Beaks
Wacky Woohoo Pizza Sadness Man
Spinning, over and under through malicious and maddening curves and twists. The demon hadn’t so much as given a second’s chance to react after finding Tsubaki before acting, grabbing her by a generous handful of hair and hurling her across the battered plain like a stone skipping across a pond.
Despite the strength of the throw, the former Captain fell haphazardly to the ground once again after a few meager bounces off of the blood soaked stone, Without so much as a word uttered in retaliation Tsubaki found her feet once again in record time, though her vision was still working double time to stop the spinning blurriness that fought for dominion over her sight.
Only one chance at this, have to wait for an opening.
Overhead the raging storm was whipped mercilessly towards a climax, cutting across the plain with shearing winds and shattering stone with destructive bolts of lightning. Howling winds and the predator’s roar of thunder shook the whole of the world around them, battering their senses with unabashed fury. Tsubaki watched through blurry eyes as the creature who wore her face came sprinting full tilt after her prey, though both her cackling scream of bloodlust and the footfalls that propelled her were lost to the din around them.
The former Templar Queen skirted a quick look down before the assault, watching the world beneath her grow redder by the second, both soil and stone choking on the crimson lifeblood that had been contained beneath them.
“COME, SISTER!” Before Tsubaki could right her vision once again two sandal-clad feet slammed into the woman’s face, propelling her backwards all the more into the battered battleground.
“FIGHT ME, FIGHT AND SING AND SCREAM TO THE END OF THE WORLD!” Behind her, too fast to react, too fast to see anything more than the burning red eyes as two hands cupped the back of Tsubaki’s skull, throwing her up and overhead back down into the stone with a heavy crunching splat. Blinding light filled her sight as the booming boasts of thunder boxed her ears and rattled her thoughts.
The hands returned, clenching tightly around the former Captain’s roots and holding fast before pulling up and backwards. With her head and shoulders arching upwards from the rest of her battered body Tsubaki was once again brought face to face with her monster.
“FIGHT ME! STRUGGLE AGAINST STRENGTH AND STORM!” Without warning the hands pressed her head into the jagged stones below with unparalleled force and speed. Vision went white and pain flooded her senses.
“FIGHT BACK! RESIST! BEG FOR YOUR LIFE!” Again and again her head was thrust downwards, pain and blindness ringing through the whole of her being like point blank gunshots.
Not...yet...have to hold....
There was no chance to respond, only another blinding barrage on the senses as the hands that held her head fast slammed it down into the wet and weeping stone again and again. Tsubaki could feel her face growing numb, could see the rocks that she was being rammed into growing more and more...skin colored with each meeting. Her blood was pouring out, mixing with the blood of the world...but wasn’t it all hers?
With each repetition the flashes grew a little softer, the pain muddled into a quiet and persistent ache.
Need...wait...can’t yet....
Another jarring slam into the rocks, then a moment’s rest. The creature that wore her face ceased, though the hands kept her head pressed firmly into the stone. Weight was shifting. Tsubaki could only lie battered and prone as the weight atop her moved, shifting for a better position.
“This world rejects you. My thoughts grow clearer with every injury I inflict on you.” The demon spoke softly into her ear, almost sweetly if you weren’t listening to what she was saying and only lingered on the tone. Nearly cooing, maybe motherly. Go to sleep little one, return to the warmth and dark and let others drive your corpse to catastrophe.
“Your passing will feed this world, and I will take it from you. You cannot stop it, you cannot escape it.” A grim giggle accompanied it, dotting the sentence like a death row diary. “I am the creature in your mind, and I am the blood in your veins.”
...now.
Beneath her tormentor the former Captain began to smile, almost chuckling at the words though it ended up more of a garbled grunt through bloodied lips and chipped teeth.
“Funny. Funny funny WHAT’S FUNNY?!” The creature reared back atop her assumed kill, pulling Tsubaki’s battered head up from the ground with her. “WHAT IS FUNNY?!”
Hold your breath, make a wish.
Overhead the storm was frozen at the pinnacle of its fury, winds and lightning made silent and still by an unseen force. Beneath the pair the world shuddered and sighed with anticipation, continuing to let its lifeblood rise up from the depths and saturate the world above. Stains grew to puddles, puddles to churning cauldrons of gore that continued to expand until the stone and soil of the world was lost to rising levels of crimson.
Despite all this and for all her fury, the creature could not speak. The demon surveyed the world with wide and panicked eyes, and though her chest rose and fell with hurried and frantic gasps no conduit of her anger could be formed into words.
The once Templar Queen began to right herself, pressing up from the ground on battered palms and knees and letting the panicked creature atop her slide harmlessly off. Though the demon’s grip on her hair remained for a moment the instant an opposing force met the fingers they unlocked without complaint.
The beast landed in the rising tide of blood with a heavy splash, watching in wordless horror as her host rose to an uneasy standing posture.
..has...to be now.
Tsubaki turned, looking down at her attacker with an expression of fury no living thing had ever witnessed...living or dead. This was no longer a matter of balance. This wasn’t about righting wrongs or doing what needed to be done.
She was going to kill this abomination with her bare hands.
The battered woman fell upon her attacker in a haphazard tackle, pressing her victim down into the sea of gore and jamming two thumbs into the demon’s eye sockets. Gargling bubbles and sputtering fragments of a scream rose up from the submerged creature, but it was futile.
As two panicked arms flailed and struggled for something to grab in retaliation Tsubaki felt the resistance give way as her thumbs plunged into a warm slick sickness, watched the hands that slapped feebly at the air around her spasm wildly in raw terror.
...at the limit...release it.
Tsubaki fell backwards, letting the beast flail and grab for an attacker that was no longer there. Overhead the storm stirred once again, battering the world below with wind and lightning almost as if to spite the forced respite.
“You...are the blood in my veins...” The former Captain was gasping for breath herself, though with more success than her double at the present moment. “...but I...am the heart that moves you.”
It had been a move she never dared attempt on anyone else who bore the Templar’s curse, but one to never be fully locked away for want of use. In the past she had only dared to lock blood in place, using the technique only once against Reijuu Kyuketsu. However, she had never stopped his heart outright, ruling it too dangerous even for someone of the boy’s strength.
“This blood...is the product of all of my....suffering.” Breath was coming easier now, filling her lungs and leaving in a more even tempo by the second. I have felt all the joy in my life drip and...dribble out of my body in tiny red drops. I felt the cold lift up the cuts in my skin...and crawl inside where warmth and love should have been.”
The thrashing creature had resurfaced from the ocean of gore, carefully touching its mangled face with fingers that seemingly could do nothing but tremble.
“I have lost my family, my home...and my way.” Her tone grew quieter as she continued, unsure if she was speaking either to the beast or trying to put her own pain into words for the first time.
Though its eyes were gone the demon turned its head to face Tsubaki, fixed on the sound of her speech and still brimming with furious intent.
“This blood is all I have left...”
An ear-splitting scream echoed across the battlefield as the mauled demon sprang up from her prone position, running headlong at Tsubaki with two hands lunging directly for the woman’s neck.
“...and I...”
The former Captain stepped to one side, dodging the hands that sought her and clamping her own the creature’s upper and lower jaws.
“...WILL NOT...”
A panicked gasp replaced the demon’s war cry as her hands attempted to remove the intruding digits from her mouth.
“...BE BEATEN BY THE LIKES OF YOU!”
Adrenaline raced through her veins like the lightning that cracked and arced overhead, filling muscle and bone with a fleeting burst of renewed vigor. Without a moment’s pause her right and left hands extended to their fullest, East and West parting from an origin of violence.
A new scream resounded on the plain, rattling the former Captain’s ears and drowning out even the booming thunder overhead. The scream quickly mixed with the ear-splitting crack of dry and brittle bone, and the wet ripping of muscle and skin.
Tsubaki staggered backwards on unsteady legs, trying to keep her footing amidst the rising waters of rusted crimson. The beast howled and thrashed about amid churning waves of red gore, thrusting its hands outwards for any purchase it could make.
There would be no more words from it, no malicious whispers or roaring bile to assault her ears ever again. The former Captain looked down at her right hand, still tightly wrapped around the bit that had been torn free and regarding it with a strange sense of detachment. This monster was a copy of herself, so to some extent this is what her own jaw would have looked like if it were removed.
As the last traces of adrenaline fizzled away in her veins the woman could only let out a worn and tired sigh, tossing the dismembered mandible into the crimson current with a small bloop.
The seals are undone, and she’s going to die her no matter what. I suppose there is no more putting this off.
A bloodstained hand reached into robes soaked with sick to withdraw a small stoppered vial, pausing to hold it in front of her eyes for a moment. This was all that was left, this was the last tiny little bit of blood that was hers, not muddled with other souls or tainted with science.
Drawn before the birth of the Blood Templar for this very moment, should the need have ever arisen. In truth the woman had done it as a sort of keepsake, wanting some part of herself to remain pure in the face of what she had set out to do.
It’s a shame it has to be destroyed to fix a place like this.
Tsubaki lowered the vial, looking out on the ruins of what had once been herself...the sanctuary of her inner world. No semblance of order remained, only a sea of blood and smashed stone with an endless maelstrom roaring overhead.
“I did this.” The woman sighed quietly to herself, gripping the tiny vial tighter in her right hand.
“Strength borrowed without bowing, on this day I return.” Her words were hurried, spoken with a sort of fading determination that would be chased away should she think on it too long. “Souls taken from rest, made slaves in undeath...I release you.”
A bolt of lightning crashed down nearby, sending a pillar of crimson rising up into the air before burning away into a red mist reeking of iron.
“To those laws of nature and man abandoned, let my sins be paid!”
Nearby, the demon stopped thrashing long enough to try and fix where the sound was coming from. Tsubaki could see her seeking it, but continued on.
This had moved away from their scope of control, all that remained was to end it.
“Let my offering of blood and soul mend the bonds so heedlessly severed...”
A mangled roar of ragged and torn vocal cords rang out, and the demon ran headlong towards the once Templar Queen.
“...and let our hearts...”
Two gore-soaked hands raced outwards for her throat, beset by two sunken sockets that bore the embers of Hell itself behind them.
The vial cracked and shattered in the grip of her right hand, silling into the endless sea of vitae below.
We will burn together, my sister.
Fingernails dug into the soft skin of her throat as four final words echoed into the storm.
“...become one, once more.”
Despite the strength of the throw, the former Captain fell haphazardly to the ground once again after a few meager bounces off of the blood soaked stone, Without so much as a word uttered in retaliation Tsubaki found her feet once again in record time, though her vision was still working double time to stop the spinning blurriness that fought for dominion over her sight.
Only one chance at this, have to wait for an opening.
Overhead the raging storm was whipped mercilessly towards a climax, cutting across the plain with shearing winds and shattering stone with destructive bolts of lightning. Howling winds and the predator’s roar of thunder shook the whole of the world around them, battering their senses with unabashed fury. Tsubaki watched through blurry eyes as the creature who wore her face came sprinting full tilt after her prey, though both her cackling scream of bloodlust and the footfalls that propelled her were lost to the din around them.
The former Templar Queen skirted a quick look down before the assault, watching the world beneath her grow redder by the second, both soil and stone choking on the crimson lifeblood that had been contained beneath them.
“COME, SISTER!” Before Tsubaki could right her vision once again two sandal-clad feet slammed into the woman’s face, propelling her backwards all the more into the battered battleground.
“FIGHT ME, FIGHT AND SING AND SCREAM TO THE END OF THE WORLD!” Behind her, too fast to react, too fast to see anything more than the burning red eyes as two hands cupped the back of Tsubaki’s skull, throwing her up and overhead back down into the stone with a heavy crunching splat. Blinding light filled her sight as the booming boasts of thunder boxed her ears and rattled her thoughts.
The hands returned, clenching tightly around the former Captain’s roots and holding fast before pulling up and backwards. With her head and shoulders arching upwards from the rest of her battered body Tsubaki was once again brought face to face with her monster.
“FIGHT ME! STRUGGLE AGAINST STRENGTH AND STORM!” Without warning the hands pressed her head into the jagged stones below with unparalleled force and speed. Vision went white and pain flooded her senses.
“FIGHT BACK! RESIST! BEG FOR YOUR LIFE!” Again and again her head was thrust downwards, pain and blindness ringing through the whole of her being like point blank gunshots.
Not...yet...have to hold....
There was no chance to respond, only another blinding barrage on the senses as the hands that held her head fast slammed it down into the wet and weeping stone again and again. Tsubaki could feel her face growing numb, could see the rocks that she was being rammed into growing more and more...skin colored with each meeting. Her blood was pouring out, mixing with the blood of the world...but wasn’t it all hers?
With each repetition the flashes grew a little softer, the pain muddled into a quiet and persistent ache.
Need...wait...can’t yet....
Another jarring slam into the rocks, then a moment’s rest. The creature that wore her face ceased, though the hands kept her head pressed firmly into the stone. Weight was shifting. Tsubaki could only lie battered and prone as the weight atop her moved, shifting for a better position.
“This world rejects you. My thoughts grow clearer with every injury I inflict on you.” The demon spoke softly into her ear, almost sweetly if you weren’t listening to what she was saying and only lingered on the tone. Nearly cooing, maybe motherly. Go to sleep little one, return to the warmth and dark and let others drive your corpse to catastrophe.
“Your passing will feed this world, and I will take it from you. You cannot stop it, you cannot escape it.” A grim giggle accompanied it, dotting the sentence like a death row diary. “I am the creature in your mind, and I am the blood in your veins.”
...now.
Beneath her tormentor the former Captain began to smile, almost chuckling at the words though it ended up more of a garbled grunt through bloodied lips and chipped teeth.
“Funny. Funny funny WHAT’S FUNNY?!” The creature reared back atop her assumed kill, pulling Tsubaki’s battered head up from the ground with her. “WHAT IS FUNNY?!”
Hold your breath, make a wish.
Overhead the storm was frozen at the pinnacle of its fury, winds and lightning made silent and still by an unseen force. Beneath the pair the world shuddered and sighed with anticipation, continuing to let its lifeblood rise up from the depths and saturate the world above. Stains grew to puddles, puddles to churning cauldrons of gore that continued to expand until the stone and soil of the world was lost to rising levels of crimson.
Despite all this and for all her fury, the creature could not speak. The demon surveyed the world with wide and panicked eyes, and though her chest rose and fell with hurried and frantic gasps no conduit of her anger could be formed into words.
The once Templar Queen began to right herself, pressing up from the ground on battered palms and knees and letting the panicked creature atop her slide harmlessly off. Though the demon’s grip on her hair remained for a moment the instant an opposing force met the fingers they unlocked without complaint.
The beast landed in the rising tide of blood with a heavy splash, watching in wordless horror as her host rose to an uneasy standing posture.
..has...to be now.
Tsubaki turned, looking down at her attacker with an expression of fury no living thing had ever witnessed...living or dead. This was no longer a matter of balance. This wasn’t about righting wrongs or doing what needed to be done.
She was going to kill this abomination with her bare hands.
The battered woman fell upon her attacker in a haphazard tackle, pressing her victim down into the sea of gore and jamming two thumbs into the demon’s eye sockets. Gargling bubbles and sputtering fragments of a scream rose up from the submerged creature, but it was futile.
As two panicked arms flailed and struggled for something to grab in retaliation Tsubaki felt the resistance give way as her thumbs plunged into a warm slick sickness, watched the hands that slapped feebly at the air around her spasm wildly in raw terror.
...at the limit...release it.
Tsubaki fell backwards, letting the beast flail and grab for an attacker that was no longer there. Overhead the storm stirred once again, battering the world below with wind and lightning almost as if to spite the forced respite.
“You...are the blood in my veins...” The former Captain was gasping for breath herself, though with more success than her double at the present moment. “...but I...am the heart that moves you.”
It had been a move she never dared attempt on anyone else who bore the Templar’s curse, but one to never be fully locked away for want of use. In the past she had only dared to lock blood in place, using the technique only once against Reijuu Kyuketsu. However, she had never stopped his heart outright, ruling it too dangerous even for someone of the boy’s strength.
“This blood...is the product of all of my....suffering.” Breath was coming easier now, filling her lungs and leaving in a more even tempo by the second. I have felt all the joy in my life drip and...dribble out of my body in tiny red drops. I felt the cold lift up the cuts in my skin...and crawl inside where warmth and love should have been.”
The thrashing creature had resurfaced from the ocean of gore, carefully touching its mangled face with fingers that seemingly could do nothing but tremble.
“I have lost my family, my home...and my way.” Her tone grew quieter as she continued, unsure if she was speaking either to the beast or trying to put her own pain into words for the first time.
Though its eyes were gone the demon turned its head to face Tsubaki, fixed on the sound of her speech and still brimming with furious intent.
“This blood is all I have left...”
An ear-splitting scream echoed across the battlefield as the mauled demon sprang up from her prone position, running headlong at Tsubaki with two hands lunging directly for the woman’s neck.
“...and I...”
The former Captain stepped to one side, dodging the hands that sought her and clamping her own the creature’s upper and lower jaws.
“...WILL NOT...”
A panicked gasp replaced the demon’s war cry as her hands attempted to remove the intruding digits from her mouth.
“...BE BEATEN BY THE LIKES OF YOU!”
Adrenaline raced through her veins like the lightning that cracked and arced overhead, filling muscle and bone with a fleeting burst of renewed vigor. Without a moment’s pause her right and left hands extended to their fullest, East and West parting from an origin of violence.
A new scream resounded on the plain, rattling the former Captain’s ears and drowning out even the booming thunder overhead. The scream quickly mixed with the ear-splitting crack of dry and brittle bone, and the wet ripping of muscle and skin.
Tsubaki staggered backwards on unsteady legs, trying to keep her footing amidst the rising waters of rusted crimson. The beast howled and thrashed about amid churning waves of red gore, thrusting its hands outwards for any purchase it could make.
There would be no more words from it, no malicious whispers or roaring bile to assault her ears ever again. The former Captain looked down at her right hand, still tightly wrapped around the bit that had been torn free and regarding it with a strange sense of detachment. This monster was a copy of herself, so to some extent this is what her own jaw would have looked like if it were removed.
As the last traces of adrenaline fizzled away in her veins the woman could only let out a worn and tired sigh, tossing the dismembered mandible into the crimson current with a small bloop.
The seals are undone, and she’s going to die her no matter what. I suppose there is no more putting this off.
A bloodstained hand reached into robes soaked with sick to withdraw a small stoppered vial, pausing to hold it in front of her eyes for a moment. This was all that was left, this was the last tiny little bit of blood that was hers, not muddled with other souls or tainted with science.
Drawn before the birth of the Blood Templar for this very moment, should the need have ever arisen. In truth the woman had done it as a sort of keepsake, wanting some part of herself to remain pure in the face of what she had set out to do.
It’s a shame it has to be destroyed to fix a place like this.
Tsubaki lowered the vial, looking out on the ruins of what had once been herself...the sanctuary of her inner world. No semblance of order remained, only a sea of blood and smashed stone with an endless maelstrom roaring overhead.
“I did this.” The woman sighed quietly to herself, gripping the tiny vial tighter in her right hand.
“Strength borrowed without bowing, on this day I return.” Her words were hurried, spoken with a sort of fading determination that would be chased away should she think on it too long. “Souls taken from rest, made slaves in undeath...I release you.”
A bolt of lightning crashed down nearby, sending a pillar of crimson rising up into the air before burning away into a red mist reeking of iron.
“To those laws of nature and man abandoned, let my sins be paid!”
Nearby, the demon stopped thrashing long enough to try and fix where the sound was coming from. Tsubaki could see her seeking it, but continued on.
This had moved away from their scope of control, all that remained was to end it.
“Let my offering of blood and soul mend the bonds so heedlessly severed...”
A mangled roar of ragged and torn vocal cords rang out, and the demon ran headlong towards the once Templar Queen.
“...and let our hearts...”
Two gore-soaked hands raced outwards for her throat, beset by two sunken sockets that bore the embers of Hell itself behind them.
The vial cracked and shattered in the grip of her right hand, silling into the endless sea of vitae below.
We will burn together, my sister.
Fingernails dug into the soft skin of her throat as four final words echoed into the storm.
“...become one, once more.”
[End.]
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[2,164]
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