Darkening

MysticShadowWanderer

Disclaimer: The damn psychic monkeys have stolen my disclaimer.

Chapter Six: Akenisomaru

What awaited me on the other side of the door was blackness. I blinked rapidly as I let my eyes adjust, but where I would usually have no problem seeing, there was nothing. With a heavy sigh I held out my right hand, palm upward, and focused my energy. After a few moments of effort, a bright orb of red light blazed from my opened hand. My eyes widened when I saw what surrounded me. There were people everywhere, hordes of sunken and swollen faces. Not only were these people, they were dead.

My breath left me in what should have been a sort of a rushing sigh, but it made no sound. My mouth opened and shut, but no voice left my throat. Where I would have growled in frustration, I did nothing but grit my teeth and snarl slightly. I didn't know what to do, but it was becoming increasingly draining just to keep the light from being extinguished; after the constant use of my darkening in the previous trial, even I was tired.

And now I didn't know what to do. The blank, ugly faces around me offered no clue as to how I needed to go about completing this trial, so the only thing I knew for certain was that I had to find some other source of light before my energy was completely depleted. With a shrug to myself, I flung my hand outward, watching with pleasure as the orb rushed forward in an arc of brilliant light and hit one of the stoic people standing near me. The body burst into flames of red as if it had been made of paper. I'd expected as much, but what was disconcerting was that all of this happened with no sound.

Apparently more than slightly irked that I'd just set one of their own ablaze, the rest of the bodies, foul-smelling and rotting, lurched toward me. I gave a noiseless sigh and unsheathed the katana that was hanging easily by my side. Sometimes I forgot about it, because not only was it a weapon that I'd just recently begun to carry with me, it had become a part of me in the time I'd spent in Japan.

Usually I would have dispersed them with a few movements of my head and a mere thought, but it seemed better to save my strength for the unknown perils that I would have to face. What was the saying? "Better safe than sorry," was it? I hadn't really lived my life that way, but it made sense in this particular situation.

Soon I realized that I was going to either need more light or have to go by my other senses as I hacked my way through a sea of odorous bodies, because I was moving forward, but my light was not. It was a problem that was easily enough solved as I set a few more bodies aflame, but I stopped for a moment, only moving to separate the heads from the bodies that continued to come at me.

If this was all, what was the point? All I had seen thus far was a stony floor and people that were dead and insisted on making this more difficult for me. Silence was nothing I couldn't handle, right? I nodded to myself, and strained on through the bodies.

I could feel their grimy skin against mine, their hands grasping at my arms and hair, their brittle, yellowed fingernails scraping at my body. And I couldn't stop it, despite the itch that crawled across me, the overwhelming desire to squirm and throw off the repulsive scent and the feeling that their hands were creeping all over me. Touching, groping, grasping, decaying skin flaking off to cling to my skin, to shower in my hair. I fought back the urge to gag as I moved on stalwartly. There was nothing I could do.

Even the "Demon King," the "Lord of Death," could be so affected. Where I'd thought I was unassailable, that death could not touch me, I found myself lacking. I choked back a scream, one of frustration and disgust, that I knew would be useless and soundless. I was lacking, and that would be rectified. Through my hatred I knew that I was learning, and if only I made it out of this, I would become stronger.

Gritting my teeth, I set my chin a little more defiantly forward and lifted my head to glare with fierce amber eyes at those that would stand before me. I could handle this silence, and these bodies. Silence could not defeat me.

An hour and several hundred bodies later, was beginning to think that I was wrong. The silence, the absence of the satisfying sound of my sword slicing through flesh, began to make me wonder if it was just me. The zombie-like people around me seemed to be hearing just fine and would, in fact, cover their ears whenever I would send my blade into one of their comrades. It was becoming increasingly obvious that whatever I had to do to get out of here, this was not it. Perhaps the answer lay upward.

Though levitation was never my strongest point, it would have to become so, if only for the duration of this trial. Sheathing my katana, I lifted upward, soundless wind rushing past my ears. I was lost in some sort of continuum, and my hearing had disappeared. But unlike when one's eyes are blinded and the other senses are heightened, I was beginning to realize that as I rose higher, I could no longer see. All I could make out below me were scattered lights from where bodies still blazed. I stopped my ascent and moved forward; this would be the end of me, I was sure.

I could not just go on forever, not knowing what I was to do and without any sound. Slowly, it was driving me insane. To keep myself from losing my grip on reality, which I wasn't entirely sure of at the moment, I thought back to my earlier musings. The Silence was to be arduous and extremely painful. Arduous I could agree with, but painful? I had felt no pain other than the dull ache of overworked muscles. As I realized this, a loud ringing sounded throughout the realm, and I shouted, silently, and clapped my hands to my ears. Too late, I knew the consequences of my action. By drawing my attention away from my levitation and by disrupting the flow of my energy with the sudden movement of my hands, I had doomed myself.

My body dropped through empty space, and I felt what I could not hear. And as I fell, there was nothing but the shrill ringing of empty chimes, thin metal being struck over and over. My hands clamped desperately over my protesting ears, but it was to no avail. The sound, that hideous sound, passed through my hands as though they weren't there, and still I fell. I could not reclaim my focus with that noise, and could do nothing but fall.

Darkness swept past me, darkness and colors and emotions, hatred and love, fear and courage. I didn't understand, but at the same time I did. And I didn't know what to do, didn't know how long I'd been falling. All I knew was that it hurt, it hurt now and it would hurt.

My fingers were stuffed in my ears but I pulled them out at the feeling of something sticky and wet. Eyes wide, I recognized the substance as blood, but for some reason, it didn't matter that my ears were bleeding. I only hoped that my eardrums would burst so that maybe, oh please, that maybe these chimes would stop ringing in my head.

Just when I thought I might reach for my katana and kill myself to stop the sound, end the horrific torture, my body hit the ground. There were no bodies to cushion my fall, and certainly no accommodating hands to catch me, and I hit the stone floor with all the force of a falling anchor dropped from a mountain. In that instant, one terrifying, excruciating instant, I felt my bones snap.

I relived that moment a thousand times in one second. I could see it all clearly, as if I were standing to the side and watching myself fall. My body, arched upward in a kind of agony that could take a man over, slowly fell, and I saw my legs buckling, snapping like sticks in the palm of a god's hand as they attempted in vain to catch me. I watched in astonished horror as I crumpled, as my spine cracked and popped down it's length, each vertebra slipping out of place until my head and neck crashed to the ground, the back of my skull flattened and my eyes squeezed tightly shut against the pain.

Tears streamed down my face, and I couldn't lift an arm to wipe the shame away. Never before had I imagined a hurt like this, and I could see the blood pooling around my body, a river of crimson that seeped out of my. And I just lay there. And I knew I had to be dead. I could only wait now for whatever justice might be done upon me.

A/N: Heh... now THAT was a mean place to stop. Also a good place to stop, though, even though the chapter was shorter. Fear not readers, for this is only the chapter that ends, not the story. I shall continue on and the fate of our oh-so-sexy-and-wonderfully-dark hero will be resolved! Will he die? Will he live? Will I ever get a Ferrari Enzo? Oh and by the way (shameless plug time), I've got an original story that I've just started to work on. I'm planning on posting it on under the penname Kurenai Seito and with the title "Broken Wings." It's dark, it's angsty, it's sexy, and it's about Egypt, so don't miss it! (I told you I'm shameless. But I really would be honored if anyone would read it when I get it posted.) Anyhow, I don't think there's much in this chapter that needs explaining. However, I received a bit of confusion about the names I've been using in this story, so I'm going to lay them out again, just to lend a hand to my dear readers.

Diabolos -- Kenshin

Licentia -- Kaoru

Skopos -- Sanosuke

Lithos -- Yahiko

Nobody else has been named yet, but when I bring them in, don't worry, I'll refresh your memories!

Translations:

"Akenisomaru" - (expression) To welter in blood.

Beware the psychic disclaimer-stealing monkeys.