Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Is everyone alright?!” Tetsutetsu yells, looking back at Kendo and I. The night falls into burning silence, a pregnant pause drowns us all in uncertainty. Something billows in the burnt out crater the Nomu was pinning Renaru in.

Kendo picks her way over, “Oh god…” she breathes, “That’s the Nomu…” The monster’s body writhes, reforming its jet black skin and bones, organs birthed again and it rises on cracking and shifting, swollen muscle explodes from the frame.

“Burns…” it rumbles, leaning forward and glaring at the three of us, “Burning… boy…” the thing’s mouth opens and a piece of cloth hangs from the straight, almost-teeth. A shred of orange and red, a single scrap of clothing.  Something I knew all too well. The same warm cloth that he wrapped around me after training. Warmed by his body, warmed by the flames that danced and crackled with happy abandon. His haori billows from the thing’s maw. Dropping to the scarred earth.

Tetsutetsu and Kendo fade away, the flames and the burnt smells fade, everything focuses on the cloth weakly billowing toward me.

I take it into my hands, gathering it like a child, closing my eyes, a burning overtaking all. A sharp, searing fire kisses my forehead. My vines wrap around my arms, growing and thorns sharpening, burning blood running down my face. The lump in my throat melts down into a scream of pure rage, ripping through my throat like a roar of some great animal older than time. Taking the long whip like vines into my hands, bleeding and sanctifying the earth…

I open my eyes.

With one motion, the Nomu’s body is hefted high above, and sent crashing down and dragged. My entire body seizes, popping and shifting thundering through it, the burning turning to stabbing, stretching, as if my very being was pulled by some invisible hand of the father.

The beast darts in, vines tearing through it’s sinewy flesh, stringing it up on my own torture rack! A smile tears my face, my eyes burn with tears and blood, all I want is to tear apart this thing that took my best friend away from me. His smile, his laugh, the way he’d always try… it’s lost to us. Lost to the world. My hands clasp around the cloth, fingers shifting and cracking, muscles forming where I had not much before. Rising, I pull on the vines, sawing through bone and muscle, whipping it around me like a storm of the Lord’s own whip in the temple.

The Nomu is rended to pieces, splayed before us and reforming fast, a blazing black fist meeting Tetsu’s metal guard and ringing against it, with Kendo grabbing it’s free arm and my vines retracting as I bound towards it. Hand meets head, squeezing, crushing, driving it into the earth as hard as my body would allow, pain crashes through my body as the Nomu counters the damage by grabbing my hair and sending me hurtling through the trees, grinding to a halt and uprooting one.

My entire body is aflame with the most indescribable thing imaginable. The constant pulsing, the burning flames in my chest don’t die, tossing the uprooted tree like a javelin with a loud roaring scream ripping from the throat of the beast, in a few bounds I am closing the distance between us, my vines shredding it into flayed nothing, over and over, tears and blood mixing.

“Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance, for thy possession the ends of the earth…” snarling, marching towards the Nomu with Tetsu and Kendo knocked out on either side, “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron…” I take up a shred of Tetsu’s metal shell.

“Thou shalt dash them into pieces like a potter’s vessel…” lurching, burning, tears and blood a mixing slurry of mourning. My best friend, my guiding light, my support and anchor. Renaru’s life was snuffed out by this… thing.

Marching forward with my sword of Tetsu’s making, marching ever onward with my dearest friend’s earnest love in my mind, I continue.

“Be wise now therefore ye kings, be admonished ye judges of the Earth… serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling, kiss the son lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way…” I bring it down hard on it’s head.

“Though his wrath…”

Stab.

Stab.

“Be kindled…”

Stab.

Stab.

Blood bathing me, baptizing me in some dark red tide, birthing me in some new, mad rush. A mad, mad drum, chanting, my very soul screaming with my vines stabbing and binding.

“But a little!” I hiss, the sinews tear, the brain mangles, the blood cakes every inch of my body, and I throw my head back. Arms spread wide. The warm comfort of rapture overtakes me, the thrill of it all is over, and now I let myself breathe, let myself be overcome.

“It is finished, oh lord god… It is finished, my dear Renaru…” falling to my knees, I surrender myself, no, prostrate myself before the sin I have committed. My vines dull, my eyes heavier than the sins of the world close.

Darkness overtakes all.