Legend

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Scurry. Skitter. Run. Hide. Cast a light. Snuff it out. Never stay in one place for long. Never sleep for long. Things in the darkness, always watchful, always hungry. Always yearning. Stop. Listen. Silence. Keep running anyway. Not too fast though. Too many bones. Too many stones. Trip and fall, break anything, end of it. All over. Death waited in the shadows. Death prowled the darkness. And every now and again, with a burst of crackling electricity, death shrieked into silence.

A shadow within the shadows paused, breathing uneasy, ear's straining, listening. Nothing. Not a whisper, not a sound. Didn't mean there wasn't anything, but it would have to suffice. Strained breathing, quiet gasps as the figure caught breath. Rest. Rest was so infrequent, so little found, in the darkness. The insufferable darkness. As always, the figure strained the senses, seeking as hard as possible to cast them out, to truly know the darkness. Light could be procured, but it was always a risk, never quite bright enough to eliminate all the shadows. And in the shadows lay death.

Well used iron claws came out, and the figure scaled along the wall, finding a safe haven hirer up along it. Eyes closed against the deep, oppressive darkness. Deep, steady breathing. Focus on the mind. Focus on the heart. The chakra. Yin. Yang. Life. Alive. Had to stay alive, by all costs, by all means. Focus on it. Feel it. The figure could sense his own chakra, as any living thing with an aptitude for manipulating the raw life-force of the world could. How it dipped and ebbed, the way it flared and coiled into jutsu, giving life to destruction, order to chaos. Energy could be neither created nor destroyed, only converted. Anyone could detect their own chakra, but for the figure lost in the shadows, it was not enough.

A few days? A week? A month? Time lost all meaning in the blinding, stifling darkness. All alone, save for the teeth and the maws and the flashing claws and too red tongues and the hunger and the No! The figure's mind lashed out, concentration broken, at the memories, the terrors, fighting and straining to remain whole, in one, focused and keen like a razor edge. But it was hard. So very hard. The figure took more deep, shaky breaths, seeking the calm again. HAd to focus on the ebb and the flow of the chakra. The way it pulsed to the beat of his heart, swelled to the filling of his lungs, flickered in the face of madness, fear, solitude.

Such solitude gave one time to think, to reflect. Chakra was a force of life. To have it was to be alive. To weaponize it, was to cast your own life force at the enemy, to seek to smother them in the very sense of your living, of your well being. Use live to end life. Reap the fire with its own ashes. But meditating was not enough. Would not be enough. Not in and of itself. Silently from his perch, the figure formed a familiar set of seals, a dry, cracked voice uttering a whisper of a whisper. Kage Bunshin. Chakra flared, and he tried to hold onto that sensation, to impress it into his mind, the wild, raging flare before the raw force was melded into form, and breathed into life his doppelganger. The clone quickly secured its own perch upon the wall, and the original focused even more.

He knew what the clone was feeling, was thinking. He knew it like he knew himself, for it was himself. He could focus on that, latch onto it, know the clone felt the same roiling emotions of solitude, madness, pure survival instinct, fear; and over-riding it all, resignation. How hard it was to keep going. How easy it would be to let go, to curl up and die, to just let the creatures have their feed. But he would not give up. He could not give up. He focused on the clone, knowing full well the thoughts inside its head, and tried to give those feelings a concrete sense beyond expecting, beyond knowing, but feeling it.

He couldn't tell for sure whether he truly sensed it, or merely felt what he expected to feel. The pulse and vibe and flow of its chakra, or of his own? The electric, spastic nature of the the thunder, always shifting and changing, jumping from one spot to the next, always seeking the point of weakness, never resting until it drove home. Until it terminated in a flash of all consuming light. And then there was the cooling calm of water, the luxurious ebb and flow of peace, flowing to and fro, never outright fighting, but flowing against, around, with. Two wildly diverse natures, contained in one body. But still, was he sensing it, or was his mind convincing him he felt what he already knew to be there? Such delusions would serve him no benefit in the darkness; they would only serve to get him killed.

Wordlessly, the clone dropped down from its perch in silence. The remaining figure continue straining in concentration, keeping all of his focus on the bead of chakra that was his clone, feeling the ebb and flow as the clone ran off through the tunnels. This exercise would cost him, surely, but he had to test, had to know for sure. He had to expand his focus, if he had any chance of surviving in the oppressive darkness under the mountain. He'd already had far too many close calls, acquired too many new scars, to afford to put off the valuable skill he was seeking to attain. He focused, and felt a tiny, flickering surge in the clone's chakra as it no doubt brought into the world a shining light.

One minute passed. Another. A third rolled by, while the original sweated in silence. Under normal circumstances, the scent of his sweat might have betrayed him to his enemies, but he'd long become so encrusted in the gore of their vile bowels and blood to have stopped fearing such things. All the same, he stiffen, breath catching in his throat as a rush of skittering paws passed by under him, nor could he refrain from wincing as a piercing, shrieking howl echoed through the caverns. He didn't need to feel the sudden, wild pulsations and throbbing of chakra to know the clone was now in the thick of the fight, fending off the beasts.

The figure remained cloaked in darkness, even as he could see flashes of lighting emanating from further down the tunnel. He concentrated heavily, opening his mind beyond his usual sense. Ignore the sight, nothing but darkness, ignore touch, nothing to feel but cold stone; taste, dried blood; hearing, shrieking howls; smell, cool, dank air and rotten blood. Focus purely on the chakra, the wild fluctuations, the sense of fear and anger and determination and.... Primal, needy, consuming hunger.

Suddenly his mind reeled, and his choked back a gasp as memory exploded in his head, a brief sensation of terror and pain as a beast latched onto his throat, the phantom sensation nearly making him cry out. He felt his reservoir of energy refill slightly, and he heard the howling shrieks as the beasts were denied true prey; but more importantly, he knew their confusion, their ravenous hunger, their anger. He knew that their primal, wild chakra could only be tamed into vicious lightning. He knew they were numerous and many.

For the first time in many days, a grim smile lit the face of Takeshi Gouka, unseen in the darkness. He climbed higher up the cave, nearly along the sealing, quickly using his remaining dagger and the broken fang, in conjunction with his remaining wire, to firmly secure himself against the sealing. He had a proper sense now. He could find these creatures in the dark. The hunted would become the hunter.

He fell into fitful sleep, the nightmares only just more tolerable than the hell his reality had become.

Word Count: 1335