Preface
Woot! Chapter nine is finally here. It was a bit hard to write so I decided to break it apart a bit. Happy Monday everyone.
Chapter 9: Lorde of Sky (Part 2)
The sky whispered to Camperon. 'Someone's coming,' he thought. He knew, even as far off as they were, that they also reigned over the air. "Anathi, Loly, Menoly," he barked, "Get inside. Get inside and don't come out. You won't be much help here."
He felt a pang of guilt at their hurt expressions, but this wasn't the time for egos. The approaching hollow was strong, pressing down upon the sky like a massive cold front. Sure, they had nothing on Starrk, but that's the equivalent of saying a blowtorch is lukewarm compared to the sun. Irrelevant, it'd still burn. After forcing them inside the treehollow, the great dragonfly rustled his wings free, spreading them out to their full twenty-four feet wingspan. Slowly at first, they beat until the very air sizzled with their passing. As he arose, he answered the opposing adjuchas' challenge by letting out his own reiryoku in a burst of heavy reishi.
Cameron's spirit filled the sky like a thick blanket. If the approaching adjuchas could be called a cold front, he was the mounting storm, a hurricane rapidly crossing the border into category five and beyond. All around, for miles, those hollows attuned to the air or capable of sensing reiatsu took note. At this point, with over a century spent with that treehollow as the center of his territory, the Guardian of the West's reiatsu was well-known. Lesser hollows in Menos Forest could only speak in hushed tones about the Whispering Death, but there were several adjuchas capable of sensing his presence. At the very least, they would know he was near.
Never had they known the sky to quiver.
Ripples upon ripples distorted the cloudless night of Las Noches, bending the normally implacable winds into ever-turbulent spirals. If any nearby adjuchas were of the mind to approach the center, they would have found the brewing storm intensify exponentially. At the outer edges, the air current only carried the slight tang of Cameron's reiatsu. That trickle became a spiraling stream and that stream would turn into a massive hammer, endlessly buffeting anything and everything that dared approach. The desert world of Las Noches, normally bearing the veneer of peace, was torn asunder, a swirling cloud of sand and bone fragments whipping around the eye of the storm, threatening to rend the world to pieces.
At its center hovered Cameron, hovering in the air and commanding El Chubasco with far more effort than he normally spared for during his spars. For once, the technique lived up to its name: The Whisper had become a Squall.
X
Cameron's challenger seemed to be a cassowary with functional wings. It soared on one of El Chubasco's many currents, gracefully gliding through the air in a way that wouldn't have been amiss on a vulture or condor. It stared with pitch black eyes overshadowed by the heavy bone mask, a mask that ended in a wickedly hooked beak. At the base of its neck were four more masks arranged in an "X" pattern with the main head sprouting from its center. The bone armor extended to the first joint of its wings, encasing the upper limbs in blunt shells to fend off direct attacks. It also extended down from the adjuchas' back to its legs, legs that looked to be heavily muscled and covered in more armor than medieval heavy knights could dream of.
"Hello, adjuchas," Cameron started. He realized that he was likely being analyzed in the same way he had been analyzing his opponent.
"Dordoni… I am called Dordoni Alessandro del Socaccio. What is your name, boy?"
'Dordoni… Dordoni… I think I'd remember a weird name like that, but all the arrancar had weird names…' It struck him like lightning. 'Oh shit, extra masks. Bird. Strong kicking feet. He's Ichigo's first challenge! Hmm… weren't all the Espada supposed to be vasto lordes? No… I think it was only the first four or something… That's good it means he sure as hell isn't one.'
"I asked your name, boy," the avian hollow said with more agitation.
Cameron started, though he made no external show of it. "Oh? Sorry, I was lost in thought. I am called Cameron Gold. Now, why have you marched so brazenly into someone else's territory?" 'He was described as being pretty arrogant if I remember right. Arrogant, but honorable. If that's true, he probably hates being ignored.'
Dordoni puffed his feathers, his reiatsu spiking with the vain motion. Cameron gave a mental eye-roll and shrugged it off. "Ha! I knew it, boy! You are strong. Join me."
'First Starrk and now this clown? What is with this place? Someone clearly wants me to fuck up canon.' "I am content with my territory, Dordoni. Why have you not claimed another part of the desert as your own? You are certainly strong enough to do so."
He visibly preened. "We are flying hollows, boy. We have no need for territory for our territory is the very heavens. Why should I bind myself to the earth?"
"Fair point," he replied, "Very well. What do you hope to accomplish if I join you?"
"I will be the strongest! I, Dordoni, am meant to stand atop the heavens and rule over all Hueco Mundo, the children of the sky at my back." He let out an uproarious laugh.
'Yep, at least he's as arrogant as he was in canon. He wanted to become an espada again after getting kicked off I believe. Like this idiot is going to match Starrk anytime soon.' "I refuse," Cameron said flatly, cutting off his laughter. Dordoni stared in disbelief even as Cameron sighed in exasperation. "Answer me this, Dordoni: What makes you the rightful ruler of Hueco Mundo?"
His beak spread to split his face in a mad grin. "Look around, boy. We already soar above the masses. Is it not my right to claim the world?"
'I hate the arrogant types,' Cameron thought to himself. Dordoni, despite being the "most likable" privaron and somewhat honorable in his own twisted way, he was so arrogant that he was incapable of considering the worldview of another. "I still refuse," Cameron said. "I don't deny that flight makes us special, but unlike you, I have no desire to rule over the landed hollows. Leave."
"If you will not join me, boy, then you will nourish my rule," he warned, his claws grasping threateningly.
"So be it then."
X
"Are they going to fight?" Menoly asked even as the three adjuchas sat atop the treehollow, peering out from within.
Loly let loose a distinctly unladylike snort. "Of course they are. What else do strong hollows do?"
"Lord Cameron didn't fight that Starrk person," her best friend pointed out.
"But they'll fight now," Anathi said simply. "The intruder is grasping, ready to claw Lord Cameron."
"Will he be okay?" Menoly shuddered involuntarily. Despite being trained by the powerful dragonfly, the sheer weight of the reiatsu released into the air by the two adjuchas was enough to take her aback, a testament to the difference between her and her master. Next to her, the others held themselves better.
"Of course he'll win," Anathi said, the confidence only a daughter can have for her father figure.
"Y-Yeah…"
X
Dordoni's first attack came in the form of a vicious thrust with his beak. His massive wingspan and bulky masks would indicate a slower, cruising bird of prey, akin to a vulture or eagle. If Cameron expected a slower attack, he made no show of it and dodged the lunging beak with casual ease. 'He's a bit like Anathi,' Cameron thought, 'His body is slow but his neck extends like her arms. Easy enough.'
Another lunge. Another dodge. No currents to guide him, just the speed of Cameron's more compact frame and the four wings that makes a dragonfly the best aviator in its weight class in the wild. He hovered like a helicopter, wings beating so quickly that they appeared to not exist, leaving only transparent space where they normally vibrated in multiple hues. Unlike with the Sage a century ago, there were no trees to get in the way, no canopy to limit his flight.
"You dodge well," Dordoni said with all the haughtiness of a knight complimenting a squire.
"Or, perhaps you're just slow," Cameron drawled. "You can't seriously expect to rule Hueco Mundo with just this."
He shook his head. "No, no I do not, boy. I wished to keep you alive that you might join me."
"If you're so insistent on it, prove yourself."
"As you wish." The vulture-like adjuchas' reiatsu spiked once again. Each of the four masks he wore began to stir. The air around him turned a sky blue as it was saturated with his reiryoku, similar to Cameron's own navy-blue Aire Cero. One by one, the masks rose into the air and Cameron noted absently that this would have been the privaron's resurreccion in canon. Each of the five heads grinned maliciously. "So, boy, shall we begin?"
This time, when Dordoni's wicked beak scythed through the air, Cameron lowered his altitude, allowing the attack to pass safely above. He had to quickly change his trajectory to avoid another beak, the azure gale nearly clipping his tail in his passing. Swerving left, he narrowly evaded two more before rising upwards. The five heads followed, tracking him with their eyes and encircling him in a shrinking trap.
'Alright, enough of this shit,' Cameron grumbled before he envisioned a corridor of wind, a cyclone spinning inwards and paving the way for him. "La Corriente," he whispered before vanishing in a flicker. He reappeared again, seemingly at random, only to disappear into thin air. Each time, he left behind a small sphere of reiryoku.
Dordoni's cyclone heads swung wildly, occasionally spotting the much quicker hollow, but unable to react meaningfully. "You are like a mosquito!" he roared. Enraged as he was, he had enough caution to avoid directly touching the small orbs.
"Thanks," Cameron said as he buzzed above his opponent. "Flies and mosquitoes are not fast, but they still manage to avoid the eyes by turning in unpredictable movements. Imagine what would happen if someone who's actually fast could pull it off?" An irritated growl was his only answer. "No? Well fine then." With a flick of his tail, every sphere he'd left behind converged in a rain of bala.
"Gaah!" Dordoni roared in pain, but the excess reishi particles were blasted aside with a large cyclone. One cyclone became five, spinning at high enough speeds to make the air thrum with his reiatsu. Aesthetically, the only true difference was that the "necks" of the four pseudo-heads appeared a more vibrant blue. "That was a neat trick, boy, but it won't work anymore."
"What're you talking about?" Cameron asked as he zipped towards his opponent in a blistering charge. He made it halfway there but La Corriente suddenly petered out, forcing him to make a desperate dive to avoid a retaliatory cero. Still, the attack struck his tail and only the dense winds of El Chubasco kept him from losing it. "Oww… How the hell did you…"
Cameron saw the vicious smirk on Dordoni's face and didn't even bother finishing the question. He wouldn't tell his opponent how his technique was stopped if their positions were reversed and he'd assume Dordoni wasn't as big a moron as Kubo depicted him as in canon. He rose quickly to escape two pecking beaks and backtracked.
Moving backwards, La Corriente seemed to work fine, but with every metaphorical step forward, the currents diminished until he was forced to retreat once more. It took only a moment more for him to notice what's been going on. There, close to the base of the vulture's neck, the four cyclones spun in opposite directions, creating a series of crosswinds that left little to no air within. "Well, fuck," he muttered, "That's fine. I don't need to rush you to spear you. Aire Cero!"
An ominous beam of navy-blue pierced straight through one of the masks and the neck of another head. Dordoni grit his teeth and kicked upwards, matching the beam with a reiryoku infused slash from his talons. "Raah!" he screamed as the drill of air tore through his claws, vaporizing them even as his hierro resisted the tugging sensation of the inward-flowing whirlwind that surrounded the cero. He sacrificed his foot, but bought himself enough time to duck out of range.
"Kuh, that hurt, boy. You're the first to hurt me so much so quickly," Dordoni grunted in pain as he checked his mangled foot. Two of the four talons were ripped cleanly off, along with the bone-plated toes, and a third was dangling by a single thread of flesh.
He snorted. "If I'm what you consider strong, you sure as hell won't manage conquering Hueco Mundo, Dordoni. Still, you're the only one who's ever survived that to date so congratulations, I suppose." Cameron didn't give him the chance to banter back, ripping forward in another slipstream of La Corriente. He neared Dordoni and felt the winds diminish, but running him through wasn't the objective. He stopped rapidly and released the dense armor of air from El Chubasco outwards. The pseudo-vacuum created by Dordoni's many heads being so close to one another did nothing to keep the pocket of air Cameron already "possessed" from his sole defensive technique. When he chose to release it explosively, the lack of air pressure in the surrounding atmosphere only made the technique more deadly.
The blast threw him back with the force of a dozen sledgehammers while simultaneously scattering the winds that made up Dordoni's auxiliary heads. Cameron used that disorientation to reactivate La Corriente and run through his opponent. Even while dazed, Dordoni managed to bring his left wing before his torso and slap away the missile of wind and hollow. "Nnngh!" Through the wind, the sound of tearing flesh and pained groans filled the air. He wasn't going to be flying quickly anytime soon.
Dordoni flung a bala in retaliation, but such a hasty attack sailed wide.
"Heh, where are you aiming, Dordoni?" Cameron taunted and got ready for one final blast to finish his opponent.
Subtly, the winds began to pick back up, swirling in four tendrils to reconstruct the missing heads. Instead of fully manifesting the four heads, he left them as vague wisps of light blue reiryoku and funneled all his spare reiryoku into the beaks. A moment later, four cero, albeit weakened, caught Cameron by surprise in the crossfire.
"Arrrggh!" Cameron screamed as his scorched body plummeted towards the earth.
X
"""Lord Cameron!""" three hollows cried out from their perch, unable to fly to their master's side. They breathed a collective sigh of relief when the figure of the dragonfly corrected his position in mid air to swoop down into a parabolic arc, only just avoiding crashing into the sand.
Then, they heard a shout of "La Corriente!" before he vanished, the sonic boom rattling their bones. Only the trail of sand and dust kicked up by the intense slipstream pointed to where he'd gone.
X
Cameron's breath caught in his throat as he sank towards the earth. The world seemed to slow down even as the desert floor loomed ever closer. 'Shit… he can fire cero from his heads… Of course he can. If you can fire bala from bits of leftover reiryoku in your flight path, he can sure as hell fire multiple cero,' he scolded himself. The truth was that it should have been obvious. The pale-blue cyclones that made up Dordoni's necks were funnels of wind saturated with his reiryoku. It should have been obvious, but they were basically conduits that he used to levitate his extra masks. It should have been obvious and he was so caught up in the success of a simple plan that he lost himself in the moment.
'Fuck, Cameron, get it together. You have a perfect spherical visual range for fuck's sake.' As the ground neared, he roared the name of his most used technique and disappeared in a sonic boom that roused the desert into yet another sandstorm.
"Alright, enough games. New plan." Cameron muttered to himself as he shot straight into the sky. Dordoni tried to dodge with a swift sonido, but he was never Cameron's target. The vulture blinked in surprise as the dragonfly shot past with a massive sonic boom, barely a blur even to the powerful adjuchas' eyes.
He tried to rise to meet his opponent, but winced in pain. His tattered left wing would not let him rise to such heights. He could only look on as the dragonfly called Cameron Gold shattered the sound barrier for the third time in as many seconds.
From above, with his full attention back on his opponent, Cameron could see the shrinking visage of the future privaron. He let out a triumphant whoop even as his reiatsu spiked to unprecedented levels. He allowed himself a small smirk when he saw Dordoni's eyes widen in shock.
Cameron whipped the air around him with a mix of El Chubasco and La Corriente, circling above his opponent in ever faster rings that created concenrated storm fronts with the friction from his passing alone. Heated air from the thoroughly abused sound barrier mixed with the cooler surrounding atmosphere, creating massive cloud formations reminiscent of the absolute most destructive of hurricanes.
X
Across the desert, a skeleton king stirred in his white palace.
In a lonely cavern, a pair of wolves grinned excitedly, the lethargy of the larger momentarily gone in their shared pride for a new friend. "Soon, Starrk, let's go see him soon," the smaller said.
Off in the mountainous crags a big-horned sheep stared at the forming clouds. "The world is changing," she whispered to herself.
X
Dordoni stared up at the sky, knowing he had no choice but to weather this storm. With an injured wing, there wasn't much he could do to escape the massive cloud formation. He did his best to reinforce his hierro to the best of his abilities while waiting for whatever came next.
With a roar of "El Aguacero!" the sky split open. The clouds, and all the millions of bala housed within, descended like the downpour the skill was named for. The bala were barely worth noticing individually. In truth, they weren't worth calling proper bala at all. They were concentrated, but only held the width of a large raindrop, not even worth noticing to a powerful adjuchas like Dordoni. And yet, like raindrops, the descended in the millions, all centered around him with the roaring winds to guide their general trajectory.
'He's gone…' Dordoni thought desperately even as his hierro began to dissolve under the constant barrage. Beneath him, he could see the corrosive reiryoku of his opponent erode away at the desert, carving out a "lake" that would stand as a testament to his opponent's power. Worse than the slow death this would inevitably cause was the absolute saturation of the atmosphere. Pesquisa, inquiry, was one of the lesser known abilities of the adjuchas class hollows, one that allowed for the sensing of reiatsu. Lesser known, but oh so vital. Dordoni now flew blind, unable to pierce the veil of navy-blue balas raining down on him. 'A true storm indeed, boy. Well wrought.'
Even as he thought this, the sky rapidly cleared and all "rain" stopped, only to be replaced by a massive cero that struck down like the hammer of an angry god. It ate at him, drilling through his torso and severing the adjuchas' legs from the rest of his body.
"Well wrought, Cameron Gold," he roared as he fell to the earth. "The sky welcomes you!"
X
Time stopped for Anathi. For her and her newfound sisters, the storm was a comforting warmth, an omnipresent pressure that caressed them and whispered that all would be okay. The winds told them that their lord was well and as indomitable as ever. For her especially, the distinct flavor of her master's reiatsu was nearly intoxicating. She saw. She saw not only what was, but what the wind would do at his command. Memories of objects. Psychometry, Lord Cameron called it.
'"Object" is a bit of a misnomer though,' Anathi thought to herself. Her power, like everything else post-death, worked off of reishi, spirit particles, in the atmosphere. With enough training, any reiryoku expelled from the body qualified as an "object." She could read the memory and trajectory of her lord's bala and predict the path of La Corriente.
That's why when the reishi surrounding the vulture was drawn into its mouth, she saw what would happen next. One last blast, a cero aimed not at the still invisible dragonfly, but at his servants. At them.
"GET DOWN!" she cried before dropping beneath the treehollow. She allowed herself to fall deep below the desert, well beneath the sands, before clawing both sides of the quartz tree to stop her fall.
Above her, she saw Loly grab her sister and climb down as quickly as she could, her centipede legs granting her purchase against the quartz. Unlike Anathi, if she allowed herself to fall, she had no way of stopping the descent other than smashing into the floor of Menos Forest.
They were too slow. The last thing Anathi saw before the home they'd shared splinter into a million razor fragments was the shocked features of Menoly as the cero engulfed her. Somewhere, she heard Loly shriek in pain.
Author's Note
Reiatsu: Spirit pressure exerted by powerful individuals, similar to Haoshoku Haki in One Piece
Reiryoku: Internal spirit energy
Reishi: Building blocks of the spirit world.
Honestly, that confused me a lot and I think I misuse some of them in previous chapters so forgive my mistakes.
A note about La Corriente: It can be counterintuitive, but there is nothing keeping him from moving directly backwards. He has spherical vision so it's not as though he's not able to see where he's going. Helicopters can actually do the same thing, except they need to fly using mirrors or rear-facing cameras.
If you want more consistent updates or a say in what stories I write next, or would like to contribute to this hobby of mine, please find me at Pat Reon dot com slash Sorre.
