Wrathful Understanding

He needed to practice this. He needed to work on this. But even as he continued, he couldn’t get much work completed. No matter how hard he tried to tap into his anger, he couldn’t force himself into a fury. It seemed like the harder he tried, the less and less angry he became, and the more and more melancholy, almost apathetic, he became. He would retire to elsewhere sitting down on the rocks, watching the yokai move back and forth, all kinds of those disgusting creatures. Some walking. Some crawling. Others jumping but most skittering.

He would clench his teeth. Why couldn’t he understand this? Why couldn’t he master this? He was asking… no begging to lose himself to the slaughter again. And yet that beast seemed to have grown still even as he sought its blessing and its call. He wanted nothing less and nothing more. Why then had it not come? He felt frustration. And he hated himself that he couldn’t even control his emotions or allow his emotions control over himself. Could he do nothing right? Was there nothing he could allow? Was there no one he could protect or nothing that he could call his own.

He lifted his eyes. He stopped trying. And he allowed the frustration not to become a part of him… but to become him. He dragged the sword behind him as he attacked the disgusting creatures. Butchering them. Flaying them. Incinerating them. Delivering them into the hands and grasp of Azrael more prolifically and more prodigiously than he ever had before. Screaming. Screeching. Demanding that they tell him why. Demanding answers where they could not be found from things that could not speak. The epitome of mad fury and senseless violence. And as he stood there over the new graveyard, the slaughter that he had orchestrated and presided over, he understood something about himself.

It wasn’t a thing to be harnessed or forced either. It had to come naturally. It wasn’t something that he could have at his beck and call. It was something that would overtake him and command him where he should go, not to be commanded. He was subservient to himself. And he would only be subservient to himself. He looked over the blood and the ichor that stained the ground. He would kneel before the slaughter, taking the blood of the creatures slain in madness and placing it upon his face, layering the colors of reds of mortal and green of yokai upon himself. This was a rebirth. A realignment.

He was himself and himself alone. He would allow himself nothing but the commands and dictations of his heart and follow others only when they matched his own convictions. There would be no other thoughts. There would be negotiations or compromises in terms of his convictions. They were absolute. He would surrender to himself, to his TRUE self, whenever the opportunity or the feeling arose in him. He had slaughtered so many already, but they had all deserved it.

He had never assaulted or attacked anyone who had not provoked it. It was a fact that he regretted. Perhaps aggression had been called for in the past and he had ignored it… it mattered not now. That call to action would never again be ignored. If he was provoked, if he was tempered, he would reach and call out, he would not any offense go unanswered.