They’d shipped his body back to Erde Nona wrapped in the banner of his regiment, the Coming Storm, which bore the sigil of a grey cloud striking yellow lightning across a field of black. Though he was sixteen years of age, and the weeks or months he’d spent fighting for the Hell Divers were but a drop in the bucket of the experiences that made up his identity; the time he’d spent warring as a soldier was the summation of his identity in the eyes of Syntech as evidenced by the fact they’d wrapped him in a banner but never thought to recover the sword he’d carried with him. Through harrowing despair and heartening triumph he had never lost it…until his death. His remains, headless though they were, were stiff and gave off an air that might be perceived as discontent by those that knew him.
Unfortunately, he was not attended by those that knew him, and back on Erde Nona there were few and fewer that loved him. Only his Sensei would mourn his loss, and even that man would only mourn the boy’s death as a brief pity, for he knew what was to come next for the young Lieutenant even though Syntech had not.
In the inner folds of his uniform, sewn between sheets of cloth close to his liver on his right side, a delicate plume of fiery orange feather began to glow. The illumination was dingy and sparse at first, scarcely lighting up even the black of Zenitsu’s coffin, but as the hours bled by on the shuttle transporting the body (and the bodies others who’d lost their lives on the comet) back to Erde Nona the glow of the feather grew until even the seams of the boy’s coffin seeped light from their confines.
Piece by piece the boy’s body began to stitch itself back together. Other bodies had been made presentable as much as possible with missing arms, legs, and even heads sewn back on to honor the dead. That had not been possible in Zenitsu’s case; his entire skull and the bulk of his chest cavity rested in the literal belly of the beast. Ridley’s malice had left little and less of Zenitsu’s identifying features. It was no small miracle that Syntech had identified the young Lieutenant by what remained of his uniform and searched his records to locate a final resting place to ship his corpse off to.
The absence of him stretched from collarbone to collarbone and swung down in a deep letter ‘U’ down to his solar plexus not unlike a bite mark left in the center of a slice of bread – the results of Ridley’s coup de grace on the boy. He’d never seen it coming, fixated as he was on his subordinate, Musashi. Doubtless the girl was left horrified by the experience, and it could be debated that Zenitsu had come out the better of the two from the experience, even dead. Better than watching a dear one bolted down the throat of an Unmade dragon, after all.
His cells worked hard, stitching themselves together and weaving flesh where once there was none. Muscle fibers materialized, spreading out, and slowly over the course of the multiple day journey the shape of Zenitsu reasserted itself in the dark of its coffin, catalyzed by the Phoenix Down. It was a slow process, but a miraculous one, and such things as the gift of life were best savored, not rushed.
When the shuttle touched down in Arcadia the unloading of the coffins was a slow and arduous process that took a small platoon of movers the better part of a day. Despite the chamber the remains were stored in containing an industrial cooling unit, some of the corpses had begun to turn and the smell was acrid enough to churn the stomachs of the laborers charged to their transport. Despite this or maybe because of it the work was complete a little quicker than expected and corpses were relinquished to the care of an organization specifically rousted to the purpose of recovering the bodies of the soldiers who’d fought the Unmade. Ever the beacon of civilization, Arcadia boasted a buoyant patriotism that favored the soldiers bold, and often young, who’d given their lives in service of the Crossroads. Soldiers such as Lieutenant Zenitsu Agatsuma.
Individual funerals were a luxury they couldn’t afford, however. In an enormous ceremony attended by many of the Palace’s brightest stars as well as throngs of the adoring public, the coffins were hoisted over row after row of carefully excavated gravesites. Each grave wore a headstone. The deceased were offered little from the living: a speech, a salute, and then they were lowered into their final resting places where the groundskeepers would bury them later that evening when the crowd had dispersed.
The fate of the honorable.
---
“WAUGH!”
His eyes snapped open, alert, when he heard a muffled thump in front of his face. Was he still he his pavilion? Was that a knock at the…no, no. He had no door. Only a cloth flap. Then why was there a…?
Then he remembered flashes of imagery that shot through his mind like a film reel: standing side by side with Schnozz, wretched Unmade closing in all around them, hacking his way free of the forest of bodies, rushing in to save Musashi, fighting Ridley, stooping over his fallen friend, telling her it was going to be –
But it wasn’t okay. If he was here, now, then he hadn’t won. He’d let them down, Musashi most of all. If she made it out, he hoped she’d forgive him.
Zenitsu sat bolt upright and smacked his head on the roof of his coffin.
“OW!” he yelled, rubbing the sore spot on his head gingerly. A lump would form there later, he knew.
He pushed his hands up, this time, learning from his mistake. He felt wood above him and pushed HARD. The coffin’s lid swung open, its hinges whining in protest. The cool night air and the smell of Earth assaulted Zenitsu’s senses at once, while the moon cast its luminous gaze into the depths of his grave. He hadn’t been buried, yet, it seemed, but –
A dusting of dirt crested the lip of the hole, parabolic in trajectory, and rained down on Zenitsu who managed to swing an arm over his face just in time to shield his eyes from the impact. Dust swirled up from his feet where the shovelful of Earth had landed.
“CUT THAT OUT!” cried Zenitsu.
He jumped at the wall of his grave and scrabbled at its side for purchase. His fingers dug into packed soil, but fresh as the grave was, it only crumbled at the prizing tug of his fingers.
“Whassat?” a gravel-laden voice called from above.
One head poked itself out from above, features dimmed by the contrast of moonlight behind it. All Zenitsu could make out was its outline. It was closely followed by one more head. …the late Lieutenant offered them a wave.
“I’m down here!” he called, his voice echoing in the chamber. “Throw me a rope, or something!”
“Another one,” growled the first man to his fellow. “Damn dead don’t stay dead no mo’, they don’t, I’ll tell yeh.”
“Fuckin’ magicks and sorceries, the lot of ‘em no better than the Demons, to be sure. Better buried ‘n walkin’ about amongst us honest Arbiter-fearin’-“
“JUST THROW ME A ROPE!” shrilled Zenitsu, shifting uncomfortably from side to side.
They did, and it landed, WUMP, at his feet. The young Demon Slayer climbed the dozen feet or so to the surface, glad to be free of his own grave, and scrabbled up onto solid unchurned earth gratefully. He could’ve kissed the dewey grass he knelt on, and unbidden he found tears welling up in his eyes.
“Don’t get all weepy-eyed, yuh heathen,” barked groundskeeper one.
He wore brown roughspun as befit his station, and had a boil ridden face rough with stubble. His hair had long since fled the frontlines of his scalp, and he wore what he had left in greasy drapes that hung around his ears and the back of his head in a ring. Those drapes were grey. From beneath them, beady black eyes watched Zenitsu suspiciously.
The second groundskeeper had already moved onto the next grave with his shovel and resumed his duties.
“Fifth one tonight,” grumbled the first groundskeeper. He turned his back to the young Demon Slayer and began to shuffle away, mumbling angrily.
“Wait! You said there were more? More of us coming back to life?” he knew that Phoenix Downs, while rare, were not unheard of. He was therefore unsurprised that other soldiers had carried them into battle – most folks, if they had the coin, were apt to choose an insurance policy over the finality of death. “Where are they going when you haul them out?”
The groundskeeper spat on the ground, pivoted his annoyed gaze back onto Zenitsu, and swore quietly. …then he pointed to a building, past the graveyard. It was a small add-on to a much larger castle, a castle the rose its stony fingers towards the inky night sky like an open hand. Smaller drums and connected towers made up its entirety, the scope of which would’ve baffled Zenitsu before he’d seen the Hell Divers’ keep all those weeks ago. Now the fortress before him looked small in comparison.
“Err…thanks?” Zenitsu half-said, half-questioned, dipping his head at the gravedigger not un-kindly.
He made his way towards the smaller piece of building jutting off from the castle’s exterior as indicated, padding along in sandaled feet down the aisle between the graves of the fallen. They’d re-garbed him as best they could, and he wore his typical orange-yellow and white triangled haori over what had become a ruination of under-garb. The uniform beneath was a mangled black undershirt ripped asunder right down to the lowest rung of his rib-cage, courtesies of Ridley, the dread pirate.
Whatever lie ahead of him in the stony keep, that would be but a pit-stop. His sights were set on the Unmade, ever present a threat as the Demons he’d hunted before, and Ridley more than any of them. If the Dragon had survived the comet, Zenitsu meant to put an end to him, no matter where he had to go to do so. Once a Hell Diver, always a Hell Diver…
The boy he’d been when he’d enlisted was dead and gone. The comet had seen to that. Whoever he’d been in service of the Demon Slayer Corps prior to the trials he’d faced in Dante’s Abyss, well, that boy was only the foundation…the cornerstone of the warrior he would make himself. When he was finished with the Unmade, they would rue the day they’d first clashed with the Coming Storm.
Unfortunately, he was not attended by those that knew him, and back on Erde Nona there were few and fewer that loved him. Only his Sensei would mourn his loss, and even that man would only mourn the boy’s death as a brief pity, for he knew what was to come next for the young Lieutenant even though Syntech had not.
In the inner folds of his uniform, sewn between sheets of cloth close to his liver on his right side, a delicate plume of fiery orange feather began to glow. The illumination was dingy and sparse at first, scarcely lighting up even the black of Zenitsu’s coffin, but as the hours bled by on the shuttle transporting the body (and the bodies others who’d lost their lives on the comet) back to Erde Nona the glow of the feather grew until even the seams of the boy’s coffin seeped light from their confines.
Piece by piece the boy’s body began to stitch itself back together. Other bodies had been made presentable as much as possible with missing arms, legs, and even heads sewn back on to honor the dead. That had not been possible in Zenitsu’s case; his entire skull and the bulk of his chest cavity rested in the literal belly of the beast. Ridley’s malice had left little and less of Zenitsu’s identifying features. It was no small miracle that Syntech had identified the young Lieutenant by what remained of his uniform and searched his records to locate a final resting place to ship his corpse off to.
The absence of him stretched from collarbone to collarbone and swung down in a deep letter ‘U’ down to his solar plexus not unlike a bite mark left in the center of a slice of bread – the results of Ridley’s coup de grace on the boy. He’d never seen it coming, fixated as he was on his subordinate, Musashi. Doubtless the girl was left horrified by the experience, and it could be debated that Zenitsu had come out the better of the two from the experience, even dead. Better than watching a dear one bolted down the throat of an Unmade dragon, after all.
His cells worked hard, stitching themselves together and weaving flesh where once there was none. Muscle fibers materialized, spreading out, and slowly over the course of the multiple day journey the shape of Zenitsu reasserted itself in the dark of its coffin, catalyzed by the Phoenix Down. It was a slow process, but a miraculous one, and such things as the gift of life were best savored, not rushed.
When the shuttle touched down in Arcadia the unloading of the coffins was a slow and arduous process that took a small platoon of movers the better part of a day. Despite the chamber the remains were stored in containing an industrial cooling unit, some of the corpses had begun to turn and the smell was acrid enough to churn the stomachs of the laborers charged to their transport. Despite this or maybe because of it the work was complete a little quicker than expected and corpses were relinquished to the care of an organization specifically rousted to the purpose of recovering the bodies of the soldiers who’d fought the Unmade. Ever the beacon of civilization, Arcadia boasted a buoyant patriotism that favored the soldiers bold, and often young, who’d given their lives in service of the Crossroads. Soldiers such as Lieutenant Zenitsu Agatsuma.
Individual funerals were a luxury they couldn’t afford, however. In an enormous ceremony attended by many of the Palace’s brightest stars as well as throngs of the adoring public, the coffins were hoisted over row after row of carefully excavated gravesites. Each grave wore a headstone. The deceased were offered little from the living: a speech, a salute, and then they were lowered into their final resting places where the groundskeepers would bury them later that evening when the crowd had dispersed.
The fate of the honorable.
---
“WAUGH!”
His eyes snapped open, alert, when he heard a muffled thump in front of his face. Was he still he his pavilion? Was that a knock at the…no, no. He had no door. Only a cloth flap. Then why was there a…?
Then he remembered flashes of imagery that shot through his mind like a film reel: standing side by side with Schnozz, wretched Unmade closing in all around them, hacking his way free of the forest of bodies, rushing in to save Musashi, fighting Ridley, stooping over his fallen friend, telling her it was going to be –
But it wasn’t okay. If he was here, now, then he hadn’t won. He’d let them down, Musashi most of all. If she made it out, he hoped she’d forgive him.
Zenitsu sat bolt upright and smacked his head on the roof of his coffin.
“OW!” he yelled, rubbing the sore spot on his head gingerly. A lump would form there later, he knew.
He pushed his hands up, this time, learning from his mistake. He felt wood above him and pushed HARD. The coffin’s lid swung open, its hinges whining in protest. The cool night air and the smell of Earth assaulted Zenitsu’s senses at once, while the moon cast its luminous gaze into the depths of his grave. He hadn’t been buried, yet, it seemed, but –
A dusting of dirt crested the lip of the hole, parabolic in trajectory, and rained down on Zenitsu who managed to swing an arm over his face just in time to shield his eyes from the impact. Dust swirled up from his feet where the shovelful of Earth had landed.
“CUT THAT OUT!” cried Zenitsu.
He jumped at the wall of his grave and scrabbled at its side for purchase. His fingers dug into packed soil, but fresh as the grave was, it only crumbled at the prizing tug of his fingers.
“Whassat?” a gravel-laden voice called from above.
One head poked itself out from above, features dimmed by the contrast of moonlight behind it. All Zenitsu could make out was its outline. It was closely followed by one more head. …the late Lieutenant offered them a wave.
“I’m down here!” he called, his voice echoing in the chamber. “Throw me a rope, or something!”
“Another one,” growled the first man to his fellow. “Damn dead don’t stay dead no mo’, they don’t, I’ll tell yeh.”
“Fuckin’ magicks and sorceries, the lot of ‘em no better than the Demons, to be sure. Better buried ‘n walkin’ about amongst us honest Arbiter-fearin’-“
“JUST THROW ME A ROPE!” shrilled Zenitsu, shifting uncomfortably from side to side.
They did, and it landed, WUMP, at his feet. The young Demon Slayer climbed the dozen feet or so to the surface, glad to be free of his own grave, and scrabbled up onto solid unchurned earth gratefully. He could’ve kissed the dewey grass he knelt on, and unbidden he found tears welling up in his eyes.
“Don’t get all weepy-eyed, yuh heathen,” barked groundskeeper one.
He wore brown roughspun as befit his station, and had a boil ridden face rough with stubble. His hair had long since fled the frontlines of his scalp, and he wore what he had left in greasy drapes that hung around his ears and the back of his head in a ring. Those drapes were grey. From beneath them, beady black eyes watched Zenitsu suspiciously.
The second groundskeeper had already moved onto the next grave with his shovel and resumed his duties.
“Fifth one tonight,” grumbled the first groundskeeper. He turned his back to the young Demon Slayer and began to shuffle away, mumbling angrily.
“Wait! You said there were more? More of us coming back to life?” he knew that Phoenix Downs, while rare, were not unheard of. He was therefore unsurprised that other soldiers had carried them into battle – most folks, if they had the coin, were apt to choose an insurance policy over the finality of death. “Where are they going when you haul them out?”
The groundskeeper spat on the ground, pivoted his annoyed gaze back onto Zenitsu, and swore quietly. …then he pointed to a building, past the graveyard. It was a small add-on to a much larger castle, a castle the rose its stony fingers towards the inky night sky like an open hand. Smaller drums and connected towers made up its entirety, the scope of which would’ve baffled Zenitsu before he’d seen the Hell Divers’ keep all those weeks ago. Now the fortress before him looked small in comparison.
“Err…thanks?” Zenitsu half-said, half-questioned, dipping his head at the gravedigger not un-kindly.
He made his way towards the smaller piece of building jutting off from the castle’s exterior as indicated, padding along in sandaled feet down the aisle between the graves of the fallen. They’d re-garbed him as best they could, and he wore his typical orange-yellow and white triangled haori over what had become a ruination of under-garb. The uniform beneath was a mangled black undershirt ripped asunder right down to the lowest rung of his rib-cage, courtesies of Ridley, the dread pirate.
Whatever lie ahead of him in the stony keep, that would be but a pit-stop. His sights were set on the Unmade, ever present a threat as the Demons he’d hunted before, and Ridley more than any of them. If the Dragon had survived the comet, Zenitsu meant to put an end to him, no matter where he had to go to do so. Once a Hell Diver, always a Hell Diver…
The boy he’d been when he’d enlisted was dead and gone. The comet had seen to that. Whoever he’d been in service of the Demon Slayer Corps prior to the trials he’d faced in Dante’s Abyss, well, that boy was only the foundation…the cornerstone of the warrior he would make himself. When he was finished with the Unmade, they would rue the day they’d first clashed with the Coming Storm.