I Was Not Afraid to Die | Obsession

Heavy steps kicked sand aside and crunched debris beneath the black boots of Obsession. From the ground he could feel the chaos in the air, almost palpable against his skin as the sounds of blazing fires and beastly shrieks and shouts shot out from the shadows that the domes light created. It was magnificent to see such a bright place devolve into a grim battlefield. In the sky everything had seemed so quiet by comparison, peaceful almost as the snaking strip of fire devoured everything that fell into it. From the blood shed and the charred remains of the corpses would rise a new breed of Hollow, one purged of it's weakness and complacency, unafraid to strike out at it's foes, determined to be stronger for that eventful day that such strength would be needed. Yes, those that survived would take the day as a lesson.

The Rebel King's once pristine coat was ragged and frayed, falling about his frame and restricting his movement in a barely recognizable mess.  With his free hand, and with much pain, he tore the garment from his body and allowed the swirling sands of the desert to ravage his open wounds. It was only then, as he released the coat and fed the pain of the sands bites to his determination, that he realized his body's limitations would be his downfall. There was much and more the former King could endure, had endured, but there was a limit to his resilience and it was better to face the challenges ahead at full strength than with half of his face missing, his back torn to shreds and a gaping hole in his forearm.

But where could could he go to fix those problems? Las Noches had no healer, not since Takua the traitor-

Mid-thought, he stopped himself. Erasmus was a traitor now too after all, to continue to call Takua by that name would be an open invitation for ridicule when the two finally met on the battlefield once again -- a scene that Erasmus intended to delay as long as he needed to. Their next fight had a place and a time and he wouldn't let it happen until then. But what fresh new moniker would he attach to the man then? Coward seemed fitting. Too afraid of his own nature to stomach being around those of his own kind. Too frightened to even try to make a difference.

Just as Obsession craned his head, scanning for a place to go for medical assistance a slow piercing wail of a howl ran him through. Hearing it was impossible over the din of flames and hum of voices, but he felt it and that was a better sense than any his ears could have received. A woeful hole in his chest throbbed, expanded and made itself known like a black hole that sucked everything else about him into itself. A terrible longing contorted his face into a pained expression of loss. These were not his feelings, he knew. They were the emotions of his child shared through the bond that kept them connected even when they were further apart -yet closer- than they had ever been.

Then he remembered what Xiaobei had done to the fake Rania in the throne room. She'd only touched her and her wounds began to shape themselves over one another, as if they hadn't even been there.

Obsession didn't need the golden light of her cero to know that she was near, that she was searching for him, but he did need it to gauge how much time he had to prepare.

It was close, behind a tower that housed Numeros not a quarter of a mile away.

Not much time. She'd find him quickly.

Wrenching his limbs this way and that Obsession curled his body into as many different positions as he could manage, opening the lightly scabbed wounds and forcing them to bleed freely once again. Sharp grunts and snarling yelps sounded out some of the larger injuries. If she found him well enough to move she'd want answers and that would waste time. She had to heal him right away. He threw himself down into the sand, sprawled on his back so that the blood from his most numerous wounds bled and stained the off-white grains beneath him. Then he lay his head back, closed his eyes and regulated his breathing until it was weak and shallow as he dispatched a faint call through their connection.

Xiaobei.

Please.

Help me.

[Words: 753][Total Words: 753]
[This full thread GP claim thing is gonna take some getting used to.]

Her throat felt raw, her flesh too tight, stretched like a drum skin across her heavy bones. Xiaobei knew, though, knew deep inside that what she was doing was wrong. That what she was feeling was wrong. Abba, no, the King, he would only be mad at her for her desolation. He would stare at her with those burning eyes, cutting the heart from her body with his searing disappointment. She had to be strong. Strong enough to find him. Strong enough to save him. To be whatever he needed. Because Abba had no one else, and she had only him. It was more than just the facts of life, it was their fate, two intertwined souls. He did all of this for her, he had said so, and so she lived her life for him. That was what it meant to be Obsession's daughter.

Snarling through the pain, as a stream of nearby energy bowled across her dip in the sand, biting and cutting and piercing unprotected flesh, Xiaobei got to her feet with a dogged determination. She was not weak! She would not sit here and whine about her loss. Abba needed her, she could feel it. And so she would prove to him, by finding him, by saving him, by being exactly what he required. Then, then maybe he would stop feeling so terribly broken if only she could fill that hole in his soul.

In that moment, her keen senses picked up a trail of blood. More psychic than physical, a ribbon of scent that came on a puff of wind, her chest writhing as the smell pervaded the air. Abba. His call hit her like a sledgehammer, sinking needles in deep, tugging and tugging so that she knew precisely where to go.

Xiaobei didn't even have to look. Their soul bond leading her through the darkness and the howling confusion. Racing, stretching, pushing for one last ounce of speed, she tumbled and raved onto the scene. Falling to her knees at the side of her toppled king. Eyes wide at the damage, suddenly connecting some of that phantom pain to true injuries, Xiaobei hissed and snapped her teeth at nothing. Who would dare hurt her Abba like this? WHO? And how was it even possible? To do this to the King? The strongest being in existence? Her Abba?

Without thought, without even the slightest pause for the gravity of the injuries, Xiaobei pressed her cheek against her Father's bloodied face. The lightest touch, a sinking feeling, as she slipped beneath his skin and her love bloomed into the emptiness. Almost immediately the healing began, her regenerative abilities synching up to his body as she poured more and more energy into her Abba. Hands clutched and scrabbled at his shoulders, pooling his head gently in her lap. Fingers brushed away tangled hair, stroking the seared flesh of his face as it began to knit back together.

Fatigue swamped her senses, for Xiaobei had never attempted a healing of this magnitude. But love spurred her onward, eyes gritty with focus as she wrapped the King up in every last bit of her passion. Wave after wave of reiryoku soothing his ills, smoothing away injuries and rebuilding what was lost or too battered to function.

Panting, feeble from the amazing expenditure, she grit her teeth and continued. This was her Abba! How could she feel tired from that? Even if she had to give everything, every last ounce of herself, she would do it! Because he was Abba, and she was Xiaobei. And that was what they were!

The beast howled a warning chime, and she jerked inadvertently, the link severed, only aware just then of how much power she had spent. Bone-deep exhaustion pulled her into a coma-like darkness, but Xiaobei refused to budge. To give in. Clawing towards the light, she rested against her Abba's chest.

“My King, are you... are you alright?”

Abba, Abba, Abba! Daddy, please! Abba! I need you to be alright!


WC: 670 | Total WC: 1104 (I guess that's how I'll do it?)

It wasn't long before a bundle of emotions came sprawling through the sands toward him. Fear. Concern. Anger. Hatred. Joy. Her feline hiss rang through his skull clear as day but he made no motion to indicate that he was aware of her presence, only repeated the spiritual message, like an SOS signal set to loop in the absence of those needing rescue. He could feel the labored gusts of her breath as she leaned down to rest her cheek against his, even that small physical connection gave him a modicum of strength, as if his soul could feel such a tiny piece of itself, detached for so long, so close. She was warm. Or was he cold? He couldn't tell anymore.

Already he felt the sting subsiding, the aches of his recent bruises slowly ebbing away. Granules of sand were pushed from his body as part of the healing process and yet even that searing pain vanished in an instant. As she picked his head up into her lap he was sure to remain limp, breathing regularly only when the majority of the damage had been repaired. A quiet awe overtook his mind as he marveled at what his daughter was capable of doing. Back in the throne room there hadn't been enough room to really consider it, his mind had been so flushed with fury, but now? His daughter, his own flesh and blood, was the only Hollow in history capable of regenerating the flesh of others. Not even Takua had reached such a feat without some form of technological wizardry and yet here his child was doing it with nothing but the soul she was born with. On top of all the rage, climbing over the macabre determination and the acceptance that his path required there was a beacon of pride rising high and strong.

As the regeneration continued that pride expanded and Erasmus became unsure whether it had anything to do with his daughter anymore, it slowly crawled over the emotions that he'd fixed in place, all of them conglomerating into the emotion of love and he lost himself in disturbed tranquility, feeling almost as if he had fallen asleep. A floating sensation, as if he were suspended in water, calmed him and the ripples of worry and fright only served to add to the pool of love and rock him gently into a deeper trance. There he saw the source of this overpowering feeling, The Sight granting him glimpses into memories and thoughts that belonged to his child, all of them centered around him. All of them. In the face of such happy memories Erasmus frowned, or his consciousness took on a state that could be interpreted as frowning. 

It was clear to him now that this was Xiaobei's soul and not his own. By comparison his very flesh felt like a coat made of maggots and rotten meat, but his frown had wilted his face for another reason.

There really was nothing else in Xiaobei's world but him. It was easy to sympathize, as there was nothing in his but her. But that was the problem. He knew what it was like to have only one precious thing and it wasn't as pleasant as it sounded. Living every day in fear that it would be taken away, that you'd avert your eyes for just a second and it would be taken from you. Then what? If you didn't have that thing then you had nothing and it was excruciating to imagine what kind of fate that would be. And the more you imagined the less you wanted the imagination to become reality. The maddening paranoia that it brought. The obsession. 

That was not a fate that Erasmus wanted for his little girl.

There was still hope, it was there on the fringes of the sea of love, those memories that contained people that were not him. She could still love others, her soul hadn't yet been corrupted as his had. But as long as he existed there was no room for them, his very presence in her heart ensured that she would meet the same fate as her father. He simply took up too much space. He could never regret ever meeting the little girl called Liora, but right then he was morbidly remorseful for all of the times he'd pushed her, forced her to obey, all of the times he'd injected himself into a life that wasn't his. As a father he should have been there when she needed him, instead he was there regardless of need, there because he was afraid of losing her, of being subjected to having nothing. It all came full circle.

He was the problem.

He had always been the problem.

But it was too late to go back and apply bandages to the cuts, the limb had festered. It had to be removed.

Good thing he was already on the path of removal anyway.

Abruptly the connection was severed and Obsessions eyes flicked open, dilated pupils shrinking down to severe pin pricks beneath the bright sky of the dome. Purpose had returned to him and blazed hotter than it had before beneath his chest. Raising his head from it's dent in the sand he peered down at his daughter. Against his bare chest she rested, barely conscious as the tears slipped through her mask, down her cheek, over the ridge of her nose. She muttered idle words in her sleep, wasting wind on concern for him. How could he have caused such a wonderful child so much pain simply by loving her? At what point had the love turned into such a force for destruction? When he ate her? When Tova's cero struck her? When he turned her into a Hollow? When he found Liora? Or was it before even that? Or had his love always been such an acidic compound and he some kind of monster cursed by fate to destroy everything he cared about?

"Good girl." He muttered sadly, thinking her to have fallen asleep due to the fatigue of healing such deep wounds. He slipped as gently as he could from beneath her, grasping the hilt of his sword as he did so and placing a palm fondly upon her head, stroking the spiny bristles of her hair. "I couldn't be any prouder of you, sweet heart." 

When he was free from her grasp and able to move again he stood, studied the girl whom just a few short years ago was a tiny little thing he'd cradled in his arms, and then turned to continue his mission.

[Words: 1104][Total: 1857]

Xiaobei floated, cosseted by thick layers of faith and love and acceptance. She felt the emotion so deeply that her very body seemed to thrum with it, each molecule, each particle of reishi, composed at its very nucleus by that love. And sustained by it as well. Through her exhaustion she felt triumphant. This was what she lived for. Her Abba. Doing right by him. Being there for him when he needed her.

The glorious relief became a prickle, and then more of a burning sensation as she felt her Abba pull away. Xiaobei had expected it, known it was coming, but it felt like being born all over again. That precious link shattering as her heart became her own once more. She found that she did not like this sensation. Being whole and separate. Being apart.

For a single moment he had held her back, his soul reconnecting with hers and their bond reformed. But then it had ended, a spark in the night, and now her Abba was retreating once more. She could feel the ripple of emotions, the shift of his thoughts. There was love there, she knew it. But something else too, something deeper and more driving, something that made her whimper and feel cold to her very core.

Shivering, skin sensitive to the air, Xiaobei froze as Obsession pat her head so very gently she could almost pretend the months of disdain had been a dream. Leaning into the caress, purring from the center of her being, she floated there on the cusp of awareness. Blissful in her lack of needs.

And then the contact broke and she could feel him moving away. Could feel his determination and the sudden frigid emptiness along their soul link. It wasn't gone, just... remote. Removed. As if he had placed a wall up all of the sudden, pushing her to the side and away from that love she had been basking in. Shuddering all the harder, muscle twitching and contorting as if even her body didn't know what shape to take, Xiaobei flung herself to her knees and stared at the King's retreating form.

A desperate entreaty filled up her chest, pressing like a balloon until she was about to burst. She needed him. Neededneededneededneeded. But Xiaobei didn't want to cry to her Abba, she had to be powerful, like him. Ready to do what was necessary. His turned back, it wasn't a sign of disapproval, it was just that there was a greater need right now. Whining in the back of her throat, Xiaobei's quills rippled and puffed up and out, her eyes unblinking.

“Abba!” The sound was sharp, a desolate echo in the middle of a war zone.

“Wait! I need to ask you something.” Her heart beat, once, twice, thrice, and suddenly he paused. She went limp, unable to look away, unable to even breath in case he just kept on walking. Suddenly it was imperative that she talk to him, that she explain. Get him to understand what was going on. That he needed her just as much as she needed him. That she wasn't worthless anymore. She could be useful to him. She could! That was why Xiaobei had been training so hard, eating so much, trying to learn and grow and understand. It was all for him, so he would take her back. And love her again. And look at her with pride and let her walk at his side.

That was all that she wanted. The only thing she needed.

To be with Abba, forever. Hadn't they promised that? Wasn't that the promise of her soul? The very reason for her existence?

“Where, where are you going? Let me come with you! I'll be good. I'll do whatever you need me to do. I'll be strong, I promise!”

WC: 637 | Total WC: 1741