A/N: Written for 5 Prompts on LJ.

Table: 32

Prompt: #3 - a murder of crows


Crows

White-hot pain seared through his chest, causing him to stumble back with a loud groan. The pain was all over his body, all throughout his system, tearing his organs and ripping apart tender innards. His knees started to shake, much to his chagrin. With all his willpower he tried to stay on his own two legs, fighting the wave of agony that wanted to drag him down with it.

No...you...can't...give in...

But he was already giving in. His knees were being weighed down with a burden that overwhelmed him. He raised his shivering hands, stared at them. He was missing his fingers, all five of them; the mighty strike had rendered his right hand a bloody, pitiful stump.

An illusion... It must be...

He tried to wiggle his fingers, tried to feel them moving along with the instructions his brain sent them, but he found that he couldn't. There was no more feeling in his hand anymore; it was numb save for the prickly shockwaves that ran through it.

Feeling his body glide backwards, he let his head fall back. A sudden dizziness seized control over him, launching a stampede all the way up his throat. His lips parted, and across the number printed across his tongue a torrent of hot liquid gushed. A sickening cry that was almost foreign to his own ears shattered the sudden silence, but he knew that it came from his very own person.

His body landed upon the ground, a heavy thump against the mass of sand. He lay there, and no matter how much he wanted to stand up again, to hold his weapon in his hands and swing it around to decapitate his opponent, he couldn't.

Still, there was no way in the name of Aizen was he giving in so soon.

"I'm...not...dead...yet..."

But as those words left Nnoitra's lips, he already knew that they were lies. His opponent, storm-grey eyes piercing his very soul, finally turned on his heel to leave him behind. To leave him burning in this hellhole.

Nnoitra wanted to scream, to curse the shinigami and call him back so that they could continue their fight, but his voice wouldn't obey him. It defied him, and all he could do was croak out something inaudible.

The sun glared down upon him, roasting him, and as Nnoitra stared at it straight in its fiery face, a crow came to settle itself on the sand beside him. Its beady eyes inspected him, head cocking side to side to take in his torn body from every angle possible.

The last thing that Nnoitra managed to feel before he was engulfed by the flaming oblivion was the crow's sharp beak picking through his ripped abdomen, sorting through innards and entrails, claiming his body as its new ragged doll.