In the auditorium of the cavern within the Japanese islands, Kenshi sat against the stone that stabbed his back tighter, softly and slowly. Held closer, Sento, he was now a deer blinded in the headlights for the entity.
Like a tiny dancer in his head, the voices that bounced off the walls crept into his skull and bounced from round to round, brain to to vein, and down into his toes with the words of the madding crowd.
They churned his mind like spiders that weaved their webs for days and nights on end until the perfection of their craft reflected in the death count spread across it. Only as the sword's grip was loosened did the voices simmer, and when he learned to relinquish it, only a single voice remained, but not his own.
"The red and black swordsman come to meet us again to learn of our ways."
"I've never met you before."
"We know you haven't, but we know we knew you."
He reached for the grip and the voices returned. The entity kneeled before him, unable to be seen, but sensed. He reached out instead for the entity and felt only dry, cracked flesh. It felt old, withered, like an elderly person that head dried out in the sand of time.
Dead.
"Tell me your name."
"We have many."
"I wish to know my teacher's name."
"You have many teachers."
Frustrated, he paused to lean back into the painful caress of the stone behind him. He would get no where like this, let alone physically in his condition. The Entity would have him before he could stand, before he could even swipe his blade.
"What must I do first?" He submitted.
"Let the past die." The single deep, hissing voice whispered into his ear. "Or your future."
A female's voice added, "kill me. It's okay, this is who you are, and what you've always wanted."
A child's voice next, "did you kill me yet?"
"I'd never kill a child." Kenshi hissed.
The Entity's lone voice responded, "we have killed many. You must kill the one thing stopping you were born to become."
Kenshi spat, a curve ball to the dead, "and what were you born to be?"
A beat between words.
An emotionless whisper returned, "we were born to die." It added before the noised of a thousand souls crawled to torment his skull again, "think about it."
It seemed like days had passed, no rest, no thoughts of his own. Kenshi's brain boiled as the voices inside scraped at the inner walls of his skull and buried themselves into the depths of flesh. A lone swordsman would cut each voice down one by one. A spirit of something, someone, not physical flesh, but an idea. The closer his blade was, the louder the voices.
In a sea of screams a raft pulled by the bones of his effigy scraped and clawed through with only one goal. Silence. How could he attain it? Did he deserve it?
He sat upon the raft his of own contempt and waded as he waited for the reflection in the screaming waters of wailing spirits to show him the man he really was, even as he pretended to be the man he wanted to be so deep within his heart.
He knew what he wanted, but what he should have was what tormented him. A child, a wife, and a life without the threat of death, but without such threats he felt there would be no reason to live at all.
As he gazed down at hunger city, ten thousand red eyes raised up at him and hands, bones, rotted flesh and screaming maws all reflected his selfish desires. His feet moved forward even as his heart stayed behind with them. Each step further in the screaming sea, he felt their names, faces, and attachments plucked from his head like hairs torn one by one and dropped into the endless sea of dissonance.
For once, he could see the entity in the conflict of his mind. Adorned like him, in red and black, but a robe and wrappings that covered its dried dead face, the entity stared back with green glowing light that emitted from empty sockets.
"We are Ermac." It recited in all the voices that dominated him. "We have taught you before, though we meet for the first time in this realm."
"How?"
"We are connected to everything, to the One Being. We are connected to the past, present, and the future."
"That's impossible."
"We are impossible."
"Nothing has that power."
"We will give you that power, it has been done before, but you must choose which path to take. Past, or future? There you will crawl for all eternity."
"Should I decline?"
"We will kill you, and your wife, and your child Takeda. You will never see what happens in the future. What path toward Armageddon do you choose?"
Ermac knelt before the physical body of Kenshi and waited as the human burned within his own mind. Ermac, unable to understand how such a decision could have been before so easily, and yet now so difficult, could only wait.
It could sense the occurrence. The moment a mortal's mind could break and snap in two like a rubber band pulled and pulled to toy with the tension, and then pulled and pulled further just to see how much suspense the toy could take before finally and willingly it would break itself.
In Kenshi's head.
Solid walls of sound.