The Me Of The Past Hates You Of The Present

Yaksha hadn't expected to have company, much less such familiar company. He didn't whirl around, he didn't speak, he didn't so much as react as he sensed the presence of the young, naive arrancar. Rudi moved to embrace Yaksha, and he neither stiffened nor spoke, simply sat there limply, as if waiting patiently for Rudi to release him, so he could continue his trip. He didn't speak for several long moments, even as he felt Rudi frantically sniffing and probing over him, as if testing for wounds. But this was the world of thoughts, and it would be quite hard to ascertain the exact nature of Yaksha's wounds in this moment.

He began down the steps, one at a time, with an almost drunken wobble at first. He needed to keep his focus razor-sharp right now, needed to imagine the permanence of the marble beneath his feet with the same ease at which he imagined his own hand. This was a place purely of purpose, of memory, a world which Yaksha could only hope to trek if he kept his sense of purpose. And purpose was identity. If Yaksha dared put voice to his worries, then they would be. Perhaps in some places, in certain contexts, to voice anxiety was to dilute it; worries shared were halved, spread evenly between all parties. But here and now, to confess to his weakness would be to give into it.

Not to mention that Rudi had come here expecting to see Yaksha. He had a particular image in his mind, and to challenge that image would be to lose whatever tenuous grip he'd managed to build up to now. Rodolfo had proven quite effectively that he would have little interest in cooperating with Yaksha, or allowing his interests to be pursued. And so he just continued downward, keeping his thoughts and desires focused forward. It took him a few minutes to find the right tone of voice, to actually remind himself how to speak to the little, trusting arrancar behind him. Had it been commanding and precise? Mellow and smooth? Shrill and to-the-point? No, none of those felt quite right. It hadn't been anything logical, it had been...a feeling. A feeling Yaksha couldn't quite capture while he walked down these steps. Perhaps there was a word for what he had exuded when first meeting Rudi, but it evaded him at the moment; all he could focus on was each step before him, and the seemingly infinite one spanning behind him. How far he had come, and how much further there was to go.

"I'll be fine, Rudi. Just bear with me. This shouldn't take long at all, and then you can take another nap."

No, that wasn't Yaksha talking at all. At least, not the Yaksha of certainty and poise that he'd been only a few hours ago. But he was too tired, too wounded by this senseless display of violence, this hideous forceful endeavour that had left him drained and doubting. Perhaps it wasn't the right Yaksha, but it was his voice, and he could feel it slipping out from inside of him, to bee whisked away scant inches from his face, and swallowed up by the hungry voice. He could hear faint, fragmented echos of his own words, spoken just below the audible level, manifesting as little more than vibrations. Countless, infinite entities, all trying his voice on for size.

Was this the first time he'd walked this staircase? Had he once been one of those patiently waiting whispers, hoping for that single crystallized moment of doubt? He couldn't remember, and didn't dare try to muse on it at this moment. Faith had a dangerous way of transmuting into reality, this close to the core of his being. What was that phrase? Believe, and you shall see?

Yaksha didn't believe much of anything, at the moment.

Yaksha could only barely appreciate the faint warmth of Rudi's presence. Again, he simply walked as if the naive young arrancar wasn't even present, his expression simply focused on the steps in front of him. The voices around him were growing slightly more fervent with each passing step, seeming to gain additional strength and force. His mind continued to reel, straining against the ironclad certainty of his self; he knew that to consider all of the stakes here, to admit that defeat was even a possibility, would be to admit it to himself. But to ward off a thought once it's been raised as a possibility was a difficulty even he could scarcely maintain. Sweat showed on his brow, his movements growing slower, more precise with each step. Each step brought him deeper and deeper into his self, and it would keep going...until he couldn't go any further.

Until he had reached his own personal breaking point, Yaksha would continue to subject himself to more and more tremendous pressures. Much as one who sank deeper and deeper into the water could feel the increasing pressure, each step seemed to wake another thousand souls, to amplify the crawling sensation of being watched exponentially. But Yaksha needed them all to see, and he needed to send the message clearly, and concisely. Someone had challenged his authority, had dared to step up to his throne, and insist that they could take his place. Or perhaps worse yet, they were simply interested in stripping his self, turning him into a mere figurehead for an entirely new regime. In either case, there was a coup in place, and Yaksha needed to stop it. He needed to crush it under foot, without ever once losing face.

And having a subordinate here was certainly in no way an opportunity for this all to go tits up. No sir, there wasn't a single way he could imagine that accepting aid from someone else would make him look like an incompetent leader. Provoke challenge from countless scores of souls. This was a problem to be solved alone. And Rudi could only truly be one more witness. But Yaksha could put none of this into word, least of all to such a young beast, unable to understand even the most dumbed-down version of what was being told here. He continued to walk in silence, his knuckles whitening, his grip on Rudi's hand turning tight, almost painful. Now each step took him a minute or two to work up his courage to. And still there were so many countless more to be seen.

How many souls had he eaten, in 2500 years? A million? Two? Three? Even if he could cross a hundred fathoms with each step, Yaksha couldn't fathom how many more souls there were to rouse from their fitful rest, before the fateful confrontation. He clenched his jaw, his breathing ragged, fitful, uneven, as he continued further and further down. The psychic assault was now so pronounced he could feel his blood pounding in his head, and his every limb felt like it was made of lead. But this was Yaksha's body, and no one else would hijack it from him.

Finally, he cracked. His foot wavered over the step, his eyelids fluttering, before he finally spoke. It was a mere faint whisper, but it seemed to disperse the shadows and send out its tendrils, as if he were probing the darkness near him. As if his mere words had brought reality into existence, the darkness began to form silhouettes; countless thousands of faceless, shapeless silhouettes, all standing in file, leading down infinitely into the darkness.

"Enough of this. Let him come to me if he insists on obscuring my path."

That was no surrender, right? There was no possible way the words he'd spoken could be construed as weakness, or incapability. No, Yaksha was simply testy, and trying his very best to deal with this incursion with the dignity one would expect of a nobleman. He began to glance across the shapeless, formless entities near him, watching as lights slowly, gently began to flicker across their surfaces. It almost resembled deep-sea fish, trying to draw in their prey. And slowly, before Yaksha's very own eye, each and every one began to brighten, shifting from a formless, empty patch of darkness into a pure white, much like his own shell. And then it all burst forth, each shadow seeming to hollowfy rapidly, forcefully.

As Yaksha could hear footsteps approaching.

Yaksha stood in place, watching the hollowfication of these empty, damned souls with a morbid curiosity; he had come here once or twice before, but this was the first time he'd ever seen them do anything besides simply sit around, watching.  Never before had they even spoken as they had, on his trek down here.  Yaksha had more proof with each passing moment that something very wrong was going on, something beyond a straightforward, mundane rebellion.  And he could think of only a single thing that could have caused this.

As the source of all of this approached, Yaksha's head tilted to the side, just a tiny bit.  There was no fear or anger to be seen there, but from the faint change in his stance, he recognized the approaching hollow quite well.  He had a fairly good memory for faces and names, especially after he'd spent so long getting to know those around him.  There had been precious few hollows Yaksha had eaten on a whim, without knowing anything about them; to him, it was almost a sacrelige, to snuff out their candle without being able to fully fathom the scope of its brilliance.  And this particular hollow had been an especially brilliant one, as Rodolfo would doubtlessly remember.

He resembled, at the very surface, nothing more than a frog; his stomach was bulbous, almost seeming to weave and waddle with each step he made.  The fingers on his hands were slender, tapering off to precise points.  Yaksha knew quite well that those fingers were deceptively strong, each capable of strangling the life out of a creature.  Not only that, but there mere touch had been poison for many weaker hollows; a simple swipe had been enough to lead to a swift death.

But his lower body, and his head, was where the incongruities started to seep in.  The man's head was elongated and flattened, with flat tombstone-like teeth, that resembled a horse's.  His hair was shaved back into a sleak mohawk, one Yaksha could still remember watching him run his hands through fondly when he was particularly excited or pleased.  His lower body ended in two powerful cloven hooves, each dripping with the same toxin as his hands; Yaksha had watched him, several times, quite literally kick the brain out of someone's head.  His heart nearly ached with the memories.

"Salt.  I haven't known you to be the sort to step out from the shadows often.  And you're looking surprisingly well-kept.  It must be an aspect of sentimentality."

"Damn, that's what you're gonna confess to?  Sentimentality?  You bit my goddamn spine out when I wasn't looking, you treasonous snake."

"Farmer and the Viper, Salt. Hospitality and sentimentality are wasted on hollows."

"Which one of us is which, ya think? I know you always loved being called a snake, but...weren't you the one who insisted snakes didn't care about stuff like treason and lying?"

Yaksha met the eyes of the hollow, and once more felt the painful, incredible pangs of regret. Those eyes, still as breathtaking as ever. Each one seemed to resemble a miniature universe, entirely on their own. They were a greenish-brown, and there seemed to be inconsistent streaks of black throughout, giving his gaze an almost cracked sense. But Yaksha knew that each time he blinked, the cracks would be subtly, slightly different. Yaksha had spent several long nights and weeks, staring directly into those eyes, almost able to pretend for a time that he was normal.

Could Yaksha blame Rodolfo for hating him? After he'd destroyed someone as beautiful, as spectacular, as this?

"So. You decided to come down and check on us, when we started making a ruckus. I thought you would. Little too late, though. Rudi whooped your ass what good, and then you finished the job quite nicely. You're dying, Yaksha. You can't possibly get back on your feet and shake this one off. Total thickness burns, across most of your body. Shock. Don't worry, though. We'll take good care of your body, once you're gone."

Yaksha glanced around the area, trying to examine the darkness for any sign of another presence. He peeked and peered, straining to notice every tiny detail...and finally simply settled his gaze on Salt. There was only one option left, then; this wasn't Salt, or at least not truly. This was the Juin, coming to him in a form it knew it could get a reaction from. And that fact hurt him more than it should've. Hadn't he been the one to kill this man, after all? Why would he pick now of all times to regret it?

"Salt. You were always a friend to me. Even now, I can't bring myself to hate you. But you know I only did what I did for your sake, don't you? We both know that there was only one path left for you."

There was a long, pregnant silence. The hollow leaned forward, his hand sliding through his hair; even the gesture brought new flutters of emotion through Yaksha, leaving him trembling. He didn't realize just how badly he'd missed this man until he was right here, in front of him. He'd managed to convince himself that he carried Salt inside of him, in effigy...but this was entirely different.

"Yeah. I remember what happened just fine. I mean, you were the first one to say it. A contract's only as good as the material it's written on. And with the blood on our hands, is it any wonder a handshake agreement would fall to pieces?"

"You would've killed us all to feed your arrogance, Salt. You were the kindest man I ever met in those sands, and you were going to throw us all at Las Noches, until you broke us or them. You had to know that there was a limit to what you could ask of a peer."

"Yeah. Do now. Difference is this time we're not peers. I've got a superpower in my corner, and this time I'm telling you. Roll over and die, so we can do this properly this time. You killed me to save yourself, and then you killed yourself to put me back in the driver's seat. I'd call that a fitting turn of events, don't you? Nice and poetic. So just...let it happen. Won't even hurt much."

Yaksha glanced around, at the countless scores of shapeless, formless, hollows, still undergoing their silent, hideous mutations. And now, as Yaksha glanced at each of them, he felt the fondness and love almost melt and shrivel, as if it were subjected to the heat of the sun. He turned back to Salt, his voice leaden, expressionless this time.

"Whose idea was this?"

"Mine, of course. The Juin's not really smart, as such. But it knows how to hijack others for its purposes. And I can't deny that I was cool with it. After all...what's a better way of getting rid of you than this?"

Salt gestured to either side, with each hand...as if to draw Yaksha's attention back to the thousands upon thousands of copies of him, each standing in perfect line, right beside him.

"This time, I'll have all the manpower I need. You did a damn fine job raising me an army. And this time, you can't just bite my head off. So do yourself a favor? Just accept your death."