Disclaimer: Once again, I do not own anything except for this version of the story and my OCs. Everything else belongs to Tite Kubo.
Chapter 1: Savior Sun Part 1: An Awakening
Year 1772 Zarazoga, Spain
"Mother?"
A dark haired young man of average height walked into a building of rough stone and painted wood, seeking his mother in the servant rooms after a long day of working in the fields. He found a group of a few other women servants at the side of the bed that his mother normally slept on. An elderly woman with wise eyes looked up and quickly beckoned him over. The other women parted before his stride that quickly brought him to his mother's bedside. The older woman that lay on the bed that was stuffed with straw was pale, her breathing shallow.
"Mother?"
He took her hand, "Mother, please… Answer me."
The woman's hand twitched.
"U…Ulqui…..Ulquiorra." She slowly croaked, voice raspy and rough from sickness and opened her blinded eyes of illness.
Ulquiorra gave his mother's hand a reassuring squeeze.
"Yes mother?"
"Your father…. Your father's name…..is Salvador… Find him…."
Her eyes slipped close as her final breath left her body broken by disease and hard labor. The women around him burst into tears for Ulquiorra's mother was a loved woman among the servants of the Master's house for her kindness to the other servants no matter what hand of fate was dealt to her. Ulquiorra went into shock; he had not expected his mother to die so soon even though the doctor had said that there was no healing her.
The elderly woman beckoned the shocked Ulquiorra off to the side, "Ulquiorra, your dear mother, Esmeralda was to give you something. She passed it on to me before she began to forget in this illness that she had. Here, take it with my blessings."
She reached into a pocket of her apron and brought out a flower. Not just a normal flower, it was a flower that had a stem that seemed to be made of gold, by color and feel and the petals were made of emeralds, tiny shoots of white crystal in the middle of the jewel-like flower. To Ulquiorra's further shock, the flower was actually real, one that is still alive and even thriving cut off from its roots.
"What in the….. Where did mother get this?"
The old woman only shook her head, "I do not know where she got this beauty from and how it is even alive but she had it and now, I pass it on to you. Don't show this to anyone, your mother swore me into secrecy and told me to do the same to you. She said that this was the only other thing, other than you that she had ever accepted from your father."
"I swear…. I can't… I can't believe this…this flower is not of this world."
"No it is not, but I believe that it was meant for something great that it was passed from your mother to you. Go now, we womenfolk will ready your mother for her burial."
The woman placed the flower into his palm and shuffled back towards the group of women and started commanding them to get the best clothing that they could find for Esmeralda. Ulquiorra left the room, heading out so he could think. Just as he slipped the flower into his pocket, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A pale shape, translucent with a broken chain hanging from its chest, he turned his head fully to try to see the being only to have it vanish. He shook his head, thinking that was a result of his shock.
To Ulquiorra, it was too soon that the women had finished with his mother. The other men, workers and servants had found a coffin for his mother. The Masters had said that they were to be out for the day so the other servants could take the chance of have that small funeral for a dearly loved woman among the servants. They were about to bury her in the same cemetery that others that have served under the house of Marid have been buried in when Ulquiorra heard a howl. The howl sent chills running down his spine even though he felt as if the howl was strangely familiar. He blinked and that was when he finally saw what he was missing. A soul, particularly the soul of his mother, like the stories that she had told him when he was young with a broken chain hanging from her chest and looking at him with saddened eyes.
"You see me, don't you Ulquiorra?"
"Mother?"
"I was afraid of this."
"What?"
The howl resounded though the heavy air again, pressing down more with a dark feeling; the noise in the area slowly being muffled before it was fully muted, leaving a ghostly mother and a flesh-bound son staring at each other in silence. Only Ulquiorra was the only human that was mildly unaffected, the others having gone unconscious already. Then it appeared though the trees that bore autumn robes, a being of darkness with a bone-white mask covering its face, a wolf-like mask that covered where the eyes would have been and stripes of crimson and obsidian crossed though the mask and then he saw it, a hole going through its neck by which no being would have survived. A hole through which the forest that the being had emerged from could be seen. Multiple strands of red forming a cord was wrapped around its throat, binding the wolf-like creature below the hole that extended backwards into the forest that the being had come from.
Esmeralda whispered a single word, "Hollow."
The massive wolf-like being sniffed the air and turned to face Ulquiorra and Esmeralda. It gave that chilling howl again and sprung. Esmeralda pushed her son aside and the wolf Hollow clamped down on her. It immediately started loping away, without thinking; Ulquiorra gave chase, somehow keeping up with it. It ran into the forest and Ulquiorra followed it, intent on getting his mother back. Both ran though the silent forest, not a sound except for that of Ulquiorra's breathing before the wolf Hollow stopped in the middle of a clearing at a foot of an ancient tree of immense height, the tie of red around its neck reaching upwards within the branches of the tree. The wolf dropped the unconscious spirit of Esmeralda at the foot of the tree and turned to face Ulquiorra.
Ulquiorra slid to a halt, kicking up fallen leaves the shades of fire, facing the wolf Hollow. It snarled and sprung at him. By luck, his unsteady legs from keeping up with the wolf failed him at exactly that moment as it had pounced, resulting in him dropping to the ground and avoid the Hollow's attack by a bare centimeter, his hair ruffling in the breeze produced by the wolf's attack. The wolf spun around too quickly to be seen with human eyes and swung a paw at Ulquiorra. He caught the full force of the blow and was knocked into a tree. He stood up again feeling something distinctively different about himself but was unable to tell what until he looked down and found a chain coming out of his chest, attached to his body that he stood in, lying at the foot of the tree that he was thrown into. He was stunned into shock again until the wolf Hollow growled at him, reminding him that there was a rather dangerous being that would not wait for him to slip slowly out of shock and he moved only for the Hollow to crash into the chain that kept him bound to his body, not that he knew it. The soul chain held taut for a moment then with a sharp sound of screeching metal, it broke. The wolf backed away, its instincts telling it that it had released something that it would not survive. The being that is Ulquiorra stood next to his body, broken soul chain swinging in motionless air with a slight clink, hair overshadowing his eyes. There was silence all around the clearing, only cut by groans coming from the trees around the duo and the unconscious spiritual form of Esmeralda. The pressure had suddenly increased, just short of causing the wolf Hollow to be forced into unconsciousness when Ulquiorra looked up at it. His eyes had changed, no longer as human-like as it once was. Vertically slit pupils had replaced the rounded ones, emerald eyes blazed with an inhuman light. Twin daggers of jade death stared down the wolf Hollow and he leaped.
She awoke on a plane of white emptiness.
