Sachihiro

I’ve been going for a while now and the disorientation is getting worse the longer I stay down here, I may be starting to panic a little. I take a long deep breath as I walk onwards, keeping a tenuous hold on my calm as I reassure myself that I’m heading in the right direction even as I lose my estimate of time and direction.

I stop suddenly, Honour hanging limply from my left hand as this dark gaol closes me completely in its maw. I take several steps back hoping against hope that I will get my orientation back but its not to be. My sense of time is fully gone now, my sense of direction I lost a while ago but still I knew when it was midday, I knew when it was night, I knew when it was day.

No longer.

I’ve lost something, a connection to the planet I never realised I had because it has always been there but now... I take gasping breaths clenching my fists trying to keep my sanity. Why I’m having such a strong reaction to loosing orientation I’m not sure but I fall on one knee with stars glittering in my vision even in this abysmal darkness.

Breathe Sachi breathe! I inhale exhale, inhale exhale, inhale exhale.

I don’t know how long I stay this way in a puddle of water completely disregarding my surroundings but I eventually manage to calm myself. I’m sitting on my ass in the puddle with Honour loosely held in my grasp, getting up I shake myself and realise how tired I actually am. I’m groggy, my mouth tastes like mothballs where stuff in and I have lost something precious inside again. Is it this place, is it me or is shit just getting fucked up in the world at large?

Everything has been going wrong from the start, I hug my knees to my chest wondering if I’m being punished for some cosmic wrong. I’m so empty, I’m so cold. Spirit-aura. I let my aura loose and instead of holding it in as Elentril taught me, I let go and let my surroundings feel me. Feel my miseray and pain, feel my anger and loathing, feel power and passions in all their many tones. I was taught how to hide the fact that I am an Awakened but the side effect of that in the anal clench my aura is usually held in.

Now my feelings come out and with spirit insinuated into it I feel my influence more influential to my surroundings. The cold retreats some, the despair retreats some, the disorientation stays but I feel better and strangely I’m not sure why. I’ve studied and experimented with sorcery for years now but spirit energy in a lot of way its just as mysterious a force to me as it was when first we went witch hunting years back.

I find myself sitting upright in the water, I need to think, this aimless walking isn’t getting me anywhere. I need to figure out how to get the fuck out of here! Yea easy to say but maybe the key to my prison is in one of the threads I’ve been ignoring but still all I know about the wilderness is never to just sit in the open like this.

‘’Hello!’’ Hello... Hello.. Hell..

‘’Anything friendly out there!’’ Anything... Anything... Any...

‘’Fuck you!’’ You... You... Yo

‘’Arrrggg!’’ I scream out in frustration. My scream echoes back at me in a more sinister voice than my own, fuck this place and fuck caution! I scream again loosening my aura expelling the fear and doubt trying to seep into me from the dark emptiness.

I start moving at a run, the only thing I have to orientate myself the blood crystals I summon singly in my palm and the unseen spiritual thread’s vaguely connecting me to one or all of my children. I run at a breakneck speed trudging through the wet darkness and adjusting my footing as quickly as I can to avoid obstacles in my way. Fuck stealth, fuck being careful, fuck whatever godsforsaken fate that put me in this godsforsaken place!

Tap, tap, tap, tap...... My first few steps keep splashing in the water but at a sprint its actually easier not harder to decrease noise I notice peripherally as I try to outrun the emptiness.

....

....

My feet are clad in water mana such that each step taken isn’t solid against liquid but liquid against liquid before my toes touch the bare stone floor under the water in silence. I run silently through the darkness jumping over a crevice then another wider one before-

‘’Oh shit!’’ I jump high over a precipice flailing my arms like an idiot as I go high then plunge into deep emptiness and likely to my death.

Ahh! I land on my feet and roll my momentum away before stopping in amazement at the fact that I’m alive and unharmed with a naked blade still in hand. I look up then shake my head at my own stupidity as I try to catch my racing heart, that was stupid. I had no way of stopping my forward momentum by the time I noticed it was a ledge and not another crevice I was jumping over. I reverse until my back is against the solid wall of the ledge and then slump onto my ass to contemplate my own mortality.

That was fucked up! I could have just as easily fallen to my death with the insanity of my behaviour right there. I try to calm myself whilst still acutely aware that I’ve completely lost my sense of time for the first time since I could remember; breath Sachi, just breath. I calm down, letting my guard down somewhat to sooth my frayed nerves, eventually oblivion takes me.

I wake with a start brandishing Honour before me like the deadly implement she is, no threats. I get up from my sitting position and assess all around me as best I can considering the situation I’m in. At least the wall is solid behind me and I think I could climb it if need be so I’m not completely stranded at this lower level, plus its dry here. I take stock of myself then move left then right along the ledge just to estimate how much cover I have and how long I can convolute here.

I have no idea how long I was asleep nor do I really remember when last I slept now that I think about it. Did the transition here count as sleeping? I doubt that and I think its time I tried to figure out what the fuck happened with my summoning and how I ended up hijacked to this place. My mind is busy though and I sigh taking a sit on my previous sleeping position removing some bread and jerky from my ring to eat whilst I think.

Okay, my spirit energy is fully back now and as much as I’m giddy about my new versatile mana it is my spirit energy I have been looking forward to most. Okay, a close second to getting Honour back but its already a given that I love having my zanpakutō with how it hasn’t left my hand since I unsheathed her. I take a breath, its time to explore my spiritual life.

I open myself to spirit energy with an inner sigh. Ohhh, it feels so good! I feel joy as it subsumes me fully in its embrace. Yes this is my natural state, this is how I was always meant to be, this is what I am and now I am fully complete with my power resonating completely in me.

Spirit is insubstantial, it is mostly passive in nature and subtle in that it doesn’t interact with anything else physically. Yet it is in everything and if you manage to find the balance in the paradox of spiritual and physical then you have something very few ever find. And now that balance is complete in me, I just let my spirituality out freely like a great valve is opening within me. The Image I use is irrelevant as there is no actual valve and I have no idea where it opens from but it fills me.

Every cell every tissue every organ every system, every part of my body, my mana channels, I feel synergy in my senses. The spirit affects how I see things, it affects how everything suddenly smells I notice taking a breath. The darkness is complete but there are other way to see that are beyond the human visible spectrum, but none of what I perceive is physical.

I see things that aren’t really here, physically, as spirit subsumes my awareness fully taking advantage of not just my physical senses but parts of myself I don’t fully understand. There are swirls of blackness in this dark place flowing in a current that my spiritual awareness makes me aware of.

I pulse spirit energy through me and with an Image of it puffing like smoke within me as it spreads and I take in all I sense with all my awareness fully open.

There are the spiritual threads around my head like a wreath of wires disappearing into nowhere, yet far away. Threats of blackness in this place flowing like streams through my awareness and past it as my spiritual sense spreads far from me beyond what the current limits of my sphere of awareness is. The resonance of my spirit with my soul hums beautifully like a chord of wonder inside me and within my awareness everything is just perfect.

Spiritual Sphere of Influence. When last did something resonate within me so perfectly that I just naturally know how to do it? It’s an ability now I just know how to do just like awareness is, just as Spirit Oppression. My awareness strangely has never been a physical sense per se but more like I imagine echolocation to be. I perceive it as a sense on its own but it has never been physical though it incorporates my physical senses. All is vibration, everything has them but all vibrations are waves, waves of different lengths and frequencies.

That’s as far as my understanding goes as I figure things out as I feel them. I’m solid to myself, I’m a humanoid shaped glow with these wires coming off my head. Honour is in my hand glowing slightly differently than my silhouette. My spirit energy goes past my Spiritual Sphere of Influence far into the distance, spirit senses are vague at that range with mostly emptiness around interspersed with dark currents and get fuzzier and fuzzier the further it reaches from where I currently stand.

All of this happens to me in almost an instant. At the same time I am still me as I have always perceived myself and everything is as it has always been as physically nothing has changed at all.

Almost as soon as all this takes place it fades, the things around that are most strange fade again into obscurity before completely disappearing. All that I perceived just a moment ago outside my sphere of awareness is gone, the spirit energy I sent out dispersed like mist under the noon day sun.

Still, I feel like I have more spiritual reserves to experiment with, much more than I ever had or thought it possible for a human being to have so I keep playing around without much concern. Suffusing myself with another influx of it and again the process repeats itself. Far in the distance, at the edge of my very dispersed and thin spiritual senses something shines dimly in this dark place.

Without hesitation I move towards it, I'll take any form of light that mighht get me out of this place.