OFF: This new chapter is very short. Sorry for that. The next update will be coming this week, hopefully.

OKAMI

Sight of Black Sun

Chapter 2

Fish out of the water

The darkness was his home, his element, his mother and daughter. In it, he found strength and comfort... but not this time. As the darkness shrouded his mind, twisted images from the past came back to haunt him. Screams, cries for help, pain, despair... swirling pictures of beings both familiar and forgotten spun around him in a sickening vortex of suffering. Incoherent words echoed with a thunderous power through the twisted, liquid air, giant figures standing exterior to the vortex yet spinning with them. Countless needles, tubes, blades, and maces slammed into him from all sides, clawing at his flesh, tearing off his scales, infusing his blood, painting his form with poison, corrupting his form...

Then, thousands of needles and blades were sent slamming into his body, a legion of corpses floating lifelessly around him, their eyes devoid of life, their gazes fixated upon him and everything that was once good dying more and more in every pair of eyes...

... and then, he saw a certain pair of eyes and he screamed in pure, sheer, raw, undiluted terror and pain.

Reality had suddenly come into form as the nightmare finally ended. Yet, he was not at peace, far from it. He could still feel his heart, beating so quickly and with such strength that he felt the world spin. He breathed loudly and if it wasn't from the fact that gills doesn't make much noise, one would have been able to hear him panting. Pain bit through his scales as a cold as sharp as a blade pierced through the thin borders of his spherical container and slammed into him mercilessly. His vision was almost completely shrouded in white, the broken fishbowl burried halfway into snow.

It was then that he realized a few things.

First of all, he was alone. Second, the two imps that had offered to help him were gone.

... no, not gone.

Although patterns of white had begun to cover the glass covering everything as far as his eye could see, he could see the delicate, beautiful two flowers that grew in front of him... flowers that smelt of death to him for he knew what those meant.

He had not been abandonned by his allies, as incompetant as they were. He had been left to die here after his foes had found and killed the two imps during his sleep.

As the wind howled even through the glass and the water, Yami shivered.

For all of the knowledge he had, for all of the power contained within his cursed body, for all of the fear he could inspire when within the spherical machine, he was nothing but a defenseless, harmless fish out of it. His foes had probably never recognized him at all and left him there, thinking that his negative aura meant he would have been bad luck to them.

Visions and nightmares rose within his mind, laughter echoing within his memories. He had been doomed ever since Amaterasu knocked him out of the Ark. He will die here, burried in snow, forgotten by everyone, frozen to death in a land he hates and that hate him. A bear or some kind of stupid animal would probably never make the difference between him and another generic fish as it would remove any proof that Yami, the so-called feared emperor of all that is evil, ever existed.

"Who do you think you are? You don't even have the slightest glimpse of a power. The markings did not even make one of your fins grow in the slightest. You are nothing... but an ordinary fish."

Yami shook his head and tried to focus. If he allowed himself to give in to hallucinations, if he allowed his memory to paralyze him...

"Dishonor is a terrible thing. How can one live in total shame?... why didn't you kill yourself yet? You're just a coward... but then, you hide behind a barrier of opaque steel as huge as you are small, not daring to show even a scale of yourself."

"SHUT UP!" his words echoed through the freezing water although not leaving the water itself, the ice and snow blocking them before they could reach ears of any sort.

The nightmares, he knew them. Were they recent or had they been there for a much longer time?... as if he cared. As his body froze from the cold, he knew that he had to do something, anything and quickly. Yes, he could die here, he could finally end the humiliation and the dishonor...

... but that would please Amaterasu too much. It would be the easy way out. Weak as he may be, humilated as he might have been, dishonored as he might be... he united the chaotic, unorganised hordes of monsters and demons and formed the forces of darkness. What was once a collection of beings who didn't even know about a semblance of order worked together and against all odds, thanks to him, led a successful revolution within the Celestial Plain, overthrowing the gods and establishing a new dominion.

His glory is great, his actions are magnificient. All that he needs is to make it to somewhere civilized that won't turn him into sushi and get someone to make a new vessel for him. He will be able to continue from there.

... and the first step was to overwhelm the odds and survive here.

His crimson eyes squinted as the cold wanted him to shut them but he forced them open, staring through the veil of white. Kamui, the northern part of Nippon, was a desolate place covered in ice and snow. It was also a place covered in countless currents of freezing water. It would be difficult and painful but then, nothing came easy. Nothing came easy for him, anyway. Unlike Amaterasu, he is not given fancy powers and a fancy title and let loose to be praised and worshipped. Stupid gods who believe they deserve everything... THEY never have to do this. THEY never have to struggle to gain what they want. THEY never have to fight nail and teeth, without any weapons, against such odds. THEY live in pleasant divine plains covered in stinking flowers and loving animals, never having to deal with curses and things falling apart around them.

He's not going to die a mortal's death in the land of mortals. He's not going to be another number on a list for them. He did not go through centuries of war and suffering for him to die at his time of triumph!

... ha HA! That was exactly what he was looking for!

The opening in the ice is small but more than large enough. He knew that the chances of making it were slim... but if he couldn't conquer a stupid patch of ice, then how was he able to conquer the Celestial Plain?

Chasing away all pain within his body, Yami closed his eyes and focused, gathering his strength. Then, after breathing the freezing water deeply, he opened his eyes suddenly and flailed his fins with all of the strength he could muster, piercing through the surface of the water and jumping out of his fishbowl.

As the life-giving water stopped enveloping his scales, the dry vacuum of air slamming into his lungs, the dark being held his breath, his eyes focused on the crack leading to his salvation.

FLOP!

... and he fell before he could reach it, an overwhelming surge of cold washing over him as his scales hit the surface of the ice. Not only was he now without precious oxygen but he found out that the air was much, much colder than the water. He also found out that ice was even colder than the air, threatening to freeze in a moment.

Fear went through his mind as he flopped about, struggling to push himself into the water before either lack of oxygen or the cold did him in. His body was not made for him to move on land and as usual, his powers did not help a bit...

As he tumbled about, his eyes caught the opening. He closed his eyes as his fins pushed him off the edge, hoping for water below...

SPLASH!

The water outside of the fishbowl was even worse. Yami gasped in both relief and pain as the water gave him life at the cost of feeling like large knives piercing through every single point of his body. On one hand, he was in danger more than any time before it of freezing... but on another hand, he had, once more, succesfully taunted fate.

The lake and rivers under the ice and snow were vast and although he was still in pain from it all, a strange feeling begun to flow into the black fish's veins.

A strange sense of quiet euphoria.

For the first time in centuries, a strong current met his fins and a large, natural flow of water caressed his scales. For the first time since seemingly forever, the world lies before him and he can see it with his own two eyes.

If he would have been able to smile, a smirk would have appeared on the dark being's face. As he found himself no longer restrained, he found himself amazed at his own swimming. His body carried by a machine for such a long time, he had forgotten how it had felt to be free, how it had felt to carry his body with his own strength. A new feeling of life coursed through him and the cold didn't seem so terrible after all.

Although his mind would eventually bring him back to his plans, Yami, for the first time in centuries, felt alive and at home somewhere other than in the darkness...

All around him, the fish did not understand. Even the largest fish kept their distance from that newcomer from the sky. Their simple minds could not understand why the newcomer was in such a human-like fit of euphoria nor could they understand why he was envelopped in curses, the blue markings on its scales bleeding poison and evil within the clear water...

"Hmmm... so the others have fallen."

"You know very well why I called you. Still your tongue and be obedient." said Oujou-joumae, his voice carried through the power of Yami's mysterious magic.

The interlocutor didn't seem impressed though. It stood before the monitor, staring at the faceless image of the regent of all that is evil.

"Lord Oujou-joumae, last of the Dark Lords and regent of darkness... the tales of your failures during the great war might have been forgotten by most of us but many, such as myself, remember why the great Yami gave you the lowest rank despite your power and role."

"Silence! You know very well that there is only one real reason why you exist and why you are not being destroyed where you stand! Stop tempting fate!" barked the faceless being, frustration getting through his usual monotone tone.

But he was ignored, the being to whom he was talking turning away from him.

"Amaterasu... she will come here first. It is fate. I know she is coming and I await her. I am not afraid." said the being to itself. "I know my place and I know that I am not to question you. Fate has always been on our side, even today it is on our side. Although Amaterasu might have been able to foil our initial invasion of the mortal world, it was only a lucky shot. We were ill-prepared, the Ark crashing down and Lord Orochi falling without any of his usual support. Most of our invasion was improvised giving our enemy the chance to prepare herself and foil us."

She turned back to the monitor.

"... but not this time. This is our realm, our home. It is an elaborate trap where our power shine the brightest. It is here that Amaterasu shall learn the true power of the demons... as well as how we managed to kill the gods, those who were meant to be immortal!"

A smirk came to the being.

"Lord Oujou-moujae... I will not fail you. By my hand, the last of the gods shall perish."

And at this moment, the monitor's display changed, showing the image of a white wolf. She was entering a building of some sorts... and the being knew very well what building it was. Its smirk grew wider.

"The time of judgement has arrived."

TO BE CONTINUED...