heavenlymisandrist | 18 - Talking like almost a normal person for once

[ Video ]

My sympathies to those for whom this flood has proven especially trying. Know that if you do not see much of Aya, it is not my doing. [ Ceres knows that alter egos are a touchy issue for a lot of people here. In fact, she's friends with most of these people. She's not totally sure if these people understand how really super emotional Aya is. ] She is... upset.

[ That is apparently all of the socializing Ceres has in her for right now. She can be found in her room, the greenhouse, or the kitchen for lunch shift. ]

[ Dreams in comments~ ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

heavenlymisandrist

The Tennyo legend of Tango told of a woman, the foster-daughter of an elderly couple. With her powers, she could create a wine that cured any disease, and she used it to save the village. Despite this, she was chased away. But when she tried to return to the heavens, her hagoromo was too dirtied by the earth. Unable to return, she wandered to a village where she withered away and died. That was the story that led you here, seeking the one thing that could set you free. A school may have replaced the temple that was said to have been built over the Tennyo’s grave, but going by the smell in the underground tunnel the grave site is still here. Why did you agree to this again?

That’s right. The man walking next to you, wearing your twin brother’s body, baited you into it. You hate him every bit as much as you love the brother he took from you. But he’s powerful enough to hurt the people you care about, and your pride won’t let you back down. So it is that you follow this awful man into a pit in the earth that reeks of death.

You’re wondering what he might do if you really do find the hagoromo down here when the flashlight reveals streaks of blood on the ancient, dirty tiles of the former temple. The source of the blood is close behind – a severed human hand. You’re horrified. You don’t know why you keep watching when he shifts the camera up, revealing more of the room.

The sight of the boy who had fallen into this very pit nearly makes you vomit. You turn away from it to quell the urge. All you remember is missing limbs, a terrified expression, a gouged out eye. He’s one of the boys who attacked you here just a few nights ago. It was his disappearance that frightened the others into running away. Now you know why he hasn’t been at school, and any anger you might have held onto towards him drowns in the horror of his death.

A sudden sound catches your attention. Your hand is still pressed over your mouth when you spin to see what made the sound. It’s lucky that it is, too. The creature standing before you looks only human enough for you to know that it was alive, once. Features seem to melt into each other. Ribs poke out through dead flesh. One breast hangs low, stretched all the way to the hip. Her teeth are rotted and wrong, one of her eyes swollen, her hair stringy and mostly missing. Something seems to be seeping out of one eye, like pus… or tears. Her legs are the most human thing about her, dead and shriveled though they are. One arm has shortened, the elbow attached to the shoulder, strangely textured. That hand is missing a finger and stretched out like a gummy doll. The other elbow turns back on itself into a shrunken arm, a segment coming out of the joint like a long tail.

The creature stares at you, and you stare back. After what feels like a very long moment, you scream.

“Whaaaaaat? What the hell is this?! An alien?!?!” For once you’re happy to stay close behind the man who is not your brother.

“Come to think of it, I did find accounts of a strange creature in my research…” You remember stories about strange sounds, ghosts, or monsters in this cordoned off area where new construction is taking place. You really should start taking those stories more literally, you think to yourself.

“It said that a room was built under the shrine, to seal in the daughter of a Shinto priest who was touched by the anger of a Tennyo 700 years ago. Hold this.” You’re inclined to refuse the proffered flashlight just out of habit, but you take it anyway. The creature lunges, swinging her arm like a whip at the two of you with an unearthly yell. The man grabs you around your shoulders and leaps out of the way across the room. His strength is inhuman, far from the brother that you knew. You don’t really like him touching you if you think about it too much – he’s kissed you more than once, in your own brother’s body. You don’t have time to complain, though. The movement wrenches both your neck and your shoulder.

“This is fun,” he comments cooly. You see red for a moment.

“What about this is fun?!” you demand, still in a panic. He ignores you.

“Perhaps the Shinto priest’s daughter was turned into this monster, and has been living here for the last 700 years.” A disturbing thought. You remember suddenly another Tennyo story, set not far from here, about a man disfigured beyond recognition after putting on a Tennyo’s hagoromo.

“Maybe… it was because she put the hagoromo on?” You hope not. If that’s a human with a hagoromo, you have no idea how you’re going to get it off of her, or even if you can. The man seems alarmed by the same thought. He turns to look at you, and is caught in the face by the creature’s arm-tail-whip. You almost scream, concern for your brother’s wellbeing overpowering logic. Then the creature smacks you with her other hand, hard enough that your vision goes black. You’re vaguely aware of flying across the room before you lose consciousness entirely.

When you wake up again, you are different. The danger is known to you. If it hadn’t been you wouldn’t be here. You wake up in a boy’s lap. The first thing you see is the deformed woman launching herself at you with a terrible scream. With a small twist of thought you place a barrier between yourself and the woman, and she slams into it face first. The woman steps back, and in the light you bring to the dark room you can finally get a good look at her.

You see the woman, but you also see inside of her. You see a beautiful young woman, crazy with pain and centuries spent locked away in this dark, horrible place. You see your kin, and you see the Mana that she has merged with.

“Did you… put on the hagoromo?” The woman understands you, and doesn’t move. Tears stream from her swollen eyes. You can see that her very shape causes her pain. You’re aware that your own voice sounds strange. As you rise to your feet you understand that your Other has been in a fight, that your body is tired and wounded. You manage to stand up straight.

“I fear that… you are no longer able to use it properly.” You give the woman another look. Yes, that’s it… it has to be. Mana has the power to make wishes into reality, but that power can also bring life to nightmares. That is what it has done to your sister here.

“And so the other Tennyo in this area left you under here… you poor thing.” You know what it feels like to be left behind, trapped, forced to go on when you no longer have the strength or the will. Your heart goes out to this woman, your sister, this poor lost soul beyond any chance of redemption. You glance around the cavern and see human bones.

“But still, your sleep would be disturbed by intruders.” And she had killed them. What else could she have done? They feared her, called her a monster. “You must have been locked under here in that form for hundreds of years, unable to die. You did not want for anyone to see you this way…” The woman makes a sound like a sob, and your heart aches for her.

“I understand. I shall help you now. I shall grant upon you the joy of purification.” You make it quick. The woman’s body disintegrates, changing from something ugly into beautiful cherry blossom petals in a matter of seconds, then dissolving into dust. Your sister is at peace, free from the pain that her life had become.

You let most of the light in that horrible place fade, leaving only enough for you to see the look on your husband’s – on your Other’s twin’s – face.

“Just give it up and come with me,” he cajoles, like a parent telling a child it’s time for bed. You know he can see the fury in your eyes, because it seems to startle him.

“Why,” he starts to ask, but you cut him off.

“Don’t you know?” Your hands ball up into fists. This man who you loved, who you thought loved you, stole away your life source, your Mana, killed your children, tormented you even after you both were dead. Centuries of betrayal and hurt turn your words into daggers, fitting for a man with scars on his face and someone else’s blood on his face.

“The Tennyo here used up their powers on humans and were eventually kicked out. They were destroyed and devastated by human greed and lust. You are no different!” You’re shouting now, overwhelmed by the feelings this man brings out of you. You want him to understand, to see your hurt and to feel it for himself, to suffer as you have suffered all these centuries. But more than anything, you want him to love you. You want to see some spark of the man he used to be, the man you fell in love with so long ago.

“You… betrayed me!”

You don’t get to hear his response. You feel a sharp pain in the back of your neck, and then the world goes dark.

From:

starofdarkness

The only thing that feels real to you is horror. A shriveled human hand has been placed before you, and you know that it is yours. Was yours. You have a new hand, a new body, a new life. The people sitting in a circle around you are all familiar: your mother, father, aunts, uncles, grandparents. But they're also strange, your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. You know that you love them. How can you not? They are your family, your descendants.

You wake like a breath of rancid air, unable to tear your eyes away from the dry, cracked skin. Why? Why do they have this? Why are they showing it to you? Your power begins to work, creating a light wind as it shifts your features into something more familiar. This family is made of the people you bore, the spark of life that you shared with the man called Mikagi. The man you loved, as you had never loved another mate. The man who killed you. Horror mixes with rage, and you look up to see the faces of those who would show you such a thing.

They have already drawn their swords. Mother and father turn away. You start to scream, but in a flash your head is cut off.

You wake again. The people are different, but the scene is the same. You recognize some of the same people, even, a decade or two older. You open your mouth to ask them why.

One of them cuts your throat.

Again. This time you're angry, furious that the children you had raised, the family you begot, would treat their daughters like this. It isn't your fault that you cannot leave this world, and it isn't their fault that you were born into their body.

A knife thrusts between your ribs just as your power is settling about you. At least when you die this time it is in the shape you once knew.

It happens again and again and again, each time bringing with it vague memories of sixteen years of life, a happy family, a society that grows and advances and permits more and more crimes against humanity. Guns start to catch on, and the family members no longer have to get their hands dirty to kill you. You can see the fear in their eyes, the suffering and pain. You want to explain, talk to them, make them understand that they don't need to do this.

After the eleventh time, you tell yourself you don't care anymore. It becomes a game. Awaken first, strike first, escape. Words echo through your memory - "we're sorry, we love you, you aren't our precious daughter". Each time you wake up angrier than the last. You spend what conscious time you're granted plotting, deciding how best to escape, how best to get revenge.

It is the third time you have been killed at this long wooden table in the center of an ornate and spacious room, paid for with money earned by cheating and killing others. You realize that you hate them. Your children have transformed into these monstrous things that kill and kill and kill, and you hate them as they must hate you. You hate them so much.

You decide that you must take responsibility. You will kill them all.

The day finally comes when you awaken early, catching yourself as you fall. It was only a split second, but it was enough. When again they show you your own mummified hand, you are ready.

You throw a burst of energy into the room before any of them has the time to react. Pure power that your current form cannot quite control or even withstand, but enough to cause a distraction. Enough so that you make it out the door, into the front yard, up into the air...

You stop to rest in a high branch of an ancient tree, one that you climbed as a child, this time. Just a short rest.

And then you will have your revenge.