Fujiwara no Mokou
People die when you kill them. When you die, you stay dead. These absolute natural laws have no meaning to me, who can never die. My existence is absolute, removed from the cycle of life and death.
A long time ago, I drank an elixir of immortality. Now I can't die. But that wasn't enough. I would die, but I wouldn't stay dead, and I was pretty weak as well. And death is painful. But everywhere I went, people wanted to kill me until I stayed dead, out of fear of the unkillable apparition that appeared before them. I got tired of dying, and when I caught wind of a phoenix that could grant whoever it possessed with immense power and immortality provided they survive the possession, I was intrigued. I was already immortal, so I saw no reason not to double the layer of immortality.
Being possessed by a phoenix is the most painful experience I have ever had in 1300 years. It drove me completely insane, but I got better. And even after the possession, I still feel the pain of burning to death every time I use my flames. I simply do not care about the pain anymore.
This may seem strange to you, being able to not only ignore burning to death, but entering combat with the intention of giving myself unimaginable pain. That is because you have not yet experienced all the pain. The possession processes felt like having white hot nails hammered into you from the inside out. It also takes a month to complete, and you still feel the agony of burning to death every time you resurrect. It is not as bad as I make it sound though; after the experience, pain of every intensity stops being of notice. Much like an old man cannot function day to day if he notices every time his back aches, I could not function if I noticed the pain of being tortured to death every time I used phoenix fire.
I mentioned that this pain drove me insane. For a while, I would share my pain. Countless wanderers and youkai died at my hands during that century. If I had to burn, then the world should burn with me. After a century I got bored, stopped noticing the pain completely, and started travelling the world. A fortunate side effect of having the power to instantly burn all the oxygen in the air is that you stop needing to breath, which lead to a lot of interesting trips across the ocean. The pressure at the bottom was still a problem, which caused me to accidentally kill myself more than once. Once I crossed the ocean, I was able to explore the world. It's amazing how much an indistinct outfit and some black-hair dye does for anonymity. I was able to witness the majesty of untouched nature, the rise of nations, empires spanning the globe, revolutions in the arts and sciences that never caught on in Gensoko, world wars, the largest explosion in current history, and was fortunate to witness the day humans landed on the moon.
No human and few Youkai can last more than 50 years without uprooting their lifestyle in some way. Whenever you meet a resident that is more than 200 years old, they are guaranteed to have a very rich, hidden history of those centuries to share. Except Kaguya. I'm not sure if it's the lunarian blood or if she is simply lazier than Yukari, but Kaguya does absolutely nothing during the twenty+ year trips I took outside the border after our feud started. Perhaps she makes medicine with Eirin?
Me and Kaguya rarely duel. Kaguya is a great general backed by the Moon's best strategist, and I'm a great warrior who has been locked in and out of battle for over a thousand years, so we can't fight eachother one-on-one or in full-scale battles due to our radically different battle skills. Instead our fights involve Kaguya invading the forest of the lost or me sneaking into Eientei to assassinate Kaguya. If we ever do fight directly, Eirin will almost always back Kaguya up, and sometimes Keine will help me. This usually evens out the discrepancy in power.
Contrary to what I have said before, putting me in so much pain that I can no longer fight became impossible after the phoenix possession. Instead, I only lose when I no longer have the energy to get up. Provided that it is physically possible for me to raise my arm I can continue to battle, and I have often lost because my body could no longer support my attempt to continue after so many resurrections and so many exhausting spell cards. The moon princess, having only the combat experience she attained by fighting me, has nowhere near this tolerance for pain, and not nearly as much experience using her powers as I have using mine. For that reason, a straight duel is completely out of the question.
Kaguya tries to kill me on a daily basis, and I do detest her for it. I think she's curious about what happens when she kills me in dozens of creative or interesting ways, likes the sport, and I really do think killing me is her only source of entertainment. Not that I mind killing her, but it gets really irritating after the 203rd time. I don't want to kill and be killed on a daily basis. Every day I have to patch my clothes from the previous battle, collect enough food and drink enough water to prevent myself from accidentally starving to death (although it is a non-issue, being full is more fun than starving), and rest up from the previous battle that left me so exhausted my limbs ceased functioning. She gets even worse after I return from one of my many long trips, making me battle her for days after I had already lost the ability to move. More than once she got really creepy about it and carried me to her bedroom in Eientei for "fun". On those days I am very grateful that Kaguya has not found a way to seal my phoenix powers.
