Carmilla!
Disclaimer: Naruto and all its characters are Masashi Kishimoto's legal property. I'm not making any money off this story; however, all the Original Characters, Original Plot-lines, and Original Themes are my own.
Rating: Written for mature readers due to content that involves Violence, Sex, and Language.
Warning: Morbid content.
Part I: The Reapers
AN: Reposted for my own convenience. The usual editing process; hence, if you've read it, you can forgo it as nothing has changed.
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Another streak of blood diluted and sailed away. Carmilla—out in the storm, she saw herself in a great warrior's mould: one with a great cloak billowing at the back, trimmed winter furs, and a sturdy hand on the giant sword's ornamented pommel, who stood before a valley whose waters shone in the effulgent light.
Wind, brush of silk, crossed her face, lifted her long hair, and swirled through tall grass, which after battle was all soggy and sodden—dappled red with a congealing liquid that smelt awful.
A little of rain outlined her girl-ish form underneath the garments: she had wiry muscles, strong but thin arms, a young face set in a serious frown. She meant business when she had set her heart on the rebels to free the lands from the Young Deity that was but a bud . . . that had yet not blossomed.
Still dusk, and a transparent mist's tinge had long since darkened to lead by her feet. She stood on low grounds, beneath the shadows of tall peaks that hid another forest behind their smooth façades.
She jumped and landed beyond this stream's yawning waters, sight set on the High Mountains, Sacred Twins, that shut out the world beyond. The hallowed land, Carmilla (with fruits succulent and airs sweet), beyond was bordered by a stripe of lush verdure and streams shivered along the sides of the lovely edifice, which, as some believers claimed, appeared in a strange hue to the monks' eyes.
There, believers made an obeisance before their benevolent Lord, still ripening deep inside a pearlescent substance. He had alighted upon their mounts, and when he exuded a colour sweet, every light was inferior in brilliance; and when the light shone in their eyes, they had set their foreheads to the grounds in adoration—cast their souls at the shores of his divinity.
Yet trouble was afoot, always; and deities were made by spilling blood of Men, good men. Naruto was lost, killed by this man to become Kami! Her sister had been driven to the last verges of sanity. The world went silent and chakra flowed in obedience, like his devout monks, to conjoin at a single spot inside his treacherous body, which still awaited a divine metamorphosis to set it free from its morals coils.
So Konoha Men plotted in silence, lest their hopes for glory would bewilder change. They wanted good men and better women to halt the germinating Lord, coveted by his monks, nuns, too; someone who possessed a keen sight, a steady foot on the precipice's brink, and a heart that burnt with courage—that was all her Leaf needed.
Now, she ran, eastbound to reach the border in time. The deity had granted his monks chakra strong. They were . . . impossible to defeat, to put down; she was all that was left of her platoon of foolhardy men and women. Swords fell, spears went through, and without a whisper they went down. At least, their deaths had been quick . . .
Beside her, chakra-trails galloped toward the mountains upon air as though dove's plumes. He had been gathering it all up for the last five years, and during this course of change, she grew from a young 'un to a budding woman. How time stood still, unchanged—how things changed, never still. Sakura had wept at the foot of Naruto's grave. He died, a faint smile on his face, a prayer on the lips that told of his love for the boy who was a brother in another life: the young Uchiha had not celebrated his victory.
That was what her father told her; but he, too, went away and never returned. The monks got him or the . . . Reapers. No one knew. He . . . never came; so she said her farewells at the river and lit a paper lantern, with his name, on the water. Glowing, it floated away—to somewhere—whilst it bore the last of his signs.
An emotion sparked in her eyes, and she crossed the distance with the ferocity of her vision. There, just beneath the bowing trees' refuge, lay the dead men. He had got them here, too! She halted, eyes transfixed to the tall ones. They stood over her, and she felt mocked!
"Uchiha Sasuke . . . " she whispered, and her eyes lit-up, spirits burning in Yomi's lost fires. It was not a foreign emotion she experienced; anger, raw rage that went in deep and slow. The aching hurt never went away . . . she had seen many of her men fall in these past few years.
Liberation. Revolution. Absolution. The Uchiha Youth had spoken the words and swore by his brother's grave. Sakura had told her in hysterics. She did not know what to believe—who to believe. They were all mad, hope-less, future-less.
Men told tales of him, and his brother, an evil seed that devoured them all like a Reaper. He came to them in the dark, spilt blood, blest none—a terrible fate to befall the young, who died upon the blade, some still suckled teats when he got to them.
"Hanabi, you're too young—stay and hide with me!" Hinata had whispered.
And, may Kami set her father's soul free, he died with a purpose in heart, and he had died fighting. It was a son's duty to avenge his father; but Hiashi had no son. They said that Hanabi was as good as any, and she was! A sparkle of fire in the night sky, she would do what her brother would have done.
And so she had taken up the sword, gird up her loins for battle, for she would strike at his heart, liberate the chakra, end him before he rose out of his shell to reign over them all.
She stopped, watched as lights fled from the peaks to gather in his breast. Darkness descended: Reapers' murmurs rose into the air. They had come out in search of prey, and they struck quick and soundless. Wind crossed her face, and she looked back at the advancing darkness one last time before she ran off towards the dipping sun . . .
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Anon, the dark was at Hanabi's heels. Wind that swept round the perpendicular peaks gave a moaning. . . like a hurt babe; and her ears were glutted with the holy land's music, eyes ravished by night's shades. She had to reach the temple beyond the hillocks.
Horrific figures came unbidden amidst the fog and mist; they assaulted men who did not remain patient at the sight of their miens that excited terror in their breasts; they possessed lineaments most strange: a lovely edifice, of a man, that contorted to gain a terrible countenance—one which a crow possessed.
The eyeless heads crowned the strange bodies, with stranger contortions—neither man nor beast. Sakura had told her that the Reaper, before it struck Men down with its deadly beak and feasted upon the still-living bodies, possessed the face of the Lord's brother. She did not understand that a Lord with no heart had love in him (love for a brother).
Hanabi let herself down into the stream and saw the clear water by her feet dirl. Whispers followed in search of the sound she had made, and if she made too loud a noise, her death would pay the forfeit of her error. Night winds, from mountains tall, blew a mixture of uncertain sounds down into the quiet valley, and her noise was merged into this chaos of vibrations.
Fog effaced the trail from the leaves-covered ground, and she had little choice but to use her clan's eyes to produce effects in her vision; crunch-crack-crackle she went, crushing autumn's signs beneath her feet. Sighs from Reapers rose and swelled, saluting her with sounds that made certain her isolation in this place at the foot of the mountains.
The crows had not yet penetrated the last defences of their stronghold. They went back into the trees when the sun came up, as if to slumber. Men had cut down whole forests in search of the pretty-faced creatures with cloaks awful, but found no trace of them—a bit of black sludge got trapped underneath their fingernails, and it had to be picked out and scraped clean.
Yet the trees grew tall and young come morning—always. Men brought them down over and over again in terror, signs of toil glistening on their brows in the rays, but each time they grew with renewed fierceness, bearing fruits succulent and flowers lovely that defied autumn, defied nature. It was mad—everything had gone mad!
A moist, sweet air had spread round that forest, and word reached the monks; and a throng of them appeared at the foot of mighty mounts, with great height, that shed a melancholic gloom upon waters; and there he lay sepulchered on the pebbled shores—his form extended on the dispersing droplets, hands resting on his breast, features, which rebirth had engraved, with signs of godhood.
There, they all bowed deeply, chanted hymns as he lay in a slumber too deep, eyeless Reapers watching his countenance with aggrieved expressions. His brother had come adown and stood by his sibling's watery grave; he dwelt in his breast still—always!
And they had called that place Carmilla!, taken him up the broken stairs to keep him safe from the world's evils whilst he grew in the radiant shell . . . to be birthed on the world's shores. They would shed tears at his birth—sing songs upon his arrival, for his birth was nigh!
Hanabi slowed down her run when the whispering grew near. They were sniffing her scent in the air. Night's air, cold in her lungs, wafted up leaves; and before she could determine the course of her proceedings, a black mass ascended before her from the obscured ground; it kept rising till it was more than a towering man's height.
She stopped, breath ceasing in her lungs, and watched, eyes fearful, the thing that stood before her, all imposing in stature. It hath no eyes! Not one! Empty sockets adorned a face so lovely, which wore a mournful expression upon its countenance.
Her body trembled at the sight of it (him?), and he could sense her girl-ish fear. His neck escalated, like a crow's, and he sucked in a breath so loud that she felt the disturbance vibrate into her skin. Vapours of her scent crawled up his nostrils, and he drew in sputtering breaths again.
In the dark, his neck was a projecting pillar, face white on the changing body that stood. Feathers grew thicker from his skin, and the arms, which wore the wings like sleeves, extended in her direction—so did his beak!
Sending a lightning fast signal through her limbs, her nerves compelled the body to respond to the threat. She sprung back towards the light that still had some strength left in it, but the shadows behind her had darkened into Reapers.
Hanabi did not have time to look behind her when the beak descended with a bone-crushing force to fracture the stones by her feet. She had slinked away just in time to avoid a blow that would have felled a giant beast. Angry, the crow let out a caw so ferocious that it shattered this place's calm; and the air vibrated with answers of many.
The Reaper cawed, still shewing traces of His brother's face upon the ghastly visage, recoiled its neck to unleash a blow to her breast. She unsheathed her sword and poised for a strike, which she aimed at his heart; it thrummed in his breast—an odd instrument made of black sludge; and when the blow came, she parried and ran him through with the sword.
He went still, and his face reverted back to that of a man's, features relegated sorrow, eyes locked on the blade lodged in the breast. He bled a vivid shade, and she felt a warmth cascade down her shivering arms. Then, beat by beat, his face and body turned ashen and crumbled and went into the ground—returned whence it came . . .
"I'm sorry," Hanabi whispered, eyes filling with tears and a new rain, for she had heard stranger things of the older one who now remained trapped in the younger one's memories; but stories were only stories . . .
For some moments, she welcomed rain. It washed away the blood, pearly in the last sunlight behind the hills. Her fingers, greased with the Reaper's blood, slipped around the hilt. It was done.
Hanabi rose up to her feet and began to sheath her sword—that was when the earth beneath her feet shook like disturbed waters; sludge, which had gone into the earth, bubbled up; and she saw his face in the black, smiling.
"I'm sorry," he mimicked her voice perfectly, every last note, and lunged at her head. She dropped to a crouch as the deadly beak, which would have torn through her neck, swished above her head as a black blur.
She took a long leap towards the light again, but he followed. Her sword hand shot out sideways, away from the body, to deflect a coming blow aimed at her breast. The beak collided against the sword and sent devastating shivers through her bones. The impact knocked her sideways into the stones.
Her body spun in mid-air, her balance lost. Chakra pooled into her back to protect her vitals: upon impact, a strong vibration rang in her ears and two of her back-ribs cracked, unable to endure the force of the blow; but the beak was relentless as it flashed down horizontal to split her head in two. She skipped to the left, avoiding it by inches. Grit and stones flew into the air, and amidst the dust, rain, mud, the Reaper grew hungry for her flesh.
Hanabi huffed. No use! E'en the chakra she had put round the blade had not dented its beak. Her body would shatter if it took a direct blow from the Reaper. Sun's last yellow twinkled on the peak's crest, and darkness began to spread behind her. Reapers spoke in strange tongues, in voices loud. Their wings beat in the darkness and churned the air like turbulent waters.
Hanabi had moments to save her life before the throng of them overwhelmed her! So she locked her hands to the pommel and aimed the sword downwards, eyes on the beast. Then she threw the sword at the tree; blind and hungry, the beast went rushing in the direction of vibrations and its beak went into the bark. Stuck!
The sword swished past the tree and clanked against the big stone, its tip too weak to break it open. The beast struggled to pull its beak from the tree, but it had given Hanabi enough time to run towards the light. With great speed, she ran from the advancing darkness, grabbing the sword as she went.
Noises still pursued her, but she fled the scene, body battered with fear and fatigue. At last, sun showed the last of its sign, and dark spread its wings wide and draped it all. Reapers sprang out from the ground, pretty as flowers, and surrounded her. Her legs shook with mortal fear; but, at that moment, a woman crushed the boulder, and lights poured out over the beasts—and silent they went into the ground.
"Sakura-San!" Hanabi said in elation. She had survived the assault at the camp!
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