Preface
What's this? An OMW update already? Yeah the rotation was supposed to be Gaming Guardian or Quo Vadis, but I decided that I didn't want to leave a cliffhanger too long so here's part three of Cameron's trial to ascension. I decided to update on a Tuesday just to make it quick. This concludes the three chapter series describing Cameron's ascension.
I was recently told that my pat reon was inactive so if any of you visited the site trying to search me, my apologies. It should be active again.
Chapter 10: Lorde of Sky (Part 3)
'No,' Anathi thought, paralyzed by the shock of seeing her home explode. 'Nonononono…' "MENOLY!"
With a pained groan, Loly's grip on the quartz wall slipped and she fell towards the forest below. Anathi lashed out an arm in panic, her claws just managing to hook around the centipede at center mass. *Cough* "Fuck," Loly gagged as breath left her lungs.
Anathi hung dangerously from one arm. She looked over Loly and saw that almost a fourth of Loly's body was missing from the tail end, leaving ragged scraps of bone, chitin, and flesh. "Loly, Loly, you've got to get a hold of yourself," she whispered, urgent yet gentle. "I-I can't hold on with one arm."
Slowly, painfully, Loly reached out and took hold of the quartz tree once more. "Y-Yeah, thanks, Anathi." She coughed violently. "Come on, let's go check on Menoly. That fucker, I hope Lord Cameron kills him slowly for that."
Anathi morosely looked up, only to see smoke clearing to reveal the pale moon. "Loly… I don't know if Menoly survived…"
"She did," the centipede hollow insisted. Her tail lashed out violently, waving the stump in the air. "My tail wasn't evaporated, Anathi. I could feel the force tear it away. Menoly's got to have been thrown away somewhere."
Seeing that she wouldn't convince her friend, Anathi sighed and resigned herself to the risky surface venture. 'Please be okay…'
X
Cameron saw red. He saw Dordoni's cero strike the base of the treehollow, reducing it to splinters. He heard the shrieks of pain from his beloved servants and prayed to a Soul King he knew wasn't listening that they'd be fine. Just as he was about to smite Dordoni's crippled form with everything he had, his compound eyes picked up a figure curving in a gentle arc through the smoke and splinters.
"MENOLY!" he roared. He moved faster than he ever had before, ripping through the sky with such speed that thunderclaps resounded in his wake. The vacuum left behind compressed with such force that the air seemed to explode, the reishi in the air colliding into brilliant displays of color. In time that could be measured in microseconds, he arrived next to Menoly's body, flying alongside her and gently guiding her arc to bleed off her momentum.
His many eyes raked over her form to assess the damage. He thanked whatever god was listening that Menoly had the sturdiest hierro of his three servants. It wasn't "reishi-proof" like Anathi's, but her spikes were both her weapons of choice and primary defense. Too slow to maneuver meaningfully, her hierro was her lifeline, literally in this case.
Nonetheless, he winced at the damage. The majority of her spikes were shattered in the concussive blow of a cero, leaving unsightly fragments of jagged bone protruding from her normally pristine back. Her hands, armed with long, but blunt claws more suited for digging than tearing, were missing. 'No doubt she covered her neck,' he thought. He felt a pang of pride that she remembered his lesson, but quashed the emotion with extreme prejudice. 'Not the time.' What truly caught his eye was the massive shard of quartz embedded in her back. Although most of the shrapnel from the exploding quartz were deflected by her quills, this one was evidently too heavy to stop. It was lodged in her upper right shoulder and sank down into her lung.
Far below, in the ruins of their home, he saw Amathi and Loly poke their heads out of the sand. A ways away, he also noticed Dordoni use what was left of his tattered wings to smooth his fall into a glide, but ignored it. He'd pay later. With the telltale buzz of sonido, he appeared just above the hole leading to Menos Forest.
He gave them a quick once over before concluding that they were mostly unhurt. Loly would be complaining about losing a few segments off her tail end, but that wasn't life threatening. He lowered Menoly into the hole using his tail, handing her off to Anathi. "Take her down and sew her wound shut. Use her own quills if you have to," he barked. They saw the dangerous glint in his eyes and obeyed without question.
X
The heavens changed once again. Without any immediate distractions, white hot rage flooded Cameron's mind. When the battle began, he flung his reiatsu so wide that the sky quivered. When he'd used El Aguacero, the clouds rumbled and sang with the rain of a million bala. The howl of the storm declared his presence as surely as any crier. And yet, it all paled before the wrath he felt now.
"DORDONI!" he roared. The heavens split open in response, ringing out to the far corners of Hueco Mundo. The clouds that formed from El Aguacero condensed into a titanic tower of navy-blue reiatsu, almost tangible in density and so high as to scrape the moon. The swirling currents could hardly be called winds anymore. They whipped with the force of tsunamis, crashing against the sands and threatening to crush all lesser hollows. Mountains worth of sand were kicked into the air, only for the constant pressure to send them crashing down like miniature daggers.
Dordoni, nowhere near fully regenerated from Cameron's last assault, was pressed into the dirt, tasting the sands of Hueco Mundo for the first time since his evolution from a gillian. "Heh, this pressure. This presence. Yes, as a king should be," he grunted. The four cyclones he was working to gather again were torn asunder, his control over the wind usurped utterly.
Cameron let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He willed his wrath under chains of iron discipline. All around him, through his thousands of compound eyes, he saw. He saw every particle of reishi that made up the wind and clouds. He saw the vectors of wind and the fronts of hot and cold air. He saw every spec of sand floating in the breeze, reflecting a fragment of the dazzling majesty that was Hueco Mundo's sole celestial body. Then, as though the battle had never happened, the storm was quelled. The winds stilled and the clouds dispersed into mere vapor once more. Once, in a time that seemed like aeons away, he had used his phenomenal control over his reiryoku to create a shell, a shell that would bend light and fool the senses.
Now, he forced every sliver of his own reiryoku back. He dragged along the reishi in the air through gentle currents. All the might of the hurricane, he condensed into a single speck of light, a hyper-dense ball of reishi that shone black, not even light able to pass the sphere. It stood in stark relief against the moon, a manifestation of his fury.
X
He had lost. Dordoni knew this. The superiority of the one called Cameron was indisputable. Heaven itself had chosen its master and it wasn't him. It was no longer his place to contest the victory. The prey may not interrogate the predator; a peasant cannot bring charges against the king.
He knew this. And yet, missing a third of his torso, with wings barely able to hold his weight, ragged breaths leaving his throat in discordant gasps, he smiled. "So be it," he said. "Never will I sit atop the heavens. Never will I rule Hueco Mundo." He forced himself to rise from the sands. Hovering just above the ground, so crippled that even a gillian could prove his end, his voice rose to a thunderous shout. "But I will die to none less than the king! Hear me, Cameron! May my death be the final step to your throne! My soul your crowning jewel!"
He acted on instinct. No one taught him how, but he knew, just as he knew how to fly upon his ascension to adjuchas, that this would end in his final breath. He gathered one last cero to meet his opponent, the new ruler of the sky. He did not build his cero at his beak, like he had so many times before. Instead, he forced his auxiliary heads to form one last time. With five heads acting as foci for his power, his cero gathered at his bloody stumps, the blood from his missing legs trickling into the signature skill of all mature hollows. For one instant, as though in rebellion against his death, Dordoni's power skyrocketed to rival Cameron's own.
"With this, I declare the birth of a new vasto lorde!" he roared, "THE CORONATION OF THE SKY KING!" Then, two streaks of blue met in the middle and the world stood in awe.
X
Cameron's eyes would have widened to saucers if it were possible. The bloody cero was impossible to miss, a skill dreaded by all and until moments earlier, one he'd thought to be unique to the espada. 'Fuck…' he groaned internally. His own cero, now a mere pinprick of deep black, felt worryingly inadequate. 'Seriously? A Gran Rey Cero? How?' He thought about mixing in his own blood to do the same, but unlike Dordoni, he wasn't on his deathbed. If it blew up in his face, he had a lot more to lose so he restrained himself.
Two cero released at the same instant, becoming twin beams that met between earth and sky.
"Raahhh!" Cameron roared as he poured every drop of reiryoku he could spare into the attack.
From just above the desert floor, Dordoni did the same. Uncaring of what was left of his own life, a life he knew could be measured in minutes anyway, he gave the cero all he had. A singular blow that contained the very essence of Dordoni's soul. The Gran Rey Cero, as weakened as he was, burst forth like the Tower of Babel, roaring towards Cameron like a thousand lions. At the same time, Aire Cero, Cameron's signature attack, streaked towards Dordoni with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. For one moment, the two attacks stood equal. Then, inch by inch, Dordoni's gave way.
As though digging through a solid object, Aire Cero bore into its much larger counterpart, its whirling drill of wind disrupting the attack and forcing the Gran Rey Cero to disperse in every direction but straight up. Reishi filled the air so thickly that even Cameron's naturally superb vision was rendered useless. But that was okay. Seeing wasn't that important at that moment. Cameron bit back a pained hiss as he felt the exhaustion of so many high level techniques get to him. He could feel his attack inch its way to Dordoni and with one final shout, he felt it pierce through.
As quickly as it had come, the maelstrom of clashing reiatsu ceased. The avian hollow's depleted form struck the desert floor with a dull thump that rang loud in the sudden silence. Slowly, the high of victory dawned on him and he let out a triumphant shout.
"Whooooo! Hahahahaha," he couldn't help but laugh. Through it all, he wondered in the back of his mind if Anathi would worry about his sanity for this. That brought him short. "Anathi," he whispered, "everyone…"
Flying low, he clutched Dordoni's form in his tail and claws and made his way to the treehollow. There, he could see his servants crawl outside, first Anathi, then Loly and Menoly supporting one another.
"Lord Cameron!" he'd never been happier to hear the little penguin's chirping. She reached out to envelop him in a hug but he stopped her short, tossing Dordoni's body onto the desert floor.
"Not now, Anathi," he said tiredly. "Menoly, Loly, eat."
"Heh, even now, with your ascension so close, you think of your servants?" Dordoni's voice rasped, causing the surrounding adjuchas to startle.
"You're still alive?" Cameron groaned.
"I will not let myself feed anyone less than the Sky King."
Cameron sighed and grabbed the back of Dordoni's skull with his pincer-like tail. He thrust upwards, cracking his tail like a whip. "Shut up," he droned, "I'm the victor, I can do whatever I want. Losers don't get to bitch about what I do with them."
"Grk!" the unexpected movement snapped Dordoni's neck, his hierro unable to handle any more abuse. It took some doing, but Cameron used his mandibles to saw off the would-be privaron's neck and tossed them the rest.
"Split this between you two, Menoly, Loly. You need to regenerate as soon as possible."
"But, Lord Cameron," Menoly started, the hedgehog shyly poking at the now thoroughly dead hollow. He could see drool gather around the corners of her lips, her unwillingness to slight her master the only thing keeping her from digging in. Likewise, Loly looked hungrily at her share.
He let out another tired sigh. "Enough," he said, "I said eat. I have the mask and that's where most of the reiryoku is anyway so it's fine."
Reluctantly, with Anathi proudly standing guard, the three dug into their meals. One by one, she could feel the reiryoku reserves of her sisters rise. She watched as Loly's elongated body regained some lost segments. Menoly's arms regenerated, blunt claws scraping against her now pristine quills. But while her sisters merely regained what they had lost, her lord had evolved.
"Guuh," he grunted in mild discomfort. The pale hollow mask that covered his face bubbled like a witch's cauldron before expanding in every direction. In moments, her master was covered in a bony layer, a pale-white statue.
"""Lord Cameron!""" the three cried. They surrounded him, trying to figure out what was happening. There, they would stay, guarding against any and all, for three days.
X
"I-Is it over, Lady Nelliel?" he asked. His voice was low and gruff, almost too masculine to be showing such overt displays of anxiety.
"No, Dondochakka," the bighorn sheep said lightly. She pouted, the cute expression unsuiting of a vasto lorde. "And I told you to stop calling me 'lady!'"
"But La-" his partner froze under his lady's icy glare, "Nelliel, the storm has subsided."
She grinned. Her friends were such quick learners. Well, one of them… "Storm?" she tilted her head curiously, "what storm? That was the calm."
X
"Ggio!" Barragan's voice rumbled throughout the palace. As quickly as he could, a saber-toothed tiger bounded into the throneroom.
"Your majesty!" the tiger crouched before his king in as unthreatening a manner as possible. Hollows have died for far, far less.
"Go and find out what caused the storm," he growled. "Bring it back that it may bow before the king."
Ggio sweatdropped. Whoever the two were that were fighting, he was sure, he was no match. Whoever won would almost certainly be able to crush him without a thought. He might as well try to make them laugh to death. Yet, he could not speak the words he wished to say. He knew what it meant to tell his king no. "Of course, your majesty," he said, letting none of his internal panic show. "If I may ask a boon?"
"Ask."
"I believe that a proper show of force would be appropriate, your majesty. I request permission to take your strongest servants to show them what the army of the King of Hueco Mundo looks like."
Barragan raised a skeletal hand to his chin as though scratching a beard that would never grow. "Hmm," he mulled it over, "yes I like that idea. Go, and make sure he knows the name of King Baraggan Louisenbairn!"
X
At the edge of the desert, a lone human girl bounced enthusiastically. "Starrk! Starrk! Did you feel that?"
A scruffy looking young man turned over onto his side lazily. "Ugh, pipe down, Lilynette. I can hear you fine." He stuck a pinkie finger into his ear, digging out some of the sand.
"Yeah, but did you feel that? He's finally done it. That last burst was like a vasto!"
"Not like," Starrk yawned, "is, is a vasto. Whoever he fought, he won. He's going to eat. Soon, he'll be a vasto lorde."
"Like us!" she cheered.
Her grin was infectious and the strongest man in Hueco Mundo couldn't help but grin right back. "Yes, like us."
"Woohoo! Someone else can help me move your lazy ass!"
"Hey now, that's uncalled for," he said as he stood. "Besides, he said he wanted to train up his little servants. You wouldn't want to take him from his friends, would you?"
Lilynette's face fell at that. "No…" she pouted.
"Don't worry. It won't be long before those three can stand with us too. Then, we'll have four new friends instead of just one."
X
"This is boring," Loly whined as she slumped in the sand. Her insectile body was splayed out in the cool sand to maximize her exposure to the night air.
"Then leave," Anathi scowled, standing alert, "I'll just tell Lord Cameron you left your post."
"Oh, you're such a bitch."
"Come on, you two, no fighting. Lord Cameron would be mad at us." Menoly tried to play peacemaker.
Anathi sighed. "She's right, Loly. No fighting. No complaining. It's only been three days. What's three days to immortals like us?"
"Yeah you're ri-"
*CRACK* A loud crackling noise cut her off. The three of them jumped to attention, scanning the surroundings for an attack that wasn't coming. Then, they turned as one to what they realized was the source of the noise. *CRACK* another.
The world trembled. The pressure that descended upon all of Hueco Mundo was more than twice that of the pressure felt only three days ago. Except this time, the reiatsu had only one distinct signature. All around the world, every reishi-sensitive hollow either dove for cover or perked their nose in surprise.
A tornado surrounded the three girls, the winds whipping so quickly that the dislodged sand appeared to be solid. And yet, not a feather or quill was ruffled or smudged in sand. The pressure that so many found suffocating held them with an almost gentle caress. Squinting, they could see the shell of bone fall away and crumble to nothing. Their lord had finally awakened. A new vasto lorde had risen.
X
Nelliel laughed joyously as the untamed pressure of a newly minted vasto lorde pressed her friends to the floor. "~I told you so~"
Author's Note
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Cameron's been referring to the trio as his servants. He is a benign monarch, but he's still a monarch. It's one of the mental shifts necessary for an adjuchas to become a vasto lorde and he's fulfilled that here.
As for how Dordoni can move with a punctured wing and half his torso missing, remember that for a hollow, the most important organ is the mask. The mask is their "heart" and everything else is auxiliary to that. Missing huge chunks of their body and still fighting is par for the course in Hueco Mundo and regenerator type hollows have been shown in canon to instantly regrow entire limbs. It's not that far a stretch to say Dordoni can fly with his willpower alone.
Yes, I know, "Sorre, how dare you give Dordoni the Gran Rey Cero? It's unique to the espada and he isn't one yet!" More on this in later chapters, but this is for all of you canon purists out there so I don't get swamped with reviews to this effect. More will come explaining just what the hell that move actually is and why it's available to any higher level adjuchas or stronger, not just espada. As for how Cameron beat it, there are a few reasons. First, Dordoni was already dying. Even if Gran Rey Cero is generally stupidly overpowered, that power has to come from somewhere and Dordoni was all tapped out. Second, it's a matter of density and concentration of reishi within an area. An ocean wave has tremendous force, just by the volume of water, but it's distributed so widely that a child can play in it. Dordoni's cero is a bit like that while Cameron's is more akin to a water drill. Less water, but concentrated in such a small area that it can cut damn near everything.
No, Starrk's comment was not a promise to make the three vasto lordes. Cameron was able to withstand Starrk's aura before he ascended, remember.
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