Chains and Bones

Sedori stood within the endless sea of moonlit sand. He held the dagger in his trembling hand, blood soaking his skin. He stared blankly at the corpses laid out at his feet.

"Now, as I am portrayed as the villain, the heroes come to light." He mumbled to himself quietly.

The sand became soaked in blood, being turned to a shade of dark red, much like wine. As Sedori stated down at Darius and Inari's corpses, their blood began to spread out and reach his foot.

*THUNK*

The dagger fell from his fingers as his body grew numb. The blade sank, point first, into the bloody sand.

"Have I done the right thing.. Mato.. Nathan.. Lyra... Desrian... Evelyn.. did I really do the right thing...?" Sedori echoed to himself, "please.. someone tell me... I don't know what to do anymore.."

Then he crumbled, his knees sinking into the blood soaked sand.

"Am I doing what's right..?" He asked himself again.. "or am I the villain here..?"

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Inari felt... lost.. but not the kind of lost that you would think. It was an indescribable sense of losing one self, of losing your sense of clarity, your sense of solidity. She felt like she had been torn to shreds, physically, mentally, and spiritually. She felt wrong. She couldn't think straight, she felt confused, and her body was numb, in pain, and cold but also burning all at the same time.

It was a terrible feeling.. it was like she was going through every possible kind of torture all at once. She, in those few moments that felt like a thousand years, felt every possible kind of pain imaginable.

And then a new sensation came over her. She felt like her whole body ceased to feel, her mind ceased thought, and her soul ceased to exist. A moment later all of the feelings she once had in life came rushing back to her, the feeling of having a physical body and clear thoughts.. but her soul.. it still felt torn.

Then her eyes fluttered open.

For a long moment she just lay on the cold hard ground. She stared blankly up at the ceiling, it was rough and made from black stone that was uneven. Why did these halls seem so familiar to her? A harsh red light cast shadows dancing across the walls. The sound of faintly crackling flames softly whispered into her ears.

She lay there, unable to think of anything or feel anything for a long time. What she had just experienced had traumatized her, and now that she could feel normally again, her mind and body repaired, she just simply felt numb. Maybe numb wasn't there right word. More accurately, she was overwhelmed and in shock from what she had just gone through. She felt so many things in such a short duration of time.. but was time even a concept she could understand anymore after that? How long had she been in that state..? That place..? An hour? A day? A year? A hundred years? Or little more than a mere moment? Those kinds of thoughts don't come to mind, they are simply ignored or lost in the sense of intolerable pain. Not only that, but how could she have even understood or think of how much time she had been there? After all, she couldn't even form a single complete strand of thought.

As her mind slowly began to wake up, coming out of shock, she began to remember things. She began to remember who she was, what she'd been through, she remembered Akuro and Darius and Onoma, she remembered being killed. Hen she realized that the state she had been in was what it felt like to have your soul shattered.

She began to wonder about something else. If she had been a mortal and her soul had been shattered.. how was she alive? Didn't you just cease existing when your soul is shattered?

As her body too came to be able to actually understand what it was feeling, coming out of its numbness and shock, she could feel something cold and hard weighing her down.

She slowly lifted her hand, all of her movements seemingly slowed and weighed down. Her hand lay then on something that was wrapped about her chest.

Chains.

Then she lived her head and looked down at herself. Her eyes widened. She was wrapped in chains and a black kimono. On her forearms were... were those bones? What seemed like a plate of bones covered her arms, much like an armor plate, but it was a part of her body. That's when she realized, no, remembered, what happened when your soul is shattered.

She was a demon.

She shot upright, suddenly filled with vigor and adrenaline. She felt her face. For the most part it was normal... then she felt four small bone horns atop her head like a crown. She lowered her quivering hands away from her face. At the end  of each finger was a sharp bone talon.

Trembling and unable to comprehend the state she was in, she tucked her knees to her chest and hid her face in her arms. She wanted to cry.. but no tears came out.

"Inari?" Came a voice in her mind.

She looked up suddenly, looked around her. She was in a small cave, torches of crimson flame lighting the halls that winded and turned on and on out of sight.

"Who is that..?" Inari asked meekly.

"Inari, it's me, Nathan. Thank god.. you can hear me again."

"Nathan?" Inari asked, "how am I able to.?"

"When you were turned into a mortal I was no longer able to communicate with you, but I could see what was happening. I'm sorry you had to go through that sorrow.. that pain.." Nathan spoke, his voice soft and kind. "I wish I could've helped you."

"It.. it's fine. But.. how am I a demon..? Why.."

"You are in shock. Otherwise I imagine you'd figure it out yourself. It's quite obvious. There were only two ways you could have gotten your powers back; get them from a god as you did before. Or become a demon."

Inari's eyes widened as eh remembered her throat being slit. Her hand unconsciously raised to her neck.

"Now that you are a demon, you have your abilities back, and you'll be harder to kill... but... there will be changes, as you have already seen. But not just physically. There will be changes in your aura. It'll be darker. Your abilities themselves may change as well, to a degree, but that doesn't mean they are weaker. If anything they are stronger now."

"So that's why.. that's why Sedori did all that.." Inari said softly. "He really was trying to help us.. the only way he could.."

"Yes. That's also why he could use his powers again when he was a demon, because when he came back to life he was no longer cursed form the God Slayer. Affects of reality bending are also much like curses."

Inari looked down at herself. The chains about her body...

Her features had changed a lot now. She had silver eyes now rather than green and her hair was pitch black instead of red. Her skin was more pale than before and black markings almost like claw marks were across her left eye. Similar markings covered her throat where she'd been cut before. She wore a black kimono with silver stitching while the chains wrapped over her breast and across a shoulder, the ends hanging down at her back.

"If you want to see what I mean when I say your aura has changed as well, summon Makane, if that's even its name anymore." Nathan spoke.

Inari thought for a moment, then held out her hand. She was relived to feel, once again, the sense of power that surged through her body. She had aura again, and she could manipulate it. Then her heart stopped. Her aura wasn't white anymore. It was black.

"It.. it's like Akuro's aura.." she said.

"The demonic royal mark." Nathan said. "Black aura is the mark of royalty amongst demons."

Inari's hand began to be covered in black, coiling markings while the bones attached to her forearms began to rise from her flesh and swirl about in a cyclone of black aura before a skeleton fox with a ghastly black phantom body surrounding the bone structure sat before her, its silver eyes staring hollowly at her.

"....Makane..?" Inari asked, her voice weak.

"Nay. I am not Makane, as you presumed me to be. I am a dark Kitsune, or, properly named, a Nogitsune." The fox spoke as its form became less wavy and more solid, though it was still transparent. "My name is Koiyga."

The fox spirit, Koiyga, was the dark version of a kitsune. An "evil" Kitsune, which is called a Nogitsune. The spirit's voice was masculine, so Inari guessed he was male.

"Wait.. so.. what happened to Makane?" Inari asked.

"She detached from you and is now back in her own realm. She is fine. Sadly."

"Sadly? Are you saying you wanted her dead..?" Inari asked, taken aback.

"I am a Nogistune, what do you expect?" Koiyga said. "Now why did you summon me?"

"I.. I was just trying to see how my abilities have changed.." Inari responded.

"Hmph. Figure it out yourself." The fox said, then his body swirled and Koiyga's aura and bones returned to Inari as they had been before.

"He's kind of an asshole.." Inari said. "I miss Makane.."

"As he said, he's a Nogitsune." Nathan spoke, "what do you expect. Also, you have your peers back now. So.. what do you wanna do now? Go back to Fort Arashi? Find Akuro?"

Inari thought for a moment, then her eyes widened.

"Wait, where is Darius?"