Hi! Waves I know this is a really short chapter, but I needed to add this before I could add the other scenes coming up. Just to warn people, the next few chapters might be a bit gory. I don't know exactly when they will become gory, so in the chapters that I think are the most gore filled, I will post a warning at the top. I hope this helps all you queasy readers. This chapter, however, is not gory, I'm just telling you how things will play out.
"What do you see?" said the demon slayer. She was leaning against the stairwell, arms crossed over her chest, piercing eyes staring at Masako.
Masako sighs, tired by all the questions the woman had been asking her. "A wall."
The slayer closes her eyes annoyed. "Wrong."
"What do you mean wrong?" the medium cried is protest. "It's a wall."
"It is a wall, yet it is not a wall. It is a collection of stones piled upon each other, then cemented together with a combinations of clay, water, and sand."
"I do not understand. What's the difference?"
Masako had been trying to learn how to see spirits with the slayer for over three hours.
"The difference," the beautiful teacher started, "is how focused you are. Now," she reached into her hair, which had been tied into a high braided ring, and pulled out a hair pin.
She handed it delicately to her trainee, who accepted it hesitantly.
"Describe this object to me."
Masako gasped. "It's a beautiful hairpin," she says, flipping the ornament around so that it caught the light, emitting a small rainbow of colors across her pale hand, "decorated with a jeweled butterfly. Is it made out of amethyst?"
"Wrong!" the Begira hissed.
"But I described it like you asked! How am I wrong!" the medium protested again, fighting back the urge to cry.
The piercing eyes on her softened, turning into a warm motherly, gaze. "You are only seeing, you are not looking."
"I've told you before! I do not understand!" the black haired girl yelled. Tears of frustration running down her cheeks.
The haunting woman straitens up, uncrosses her arms, and walks over to the crying girl.
She wraps her arms around her, encasing the girl in a tight hug, pressing her face into her chest, blinding her, much to the girl's protest. "If I tell you the answer, you will not fully understand, thus this would all be pointless. "Now, describe me to myself."
"But I can't see." came the muffled reply from Masako.
"That's the point. If you cannot see, then you must feel, focus, and use every part of your being to understand. Begin."
The medium closed her eyes, for she wouldn't need them, and tried to concentrate.
"You're very warm, and you are firm with muscle…" she said quietly, slightly embarrassed.
"Good, what else?"
Adding more concentration to her determination, the girl focused.
"You're voice is low, yet smooth, and you have a very soft heart beat."
"Also good, but anyone could figure that out…try looking…deeper."
"But…" she tried to say, but she was quickly shushed by the woman holding her.
In a moment of utter defeat, Masako stopped trying, and the moment she did…
'Where am I?' she though horrified at the darkness around her.
The medium turned frantically, trying to find out what had happened. The only thing she found was the Begira woman… on a bridge.
'What's going on, why is-'
It was then she realized the way the woman was positioned on the bridge. Her foot was caught against a wooden beam, the rest of her was leaning so far out that her body was horizontally sticking out toward the abyssal blackness surrounding everything. Should she make one, spur of the moment, movement, she would surely fall. The woman must have already noticed this, for her entire figure was covered in sweat, and her face was scrunched in a look of pain and restraint.
"What are you doing? Watch out!" the medium called.
Masako snapped open her eyes, shoving the thing caging her away.
"What just happened!?" she demanded.
The Begira just flipped the hair on her shoulder back behind her neck, then sticking the pin back in her dark locks, giving off a look unwilling to give away any sort of emotion.
"What you saw, is more than your eyes could show you."
"Are you saying I should be able to see spirits now?" the kimonoed woman challenged.
"No, but once I tell you the way to see, you will be able to."
At first Masako was taken back, but she quickly recovered. "I thought you said you wouldn't tell me."
"I couldn't, not until you weren't as conceited as you were before."
A blush of fury spread across her face. "Why you-"
"You were right about that wall being a wall, but you were wrong because that wall is not completely a wall." the demon slayer suddenly started, grabbing Masako's full attention. "This place had not been disturbed in over a hundred years, it's only natural the spirits have become like part of the building itself."
Still confused, Masako gave a delicate sigh.
"When you step into a room, you see a bed, a dresser, a wall, and little trinkets. You see the room as a whole. However, by doing this you miss the little things, the strings of fabric in the carpet, the difference in strokes on the paint from the wall, the individual differences in color for each object. The only way you would notice these, is if a new object was placed in the room. New objects are unfamiliar, and give off a different aura form those that have been known of, but there is no new object to looks at, for the new object is the thing trying to look."
"You're saying that, because the sprits have been here undisturbed for such a long time, they have actually become the background of the building? And since I amthe new object, I could not see them?"
"Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying."
"How am I too see the background then?" the relaxing medium inquired.
"When you look at a wall, don't look for a wall, look for something at the wall that should not be there."
Not quite understanding, but too exhausted to ask for a better answer, Masako returned her gaze to the wall once again.
Her heart stopped.
"What is this…" she cried, legs nearly giving out from the shock. "Why are there so many…"
The new view in Masako's eyes was a mass of spirits, so compacted into the room, that she could not even see the wall anymore.
"I'd say about a third of those are just spirits that came here to stay undisturbed since no one had been here in such a long time, along with eight percent of that being spirits that came from the furniture and stones used to make the house." the haunting voice of the woman deduced.
"And the remaining two thirds…" Masako breathed, body shaking from the overwhelming presences.
"The remaining two thirds" she replies, her voice filled with a venomous seriousness, "would be all those who have been killed in this house."
Masako's trembling increased until they were full fledged shivering shakes.
The only voice she could find came out in a nearly inaudible whisper. "What could have done…all of this…"
The stunning woman crossed her arms again. "Even with this being a noble house, not this many people should have come here, meaning something summoned them from distant lands. We Begira came here because we sensed a powerful aura. The only possible answer would be that in this castle…"
Masako froze, terrified, knowing what was coming.
"is a powerful bloodthirsty demon, finally awakened from its slumber."
I know, it's crappy, and I probably won't update this any more this weekend, so I'll add other chapters NEXT weekened. Hope it doesn't bug you guys too much.