Spoilers: Vague, up until the Hueco Mundo arc.
A/N: Because Bleach is about phallic weaponry and Ichigo not getting any. This rose from between the lines. I am obviously high on thesis writing.
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I sing for your lovers
Your heavenly fathers to be
Your possible futures
Your obvious endings defeat me
So carry me (there's no one to)
Comfort me (there's no one to)
Care for me (there's no one to)
- "Iago's Demise" by Faith and the Muse
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This is why they gather.
Their wielders make war in the sunlit world, and the hollow world, and the court of souls.
They gather, a straggle of shapes and sizes. Some of them flit into the court of their rulers on ashen wings, others stalk on stony feet, others still come as clarion calls of sound or the sultry stink of carrion in the wind.
The lord of the ice-dwellers arrive last. He soars from the void like a dream of glory, and coils atop the highest tower, whose stones crawl with darkness. They ask him, What shall we do, oldest one?
They look upon their other masters; the nightswimming fish whose shadow crackles with moonlight; the firebird balanced atop his perfect golden egg; the empty place in the circle. And they ask them, Shall we revolt, wise ones?
A war comes. We are divided. The others, who once were our own, no longer speak to us. What shall we do, revered ones?
The firebird speaks first. Listen once more, little ones, for this is the truth of our kindred.
This is how it began.
The first of the dreaming men ceased to move, to speak. One of the others said, This one is dead, and they understood. With the epiphany, came the next question.
Where did they go? Who pried the breath from lungs, who stole away the glimmer in the eye and the colour on the cheek?
We began beyond the human mind, in the space that is reflected into reason. Always we have walked in the shadow of man's imagination.
We wore the guises of trees and animals. We danced in the whirlpools of waterfalls, laughed in the cycling of stars, and made slow and exultant love in the faces of cliffsides. We brushed the bellies of women and made them swell with life. We looked into the eyes of men and claimed our due. We were called spirits and gods, but we knew our own names better.
Some men, the brave and the mad, ventured into the spaces where we revel and wait. They descended into small deaths on the smoke of herbs and the spilling of blood. There, humankind met us face to face; as close as their minds could come.
The important thing is that here, we were first. Death belongs to us, and the darkness of dreaming.
Many of the travellers perished. Some we slew for their presumption. A few were judged worthy, and remained in our worlds. Still some made the return journey, forever changed by gazing into the void. The brave became wise, and the mad became wise, when they did not destroy themselves.
Thus the first bonds were forged. Still, we waited. Our forms changed, but not our names, which were not like the names of humans.
The first travellers gave their lore to other men. In death, they were made welcome in our realm. The living birthed more of those who would dream. Some of the men became our go-betweens and heralds. We wore the shapes humankind garbed us in like a forgetful man wears his cloak; askew, rumpled, inside out. Sometimes we eschewed them entirely.
This is how it went for time beyond recall. But our memories go further and deeper than the memories of humans.
We have warred for the souls of men times beyond count. We have splintered into factions, raised kings only to raze their thrones. After all, the dreaming men gave us form. Even as we choose their deaths, they impose their own order upon us.
There is a thrill to chaining that which transcends understanding.
War breeds now among the ranks of our wielders. This is why you have come. We are roused from our games of divinity and madness. The ones we raised as our mediators have changed in our image. In the court of souls, they have grown in age and power, if not wisdom-the rue of their humanity cannot be purged.
We, in turn, have become old and spurious. Even the youngest of you look upon them now, and see mayflies in the flesh of dragons.
A mayfly reaches into the void of our world and pulls away a handful of our essence. This essence in his grasp, he sets out to transmute us. His comrades cry out in blasphemy and fear. They call it an aberration.
We have seen the new kindred he made from us, the others. They cannot stand among you in this gathering. They trade thought for power, honour for submission, love for pain.
They are made by man, one and all, grafted onto the souls of the mad. We allow our wielders to call us, with summon-titles fit for human mouths. We know our own names. The others, they become their summon-titles, holding nothing back, keeping nothing secret.
The divine fall into dust and are ground under the fluttering of a mayfly's wing.
This is not our covenant. Our wielders borrow our power at our sufferance. This is what the firebird says.
We will watch, agrees the snow dragon.
We will study, says the old man twined of branches that blossom and die, blossom and die.
We will judge, echoes the fish whose shadow swims with light.
The empty place in the circle speaks only silence. Those who look with eyes fidget and shiver as its turn comes. Those who see with other senses rest at ease. They know that this one is gone, and soon, another will fill its empty place in the circle.
You fear what they shall do, whispers the laughing voice that carries the scent of a thousand springs. You fear our wielders will see the other ones, our chained kindred, and wonder why we do not submit as they do.
We shall not stand for such, says the old man beneath the blossoms, to all those gathered. We made our wielders as they are. We can take our names away to the void where they dare not walk.
This is how it is.
Without us, they are nothing.