Sachihiro

I’ve painstakingly studied the notes I have on the ritual; I’ve revised it in my mind several times now. I’ve loosened my body with a run that warmed me up then I’ve cleansed myself of all the excess noise in terms of people, problems and the mess that is everyday life as best I can. I walk to the clearing I’ve already marked out and unsheathe Razor audibly slicing the air with the thickness of spirit energy I am running through the metal.

Its almost like cladding a weapon with aura but much more comfortable as the energy is actually welcomed into the steel instead of just being layered on top. The balance is perfect, the length ideal, the sharpness unquestionable, my grip on the tsuka is light; I have never been disarmed of my bound weapons. I’ve gotten judgmental looks before from other tribesmen for having my share of celestial ore ingots fashioned into such an exotic weapon but honestly Razor is a part of me in a way only someone with a bound object could understand.

Stabbing deep into the sand; I start with the outer circumference scratching into the ground the membrane sigil ensuring that traces of my spirit energy remain embedded into the markings. The ritual has already begun with the drawing itself a meditative mantra, I walk the path that starts the Summoning Dance. The path that draws the summoning sigils both on the ground and within my Self.

In the middle of the semi circle I turn perpendicular walking the mental path of self scrutiny whilst scratching the line into the sand through Razor. I turn when I reach the other end into self truth going all the way onto the other end straining my psyche by turning into uninterrupted judgement of self.

The curves of inner ramblings are easy paths to mark but then I have to decipher them in the straight short straight triangles of the mind/sigil. I go deep or shallow as my mind allows, as my spirit reserves allow, as my psyche can allow. This is not a physically draining process, discounting the spirit energy which only a thread is left behind in the sand, to a casual observer I am just doing squiggles on the ground.

It takes a while but eventually I am in the middle of the summoning rituals’ finished sigil, a construct of geometric symmetry that prepares and winds the sorcerer in mental and spiritual symmetry. I sit after connecting the last dots and think on all that I just went through while walking the paths. I take a deep breath and relax, having taken a deep look at myself I take a spiritual sigh; breaking the beautiful pattern painstakingly drawn within me.

Somewhere within me usually intangible and hardly ever directly experienced. Not sure whether to label it my spirit, my inner self, my soul or what but I know I’ve connected with something we all have that’s necessary for us to be us but its insubstantial, unquantifiable. And as I walked the paths I drew the symbol on the sand on this intangible part of myself.

Then I find myself dancing, the pattern is just there.

The last thing I remember is meditating but now I’m as a person in a trance, led by the dance I move this way and that carried by the momentum of the wholesome energy being sucked into me. I am unwinding backwards through the path I had painstakingly taken forward, now the spiritual energy I used is sucked back into me changed and amplified, more than the sum of its individual parts.

Every turn I make, every bend and step and stumble. I actually know the moves as I’ve practiced this dance many a times before Tiba and because I know the moves I’m not sure whether I’m pulled along or pushing myself along. It feels good on my body, straining ligaments, muscles and joints in ways they may not have been exercised in years. And as I dance all the burdens of having to look at myself through the path are relieved. I know myself.

I know I have a delusion that maybe Hannah isn’t dead at the back of my mind but I’ll not share that with anyone lest they think me crazy. I know I haven’t really faced my grief head on though I’m 90% sure she’s dead. I know I faced Rigs, a trained Barbarian wielding his artifact longsword with Kata a handaxe because I wanted to test how good I am by giving myself the handicap. I know I had fun fighting him before taking his head and having to deal with the consequences.

I know I don’t want to have sex with Kuyoki ‘cause she had sex with da, I know I want to smash his face in yet I still love and respect him. I know I have favourites even though as a father and a husband I try not to, I know I’m afraid. Afraid of being ignorant, incompetent, useless, afraid of outliving my children.

I’m easily seduced by the opportunity to improve myself, case in point the crazy idea of keeping 2 of the perverts summons as my own (Katya & Keir). Commuting with that creature that I banished all those years ago in the dungeon in the Foothills so as to gain knowledge, (Zillah). Letting creatures as strange and unknowable as the sidhe fae be a lover and another study my progress so I can gain every single advantage I can milk from them to better myself. Letting an unknown spirit recuperate within Katya just ‘cause it promised me a water elemental.

I‘ve looked through the mirror provided by the ritual dance and I know myself, my hidden hopes. My fears. My dreams and nightmares, secret fantasies and many shortcomings to my own standards.

And then it’s over and I’m standing where I had started the sigil bloated in spiritual energy like I haven’t felt in years. I feel good, I feel healthy, my skin feels like I should be seeing sparks sizzling off it. The spiritual ‘spectrum’ is open to me, everything within my awareness is layered on with a spiritual sense again.

Were things always this clear before or is this new? There is power everywhere such that even with my normal sight now layered over with a little spirit sense I can see things I wasn’t before able to see, hear things...

I look around. The ritual is finished and I can feel the many spiritual threads connected to me. Spirit threads connecting me to my mates I can easily identify and resonate with naturally, I’m surprised at how different each feels from the other and how immovable they are.

It takes a moment to identify the many little threads I have hanging off me. Thread to promises, contracts and oaths I’ve taken are a little harder to identify but I do and they worry me. Some seem even more unshakable that my mating bonds whilst others seem to be barely there at all. Who would have guessed that words not spoken in a mana bound oath or contract could still be so binding still.

There are threads whose purpose or origin I can’t immediately identify and that worries me most.

There is a lot of ‘new’ senses to catalogue through but the feeling of holding so much bloating spirit within me is becoming more and more strenuous so as curious as I am I focus on the threads I can summon.

There is my connection to Katya, always suspected I could summon her to me but with how physical she is I have no idea what that would do to her. There is my connection to Keir, I wouldn’t mind experimenting with that thread some. There is my connection to Honour, my hands twitch, I haven’t held my zanpakutō in a very long time.

It is my connection to my own spiritual energy that I lock all my attention onto thought. I have finished the ritual, I just need to reach out to pull what is mine from this unseen spiritual realm back to myself where it belongs and I do so eagerly.

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Everything happens at once and very quickly. With the connection to my spirit open I ‘summon’ my old spirit energy into myself where it belongs and eagerly it comes and starts filling me up. Immediately I start feeling better though I didn’t realise I wasn’t feeling myself since Tiba. I start to see, hear, feel things around me differently as all of my physical senses become inundated with excess spirit that has nowhere to pack inside me.

I try to consolidate as quickly as I can but some is going to waste starting to fill the air around me and not just staying within my body. This feels like more spirit energy than I lost, is this more than I lost?

I’m trying not to panic but I’m being filled up all in a single moment in a rush and though there is a lot of bleed-off there is more energy than I thought there would be. I’m tingling all over my eyes are open but all I see is white, there are sounds, voices at the edge of my hearing; I feel warm, comfortable but I can feel nothing else. I’m worried because I am not in control of this nor have I consciously relinquished controlled as I did the first time I Awakened.

Spirit is an odd force of energy, less substantial than mana or aura, less tangible. My most potent spirit based ability, spirit oppression makes my opponents feel hopeless and suppresses them on the inside to an extent that it manifests on the outside. And that’s just normal physical people, it drives sorcerers and spirits crazy. And of course spirit energy is easily insinuated into my other abilities without much need for adjustments and the results speak for themselves.

So regardless of whether or not I can control it I leave myself open for my spirit to return to me, it fills me from my feet up my legs settling in my torso then all the way over my head yet still it keeps coming. I’m saturated in it, clogged in it and if it was unfamiliar I’d be drowning in it. So much power...

I lose all sense of the physical, I can’t feel myself standing where I know myself to be standing. I’m not floating I’m not swimming I feel nothing about anything at all. It’s gloriously relaxing, like sleeping with your mind wide awake but still resting. I’m just chilling in the good vibes of my spirit welcoming it home, its easy when gaining power or growing is usually so hard or painful.

Hi spirit, how you been? Oh, so you’re older now, much older than I physically am? That’s good to know and you learnt a lot out there without me? Oh, you were never without me? Oh, you are me and I am you? So right now I’m having a conversation with myself, ahh a part of myself that I’ve kept asleep since you’ve been away. Here then, lets assimilate.

VOOOM

An implosion of ... of ..... something takes place within me and I’m changed. Almost the same way a spiritual weapon is infused with spirit when bound something similar happens to me. As any tool made from spiritually susceptible ores or material is shaped and made to house and grow with the spiritual energy of the wielder so is the body made to house the spirit. Naturally the body also grows with the spirit, after all what has more potential than flesh?

The body I wear, the body that is Sachihiro van Damage becomes a vessel, has always been a vessel and as my spirit energies fill me. Old thick ripened spiritual energies I become more than what I was just a moment ago. Like an empty sword once filled with spirit becoming an artifact I become an artifact, at least that’s how I am understanding it.

My skin changes subtly getting a golden honeyed tan, my eyes glow bronze, my awareness fizzles and readjusts now showing me stranger things than I am used to ‘seeing’ with my dimensional awareness.

My senses are back with the change and I survey not just myself. My surroundings keep getting stranger and stranger, I’m seeing things in some juxtaposition that is causing a mild headache as I try to parse through it all.

I frown, what the fuck is that horrible thing on Katya’s leg? What the fuck are all these things attacked to all of my people? Fattening themselves feeding off my family?

Before I can probe something big, all encampusing in fact, that has me instinctually pulling on Honour with all I have as the threads are still there to connect through. Honour comes; the beautiful two handed nodachi comes eagerly and quickly into my grasp. How or where it comes from is irrelevant, all that matters is that I’m whole and posed to fight-

But what has me swaths away my defences as insignificant, I am a fly trying to face a strong wind head on. My prowess is nothing here, all my years of training are nothing here, all my obsessive focus on being a superior warrior is nothing. I’m washed away like a guppy washed by the waves that keep ships off the Undine Straights, completely overwhelmed.

Physicality has no place here, I’m a babe here, completely helpless. Shit, have I come here physically? Where am I exactly, what’s happening?

I try to stop myself from being swept away, I try to anchor myself as hard as I can but to absolutely no avail for I have nothing to anchor to. Even my soul sword Honour, the one I currently have on me isn’t a physical sword that I can wield but actually just a part of the piece of my soul that is a weapon. She has shed her mortal coils, the coils of a Hito made 130cm long nodachi and is now just a part of me.

A part of me tempered, moulded, prepared and now poised to kill any and all that I consider offensive to me, at least all physical threats. The making of a soul sword is not about taking a pieces of metal and making a weapon, not quite anyways. The really important work is taking a piece of the soul and moulding it into the shape of the weapon and that soul piece is still my soul, just specialised.

The realisation comes to me as an epiphany as I lose touch of all that is physical but still retain my zanpakutō. Not as a nodachi, not as a long handle war axe as I know its release form to be. Even as I lose my hands to handle things, feet to stand on, senses to see or hear or smell but retain my zanpakutō as part of me that isn’t part of my body I finally understand.

I’m swept away by a giant that at any instant can and likely will squash me as insignificant under its heel but I learn that I am always armed. My very soul is armed, I have always been and will always be armed, my very soul is what it is but it is also an implement of death... with the suddenness of an unplanned ejaculation I learn the complete name of my zanpakutō. Her/My name isn’t just Honour, I am Honour in Death. I am Shi No Meiyo.

*

Corvus of Celest

A being walks out of the open rift in space and looks around; he is about 1.7m tall, I estimate 80 to 90kg with an lean frame but with the loose robe like clothing bellowing from the wind coming from the other side makes its hard to be sure. He definitely seems to be human or some variation of human with all the usual features though his honey bronze skin, brown eyes and thick black curls makes his race difficult to guess. He sniffs the air, frowns, then slowly starts rising into the air. The general gives a signal and one of the hidden archers lets loose an arrow enchanted for penetration.

The being casually snatches it out of the air and snaps the shaft with the same hand with no change in his demeanour, it all happens within a heartbeat and he doesn’t seem the least bit perturbed about being fired on. Another signal is given and a flight of 100 enchanted arrows whistles through the air all unerringly on target.

Casually he waves his hand and all the arrows seem to turn to dust, he tsks and continues looking around when he reaches about 400m into the air. I look at the soldier in the ditch next to me in confusion and he shakes his head seemly also bewildered. I guess I’m not the only one that did not sense even an ounce of power used in that defence.

The general again tests the being, signalling a flight of enchanted arrows fired by specially raised and trained Hezbollah archers that have Awakened to the perfection of the use of projectile weapons. This flight of arrows is not visible or audible to me until another cloud of dust similar to the fist tells me that again that nondescript average looking bronze person in the sky did his hand waving again.

I’m tempted to send to my ministry colleagues and get their take on this but for us this is strictly an observation mission and I’m not one to piss off a group of Hezbollah generals with their armies less than 300km away.

I look to my far left, we are all hiding behind ‘natural’ barriers that provide cover from the portal and what has caught my attention is the vast build-up of mana from that direction. A bright beam of energy instantly stretches the whole distance, enveloping and going past the being to eventually tapper off far in the sky.

I blink and the energy beam is gone but our prey still stands undisturbed, I’m not sure whether the spell missed was neutralised or blocked. No it wasn’t blocked I traced its path just a moment ago, did the mage miss then?

The figure suddenly accelerates down landing before the open portal creating a dust cloud as it breaks the ground then disappears on the other side. Messages start flying in to everyone and quickly the observers are rushing back towards the main army which is no rushing forward to deal with the threat.

I’m on a Persian horse along with numerous others bounding through the checkpoints, zigzagging our way through the barrier prepared to stop an invading force from the other side. I’m not even a km away when I look back and grin with confirmation of war coming to our shores. Rank after rank of armed and armoured humanoid beings march out of the portal as it widens unnaturally from clear manipulation from the other side.

‘’It’s war then,’’ I say to myself in excitement as every Celestian has been preparing for this challenge our whole lives, most without even knowing it.