Eternal Engine: Oni

The air is still… cold clings to it, and there’s a feint touch of dampness to it. My breathing is steady, my mind at ease. All things around me slow, and as I inch my left foot forward, I can feel and anticipate every action and reaction that shall soon take place within but the blink of an eye.

My blade is pure, my intentions of equal quality, but soon both are soiled with blood. Three of them surround me, and their whispers sound like death. Their feet cause life to spring fourth, but their claws reap the earth of all things. Metal clangs in the night, they harvest nothing, and I take from them the air that no longer burns in their lungs.

Everything spins, I am not where I should be, nor is the earth I stand upon what it should be. I feel my way past everything, if I still had eyes I would survey this new and strange place, but I can not. They were taken from me, and the only reminder I carry is the large gash across my face. I see things now, but not as I should. Lines trace the air and I grasp at them, feeling reverberations and the tone of the air around me. I taste everything, and smell the death that lingers around me at all times.

Rotting flesh fills the air.

A ring, it spins, never backwards.

Life stood once, proud and moving and changing constantly. Children came, people were happy, but the death that lingered in the center of the ring could not be contained. Like a plague it spread, and foolishly I stood outside, thinking that I could defend such a place, even while sightless.

Things that have taken place can not be undone, but… why do I feel as though this has happened at some other time, in some other place?

BLADES AND SCREAMING AND BLOOD LIKE A WATERFALL!

It should have been worse, my eyes were but a token, now I am as cursed as I am blessed.

She stole them, took them back to the tree in the middle of the ring. My sight gone, and now all I can see are the outlines and feint traces of the demons that haunt me. I come to the ring, a place that is meant to harbor life, and within there is nothing but screaming.

I can see their forms as though it is engraved in my mind. Claws and teeth and misty bodies that puncture the souls of the pure… invading and destroying, chewing and crushing them all.

I can hear the burning that surrounds the homes, the peace and tranquility has been replaced with chaos and death. The people I protected I must now destroy. Screaming and horrible things emerge from their necks and arms and torsos. Scratching legs like a curious insect reach out as teeth look for anything to consume. The fog these creatures shroud their selves in is parted only by my blade. It is a fitting match, as it is now as tainted as they are.

Ashen things that walk and sunder all life just by touch, as graceful as the setting sun and as illuminated as the moon… their hearts pound furiously outside of their forms, their calls ring of dying children, begging for death to finally come. My ears burn as their tongueless mouths spit lies and sin at me, I sunder them into nothing, but even in death they mock me.

I protected these people, now they are but a harvest of death that I reap. I can not erase the scars of the past, so furiously I try to stop any more from ruining the future. My body is just an instrument, a functional form with a singular task.

I wind my way through the ring. Past the burning and death I look back to see the smoke darken the sky as the screams persist ceaselessly. There are no tears for me to shed, I did what I could. The smoldering bodies still reach and claw at anything they can. New legs and arms start to sprout from the corpses of the recently slain, but it is of no concern. I look now to the doorway before me, the iron bars locked in place as they always have been. No one ever ventures into the graveyard, because the souls there shall find no rest.

From one nightmare I enter another. The demonic figures behind me retreat and cower at this place, the mausoleum that I myself have never even stepped into.

RING OF DESOLATION, A THOUSAND STONES MARK NOTHINGNESS.

I came here once, inside this ring was life. People were thriving, living, even having children. All the horror I was subjected to in the Waking World vanished here. I stood before these people as a protector. Then one day, she came to me.

Striking without cause or reason, she stole my eyes away, and soon I was surrounded by the screaming of the children within the walls. Tracing the walls, my hands could not feel the flowers and vines that grew; now only wilted dead leaves remained. My cause, my duty, I failed everyone.

The day I arrived I could smell flowers blooming, I could hear laughter. I had traveled so far and seen so many things; I had dealt with the horrors of the world for so long. As I awoke I would wander without cause, and as I slept I would see a beach, and nothing more…

She smiled as she lifted my chin up, a gaze of malice and devotion, and it was the last thing I ever saw. A gash across my face, and my sight was stolen from me. Brought to my knees and scared so badly only to be spared and continue my horrid life. A curse…

SOULS OF FIRE AND WIND, A GATEWAY TO ALL THAT THE EYES CANNOT FOCUS UPON!

My eyes were gone… but still I could see… I felt the echoes of sound with my fingers, and my ears focused. Images came into my mind, and I could sense the world around me as a new image. Lines traced into the air reverberating and pulsing, like an image with brilliant lines swimming through a dark and hazy sky. I could see the world around me… but the things within it had changed. My ears were burdened with the suffering of those I had failed. When I felt my way into the ring, I could see with incredible focus the death that was wrought. The older ones walked around shambling in an unending death, their bodies covered in flames that licked at their flesh. The children were covered in fire; their cries bled into the night and cut the sky like a dagger.

I am here now… before the gates, the center of the ring before me. Demons cower here and dare not question the contents of the mausoleum. A tower rests in the middle…

CLIFFS AND WATER, THE TIDE WASHES INTO YOUR MIND AND BODY.

This is no tower… The stones mark the circle in some strange ornate manor. Like a symbol built around what sits in the middle of this ring. Figures traced with broken stones tell a circular story, but it has no end, it just repeats endlessly.

The tree has branches, but no leaves. Its bark and trunk are made of twisted and broken metal, scraps stretch out into the sky as shadows linger around it, casting out forms of faceless creatures with wide mouths all too eager to devour.

Their hearts are not dark ones, because there is no heart within them. No feeling of guilt or remorse, no feeling of elation as they stalk their prey. There are only calculated well timed movements in step with my own.

Hunger, it has driven all things here… a dire need to consume and feed. The tree starts to crumble and bow its branches before my feet. Images are placed into my mind like some distant slide show illuminating the details of another life, but I’m placed into them with such clarity that it astounds me.

There is a child… and he greaves in silence. His home burns, his friends are gone, and he holds a dying woman in his arms. She whispers to him, and tells him that all will be fine. It is a fine gesture, but it is still a lie. He could not protect his self or his mother, and his mind fractured. Half of him went in one direction; the other went the opposite way. Both found each other, and both crafted a paradise.

But… what is a paradise if the people know nothing of suffering? In order for joy to spring fourth, all must know great sacrifice. This child’s mind grew pleased as it devised a way to structure both things into being.

Two circles in the sand, looping together and crafted with fine walls. Flowers grow on one wall, dead leaves cover the other. Angels in one, demons in the other, the child had understood things with a sick clarity, and he brought devastation and life into focus. He presented both things to the sea, and let it willingly eat them. A gesture he would laugh to his self.

I am no gesture…

From this place my sight has been burned from me, from this place my wife has been taken from me, and from this place I have lost my family. I am no gesture…

From this place I burn. I understand, and I shall rain chaos. The shadows in the tree twist and bend the metal; it screams into the night and makes my ears bleed sticky black ooze. A female face emerges from the tree, and the branches hand me a bottle.

IT ENDS SOON, BUT YOU MUST BE READY.

The child laughs in a mocking tone, thinking of his gift and what it shall bring him, I think only of breaking free of this place and how delicious my revenge shall be. The branches drop the bottle at my feet; Inside of it are my eyes. I devour them.

My body’s burn, hands erupt into a green flame and the sockets in my face melt and let me gaze upon the world again. I am something new, I am broken, but I am right. My skin stretches and tears and reveals the inferno that is at my core. My innards twist and wither, and I vomit blood and hair. I cover my bleeding form as the stones around the tree melt away, and I see the branches drop one final thing before my clawed feet.

I take the mask and place it where my face used to be…

I am the end…