew Mitsuko's attention. “Something's happenin’..”
“What is it?” Sevrin asked as both Ayune and Keiko looked as well.
“The AION relays are tracking somethin’.” Mitsuko narrowed her eyes and continued. “A rapidly approachin’ energy signature.. and its big one too.”
The battlefield filled the screens once more.
Something was moving toward Kinslayer at an alarming speed. All at once, confusion began to sift among them before suddenly—
“ELDERS!!” The voice of a Yaarou sage stumbled through a nearby doorway, breathless and pale. He nearly tripped over his robes before catching the wall for support.
“Great Council! Forgive me—” He exclaimed, panic consuming his face as he struggled for air. "—But the Xhi'on!"
The room froze from the implications as the man swallowed a large gulp of air.
"Lady Xhi'on is gone!"
He exclaimed with his chest still heaving from his sprint through the subterranean corridors. But despite the absurdity of his news, not a word was said in response. Not even a breath drawn in shock. Just absolute silence as his words lingered in the air.
But soon.. eyes widened and jaws dropped once his declaration made impact.
"...what?" Sevrin finally asked.
The sage swallowed. "Her room is empty. And I-I've searched the entirety of the rejuvenation chamber but —”
“Impossible.” Ayune retorted sharply. “..just a few days ago she could barely walk. How did you lose a cripple?”
“Um, forgive me, lady Ayune.” The Sage bowed before responding. “I do not discount your wisdom, but from what I've seen while caring for her, I have reason to believe that our Xhi'on is far more capable than she's been letting on.”
Sevrin's eye widened slightly beneath his blindfold.
Hitomi had only recently awakened. Even with her absurd constitution she should have remained under observation for days. Weeks, perhaps. Her body had suffered catastrophic trauma.
But somehow… Perhaps out of sheer desperation, Sevrin believed it immediately. Because if there existed a single creature capable of ignoring such limitations—
It was her.
Then the AION relay screens flickered again, and every head in attendance turned to witness an impossibility.
The battlefield appeared once more.. a charred canyon of ruined land stretching endlessly across the horizon. There, a visual of Kinslayer resting in the ashes of their dead city came into view. And the man was surrounded by corpses and pieces.
Then, target acquisition runes flashed across the projections as an object entered visual range.
The feed magnified and the citizens leaned forward with drunken expressions.
The Elders rose from their seats, including Jhun whose concentration had been shattered completely by what he was seeing.
..At first there appeared to be nothing there. Only clouds of drifting ash whispering against debris. But then—there she was. Proceeded by the murderous, crimson glow of her gaze piercing through the smoke.
A collective gasp swept through the fortress as Hitomi's silhouette came into view—floating about a dozen feet above the battlefield like a spectre of war. Her bare feet hung motionless above the ruins while her medical gown drifted gently against her body.
She surveyed the ruins of her kingdom. The piles of dead and wounded. The destruction.. their failure. Hitomi's gaze lingered on none of it. Their ineptitude did not shock or surprise her, because she knew they would crumble in her absence.
No, her gaze settled upon Kinslayer. And for several seconds the entire world seemed to pause between heartbeats as Hitomi studied the figure before her.
The Nether Serpent. The legend that had haunted the Yaarou for generations. Today, that child's story had become a flesh and blood calamity that had just shattered her entire military, slain several Mazoku Executioners, destroyed Hiroshi Yaarou, and reduced her homeland to ruins.
His was perhaps the only existence alive, capable of standing alongside her own legend. And the thought irritated her to no end.. but only because it was probably true.
“...”
Regardless, her expression remained unchanged. Neither fear nor admiration reached her face. Only certainty.. The certainty that this creature standing beneath her was just like everything else that dared approach her. Beneath her.
Slowly, Hitomi brought her hands together and formed a single Ava with her fingers. And the gesture triggered an immediate response.
The atmosphere shuddered into quickening gales as something impossibly vast took form overhead.
Shadows swallowed the clouds beneath an enormous veil of black, dimming the skies like a cosmic eclipse. Every gaze then felt drawn toward the suffocating presence in the skies, and what they saw pulled the air from the lungs.
An enormous black obelisk materialized high above the battlefield, and hovered above Edo like a second moon.
Reality trembled beneath its weight.
The fortress below fell completely silent.. The Elders in particular were left breathless, for each of them knew exactly what they were looking at. This was Hitomi's Supreme Art; The Hideous Construct. Without question, this was their Xhi’on's most infamous weapon. Her ultimate declaration that she had no intention of testing her opponent, or measuring their strength.. No, she intended to kill him. Immediately. Right here, right now.
This was perhaps the greatest, indirect compliment she'd ever given to an opponent. If nothing else, it was the ultimate gesture of recognition considering the boy had barely caught his breath. For as much as she loved to play with her food, demean and humiliate her foe.. Hitomi would spare Kinslayer nothing.. He had earned her relentlessness.
“Behold, Shi dog..”
Her voice drifted across the wasteland, soft as silk and cold as winter.
The enormous obelisk loomed behind her like the shadow of an approaching apocalypse.
"...the face of your true God." The crimson glow of her eyes intensified.
And all of Edo seemed to tremble beneath her gaze.
"...for she has returned.”
Re: The Throes of Prophecy
The skyline, a jagged wound against the bruised heavens, slowly began to heal from the aftermath of the literal warfare that had just ensued. The winds howled solemnly now, long, elongated sighs of gales that shifted through the newly terraformed land where Qioyoto stood mere hours before. Once a city that represented the pinnacle of the shinobi world, of Edoan shinobi life, culture, and lineage, it was now little more than a desolate ruin. Blanketed earth, so thoroughly harmed that life would be unable to grow here for generations to come. There was nothing here alive, no flora nor fauna, not a single tree, not a bird in sight. Only the wind, carrying the dust of shattered dreams and ancient lore across the scarred plains.
The only living creature for miles on end was Kinslayer. On bended knee, exhaustion had claimed him, burning him with a heavy toll paid. The forbidden technique of Profane Embodiment had availed him unfathomable power, allowing him to manifest an ethereal carapace forged from his literal soul. However, bearing one's entire essence on the line was not without risk. Usually, the technique was reserved only for a single body part, one that was normally lost when the technique ended. But to use one's entire body as a medium invited both more power and more danger. The stronger the soul, the greater the drawback. When the technique subsided, extreme exhaustion overcame the host, in rare cases resulting even in death. In fact, if it had not been for his superhuman physiology, Kinslayer would be face down in the dirt, at best comatose, at worst dead on the spot.
His muscles screamed, each fiber vibrating with residual energy and the agony of exertion. His lungs burned, struggling to pull air into his depleted frame. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through his body, a testament to the raw power he had just wielded and the price paid. Yet, even in this state, his will was a furnace, refusing to be extinguished.
But Kuro worked tirelessly to repair his host form. The AIONS kept him from crumbling; they did this by pulling in ambient heat from the environment, radically changing it, and converting it into energy via his Nestu. It was an ability of Nestu beyond even what Kin himself had ever utilized, and Kuro's quick thinking had saved him twice now, a silent, tireless guardian within his very being. The nanites surged through his veins, a microscopic army fighting against the collapse, stitching together nerve endings, mending torn tissue, siphoning warmth from the cooling earth to feed the dying embers of his life force.
Nevertheless, Kin was not done. His eyes, though heavy-lidded and bloodshot, held a furious spark. "N-not yet..." he rasped, the words a raw whisper torn from his throat. His gaze, distant and focused, was aimed not at the desolate surface but deep beneath it. "They're still here... I can't stop... not until every last one of them is dead."
Leagues beneath the surface, there were hundreds of thousands of flickers of naten hidden in the Yaarou's subterranean bunkers. He would deal with them the same way he dealt with the Owaki. Total erasure, a complete severing of the bloodline. He would not rest until the very concept of the Great Shinobi Clan was erased from the annals of Edoan glossaries.
"Current energy reserves 1/3rd restored. Estimated time till full restoration: t minus 15 minutes. It is recommended for the host to subside activity until then." Kuro's calm, synthesized voice hummed within his mind, a stark contrast to the storm raging in Kinslayer's soul.
"Recommendation denied!" Kin refuted the very idea vehemently, spitting the words like venom. He clawed at the blackened earth, his fingers digging into the pulverised soil, a primal gesture of defiance. "Look at what they've had to do to merely stall me!" His voice gained a fraction of its former power, fueled by pure, unadulterated rage. "They conjured wards that could not hold me, deployed recon that could not detect me, mustered armies that shattered themselves against the bulwark of my resistance!"
Slowly, Kuro's efforts brought strength back to him, a faint tide pushing against the crushing weight of exhaustion. He pushed himself further, his knees protesting, his entire frame shuddering. "No... Kuro... they must suffer... they must all die... even a third of my power will be enough to sweep them from Edo." Kin continued, strength returning to his legs, though each movement was a testament to his sheer willpower. He wasn't moving through his muscles, but through the iron resolve that burned in his core.
But then Kuro's alarms went off, a jarring cacophony in the stillness of his mind. "Massive Energy Signature inbound!"
"!!!"
That was when everything shifted. His focus left the litany of souls beneath the earth, and his head lifted towards the sky. And it was then that the universe itself came to a halt. Time seemed to stretch infinitely, space chilled to an absolute stall as they laid eyes on each other. Two opposing pillars of Edo's self-fulfilling prophecy. A legacy thousands of years in the making, the bearers of the only Eternal Arts ever sired in Edo's history.
A bloodline feud that stretched back to early Edo, the scions of the Shi and Yaarou clan. History repeated as if Ains and Kaedae stood face to face as they had in the Tournament of Blood those many eons ago.
She was a visage of divine fury, cloaked in medical robes of white that seemed untouched by the dust and ash of the ruined city. Behind her, an inconceivable construct of power pulsed into existence, a distortion in the very fabric of reality. By the sheer weight of force that pressed against the seam of the unseen realm, he could guess that this was her ultimate technique. A monolithic black obelisk, jagged and threatening, materialised in the sky above her, radiating an oppressive aura that made the air itself seem to thicken.
"A Supreme Art," Kin breathed, the words heavy with grim recognition. It was then that Aphosis's lingering words replayed in his mind again. That if he faced her as he was, he would surely die. He hated to admit that that damned snake could be capable of truth, but as he gazed on the sheer mass of her technique hovering above him, he knew without a doubt death would be certain.
"So that is her... Hitomi Yaarou." Even from here, he could smell the lingering wisp of it, The Ring of Hatred, but it was faint... she did not have it on her person. A shame... it might've been the only thing capable of hyper-charging him again. But as he was now, he was far outmatched against her. Profane Embodiment was known to be the only technique that could counter a Supreme Art. But weakened as he was, if he attempted the transformation again, it would kill him, and even if it didn't, it wouldn't hold the power needed to face a Supreme Art this powerful.
He struggled to his feet, swaying slightly, digging his heels into the scorched earth. A sarcastic, bitter laugh escaped him, wet with blood that trickled from the corner of his mouth. "True God?" he sucked his teeth, the sound rasping and raw. "You are the goddess of nothing, your domain in ruin, your strongest, dead by my hand.... True god...."
A scathing wet scoff followed as he spat blood and bile on the desecrated earth that Qioyoto once sat upon. His eyes, burning with a cold, hateful fire, met hers across the ruined expanse. "You've seen what I do to gods...."
His eyes narrowed as darkness pooled beneath his feet, struggling to maintain his balance. The shadow lengthened, deepened, a swirling vortex drawing in the faint, ambient light. It was Kuro's last-ditch effort, siphoning every last atom of accumulated energy, not for healing, but for escape. A wound to his pride, a bitter pill to swallow, but he would have to live to slay another day.
"But alas, I've stomached enough Yaarou souls to satiate me for the day... when next we meet, you will face not a Shi dog." His voice, though still hoarse, carried an undeniable weight of menace. He began to submerge into the blackness beneath him, a portal, a rift between space, his form slowly dissolving into the shadowy maw. "But The Godslayer himself..."
With that, he retreated, knowing full well those words would scathe her deeper than any blade he could forge against her at the moment. He would not let arrogance or greed be the cause of his death, not after surviving this far. Fate, as Hiroshi would have said, would make sure they crossed paths again, and when they did, it would be a moment that defined not just Edo's future, but very well the future of the planet itself. The darkness consumed him, leaving only the desolate wind, the dust of Qioyot, and the towering, ominous presence of The Hideous Construct hanging silently above the scarred earth.
The only living creature for miles on end was Kinslayer. On bended knee, exhaustion had claimed him, burning him with a heavy toll paid. The forbidden technique of Profane Embodiment had availed him unfathomable power, allowing him to manifest an ethereal carapace forged from his literal soul. However, bearing one's entire essence on the line was not without risk. Usually, the technique was reserved only for a single body part, one that was normally lost when the technique ended. But to use one's entire body as a medium invited both more power and more danger. The stronger the soul, the greater the drawback. When the technique subsided, extreme exhaustion overcame the host, in rare cases resulting even in death. In fact, if it had not been for his superhuman physiology, Kinslayer would be face down in the dirt, at best comatose, at worst dead on the spot.
His muscles screamed, each fiber vibrating with residual energy and the agony of exertion. His lungs burned, struggling to pull air into his depleted frame. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through his body, a testament to the raw power he had just wielded and the price paid. Yet, even in this state, his will was a furnace, refusing to be extinguished.
But Kuro worked tirelessly to repair his host form. The AIONS kept him from crumbling; they did this by pulling in ambient heat from the environment, radically changing it, and converting it into energy via his Nestu. It was an ability of Nestu beyond even what Kin himself had ever utilized, and Kuro's quick thinking had saved him twice now, a silent, tireless guardian within his very being. The nanites surged through his veins, a microscopic army fighting against the collapse, stitching together nerve endings, mending torn tissue, siphoning warmth from the cooling earth to feed the dying embers of his life force.
Nevertheless, Kin was not done. His eyes, though heavy-lidded and bloodshot, held a furious spark. "N-not yet..." he rasped, the words a raw whisper torn from his throat. His gaze, distant and focused, was aimed not at the desolate surface but deep beneath it. "They're still here... I can't stop... not until every last one of them is dead."
Leagues beneath the surface, there were hundreds of thousands of flickers of naten hidden in the Yaarou's subterranean bunkers. He would deal with them the same way he dealt with the Owaki. Total erasure, a complete severing of the bloodline. He would not rest until the very concept of the Great Shinobi Clan was erased from the annals of Edoan glossaries.
"Current energy reserves 1/3rd restored. Estimated time till full restoration: t minus 15 minutes. It is recommended for the host to subside activity until then." Kuro's calm, synthesized voice hummed within his mind, a stark contrast to the storm raging in Kinslayer's soul.
"Recommendation denied!" Kin refuted the very idea vehemently, spitting the words like venom. He clawed at the blackened earth, his fingers digging into the pulverised soil, a primal gesture of defiance. "Look at what they've had to do to merely stall me!" His voice gained a fraction of its former power, fueled by pure, unadulterated rage. "They conjured wards that could not hold me, deployed recon that could not detect me, mustered armies that shattered themselves against the bulwark of my resistance!"
Slowly, Kuro's efforts brought strength back to him, a faint tide pushing against the crushing weight of exhaustion. He pushed himself further, his knees protesting, his entire frame shuddering. "No... Kuro... they must suffer... they must all die... even a third of my power will be enough to sweep them from Edo." Kin continued, strength returning to his legs, though each movement was a testament to his sheer willpower. He wasn't moving through his muscles, but through the iron resolve that burned in his core.
But then Kuro's alarms went off, a jarring cacophony in the stillness of his mind. "Massive Energy Signature inbound!"
"!!!"
That was when everything shifted. His focus left the litany of souls beneath the earth, and his head lifted towards the sky. And it was then that the universe itself came to a halt. Time seemed to stretch infinitely, space chilled to an absolute stall as they laid eyes on each other. Two opposing pillars of Edo's self-fulfilling prophecy. A legacy thousands of years in the making, the bearers of the only Eternal Arts ever sired in Edo's history.
A bloodline feud that stretched back to early Edo, the scions of the Shi and Yaarou clan. History repeated as if Ains and Kaedae stood face to face as they had in the Tournament of Blood those many eons ago.
She was a visage of divine fury, cloaked in medical robes of white that seemed untouched by the dust and ash of the ruined city. Behind her, an inconceivable construct of power pulsed into existence, a distortion in the very fabric of reality. By the sheer weight of force that pressed against the seam of the unseen realm, he could guess that this was her ultimate technique. A monolithic black obelisk, jagged and threatening, materialised in the sky above her, radiating an oppressive aura that made the air itself seem to thicken.
"A Supreme Art," Kin breathed, the words heavy with grim recognition. It was then that Aphosis's lingering words replayed in his mind again. That if he faced her as he was, he would surely die. He hated to admit that that damned snake could be capable of truth, but as he gazed on the sheer mass of her technique hovering above him, he knew without a doubt death would be certain.
"So that is her... Hitomi Yaarou." Even from here, he could smell the lingering wisp of it, The Ring of Hatred, but it was faint... she did not have it on her person. A shame... it might've been the only thing capable of hyper-charging him again. But as he was now, he was far outmatched against her. Profane Embodiment was known to be the only technique that could counter a Supreme Art. But weakened as he was, if he attempted the transformation again, it would kill him, and even if it didn't, it wouldn't hold the power needed to face a Supreme Art this powerful.
He struggled to his feet, swaying slightly, digging his heels into the scorched earth. A sarcastic, bitter laugh escaped him, wet with blood that trickled from the corner of his mouth. "True God?" he sucked his teeth, the sound rasping and raw. "You are the goddess of nothing, your domain in ruin, your strongest, dead by my hand.... True god...."
A scathing wet scoff followed as he spat blood and bile on the desecrated earth that Qioyoto once sat upon. His eyes, burning with a cold, hateful fire, met hers across the ruined expanse. "You've seen what I do to gods...."
His eyes narrowed as darkness pooled beneath his feet, struggling to maintain his balance. The shadow lengthened, deepened, a swirling vortex drawing in the faint, ambient light. It was Kuro's last-ditch effort, siphoning every last atom of accumulated energy, not for healing, but for escape. A wound to his pride, a bitter pill to swallow, but he would have to live to slay another day.
"But alas, I've stomached enough Yaarou souls to satiate me for the day... when next we meet, you will face not a Shi dog." His voice, though still hoarse, carried an undeniable weight of menace. He began to submerge into the blackness beneath him, a portal, a rift between space, his form slowly dissolving into the shadowy maw. "But The Godslayer himself..."
With that, he retreated, knowing full well those words would scathe her deeper than any blade he could forge against her at the moment. He would not let arrogance or greed be the cause of his death, not after surviving this far. Fate, as Hiroshi would have said, would make sure they crossed paths again, and when they did, it would be a moment that defined not just Edo's future, but very well the future of the planet itself. The darkness consumed him, leaving only the desolate wind, the dust of Qioyot, and the towering, ominous presence of The Hideous Construct hanging silently above the scarred earth.
-
The Yaarou Clan
- Drifter
- Posts: 141
- Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2024 6:42 pm
Re: The Throes of Prophecy
Far above the devastation, Hitomi watched as the shadows beneath Kinslayer's feet deepened into a bottomless abyss before folding inward upon themselves, swallowing the Nether Serpent whole.
Even after the darkness settled, her crimson eyes remained fixed upon the place where he had disappeared, studying the silence as though expecting it to betray her.
Many moments passed until she was satisfied.. and then, when she was certain he had truly withdrawn, did the severity of her gaze relent.
"...Coward.”
The word drifted from her lips without anger. Only dismissal as she descended through the drifting ash.
High above, the Hideous Construct remained suspended against the heavens, an impossible obelisk eclipsing the sky like a second moon. Beneath its immense shadow, daylight itself seemed reluctant to touch the Edo. It stood not merely as a weapon, but as a declaration that the Xhi'on had returned.
She moved like an apparition through the corpse of her kingdom.
Her bare feet hovered inches above broken stone while her gown stirred softly in the restless wind.
The silence around her felt oppressive.
Her eyes wandered across what had once been Qiyoto. Or rather—What remained of it.
The great avenues that once carried generations of Yaarou shinobi had been buried beneath oceans of fractured basalt and cooled magma. Ancient shrines, monuments, archives, and ancestral estates—structures that had endured centuries of conquest, civil war, famines and dynasties —had been erased so completely that not even their foundations remained.
"..."
This was no longer a city.. Now, it resembled an abattoir abandoned by its butcher.
Everywhere she looked, bodies littered this hollowed wasteland into the horizon; Kurotori, Sages, engineers, acolytes.. Even the colossal Mazoku Executioners remained where they had fallen, their ruined carcasses rising above the dead like grotesque monuments to the calamity that had unfolded.
But despite the grisly scene, Hitomi regarded every husk she crossed with the same detached expression. One completely devoid of sorrow or sympathy. But laden with judgement.
"...This is so fucking embarrassing."
She hissed through gritted teeth as she passed another disfigured Kurotori soldier. She had been blind to their suffering and sacrifice.. Through their mangled corpses, all she could see was their weakness. And how each and every last one of them failed her when it mattered most.
An army cultivated across thousands of hours; disciplined, armed, refined into what she believed the pinnacle of Yaarou strength—allowed themselves to collapse in a single day. She could not feign tears for them.. instead, what Hitomi felt was a faint twitch pull at the corner of her eye.
The only indication of the storm brewing beneath her composed exterior.
The more she thought about it, the clearer it became in her head. This did not feel like a mere defeat.. Defeat implied resistance worthy of remembrance. It implied equals meeting upon a battlefield and one emerging victorious. No, this.. this was humiliation. And humiliation was something Hitomi would never.. ever.. ever forgive.
Miles below, within the subterranean fortress, every active relay projection flickered simultaneously as the image of Hitomi filled every screen.
The entire fortress watched with baited breath as their Xhi'on glided across the ashes of their dead civilization, but not without first chasing away the greatest threat they had ever known. And while they felt an inalienable sense of hope and security upon her return, her silent fury could be measured in storms.
No one spoke. No one even breathed louder than necessary..
Even frightened children instinctively buried themselves against their parents as Hitomi's crimson gaze shifted toward one of the AION Sentinels observing her overhead.
"Elders. To me."
Her words came calm and unhurried, yet they carried across every projection about the underground sanctuary with a sullen urgency. This was a summons. And the Elders obeyed without question
Sevrin, Ayune, Jhun, Keiko—One after another they appeared in blurred flashes of motion before immediately lowering themselves onto one knee.
“...”
For several moments none of them spoke.. Not until Sevrin built up the courage to clear his throat and break the silence.
Lady Xhi'on—”
His words were stern, but cautious. “Thank the gods for your return. However, following your battle against the Bhalian Ice Mage, Qiyoto was attacked again. By both a pair of Mazoku Executioners.. and the Nether Serpent himself.”
Hitomi said nothing in response. Her crimson gaze simply hung over their bowed heads, cold and unmoving.
“We deployed the Kurotori, as well as invoked the aid of the Inuki Tribe and the Western Yaarou Military.. but it was to no avail.” Sevrin continued, but nearly felt himself crushed beneath the weight of his Xhi’on's impending judgment. “..not even our desperate efforts of deploying the Defiler could preserve the state of the country in your absence. We failed you.”
“Yes. You have. In extraordinary fashion, no less.” She said plainly as her gaze shifted through what remained of her fallen city. “Not even I thought you all were so inept, that you would allow my city to be lost.. in a single day.”
None of them dared argue.
The devastation surrounding them spoke louder than any of their words ever could.
“But the extent of your failures will be cataloged later.. Now, my concern lies upon rebuilding what was lost.. What you lost.” She said, extending one hand toward the endless sea of rubble. "AION units are to begin immediate excavation efforts. Every artifact.. every weapon.. every archive.. every relic. If it belongs to the Yaarou, I want it recovered."
Ash spiraled skyward.
Mountains of shattered stone groaned before slowly separating beneath an invisible force. Then, Shōsen Kobari emerged from beneath the ruins and floated silently toward her extended hand. She never-ending touched it physically, but she regarded it thoughtfully.
“Jhun.” The elder raised his head as Hitomi carefully inspected the powerful instrument. “You will oversee the operation.. and leave no stone unturned.”
He bowed deeply. "It shall be done, my Xhi'on."
Though, after a brief pause he ventured carefully, "And... the wounded? Should I make efforts to rescue any stragglers as well?”
“You will make efforts to do as you're told.” She retorted sharply without her eyes ever leaving the spear. Jhun said nothing more. And Hitomi continued delegating.
“Ayune, Keiko. You will contact the Inuki and inform them that their allies require temporary sanctuary as we rebuild.”
Ayune nodded without ever lifting her gaze from the charred fissures on the ground. “As you command, my Paragon.. Though, the Inuki council will inquire whether this means you've given thought to their proposal. Is that your plan, my Xhi’on? Have you considered the benefits of a formal union between the clans?”
Hitomi looked genuinely offended by the notion.
“Union? As in marriage?” she responded with a faint scoff “..no. The Inuki have been struggling with their own invasion against foreign entities. I will lend them my aid as a show of good faith.”
“Understoof, my Xhion.” Ayune nodded.
“Good. Now go, you are dismissed.”
Upon her words each of the Elders dispersed into blisters of speed, departing to proceed with their respective duties. All aside Sevrin, who remained kneeling in anticipation of hearing his task from his Xhi’on. But she said nothing. Not even a sigh of disappointment. She simply stood with her back to him, gazing longingly into the horizon of the barren wasteland.
Still, he could feel her ire. Her contempt. She needn't say a word for it to pile on his shoulders like a million pounds. He hesitated there, in the silence, filling his hands with soot and soil.
He felt as if he were going to die.. no different than Hayate. No different from anyone who Hitomi found to be more trouble than they're worth. How much did she know about his plans? His ambitions? Could she not see that they were cultivated with the good of the Yaarou in mind? His mind raced and spiraled.. inside, his own heartbeat became unbearable.. but on the outside, he had to remain poised. Controlled.
“Lady Xhion..” His voice came soft and contrite. “..forgive me for my oversights. But I want to assure you that everything I've done was to fill the void of your absence. Nothing more.. nothing less.” He said, half expecting to be struck down before he finished his breath. “We were all lost without your guidance.”
Hitomi remained facing the horizon, still and statuesque like a sculpture of ice.
“..spare me your words.” She said as if exhausted from simply listening to him. “..my city is gone, Elder. Please.. just get out of my face.”
The words struck harder than any blow.
"...Understood." Sevrin said with a heavy heart before he departed, leaving Hitomi alone. At last..
A silent gale wind swept through the ruins, fanning loose flames scattered throughout the scorched terrain, and brushing loose strands of hair across her face. Without thinking, she brushed them behind her ear.
Shōsen Kobari floated silently behind her while overhead, the Hideous Construct watched over Edo like an omen suspended above the world.
For several moments, Hitomi remained motionless before her gaze drifted toward the black stain in the ground where the Nether Serpent had fled.
The expression on her face never changed, yet something stirred beneath the arrogance and fury and humiliation..
Anticipation..
For had he remained, Hitomi was certain one of them would have likely died on the spot. And though she would never admit it aloud, she found the thought strangely disappointing. And anticlimactic..
“Recover well, Shi dog..." She said softly as the crimson glow within her eyes intensified. "Because the next time we meet, I'm going to enjoy peeling off your scales.”
[Next Chapter]
Even after the darkness settled, her crimson eyes remained fixed upon the place where he had disappeared, studying the silence as though expecting it to betray her.
Many moments passed until she was satisfied.. and then, when she was certain he had truly withdrawn, did the severity of her gaze relent.
"...Coward.”
The word drifted from her lips without anger. Only dismissal as she descended through the drifting ash.
High above, the Hideous Construct remained suspended against the heavens, an impossible obelisk eclipsing the sky like a second moon. Beneath its immense shadow, daylight itself seemed reluctant to touch the Edo. It stood not merely as a weapon, but as a declaration that the Xhi'on had returned.
She moved like an apparition through the corpse of her kingdom.
Her bare feet hovered inches above broken stone while her gown stirred softly in the restless wind.
The silence around her felt oppressive.
Her eyes wandered across what had once been Qiyoto. Or rather—What remained of it.
The great avenues that once carried generations of Yaarou shinobi had been buried beneath oceans of fractured basalt and cooled magma. Ancient shrines, monuments, archives, and ancestral estates—structures that had endured centuries of conquest, civil war, famines and dynasties —had been erased so completely that not even their foundations remained.
"..."
This was no longer a city.. Now, it resembled an abattoir abandoned by its butcher.
Everywhere she looked, bodies littered this hollowed wasteland into the horizon; Kurotori, Sages, engineers, acolytes.. Even the colossal Mazoku Executioners remained where they had fallen, their ruined carcasses rising above the dead like grotesque monuments to the calamity that had unfolded.
But despite the grisly scene, Hitomi regarded every husk she crossed with the same detached expression. One completely devoid of sorrow or sympathy. But laden with judgement.
"...This is so fucking embarrassing."
She hissed through gritted teeth as she passed another disfigured Kurotori soldier. She had been blind to their suffering and sacrifice.. Through their mangled corpses, all she could see was their weakness. And how each and every last one of them failed her when it mattered most.
An army cultivated across thousands of hours; disciplined, armed, refined into what she believed the pinnacle of Yaarou strength—allowed themselves to collapse in a single day. She could not feign tears for them.. instead, what Hitomi felt was a faint twitch pull at the corner of her eye.
The only indication of the storm brewing beneath her composed exterior.
The more she thought about it, the clearer it became in her head. This did not feel like a mere defeat.. Defeat implied resistance worthy of remembrance. It implied equals meeting upon a battlefield and one emerging victorious. No, this.. this was humiliation. And humiliation was something Hitomi would never.. ever.. ever forgive.
Miles below, within the subterranean fortress, every active relay projection flickered simultaneously as the image of Hitomi filled every screen.
The entire fortress watched with baited breath as their Xhi'on glided across the ashes of their dead civilization, but not without first chasing away the greatest threat they had ever known. And while they felt an inalienable sense of hope and security upon her return, her silent fury could be measured in storms.
No one spoke. No one even breathed louder than necessary..
Even frightened children instinctively buried themselves against their parents as Hitomi's crimson gaze shifted toward one of the AION Sentinels observing her overhead.
"Elders. To me."
Her words came calm and unhurried, yet they carried across every projection about the underground sanctuary with a sullen urgency. This was a summons. And the Elders obeyed without question
Sevrin, Ayune, Jhun, Keiko—One after another they appeared in blurred flashes of motion before immediately lowering themselves onto one knee.
“...”
For several moments none of them spoke.. Not until Sevrin built up the courage to clear his throat and break the silence.
Lady Xhi'on—”
His words were stern, but cautious. “Thank the gods for your return. However, following your battle against the Bhalian Ice Mage, Qiyoto was attacked again. By both a pair of Mazoku Executioners.. and the Nether Serpent himself.”
Hitomi said nothing in response. Her crimson gaze simply hung over their bowed heads, cold and unmoving.
“We deployed the Kurotori, as well as invoked the aid of the Inuki Tribe and the Western Yaarou Military.. but it was to no avail.” Sevrin continued, but nearly felt himself crushed beneath the weight of his Xhi’on's impending judgment. “..not even our desperate efforts of deploying the Defiler could preserve the state of the country in your absence. We failed you.”
“Yes. You have. In extraordinary fashion, no less.” She said plainly as her gaze shifted through what remained of her fallen city. “Not even I thought you all were so inept, that you would allow my city to be lost.. in a single day.”
None of them dared argue.
The devastation surrounding them spoke louder than any of their words ever could.
“But the extent of your failures will be cataloged later.. Now, my concern lies upon rebuilding what was lost.. What you lost.” She said, extending one hand toward the endless sea of rubble. "AION units are to begin immediate excavation efforts. Every artifact.. every weapon.. every archive.. every relic. If it belongs to the Yaarou, I want it recovered."
Ash spiraled skyward.
Mountains of shattered stone groaned before slowly separating beneath an invisible force. Then, Shōsen Kobari emerged from beneath the ruins and floated silently toward her extended hand. She never-ending touched it physically, but she regarded it thoughtfully.
“Jhun.” The elder raised his head as Hitomi carefully inspected the powerful instrument. “You will oversee the operation.. and leave no stone unturned.”
He bowed deeply. "It shall be done, my Xhi'on."
Though, after a brief pause he ventured carefully, "And... the wounded? Should I make efforts to rescue any stragglers as well?”
“You will make efforts to do as you're told.” She retorted sharply without her eyes ever leaving the spear. Jhun said nothing more. And Hitomi continued delegating.
“Ayune, Keiko. You will contact the Inuki and inform them that their allies require temporary sanctuary as we rebuild.”
Ayune nodded without ever lifting her gaze from the charred fissures on the ground. “As you command, my Paragon.. Though, the Inuki council will inquire whether this means you've given thought to their proposal. Is that your plan, my Xhi’on? Have you considered the benefits of a formal union between the clans?”
Hitomi looked genuinely offended by the notion.
“Union? As in marriage?” she responded with a faint scoff “..no. The Inuki have been struggling with their own invasion against foreign entities. I will lend them my aid as a show of good faith.”
“Understoof, my Xhion.” Ayune nodded.
“Good. Now go, you are dismissed.”
Upon her words each of the Elders dispersed into blisters of speed, departing to proceed with their respective duties. All aside Sevrin, who remained kneeling in anticipation of hearing his task from his Xhi’on. But she said nothing. Not even a sigh of disappointment. She simply stood with her back to him, gazing longingly into the horizon of the barren wasteland.
Still, he could feel her ire. Her contempt. She needn't say a word for it to pile on his shoulders like a million pounds. He hesitated there, in the silence, filling his hands with soot and soil.
He felt as if he were going to die.. no different than Hayate. No different from anyone who Hitomi found to be more trouble than they're worth. How much did she know about his plans? His ambitions? Could she not see that they were cultivated with the good of the Yaarou in mind? His mind raced and spiraled.. inside, his own heartbeat became unbearable.. but on the outside, he had to remain poised. Controlled.
“Lady Xhion..” His voice came soft and contrite. “..forgive me for my oversights. But I want to assure you that everything I've done was to fill the void of your absence. Nothing more.. nothing less.” He said, half expecting to be struck down before he finished his breath. “We were all lost without your guidance.”
Hitomi remained facing the horizon, still and statuesque like a sculpture of ice.
“..spare me your words.” She said as if exhausted from simply listening to him. “..my city is gone, Elder. Please.. just get out of my face.”
The words struck harder than any blow.
"...Understood." Sevrin said with a heavy heart before he departed, leaving Hitomi alone. At last..
A silent gale wind swept through the ruins, fanning loose flames scattered throughout the scorched terrain, and brushing loose strands of hair across her face. Without thinking, she brushed them behind her ear.
Shōsen Kobari floated silently behind her while overhead, the Hideous Construct watched over Edo like an omen suspended above the world.
For several moments, Hitomi remained motionless before her gaze drifted toward the black stain in the ground where the Nether Serpent had fled.
The expression on her face never changed, yet something stirred beneath the arrogance and fury and humiliation..
Anticipation..
For had he remained, Hitomi was certain one of them would have likely died on the spot. And though she would never admit it aloud, she found the thought strangely disappointing. And anticlimactic..
“Recover well, Shi dog..." She said softly as the crimson glow within her eyes intensified. "Because the next time we meet, I'm going to enjoy peeling off your scales.”
[Next Chapter]
The team