Sachihiro

It takes a while for me to recover myself from the pain and trauma of pulling myself physically through a spiritual opening. I'm a mess of destroyed flesh that looks like a plague survivor but once over these spiritual caused harm recovers much fast than any normal wounds would.

Shae has been killing Alderman and harvesting their blood to make herself stronger judging by the evidence around me. After drinking a second health elixir I manage to get to my feet.

"Save any for me?’’

[GRrrrr], a growl comes out of her that shivers the blood about me. I wade steadily towards her, she’s angry and hurt. Third tier, a king in her power, inwardly I’m proud as I feel her aura bellowing about me from the weight of her presence.

She watches me with blood-tinged eyes not blinking, her power is blood and it is everywhere. The iron tang of it is almost sweet at the back of my throat as I take a breath, I am heavily in her domain. Never have I felt such power from her as the blood bubbles flowing like living liquid about the room, thick and turbid, sluggish in its movement to and from her like a lava pool.

‘’You’ve come far enough Sachi,’’ voice deep in threat as I get close.

I stop as the blood thickens between me and him slumped against the wall in what used to be the Family Room.

‘’Shea... I’m so sorry, for everything you've through. Everything you're still going through, you're not alone in your suffering.’’

‘’Do you know suffering Sachi?’’

‘’Shea...’’

‘’Have you ever been kept in a cage, stabbed so you’re always wounded and bleeding? Whipped raw while the people you care for are battered as possessions? Abused before your eyes with nothing you can do about it; beaten, raped, abused for sport and pettiness..., you don't know my suffering desr husband.’’

Her eyes hurt with deep sadness as she speaks, remembrances taking her away from the present. I get closer but stop as that sadness turns to furry.

‘’Have you ever held the abused corpse of your child in your hands, a child! What kind of people abuse a child!’’

A thin crystalline wall of red constructs itself from the blood barring me, ‘’I said that was far enough.’’

I’m blown back as the wall explodes outward, spinning in the air I land in a crouch at the centre of the room, now soaked in blood which slugs off to join the puddle leaving me spotless.

‘’I don’t want you to touch me, respect that.’’

I nod, sitting in the puddle as he stands stepping towards me.

‘’I’m going to kill them, I’m going to kill every Alderman I can get my hands on and I’ll take their blood as my own. I’ve been planning it, my revenge. I fantasize about making them suffer, I’ll use every one of them I kill to get stronger so I can kill even more. This room I will seal and fill to the brim with blood, blood I will cultivate. I’ll absorb it all and no one will ever be able to take anything away from me again.’’

‘’We will kill them together, but first we must mourn all we'velost and celebrate what we still have. Grief must pass before revenge is sort or it will consume us.’’

"My grief is my revenge!"

The blood pulls and pushes me about getting scathing hot and blistering cold before settling again.

‘’You know I almost fell for the dream you represent. A husband, wives, children, a family and community to call my own after so many years alone. I almost fell for it but it turned to ashes in my mouth, this world doesn’t allow such delusion to go unpunished Sachihiro. The hubris I had to think I could be thrive, to think I could have a family and-‘’

‘’You do have a family,’’

‘’Who is my family, you?’’

‘’Yes me, I’m your family. Mira is your family, Orochi and Serenity are your family.’’

‘’Orochi, Serenity. More names of people I’ve cursed with my blood. Rayna is fortunate to be dead.’’

‘’You don’t mean that!’’

‘’But I do. Better her rested and apart from all this suffering we call life,’’ breath fumes from his blood crusted orifices as he starts pacing about. ‘’I never told you before, I have it controlled and had measures in place for when the twins get older. But little Rayna,’’ he shakes his head sadly. ‘’Rayna never would have survived my blood Sachi, she wasn’t strong enough even from birth.’’

‘’We all have curses we’ve inherited, we just have to keep doing the best we can and pray the rest works itself out for the better.’’

‘’Pray! Pray to whom? I will not spend the currency of my belief to fatten the coffers of some deity. You think the berserker rage a curse huh? Something that makes you stronger and harder to kill?’’ he shakes his head shifting the blood about creating himself a seat he immediately abandons to pace again.

‘’You have not felt a true curse, a curse that drives you to madness with a thirst for blood. A thirst so deep you’d slit your own throat for the illusion of sustenance created by the blood dripping into your stomach,’’ he displays sharp canines starkly white in the backdrop of red.

‘’If such cravings come upon the kids we’ll deal with them together.’’

‘’Deal with them together,’’ he mocks shaking his head in apparent disgust looking at me.

I stand as he slumps back against the wall an inch deep in blood, naked except for the blood crusted and flowing about him.

‘’Are the others safe?’’

I nod, telling him about how I found the others and where everyone is now.

Shea listens silently, paying attention but also getting lost in his own thoughts before remembering he’s supposed to be listening to me. There is something wrong with her mind I can’t put my hand on, the way she keeps shifting gender indicative of instability. What should I do? I can’t overwhelm her, not here in a confined space with so much blood under her command.

‘’Shea, come home with me.’’

‘’Don’t you know, I am home. We built this keep together with all the wealth I’d accumulated in my 200+ years, where else can I call home but here?’’

‘’Home is where family is, home is where you feel safe, home is where you are loved.’’

[Pfft], ‘’I forget how young you are until you start spewing nonsense like that. Strange, I used to find your bright-eyed earnestness endearing, now I just pity you. I pity myself for getting caught up in your dreams.’’

‘’No dream Shea, reality. We love you, we need you with us for our family to be complete.’’

‘’You haven’t mentioned Lysandra or Kira in your little reunion, haven’t found them yet?’’

‘’They’re my next stop and we’ll all be together.’’

‘’ ’And nye nye together’, fuck you Sachihiro!’’ Something yanks on my left leg hard, I swerve, a whip of blood missing my head. I slap aside another to splatter apart hotly which gets her more frustrated at me, I let a fist of blood knock me harder than I expected in the face.

That seems to make her angrier, ‘’you won’t even fight me.’’ She shakes her head, ‘’what do you want from me?’’

‘’I want you to come home.’’

‘’I am home.’’

‘’I want you to mourn Rayna with the woman that gave birth to her, I want you home to comfort your other children, I want you home to grieve and heal with the rest of your family. Not alone here at a place of blood and suffering.’’

‘’I am a being of blood Sachi, maybe you’ve blinded yourself with your hopeful delusions of butterflies and rainbows but even you should feel how much more power this blood gives me.’’

‘’There are many chambers further down that we could be filled with Alderman blood for you to bath in. Do not worry that you will be robbed of your revenge and power when you leave here with me. We will hunt the Alderman like the animals they are and feed ourselves from their bounty, we will sell their children into slavery and their bones we will scatter to the wind. We will do so together as a family, or just me and you if the other don’t have the stomach for it.’’

‘’Do you have the stomach for it? I know you. You have a healthy appetite for a fight but you’ve never been one to slaughter those that can’t defend against you.’’

I shrug, ‘’they killed our children, I am resolved to being a slaughterer.’’

I feel the hot dark presence of the Draug before I can say another word. Shit!

*

I'm snatched and deposited unceremoniously to roll getting up to gaze through the darkness that is Draug’s humanoid form.

‘’What are you doing playing around in the realms of spirit?’’

Shit, I was getting through to her and you bring me here to question me about my life? ‘’How is that any concern of yours?’’ Inwardly I’m fuming but I keep that from my aura, no point expressing anger to a being so far beyond me.

‘’Do not think of yourself more than what you are.’’

My breath changes as it gets harder to maintain a facade of calm, ‘’what is it that I am not?’’

‘’You are not one to ask questions of me,’’ his voice almost growling in my mind.

What the fuck do you care what I do or don’t do in the spirit realm? ‘’Nor are you one to command my life. I go where I please, from now on if you want my time as a herald you’re going to have to pay for it.’’

‘’Pay you?’’ deep darkness opens ejecting a pile of fuming wet fibrous substance so fast I can’t dodge it.

Splatter, ‘’here are my defecations from the flesh of a god. Be grateful you get that much you slivering worm for I could make you a stain on the rocks with a backhand.’’

...

The smell clues me in before my frazzled brain starts working again.

Did he just throw shit at me? What the actual fuck!

I detach from my body as I feel my rage coming to the fore. I escape myself into my spiritual self to more dispassionately study this interaction, suddenly I’m aware of Draug’s underlying anger and worry for the first time since I got here. Why is he so affected by my passing through the spiritual realm?

‘’Maybe you could but you are yet to do so; while I live my life it will not be used as ransom against me. That’s just insane,'' I'd rather be dead than controlled against my own interests with the threat of death. ''Now tell me what you want Draug, I charge this as part of my pay.’’

{Grin}, ‘’you were developing hard vertebrae where the Elder-Thing kept you. I didn’t expect the creature would let you out and about so quickly.’’

So Draug didn’t know I was out of the elder creature’s grasp. ‘’You mean you expected I still be stranded where you left me, tell me what you want Draug or I’ll need more shit than the shit you’ve already given me.’’ As incensed as I am having shit thrown at me, I’m interested in studying why shit has a spiritual presence. I stuff it in my storage pouch as carefully as I can.

Huhuhuhu, the Draug’s laugh rumbles the stone yet affects nothing.

‘’You’re growing fangs. Avoid playing around the realm of spirit, you have enemies there you wouldn’t care tangle with.’’

Phosphorus? Why do you care what Phosphorus tries, or is it the sidhe that were watching me? ‘’Oh, how nice of you caring. You said you would allow me near you for a time Draug, when exactly does this time come to an end?’’

‘’Tired of me already Herald?’’

‘’I like things defined so they end amicably. When next I refuse your summons I don’t want you to be surprised.’’

Blood lusty grin, ‘’you imagine you could resist me?’’

It seems like the Draug genuinely doesn't want Phosphorus to find me, which confirms he has an invested interest in me. Or he's working another angle that me playing around the spiritual might disrupt? ‘’Eventually, I will, for now, I wish for us to work well together.’’

A snort of heat, ‘’you presume much. What has the elder creature being feeding you about me Herald?’’

Changing topic? I was getting through to Shea though.

‘’Do not concern yourself with that, I was busy Draug so get to the point I’m here for.’’

A snort of impatience, ‘’you haven’t even continued your cultivation yet you have the gall to be out and about the places of spirit. Why haven’t you continued to cultivate and temper yourself?’’

‘’About that, I’m gonna need you to do that thing to me again. I’m having a hard time forcing myself through it,’’ embarrassingly true. It’s like breathing underwater, not something you can just convince yourself to do even if you know it won’t kill you.

‘’A masochist are we? I won’t take it easy on you this time.’’

That was easy? ‘’Not right now, like I said I’m busy. If there’s nothing else I’d appreciate you send me back where you found me.’’

‘’I’m beginning to think you really don’t understand the position you’re in.’’

Fuck this shit. I activate the sigil in my palm burning a hole connecting with my spirit-body fully yet pseudo.

###

Using my spirit-body on the other side I draw a sigil from the spiritual into the physical directly where I physically am, I pull the physical into the spiritual.

#######×>÷>=>=>=>=[=

It burns, I scream, I think I scream.

###

With a snap I’m in my body in the spiritual realm; spirit-aura bellowing about compactly in the confines of my empty awareness. It heals me, it cleanses me even as my back burns. I am in fire burning!

[HAARRR!], I wiggle and squirm knowing both pain from which I squirm and pleasure of cleansing health.

The pain I pleasant!

Pleasure is painful!

Eventually a skin is burnt onto my naked existence that protects my awareness from the pleasure and pain of a spiritual existence.

...

I float slowly taking the wonder of everything in as I physically experience the spiritual realm in sensations other than pain.

I can’t believe that worked, I can’t believe that worked so well!

Physically I float in an egg of my own spirit-confines and it doesn’t hurt. I take everything in almost comfortably, my strongest perceptions are mostly of myself but I sense the wonder around me through this husk of a skin burnt onto me.

My spirit-body is now no longer a humanoid structure but worn like the giant bubble that is my dimensional awareness through which I feel everything. I'm a bubble full of aura.

Physically inside my spiritual self, I float here fully without pain, taking everything in. I’m captivated to discover I can physically exist here. Am I physically existing here?

I touch myself without hands and feel like I feel.

The sensations coming through my skin are more nuanced than just pleasure and pain. It’s like I didn’t have any eyes before and now I’m actually seeing this place for the first time on my skin. There is much more order and presence here than I ever imagined and this is actually just a peak in the keyhole that I’m experiencing through my 'skin'.

Inside myself my perception is omnipresent, the smoke that is me follows precisely my imaginings in movement. Inside of myself I am omnipotent.

Outside my spirit body I still perceive that fading burning golden crimson of the spiritual realm but also pressure, texture, temperature with everything shifting like a melting world of coloured wax but more real. A world with firmer rules than i could perceiveor experience before. Inside myself there is order.

I take everything in enjoying being comfortable under the ocean of spirit all about. Being part of it all so fluidly yet being my own entity defined by so much uniqueness.

Able to feel everything about me as though experiencing an actual tangible world. I was short-sighted not to have imagined more layers to this place, fragments of Kata and Razor are easily malleable into any shape I imagine like clay. Like a liquid limb, I move the bound spirit-material in and outside my 'body' freely within the confines of my spirit-body.

Inside myself I imagine hands and layer the malleable material like claws over my nails with a thought. I shift it to hardened metal encasing my fist, I fluidly form the summoning sigil in the air inside my centre in painstaking detail.

The fluid fragments of the spirit-bound weapons are as malleable as liquid dough under my command. There isn’t much left of the bound material but the connection has never been stronger, I encase the sigil on my left palm as usual. What did I do differently this time? How did I put my physical body inside my spirit body?

How do I move?

I mimic walking and distance is covered as things change quickly around me, I mimic running and movement accelerates as a vague sense of direction forms as more of my physical senses combine with spirit helping me orient though I have no legs to walk or eyes to see. Could I?

I mimic what I imagine flight is and I accelerate further almost weightlessly, the speed of my passage so fast my heart pulses in startled nerve as I slow myself down.

I’m getting a high from this feeling of weightless acceleration, this is great. I bask in this accomplishment manoeuvring my egg-shaped spirit-body through the endless spiritual realm feeling as though in flight.

Okay, I can fly but I need to get back to Shea, with a thought I’m there near her spiritual presence. My movement through this place is seemingly only limited by my imagination.

I watch her spirit, trying to figure it out as it keeps itself naturally infallible somehow. I’m hesitant to get back into the physical lest I lose this... spiritual clarity.

I step into Shea’s spirit engulfing it into the bubble of my spirit body. Her gaze blazes like a thousand burning suns, her form a humanoid alienly tall blob of muted light wearing stars as a cloak.

‘’You should not see me,’’ it conveys blasting me away with the declaration that regurgitates it from my spirit-body as I’m blown back.

Rattled, I look again from outside the sphere of my spiritual body and perceive a warm spectral light that conveys itself to be Shea’s spirit. My Shea, yet what was that?

I disregard that line of thought for now.

How do I keep these benefits in the physical world? Since the spiritual realm and the physical realm are interlinked, things done here affect the physical and things done in the physical can affect spiritual realities.

How do I mix these two realities when I transition into the physical? My excitement is tempered by my nervousness as I try to figure out how to make myself this dynamic in the physical world. Is it even possible?

Spirits beyond, if I could move at the speed of thought to distant places in real life! I have a theory I’m willing to try but there are so many implications. So what did I do differently?

I busk in myself as I watch Shea’s spirit. I busk in the warm womb that is my spiritual body keeping my physical body safe.

I pulled my physical self into the spiritual realm encasing flesh in my spiritual body for protection. If I pulled my spirit into the physical encased in flesh I should be able to get similar results. But that’s how I usually do it anyway, isn’t it?

People are flesh-wearing spirits, so should I already be able to mimic spiritual abilities in the physical realm?

I ponder it but feel myself starting to diminish which means my time here isn't without limit.

I ponder ways to return safely and theoretically come to some possible ways but testing any is impossible so I just have to choose and figure it out.

I start working, making connections with my insides as conduits. My arms, legs, branches and passages are sigils connecting to each other. I make the summoning circle like it's supposed to be made, as a perfectly symmetrical four-dimensional construct.

Here goes!

A palm burns opening a connection to the physical, my entire insides are a representation of a summing circle and they thrum with power going through them.

-------!

My body squeezes itself painfully through an opening as small as a tea saucer, things fold on themselves. Pain quickly exceeds my ability to comprehend it, I can’t control what’s happening. My flesh reforms bloats, my body expanding beyond the 1.8m tall 105kg sack of biological matter it has been my entire adult life.

I pull myself in with everything I am but nothing is happening as I crack and leak, expanding beyond human dimensions.

[Phhhh], I pop outward like an overinflated balloon.

...

[TSWEEEEEE...]!

Ringing, all I perceive is the ringing frequency of the particles that used to be my body now stretched thin in a sphere of exactly 32.41m circumference held together by pieces of viscera, spirit-energy, attractive frequencies and well wishes.

How I’m not dead only the creator knows but I hold on to myself with everything I am.

I ring in a single note coming from a round bead of metal that is the fragment of my zanpakuto spinning in tandem with a round molten bead that is the spiritual material left behind from Kata, Razor and everything else that was once spiritually bound to me. The two beads of molten mercury material shape themselves like two tear drops kissing each other as they spin round and round as the centre around which my spirit-body is anchored.

What the fuck did I do? I have no body, I literally have no body yet consciousness remains. No, I do have a body but it’s not humanoid, I am a frequency of fading vibrations confined within an area of space. Mana is being sucked into the ball of vibrating particles that I am to sustain me but there isn’t enough ambient ether around to sustain this forming form.

I’m dying.

It dawns on me that this is the next step in mana evolution, domain creation, but I don’t have enough resources to complete the process. I took a step I wasn't ready for.

I’m dying.