iv.

Dark entrails of the Spider are slick and stuck under his fingernails.

Hisoka grins at his palm. Is this what a legend is reduced to?

That woman tells him they shall meet from the river, where awaits him is a promise made of gold. Something bristles beneath his skin, an untamable malice, that pounds hotly from his veins at the thought of ruined mortals. He could almost taste it, the blood on their lips.

He treads and treads until the evening fires make the skies burn, and the sun is choked down, split in half by the teeth of mountains. The wind is howling and humid, but it is not the one that makes him swelter in a rush of excitement. His strides grow larger and his foot steps unknowingly on a flower. A manic smile stretches wide on his mouth. How must he have her when he kills her, finally?

There lay the promised river as crimson as Sanzu.

There they rest afloat, pale and weightless as their souls.

There he meets betrayal when gold turns into sand.

They are dead.

They are dead. Bloated flesh on water, breathless bloodless bodies. Uselessly lifeless.

The rage in him nearly rips his paper skin apart and the red lilies quaver back to their thatches. He bays for her blood on his fingers, her carnage wedged between his teeth. Her throat slit clean, her bones broken, her eyes blood-red, and her final battle cry swallowed down by his parting kiss. This dying flower was his claim, only his; death be damned.

Hisoka wants to crush something from the palm of his hand, raze the earth into pieces, and before he could unleash a furious scream, he stops and thinks and finds himself giving in to a breathy rapturous guffaw. His laughter echoes to the heavens; it is the sound of madness, the song of tearing hysteria that should make even the gods tremble. He is still hungry and the slaughter of bandits is not quite enough to satisfy him.

So he shall wait.

A lifetime is but a heartbeat, a daydream, to him anyway—and while he revels in the blood he has spilt in leisure, he shall wait for her with all the compensation of violence and violation. Even if he has to drag her back from the very hideous depths of Mugen Jigoku itself.

After all, she has promised him that he shall paint her red.


Exposition Corner:

Mugen Jigoku: translated as "The hell of uninterrupted suffering", it is the eighth and deepest circle of hell, reserved for the worst of the worst. Some say that those who are sent here never come back, while others say that the term of punishment here lasts one full antarakalpa, after which the soul may reincarnate again; although, even after a soul is finally released from this hell, its punishment is said to continue on into its next lives.

Sanzu River: or known as "the River of Three Crossings", it marks the boundary between this world and the world of the dead.

Ōtekkō: iron pyrite, or popularly known as "fool's gold."