Heavenfall

Headache wouldn't abate, nor the visceral boring along core, as if he was being torn apart by horses. Nervously, he kept checking whether the breaking along his line of symmetry had already begun, finding nothing to make the pain explicable. Wandering at random, he realised that the central ruins of the lost city were where the tether of the spiritual blade splitting him might have been.

Was it that at a place of such extremities his hybrid nature was not sustainable any more? That the human and the dragon would break apart? He had to know, no matter the cost.

[Driven: Know Thyself]

The closer he moved inward, the more intense the pain got... Then he moved past a broken building and the view opened up. His headache screamed as he looked at the portal, the hole that penetrated the Earth itself, corrupted it. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest, feeling the pain in concert with the element of his parent.

It felt like the wound had been done to him. He stopped between two broken columns and pressed hard against them, both to find some definition in what was real and what wasn't, and to prove to himself that he still had some control over what was happening to him. Was it his father's nature that revolted against the rot of his essence and wanted to shed what tied it to oh so corruptible Ningen-do? He had always considered himself indomitable, but it hinged on him remaining whole. His mortal coil, his weak flesh, were challenged.

Was it a deliberate will of a heavenly progenitor or some cosmic law that made Heaven and Hell repel each other, him being caught in the middle? He hadn't realised it until now, he hadn't thought of it enough, his personal stake in the expedition. He had thought it was all about Shinjo's crusade, and he had been glossing over what it could mean for him personally rather than just for his marriage.

And there he was, in excruciating pain, yet putting up a fight with whatever forces were pulling on him, refusing to give up, to flee, to recoil, withstanding it until something would eventually give. One thing he couldn't contain was his voice. Initially pitched human-high, it was dropping tone by tone into a feral roar that carried over.

Something broke through the pain - a sound, though quiet, that broke through the pain and the sound of his screams to reach his ears, paired with the feeling that had drawn him here in the first place. It was like a fresh, cool stream of pure water trickling through the blasted landscape of his mind.

Come here... Hurry...

It was close, in the direction of a crumbling but mostly intact building near him.

He wouldn't know for sure if it were a mischief, an illusion of deliverance from pain that spoke to him in the call, but he... followed it, tearing his feet off the ground even though they felt as if cast in lead. Whose voice could it be in a place like this...?

Entering the ruined building, he discovers a young woman with terrible wounds lying in the near-ruined building, blood covering her and soaking her clothing. Her gaze is unfocused and parts of her keep manifesting blue scales before they fade and disappear, her hand becoming a claw. She manages to look up at Koyama, and there's a sense of recognition.

She's like him.

"I thought... I felt something out there... Steadiness... like the earth..."

"Tis whit a'm made of." He uttered with some confidence, after a short victory over pain. "'n' ye, of water? Ye need help?"

The significance of the encounter was not getting through. He was sometimes dense like that.

"Yes... water," she said. She reached out a broken-looking hand, hovering it over the stone and drawing up a small, bubbling spring of what little water was left. It flowed down the uneven floor. "... I think I'm beyond help," she admitted with a weak chuckled. "I flew here to observe the portal and see what was here and what might be done, but... it didn't end well."

He took some of the water and brought it to her face, to wash her lips with it. "Ur we... mortal?"

He manages to wash her lips, and she smiles weakly. "Thank you, cousin... All things born of this world are mortal. All things here die. But that doesn't mean we'll die any time soon."

She chuckled dryly before giving a bloody cough. "Most of us, anyway."

She squinted at him through the blood. "The two sides of yourself... don't seem fully at home with one another, yet, though, cousin..." She reached out and touched his face, leaving a red streak.

"Thay dinnae." He said simply, feeling inferior for it even though it was her who was likely dying. "Ah kinnae make them fit th'gither." He was speaking with pauses needed to steel himself against the pain. His nostrils moved at the scent of her blood.

"You're... young," she wheezed with a small smile. "It's normal... I can... I can help you connect with your element, but... I want you to do something for me, too."

"What is it?" He said without eagerness even though it sounded like a promise of some relief from his current torn state. He half-suspected that the price would be something of proportional... gravity.

She smiled weakly. "Once I'm done helping you... I need you to kill me. This place will try to keep me alive until it can corrupt me enough to claim me in death. I'm not as resilient against its corruption as a soul of the earth..."

"Wuidnae it make me a kinslayer?" He frowned, gripping her hand. "Kinnae ye joyn me wit' yer essence somehow, juist t' leave the dying husk?"

She shook her head. "If you killed me for a selfish reason, you might be a kinslayer. This is just letting my soul remain pure and pass into the wheel of reincarnation. I am already dying, but it is drawing it out..."

She held his hand with both of hers. "Please..."

"...I git yi'll need a Hikaru tae dae th' awfy bit necessary hing." He held her and stroked her chin, as he would with any long-lost family that he found but could not longer save. "Tell me whit happens now."