Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Grief ❯ Epitaph to Chaos ( Prologue )

Epitaph to Chaos

 

In the beginning, there was only joy. My life seemed so flawless through the eyes of a 6-year-old. Though my father seldom showed himself in my childhood, something inside me has told me more than once that I didn't really need him.

My mother was a steadfast woman with beauty and intelligence equal close to none. But she faltered in the ways of love, and when she met my father, her life was torn apart by her mistake.

Afiriti was a lovely and revered wind demoness by both her undeniable beauty and her high rank in her clan. But the day she met a poisonous demon Lord, and bore me, nothing of the sort mattered to her family and admirers anymore.

But for some reason, she didn't seem to care—about her family, the disgrace written on her face, the fact that her mate never helped in my raising, or to comfort her in her times of dire need—at least on the outside. She gave birth to me alone deep in a forest cave; the former owner of the grotto obviously a being with disgusting repute. And during all this, a tear never left her eye to mar her pale features. Instead, they tore apart her soul and ran down never-ending inside her heart.

I was strong for her after living the beginnings of my life, still in her womb, being fed all the pain and suffering that she continually forced inside her. I never complained, and I never caused my mother grief. For her, I never cried. I never feared anything, or anyone.

Except for one.

Every year, around the middle of summer, I would find myself hidden in my room for the longest of times; pain tearing through me as my mother was met by my absent father. Every time he showed his face, such an indescribable, unrealistic anguish coursed through my mother's heart. And during these times, with my strong link to her emotions, I took the pain from her, and in her stead, I suffered through the time that my father showed himself.

And that, I fear, was my downfall.

Three days before my seventh year of life, I traveled out from our home as I usually did to catch us something to eat. I had spotted a young bear cub meandering too far from its mother, and moved in for the kill. When suddenly, the agonizing pain that I always felt whenever he came around assaulted me savagely. He was early this year.

I fell to the earth before the cub from my vantage point in a tall tree writhing in pain. In fear, the cub cried out to its mother, and she rushed forward to protect her offspring. And I, being as weak and helpless as I was, fell victim to her vicious claws. I surpassed the pain inside enough so that I could take control of my body once more, and fled from the bear matriarch with deep gashes on my chest, hips, and left cheek. The scars have never healed.

And I am glad they didn't.

I ran on, pain screaming in my thoughts as my lifeblood poured from my wounds. But for me, that physical pain was nothing compared to the increased pain my mother was feeling then. Just as I was only a yard away from our cavernous home, the pain intensified by a thousand-fold, and I was knocked to the ground. I cried out, and shivered on the ground as the agony reached a high crescendo, and then lessened to a dull ache in my head until I felt nothing coming from my mother. Panic filling my thoughts; it drove my body to sprint faster than I should have been able to from my deep injuries, and I reached our home in a matter of moments.

The image I beheld then has been burned into my mind's eye ever since.

My sire stood to the far side of the entrance of the cave mouth, his back turned to me and the bloody carnage that was my mother—his hands soaked in crimson liquid. After all the time I had been strong, a rock, stubborn and steadfast, pressing against the gale without moving…I could not hold back my tears then.

They fell as if in a pattern, one after the other onto her lifeless corpse. Her eyes, once such a bright violet, were glassy; a white film already forming over their wide-open pupils.

My emotions, neglected for so long, burst and twisted suddenly into a mix of a burning rage, and an overwhelming sorrow as I turned to the monster painted in her blood.

“YOU!!” I screamed in my newly-attained fury, the tears falling from my eyes feeling like flames against my skin, “What have you done?! Why did you kill her!!”

He turned then, and for the first time in my life, I felt a sickness growing in my stomach as I realized how much I resembled this beast.

His face was set in an unreadable mask, no emotion in his cursed scarlet eyes as he looked me over; as he judged me.

“Dear, dear child…your mother killed herself. She asked for death because she could no longer bear to understand the truth that an abomination such as yourself were really her child. She couldn't take you making her life more of a hell than she already felt it was.”

My heart stopped. The words played in my mind hauntingly, repeating themselves over, and over, again… The tears stopped. And I looked up at him pleadingly, half of me not believing, but the other half knowing, somehow, that his words rung true.

“You…you lie…the blood…your hands…pain…”

“I do not, child,” he said in his mocking baritone. “She asked me for death. Afiriti judged you, and hated you for every time she laid her eyes on you…you cannot tell me you did not feel that?” My eyes widened, and then half-closed as I looked downcast. So…he knew about the fact that I had taken her emotional burden as my own…

A long silence passed between us then, until he stepped toward me, and kneeled so that we were eye-level—emerald meeting crimson orbs.

“Come, then, my daughter. Come with me, and I will never again let anyone judge you. You will be powerful…come…”

His hand placed itself almost fatherly upon my shoulder, and as I fell onto him for support—falling for the lie that I knew it was, yet was too hurt to really believe—my spirit was torn to pieces. To physically show my curse, my emerald eyes, that for the first seven years of my life had been so innocent, were changed…to a deep, foreboding red…the same color as my mother's blood.

On that day I made three vows to myself: To never again feel the same pain that I had been fed by my mother in the time she lived, and fell. I would never again let anyone be so close to my heart, that it hurt me to leave them. And the last, most important vow that I made to myself…I would never again cry.

I only wish now, that that bear had slain me.

* * *

“I see, the blood all over your hands.

Does it make you feel, more like a man?

Was it all…just a part of your plan?

This pistol shaking in my hand, and all I hear is the sound…”

~Always, Saliva

* * *

My father, for reasons at the time that I could not comprehend, wanted me to train, and become strong. So, he sent me to different mentors for a certain amount of time.

My first mentor was a kitsune. But not just an ordinary kitsune…he was the master of all bandits: Youko Kurama, and his counterpart, Kuronue—who mainly just seethed in jealousy of my increasing, and amazing capabilities. I trained with the pair for almost eight years before my father took me back, three days before my fifteenth birthday. I never saw them again. But, according to my vows, it didn't matter.

I spent one year at his small home far into the wastelands of a vast desert, before he sent me to a Shinobi tribe. I only trained with one of the masters there, but I still remember most of their names. Touya, Risho, Goma, and Jin. Jin was the one who I trained with for a total of five years.

During my time spent with the windmaster, I broke my second vow.

I fell in love.

And near the end of my last year with him, I broke my first, and my third, my most cherished, vows.

I cried out my pain in the arms of the man who I had opened my heart to.

But those days were forced back into my swirling memories as I began my planned four years of training with my father. I was given a mighty sword that was both sleek, and rugged; powerful and subtle. And strangely, I felt a mental link to my sword, and ended up naming “him” Estaron. I had trained two and a half years with my father, and as the season changed from summer, to the beginning of fall, I learned the truth of why my father had wanted me to train.

It was a cool, autumn night that it happened. For once in my life, I found my dreams not twisted and filled with unspeakable horrors, but instead, peaceful…enjoyable… It was that night that my father drove Estaron deep into my troubled heart. To myself, I believed it to be the end of all my suffering, and, awkwardly, I thanked him.

But it was just the beginning of my pain.

Kojiatsu, my father, was a power hungry tyrant. He realized my potential from the beginning, and in fear of my growing power, and the chance that I might turn on him, he had killed me before his planned time. So one and a half years before my planned death, he murdered me in my sleep, and began to consume my powerful spirit.

But, thanks to him, through my training, and all the hidden power that had yet to be exposed, I fought back, and managed to get away with only a fourth of my soul having been eternally devoured by the monster.

But even with just that small fraction of my power taken away, he became much more powerful than he had been, and to this day, I am linked with him. Linked with the evil that thrives in his soul. Whenever he feels the urge to kill, my damned link with him drives me to near insanity, and I find myself to begin to yearn for mayhem…yearn for blood to drink…

For almost seventy years, I avoided the Rekai spirit hunters from capturing my rogue soul, and met up with another ghost like myself. Together we were determined to restore our bodies. But with her limited and my depleted power, it wasn't enough.

Another two years after I had met this akin spirit, Rekai finally found us, and on that day, we were almost caught. Using all my remaining strength, I sent us into a portal straight into Ningenkai, and half “dead,” you could say, my partner merged souls with me, and with the two of us combined, we became half-mortal.

But it wouldn't last for long. And we both knew it.

Desperately, we searched for a third soul to help us complete our mortality. But the thought of finding another rogue spirit, let alone one strong enough to make up half of a mortal body, seemed impossible.

But Shoshoku, a spirit like us, but only a mere six years old, proved us wrong.