Sachihiro

Constant consistent shaking of the cave pervades into me through my butt up my spine shaking me systemically at the frequencies of the rock. I rattle, at first struggling against the micro shaking as it shakes my stomach to rumbling, teeth to chattering, arms to trembling from the torrential power the waterfall has on the surrounding stone.

My necklaces is moving about under my tunic, weapons rattling on my belt, Razor trembling dully in its sheath scrapping against the bumpy smooth stone. My belt tie starts loosening, boot-buckle untying slowly, everything on me is moving, conspiring to pull me wholly into the shaking of the world around me.

Vibrational Sense tells me the shaking stone is solid, the purest natural stone I’ve ever come across. So pure in fact that its frequencies are closer to metallic, what metal could this be if it's metal? Vibrational Sense tells me I’m on a huge piece of single rock/ore, the largest structure I have ever come across with a constant frequency through its entirety, a pure substance.

A single piece of purified ore with no flaws, an uncut gem of huge proportions. I wonder what I could do with it if it can be worked at all.

Vibrational sense spreads encapsulating the whole thing without resistance. The largest object I have every sensed, the furthest vibrational sense has ever been stretched but it's not a difficult as the vibrations of the stone themselves help me map it, pulling me in more than resisting. I ‘see’ the shape of the rock, oval, with some sharp corners and protrusions like goosebumps on its lower surface. I ‘feel’ the density with which the particles are clumped together, tight, like a pure metal element further refined to leanness. Tight.

The hairs on my arms stand on end, concentrating becomes a chore, then a burden as I take in the shaking of the thing within which I’m in. It’s a strange phenomenon. I’m certain nothing but me looks to be moving to the naked eye as I'm visibly shaken about by the whole thing.

My body becomes uncomfortably itchy, even in a meditative mindset it's difficult to ignore. Warmth spreads through me, laces coming undone, hair dampening and drying within the salty spray matted across my face. The walls aren’t damp, why aren’t the walls and floor damp from the spraying water?

I don’t move, I don’t change position or touch myself to alleviate the discomfort building up the longer I stay here. I think I’m starting to get why a hidey-hole so close to a water source had no occupants, my butt is on fire.

I stay like this long minutes experiencing the vibrations of the house-sized stone. The vibrations coming at me from everywhere. The air buffeting my skin, the screaming roar buffeting my ears, the silent stone shaking my ass hot beneath me. Uncomfortably hot but I stay as I am, straining my vibrational senses further than they’ve ever been stretched, drowning in the sensation.

I can ‘see’ the entire rock, its structure, its tunnels and openings, the pieces of stone it rests on moving at their own frequencies. Churning waters around its oval bottom jumping about, gems jutting out of its surface being slowly pushed out like sweat from a giant egg.

Focus slips, [ghm], I grunt at the sudden discomforting disorientation as divided mind slips into one.

I lose dimensional awareness as a headache splits my skull in half, my hand reaches for my head whilst another lands on the tunnel wall for support. Disoriented I try to get up but crash sideways instead unable to orient, unable to move my numb legs jerking independently under me.

Shit, I deliver myself into a trap.

I crawl backwards, rattled about trying to get out of the ringing field of death I’ve delivered myself into. I flex, resisting the frequency from changing my own, able to move forward away from the roaring water deeper into the rock but every cm a struggle. Wait a go Sachi, delivering yourself into a death-trap

I can’t focus, I can hardly move, the shaking not getting worse but feeling worse on my body. Accumulating. My bones rattle, my muscles itch painfully, I sweat and dry as the shaking stone forcefully shakes me at its own frequency. Spreading me to its dimensions, spreading me wide and high and thick and dense-

I fumble about unsheathing Honour,[zzzzzwweee].

It's like a lantern has been switched on as the blade takes the vibrations onto itself. Once I was blind but now I see!

Slowly I stand, zanpakutō held steady as it rings sharply taking the brunt of whatever it is I was going through turning it into a cutting wail of ringing steel.

Stumbling forward I make progress outward, knowing exactly where I’m going. Turning left scrambling upwards, blindly stumbling unerringly forward familiar with the place. Through the vibrations I can see where I’m going, I can see every nook and cranny on this rock. My zanpakuto's ringing is lowering in pitch the longer its exposed. I don't think that's a good sign

[-], my hearing goes first. The little bones of my inner ear unable to handle the vibrations even with my zanpakutō taking the brunt of them.

I stab Honour forward for support as I fall on one knee, aura blazing I rise cladding with everything I’m worth for amplification. Limit Break activates as trembling exhausted muscles find inner strength they previously didn’t have.

The left boot remains behind as I lift my foot for a step, then another, then another. Struggling onward to the only source of safety within reach.

Ducking low I step into the heart of the rock to a completely still world unshaken by the shaking around it.

I slump in succour, completely exhausted. Trapped in the only safe place from the vibrations, safety found in the middle of a ridiculously dangerous place. I breathe deeply, that got too intense way too quickly.

Breathing deeply I lie in exhausted slumber, every muscle in my body shredded, bleeding internally and outwardly, twitching uncomfortably.

It takes a while for me to stop trembling, which for whatever reason increases the pain ten-fold for a good ten minutes or so. I lie there feeling sorry for myself in abject discomfort, visceral bone-deep discomfort that reminds me of the misery and nihility of life. I mean what’s the point to it all?

We are shat into this strange world through a narrow channel screaming from the trauma. Never to return to the warm safe comfort of the womb, welcomed by calloused hands to a too cold, too loud, too bright world full of danger and pain. From birth every experience changes us, shaping us to conform to best survive our new environment. It hurts, everything hurts.

I manage to take a breath, the air stuck in my throat longer than is pleasant. Everything hurts.

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My awareness slowly wakes again. A clearer picture of my immediate surroundings building in my mind, micro-shudders going through me painfully throughout.

Sometimes wish I could will myself unconscious.

I’m on the ground folded on what is probably the most solid piece of ground I have ever felt. It’s a gem, it has to be. It has to be diamond hard or harder I predict. A giant diamond resistant to the shaking, whatever it is I’m grateful. The whole thing is tilted such that from here I can jump to relative safety easily, just as soon as I’ve recovered a little.

I giggle when I realise two of my rings slipped off my fingers at some point, this day just keeps getting worse.

Comforted by my connection to the spirit-bound band still wrapped around my finger I open it with a minor effort of spirit and will, pulling blood-red crystals onto my palm.

I blink, suddenly wide awake at the unbelievable sight on my palm.

One of the crystals is dun, one of the crystals is there in my hand but I can’t see it through the gloom of the underground. One of the crystals isn’t bright, ‘’it can’t be.’’

I don’t know when I got up but I’m now crouched, swaying on my feet naked zanpakutō in one hand staring uncomprehendingly at the little lights of blood on my left palm.

I pull the crystals into the ring, I pull them out again. In out, in out. I’ve checked these gems so often its become routine, its become the reminder that pushes me forward. My silent mantra, reasons, responsibilities, reminders why I live, why I fight as much as I do, my focus. They represent my kids’ life forces, and one of them has lost its glow?

Who? How? It can’t be!

In and out of the ring the crystals move, nothing changing. Ten crystals dully glowing blood-red on my palm, each representing the life with the inner glow. Each more precious than rubies or gold or power or any accumulated treasures waiting at the end of this quest. And one of them has lost its glow, the 11th. Dun.

Heart pounding, breathing irregular, body an abused bruise from head to toe but I find that I’m numb even with the pain.

Spirit Aura blurs within and without, naked sword keening lowly hungry for use. I follow one of the spiritual threads connected to me desperately, grasping inefficiently with spirit at what I perceive as the connections to my children. Grasping but failing to find purchase, urgent desperation pushing me on. I don’t believe it, it can’t be true. Not now, not so soon after Hannah, no, my kids can’t die.

‘’No,’’ I croak.

I don’t accept it. The little ones are safe with Shae and Isis tucked away in the Foothills, the others safe with Mira and da in the larger group.

Extensively I’ve researched how the relatively weak Alderman tribes have survived in war-torn Pangaea as long as they have. I’ve listened to their legends and assessed their strengths and weaknesses. The Alderman always hide their land when trouble comes towards them, always and without fail they reveal themselves collecting resources then disappear as quickly for generations at a time. Perfect place to safely tuck away the little ones.

‘’No,’’ I shake my head; what might have gone wrong with the crystal?

Somehow I find purchase, grasping the intangible spiritual thread connecting others to me with invisible formless hands. A minuscule delicate thing useless for anything except giving awareness of its presence pulls me without force towards those I’m spiritually connected to before fading like mist in summer, but its enough for me to know.

I’m hollowed out.

I have no desires, no aspirations, no reason for anything in the greater scheme of things. I’m empty, life is meaningless. There is absolutely no point to all this suffering.

I step off the stable footing into the micro shaking of the stone without a second thought. Stumbling at the shaking I move further forward, sheathing Honour on my back unbuckling the sheath straps stifling me. Unbuckling Razor leaving it behind, dropping Kata, balancing myself against the metallic wall of the giant stone as my legs fail me.

I lie there trembling at the death of yet another child, trembling with increasing intensity that takes control of my limbs away from me. Muscles tear, skin splits, old wounds bleed as I lie here shaking with the shaking world sweating blood from broken skin.

Power rushes into me with the Rage activating. Heart pumps hard, blood clotts fast, muscles re-enforce themselves even as they are torn apart by the constant pervasion of higher frequencies. Power lights up from within, spiritual energy pulling from me into me in a world shuddering implosion as Honour in Death melts, bubbling, reforming into a sleek crescent bladed war-axe with an obsidian handle firmly in my grasp. I ignore it.

Shikai wakes my body with a second wind of power and resilience. The tremors are suddenly manageable, the world again audible, breathing again possible. I ignore it.

Do I want to die? Yes, I think I should die. It doesn’t matter anymore, nothing really matters anymore, even though more resilient through shikai I’m still flesh so not as resilient as this rock. I grit my teeth at the increasing pain of my body counteracting what’s being done to it in pure animalistic survival instinct.

[Crack], teeth crack with stabbing pain from the rattling resistance.

What’s the point to resistance, let the vibrations tear me apart. I spasm painfully something giving up within my body, failing me as I’ve failed yet another child.

The stone keeps vibrating constantly, minor tremors circulating through me changing my own natural frequencies forcefully. A painful process I know will kill me.

How many objects have I seen break from outside frequencies, how often have I seen objects shutter shaken beyond their ability to endure? Glass, metal, people. Each with its own threshold, each with specific frequencies nature cannot allow circumvented thus I will die, I will shutter, I will evaporate but I do not worry. Broken to pieces like screaming glass is my fate, how could I face them after this?

Like another impurity on this object my corpse will be cast out, maybe a crystal jutting out of the rock will be all that’s left of me after this. Do I want to die?

I’m not a coward, that much about myself I know. No one and nothing is beyond the threat of my blade but I can’t fight death, not really, it waits to embrace us all. I’m not afraid of death, but do I want to die?

I led them to this, I led them out of their safe home into the wilderness on a dream of a chance of perceived threats I didn’t even understand. I divided them and then abandoned them, having also killed Rigs along the way. I’ve doomed them to death out in the wilds without even proper burials, lost and scared instead of facing this together. I’ve been led by fear for years and made drastic mistakes because of it.

Planning, scheming, thinking I could prepare, thinking the Conclave could help protect us. Thinking the fae could help protect us. Thinking the Foothills could shelter us, all fear, all reactive. For years I’ve been thinking defensively, decades. I’m a fool. I’ve been afraid of death, if not my own then death of my loved ones.

I’ve been a fool and my worst fears are befalling me, life is twisting all my intentions and plans into accidents of fate that leave my family more vulnerable than ever. Lost, far from their own people, closer than ever to death. I’m a fool, but I don’t want to die. No, there is no honour in death here, not like this.

[Kgh], foaming blood escapes my mouth as I try to move.

It’s a matter of will over matter, I can do this, I can do anything. Taking a deep breath I try to get up again. My abused body trembles with sharp pins and needles stabbing hot, [ghg], I gargle bloody saliva. Having covered only millimetres back to the stable centre, I can’t get up.

I crawl, leaving blood and skin on the sharp ground made of stabbing daggers, surely its made of stabbing daggers. I crawl, oozing fluids, skin sloughing off, muscles useless, my knee-caps twist sideways, ligaments giving up covering a few more centimetres before my elbow bends the wrong way. Abused beyond enduring.

The Rage, limit break, a strong will to live keeps me crawling. Nudging forward like a worm using my own oozing blood and leavings as lubrication I slide further forward. I don’t make it, I can’t make it I realise, cold fear worming into my gut.

Spirit Aura blazing I gargle out my defiance through fractured teeth, I’m not going to die here. Not today not like this. I can’t move my hands or concentrate enough to cast chakra abilities, would Afterimage even make a difference? Nor can I feel my mana at all, at all at all.

I inch a few centimetres further forward but can go no further. I lose connection to my nerves, like a burn victim too far gone but it’s a relief not to feel. The pain making way for sanity to again come to the fore of my bloodshot eyes, I’m not gonna make it.

The realisation calms me.

Honour ringing in silent protest to the frequencies forced into it through me, through its blade touching the stone floor. My heart quivers skipping a beat-

I startle to consciousness, brought back by the Rage but I can’t think, can’t see, can’t feel anything except the vibrations with vibrational sense.

....

Constant silent buzzing.

....

....

My body is breaking down this much I know without feeling it, ‘lights’ out on all but my spirit. My spirit unbreakable but useless to me with nothing to shape it. No body, no aura no chakra no mind to give form to spirituality. I’m breaking down into nothing but vibration, falling apart forced into a frequency no biological being could bear.

I’m dying...

What the fuck!? I'm dying!

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