A/N: Sorry for the huge hiatus, this kind of got lost in the melee while life was going on. Should return to updating semi-regularly, so as a massive apology I'm going to upload two in one day.
Only the Impure
The ride up had been slow, the imp hadn't ceased moaning. He was tired, he had moaned, the Master had no idea, he moaned. By the time Lika eventually reached the top, her heart was beating fit to burst, her hands trembling with nerves.
At the top, was a spiral staircase leading to the observation platform. At the bottom sat a merchant imp, bursting out of his ill-fitting earth coloured clothes. He stared at her with a cruel, curiosity, and promptly attempted to sell her an assortment of knick-knacks: prayer slips, exorcism slips and gold dust, assuring her that she'd need them in the afterlife. She politely declined.
She was going to face the monster alone.
Baikokudo had left her at the bottom with another mocking bow and a smug titter of glee. Irritation boiled in her, but she smothered it. There was no point, not anymore.
Her nerves clamoured in the pit of her stomach, she could feel the inside of her turning slowly to ice. She felt as if, for a single moment, her heart stopped, and was replaced by a dull, rhythmic pound in her chest.
So this was it, the moment before she was eaten alive, before her soul was devoured into his black essence. Sorrow washed through her. She would never get a chance to say goodbye to Kai, let alone apologise to her. And Oki... She'd failed him. She couldn't even protect herself from the demons' schemes, let alone protect her sister.
She walked out onto the pedestal, and there he was.
The throne room seemed smaller, paint peeling from walls cracked and shattered, statues broken into jagged lumps of stone and the floor split into an uneven pattern.
He seemed to have aged since she had last seen him, his gold armour was gone, showing rows of black and red scales underneath torn and tattered from years of hard fighting. He looked tired, but unbeaten, the heads lying against the floor.
She took another step forward, and eight pairs of eyes turn to look at her, to stare at the lone figure on the platform. His gaze seemed to pass through her, through the nerves and the panic to where her spirit hid underneath. It unnerved her.
"Come down." It was the fire head who spoke, his voice a command, disturbingly soft yet laced with a silent, potent threat. A reminder that she had no other choice left.
She felt her legs almost give way as she descended the ramp to the centre of the cave, trembling with trepidation, knees knocking with nerves.
She stopped a few feet in front of him, so close she could feel the burning heat of flame's breath on her exposed skin.
His posture appeared reclining, his entire body taking comfort from the floor. But it was strained, pained, as if causing him ill. Then she noticed the wound that ran across the length of the flame head's neck.
Blood, blood poured from the open wound, where a sword had cleaved through scale and skin and sinew almost down to the bone below. The cut gaped, angry and red and raw, oozing a thick crimson liquid that dripped down the sweat of his neck and pooled in the cracks of the floor below, staining it scarlet.
The dark head gave a snort of impatience at her curiosity. The poison head joined with an irate growl. The flame head quickly silenced them with a commanding snap. "The villagers have grown wise to my presence. You will heal me."
She blinked back blankly. Had she heard right, had Orochi just asked her to heal him? She suppressed a gasp of shock, and a sigh of relief. He didn't want to eat her? She wasn't the final sacrifice?
Wait.
Her gratitude quickly soured to suspicion. What if she healed him, and then he ate her? What if she couldn't heal him? What if her powers refused to flow, if her mind refused to cooperate?
The flame head drew close, until he was inches from her own. She blushed furiously under the scrutiny, bowing her head to avoid the monster's gaze. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"I don't know how to." She closed her eyes, forcing them shut, waiting for the moment rows of teeth clamped around her, sealing her fate.
Instead, she felt the earth begin to tremble beneath her, then shudder, then shake. It took her a moment to realise what it was.
It was Orochi. He was laughing at her!
"I never back the wrong horse little girl."
"What do you mean, the wrong horse?"
The lips curled into a hungry smile. "I remember you. The little girl who wandered through the Spirit Gate." She felt the brush of a memory and shuddered. They came back to her now, from their years of misuse and the fog of her possession, clear, sharp and painful, digging into her mind like nails."I remember your power, the way it curled off you in waves, it was almost Divine. Almost. But you are no God. I have seen Gods." His expression fell into a snarl of reminisce. "And you are not one. You cannot burn me with your divinity, little girl. You can only strengthen me with your impurity."
She looked up from the floor, confused, and gazed straight into two predatory red eyes only inches from her own.
"Not even the Gods are entirely pure. But you, you are less so than most."
"No. Stop it!" The outburst came before she could stop it. Her hand flew over her mouth. She prayed that Orochi wouldn't turn on her for her reaction. Instead he laughed again, and a lone tail snaked around her ankles.
"You command the twin peaks of Ezofuji, yet you do not honour the Gods, and what about the boy, Tosu...?"
"Alright!" She shouted, flushed with annoyance. "I'll heal you." He stopped his verbal assault and watched her, smug.
She took a step forward, and he stretched out towards her. The wound looked even worse close up, an angry slash of red in the black. She reached out, hesitant to place her hand in the mass of muscle and tissue.
"Closer."
She took another hesitant step forward, and laid her hands in the mass, watching in a mixture of disgust and fascination as rivulets of dark crimson blood drew out of the body and carved their way down her hands and onto the pool of blood that flooded the floor below. She felt a squelch, and then the sickly warmth as the red soaked in through her fur soles and soaked her feet.
What now?
She had little idea of how her powers worked, perhaps... She shut her eyes and willed her spirit to cooperate, trying to force the loose coils of energy that nestled in her mind into the body before her.
Nothing happened.
"Do not be disheartened." His voice was surprisingly forgiving. "Try again."
She pulled herself together, inwards, feeling the way the energy snaked around her spirit. She drew an image, focused on it, let her mind draw from it. The image of Kai and Oki, on their wedding day; they were happy and healthy, glowing with joy, laughing as Lika messed up her lines and Kemu drunk himself under the table.
Still nothing happened.
Frustration boiled in her, anger and irritation at her abilities. A second image came, a fragment of a long forgotten memory. It startled her.
It was Orochi, in his true form. He was clad in golden armour, illuminating the throne room under the full, fatness of the harvest moon. He was laughing, the ground shaking with the force of his laughter, trembling as if before a tsunami. And 16 red eyes had watched her cross the floor, powerful and hungry.
A warmth flooded around her, flowing out of her palm and into the body. She heard the soft squelch as muscle and sinew wound themselves back together, as flesh and skin and scale pulled tightly back over the tissue.
She exhaled, and drew back.
He was complete, even more so, his body seemed to glow, strong and healthy in contrast to the strain and labour of a few minutes ago.
She, in comparison, felt exhausted, her hands were slick with the demon's blood and she swayed in the slight breeze that made its way into the cavern.
Orochi watched her silently, and then spoke. "Never the wrong horse." She staggered with light-headedness. His tail shot out, propping her back up. "The blood on your hands, my blood; it will heal you."
She shook her head firmly. Or at least she thought it was firmly. The last thing she wanted was demon blood coursing around her body.
"It is the least." She peered warily up at him, her tiredness destroying her inhibitions. He gave a sigh. "It will corrupt, that is true. But no harm will come over one drop, and you have already tasted it. The twin demons have done that much."
She raised a hand to her mouth, and tentatively drank a drop.
It tasted as foul as any medicine, but flooded her mouth with a multitude of tastes, her body with a sudden, incredible warmth and energy. She instantly felt better. No, she felt more than better. She felt amazing.
Eight heads grinned wistfully at her thirst. "Behold, the gift of the Orochi to mankind, the body of demons. Chishun!"
An imp appeared from the entranceway and scurried out onto the platform. "What is it Master? Were you not happy with your meal?" He seemed almost to pale as his eyes drifted over to where the girl was hungrily licking the bloodstains off of her hands.
"Chishun, take her to the cavern, make sure she is not seen, nor that she comes to any harm. Disguise her as an imp, and listen to me, no one must know,"
"Yes, Master." The imp tried, and failed, to conceal his astonishment at his Master's order.
Orochi simply ignored him. He didn't understand the girl. Orochi himself scarcely understood the magnitude of her powers.
She stood there, still swaying, albeit more steady, completely vulnerable, utterly alone. The thought struck him, that if he turned on her, that she wouldn't do anything to stop him. And yet she could.