Tus Nua II
With a shuddering breath, he found himself standing in the center of a familiar bar. This was inside of him. The inner world of his zanpakutou. What he had for the longest time thought was the entirety of it. He had only recently found out otherwise. That his cantankerous shittalking chimp was actually a cantankerous shittalking dragon. Frustratingly enough, the static had followed him. Though, it now resided in places other than his own head, which was something at least. The atmosphere itself was charged with static flow, grey objects fuzzing in and out of visibility like an old television set coughing its last fizzling breath. Beyond that, there were other changes. The wood of the bar and floors, both usually a bit unkempt but dark and rich in color were now a few shades of sickly grey. As was pretty much everything else.
Though frustrated, confused and truth be told a bit scared, Raurys will do what Raurys do best. He sauntered across the bled out room and selected one of the larger bottles from the wall. This one seemed to only be fading in and out every so often, mostly maintaining its shape. Good enough.
He popped the top, the welcome and familiar scent of distilled glory filling his lungs. This too felt a good bit muted, but apparently he’d been without for a while. Thinking on it, and now free of a brain full of static, Raury was unsure of anything that had happened after falling asleep waiting on an opponent in the Tournament. How long ago had that been? Yesterday? Longer? No clue.
Shrugging to himself, he brought the bottle to his mouth, paused for a beat while it shifted in and out of being for a moment, and then took a long swallow once it had settled down. Unsurprisingly, it was pretty ‘meh’. All the same, internally materialized spirit sword fake McMakebeleive Land booze or no, it was glorious. He’d have preferred it in technicolor, but at the moment anything with ethanol was ambrosia to his parched body. Or persona. Bodysona.
Resting his back against the sometimes there bar, Raury lightly tapped the bottle on his thigh and tried to hash out some semblance of a memory. He got nothing. Looking around he wondered if the monochrome look would grow on him. This thought alone told him he was stalling.
“Ffffffine.” He sighed, rolling his shoulders as he came away from the bar. Time to go consult his inner dragon. He made his way across the room, pausing momentarily on the threshold to the cave door as the room around him darkened. He peered around, the dull shades of grey and more grey dimming down to charcoal and black. The wooden structures in the room began to curl around themselves the way wood does when burning.
“Well.” He stated, nonplussed. “That ain’t good.”
Shaking his head, he turned back to the door and quickly turned the knob, anxious to leave the silently burning room behind him. The cave proper had to be better off. Rocks don’t burn.
Or so he thought. Opening into the cave itself, it was much the same. But still quite changed. Maybe in contents more than structure. It was still dim and dark, but the shadows seemed to writhe with life. Tendrils of oily black crawled the walls, motion similar to that of flame. It looked like a room full of shoggoth. Without all of the eyes. Less skin-crawlingly creepy, but equally disturbing. Center of the space sat Logi, the great serpent coiled around his immense wine pot. Seeing his zanpakutou spirit, Raury’s metaphysical breath caught in his metaphysical throat.
“Logi!” He yelled, terrified of what was happening.
The writing darkness had washed over the dragon, covering the creature from tail to breast, leaving only a head the hue of rough stone visible. Tendrils played over the great beast, caressing sickeningly over scale and mane. It even dipped into Logi’s pot. Upon his cry of surprise, the mass had shifted, boiling maddeningly across Logis body until what looked like a face rolled into view from somewhere near the dragon’s head. Less face, in fact. A mask. Unadorned and featureless, it looked like a simple sheet of shaped ivory, roughly humanoid, sitting placidly against the turbulent mass of inky mess surrounding it.
Raury stood stunned, rooted in place as his mind worked furiously.
The fuck is this thing?
“The fuck are you?”
He blurted that one out, not letting his brain catch up before the words had spilled out. In response, the mask tilted slightly, as if in query a split moment before the mass around it erupted into a volley of speeding tendrils aimed for the drunk.
He barely got a meep out before throwing himself away from where he had been standing, the mass of appendages crashing like a wave into the spot his feet had been a moment before.
He came up from the roll ready, his forearms sheathed in metallic scale, white hot heat emanating from the weapons. Whatever was happening here, it didn’t block his access to Logi’s power, thankfully. Or maybe it was inner-world shenanigans. Either way, he turned to face the wave of animate vine just as it swooped in for another dive, slapping away the affronting mass., which retreated back to the inky blob coiled around Logi.
“Oi, get the hell off my dragon!” Hesitation forgotten, Raury pursued the mass of tentacles as it flowed back into its origin, hopping high to send a fist wreathed in flame crashing down toward the mask. Another myriad volley erupted from the blobs side, curving around the black body to close in on Raury’s flank. He managed a bit of a twist, avoiding the mass but coming into contact with another that had burst in from the front. The tendrils played staccato across his body, pushing the drunk back to sail through the air.
He landed hard, facedown on the rough cavern floor. “Stupid blob.” He coughed into the gritty ground, climbing back to his feet. His hand reached for his belt, feeling out for a fresh wine gourd and finding none. The drunk brought an empty hand to his bewildered face, then glanced down at his midsection. Not a single gourd to be had. He was not amused. “This day fucking blows.”
Sensing a shift of the pressure in the room, Raury looked up in time to catch another tentacled assault heading his way. His body immediately wreathed itself in flame, the waves of heat rippling outward to meet the attack. Upon contact, the shield of heat reacted aggressively, hungrily lapping at the tendrils until they were consumed.
“Huh. Yeah, fuck you, mate.”
Heartened, he started forward to mount another assault, only to be stopped short a few steps in. The mask had begun to whirl rhythmically as reiatsu coalesced around it, shifting from black to an angry red. He could feel the potency of the attack from where he stood across the room. Crestfallen, the Founder took a step back.
“Well. This is gonna suck...”
He took a defensive stance, calling out another protective sheath of flame to ward off the brunt of the attack. Hopefully. An oppressive wave struck the entirety of the cavernous space, building steady pressure against Raury’s body as another tide of horrible static screamed from the mask. He blinked against the force mounting, feeling himself tense instinctively. This was beyond him, and he was too sober to bullshit himself about it. Pity.
As the screech of static reached crescendo, the red wave of reiatsu converged on itself, forming an orb of angry red. With an abrupt silence, the orb fired, morphing in the span of a blink into a lance of intense crimson and black compliments heading right for him.
Raury blinked off his uncertainly and braced himself, readying for impact just as the lance burst into flame. It halted in its light-speed advance, a suspended column of horizontal fire. In the silence, he could now hear Logi. The dragon’s cries were coming out in rapid chant, a language Raury wasn’t familiar with. Something, odd enough to say for a shinigami, felt otherworldly about the sound. It made his skin prick.
The column that had been heading for Raury guttered out, simply ceasing to be, eliciting a static-filled shriek from the mass of oily blackness surrounding Logi. It rippled inward, turning its assault on the dragon, who in response, turned its neck to meet it. Unhinged jaw met mass and simply gobbled it up, Logi snapping and gnashing his way through the thing. With a deep inhale, Raury’s zanpakutou spirit began dragging the thing inward, forcing the entire mass into a ball collected at his maw. Tendrils and masses all over the room slid off the wall and sailed through the air to join the goopy mess, static cries filling the room.
When it had all been collected, Logi unhinged his jaw further, sucking in the whole mess until his cheeks bulged. The whole scene was something between hilarious and tremendously disturbing. Raury’s knocking knees told him it erred more on the disturbing side. Once the ball had been taken in, Logi gave a great hawking ihale and rejected the whole load in one almighty retch. The black thing landed in a wet, heavy mass on one of the far walls, a set of intricate sigils burned all along its surface, apparently binding the thing in place. A semi-transparent column of fire erupted all around the thing, giving credence to the binding theory. With a satisfied snort, the great lizard swiveled its head to look at the drunkard, pausing for a moment before promptly smacking its face into the immense wine pot it was coiled around. Logi drank for a moment, head fully immersed, before he came out again, swallowing loudly.
“You’re late, fuckass.”
Raury sputtered. “Oi, oi, what the fuck is even goin’ on!? Late? excuse me, I jus’ woke up from whatever the fuck had me sleepin’, an’ I dun even know what day it is, or where I’ve been or what was happenin’ to me, or what I had for lunch last, or what the everlorvin’ fuck that mess was all over ye, and goddamnit, I’m jus’ glad yer okay.” Post outburst, the redhead went to his knees, exhausted in every way he could think of.
Logi regarded him for a moment, a brief flicker of sympathy touching the great beast’s red eyes before he craned toward him.
“You’ve missed a lot, is what happened. Don’t know what it all is. Ain’t my business either, that’s fer you. As far as this mess goes,” the dragon gestured with a wave of its massive head to the bound glob, “It’s a hollow. Not sure how it got in, or why, but fuck you, you find out. I wanna drink.”
“Shit, so do I ya gret lizard. Lemme get into that pot!” Emotion times over, Raury came back to his feet, a bit more resolved now that drinks were on the table.
“Fuck you, no. This is my pot. Get yer own. Besides, I dunno how long that almighty flamin’ loogie is gonna hold that thing, so go find a way to get rid of it. And when ya come back, bring bacon.”
“Stingy old fuck, I oughta come get that godd...”
“Bacon!” The beast yelled, the sound forcefully expelling Ruary from the cave proper and sending him skidding into the old bar. The monochrome door slammed in his face. Well, partially monochrome. It seemed to be flickering in and out of technicolor now, bleaching out then regaining color on occasion. It was alarming, quickly snuffing his urge to go marching back into the cave. Logi was really fighting this thing. And was really having a hard time.
Dragging down the sudden gout of worry, Raury focused back inward, willing himself back to real-world status.
He woke up to the aftermath of some hardcore chaos. There were numerous craters, long lines of gouged earth and a collapsing stone bridge. Not a large one. Just one of those ‘well this is nice’ park bridges. Nothing to see here.
He could hear sirens in the distance.
Time to move my ass.
Slapping bits of ivory mask that led his questions into an obvious conclusion from his face, the drunk cursed inwardly and made his way to the only man he knew to turn to in a time like this. Someone he trusted. Someone who probably had spare close in his size. And someone who had some goddamn booze.
