Song of the Starry Skies
From the blinding radiance of the nastikas to the subtler glows of the humans, countless souls lit the early universe. But the schemes of the primeval gods blurred the line between who the winners and the losers would be. In this flawed universe, the few with the most potential and the kindest hearts alike were destined to fall.
A sort-of distant-distant prequel to Shaded Leaves, Cloudy Skies, a Hunter x Hunter OC fanfic. Fusion with Korean webtoon 'Kubera," by Currygom.
*While this story is mine, like me, it is inspired from other famous works. Any references to popular media you can recognize are not my own.
Chapter 1
A Too Early Coming of Age
The day's sun has long gone to rest, along with the most of the rest of the village. Though sleep threatens to pull his eyelids down, he fights to keep them open, for the low murmurs give away that a few are still awake and have wandered to the lone campfire they keep burning at the edge of the villages' grounds.
Injera stirs the embers of the fire to life, the flaring light washing her skin pale for a moment before it darkens to her usual syrup-brown. At her raised brow, Qurak drapes a heavy blanket over him – before she continues on with her words, louder and dramatically pitched now for his benefit, no doubt.
He doesn't mind, though he doesn't like it as much when she changes her voice for the other children. Those times, she tells simple stories that are meant to teach them right from wrong. Right now, they talk of their other-lives.
"-though our village may be the only one on this planet, I know there are far many other humans out there."
Leaning against the man's comforting bulk, he feels Qurak's rumble. "In my past life, I met a man who could turn into a' enormous bird. He said there were others like him, who could transform into animals too.
"Woah-" Einer gasped, raising her hand to her mouth, her blanket dropping from her shoulders. "Really? Which planets did they come from? I've never seen nor heard of a tribe like that-"
"Wait a minute," Mushan said. "What was that bird-man like?"
"Wore lots of red clothing," Qurak said in his usually gruff way. "Red markings 'round his eyes too. White feathers sticking out for ears. 'Could fly with the largest pair of red-and-white wings I've ever seen."
"Ohh." Mushan replied. "I think around three lives back, a lady I met had pointed ears and a furry tail, and green colored hair and fur. She said she was a half… sura, I think? Or that she could only be counted as half-human, at least."
"Yeah," Kila said. "I kind of remember this. Humans, sura, and gods. Those are the three races that exist in this world."
"Gods?" Injera asked. "What are the gods supposed to be like-?"
"What are the gods like?" asks a blond-haired child with the slim dark wings of a cliff-swallow, their lips never moving even as they asked the question-
-Fire, water, creation, or death. Beings who all wore the guise of power and authority, with fully human forms that were only noticeably different from the sura race when they were hurt and dissolved into the attribute of nature they represented-
"-omise is fulfilled," A woman-who-isn't-human- smiles with fathomless blue-green eyes that seem to shift in color along with her night-colored hair. Standing proud naked-and-clothed-at-the-same time in the empty white space, she hands him an amorphous orb that flickers between steam and smoke-
"-make the planets out of nothing," someone says, the vivid flash of memory too strong for him to shake out of in time to see who it was, even as he starts to fall forward-
And Qurak's forearm catches him. He catches the crinkle of concern in the large man's brow, even as the conversation distracts the others from them. "Welp, I think it's time 'fer you to lie down," Qurak quietly declared.
Distracted as he is, he doesn't protest when the bearded giant gently lowers him down onto a makeshift pillow for him made out of the man's own blanket-
He's right. He isn't old enough to have his coming-of-age ceremony for another two years, so what was that? He can still hear the talk going on, so closing his eyes shouldn't hurt-
-A layer of shattering stone dissolves into light before her. Standing before the giant crystal of the village, the image of her reflection was burned in her mind. Amongst a bloodied face and dust-muddied hair, violet eyes were set in an impossibly calm expression.
Her throat that had gone sore from her screams, bruises, broken arm, the white-hot pain of trying to absorb what had seemed like all of the endless well of energy stored in their village's sacred stone—all of that was gone, underneath the grime her body was whole again-
Another Bwooom! rattles her teeth and bones, shaking her mind from surprise into an icy calm too that reflected her face's.
It had been a year since her coming-of-age ceremony had passed, and she had received her previous incarnation's knowledge and their common gift of teleportation. But unlike the experience then or the following days, now there is new feeling, an instinct in her that wasn't there before.
Though her sobbing mother reaches out for her when she makes to turn back to the entrance of the cave, she trusts her oldest surviving family member to her younger sister Tila. Dead as he is just outside their hiding place, Father couldn't stop her either. The rest of the villagers let her go, faithfully – blindly - trusting that she'd successfully absorbed their totem's power, that her teleportation ability could help her more than they could.
Unlike the totem crystal, smaller as they are, the rest of the cave's crystals are cool to the touch. As the multi-colored light in them pulses in time to the thundering booms outside, she hears a faint ringing in her ears that pulses with her heartbeat.
She reaches out. Outside the concealing boundary of the cave, the jagged fore-claw of a giant hornet-like monster –Asura-clan rakshasa - clangs off the half-sphere of light-scales she conjured before her. With a furious buzz of a high-pitched whine, it fires a deadly blood-red beam of light that had shattered her earlier shields-
With a twist of will, she teleports to the fishing-knife she'd lodged into the back of its enormous neck earlier before she'd retreated into the cave. Her blow then had been too small to try pushing it in deeper before she'd had to teleport out of the way of its deadly pincers.
Now, she grasps onto energy the hornet wielded that she let pierce her shield. The same blood-red light glows around her grasp and transforms the knife into a sword that she pulls, swings with impossible strength through the insect-shelled head with a Scchluuuck.
More of the similar-looking hornet-monsters – more of the same being – buzz in time at the death. She can see – can feel them pause in unison in the middle of the wrecked homes and fields, a few flying in her direction-
Away from the rest of the village. Since she could only sense the sura close to the crystals that every villager carried with them, she could sense everything else-
Nearly everyone who stayed behind, twenty of their best fighters, fifty-nine of the non-combatants – the elderly, the young, the new-born twins - are dead. Only five humans remained alive, fighters wielding the small shields their village's crystals granted them and their powers to deflect the sura's killing blows. Only one other Asura wasp was killed by their efforts-
There's only one Asura-clan. I have to kill them all scattered as they are, before they can rejoin into one body- she thinks.
And stops short at the body in the hut she's sheltered in. Orange hair, that belt, No- "Rajah!" she yells, her heart plummeting like a rock in her chest, as the far-sighted clarity of her world shrinks back into the sight before her. The energy she pours out knits the hole in his chest back to untouched flesh, but there is nothing there-
"—NOOOooo!" She screams awake, tangled in bedsheets soaked with sweat. "-!"
"Block the door-" someone says-
"-Yima, be quiet, Yima, listen-!" Nerala hisses, the older girl squashing the pillow over her mouth. "You have to stop screaming, please, it's not safe for you-!"
Yima. Yimanta, born to the Shiyena tribe, that's me. "What?" Yimanta swallowed down the rage and sorrow that had almost overwhelmed her into, into… something she would have regretted doing to Nerala, easing her death-grip on the girl's arm.
"Listen." The eldest girl in their dormitory-group of humans whispers urgently, wincing out of the five-spotted bruise on her forearm. "I don't care what you dreamed about, it was just a passing nightmare, okay?"
"What?" Clearer-headed now, Nerala's words don't make sense to her. "No, I think it was my past lives' memories,"
"That doesn't matter." While the plum-purple-haired girl eases her body off hers, she takes note of the other girls. They've blocked the door with a bed-? To prevent someone from opening it and seeing me in this state- The older girl looks like she was being hunted -by suras? No way, the stories say we're supposed to be safe here at all times, it's why they say it's good to come here- "No matter what, just say you had a nightmare…" At Nerala's unsure pause, Yima looked up.
"Okay." Of their group of humans, Nerala had acted like their mother figure for the nigh-three years she'd been here, even when she hadn't been the oldest. She'd always had the best advice for the rest of the new girls acclimating to their new home away from their home in the human realm. "But why-?"
A banging knock on the door, a muffled "What's going on? We're going to-"
"Don't look into their eyes," Nerala hissed as she smacked Yima's hand away from her ruffling of the hair into her eyes as she dived back into her own bed. "Don't let them see your eyes-"
"-coming in now," the door pushed inwardly open, the floor bedding – and the girl in it - effortlessly skidding back on the floor from the doorway. Lit silver by the light of the torchlight she held, the white-haired Lady Narashika wore a no-nonsense look with a firmly extended arm. "Who was it making such a noise at this hour?" she demanded as she sternly searched the rest of the girls lying in their beds with their seemingly-or-genuinely newly-awakened states.
Muska eeped when the goddess's gaze snagged on hers, the younger golden-haired girl audibly gulping as an answer was reluctantly forced out of her throat. "Um, I… it- it was… Yima."
"Yima- Yimanta." Lady Narashika stormed to the front of her bed as another lady – another goddess by her robe's decorations - stayed behind to wait outside the room, eying her body as though she could see the dried sweat on her skin. "You've disturbed the nights' rest. You're going to come with us to give us a proper explanation." At Yima's hesitance, the goddess sighed and grabbed her wrist. "Stop wasting my time-"
Before this nights' dreams, Yima would have hurriedly complied. Whenever one of the younger girls was throwing a tantrum and Nerala didn't get to them fast enough, it was Lady Narashika who would punish them. Though she dealt the physical punishment, she still had the time to spare a few compliments for her or a few other girls whenever they'd exceled in a new class she'd just taught. She'd been their teacher, instructing in them the discipline they would need if they wanted to achieve the honor of actually serving a god.
Now, something in Yima hated what she saw in the white-haired goddess from between her ruffled black-bangs. Arrogance-
Regret-? "Nnn- yes, Lady Nara'," she groggily but dutifully intoned, her head turned down with a tiredness that was only half exaggerated, muzzy yet clear as her head was from the waking-dream.
As Lady Narashika swept out the door, grip still firm on her arm, a tide of whispers leaked out before the other goddess – by the brown-colored hair and robe color that was kind of subdued for a goddess, she had to be Lady Periyachi? – shut the door.
Where– "Lady Narashika, where are we going?" Yima asked as they walked at a fast pace out the temple door.
But both Ladies Nara' and Peri' didn't answer her question. Unlike her counterpart, Periyachi was more relaxed with the girls, and sometimes indulged in a few wry jokes or sneaked a few treats with them whenever Lady Nara' was occupied with the boys. Her silence seemed infinitely more threatening than Lady Nara's.
They stopped under the Parijata tree, where the girls had taken so many of their rare nightly lessons, or when Peri' "allowed" them to sneak out on certain nights when they'd all performed well to see the stars. Despite Nerala's warning, Yima took the chance to sneak another glance at the two adults' faces.
Sadness- in Lady Periyachi's chestnut-brown gaze, resignation- in Lady Narashika's bloom-white eyes that caught her own. –Cr*p- Yima thought-
Lady Periyachi sighed. "You have Awakened, haven't you," she gently stated.
Awakened? …No, I haven't had my Awakening ceremony yet- Yima silently raced through her thoughts' response- Yet I- I think I remembered two of my past lives, though most everyone has way more than that number at least "-No, I haven't," Yima honestly decided on-
"Pfft. It's obvious, Periyachi," Narashika cut in dismissively, her speech abrupt in a way that she'd never shown before. "It's like the last time they let another human get away with it."
"…yes," Lady Periyachi signed again. "…it should be fine if we only deal with her, right? She's the only one who's shown these signs."
"Hmm." Narashika responded. "We'll have to watch the other girls in her class more closely for the rest of this cycle."
"… that should be fine." Something shifted in Lady Periyachi's body and gaze as she addressed Yima again. "Yima, I'm sorry, but you've suffered enough, haven't you-?" Sadness, pain-
Emptiness. Nothing, except a hollow shell of regret. Despite Narashika's stone-like grip on her forearm, Yima tore away. That kindness, that trust we had, fake-
Her skin stinging, bleeding from the deep scratches left in her skin, Yimanta ran away from the two adults, from the teachers that she had thought could be trusted, heedless of whatever they yelled behind her, tears streaming down her face. Everything I've done was for nothing, Father and Rajah are dead-
Except when she last saw her family three years ago, she didn't have a Father. Or a younger sister. Only Mother, an Uncle, and two older brothers whose annoying bullying in her life had driven her to accept the god's proposal was she was eight years old… Past life, right. Have to remember that.
Except from what little she remembered – at least in this life - remembering your past lives wasn't supposed to be like- like this. It was supposed to be like reading a good book about someone else's life, something you could refer to. Something you could put down and walk away from, to indulge in again whenever you felt like it or when you met someone you recognized from the past.
Rajah, Father- They must be someone else by now… I wonder if they remember me-
I wonder if I'll ever see them again.
Right. Right now, in this life, she was Yimanta of the Shiyena tribe, born to Yimena, younger sister to Abokin and Avegin. A trainee duty-bound to in service to the gods for at least ten years, in return for the heavens' promise to protect her planet and her family for at least the time she spent in the gods realm... Even if she failed the chance to become a personal servant or all the glory and riches that entailed.
Even if she- what, Awakened too early? Skidding to an abrupt stop that ploughed deep furrows into the grassy field, Yima frowned. I've never been able to do that before-
Deep in eye-height grass in what looked like the unmaintained part of the realm, she had to be far away from anything that looked like the heaven's city- no. Squinting let her pick out the pinpricks of the city's ever-burning lights-
… Aalll the way at the very far edge of the horizon. Considering the fact that each planet in the god's realm was supposed to be at least ten times bigger than any planet in the human-realm, that meant… well, at least she'd gotten away from her teachers. –or ever been able to run this fast before.
"Okay," Yima sighed. I ran away from them, since I somehow knew they were going to do something dangerous to me. Thanks, past-lives' instinct. If only she'd gotten more of her past lives' knowledge and skills back. Like teleportation. That would really be helpful, if she could at least teleport back to the human realm-?
No such luck. Thinking really hard like she'd done in the most recent life she'd partially relived didn't so much as teleport her as it did make a vein throb in her temple. -Yeah. Unless a god were to miraculously still want to claim me as one of their personal servants and grant me all the privileges that would come with, I can't go back to the gods' city-
"Now what?"
Narashika – short for Narashimhika a Hindu goddess.
*Lady – replacing the Korean term –nim for lord or lady, used to signify utmost respect for a person, such as for a deity.
Waking-dream – lucid dream.
Parijata – Night-flowering coral jasmine. A real flower featured in Hindu myth.
