Sachihiro
I rush to get to the only source of light to be found with enthusiasm but I also try to be cautious, everything outside my awareness is still complete darkness and I don’t want to fall off another ledge. Yet that is light I ‘saw’; the only hopeful thing I’ve had in what feels like days. Could it be a way out? I strain my eyes as I rush carefully ahead trying to spot the light with my actual eyes but its only with the now faded spiritual sense I was able to perceive it.
Maybe that’s the trick of this place, maybe the way out is some sort of spiritual door no one can finds with physical senses. I walk quickly ahead, my blade is still naked in hand as I skulk about keeping quiet as I move decisively. I can’t have anything stop me while I’m so close.
I dig within myself, another pulse of spiritual energy leaves the bounds of my improved sphere of awareness traveling across the stygian darkness until eventually pinging again on that source of light, and another and another. I frown but keep moving forward in hopes of finding some clue on getting out of here with increased worry now as more and more ‘lights’ ping to my expending senses.
Like disturbed fireflies they bloom to my spirit sense.
With so much potent spiritual-energy returned to me with the return of my blade I freely send another pulse when I feel like I’ve transversed half the distance to my goal, its harder to push out the energy this time, much harder than the previous one in fact. But I perceive the lights I had sensed before much closer and there are a lot of them stacked next to each other going forward as far as my senses can reach.
I slow down some but I keep moving forward, my heart is in my throat now in nervousness as I perceive more and more box like constructs glowing in my spiritual perception before fading. What the fuck is this place?
I move cautiously forward once I get close, ‘seeing’ for the first time the marks drawn on the ground around the boxlike coffin with a glowing lid. I try not to disturb the sigils etched on the floor with my steps as I recognise them for what they are, I’m hesitant to mess with another sorcerer’s spell but what else can I do? I study the markings on the ground for the moment whilst another forced pulse of spirit-energy diffuses with an effort of will. More and more of these boxes stretch out as far as I can perceive ‘till I lose count of them at something like 72 and counting.
Okay, what to do now? The box is mostly made of stone mouldered into a rectangular shape gilded with glyphs, a metal lid on top and sigils all around the whole thing.
It’s only the metal lids that glow with spirtual energy, yet as I tap it with Honour I know its just a slab of normal iron, not particularly well made slab of iron at that I realise with the vibrational sense allowing me to percueve the type of metal I'm dealing with.
What to do? I stand there breathing, calming my myself down whilst studying the sigils on the ground. I can’t make sense of them, or I can't concentrate.
Fuck it.
I stab my nodachi’s tip between the edge of the lid and yank it open as forcefully as I can before taking a step back in startled fright as I ‘see’ what’s inside. It doesn’t move and I start calming down somewhat and move a step closer to my dead foe. My awareness can’t pierce the coffin’s sides but I get closer and look inside the open top. Its definitely the same as the one I killed but this one wrapped in fresh rags instead of the falling rags that the other creature was wearing.
There are weapons and some gold and jewels in the coffin with the creature as well, I take another step and the thing’s eyes open abruptly. It sits up!
[ZWEEE!]
Cleanly I cut off its head without hesitation, that first one was a nightmare to face in the dark and I’m not about to see how dangerous a fresh one compares to my last opponent.
The head flies rolling outside my awareness, my attention is on the body to make sure its dead but I hear the head stop moving somewhere in the distance. Nothing else happens, silence again reigning whilst I hold my breath and stance waiting for something to move, to my dismay something does.
There is scrapping of metal against stone in multiple places all around me, the unmistakeable sounds of more of these creatures coming out of their coffins drops my stomach to my knees. A sense of dread falls of me as I send out another scrambled pulse of spiritual energy outward; 1, 2 , 3... 16, 17 I twist around using the coffin as a launch pad and I’m off at a sprint.
[KRRRRRRRR......]
[KRRR...]
Vibrating screeching screams pierce the dank silence from multiple mouths with the first cries of the risen horrors. The sounds reach me but the paralyzing fear induced by the sound attack crashes over my sphere of awareness without taking root as the spiritually fuelled sphere acts as a barrier against outside spiritual influence. I hear some start to follow as others escape their confinement, I increase my sprint putting everything I have into reaching that wall first.
Its only a few minutes of running before I catch myself against the wall and turn around quickly as something enters my awareness on my heels. Claws rake the wall where my head was as the thing screeches hatefully at me, it retreats quickly as though hurt but another is already coming into my awareness from a different angle. A spinning slash has Honour reaching my foe before its claws reach me.
[KAAAH!]
It screams and tries to retreat as its arm is cut off but I duck under its other arm following it in its retreat then cutting its midsection open so I can follow through and slash at another circling around it to get to me.
I duck under another attack as I spin around cutting into a leg downing another then I finish my eviscerated armless foe removing its head. Something like sand bleeds out of these creatures but bleed they do.
Bringing Honour up sparks light the darkness shocking my eyes as I block an axe, forearm at the back of my blade keeping it steady. I grit my teeth as claws slash into my back painfully.
I kick behind me and miss, swerving as the axe swings again. Using the opening to counter but another is there with sharp claws ready to wrend me open. I turn to counter and end up wounding one as I manoeuvre myself so the axe wielder doesn’t get a clean strike. They are all over me and more are coming.
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I grab a wrist on my left and yank whilst stabbing into a hand on my right, I smash my knee into the off balanced one I’ve pulled but it just rolls with it slashing my calf open before getting its head separated from its body. It got me good though, blood dripping from a stinging calf.
A front kick to another, a dodge and stab, I slash and roll into the created gap coming up with a slash that’s stopped cold by another weapon wielder.
[BAM.]
A foot to the face has me turning around in my movement using the momentum of the stomp to cut shallowly into an unsuspecting foe retreating immediately creating room for me to get into a stance. I take the gap and keep slashing left, right, left with quick decisive strikes keeping the screeching horrors away whilst orientating myself so the wall is at my back.
I veer backwards but these things are fast and aggressive even with Honour cutting into many of them they take the deep wounds so another can get behind within my guard. I keep turning as I move lest I find myself completely surrounded, keeping them honest with folded celestial steel cutting as easily into them as they cut into me with claws.
I turn into a spinning back kick as I slash at another that swerves under my blade; motherfucker!
I land awkwardly and get punched in the gut by the one I just kicked as it moves unimpeded by the wallop I delivered. Breath lost my lips mime like a dumb fish trying the get my diaphragm to pull in another breath, still I deliver a knee to the face as it tries to cut open my belly but mises, a dagger stabs into my shoulder from the darkness.
Reverse swing and miss, turn kick slash form 13, form 12 cut cut I block a sword that comes flying out of the darkness.
[CLANG!]
Our blades push against each other my foe’s and I and I’m found wanting in the strength department, I manoeuvre around it in a twist slashing into its back as its retreat is impeded by the wall I was hoping had my back. I take a slash to the forearm as I instinctively block a strike to the neck, it rattles my arm leaving it numb for a moment but I kick a leg out then stab into my falling assailants skull.
More keep coming, others at the edge of my awareness injured but far from out of the fight stalking me looking for openings as the fresh ones rush in.
I can’t fight all these things but I have to, there is no way I can outrun them and hiding from them is impossible in this place. I kick another at the side of the knee after stopping its short sword and dodging its countering black claws detaching the offending hand.
I can’t win, not like this, not with my punches and kicks doing no visible damage and with how well they work together. As ineffective as they are I send out kicks and knees along with the stabs and slashes panic starting to rise as they crowd me. Opening wounds with claws and daggers at every opportunity.
These are thinking foes not the mindless mummified beasts they look like and every single one of them has better movement speed and strength than I do, every single one of them can take a hit and shrug it off, every single one of them is armed with long razor sharp claws at the very least. I pull my head back from a swipe at my face parry away the short sword wielder wounding it in the forearm, ducking under an axe I deflect its follow up with the heavy sheath I had on my back. I duel wield Honour in Death sheath and blade.
Hitting left and right at the same time I gain some breathing room as I beat and cut at everything around me. Moving my entire body with my arms I position myself in the ideal position to counter, to maim and occasionally to kill one of my opponents whilst taking the least damage to myself I can. I find a good pattern of movement that kills fewer mummies but keeps them off me better.
I connect with my zanpakutō, my movements become more naturally smooth with me taking only the barest of damage and even that when there is absolutely no way to avoid. A smack of the obsidian sheath to the head breaking one’s face like an egg, a sweep of my edge across a throat leaving another confused before it realises its dead.
I start flowing connecting in a deeper way to my zanpakuto, zanjutsu, the art of the soul samurai, the way of the sword taking form naturally in the heat of battle.
My movements start taking me further from the wall at my back and as expected they encircle me. I hit left right, over-shoulder underarm, spin and twist moving from stance to stance and form to form whilst incorporating everything else I’ve learnt over the years of training and sparing in a natural flow that adopts to the situation. I disarm the axe wielder spinning around I smack it in the neck crushing its throat cutting the arm that grabs for me it joins the fingers somewhere at our feet. I keep the worst of their numbers at bay with the ease with which Honour goes through them, she hasn’t been caught in a bone yet.
They fully encircle me now as far as my awareness can tell I have a tall mummified horror screeching at me from every spot one could fit and the circle is closing.
[HAAAARRR!]
I scream out my defiance killing another, wounding another, trying to keep a big one at bay with my knee whilst I cut at another and smack yet another on its hard head repeatedly. Everything is happening all at once at such incredible speeds under my intense focus.
I won’t make it though, not at the rate I’m taking wounds, not with so many foes still to face. Flesh, bllod-sand and specks of my blood dirty our fight, I give everything my body has to give. Breaking the normal limits of my endurance, moving faster hitting harder but I'm taking hits. Bruises, cuts, curse-worthy hits, my flesh and blood ripped away by dirty claws that score with power.
[kfffFFFFFSSSSHHHHHHH...]
The fire runestone lights overhead like a flare with a mote of mana, having thrown it into the air whilst keeping my own eyes closed against the sudden brightness.
They screech in pain and anguish immediately abandoning their attacks as they bump into each other trying to get away. The sounds they make loud and horrified to the extent that I find myself paralysed unable to move before my eardrums pop and I stumble falling on one of my foes that now pays me no mind in its madness.
I kill it stumbling to my feet pulsing spirit-energy heavily into my aura and senses finding to my surprise that I can identify dark shadowy shapes scattering like roaches getting away from the light.
There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands but I take this opportunity to be their exterminator. I start cutting, left right, left right with my blade as fast as I possibly can. Left right, left right creating showers of blood-sand and tissue wherever I cut moving around.
A nodachi is a very powerful slashing weapon, add the fact that this one was made by a Hito Master Swordsmith from celestial ores and a part of my soul and you begin to have an inkling of the efficiency by which it kills. I cut through torsos through heads through spines and hip bones as nothing. Cleanly I mow through them sometimes two or three at a time as they stack trying to hide from the light fizzling upwards, then descending.
The light was a gamble but it worked. Seeing them with my eyes for the first time is a distant experience but truly they are horrors wordy of any campfire tale.
The runestone eventually lands somewhere behind me but even the little brightens given off now that its on the floor seems to be too much for those within my reach. I deal death, reaping through as many as I can as quickly as I can, tripping on kicking legs, arms, blood-sand and guts but getting the job done.
Within no time at all I am panthing, my footing slippery on the dissolving blood-sand and guts with nothing living within my vicinity no matter which way I turn and nothing coming any closer due to the now dim light given off by the fading fire runestone.
Honour is warm, vibrating happily in my hand, I look around in a daze at the carnage I’ve wrought having fallen into zanjutsu so naturally. My pupils are pinpricks as I stand swaying on my feet riding the very edge of the Rage, it isn’t anger or a loss of control I feel but determination. I am determined to give these opponents the final rest they deserve, to see them dead and free from whatever binds them here unnaturally. The plan was to start climbing as soon as I reached the wall and hope these things can’t climb and even if they could I'd have an advantage up there surrounded by all that water.
Yet here I stand unmoving as the light dims further and further until again silent darkness reigns loudly. Jinzen, I hear Honour’s joy at finally being used after so long. I feel her/my comfort as she does something she was meant to be doing. I stand even as I hear some shuffling and scrapping as these poor creatures come out of their hiding places, I smile as with a pulse of spirit I sense them rushing towards me with renewed vigour.
‘’All things must die,’’ my words cut through the screeching impregnating the silence that follows. Death is the fate of all that is born, death like life has meaning ‘’... do not despair, there is honour in death. 死の名誉! Shi no Meiyo!’’