Chapter 1 - New body, new problems

The soul's name was Cynthia. She had just been at home reading an interesting book titled "The city of the ape god". It was about the discovery of a quarantined mayan city and the subsequent infection of the explorers with the quarantined virus. It was quite a good read.

But then from one moment to the next she was suddenly sitting on a boulder in the middle of some clearing in a deep, dark forest. And as if that wasn´t jarring enough by itself she also suddenly got a truck load of memories from the body she was now inhabiting.

This would have been enough to send anyone into unconsciousness, if it weren't for some extraordinary circumstances.

For you see in those universes the mechanics behind the storage of memories worked quite differently from ours. Over there memories were recorded both in the brain and the soul of each and everyone there. And only when they were recorded on both, did they possess the strength to create both strong emotional reactions and to leave lasting impressions on that person's psyche.

Therefore the fact that those memories only existed in the brain of Haha´s body and not in Cynthia´s soul cushioned their sudden appearance and the weight of their attached emotions quite a bit and so prevented Cynthia from falling into unconsciousness.

But that still didn't make the situation she was in any better. Cynthia was shocked by what just happened and as such needed some time to compose herself again. And in that time the strings, that extruded from her new bodies hands, slackened.

This caused Haha´s so called puppets to stop moving and made the demon slayers quite confused and suspicious. After all, just moments ago they had been in quite a hectic fight for their lives against both the living and death bodies of their comrades in arms.

Cynthia was wide awake by this point. Both because the body she now inhabited was practically drenched in adrenalyn and because of the muted memories she had just started to panic. Her confusion and the horror of the memories she had received became stronger and stronger until she was almost overwhelmed by them. But then she suddenly didn't feel anything anymore. It was almost as if the emotions that had almost overwhelmed her a moment ago had never existed to begin with. That would be the onset of shock she mutedly realised. She would need to deal with that later.

As she pursued the new memories she now had more closely she realised that she knew where she had ended up now and more importantly as who. She had possessed the Spider Demon known as Mother right at the beginning of the Natagumo Mountain was highly unfortunate. Her chances of escaping alive were rather slim now.

But that didn't concern her. She wasn't feeling anything right now after all. Her only thoughts were about survival now. And after a few moments of consideration she had a plan, well, the framework of one at least.

With the knowledge she had gained from Mother´s memories she gently lowered the bodies from the demon slayers on to the forest floor. She hoped that they would be distracted by the injuries of their comrades long enough for her to escape the mountain.

And they were indeed distracted by them. They rushed to their side and started tending to their injuries. Even Tanjiro and his friends stopped to help them. Although Inosuke had to be convinced first. THis left her with an opening through which to escape. And so she did.

She seperated the strings coming from her fingertips and got up. The boulder would have been cold in her old body, but her new one barely felt the cold through her bare feet. She hopped down from the boulder and started running.

In this new body she was far faster, than in her old one. It was an interesting experience for her to say the least.. She made a wide arc around the hunters and ran for her life. She hoped she didn´t derail the story of Tanjiro and his friends too much. That would have dire consequences for all of them.

As the trees barreled past her she had to make several changes in direction to avoid more of the lower ranked demon slayers. This was made easier for her through the spiders that Mother had created, through which she could look and see where the demon hunters on the mountain were. She ran and ran and ran until she had left the mountainous terrain behind her. She continued running through the forest below the mountain and only stopped once she reached a small stream in an especially overgrown part of the forest. She decided to make a stop there.

She sat down at its edge and put her feet into the stream. The flow of the water was quite soothing. And the stars that were reflected in the clear water made it an even more idyllic sight. She chose that moment to look at herself in the stream and was shocked by what she saw.

What had happened to her hadn´t really sunken in until now. As she looked at the unfamiliar features she now bore it clicked somewhere in her mind and all the emotions that she had kept at bay came rushing forth. Her limbs were shaking and her breath hitched and then she cried and wailed and wanted it all to be nothing but a dream. But no matter how she tried to deny it. No matter how she swore against the heavens. No matter how she pleaded. At the end of the night she had to accept that she would probably be stuck like this for quite some time. And so it was with a heavy heart and wet eyes, that she rose from her seated position at the river's edge several hours later.

She looked up to the sky. The stars had shifted quite a bit. It would be morning soon. And so she decided to find some shelter for the day. As she moved through the underbrush of the forest she kept constant watch of her surroundings. After all, there were demon slayers all over the mountain and it wouldn't do to have escaped them only for them to stumble upon her again.

Several hours later she hadn't found anything except the edge of the forest. It was a very abrupt edge. Likely created by farmers, that had once had fields next to the forest. There was nothing left of the fields now but indentations in the ground. But she could see a village not too far away. It looked abandoned. The roofs on some of the buildings had collapsed and some of the other houses looked badly burned out. That would probably be her best bet to find shelter before the sun would come up.

So she made her way across the abandoned fields towards the ruins of the village while making sure to keep her body low to the ground. She was quite exposed in the open fields, after all.

Once she was near enough to the ruins her new nose picked up the faint smell of blood and ash. She supposed, that even with the time that seemed to have gone by after the destruction of the village, that some traces of that tragedy would still remain. The smell got stronger, the nearer she got to the village.

Once she entered the ruins of the village the smell was thick in the air and ever present for her new sensitive nose. She looked at the houses while exploring the small village. They looked even worse now, than when she had looked at them from afar. Most of the houses were nothing more than some charred walls that looked like they would fall over from the slightest breeze. Dried blood was on many of those walls as well. It must have been a slaughter.

After some more exploring of the ruins she chose one of the few houses that still had a roof and spent the rest of the night shoring up the windows and any cracks in the walls. Her new ability to produce spider silk came in handy more than once during that time. And so, when the sun started to rise over the horizon and heralded the beginning of a new day she entered her shelter and closed the sliding door behind her.

She was exhausted. In one night she somehow managed to get transported to some alternate dimension and got dropped into the body of a demon. She wanted to sleep.

And so she curled up in a corner of the house and tried to sleep.

But as much as she tried to, she couldn´t. Her new body had even taken the sweet respite, that was sleep from her. Once more she was confronted with the changes, that had happened to her and once more so wanted to cry. To let her sadness and despair out but she was tired. Not physically but mentaly. She couldn't bring herself to cry. So while the sun passed her by overhead in the celestial sphere she sat in the corner and waited.

Her peace and quiet was disturbed however around midday, when a group of younger demon slayers passed through the main road of the village on their way back from the mountain. She could hear them quite clearly, as it seemed like one of them had run off ahead and the others were calling out to him to come back to them.

One of them shouted to that member: "Sato! Come back! It isn't safe here!"

To which the boy named Sato shouted back: "You are no fun Akane! No one is around here! This village was pillaged and burned by bandits some months ago! Who would stay here?!"

This Akane seemed upset by his reply and shouted back to him:"Even so! You should help us carry Manzo! He was hurt pretty badly by that demon who puppeted his body!"

This seemed to reach him on some level and he shouted back to her: "Alright! Alright! I am coming!"

And with that he jogged back to them and, from the sound of it, helped Akane to support the boy Manzo. They continued on through the village after that. Sadly Cynthia couldn´t make out what they were saying anymore, as they were no longer shouting.

After that the village was quiet again and for the rest of the day no one else ventured through the village. So when the sun had set Cynthia exited her shelter and looked back at it. It seemed like the sun had done nothing to her spider silk. Which was obvious in hindsight. After all Spider Silk wasn't exactly demonic by itself.

Sadly she couldn't stay here. She would have to leave to not get caught by any of the no doubt returning demon hunters. But it couldn't hurt to look around the village one last time.

After all she hadn't been very through last night. She had been primarily searching for shelter then.

So she searched the village´s ruins once more. This time she also looked inside the cabinets in the homes. But there wasn't that much to find there. After all, if the information, that the boy had mentioned was correct this village had been ransacked by bandits months before and anything valuable that the bandits had overlooked would undoubtedly be long gone now.

After she had pilfered a decent number of houses she had gathered some things that would undoubtedly be useful for her on her journey from here on out. For one, she had found some Geta so she wouldn't be walking around barefoot anymore. That was a plus.

She had also found a basket that she could carry around with her and promptly filled it with some kimonos and other clothes she had found. She even found a mask she could wear to hide her demonic features. It was a painted Kitzune mask which had been left in one of the larger houses of the village.

And then she hit the jackpot. She found some dried meat left in one of the houses that she hadn't explored before. It seemed as though someone had had the same idea as her and had used the village as a waystop not to long ago..

She hadn't had something to eat since she was transported here and she was beginning to get hungry. So she took one of the meatstrips and ate it. It wasn´t filling and it tasted like nothing. And that terrified her. Because it was then that she remembered one of the main aspects of the anime. The fact that demons eat humans.

Author´s Note:

Don´t you just love cliff hangers. ;)

I hope you people like my first true chapter.

See you at the next chapter.

Untill then,

SC