Sachihiro

My blade swings left across my shoulder and the man squeals like an swine 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 on the cheek. He turns quickly raising 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, fainting then 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 battle mages whose capabilities we can't guess. 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, 6 or 7 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 then swerves past 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 but 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.

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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.

After all the is honour in a good death.