Outlaw Star Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction / Threads Of Fate Fan Fiction / Threads Of Fate Fan Fiction / Ronin Warriors Fan Fiction / InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dark Night's Wind ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter Three: Afternoon Rain

Intro: Midnight Rain

Tatewaki Kuno stares into the brightly faceted eyes of his tormentor, swallowing his tears and trying not to notice the way the drying blood makes the stone bench stick to his back.

Humans have an innate sense of death's coming: they know when their time on earth has fled, just as they instinctively know when another's has been gone and it is not entirely in their nature to fight death, though a few do.

Tatewaki, being alive and human in entirety, looks into his tormentor's raptor gaze and loses all hope of ever being saved; he knows that he is lost. And yet something in him, something that may not be entirely natural, frankly refuses to give up. Damn it all, I don't want to die! The something cries. I don't want to die! I don't want to!

From his lips comes a choked sob as he realizes just how little he has done, how much sorrow he has caused and not yet mended.

The sob is a name.

[1:42PM]

1

Seiji silently pulled half the pile of beans towards himself while Sanada Ryo took the other half. They were playing a game of Hearts, though it had some distinctly Poker-like elements--for example, the betting.

A sharp knocking on the door interrupted the next round. Seiji rose to answer it.

He found a boy of perhaps fifteen waiting at the door. The boy had brown hair and dark eyes, and Seiji sensed a deep wrongness about the boy.

"Who are you?" Seiji asked brusquely.

"I'm Ebon D'Ebullient, an exchange student from France. I'm a friend of Jun's," the boy replied.

"Why are you here? Jun-kun does not live here," Seiji replied.

"His parents told me that I could find him here."

"…Very well, then. Come in." Seiji said shortly. The wrongness hadn't abated.

Jun looked up from his cards. "Hi Ebon!"

"Hi Jun. Who're these people?" Ebon replied, slightly inflecting these.

"They're my friends. Ryo-Nissan, Nasuti-san, Shuu-Nissan, and you met Seiji-Nissan," Jun replied, indicating them each in turn.

"To-Sa! Ka-Sa!" Hikari's bright voice chimed. "To-Sa! Ka-Sa!"

"I'll go get him," Nasuti said, seeing Seiji's dark looks at the boy.

"No, don't. I'll get him. Damned doors." Ryo replied. "Hey, Hikari, wait a sec! Onkle Ryo's comin'!"

"Onkle Ryo!" Hikari squealed.

Ryo smiled helplessly as he opened a door. "These knobs really are too high for you, aren't they Hikari-kun? I think your To-Sa should put the knobs down lower."

Seiji glowered at him.

"Your To-Sa doesn't like that idea, does he?"

"Ie!" Hikari chimed.

"Hikari, why don't you come here? Ka-Sa has a surprise." Nasuti said, knowing that Seiji would be polite with Hikari around.

[12:00 Midnight, Daemon Realm Time]

2

Mist covered the streets of the city, making the forms of the Will O' Wisps that lit the streets appear to be nebulous balls of bright fog and giving the streets an eerie quality.

The Daemon Realm's capital had a tendency to shift its appearance, looking like a Japanese temple one year, then a dark and dreary cave the next. This year, the Daemon Realm looked like a twisted replica of London town as it had once been, with carriages drawn by ghostly horses, "footpads" shaped like werewolves, stray dogs in the forms of Grims, and the like.

The mist moved in and out in hypnotic patterns, uncovering a townhouse here, a footpad there, but the figure who walked through it all did not stop. He did not engage in conversation with a Headless Horseman atop a ghost-drawn cab and walked right through a footpad, even as he moved the mists aside so that he could see.

The fog lifted suddenly, and the Will O' Wisps glowed as a bright as day, obviously attempting to bring back the old Daemon Realm, which was bright as noon at midnight, and as dark as pitch at noon.

The Daemon Realm also had a tendency to judge and critique the illusions that were cast over it, and only rarely liked them. London was obviously not to the Realm's liking, despite the oddly appropriate twists that the Caster had given it.

The figure smiled, though the smile did not reach his visible eye, and continued to walk through the ghostly avenues, his steps resounding oddly throughout the alleys. He reached his apparent destination and walked up the short flight of steps to the overhang, the strange resonance from his gait mysteriously gone.

Seiji lifted the heavy brass ring on the doorknocker, which was shaped like a lion's head, and slammed it against the hammered out space on the bottom of the thick brass circle that surrounded it. Instead of the booming sound he had expected, the lion's eyes glowed a deep green and the thing's maw opened for a reverberating roar that caused him to step back slightly. He raised one elegantly arched eyebrow, thinking that he was lucky the thing didn't wake everyone in the vicinity.

The door opened a crack with no apparent cause, which he thought was just like a Caster, until he saw the suit of armor standing in the doorway.

"Who goes there?" The English armor asked gruffly.

"Just me." Seiji replied quietly. "This hers?"

"Better than that skirt she had me in last time," the armor replied.

"…I don't know, I thought you were rather pretty, disguised as a Greek nymph." He replied.

"Of course you liked the nymph. How could you not?" the armor retorted. "Bet I reminded you of your home Forest."

"Just let me in." He said stiffly.

"Okay! Touchy, touchy!" The armor replied, swinging the door wide open.

=====

I rather like this chapter. That entire exchange makes me smile.

Anyway, Casters are people who cast illusions on the Daemon Realm and give it an appearance other than the reality. The reality would freak any one out, as the Daemons are basically walking through this brightly colored field of stars, and the townhouses in the illusion are actually planets/nebulas/stars/what have you.

So instead they make the Daemon Realm look like one city, or cave, or street, or building, or whatever.

But the Realm is also sort of alive, and so it has a favorite illusion.

The thing about it being "bright as noon at midnight, and as dark as pitch at noon" is true. It likes its illusions to be appropriately twisted, so that the Realm's "streets" are bright at midnight and pitch black at noon.

Anyway, each house or townhouse or dwelling has servants, who are actually shapeless, formless spirits, and one of them gets to answer the door. The Almighty-Door-Answering-Spirit will always "match" the theme of the illusion; for example, if the theme is "Tropical Paradise", then the poor ADAS will look like a hoola girl or something.

Sadly, the Fated One isn't allowed to Cast an illusion on the Realm, for fear that he'll make the Realm into some sort of pleasure-garden that is purley for himself.

There is a loophole: he can give a Caster a general outline of what he wants and the Caster can improvise and make the Realm a nice little illusion that will please everyone.

And that was a very long explanation, and I'm sorry, because I really should give you an explanations chapter or something, but it'd be monolithic…