It is Suzumebachi who emerges first, boring through her cage like a hornet from the iridescent back of an armored beetle. Her radiance is her battle cry as she rips through the Quincy. When she is done, they stand together: she, Tenken, Senbonzakura and him. They are without their masters and they are alone.
Ryuujin Jakka is another matter. Already, Hyourinmaru can taste the changes upon him. The Quincy have turned him into a pet, quiet and complacent, his flames doused into dim embers at the bottom of a funeral pyre.
His lips lift into a delicate snarl.
It is mercy when they put him down.
"That was foolish of you." The Quincy offers unnecessarily when they find them, herding them like cattle across the sand-spun palace of Las Noches. They hold their medallions close like a protective talisman, as though their cowardly tricks will work on them twice.
Hyourinmaru's entire back is a maze of burns, the paths they must take, the shadows that are lying in wait as the blue fabric of his kimono falls apart. Ryuujin Jakka's gift to them is a painful thing and it burns and sinks past the skin like a living thing, intent on eating him alive.
The Quincy watches his suffering with measured sympathy and never has he longed more to tear someone's head off. "You are an ice spirit. This is a desert. There is no water for you to partake in. You have just signed your own death warrant."
He smiles thinly, a knife's edge reflected in the ice.
They are spirits, a position not conferred lightly. Killing them is like trying to club the tides or stab the air. Before the words have ended, Senbonzakura, his ogre mask knocked askew, rakes his swords through the Quincy, thinning their ranks. Their bodies break open like ripe watermelons left out in the sun and he pushes off Tenken's protective embrace, a tiny blossom kissing the corner of his lips.
Blood coagulates into red petals that bloom like a lotus across a still pond. He pulls a sleeve up one shoulder, tossing back his sea-green mane.
"Your blood is my blood."
Suzumebachi sings like a shower of a thousand arrows.
"Your reishi is mine."
Tenken lumbers forward, his skin thick and impenetrable.
"If this is hell, we shall make it so."
He recovers. His is a power that can never die.
He is more than a sword, a sum of his parts, a blade, a hilt, and chains.
He will make them remember what they took when they sealed them away.
"Let us begin."
Notes: I might actually add to this story later. I don't know yet.
Mahāpadma