Sachihiro

I toss and turn feeling chased and oppressed in my own dreams for the first time in many years. I am being pursued by creatures stronger than I am, creatures greater than I am with malevolent intentions and a taste for blood.

I'm in narrow twisting tunnels in gloomy twilight with mist all around trying to used stealth and guile to stay alive instead of speed and my ability to hide. I know I have to keep moving, I know I'm being tracked by means that cannot be fully cloaked or covered up. I know I cannot outrun my pursuers or outfight them.

I have nothing backing me, my faith is not one of worship or surrender and so I have nothing backing me, no geas from a patron diety. I am known by two gods but I worship neither. I am under their favour and enjoy their blessings but that's because they gain power by my deeds, by the favour they've bestowed upon me they benefit. Both receiving worship through me and thus their blessings upon me bear fruit for them as my actions honour them. But neither receive worship directly from me and though Wisdom/Sapientia is satisfied to call me friend, Eros is not satisfied with the lust received from the penitent through me.

My spirit body is being pursued through the twisting dark tunnels of the spirit plane and I can call on neither deity for help because it is in my own name I have claimed the daemon. It is against myself and the cages of my spirit that it's been bound and it pursues me deep within the confines of my spirit being where I have imprisoned it. It shows its true age and true colours here, able to manifest its true form in all its terrifying glory as it seeks my life.

Albert was many things but lacking ambition was not one of his faults and so the thing I claimed from his hold is old, much older than I could have ever imagined a living creature to be. It has seen the birth and death of worlds, it has walked on many worlds in many forms through the ages summoned by lesser creatures that were able to bind it temporarily into flesh. Flesh it allowed itself to be bound in whilst physical but still it roaming freely in the spiritual. But I have claimed it using it's true name, an binding it cannot let go unchallenged thus I find myself needed to bind it's true form as well as it's physical form.

It's actual spirit body always roams freely, it's true self always finds a way to twist and convolute the bonds that bind it and the holder of those bonds into giving it freedom and authority over itself eventually. It plants fears and doubt into the psyche of it's prey, it strikes at the spirit where no wounds will show when the intended victim wakes back in their physical body.

Light encampuses me and courage fills me as I stand my ground, I should not fear this thing. This thing that is bellow me even if bound with no backing and the power of my own name. I should not be fleeing from it like some prey in an inevitable chase for the slaughter, like I myself am not a warrior that can stand his own ground.

The thing is a spirit of consumption and excess. A spirit creature that feeds and feeds and finds no satisfaction in what it consumes. It allows itself to be bound time and time again in order to mitigate the pain of the all consuming hunger. The hunger lessens when it is allowed to feed through a whole being. It consumes through it's summoner and thus manages to retain some of what it consumes for a time slowing the endless hunger from haunting it's spirit being.

I activate spirit oppression and everything around me changes vibrational frequencies at an instance as the pressure applied on everything quadruples. The density of the air around me increases to that of water at the bottom of a deep lake. Small creatures caught within the oppressive dome are moving slower as the friction in the air and the density of the air resists them. So this is what my spirit oppression looks like on a spiritual level.

Small spirit insects start to disintegrate as they vibrate until broken apart, almost like they were stepped on they separate limb by limb. Even the walls around me start to crumble within my bubble of oppression, the visualization of my skill and it's effects in this way increasing my understanding and Image of the skill increasing its potency even as I use it in the spirit plane directly for the first time.

The thing comes in all it's hungry furry disregarding my oppression like a fish disregards a different current of water in the ocean. I suddenly have Honour in my hand and am meeting the strike of it's claws with the edge of my blade to the ringing of metal on stone. The thing hisses and fazes through the air appearing behind me and slashing out at me back but my nodachi is there blocking the strike as it comes.

I have complete 360° awareness in the entirety of my oppression domain and beyond, I do not need eyes to keep me informed of the creatures movements. "You have no authority over me human!" It hisses at me in desperate rebellion.

"I have authority over you creature, I name you Keir Airell, I name you Saliyasis, I name you bound to me until I choose to release you." I say as confidence whose original I cannot identify fills me.

"..... Meiyo ...!" I say unleashing my zanpakutō from its confides of mortal flesh, letting it cast aside the shape it was molded into by physical hands as it takes the shape of it's true self in the spirit plane directly.

The axe now in my hand is sentient, awake and present. It glows with emotions and power syphoned from everything around itself. It blazes in the dark with a smoldering miasma of destruction and finality that shrouds it like an aura. The axe head is big and curved like a half moon with a silver sheen of soul at the edge for dealing with those stubborn creatures that only know true pain when their souls get cut. The handle is long and dark, the weapon itself almost a poleaxe with a long shaft of obsedion celestial metal. The release form of my nodachi, its shigai...

Its body is an actual physical manifestation of a spirit being's body. The dead flesh of a celestial being from the realm of the spirit beyond, the physical animated by the infusion of my own spirit fusing with it. It is an unnatural thing to weild the body of a god this way but it is permissible because I have managed it.

By it also is my soul manifest, Meiyo is no longer the dead flesh of a being that is the equivalent of what we consider gods. No, by placing my soul within her I have animated her, I have made her alive in the once dead flesh and I have given her an unlimited platform to power. She may look like an axe, take the form of an axe in her first release but she is so much more than that. She is a deity in her own right and if she would accumulate worshipers... Woe to any that choose to stand before her.

But that is not her path, her path is by my side and she is content with that. She is content in waiting for me to realise my potential and be able to one day weild her with the realisation of the power I hold in my hand. The spirit creature hisses but more sedately as it watches me, bowing before me as I stand with soul-axe in hand ready to and capable of permanently killing even a spirit in it's domain, especially in it's domain.

"You have done well in taming that one, it is usually a mischievous creature to control." A sweet melodic slightly familiar voice rings out from the grey mist and I turn trying to find the source.

"What of you, how can I tame you to be under my direction?" I say into the air, not finding anything with either my awareness or my eyes.

"I would try to strike a different burgeon with a creature like me if I were you." The Lilithian creature says again out of nowhere.

"And what burgeon would that be creature of the dungeon?" I say letting it know I can 'feel' with whom I speak.

''I am not of this world unto which you have banished me but I came here of my own accord when I felt the call. I could have resisted and claimed your soul had I so chosen, but the call was insistent and the potential rewards great..."

The thing floats towards me from the mist in it's humanoid form. A very femininely shaped monster with no eyes and a bleached stone skull for a face. It's body is shrouded in darkness like a cloak but there is no mistaking the hips, the thighs, the curves as anything but feminine and the disconnect between its appealing body and monstrous face is disturbing to gaze upon.

"I have gained much from my time on this plane and have learnt many secrets of the spiritual. By I am flesh and do not belong here as these creatures do. You will banish me back to the material world as you have banished me to this one many centuries before, I will return to the physical world and in return you may call on me 3 times in your hour of great need."

"So you can cause havoc on the Gaia I love. No deal creature, I know nothing of your kind nor what vile acts come naturally to you. No, if ever you are to return to the mortal you shall do so with a leash around your neck that is tethered to me. You will be under my direction and bound by my values and philosophies," I say to the thing trying but unable to see using awareness passed its cloak of darkness.

"Are you really so foolish as to think you could enforce such an agreement upon me, do you think you can compel me into suck a burgeon like you have compelled this lesser creature?" It says waving a knurled hand towards the now again in his human guise Keir Airell kneeling a ways away.

"Maybe I can and maybe I can't, but I can always just leave you stranded here." I say with a little grin already feeling myself fading from here and waking within my body.

"Name yourself now creature and bind yourself to my leash or forever be trapped within this plane of half spirit and half flesh."

"I name myself Zillah..."

"And so you are bound by my philosophies and values unable to break them so long as you are on the physical world."

"And so I am bound." The creature says and I swear if it had a face I could decipher I'd say it is grinning.

"You are smart human but not smart enough to deal with creatures of this age without help. I will educate you as we part, I am not bound to you like summoned spirits are bound to do your bidding, for I am a true creature of flesh and need not your spirit energy to tether me to the world. Your summons will be naught but a suggestion to me, and your values not a rod that you can use against me to keep me in line. For though they may bind my hand they also bind yours, already I find nothing within your philosophies that is anathema to me and so I have come out the greater of this agreement."

"Maybe, maybe not. Grab this." I say tossing Honor at the thing, which it catches by the hilt before disappearing along with my axe as I banish it home.

I sigh and look at Keir. My oppression long since faded, my body trembling from exhaustion but I survived. Whatever it is that happened here I survived it, and I think I'm still fully intact. "You, don't fucken' try to do that again." I say before disappearing.

*

I wake up with a start in my body in the bed that has been assigned to me completely drenched in sweat. I'm exhausted, my spirit energy is empty. The tank is gone and my spirit body vulnerable to direct attack from any for of spiritual attack.

All my spirit based abilities and skills are dead, dumb, blind. The spiritual part of my awareness is blinded, the awareness I have of my spirit bound weapons is gone. My mind is again open to influence from creatures that can manipulate spirit like it was when the hag witch got it's claws into me all those years ago.

Spirit aura, spirit summoning, spirit shield, spirit sense all gone. I know that my zanpakutō is somewhere far far away because it is part of my soul but I can no longer summon it to me. My heart is racing and panic is rising slowly up and blocking my throat, what the fuck have I done to myself?