Selenophilia: Rebirth (ON HIATUS)

𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑂𝑛𝑒

It was a wonderfully cool night in Dihua Marsh, and Xiao could not breathe.
The air around him was heavy, smothering, completely choked with the smell of blood, like the very air wanted to strangle it out of the demon corpses laying in the murky water.

Xiao's insides felt shredded to ribbons from the sheer pressure in his chest. His vision swam as he took a faltering step forward to find that he wasn't sinking into some yawning chasm intent on stealing the oxygen from his lungs as he'd wondered. His jade spear slipped from his weakening grasp, the weapon no longer green but stained rusty red, the same color splattered on his gloves.

There were so many demons this time, shattered manifestations of the pure hate and resentment left behind by the evil gods of the Archon War. There shouldn't have been so many, but there were, and Xiao had officially reached his limits in fending them off that night.

Yes, even a Yaksha has limits, believe it or not. Xiao surpassed his time and again, proving his worth a hundred times over to the Geo Archon he served. For a servant and soldier of Morax he was, fulfilling his duty with a suicidal sort of despondency that bordered on fanatic. 

Well accustomed to escaping battles by a mere hair, this was something quite different. It'd started with unease, but at the battle's end when he emerged victorious and fairly unscathed, it grew into something worse. Into this.

He gasped for breath like a fish out of water, and he found himself falling to his knees. Standing was a task far too monumental for him. Mud oozed beneath his legs, soaking his clothes. But it wasn't any worse than the blood crusting his arms, streaking the Yaksha mask.
The mask...that infernal, asphyxiating mask. With shaking hands, Xiao tore it away from his face and hurled it to the side. Cold air rushed in to fill the space where it had been, mixing with the sweat on his brow.

The mask stared back at Xiao with blank eyes and a gaping mouth, almost mocking him.
Every time he took it off, it was only a reminder that he had to put it back on eventually.

Xiao's throat burned and his eyes watered. His stomach heaved as he fought the urge to retch and vomit. It felt like someone's fingers had closed around his neck, crushing his windpipe. He couldn't inhale, and he certainly couldn't exhale. He was being strangled to death by his own karma.

("What on earth is karma?" Jiao Long interrupted.

"It's a meat-aphor," Yue said snappishly, wishing Jiao Long wouldn't open his big fat mouth and interrupt Granny Ruoxin.

"It's pronounced metaphor," Jiao Long retorted. Yue flushed.

"You'll see what it is in time," was all Granny Ruoxin said. The two children fell silent and she went on.)

As the empty shells of the demons he'd fought faded and crumbled into ash as every vanquished monster did, the voices in Xiao's mind reawakened. They were quiet at first, drowned out by his pathetic attempts to breathe, but they slithered through his head and filled his ears from the inside out. They bound him into a state that released a torrent of pain he'd barred off for the time being...at least he thought he had.

But the next thing he knew, the sounds in his head exploded into a cacophony of howls. Animalistic screeches reverberated through his bones.

It was more than just a headache, more than just an intrusive thought that could be shoved away until another time. It was being rent limb from limb by screams, having his head filled with burning coals, being stabbed, kicked, and seared by curses, flogged and torn to bits by oaths and bad omens gifted to him on the dying lips of all those he'd slain. It was insanity trying to claim him, karmic debt forcing him into its slimy embrace. It was unadulterated darkness ravaging his very conscience as revenge for those he'd killed.