by Philip Read
“There is just a lot that has made me feel like I don’t fully belong with the tribes anymore.”
“You planning to leave?” I ask him.
“Eventually, I will get an artifact soul weapon made as per our agreement with the Hito vampires. Then I will stay a while to kill some southerners. Some of the things they’ve done give even a man of my experience pause.” He says gravely. “Then I will go, see what’s out there for me.”
“Where will you go?”
“You’re full of questions tonight aren’t you?”
“Can you blame me? You aren’t exactly known for being up front about anything these days. Getting you talking is a treat I can’t pass up.” I say with a smile.
“I will go to the Dawn first. I need to see an Ancient beast about turning me into a wolf or whatever she did. Then I need to learn how to be a wolf. Fenrir seems to think I suck at it.”
I grin at that. “I think he may have a point.” I say, but look at his two grey companions sitting comfortably with us.
“Yes well, turning into an animal isn’t exactly something that came with a rulebook.”
“You can read?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. Sandersonian isn’t so difficult to learn.”
“I mean with your awareness thing, you can even feel words on a page?”
“Oh, no I use my eyes to read, though with more practice I’m sure I will be able to read with it in a few years.”
“You have your chakra points opened yet?” I ask.
“Sure, opened and balanced a last year.”
“That’s such a cheat! I’ve been working on stabilizing my pools for over three years now. How did you do it?”
“Well it helps if you can actually see what your trying to accomplish inside yourself.”
“That’s it, I’m done! Your abilities are way too overpowered. You can potentially see anything. Spirits beyond, now that i think about it even Asriel can’t use examine on some of the fae and you just casually look at the Sidhe.” I grumble.
I have been working my butt off trying to stabilize my chakra pools into usable fuel sources for power. The first stage of clearing and opening them took me four months of hours of daily meditation dedicated to opening them all.
Then I spent something like two months balancing the flow from root to crown chakra. With daily practice I could consistently feel all my chakra points and I benefited from having them opened.
I got emotionally, mentally and spiritual healthier. Everything got initially easier. My aura detect became passive instead of needing me to concentrate every time I wanted to check the aura around me. My spiritual energy grew to levels comparable to what Dee’s was when we face the witch, though I couldn’t project it.
Meditation and memorizing became easier, I got more ideas and got better at critical thinking. I got better at sex as well, something Mira commented on. My emotions became stable, everything.
Now I’ve been trying to pool my chakra into pools at each point, like making a dam from a river. A very slow process regardless of how talented a person is, or so I thought.
“I’ve realized that a lot of things are about visualization. The better the mental image of what you are trying to accomplish the easier it becomes.” The hermit says sagely.
I grant at that. “Teach me. Please.”
“Sure, but if this works you owe me. And I’ll have to teach Om as well, its unnerving how powerful that kid could become.” He says looking towards the fire. But I already know by now that were his eyes face does nothing to tell what he’s actually looking at.
“Anyways let’s begin right now.” He says drawing on the ground with a stick. “This is what my chakra channels look like. My root chakra is mostly red like blood, but then..”
And so my lessons on something I thought I understood begin anew. We spend the entire night talking about chakra and visualization. We go through a few sessions of meditation where he guides me into what I should ‘see’ as I meditate.
It takes a while for me to truly believe that all these things he describes are actually within my body instead of just imagining them. But the moment I start to literary try to ‘see’ these things within me something clicks.
I open my eyes and find myself alone with my zanpakutō humming pleasantly in my lap. The sun shining, warming my skin. I have no idea how long I’ve been here or why its already day but I know my chakra is finally complete, finally mine to control.
So many paths have just opened to me now.
Chapter 32
Sachi
My blade swings left across my shoulder and the man squeals like an animal as I cleave into him. He instinctively tries to move away from the cut but his predictable response leads to my follow up spin and slash taking his head clean off in a stray of blood and other fluids.
I look around then head to one of Dustin’s opponents. He’s currently facing three and there is no need to be stingy now. I pat one of them with the flat of my blade on his or her shoulder. He turns and quickly raised his shield and spear to face me, camping behind the shield making himself smaller.
I snort as I move in then out as I dodge a spear thrust but leaving a gush on his thigh before kicking him on the face of his helmet causing him to swing wildly trying to keep me back.
I step back two steps then forward quickly in a step step run and jump, slashing down hard at the gap between his neck and shoulder. Cutting into his mail and leaving him bleeding on the ground holding his gushing wound. I find another opponent.
There are around 462 of us in my battle group and we’ve been ambushing small groups of southerners for months now. But coming across a mass grave of tribesmen women and children we followed the fresh trail to these fuckers. Over a thousand of them in a single battle division with a dozen mages.
But after seeing what we saw, none of us were eager to let them go unmolested, so we set an ambush at a point where we would get closest to the mages without too many of us dying, and we fell upon them like a snow storm.
I find another group of opponents, six or seven all surround Om as he keeps them back and keeps them honest. I stand back and watch for a moment as he stands his ground, deflects, soaks up or swerves passed damage. He looks like a bloody mess of damage but he hasn’t been slowed down in the least.
His leg movements deceptive in their simplicity and slow pace, his arms and up body extremely fast, he dodges a spear and uses and elbow to hit it off course while simultaneously smashing his hammer head first into the chest plate of his opponent like he’s thrusting a spear.
He uses the shaft to deflect two swords almost simultaneously then takes a step to the left causing two of his opponents to step back as they are suddenly crowded yet his hammer is deflecting weapons on the right.
He bunches up a moment then bursts with a spinning move that’s punctuated by the complete and utter destruction of a human torso as one of the left opponents is wrecked in a wet squishing and snapping sound that causes all around him to flinch.
Om himself hardly makes a sound or bat an eye as he continues to harass his now depleted opponents. I shake my head and go help someone that won’t complain I ruined their fun.
There are a lot of unopposed southern soldiers looking for opponents as they outnumber us two to one and finding a fight is as easy as taking four steps in any direction.
I take a few steps and my eyes lock on a panting southerner looking around as though for a fight as well. Our eyes lock and we move towards each other. From his aura I suspect this guy will be a handful and so I take a swing of my water skin before our clash begins.
I swing first hoping to defeat him with my first stroke and the deceptive size of my sword. No such luck, he blocks my monster of a nodachi, a polearm designed exactly for fights like this on his broad sword single handedly and rushes me in a burst of speed with his shield.
The strength it takes to stop a nodachi dead on its tracks is astounding so I don’t even try to meet the shield bash bu
t push back hard to get out of his way. I get a boot to the kidney and one to the face. I deflect a sword strike to a shower of sparks and a slight feeling of vibrations in my arms.
For me to feel the reverberation when my zanpakutō has always soaked up such things before speaks of the power of this current foe. I try to spin out of the way but he blurs and is with me every step of the way.
My focus on keeping his sword off me leaving me open to his numerous kicks that devastate my muscles, bones and internal organs.
A kick to the back of the head sends me sprawling forward but even as I do I pull my monster close, spinning around and sparks fly as I deflect a strike to my ribs.
I land in a roll and come up only to be met with a thrust to the face I deflect and a boot that connects solidly on my sternum to the snapping of ribs. I’m vaulted more than 20 meters back and thankfully land softly on a body that grunts slightly to my invasion.
I get up quickly as my opponent deflects a strike from someone else and leaves a debilitating wound on his thigh that will slow him down enough for others to finish, maybe.
Looking around myself I notice that almost every single barbarian warrior is in the Rage and is hamstrung and being hammed in by these filthy southerners. I spit out a globe of blood as I reassess my situation.
This guy has to be an Awakened warrior or something. There is absolutely no way he could take on all these tribesmen and hamstring them, yet still be as fast, cool, powerful and clean as he currently is if he were normal.
I take a breath through the pain and fortify myself. Fortify my resolve that if I need to die today then I die as a warrior. I let go of my anger, frustration and hurt as I connect fully with my zanpakutō, such concerns or not for me.
Hate slows me down, it inhibits my heart chakra and thinking. Anger slows me down, it saps my strength and tunnels my vision, pain slows me down.
I move passed pain, anger and hate as everything around me becomes greyscaled. My opponent watches me dispassionately before his aura flares and becomes a physical thing manifested around him like a raging fire.
All move away from him, friend or foe as his oppressive aura fills the ambience all around us. I take a stance as everything around me becomes fully monochromatic. Jōdan kamae, my upper level posture stance and get ready to face my opponent.
He moves and all I see is the indentation he left in the ground but I move as I am the sword and my spiritual pressure flares as sword strikes sword to a loud pervasive ring that permeates all around us.
I move and slash and move and cut and move and thrust. I am the sword and the sword is me. I have never danced so beautifully in living memory. My spiritual pressure so dense around me that his aura does nothing even as it causes all that get too close to fall to their knees.
I am fast and true and clean in my strokes, precise and not limited to just the 36 forms or the forms of the style Kazimoto has been teaching me. No, my zanpakutō has wisdom to impart as well and we sing the tune of the fight instead of just dance to it.
Never have I moved so fast and perfectly, each form moving perfectly into the next and the next and the next. I/we are a maelstrom of power and precision.
I know where my opponent is at all times within my greyscale domain, it isn’t eyes I use but a combination of eyes, sound and slight vibrations that give me a mental image of all movement around me so quickly that his skill of being imperceptible is completely countered. Almost completely countered.
Yet he stays imperceptible to most on the battlefield as sparks fly whenever our bodies/blades connect. The power behind my strikes fortified by thousands of years of the berserker rage in my ancestry and my own spirit.
The speed behind my moves increased by thousands of years of the berserker being passed down from parents to children, filtered, disseminated, perfected as a tool for my benefit instead of the curse it was intended to be.
My spirit hums in tune with my zanpakutō and I understand her perfectly for the first time. I understand the joy, peace and purpose we get from testing ourselves this way. We aren’t bloodthirsty, no. We are disciplines of an art form that has been lost since the end of the Proxy War Of The Gods.
An art form that even then was barely being discovered and perfected. An art form that transcends just killing becoming beautiful killing with purpose. An art form so far beyond most creatures that their souls need to be tempered before they can glimpse it without destroying themselves. And that’s what my zanpakutō/I have been doing, tempering my/our soul.
Tears flow from my eyes in joy and wonder as all these and more are revealed to me. To know someone, to truly know someone, is a rare thing, a scary and beautiful thing. And for the first time in my existence I know someone other than myself, I know my zanpakutō and I know her name.
But even as I fight and move as I’ve never moved before the injuries I’m incurring start adding up. I thrust and sparks fly before a piece of my blood and flesh go flying off. I swing and sparks fly before a cut cleaves into my side cleanly.
I spin and move into a perfect form 18, form 33, form 3, form 20 in so quick a succession that my ligaments and tendons threaten to snap. My strikes are dodged and reflected beautifully as our bodies/blades collides.
A kick to my stomach seems innocent enough to the bystanders but is turns my intestines to mush, the punch to the kidneys hardly moves me outwardly but the blood vessels in said kidney burst as it sags within me, I’m slowed down.
Though his blade and shield keep my zanpakutō/me at bay his body devastates me. Whatever his skills are, he isn’t primarily a weapon’s user, but he uses weapons to get close enough to devastate his opponents.
My internal injuries start piling up and add up to my body shutting down even though I’m in the swordRage, a type of berserker rage only possible when the soul of the berserker is in a weapon that can thoroughly express it. Unstifle it, unbridle it, release it in unmitigated violence, something the human body is just too fragile to normally be able to do.
I step back and stand facing my opponent, he stands as well, now visible to all as he faces me. His weapons coated in a visible layer of aura, visible to me anyways. I nod, understanding why my superior weapon didn’t manage to destroy his sword and shield.
I love my nodachi, it’s impossible to so intimately know someone and not love them. Even with their flaws and faults they seem perfect, and she is truly perfect. I understand how she’s been collecting soul energy to heal herself now. I know that without me she has also been going through bouts of depression, without the other half of her soul.
I know her name now, or at least part of her name. Something that should have taken me decades to achieve in times of peace, but using her daily and my dedication to meditation and her ability to harness soul energy from those we slay…
Yes, I know her name. And if she were whole I could release her from this mortal coil with it’s many limits. I could release her into her true form, the first release of a zanpakutō. But for that, I still have a thousand more enemy souls to consume before I can do that safely.
I salute my opponent, I guess it is time to die. I grin at him as blood flows from the corners of my mouth. I can barely stand but fuck it was a good fight! My vision is already getting blurry but I want to die with my eyes open.
So I take a stance, Gedan-no-kamae because I’m ‘fucken’ tired and the lower guard stance is perfect for a quick clean death. I vomit out my guts and blood before stabilizing myself again.
Digging my feet deep into the ground for traction I face my opponent again, then I move with everything I am and everything I ever was, meeting my death like a warrior should.
Chapter 33
Adonias
I face the barbarian before me, giving him the time to come to terms with his demise. To realise that this is where his path ends and to watch the despair and desperation in his eyes. But the bloody savage grins in the face of death as he sways on his feet.
Barely able to stand he takes up a fightin
g stance to face me. I hate these bloody barbarians, I hate them to my core for they took my daughter, my beautiful Aaliyah. But by the spirits do I admire them.
I’ve moved from village to village killing them to sate my grief and all I’ve found is the smell of death and blood. This bloody division I’ve been traveling with has been emboldened by my presence into scouring deep into tribal lands. Stupid of them, but I didn’t mind, it gave me more chances of killing these monsters.
And now here one of them salutes me and grins in the face of his demise. Not once have I seen them beg or prostrate themselves before any of us. Even the women and children fight to the last of their strength or till death before being subdued.
Even in my anger I have lost the taste of this fight, and my grief is just a damn hole that is never filled no matter how many I kill. ‘One more Aaliyah, one more dead barbarian killed in your name and I will join you in the ever after’.
The young barbarian tribesman with the exotic longsword and strange powers bunches up getting ready to attack. Our eyes meet as he rushes to his death, and all I see there is a determination and an iron will. I will kill him cleanly, the least I can do.
*
Om
I move in to attack Sachi’s killer with a roar of Rage as I jump the 30 meter distance between us. Not looking as the discarded remains of Sachi fly in almost different directions, almost cleaved in half from shoulder to hip.
I land with hammer on shield to a resounding gong as I summersault over and land behind my opponent while spinning back around with a devastating blows that cuts the air as though it were a viscous fluid.
The pressure wave is like an explosion as he blocks the strike on his shield. Not even moving back a step yet frowning slightly as his feet dig deeper into the ground.
My hammer is a blur as I spin it before me with my wrist, my aura flared as much as it can go the entire time. Increasing my strength and speed on top of my Rage. Orange sparks fly as every other spin deflects of his sword, me moving a step forward every second yet he doesn’t move back.
