Returning Home [PRIVATE]

The sands had turned a dull grey as opposed to a shimmering silver in the Queen’s eyes when she felt she had neared the end of her march. It had been a long, hard walk from Las Noches. She heaved, breathing heavily, but she would not rest now. Not when she was this close. The gazed up a large hill of sand, knowing that just beyond its crest waited her answer; would she find the citadel she’d worked so hard to develop, or would she find a ruin where once the only true home she’d ever known had stood? She collected herself, and began marching hard up the hill. Behind her trailed her three personal servants, the young twins skipping merrily along, the taller older sister with straight hair black as midnight hanging near to her knees, a mere five paces behind. The rest of her company had stayed much further behind; moving a large group was troublesome, but she had no patience. They were on the right track, and they would catch up eventually. The twins skipped past her, reaching the top of the hill first. They paused, gazing out over the hill.

She could wait no longer to return to her home.

The twins turned, their eyes seeming to glow, hints of smiles on their lips. Cybele heard a satisfied ‘hmpf’ from the third girl, still behind her. A smile curled on the Queen’s lips as well. Surely that meant only one thing.

It was difficult to fight back tears as she crested the hill. The hill gave way, falling steep before her and emptying out into a vast, flat plain, and no more than two miles into that plain stood its edge, the Kardiá tou Ákardos, the citadel of shimmering whites and yellows and blues and every color imagineable that was the symbol of her progress in bringing civilization to this world. It took no more than a second to see the abandonment and degredation of the city, but she expected no less. She was merely happy that it still stood; for years she had been almost certain that Aarón had leveled it the instant she’d been captured by Aizen.

Her eyes raised past the collapsing rooftops of the outer rim of the citadel, to the towering black spires in the center; the Diamanténio Kástro… her home, untouched by even time and neglect. This was what she had been biding her time all those years for; this was the time for her to begin anew. Her enemies were gone, and there was nothing to stand in her way now, to bring this world, to bring everything to a brighter future. She stepped out into the slope of sand, sliding down to level with the plain stretching before her. The three servants followed. They proceeded with Sonido; she cared little for dramatics when there were none to view them, and she was certain the twins were likely just as eager to return to the halls of the Kástro as she was. Within moments they were at the edge of the citadel.

The Queen’s eyes turned cold as she realized there was more to this damage than time and neglect. She instantly noticed bloodstains long dried against some walls of the outer buildings, and as they walked the streets, slowly now, she took in every bloodstain, every broken-down door, every shattered window, every caved in wall.

When they reached a market square she had frequented when the city was still bustling, her fury reached a new height. In the center was a well that had once connected to the moat around the Kástro, now long frozen. Strung up by the rope of the well was a Hollow, hanging limp, barely breathing. There was no telling how long it had been there, but it was thin, bones threatening to poke out of its skin at any moment, hanging within an inch of its life. She approached the Hollow; it wasn’t until she was only a foot away that it flinched, gazing at her, then settling into recognition.

“L-Lady… P… you’ve… return…” The Hollow struggled with words. She caressed his cheek softly, eyes soft and apologetic. It heaved one last breath, and then it was gone, and its bony cheek faded away from her fingertips. She closed her eyes for a moment.

“Come,” she said, her voice low, but strong. The three girls stood back, unsure of whether she would lash out. They had nothing to fear; her fury had only one target now, and that was whomever had done this to her home. “We are going to the Kástro.”

She had seen enough. Her Sonido carried her to the great doors leading to the main hall in seconds, well ahead of her followers. The doors hung open under a deep black arch, opening into a grand curved hall with ceilings seemingly as high as the sky itself, great obsidian columns rising evenly on either side, the black, smoothed floor stretching to the far edge of the room, where there was a slight incline before a door that entered into the deeper halls of the castle.

It was a lucky day indeed; while she had feared that perhaps the culprit had come and gone long ago, here she found exactly what she sought after. The hall was lined with Hollows on either side, miserable unevolved cretins drooling savagely as they watched her walk calmly into the hall. They were obviously using every fiber of their being to hold back from charging at her. Good for them, she considered, though she wouldn’t mind slaughtering them all right here and now. They might even make a half-decent meal, all together. But she didn’t care for them. They didn’t have a mind to do what had been done to her city; there was someone greater here, and she almost felt disappointed when she found a lop-sided Adjuchas seated fat and comfortably on a makeshift throne hobbled together on the incline before the doors.

“You,” the Adjuchas snarled. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my hall!?” The cretin slammed a grubby paw down on the arm of the throne, nearly shattering it. Cybele grinned, a cold, sinister grin. She took another step closer, using every ounce of civility she could muster to keep herself from letting the darkness take over, to just blindly slaughter him and every other Hollow in this room.

“You dare to speak to me in such a way, after coming to my city and treating my home, my people, in this manner, then filling MY halls with ingrates like these?” She roared, her voice filling the entire hall easily. She noted the Reiatsu of the twins and their older sister coming up to the great doors behind her. “I will give you one chance to leave before I remove your head. I would advise you to choose wisely.”

For only a moment, she thought the Adjuchas might think better than to challenge her. Then, she found out how sorely mistaken he was. With a simple raising of his arm and pointing at her, half the Hollows crowded along the walls of the hall charged all at once. Her grin widened, showing sharp teeth between her smooth lips. Her white dress flowed with the motion as every single Hollow that charged at her exploded in a splash of blood without her moving a muscle; when the blood cleared, her servants stood evenly around her, long katanas brandished and freshly slick with black blood, dozens of corpses of Hollows strewn about the floor beneath them. The tall one’s hand was raised, near Cybele’s face, fingers outstretched, a spot of blood on her palm, kept from the Queen’s face. They returned to formation in a line behind her, kneeling.

“My lady,” they said, in near-unison. As if on queue, she finally unleashed her Reiatsu, filling the room with a thin red mist that felt heavy like water. It proved to overwhelm all that remained of the cretin Adjuchas’ guests. Yet somehow, the Adjuchas didn’t seem worried in the least. In fact, it grinned, drooling savagely, then began to cackle maniacally.

“Very well then, it seems we have something interesting here. You should be more than enough to handle this, new guy.” Its words confused her, until a shadow moved from the side of the throne that she had not even noticed before. The figure stepped out in front of the throne, seemingly unaffected by her Reiatsu, its entire form shrouded in a dark brown cloak. She heard the sound of metal sliding, and out of the bottom edge of the cloak peeked the tip of a blade, black as midnight, a thin white streak along its cutting edge. A katana. She smirked.

“You overestimate yourself,” she said, her tone cool and confident. Then, the stranger released its own Reiatsu, and a thick black mist clung to the floor, and the whole hall seemed to shake. Whoever this stranger was, they had power to that seemed to even rival her own. How would such a disgusting creature as this Adjuchas have won the support of one such as this?

Mismatched eyes stared out indifferently from under the hood of the cloak. “Maybe it is you that is overestimating yourself. Care to prove me wrong?”