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 Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:58 pm
 Ryuichi Cave
Among the world's most feared and well-known summons, the Snakes of RyΕ«chi Cave have a history longer than any scroll could practically document, and an ego to match. Ages upon ages of conflict, both within their territory and without, has left them with few parallels beyond the Toads of Mt. MyΕboku. They bow their heads to no one, save the elder snake Kei who presides over their territory's denizens, summoners included. Even the elder rarely remains unchallenged, though his brutal responses to dissent have served to effectively subdue many a would be usurper before an attempt is made. Contract signers will often find their influence less substantial than they'd hoped, with only exceptionally skilled and powerful shinobi, whom the snakes cannot overpower, truly enjoying a level, but somewhat cool, relationship. A summoner suited to the snakes will find a way to take advantage of their pride, using it to play the serpents into a false sense of security while they build a level of skill that makes them equally as formidable. Despite the tall task involved in gaining the summons' help, those with access to the Snakes have at their fingertips a formidable array of fighters. The Cave is the size of an entire hidden village, and for good reason as Hiryur and Ginda are not the only massive snakes who make this place their home, just the only ones who are summoned. Light only reaches to the top level: beyond that luminescence does only so much. Fighting for the snakes to respect you often requires surviving the hordes brutal tests as well as respecting and placating them all with promises and shows of strength.
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2019 12:17 am
 Zahara
Half-Blood Hyuuga
... I am the Serpent ...
It had been days since the war, the cavern home to the serpentine denizens left the lone human be in this land. The matron, Ginda, called back her would be summoner after the war concluded for the better. Zahara had relentlessly attacked his quarry, fueled by the blood lust of his old self and the parasitic relationship he had with his sentient sword. So much so, he sustained wounds from opponents shortly before he dispatched them atop of the drain his sword imposed upon himself. His end of the bargain was held, a hundred count and he passed out in the middle of battle, only saved by a reverse summoning by the snakes that were brought into the fight. Now he lain in a small cave, wounds bandaged and he remained unconscious while the Samehade lain close by as well, chittering softly as it took in the ambient chakra around it.
In the depths of his consciousness... Zahara was met with his inner world once again.
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2019 1:07 pm
Quiet was the cave, the ambient noise of other snakes deeper within echoed with scale against stone. He awakened for a moment as pain shot through his body, groaning against the increased struggle as the body protested against his efforts to move. "I...must retu...rn.. To.. the leaf..." As he spoke, his throat was afire while his voice broke and back to the straw mat he slumped with a exasperated sigh. Zahara coughed as he breathed in with a shudder, more pain as he sprawled where he lay, head pounding with a constant pressure on his temples, eyes burning with needle like pain as he so much as open his eyes. "K..Kassan...dra.." He said as his head hit the straw lined mat as he choked up for a moment, his eyes stinging with the salt of tear as he held a single hand over his face and gritted his teeth, holding back his emotion.
Guilt on his failure now started to weigh on him of recent losses as he haven't had any time to reflect on everything. He lost himself for a long moment in the same emotion he was fighting back and then the scuttle of something heavy moved, scale against dirt and stone with the signature "Gikikii" chirps as the foreign touch of the sharkskin's bandaged blade touched his shoulder its chirps quiet, empathetic even. Zahara stopped with a deep inhale, a glance to the sentient blade as he coughed, pain twinging his wounds again. "Y..ou're more a..ware than I belie--" Zahara breathed out but couldn't finish as the sense of fatigue washed over him and the only sound he remembered before slumber was chirping of this strange blade, deep into a dream as the blaze of the sharingan eyes opened in his mind's eye... Kya, the Serpent Caller before himself.
"When in motion, you must MOVE Zahara! Through Focus comes CLARITY." < Continued next post >
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Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2019 8:47 pm
A great rift spand in a sea of greys, voices echoing in the far off distance as sleep clutched as a vice. It was endless, no tangible structure to the realm or discernable form other than a constant rolling abyss of grey shadows and the voices of haunting past reverberating, muffled and disembodied. Light as a feather, yet stiff and heavy as rock, floating through the empty limbo. No body was possessed in this state except as a disembodied soul lost. It was Zahara as he drifted into the slumber, his curse of emotion weighing heavily.
"You fool!" a voice shouted out, clearer than the rest. "A disgrace to this family you are, filthy half blood." The heavy feeling sank in deeper as the sea of shadow darkened, thunder rumbling as the blazing azure eyes of Kya's mangekyo sharingan manifested now as the sea of grey turned to a deep sea of darkness. Thunder rumbled more as the voices of the past resurged more as the phantom pain gripped the soul, the metaphysical pain of being choked washed over it. "Focus, Zahara!" the thundering sound of Kya's distorted voice boomed as thunder as lightning cracked through the sea with flotsam of terrain flowing around them. The ruins of Old Konoha and Uzushiogakure. "Through it, comes Clarity!" the voice reaffirmed with rumbling booms with a lance of pain tightening around a disembodied neck, thoughts scattering and emotion rampant.
Zahara snapped his eyes open as he roared out in pained induced rage as he struggled as his soul-self materialized in the dreamscape. Choking against the phantom hand, the phantoms taunted him more. "You've stood against reform in the Leaf. I told you to not let those loyalties betray the family." The voice... of his uncle rung out as he stared at the eyes of his deceased mentor.
"You told me this would bring peace! That the burden would be gone!" Zahara shouted, he coughed as tears flowed now, still weightless yet locked by the burdens. "I did as what you all asked! I did it all and then some, lost everything! Everything fell apart and you even went and died on me." He began to lose feeling in the body again as he started to fade back to a intangible form. His left arm was completely gone and he was released from the grip but not before a thundering rumble and another lance of pain in his mind.
He floated there helplessly in the sea, the phantoms whispering now as the faces of the dead appeared before him. Zahara held back his emotion as best he could. The most recent face showed was the elder Hyuuga, the woman who was latest to die because of him meddling in the affairs not for him. Another was the face of the snake man, jet black scales and one who was slain by Ginda. Kya and Chie were among others, and then the two he murdered that very night that started his downward spiral. Then his mother and father as well drifted into view, his father was of ashen hair and pale eyes of the hyuuga while his mother, raven haired and amber eyes of her yamanaka heritage. Guilt, settled in his stomach but the faces faded and instead the terrain shifted as it was all torn and shifted like smoke.
He stood now, the same scheme of grey and endless sea of sand and dunes stretched across the horizon. A single moon hung in the sky, silver and vacant of detail as Zahara looked upon the macabre. Graves and a lonely withered oak in the corner of a fenced in boneyard. Stones with the reliefs of whom they represented filled the graveyard as Zahara walked through it, bare of anything except for a black tattered robe, his left arm still gone. "What..." he began to say as the shadows collected in the grey sandy path he walked as a silhouette formed, his left arm missing as well.
"It is the karmic debt you owe." A voice spoke, this one unfamiliar from all the phantoms that were previously speaking as Zahara blinked... He... Felt more aware, the sense of paralysis was gone and now he stood before this dark figure as the shadows pulled away to reveal a face he had not seen in five years. The assassin sent by his uncle on the eve of his exile from the family and the leaf, the very same man that Zahara killed and lost his original left arm to.
"Face your past sin. You walk a new path and cling to ones crumbled away. Forge anew, or die." The voice whispered in his ear as Zahara looked over his shoulder, expecting to see someone but didn't. Fear crept over him and he shot his glance back to the approaching figure, flames rising from his fist and eyes glazed. Chikari was the man's name, a young man given a task of wetwork only to fall to the prey. Now Zahara stood face to face with his past, shifting his stance with his right arm, fingers extended and together with thumb curled and his dominate side facing his foe as he held his opposite arm back useless as it would be.
Fear clutched at his throat as the face of his foe contorted, visions of others flashed before him and the phantom stopped. "What is this...?" Zahara asked himself... the dream starting to feel a little too real at the pressing moment.
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Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 4:42 pm
Blood splattered on the ground, staining the grey sands and stone since the fight had ensued. Everything was bleak grey or a shadow of black and white, the graves of faces he knew scattered all around. Nothing made sense there as he fought the phantom of his past, crippling blows dealt to it. He sustained wounds of his own, cuts along the arm, bruises and swelling from constant returns from his opponent but pain didn't register oddly enough. Yet he continued his assualt, his single fist breaking the phantom's face with a cracked cheek, dislocated jaw and rupturing the eye in its socket even.
It was futile as it didn't put back up much of a fight, only taunting him with the images and quotes of his past. The closest he gotten to a confirmed kill was his fist crushing the phantom's chest where the heart was. Normally a kill but even that wasn't enough as the thing only regenerated any damage dealt and repulsed Zahara away with pulses of chakra that broke the terrain, stone crumbling at its touch and it was the only jutsu the thing did. And only after it was dealt with blows from himself, it was futile to continue and now he was left at the standstill.
Zahara stood there, the rags flowing with a breeze as he looked at the phantom that now held his own image, his face aged beyond his years and crippled. Arm gone, leg prosthetic and one eye, hair greyed and blind in the one good eye. Perplexed, Zahara looked on this creature that was a future vision of himself.
"I see..." He finally said, the phantom was... himself but not. The moon turned red as blood still pooled around from their exchange. Back toward the blood-moon, unnatural chakra plagued his mind to fly into an uncontrolled rage, the memory was stronger now as he could realize what the phantom was as the skin peeled away from its features and the pain lessened.
The phantom was his own guilt, his own self plagued by the malicious energies of the corrupted nature chakra from the blood-moon. It was no wonder his sentient blade sought out Zahara, it reveled in the strange chakra that lingered in him all that long ago. He was made aware of the dreamstate, but the unknowns were of his own consciousness assailing him there.
The voice from before spoke again, echoing as the phantom of himself looked upon Zahara with the red eyes and fanged teeth from just like that night. The same face innocents saw before they died to him, to the corruption within him. The phantom was reacting to how he saw himself this entire time.
"So you realize what it is, it's only up to you now to cleanse it."
Zahara closed his eyes as he touched deep within, reaching out as emotion blanked and the phantom approached, arms outstretched as it had both its limbs now and teeth bared. The bleak desert faded away as did the graves and tombs, the endless abyss started to form back again as a tiny risen mound of earth in a sea of endless water. Lights off in the distance, fire burning anew as Zahara opened his yes and yellowed eyes with narrow slits in place of his pupils shone bright. Foreign chakra swelled in the nightmare as the darker shadow of himself shrieked in agony and Zahara felt the same pain of searing pain over his skin.
But he now stood there as a blazing avatar of chakra, golden energy flowing off his skin stark naked and devoid of the rags. "Forgive me, but this must be done." Zahara said at the phantom as its form now changed to that of his mother, sharing the same agony of pain. He took his right hand as he formed claws of chakra and held it over his chest uncertain at first. Then, he impaled himself in the chest and straight to the heart would be as he accepted the intent.
Both he and the phantom pulsed with chakra and the phantom shrieked in agony as he collapsed to the ground. The phantom dissolved to ash as Zahara's eyes reverted to normal and the golden foreign chakra left him but now the endless sea went from black to a crystal blue. Now his body faded and the consciousness of his awareness faded as the chakra rooted out the corruption once and for all.
The scene faded again and he was left wandering a deep sea once more. "Life is Motion, Zahara. You've saw clarity..." Kya's voice spoke to the disembodied form of the wandering mind. "My god has burdened me with the sight of the truth, now you are burdened with this gift as well. Don't disappoint me, serpent caller."
And now he woke, a deep intake of air and shock as Zahara screamed nearly at the top of his lungs. The sound echoing in the cave he was in as his hands found the snake that been inches away from him as the creature shrieked in surprise, fingers gripped on its throat and Zahara's other hand cocked back with flames and raw chakra flowing from his knuckles. "STAY THE ******** OUT OF MY DREAMS YOU SCALEY b*****d!" He screamed with venom in his intent and he held every fiber of his being wanting to slay the creature.
"M-Master! P-P-PLEASE! W-Wait!" The snake spoke the common tongue as Zahara stopped mid-punch as the chakra still flowed, but instead of his normal red...
Gold. "Y-You're a sage now, Master. I-I am just a soothsayer, a dreamwalker, Master. Mistress Ginda t-told me to go through your dream. B-But that sword m-made it difficult..." Zahara released his grip from the snake as he tossed him aside, carelessly throwing him against the stoney wall as his fury was still unabated. He could feel the room around him and the sense that he didn't have before as he felt...? Felt the ravenous hunger of his sword, his friend really as he glanced at the sharkskin blade in the corner, surface of its body rumbling in... sleep?
The snake coiled around into a ball and looked at the man glowing with the golden senjutsu chakra as he let the chakra fade and deactivated the flow. "M-master?" The snake chirped, tongue flicking out and Zahara smiled.
"...I feel.. refreshed. Anew. Thank you." He said, knowing this snake was responsible for the influenced dreams. "You saw my memories, speaking to me." He said, confident in his suspicions and he looked at the white snake but the creature looked puzzled.
"N-No, master. I only gave visual aid, I cannot see the memory. Just illusion to help those dream." The snake coiled tighter in a ball and flicked its tongue out.
Zahara squinted, confused as he tried to piece it together. "But I... heard Kya, like she was still.." He stopped there and shook his head. "They spoke to me, several times. That wasn't you?"
"No, Sir. She is n-not of this world anymore." It said, increasingly confused.
What the hell? Zahara thought, sitting down on the straw mat as he was even more confused than he was waking up.
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