Mononoke Ch~25
~~~~~~~~~~~NIGHTMARE~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Mononoke dreamed she remembered every disgusting thing she had done for Naraku; she rode on a cloud of air until she heard the sound of a scream of terror. she landed on the ground and saw that it was a village under attack by a demon. She decided that this demon would be the first one to assist her in a way to show her devotion to Naraku.
"Demon. I challenge you," She said to the creature.
"I'll devour you, human." It said with its mouth open heading towards her.
She summoned a burst of flame in her hand sent it at the demon. "I'll be the one devouring you demon. You shall aid in my pledge to greatness. I will leave this pathetic form of humanity and become what Naraku has desires for me to." She said as the blast burned the legs off the demon.
The creature let out a pained scream and She laughed at its pain. She sent out another blast of fire that killed the demon. The demon was dead and burnt. She tore a chunk out of the demon's dead body and ate it. She felt something inside her change when She took the first bite.
She ate as much of demon that she could hold in her stomach and heard cheering in the distance. She turned and saw a village of humans cheering, but they were all silenced when she crouched down and growled at them.
"Kill them!!" said the voice of Naraku in her mind and the creature inside of her roared to life, the creature itself didn't understand why it had to kill innocent people, but if it was to protect its mistress it would do anything.
"Quick now, you can't hesitate," Naraku had said, and had showed her how to rip out a heart with her claws without going through the sternum. She had practiced on a monkey, who had screamed pitifully, and at the noise scraping down the inside of her skull, Mononoke's skin crawled over her bones.
No hesitation, said Naraku, blood running down his arm as he made quick work of the heart.
No hesitation, my sweet. No joy, no fear. No mercy.
Mononoke had attacked the entire village ripping hearts out with her claws, making clean cuts through stomachs, torsos, heads, and faces. It was all chaos as she saw many she had cut open fall lifeless to the ground while one tried to run with his intestines tangling around his legs.
Mononoke ground her teeth and tried to block the screams and shouts from her skull, but it was no use; they grated down the inside of her brain like fingernails. Yet suddenly the screaming had stopped and at her feet laid a village at waste. Thankfully their were no children among the corpses at her feet, nor any women just a bunch of men and some samurai, which made her wonder where were the women and children of the village.
But she began to regret that thought when she saw a woman hugging her two children close by inside a hut.
Mononoke began to walk towards them when suddenly the woman threw her children behind her and begged her not to harm them at her feet. Mononoke just looked down at the woman then turned around and walked away.
Looking at the many bodies that littered the ground, then a chill ran up her spine, and a foul taste ran over her tongue and through out her mouth, she knew what this meant, suddenly by her own will Mononoke shouted; "Run for your lives!!" to the top of her lungs and all women and children ran out of their huts and out of the village.
And abruptly a huge group of demons were heading straight to the village she was in.
Mononoke ran harder and harder as she neared the edge of the village. Her skin crawled and her lungs burned, but all she could see was the darkness that had turned the sky into a black and purple bruise. Then, with a loud crackle, the clouds burst apart like a lanced wound, and the air was filled with the sound of a hundred voices raised in one unholy roar.
Mononoke squinted, making out a stream of writhing bodies that flowed into the village with bloodthirsty eagerness. It looked like a hurricane had hit, funneling into the small settlement, and tearing it apart.
A split-second later, Mononoke heard the first of the screams in the distance.
Ignoring the protests of her body, she pressed on. Mononoke stared up into the sky in frozen horror. There were so many youkai that she couldn't make out a sliver of blue. The black and red aura of their bloodlust hung thickly in the blisteringly hot air. Mononoke closed her watering eyes against the acrid, poisonous smoke. Her ears rang with human screams and lower, inhuman cries.
Then, the very earth seemed to heave in protest beneath Mononoke. Mononoke looked around rapidly, trying to take stock of the situation through the thick haze of smoke and youkai that obscured everything in darkness and chaos. Her stomach clenched into a tight knot, eyes widening in shock.
Mononoke's hands clenched into fists, and her head bowed as she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she blinked at the sight of her boots, now covered in human blood, and she fought the nausea that threatened to overtake her. She had no time for hiding and trembling. Only minutes had passed since the onset of the attack, and there was no telling how many people were going to be able to escape with their lives.
Impatiently, she wiped her wet eyes with the heel of her hand. This was what she had been training for. She was scared, Mononoke knew that she was alone, but she had to fight if she wanted to live to see tomorrow.
She felt the fire of resolve unfurling in her veins. Steel stiffened her spine, and the muscles in her body tensed in readiness and her instincts coiling up like a snake ready to attack.
The ground shook again, and the roaring overhead intensified with every tremor. There was less screaming now, and Mononoke tried not to think about what that meant, or what the smell of burning meat signified.
Mononoke heard a child shrieking, and turned. Above her, a seven-headed dragon leered downward, bringing its red, armored tail around to lash at her. She raised her arm to shield her body, now pulsing with violet fire, and heard its hissing shriek of pain as her energy burned through its flesh. She flexed her fingers into a fist, and brought her arm down sharply, feeling her gorge rise. Her forearm scorched its way through scale, flesh, and bone. Then she watched the child run to her mother and they both ran away.
The beast above her snarled in pain and flung itself away from her to regroup. Its eyes glowed a bright, clouded crimson. Then, it extended a clawed hand, and lunged downward trailing smoke, its body uncoiling in the air like a striking serpent.
Mononoke's eyes darted rapidly as she attempted to gauge the speed and trajectory of its descent. Her mouth set in a firm line as she tried to calculate her chances.
The beast was a little slow due to its sheer size. Its movements were off balance after the wound she had dealt to its tail.
She could do this.
Mononoke watched yet another youkai fall to the ground with a sickening impact. It dissolved into a broken mass of muscle and bone in the reddened dirt, with her claw marks projected on what was left of its skull.
There were so many, she thought dully. Too many. She had stopped counting, but every time one fell, another was there to take its place.
She turned and raced through the town, wondering where all the youkai had gone. It was suddenly and eerily quiet. Her arms and legs ached from fighting, and she was vaguely aware of several cuts and bruises that she would have to tend to later. Luckily, the rush of adrenaline was still raging through her, and none of her injuries felt terribly serious.
Blinking tears from her eyes, Mononoke scanned the wreckage of buildings, and that scorched and ruined fields beyond. She looked at the ground only as often as she had to in order to avoid debris. It was hard to blind herself to the corpses that littered the once-bustling village.
Later, she would have to deal with this, not now. Just now, she didn't have time. The youkai hadn't suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.
Mononoke's relief at her unexpected reprieve faded, and a hard ball of fear congealed in her belly.
Where had they gone?
"Demoness."
The voice was rough and filled with anticipation. Mononoke whirled to see two compact, reptilian youkai advancing on her. She narrowed her eyes, and reached back to pull the staff free from the hut's frame. She wrapped her hands firmly around the dark, almost petrified wood, and swung it experimentally, only half-noticing the near-perfect balance of it before one of the youkai charged her with blinding speed. She didn't even stop to think why did she get the staff, all she knew was a long fight was ahead of her and there was no stopping it.
Mononoke leapt back into a defensive crouch, staff held protectively in front of her, and flared with purple light, trying to push her energy outward and make a shield. Kagome had tried to show her how to do this, but Mononoke's attempts were usually less than successful. At this point, Mononoke no longer had any other choice; her opponent was too fast, and her muscles were already burning from the strain of battle. She couldn't even see where her foe had gone.
To her left, Mononoke saw a sudden flash of its glowing red eyes. It was bearing down on her fast. Mononoke did all she could to evenly distribute energy through her barrier, and then braced for impact, though she was sure that the youkai would be able rip out her throat with its large jaws before she even felt it.
However, before it reached her, she heard it emit an injured howl. The youkai lay in front of her, repelled by her shield, but only mildly stunned from its brief contact with her purifying energy. She would have to take advantage of its momentary confusion, or she would be a goner.
Leaping back to her feet with almost inhuman speed, Mononoke ran forward, and speared the glowing fist through its midsection with all her strength, preventing it from recovering for another attack. Then, as it hissed at her, grasping for her with narrowed, slit eyes, she yanked her arm free of its ribcage, seized one end of her found weapon, and whipped the other end downward.
The smooth wood of her weapon bit through the creature's neck before it could roll free. She closed her eyes as she felt her staff crunch through bone, severing the youkai's head. She tried to stop and think of the pain her body was going through, but ignored the pain nor did she think of the feeling in her legs and arms as her muscles coiled with a new energy.
The other youkai backed away slightly. "Demoness," it repeated in a flat, sibilant voice.
Mononoke slowly straightened to face it, quivering with anger. "What?" she asked quietly. She took a step forward. "Where did the rest go?"
A slow smile cracked the youkai's wide, leathery face. It clenched and unclenched its clawed hands, and then coiled in preparation to spring.
"Shikon no Tama." Mononoke's face froze into a mask of revulsion as the words spilled from the creature's cracked lips in measured, robotic syllables. They had come for her not the village, which made her sick at their irrationality.
Mononoke's eyes widened in horror, even as she kicked the youkai backwards and then cut cleanly through its scaly body with her staff.
Mononoke threw her head back and raised her hoarse voice in a battle-cry, as daylight slowly died.
It took everything in her to prevent her body from slumping in fatigue.
She couldn't even count how many youkai she had killed, how many heads she had severed. Her body and clothes were steeped in with their reeking blood, and now, she could only lash out furiously with what strength she had left. Her store of spiritual energy wasn't going to last much longer before giving out, she knew this. Mononoke despaired to think that she would fail now, but she seemed to see an end to the demons in the sky… but it would last long enough her stubbornness said as she fought on and on.
Mononoke desperately summoned her strength and fought on, through the straggling remains of the youkai. Many had left, finding that Mononoke was not easy prey, but some still lingered to challenge her.
Mononoke was numb to the shocks of repeated impact that filtered up her staff.
Strike to the neck, strike to the head. Movement to the left. Turn and defend.
In Mononoke's mind, Naraku quirked his lips upwards in a small smirk. "Fight dirty," the apparition advised, one hand resting on his cocked hip. "Aim to disable." Said Kagome's apparition in her mind.
Mononoke aimed to kill, when she thought of the many times she saw Sesshomaru fought he gave no mercy; so would she, he gave no chances; so did she, he aimed to kill to give a quick death; so did she.
She pushed off into a spin-kick, combining it with a hard swing of the staff that caused three of the dark shapes to fall. Three unearthly voices merged into a dull roar.
Though her body struck with deadly accuracy, Mononoke had no idea how long she'd been fighting. She was barely registering her foes. They were only dark shapes blending into the night, existing only as meat for the slaughter. But then there were no sounds nor cries only silence, only the smell of burning flesh and light of burning huts with the corpses of demons and humans alike. Then it hit her she had done this she had killed them all. With no hesitation. No joy, no fear. No mercy.
Then she fell to her knees and screamed out in agony of her own cruelty, brutality and malice.
Yet she had to survive and she'll keep surviving for her Shiori, for Sesshmaru, for Rin, for Xiang, for Kagome and even for Sesshomaru.