Part 4 in the Obelisk Series:
Kingdom of Man, Kingdom of Beasts, Kingdom of Monsters, and Kigdom of Gods.
OBELISK:
KINGDOM OF GODS
I don't know how to stay tender
with this much blood in my mouth
-Emma Tranter
excerpt from the heartless girls zine
Recap: The pain in her heart hurt more than the dagger in her back. The blade was one she would survive, but Sasori's betrayal…
Her hands were weak as she reached up to hold his face, thumbs tracing the smooth of his skin as she looked up, eyes wet with tears that spilled over, on hand sliding down. He should have been watching Gaara but he was caught in her again. He was still so warm for her.
"I love you, Sasori," Sakura breathed, stilling him. "I loved you in the beginning, when you died under my hands, asking for a kiss as a final gift. I loved you when you hated me, then when you were weak for me. I loved you when you didn't know me. I love you now as you betray me." She swallowed, feeling her throat close up. "Yes, I love you, even now, but know this…"
He began to lean into her as she parted her lips.
"It was not enough."
Her hand on his neck became full with the hilt of her bone sword, tearing into the flesh of him.
In one moment he was warm and loving for her. In the next, his severed head rolled to the floor, followed soon by his limp body.
There was anger and then there was whatever Sakura felt. She felt hot with a holy sort of rage. The heat turned literal as she screamed, body shaking under the burn of a new tattoo taking over.
Sakura fell backwards as her throat blazed with gold and burning light. The markings ran out from under her jaw down to her collarbone in rays. She felt them stretch like ribbons of fire over her skin before the light dulled and they sat on her skin in black patterns.
Breathing came in a gasp as Gaara rushed to her side and pulled her towards him. She couldn't stop coughing or shaking as the tears came. She hadn't anticipated it to hit so hard, the world of the Obelisk had devastated her already so much, but Sakura was a mess of mourning.
"It's a curse, a curse," she chanted in hazy confusion, too tired to make sense of her own words.
"You're safe though, you're safe," Gaara whispered into her hair as he held her closer. Outside the world went on rumbling as more ruins fell under the shifting sands.
"It's not fair," Sakura whined. "It's not….fair."
"I know. It's not, it's not. You didn't deserve this," Gaara agreed, voice breaking as he tried his best to hold her in his arms while she continued to shake.
"It's not fair."
"I know. You're too good for this." He kissed her face, smearing the tears. "I'm so sorry."
"N-ng f-f-fair…"
It had always been Sasori for her. He had been the nexus of her universe when it came to feelings. She loved him, and that always came out ahead of other potential lovers. When Madara made her happy and treated her like a queen, when she took comfort in the sweet companionship of friends, it always came back to Sasori in her heart. Nothing fit quite like the love of the redhead.
It wasn't fair that she found something that good and that amazing so early on, only to lose it right away and spend years in a nightmare, chasing that same thrill while working towards her freedom from the Obelisk trials. It wasn't fair how Sasori had been so perfect with her in the very first world, only to stay out of reach for each world and gate until this one…where his whole role as an actor was to betray her.
"It was a part of the narrative," Sai's voice cut through.
She jerked at the feel of a new hand on her shoulder and sat up, eyes red and wide to see Sai standing there, smiling sadly and bleeding from a myriad of cuts across his face and arms. His hair was a mess and his clothing was as dirty as they came, but he was there in one piece after days of tracking.
"Sai?"
She hated how her voice wobbled.
He tossed the bloody saber onto the stone floor beside Sasori's dead bod and sighed, whole body deflating. "Yes. I'm sorry I'm so late in getting to you. This narrative has become increasingly aggressive the closer you draw to its nexus."
He waited while Sakura choked back the last of her tears and rushed to rub her face free of tear stains and dust smears. Her hands were shaking too badly and Gaara reached over to help with a cloth drawn out of his shirt front. He held her face still by her chin and wiped her eyes and cheeks before the rest of her.
Sai watched as the young pharaoh took to caring for Sakura. Sai had been away for long enough, but he had expected the other dead dreamer and his favorite dreamer to grow close, but this was closer than expected. Gaara treated Sakura like a glass bird.
'No wonder the narrative advanced so rapidly. If Gaara, an aware actor, was this attached to Sakura, than Sasori must have been even worse, even with the alterations to his personality,' Sai thought to himself, still watching.
"What did you mean when you said it's getting aggressive?" Gaara asked, pulling away from Sakura but not looking at anything but her.
"I think Baki was concerned you wouldn't actually try to progress through the world appropriately." Sai glanced sideways at Sasori's dead body. "Originally the script looked more like it would have Sasori leading you into an ambush where you would be trapped and defeated by Sasuke. But Sasori stopped communicating with the Dream Killer, making Sasuke agitated and Baki nervous. Sasori didn't do as he was scripted."
"He still tried to kill her," Gaara growled, hand reaching for Sakura's.
"I don't think he meant it though," Sai hummed.
He looked down at Sakura and frowned, seeing still so much hurt in her eyes. She was broken beyond belief but somehow she was still…her. She wasn't undone by her own hurt.
"Sasori changed because of you…the same way Zabuza changed because of you. Originally in his script for the Kingdom of Beasts he was supposed to betray you and turn you over, but he deviated. That wasn't a big deal at the time, but Sasori's position was one of the leading roles in this world. His deviation was…unsettling."
"I never knew that about Zabuza," she admitted, thinking back to how he had done so much to help her. She had always thought of him as one of her biggest supports alongside Kisame. His voice kept her going when her form turned sloppy in the gladiator games. But, hadn't Kimimaro been scripted to betray her as well, or be her enemy from the beginning. He changed as well, maybe not for good, but for a little while he was changed.
Sai shrugged. "Neither did I until I became stuck in that dank one's lair. Baki didn't share much, but Sasuke did. The Dream Killer that possessed Sasuke liked to monologue. He revealed much."
"Was any of it useful?" Gaara asked.
Sai stared at Sakura, at the trails where tears were smeared across her face. "What is useful?" He knelt down in front of her so they were eye level. "He loved you. He wasn't supposed to, but he loved you enough to change. That scared them."
"He still was…it still wasn't enough." Her voice was a whisper.
"It was too much for this world."
Sakura felt her shoulders shake inwards again. "But he's dead. If not here…where else?"
No one said anything else for several minutes, eve as the stones around them shifted with the passage of the bastard god underneath. It was Gaara who broke the silence to point at Sai's bloody saber.
"Were you the one that hurt it?"
"It was a group effort. I just wanted to get away. Sasuke lost me after our base was interrupted. The god is looking for us now."
"It'll be here soon."
"I don't feel like fighting tonight," Sakura admitted, holding her shoulders. She stared up at Sai, pleading with a look. "Could we just pause it for a night?"
"We could try. Do you think that best?"
Sakura hated the answer that sat in her mouth, full of painful, truthful edges. When she was stagnate and didn't move bad things happened. When she lounged in the palace for days on end bad things happened. Baki was this world's weaver and he didn't like a passive heroine that wasn't much better than her reactions. Passivity would punish her, no doubt, but Sakura couldn't begin to imagine how much more hurt there was to endure after having to…
Sakura glanced sideways at her handiwork and it was sick how lovely he still was in death, decapitated.
She turned and retched into the corner, throwing up whatever was in her dreamer's belly. It wasn't much better than dry heaving as more and more guilt squeezed her insides out like icing in a piping bag. It wasn't pretty, but she didn't care. Her mind wasn't made for such horrors and her heart wasn't built for such wreckage.
Broken
Broken
Broken
"We're turning back," Gaara said, pinning Sakura's hair back behind her ears as she trembled over her vomit. He tugged on her shoulders and she fell back into her arms limply. "She's done well enough for one night's dream. She has a new god tattoo, that should be enough to placate the guide for this kingdom, no?"
"That might be worse than doing nothing."
"I am not so idle a force in this world, have you forgotten?" the redhead warned in a dark tone as he held Sakura closer. "I'll be ready to guard her should he try again. She's too tired to do much more."
"It's not just Sasuke and the Dream Killer you have to worry about," Sai said, moving to stand and walk around them. "The bastard gods are forces unto themselves that no guide or dreamer can anticipate, much less control."
"I've killed one before."
"I know."
Gaara glared up at Sai as Sakura head rolled onto his shoulder. "I'm not letting her get hurt any more than this. It's not fair. She doesn't deserve this sort of horror. Blood and war are to be expected, but this sort of dreaming is dirty."
Emotional sabotage
Sai looked down at Sakura and saw her eyes mostly closed. He turned his back to the wall and knelt down alongside the pair, watching the still shadows on Sasori's body grow longer as more and more of the sun became visible over the dunes and ruins.
"Her weakness is her strength. Sakura, you've so very loved by almost everyone who meets you. It's your true weapon here in this dream world. Actors love you, more than just like you. I've seen it before, but your power is unique. You're drawn into the emotional side of the narrative while trained fighters and generals and child killers only saw the blood when they entered the trials."
Sakura glanced up at Gaara to see him glaring at Sai. She remembered the journals, and the conversations she had over each dreamer she and the others read about. The pattern was clear. Most sent into the dream were sent like soldiers to battle. Madara was a perfect example, he was a warrior through and through.
Looking at all the dreamers who endured the Obelisk trials was like a a game of 'one of these things is not like the other' with Sakura being the odd one out. She was everything the dreamer wasn't supposed to be. She was a girl, she was stressed, she was a secret, she was crazy, she was incapable of love, she was a delineate, she was a failure, she was parentless.
Even the things that gave her an advantage in the dream world, like her creativity and aptitude for gaming adventures, were things born out of a desire to stay sane in the real world and hide how messed up she really was.
She never should have touched the damn obelisk in the first place. It wasn't didn't know!
"I never asked for any of this."
Sai's expression was pained. "I know. It would be…insensitive of me to say that's why you're so perfect for this terrible dream, why you've come so far. You never wanted to be a god."
Sakura closed her eyes to the thought of it and ducked her head closer to Gaara's chest. She knew she was being unfair if she was sweet to him now, after he opened his heart enough to show her what was in it. But she hurt.
"I want to go back," she said again, grabbing at the front of his shirt to hold onto. "Please, just for now."
"I'll take you there," he promised.
Sai stood. "You can't. Sakura, it will be that much harder to go forward if you turn back now. Please, I know it's painful, but don't give up."
"Stop it," Gaara hissed. "Can't you see she's hurt and in pain? Don't force her to do any more than this. I'll take care of her, you don't need to tell her to fight any more."
The sand around them, caught in the cracks and hidden in the shadowed corners, started to rise and shift in response to Gaara's agitation. Sai didn't even blink as the move but his expression remained agitated.
"What have you been trying to do all this time, Sakura? I thought you said you were going to tear this world apart and do what no other dreamer has done before. You've come so far and endured so much. You can't turn back now, or else Sasori's sacrifice will have been for nothing."
Gaara's sand was a wave that pushed Sai back, picking him up off his feet and sending him tumbling over his ankles back further into the ruins. Sakura looked up in surprise from Gaara's arms, but he tugged her back.
"Don't listen to him," he whispered into her ear, pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen over her ear again. "Don't think you owe this wretched world anything anymore. You don't deserve this terrible fate. Come back with me and I will take care of you and you may rest. You'll heal from this and then when you're better you can return to the gods and their wars, but no one can hurt you now. Not Sasuke, not the gods, not Sai."
She looked up, expecting to see Madara, but it was Gaara who was staring down at her with eyes full of pain from having watched her too long. She had heard this tune before, she knew the words to it and everything. She knew what was right, she had made that terrible decision once before.
But could she make that decision again, after being broken down this much?
"Sakura," Sai called out to her, standing up and panting from where his wounds hurt-both the old and the new. "You know better."
"She doesn't need to."
"I believe in you, Sakura."
"Stop saying that! You're just using her because you want this world to end." Gaara's sand swirled in anger around them. "You don't care about her at all. You're heartless."
Sai pushed himself up to his full height and staggered. There was blood dried to the side of his head that flaked off from a battle not long passed. "I may be heartless. I am the Sigh of Dejection, after all. But I believe in her. I know Sakura will always do what she needs to. If that's to rest, then I'll follow her."
There were words unsaid that hung between them, words only Sakura could hear.
'Sakura, I know you see it, I know you see what the right thing to do is. Be strong like I know you are.'
"But I'm so tired of being strong."
"Shh," Gaara whispered into her hair. "You don't need to. You don't need to be anything but yourself."
"You are strong, even if you don't feel it right now."
It looked like Gaara and Sai might come to blows between them again, as Sai had picked up his saber and Gaara's sand swirled faster and higher behind him. If they did clash Sakura didn't know who she would have protected or gone with, if she would have really turned her back on the dream's dangers and hide in Gaara's palace, or pushed on like Sai knew she could.
That decision was taken from her.
The stone between her and Sai was split perfectly as a feather thin arm of black shot up from beneath it and then bent at an invisible angle to turn and reach for Sai. The boy ducked and tumbled out of the way, scurrying for Sakura and Gaara across the crack in the ruins.
"We're out of time, it found us!"
Sai cried out, grabbing for Sakura and tugging at her even though she was still in Gaara's arms. She started to pull out and follow Sai, but Gaara just went with her, sand rising protectively. They were an awkward unit of three, running through the slipping and sinking slabs of stone that crumbled after the hulking god moved underneath it.
"Where is it under us?" Gaara yelled, trying to find a safe place to run to. They were blind, unable to see where the all seeing god was hiding under stone and sand.
"Just run, it already knows where you will be, use your sand to shield us."
Sakura had enough mind about her to turn out of Gaara's hold and run on her own, dreaming up armor over her arms and chest as she ran. It came into being in patches along her body as she moved, her mind being too much of a mess to do things perfectly.
Sai raced forward and was a lithe as an alleycat over the upturned rocks in his way. He turned on the balls of his feet and reached out his hand for her to grab onto and pull herself up with. Another black arm reached up between them and Sai nearly lost his hand to it, but sacrificed his footing instead.
Sakura cried out his name as the arm turned and tried to come back for Sai who rolled across the floor, but Gaara's sand was a wall pushing it back.
They reached the edge of the temple ruins and Gaara made a road down to the desert floor out of sand that they fell onto and slid down together, haphazardly tangled in each other. Several arms came down crashing for them, each extension made out of black shadow and just as feather thin as the first. They cut up the ramp and Gaara was forced to push the three of them into an egg shaped ball that protected them as they fell straight down. It cracked open upon impact and Sakura rolled free.
The daw was bright and burning all around them and Sakura stood in it, glittering where her armor stopped in patches so rough they gleamed like raw geodes.
"You."
She turned and saw the brat prince Sasuke, propped up against a slap of stone. No. He wasn't propped, but pinned. A sword like Sai's was run through his chest, keeping him trapped there. Blood stained his lips and was dried on his chin. He looked pale and ready to fade away at a moment's notice.
"Dream killer," she breathed, summoning her bone sword. She took a step but stopped when he didn't react. His eyes were empty apart from anger and the heavy bags made him look sick. "No, it left you."
Sasuke managed a sarcastic grin. "Wouldn't you?"
There was a rumble and a burst as more of the black body swelled out of the stone ruins. It came out in a hulking mass of writhing arms as numerous as the hair's on a person's head. They were thin and wild. The rest of the creatures body was shaped like a pill bug's, with the enormous eye on it's back, wide and open to the world with a hoard of smaller eyes squeezed in between the lids. There was more than one mouth to it as the monster roared, flashing with veins of gold beneath the surface of it's black body.
It's voice rang out, deadly and deafening.
"Who knows where the Old Ones broke through the folds of space and age? Who knows where? The Gate and the Key, is He who knows all these things. He knows where the bastard and the blessed have trod across earth's fields. I am the Gate and the Key, I am He who is the one who knows where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread."
Sai recovered first and flickered forward with his sword high, cutting at one of the arms before it could catch him, severing it at the stump. There was a sound like air escaping but no blood as the creature turned towards Sai as if he were a fly and not a threat.
"Good luck with that thing. You'll be dead if you don't run," Sasuke coughed, glancing down. He seemed able to breath around the blade in his chest, but not easily.
"Is that what you tried to do?" Sakura asked, dreaming up the rest of her armor over her. She didn't know why she spoke to him. He had been sleazy with her before the spirit of the Dream Killer came over him and really turned him into a crazy terror. She didn't particularly like him.
Behind her Gaara summoned up a wall of sand stronger with the blood of the bodies that lay scattered around them, leftover from Sasuke's entourage. Blood made Gaara's sand thicker and heavier. He could do greater damage with the blood sand. He swiped with a fist of sand and the bastard god moved back, but screamed and did not retreat completely.
Sai was a ghost at its flanks.
"He said it would be easy if we came from where it couldn't see us, but it saw us everywhere. All my men are dead, the most loyal…I can't go back. There is no one to support me now."
"You're stabbed to a stone. I don't think the lack of support is what you should be worried about," Sakura chuckled dryly, hating herself for how she was cruel to a man suffering.
Boy.
He was a boy suffering with fat still on his face from a leftover youth not yet finished.
"He meant to betray me all along."
"They do that." She could still taste Sasori on her lips and if she closed her eyes the wind was his kiss. She didn't close her eyes, she kept them open and narrowed. "You knew Sasori would betray me, didn't you?"
Sasuke looked up at her, glaring. "He was supposed to! He never handed you over though, and they said he turned on us to take Gaara's god mark." Sasuke sucked another shuddering breath into his lungs. "Did he do it?"
"Dead." Sakura almost choked on her words, but dreamed a mask up to cover her lips to hide the way they trembled. "I killed him."
Sasuke noticed the black tattoos stretching down her neck like the rays of a sun, each one tipped at the end in a hand design. He smirked at that. "Then at least he went out doing what he wished. He should have just stuck to the plan. I never took him for an idiot, but he truly was a fool."
'And I loved him, but that doesn't matter now.'
"Where did the others go, the spirit that took you over?" Sakura asked while raising up the point of her bone sword.
Sasuke gave her a look of boredom. "I don't know, obviously. They left me here like this, to die slow and painful over hours. If I knew I might have told you to spite them, but I don't and I'm too tired to care if you end me any faster."
Sakura believed him. He had nothing to lose and nothing to gain. He was ready for the end. His role was almost over. The script written for him had run out of lines.
She kneeled down in front of him and touched the palm of her hand to his chest and pushed the green light into his body. Sasuke shuddered at the feel of it, and gasped when she pulled the sword out of his chest with the other hand, her own bone sword standing up out of the ground. The whole in his chest would have killed him eventually, but Sakura found the edges of it and pulled it closed, knitting it back up little by little, piece by piece. He would still be sore and weak from the blood loss, but she wasn't going to address that separately.
"What are you doing?" Sasuke whined, voice pitched high and close to breaking. "Idiot, I'll kill you."
"I am an idiot," Sakura said, listening to Sai and Gaara fight while she healed an enemy. "I loved a dreamer that's been dead for hundreds of years. What kind of idiot does that?"
She pulled her hand away and stood up, backing up in the sand. Sasuke leaned forward and touched the flesh that was pink and scarred, but no longer spewing blood. "You should have just killed me. I'm supposed to steal your god mark."
"Why? Because a script told you? Because that's your role here in this world?" Sakura barked, voice filled with sharp edges that turned sharper the more she spoke. "You live in a world with stupid gods and stupid laws and stupid guides that tell you want to say, what to do, what to wear, what to think, how to act. You're a king but you're really a slave."
He watched her with wide eyes, likely not understanding what she was talking about. Her words wouldn't make sense to him as long as he was a dreamer unaware. He wasn't like Gaara or Madara, he was dumb to the laws of his own reality and the strings manipulating him through the narrative. She pitied him. She pitied Sasori. She pitied all the villains and lovers who were slaves in their own bodies.
She remembered the shackles on her wrists and the boot on her back. The memory was fresh and raw of a man telling her she wasn't anything better than property. She wasn't her own person anymore, but a thing to be bought and sold. She was slave to a slave inside a world where no one was free and never anyone safe.
"As long as you live in these lands your actions will never be truly your own. This world needs to come down and I will be the one that rips it from the heavens."
"You're mad."
"I'm far more than that," Sakura snarled, feeling all the anger in her rise to the surface.
Her aura was a crackle of energy that made her hair stand up and the sands shift around her. Her armor melted into rough geode chunks around her and the mask fell away. She was steaming as a her eyes strained to see the world rightly. Sasuke was right, she was mad. She was furious and she was crazy with it.
She turned to see the giant, bastard god and the edges of her vision took on a red tint. She took hold of all that anger, all that hurt, all those moments and times she felt hurt. She reached into her hurt like a bloody scabbard and pulled her bone sword out anew, gleaming and bright between her breasts.
She stepped onto the sand and it hissed, crystalizing into glass where she walked and she made her paces steady and even, coming up behind Gaara and Sai's efforts to incapacitate the god that saw all. She was close enough that it turned to her and reached with one of its many arms, but Sakura swung through it and the appendage fell nearly to the sands around her, drying up upon impact.
Gaara was fine, close and aggressive, but Sai was lagging with bleeding cuts old and new across his body. Sai saw her first and limped back, close to her but not close enough to be burned by the heat shield that swirled around her. He grinned at the sight of her and back peddled to where Sasuke watched limply in the sand. Sai swung his saber and kept the brat prince down, but didn't move to threaten him any more than that.
"What is she? Is that because of the god marks?" she heard Sasuke ask.
"No, that was always in her to begin with. It's how she earned those marks, after all."
Sakura felt her hurt deep inside her and pressed up against it like one would with a fresh bruise. Each application of pressure made her hurt bleed a little more. She saw Sasori betraying her, died under her hand. She saw Tenten and Kiba being killed in the sand of the coliseum. Madara calling out to her in notes of loneliness, swearing he'd do whatever if she'd just stay where it was safe. She saw the heavy weight of a tailed beast trampling Deidara and then Sasori's puppet form. She saw Sai dying under her sword the first time, she heard Kimimaro's cries as another finished him off. She heard the dead howl of Hungry broken and trampled. She tasted Sasori's first and last kiss with her from the Kingdom of Man.
Hurt after hurt. Each one made her burn a little brighter, a little stronger, a little hotter. Each experience made her a more deadly creature in the Kingdom of Gods.
She broke glass where she walked.
A collection of arms wound together and pushed Gaara back. It was the perfect move that put him out of range and Sakura was ready for it, raising her blade and screaming with a dozen voices in her throat, each one the last sound of a loved one. She lunged and twisted into the attack, pouring anger and rage into the strike, sending it out like a golden arch that cut through a dozen arms before landing in a shrieking hiss just below the large eye.
The bastard god screeched with all it's mouths and stood up before falling back down, close to where Sakura stood. She ran to avoid the impact and changed direction on a time to charge back at it's body, swinging again with another glowing blade. This one took out a whole side of arms and cut into the body where gold ichor bled.
"Child!" it roared with three voices. The large eye turned down the side of its body, moving to see her more clearly. "This is the body you will not defeat. I have seen it."
"I'm not playing by your rules anymore," Sakura snarled, stabbing at the eye and missing as the giant lids moved out of the way. Sakura's sword sank into the flesh of its body and freed a stream of gold ichor.
"I have see the dawn of man and I will see it's twilight yet. I am the one who has, who is, and who will be, the sight that sees beyond the bound of man's mind. I am the Gate and I am the Key. You know not what you do. I know your fate."
Sakura screamed with all the breath inside of her, assaulting the body she was closest to, tearing it open and hacking away huge chunks of it. A coil of arms reached for her and she rolled out of the way only to spring up and slice through them at the base. There were still hundreds of arms, but Sakura saw bald patches on the body that were in thanks to all the efforts supporting her.
"You know jack shit!" Sakura roared.
The body rolled over towards her and Sakura ran to avoid a crushing, racing straight to the edge only to be caught as it pitched upright and turned towards her, towering like a huge door to the sky. She looked at it and froze, caught in her mistake as all the many eyes in the center of the great eye were locked on her, some spinning, others rippling with all the worlds they saw into. Sakura was caught in their gaze and transfixed as a image bled into her mind.
She saw herself ripped in half and left to bleed out in the sand. She saw her friends screaming for her. She saw the world close up and fold into itself only to turn and show off the real world where she lay bleeding in her bed, eyes wide and open to the world with no life in them. The people around her were crying and cursing. Even Danzo was there, looking older and sadder than she though he could.
They lowered a black box into the ground and Ino was there. Karin was at the head of it all, with her mom and dad behind her. People Sakura barely knew were there. Sakura's mother was there, looking lost, but there all the same.
Then there was Madara, standing in the empty void of a dead dream, looking at nothing, watching nothing but the emptiness. Across that black expanse Gaara knelt on his own mound of sand, watching and waiting just as well.
The Obelisk tumbled into the mud and sank deep, finally forgotten. All the spirits trapped without slept on for another thousand years, trapped in blissful slavery to a narrative not their own.
"Lies," Sakura breathed into the vision.
"I am the one who has, who is, and who will be, the sight that sees beyond the bound of man's mind. I am the Gate and I am the Key. All of this is what was, what is, and what will be. I see your death."
The image went back to Sakura dead in her bed, discovered in her own blood. The tattoos under her neck still stood out, as well as the ones on her shoulders.
She didn't have any tattoos on her shoulders.
Sakura's eyes burned as her heart roared in discovery. She wasn't going to die here. What it showed her was a lit!
Sakura found the hurt deep inside her and squeezed it harder, wringing out all the blood in it like a ripe fruit. Her hurt flared as a power around her and the image burned away.
Sakura was on fire again, brilliant and glittering.
The bastard god screeched and attacked her with so many arms at once. Sakura cut down what she could and dived out of the way from the rest, but a coiling strand reached for her face and brushed up against the side of her head as she fell, slicing through her hair close enough to make the wind a sound in her ear. The pink strands fluttered as she rolled further out of reach and rounded, flaring the fire around her so that it burned the arms that reached for her before they could get close enough to harm.
"I hold the Keys to the Gate of Time and Knowing, the boundaries are mine to trespass. The world of secrets is me and in me. I have seen that no man strikes me down from the dawning of day to the husk of nigh. I am a god of unknowing, the great auger of fate and your fate is seen."
"No one knows my fate but me, it's what I make."
Sakura rumbled, her own voice lapping over and over until her words sounded like they came from a dozen different mouths. She felt terrible and powerful. The sand below her feet was blooming in shards of glass, with more and more layers atop each.
The arms reached for her, a dozen at a time, each set burning as soon as it came close enough to the shield of fire around her. She lifted her bone sword, feeling it light with veins of gold. In her opposite hand she wrapped her fingers around the dreamed out sheath, made from ivory and carved with her history. She turned the point of her breathing sword back into the sheath, listening to the sound it made going back before a click told her it was at the end. She held both at her side, braced the way Zabuza taught her for a dynamic draw, something too flash for her to have studied very well.
When Sakura lifted her eyes to the bastard god and saw it towering over her, stretching tall enough so that when it fell it would crush her. All its eyes were set on her but they couldn't suck her into another illusion. Sakura felt her own eyes burned away to orbs of pupils whites, wicked with fire.
The bastard god cursed her for her arrogance and it was all noise to Sakura. She had heard this speech before, how it knew it would live, how no man could defeat it, bla bla bla. It was out of time to learn the truth about fate.
Sakura felt her sword shake inside the sheath at her side and grinned, teeth sharp and gleaming in delight. All her hurt was drained into this and she would be light and empty afterwards, but that was okay. She didn't need to be anything more after this.
"You should have run when you knew I was coming. You see a fright train rumbling and no amount of knowing or seeing is going to help you if you're still on the tracks."
She gripped the end of her blade and tensed. Her whole body moved with the action as she drew her blade on a war cry. A crescent of golden light, thicker and bigger than before, rippled out from her blade and it tore into the body of the god as the bastard celestial started to throw itself down atop Sakura. She was covered in its shadow as she screamed, gold and glowing.
"I am no man you fucking piece of shit!"
I am the god here.
The god collapsed atop her, thick and heavy. All around her the desert scattered in shards of glass and grains of glittering sand as the mammoth body settled down.
"Sakura!"
Gaara screamed her name and Sai ran out behind him to where her body had last been seen, a speck in comparison to the hulking god. A river of gold colored ichor spread out from underneath the god and no one doubted Sakura struck a fierce blow, but a god the size of a small skyscraper just fell on top of her and no one had seen her move out in time.
Gaara swirled his sand into the gold ichor making it hammer hard, knife sharp and used it to tear the body apart, hacking away at shreds of it. There was enough body to fill a temple and it was a slower process than anticipated.
Gaara was screaming her name over and over as Sai ran to help in the process. The redhead's voice was raw as he continued to scream. Far behind them Sasuke started to limp over, holding his bruised elbow and looking lost.
"She did it," he breathed, staring at the frantic friends. "How did she do that?"
"Here, Gaara."
The redhead looked up to where Sai was pulling up chunks of god flesh. The parts he peels away were black and burned. He peeled another layer out and a hiss of steam escaped as the heat abated. Gaara's sand helped in the efforts and together a huge chunk was pulled away.
Sakura looked up from where she knelt, feeling empty as she leaned on her sword, stuck into the ground. She was covered in god ichor, gold and heavy. It didn't matter to Gaara as he rushed in and fell on her, pulling her to himself in a hug made up of all his fears and love.
"I was so scared," He whispered into the side of her hair. "I was so scared you wouldn't be able to fight it."
She looked at Gaara so close and then her eyes went to Sai, watching her from atop the hacked body. "I did it," she croaked, feeling tired in more ways than one.
"You did, you did," Gaara cheered, voice almost as raw as hers.
Sakura closed her eyes and leaned into his shoulders. "I didn't run away."
"I'm sorry I didn't believe in you," Gaara whispered back. "But I'm so glad you're alright."
Sakura forced herself to shrug. "It was just another god. I've already killed one, this one wasn't so hard." She chuckled and then her voice dissolved into coughs that racked her whole body. She leaned forward out of Gaara's arms to brace on the side and hack.
"Her shoulders," Sasuke said, pointing. "The markings!"
Sakura glanced down at what she could see of the eye marking on her left shoulder before looking to her right and seeing the exact, but reversed image of the Egyptian eye on either shoulder. The Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra. Several inches below the eyes her arm was encircled with a band of star shaped dots. Each of her index fingers was burned with a similar star, but only her index.
By far this was her most expansive tattoo.
"The eyes to see now rest atop your shoulders, my friend," Sai joked. "Be proud, you've won for yourself two different god tattoos in one dream. You are three fourths of the way to the end of everything."
Sakura smoothed back what was left of her ruined hair and glared up at Sai, but it was Sasuke who ended up laughing, oddly enough. She turned along with Gaara and Sai to stare at the young brat prince who seemed to have lost it.
"Of course it would be you," he laughed, still holding his elbow. "The bastard gods have lived in these lands since time immemorial, and you kill two of them. You're mad, you're crazy. Of course the woman stupid enough to save an enemy is the one that does the impossible," Sasuke laughed.
Sasuke dissolved into giggles and Gaara turned to look at her again. "Was that not a mistake? Did you really do that? He's not a decent fellow and sort of an asshole."
Sakura touched on of the eyes on her shoulder and then looked back up at Gaara. "I've had enough of death and killing. I just felt really bad for how he was written, it's not his fault."
"She's crazy," Sasuke continued to laugh, falling back on his rump from the shakes.
"Hmm, he may be right about you, though." Sai came up behind her and pat her head in praise. She felt how short her hair was on one side when he ruffled it. "You're crazy enough to be what this world needs."
"Blood ends and blood begins.
Blood ends and light begins.
We are broken dams.
We are goddamn broken.
We are God: dams broken."
Jeremy Radin, from "With These Hands"
AN:/I really do feel bad for how Sasuke was written, not like he could help how much of an asshole he was in the series. That's not his fault and I've had a couple of years to try and get over it. I had planned to kill him in earlier versions, (cause you know how much I don't love him, right?) but so much time has passes that a few details have been swapped around to better suite the story. The actors really are sort of like brainwashed slaves that can still think and don't know they are being brainwashed. They can't help it if someone tells them to think or act or work in an icky way and Sakura is starting to feel the weight of what that truly means-especially after being a slave in the last gate. So, the end game hasn't changed at all, just a few details between here and there.
It's getting close to the end, but I still have a handful of chapters to write. That being said, they might start looking a little shorter, just because 8K a chapter is kinda difficult. I also want to put of the ending I know is coming up. Obelisk is like my baby, I don't want her to be finished and over. The next update comes the following Saturday. Every Saturday is an update of something, either this or Under the Rabbit's Moon, because that has a few chapters to update with.
Also, the next chapter is sort of a down chapter, like, resting and relaxing or at least the illusion of it. Things in the waking world might just be more frightening than those in the dream world for once. We shall see.
If you can, please leave me a review to let me know you're still on board with the story and still find it interesting. I love to hear back from you and know my work is reaching people. Thank you!
Side Note: I also have a A03 account where I'll begin to start uploading stuff *coughsmutcough* (I'm super lazy) that usually shows up on my tumblr... my A03 handle is Vesperchan and of course my tumblr id is vesperlionheart in case you wanted to know.