Lotus Moon-Chapter 15
disclaimer: I don't own JCA.
Author's not: Dear God! I hadn't realized how long it had been since I updated! I've been so busy this last year, but I never forgot this fic. Nope. So, here is some Lotus Moon for all you patient readers. We're reaching a point in the fi cwhere updates should be coming A LOT sooner. Things accelerate and things spiral downwards. Hang on. Here's what you can expect in this chapter: Tso Lan has a power surge. Someone dies (. You will like it, that sounds so wrong), and Firefly 4000's question gets answered. Enjoy!
Chapter 15: Broken
Niroto screams aloud and drops the severed head of my father.
A sick feeling wells within my stomach.
Niroto quivers as my father's dark blood runs down her hands.
"There...There was nothing I could do, He's just...just...dead,"
She's talking to herself.
No one else cares what she has to say.
One of her Chi tattoos blazes to life on her arm. Its the one she once told me was some ludicrous thing called a "Beacon of Blame". The Chi guardians are over dramatic.
Niroto glares at Syra, who observes cooly as her shadow warrior close in around us.
"Why have you killed our lord? Was he not good to you?"
Why am I not saying these words?
Was it not my father who was just slain?
Why am I, so well read, unable to say or feel anything.
Anything, that is, except for spiraling darkness.
Everything is cold.
There is no Syra, no Niroto. Only myself.
And blazing red eyes in the dark, all with dark claws reaching for me.
My heart beats faster and faster.
It pounds in my head with incessant madness.
Faster.
Harder.
It will not stop!
My upper arms clasp over my ears to drown out the hideous thudding of my heart. My lower arms clutch my chest, feeling the muscle as it slams against my ribcages.
I fall to my knees, shaking.
A voice breaks through the darkness.
It is a desperate and sad voice, twinged with panic.
I know that voice.
Niroto? Where is she? I want her! I want her to hold me! To make it stop! To make everything stop!
"STOP!" I scream, raggedly and thundering.
Suddenly, the darkness is gone.
I am back in the nightmare of reality.
Syra is drenched in the blood of my father.
My sire's body lies bloody, broken, and slashed practically apart by sword blade and dragon claw.
She must die.
She must.
I suddenly realize that the cold never left me.
A voice seems to speak to me, in my head, in my thundering heart.
Just crush her.
These shadows as well.
Crush them.
Kill them.
You are cold.
Do it.
I give in.
I slowly raise my hands above my head.
Niroto leans by my side.
She asks me something, but her words have no meaning.
I feel my eyes illuminate with burning fury.
Syra gives a motion to the Shadow Khan.
The living shadows begin to move towards us.
Niroto clutches my shoulder.
She is touching me.
The Shadow Khan never even get to move an inch.
I release years of pressure in an instant.
Waves of peculiar puple force gush from my fingertips like a tsunami.
I see Syra's eyes bulge in disbelief for a moment.
It is enough for me to know that she's afraid.
This is good for us.
Her creations are crushed out of existence in an instant.
I know this.
I don't know how, but I feel them crush within my power.
MY POWER.
I didn't even know shadows could be crushed.
I hear Syra stutter for an instant before she to is swept into the crushing abyss of my unleashed power. I raise her off the ground.
It is as if the knowledge of my power, my element is innate, it only needed to be unlocked.
I smile coldly.
The dragon is afraid. I can feel her heart now beating against the blackness.
Faster and faster in a panic as the air around her tightens.
I'm breaking her bones.
One by one.
She can't even scream.
I forced her mouth closed.
Snap.
A leg.
Snap.
An arm.
Twist.
Her spine.
I drop her.
I don't want to kill her.
I don't need her black soul on my karma.
I know she won't live much longer anyway.
I saw it.
The future.
I realize now, that when I use my powers, i see the future.
I saw three things just now.
All very unrelated.
I saw Syra crawling, crippled along the ground, then she was dead.
Strangled. Her body lies discarded and broken. A raven eats her eyes.
I saw myself, alone on the Moon, my home. The soft blissful touch of gravity without sound. Without air. Silence. I am alone and happy here, until a wave of emotion strikes me.
But, I am unsure as to what the emotional feeling is.
I don't have the chance to see.
Hsi Wu comes into my vision now. He's older now. By Demon standards, he's still very young. But he's hiding behind a foreign building whose design I do not recognize. He's watching and waiting. A girl in an orange garment and blue pants comes racing around the corner. Hsi Wu assumes a human guise, A HUMAN GUISE-and goes after her. He looks happy, sad, and coniving at the same time.
Its over now.
Niroto is staring at me in disbelief.
I look around. The floor has been split open. Everything in the room except for Niroto and myself has been destroyed.
Syra drags her broken body away with her one good arm. Her legs are twisted, they will never work again.
Niroto moves to go after her.
"No," I say. My voice has become slightly metallic.
"No, she will meet her end shortly,"
Niroto nods.
"Tso Lan-kun, we must go tell the others. Even if she is defeated, the task at hand may still be completed,"
She is avoiding the subject of my power. I can't blame her. I do not want to think of it either. It seemed...too easy.
Too easy to destroy lives and maim beings.
If you could call them beings. Their former selves were lost long ago.
Niroto grasps my sleeve, tugging sharply, to get me to follow her.
We leave my father's throne room for the last time.
I reach behind me with my power and place my father's head beside his body and pull his cloak over his face so that carrion birds will not fly in though the open windows and devour his still warm corpse.
It is the only thing I can do for him now.
For the first time in years, my head does not hurt.
THE ONLY PART OF LOTS MOON NOT IN TSO LAN's POINT OF VIEW.
Syra drug her broken body slowly over the ground. Shards of bone within her dug into various tissues, ripping muscle, fat, and nerves.
She growled to herself about revenge. She wold avenge herself and kill them all! She could and would still rule the darkness!
She saw a familiar golden talon step out from another room.
Shendu!
Her bloody, shattered face smiles.
"My boy! My dear sweet son! Be a good boy and help you dear mother up, won't you?" she asked hopefully.
This tactic had never failed before.
It didn't this time, either.
Her good son leaned over and pulled her up gently. But he didn't stop.
In fact, he placed a talon around her neck and lifted her up.
He squeezed.
She struggled, but one claw is no match for a young male dragon.
Her neck snapped.
She fell limp.
Her "good son" threw her carcass against the wall and watched it slide downward to the floor where it lay in a heap, its eyes staring blankly out at the world, unseeing.
Dead.
Shendu smiled and slowly walked away, out into the courtyard behind the main house, leaving the door open behind him.
Moments later, a large raven flew in through the window and devoured the juicy eyes of a very dead dragoness.
End Chapter 15