Sachihiro

The mist from the oncoming cloud has faces. My insides itch in hot increasing discomfort the closer the enfolding thing comes. The mist has voices. Wails and screams scrape against my nerves disrupting my thinking confusing my mind. The mist smells like death and the things within it are hungry. Dead things.

Things that should not be.

My insides itch even as I run to get away, something inside me completely outraged at what I’m picking up from the cloud even from this distance. Shit, I’ve slowed again.

I pick up the pace running at full sprint saying a mental mantra so as not to slow again, I like to run it feels good to run. Just keep running Sachi, ignore everything else.

There is something unwholesome about that cloud that irritates the Rage to the fore of my mind, something dirty that’s anathema to everything holy in the world. A wind billows all about blowing dust bringing harrowing wails whistling from the unclean cloud phenomena.

Never have I seen such a massive concentration of filth and pervasion. I’m completely disgusted and I haven’t even gotten close, I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing when it passes.

Looking at its edge it doesn’t look like I’ll make it, I’ll get caught in it. Shit.

I don’t stop running.

As predicted the cloud engulfs me still kilometres from its outer edge with its abhorrent existence more nauseating than I could have ever imagined. As it does the Rage rages to the fore preventing my mind from being ground under the deluge of poisonous wails. Fetid and vile the cloud is full of death, a twisted unnatural form of death that cloys at the living in malicious spite of madness.

I fight.

The mists roil and coil encircling me striking with bloody claws biting with ragged teeth. Shapes, all unnatural coming forth from every which way I’m exposed trying to get at me as the sanguine darkness of the mists blots out the sun.

I fight. The darkness light compared to what I’ve been through.

The black mist of unholy death thickens, the shapes tougher and harder to disperse but I fight on awash in spirit-aura, kicking clawing punching chopping awash in righteous outrage at this perversion of death, awash in the Rage that has my eyes pin-pricks, my focus pure.

This is death, this is death taken form and there is no honour in it.

HAAA!!

I hear and identify but don’t feel the scream come out of me as Shikai merges with the Rage. Half my skin tears off with bloodied visceral.

TLAA!

Turning I swing the forming axe cutting through the apparitions as easily as I would air; Honour swallowing everything it touches in a roaring vacuum I’ve never before experienced. This is death, all these spirits screaming in hateful torment are dead but still being used in a pervasion of death that defiles life.

Even in the Rage my stomach roils in sickness with bile rising in defence.

I congeal mana, puking out a torrent of disgust at the filthy things about me scattering them about.

There is no honour in this. There is no honour in this kind of death.

I purge it.

*

Texas

We take a path with more risk than I’m comfortable with but it will take us quickly where we need to be.

‘’Hurry,’’ Nate says a few paces ahead with his sword at the ready.

‘’Left,’’ I warn and he swerves right as he swings left bisecting an arm. I silence the squealing rock prolemuris with an arrow in its eye having already walked this path in my dreams.

They come en mass flinging sharp shards of rock from a distance while I send arrows at them in turn, we run through them bleeding from a few more holes but sliding down a gorge to scramble beyond their hidy holes. They don’t purse.

I’m worse for wear than Nate who slowly but steadily heals as we progress but at least we make good time. My heart is in my throat, I’m literally rushing towards that which seeks my death like a suicidal imbecile.

Those things killed my entire village, left the corpses so horrifying to look at that I feared to touch them even as I recognised them as the remnants of people I once knew. There was nothing but horror and fear in Lillian’s eyes even in death, horror so stark that the fear of death gripped my heart in cold claws.

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Since then I’ve been dreaming of my death, which isn’t the worst part of this advanced precognition that came with the mana awakening. The worst part is that I die and those things take me as they did Lillian, as they did everyone else. No matter how I die or what kills me those things claim me for themselves, but that man can fight them.

‘’You alright?’’

‘’Yea I’m fine, we go left the up that slope and it’s a straight run from there.’’ I direct Nate on the path we should take.’’

‘’That guy wasn’t heading this way when he set off though,’’ he thinks I’m leading us astray.

‘’Follow me or don’t it’s up to you.’’

‘’You’re the boss,’’ he sets off in the indicated path.

I check the sky trying to predict how much time we have before he’s too far into the mists to reach. I died in my dream but I wasn’t consumed by the horrors, hopefully, I can die in peace this time as well.

His roar is a primal echo of outrage that echoes the mists away.

‘’Get down!’’ I shout reflectively as I foresee our deaths.

[VHHOOOO!]

A cyclone of horrors rushes overhead blasting us concussively into the ground.

TSSSS!

I can’t get up, I’m up I’m up.

Everything is confused.

Shit, it has me.

I claw at the thing around my throat whipping my weight to get loose.

I’m getting up again, the world is shaking.

That’s Nate shaking me, he’s yelling at my face.

‘’I don’t understand!’’ I yell back my vision clearing, nothing is pulling my throat.

I tumble about losing control of my centre mass, ah that’s Nate with his arm around my throat running. I ease into his grip to make it easier for him then melt into relief.

I have faced the horrors, I have been swallowed by unbearable horrors and haven’t been consumed by them. Now I can die in peace.

*

[HAAA!]

The roar is empowered, blasting a clearing between the black skeletal apparitions clawing around us.

‘’Down!’’

I’m down before he’s finished the yell.

[BWWAAAA!]

Pressure like a sky falling blasts through my protections crushing us into the ground to bounce. I’m up an instant later grabbing Texas who sages about like a wet eel, shit. A tornado of pitch-black skeleton things covered in shit is tornado bombing into a blooded beast of war swinging a giant axe.

I hesitate between the skinless bloodied horror of a man and the child skeleton apparitions that cover the sky in nauseating pitch. They completely ignore us as they dive bomb into the grimacing axe wielder loudly disappearing into silent oblivion as he spins with the thing swinging. Fuck these things are ugly and there are multitudes of them.

I run towards the swinging death-dealer, there is just too much bad juju from the apparitions so if I’m risking death I’d rather die from an axe than whatever they’ll do.

Luckily they mostly ignore us only brushing against my restored protection in their rush to their own doom. What kind of man can kill ghosts anyways?

He sloughs through them like a wiper erasing filth from glass.

NYEE, NYEE, NYEE, NYYEEEEE!

Every swing an eraser for dozens swinging the axe and spinning it like it’s a rag.

Tex claws into my arm coming to his senses. I drop him as I duck down, the madman passing close with a swing. The screaming apparitions twist en mass to follow creating a vortex that shatters my protection again from concussive force of their passage.

I pull Tex up with me, he’s wobbly but the black blood has stopped leaking from his eyes.

‘’We need to run, I’ll carry you!’’

I grab him and follow in the axe warriors wake following a clearing of silence amid the screams of horrors.

If we keep in his wake we could make it through this. I think.

*

Sachihiro

Sachihiro gives himself fully to the Rage without worry or reservation without fear or thought to survive the encounter. Completely incensed by the dead things screaming out the horror of their existence he gives everything he is into the Rage, a boiling rage far from the cold rage he’s accustomed to.

His Shikai released zanpakuto eats the apparitions of horror greedily as they plunge themselves wholly at its edge seeking the oblivion promised in its bite. They seek death, a true death and as suck they ignore all else climbing over each other in their rush to be cut down by the weapon. To be eaten and be no more what they’d been forced into being.

Spirits of the long-dead, perverted and twisted coil and twist in cyclones of power bombarding each other and everything about them in their rush towards the lone warrior’s cleansing blade.

Completely oblivious to anything besides swinging his axe at the dead things Sachi is an apparition himself, an automaton cleaving through the cloying murk of half-dead things. Shikai giving him strength and resilience, the Rage giving him strength and resilience, zanjutsu state pure. The combination of man and weapon, weapon and man instinctive as he purges through the undead spirits with his soul as a weapon delivering true death, peaceful death that cannot be perverted.

The distinction between man and weapon disappears for him, for both of them as the zanpakuto performs its task cleansing the spirits of the dead.

All else disappears from his/their perceptions as they give themselves fully to their task, their burden of responsibility to the dead compelling all else from his mind. There should be rest in death, there should be honour in it, not this perversion.

Sachihiro becomes zanjutsu as he wields himself as a weapon eating the ghostly mists wholesale with every turn, every movement an experience of sharp combat. With no resistance from flesh every swing is wild, spinning him around and around as he jumps about in acrobatic agility led by the axe-heads hungry weight deeper and deeper into the thick of them.

Spiritual energy refills itself such that he doesn’t run low, aura a pure energy fuelled by outrage and determination, spirit-aura keeping the apparitions from overwhelming him wholesome. A person shrouded in a faint glow of spiritual protection chases in Sachi’s wake forced to dart about keeping to the shadows of Sachi’s passage.

Nathanial carries his friend on his back as he runs and darts about lest he is devoured by the dark. Determination to stick to the cleared gaps before they quickly fill with death apparitions keeps him moving. Determination to stay alive.

The apparitions take different forms to the perceptions of each the people within them, ghosts to one, floating black skeletons with no lower limbs, mists of filth giving form to the spirits trapped within them.

The bloodied mist of undead filth congealing as it combines into more and more solid forms that easily get torn asunder by the silent edge of the cleansing axe. A vortex of black darkness revolves around the quiet plains of the rocky terrain created by the manoeuvring sanguine cloud as the deeper things within its centre turn aligning themselves with the disturbance persisting amongst them.

Deep within the bloated lake of sanguine cloud, an abomination stirs