To Contemplate the Face of God
- Location
- Brazil
Well, shit has gone fucked up. Crude but true. There is no other way that I can describe the last twelve hours. The morning was going splendidly until it wasn't. It was like one of those movie clips used as tear jerk material, I honest to God's blitz. The worst part is that it wasn't even directed at … anything or anyone. While some ninja tried to jump me, it was more like Touko-me was a rare prize in the catalogue than a priority target. There were simple too many rich people and too much money in a "soft" target to seem worth the risk. Kidnap the right noble and you can get a fortune in ransom, even the portable wealth nobles carry on their person might be worth the effort. It was literally the textbook definition of random ninja violence in the mainland! I cannot even feel guilty about it, knowing how retarded these ninjas were. It is folly to predict a fool's whim.
Of course, as the resident doctor panacea, where do I fit in it? To whom are the victims of this attack and their loved ones rushing for help? If the words patient triaging does not evoke existential dread and panic attack in you, then you are not a real medical professional. Every injured person dragged themselves and their loved one to my doorsteps. My humble clinic ended looking like an underworld clandestine hospital or a medic tent of a war zone. People I have come to know laid in my tablet with desperate, pitiful eyes.
All these shinobi I contracted came through here, at least. Some among them are veterans that had true first-hand experience of the last war. After the battle was won, and I made clear I would be helping out, they made the executive decision of coordinating things. Taking upon themselves to organize the mobs, raise extra tended and coordinate with other medics and nurses of the city. Their actions saved as many lives as mine own; I might be good but not that particularly fast, so my talent was best served stabilizing patients in critical condition. Life was to be prioritized as there is no injury beyond my capacity to heal so.
Except one, that is.
Death.
I am in no way, shape, or form an emergence room doctor, my job is closer to physiotherapy. I do the cleanup and mending, but now I have people blow open, with all sort of injuries, bleeding at my therapy turned surgery tablet and my professional seniors are looking at me for directions. I can barely tolerate blood! I get nauseous just passing by the butcher story! In my head stakes grown on trees! I have half dozen live chickens back home that are giving me eggs because I couldn't man up enough to kill and clean them! And now people want me to pull a Grey's Anatomy!?
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!
Nevertheless, I am the only one that can do it. Forget social repercussion, I would never forgive myself if I backed down.
Therefore, I did it. I put everything into mending others, getting blood up to my elbows weaving broken bodies together as if this was a fast-food chain. At some point, I notice Apollo gently pulling aside the distraught family member of a patient. Kurama must have brought him back. Good.
My Original One also walked through the door at some point, completely shell-shocked, covered in injuries and blood, being almost dragged by a tall grey wolf friend she made today. Our information sharing is mechanic at this point, something I will pat myself in the back latter, as she look done for. As most of that blood wasn't hers, I now have to look up to the nightmare of tonight's synchronization to boot! I just mended the surface of her injuries, provided some clean cloths and set her in one corner where she won't disturbs my work. She was well enough physically to help, but I cannot even afford to let her on her own at this point. I have my own nightmare of real Trauma Center role-play to deal with!
Of course, minds are in no way as malleable and easily mended as bodies. The festival of violence Kurama instigated might have won the day but left people in their last nerves afterward. Something I apparently had a first-hand experience today. Victory was had, but moral is bottom low, and despite the indiscriminate execution of tragedy that happened today, people started to demand privilege treatment in the triaging, forsaking any solidarity. They might have justified it is due to whatever reason they could come to; to their standing, class, money, to the usefulness of their skills.
As if the measure of a life could be quantified. As if the people that caused this were right in their calculations that led them to think this attack was justified. As if there is nothing sacred in life. Again, who is the worse one then? The one who commits evil in ignorance or the one that sins in abstention despite knowing better?
I tell myself that my hands are already full, that any diversion from my task could not compensate the loss of live that hang at the clock's leg. The worse part of it all by far is that I killed today, that much was obvious. I now am letting go of people I could save, that are being pushed to the wayside because I am too afraid to rock the boat. A lifetime of instincts as a cog in the machine raise its head, rooting me on the spot. Am I 'going native' in the worse way possible?
Everybody want to be a hero but nobody wants to die. The idea of acting like a big shot main character has been beaten out of me so long ago I don't even remember when I lost it. Despite growing up with tales of great and virtuous people that went against the grain to uphold higher ideals it was also expected to 'adulting'. Society was not perfect, but there are proper and proven channels of change, and they exist for a reason. Everyone at least once in their lives think that if given absolute power they could be the ones to usher a utopia. History is full of cautionary tales about those that failed to grow humility and see their shortcomings, becoming willing facilitators to of demagogues that exploit said political ignorance to accrue power.
A single person, no matter how gifted, cannot measure up to the collective brainpower and processing capacity of the collective common sense. It take millions of hours of countless people to lay the groundwork to manifest a single genius. They are the exception that proves the rule. Yet, doesn't that mean that people of Konoha are right, then? Isn't this the same situation of two years ago when Apollo was consigned to a life of isolation? Are these people less deserving of salvation than he was? Isn't anyone out there, that loves them just as much as I love my son, going to lose said love for my cowardice? What changed? Did I change? Would the me of today have saved Apollo?
These are the thoughts running through my head as I pretend to not hear the commotion outside. Mister Fugimaru is screaming himself hoarse with the voluntary nurses, security closing in to detain him for obstructing things. He is a hardy and hardworking person that works as a freelancer drayman in the commercial district. I know him personally because one of his sons had become fast friends with Apollo, leading us to meet and perform the 'parenting networking' that got him to regularly cart supplies to my clinic. But I guess our relationship will come to an end.
In his arms is little Keyko's listless body. He probable got trapped in the rubble of the initial explosions. He lasted a good while but got held back in one of the distant tends due to be low priority. Not even a medic ninja there to keep patients stable, just volunteers. Because they are nobodies.
The chain of events is evident. Without magical assistance, they had little way to deal with the brain damage from oxygen deprivation. As the damage mounted, the brain capacity to regulate bodily functions such as breathing was compromised, creating a vicious circle that resulted in a slow draw out death. While the technology capable of saving him was common in my old World, in this one I have only seen in Konoha so far. His condition worsened and his father only managed to get this far inside by pulling favors.
To no avail, he was dead on arrival.
This is on my head! This is what playing along and letting myself be dragged by the current got me! I could have saved him! But I didn't even try because I was scared of stepping on some toes! All has gone to shit and there was nobody I can run to for help. Not with this. This isn't like back home where I could justify my inaction in my powerlessness! I have power! Even the strongest being in the continent, probable the world, acknowledge me. Why don't I activate these special eyes I am so proud of to take stock of how many more people I have let down!? How do I dare to think that the power of chakra is wasted on these people when I am no better!? I used this gift to kill my enemies and refrained from using it to help someone in my capacity to save.
…
Am I not exactly the same?
I tried to be rational and reasonable but in the end, I turned in just another hypocrite. This result was obvious from the beginning; I just chose to turn away from it. Because I was afraid. I was afraid of being the especial one. The savior the future of this world rest up. Stalked my power as coincidence instead of divine providence and walked along my way. Because otherwise I would either be wrong, another fool of history books and cautionary tales, or I would be right and the weight of the world wound be mine to bear.
A shame real life is not as idyllic as fairy tales are. Everything Jonah had to do was repent and promise to return to his mission for God to forgive him and have the fish spit him out. My own remorse and regret can't bring the boy back to life. I cannot undo my mistake, my sin!
My hands stay stead as I keep to my tasks but my legs feel like giving out under me. Please, someone, anyone. Save me from this.
Like thunder, the sound of the wooden chair hitting the floor break me out of my funk. It was my Original, stands up so fast that the chair was toppled. Her eyes assume a crazed mania as she looks at me and the pungent and sweet smell of alcoholic fruit linger in the air. Did she never stop turning that power on herself?
"The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom." She hit me in the head with it. Words I said to myself once before, now so laced with so much meaning it is like a hammer to the knot of thought my mind was wringed into. I must be getting drunk myself, because I got it.
Who is it that said that there is no cure for death? How can I say such thing without even trying? Why am I dismissing the possibility out of hand because of old bias that said this is a miracle or fairy tale? The resurrection of the dead is definitely something beyond human wisdom but is it beyond the grace of the divine? Magic and Mysteries itself are the providence of the gods. Give the divine fire by Prometheus' sacrifice, yet humans fancy themselves the masters of power they do not really comprehend.
I fell to Socrates' seduction, the sweet traps of dialectics. The blind faith that reason is virtue upon itself; indeed, the highest of virtues. Proceeding then to strap the Spirit and the Hunger, putting said reins in Logos hands. As if those irrationals Instincts of Life could be measured as nothings but an unstable force, lacking purpose and meaning, and which only worth could be found as the slavish servants of Reason.
If Nietzsche was the last disciple of Dionysus then Socrates was the Light-Bringer's first disciple, the Spirit of Rationality, and it's tendency of producing all-encompassing, totalitarian systems that encompass everything then fall in love with them. At some point, I believed I had "figure out" chakra, that in time all its secrets would be mine to command. Like a scientist dissecting nature under the scalp and microscope.
At the end of this road is Hell. Nothing above or outside the control of the rational is ever allowed to exist. It denies man as anything but a sterile caricature deprived of vitality and aspirations. The seed of nihilism that denies and smother live at the cradle. It uses the existence of pain and suffering to denounce any god and world that allow and abide to it. Not for the existence of pain and suffering on itself, but for the temerity to exist as something beyond its power to control and arbiter as it sees fit.
I don't want it.
That, if nothing else, is the Truth.
God exist in the Realm of Mystery. By whatever form or culture it was understood, The Divine existed beyond the grasp of human wisdom. And yet humanity exist as part of it, something we can experience. Rituals and ceremonies exist to convey something that is impossible to directly describe. That said, sometimes these experiences do not need to be induced, circumstances align to promote it naturally, like lightning out of the blue sky.
What exactly constitute death when magic get involved? It is obvious when you think about it, if modern medicine can restart a heart that has stopped then what does it matter to be brain dead when magic that can reverse necrosis and regrow what has been lost is possible?
This can only end in tears, to raise a false hope to then topple it down, but I simple could not dismiss it when lives where at stakes. As it turns out, it comes down to the soul.
I turn around so sharply that my assistants look at me now, thinking me also mad. They might not be wrong. Some distant memory of my catechism classes remind me of obscure vesicles that basically states: to experience the rapture of God is to lose you good sense, this is why you depend on the good neighbor to return you to your sense. I appreciate the concern, but for now I will ride this dragon until the work is done.
The Original Self and I push the door down, cutting the confrontation that was taking place before it escalated. Maybe it was the palpable madness around us, but even the grieving father stood to attention.
Before any disturbances could take place again I declare, "Bring him in, now."
My words aggravate the already recalcitrating staff. The medic ninja I first meet with A try to make me reconsider, "He is already-
"Did I stutter? You are wasting time we might not have. Come!" I am beyond caring for good bedside manners now. The father didn't need to be told twice and bolted with the boy inside the room with all haste. Hope is the last to die, we will find out if it is a blessing or the vilest of evils, that which extend suffering.
The boy is now on my tablet. It's show time. I breathe deeply, letting go of every thought and distraction, and surrender to the experience. This Epiphany, the ecstasy of the divine frenzy that transcends beyond the rational and gives up the mind to be medium to the Divine: theophany. I collapse upon myself, the World that is me, for the face of God is the face or a world, if there is a god that is mad then there is a respective world that is also mad. Time to go down the rabbit hole.
I watch in rapture, as life returns to the still body, once stilled chest rise and fall once again. Breath and living pallor return to the boy. He stirs up and groggily open his eyes, as if death was just another form of slumber. He look up to the bright sailing, eyes stunned by the light, he turns aside, locking eyes with mister Fugimaru.
"Father?" This did it, the father jump into the tabled embracing the son whose voice he thought would never be heard of again, saying those simple words that mean so much. If the previous whales were ugly and heart wresting, now it is a discharge of gratitude and happiness a person is considered luck to experience once in his life. The son he considered lost returned to him. This is what this gift is for, to bring people happiness.
Thank you, thank you so much. Somehow, looking at this, I feel I am the one that was saved.
"What are you…" the awestruck voice break my musing and I turn around.
Ah.
It seems that my earlier display caught a lot of attention and the lack of closed doors gave the awaiting patients first row to my little miracle. I… really didn't think this through.
"They are the bassarids." From the back, Kurama oppressive presence is heard. Despite this, his smile is positively feral, full of unquestionable pride. Behind his leg is the small ball of happiness and sunshine, smiling to me just as he did the first time we meet. It fills me with pride, knowing I am still able to elicit such joy from them, that I am still worthy. I am not done though.
"Review the triaging. Less than half an hour, but at least ten minutes, depending on how strong they are of body. Anyone in that window, I can resurrect them for sure if I reach them in time. So Please, help me save everyone!"
My pronouncement lights a fire under everyone, and they all started running around like headless chickens, frenetically talking to rash out the new trial. Maybe the madness really is contagious, but experiencing this small miracle seems to have filled them with resolve to do more too. In the end, maybe what everybody need is just a little push.
-//-
The following hours were grueling, until even my superhuman endurance gave out and I was forcibly but gently packed back home.
Over my unfortunate trial and error, I narrowed down the timing of my resurrection to between nine to around twenty five minutes, depending on how strong the deceased was. Nobody lasted more than thirty minutes, no matter how strong, and they are seriously debilitated afterward, something priceless and precious lost during their death experience. But this still basically 5th level spell Raise Dead. This has become the talk of town, and if people were friendly before, they are almost worshipful now. I can't really fault them, I guess this is the normal behavior for this sort of situational. The way humans deal with mysteries is by insolating themselves from them. Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom. Words to live by.
That said it would be bad manners to forget of those that I met before my apotheosis. Just as I reach home I turn back to greet my newest friend. "Good to see that you stuck around. You have no idea how aggravated I would have been if you had actually baited."
"I also would have liked to be thankful you stayed the same busybody and aggravating mad woman that I meet in the morning. But that would have been a lie."
That got me laughing. Deep, from the gut. A hearth laughter that echoed through the street at the daybreak. Even after I was done, the smiling disposition remains. I feel that I could laugh like this again at any minor surprise. I feel different, light, as if something has been knocked loose inside myself, bringing great relief, joy and happiness.
"So, you are coming inside or not?"
"Why would I follow you exactly?"
"Isn't it obvious? I am your new sponsor and friend. Artists like you are nothing but vagrants until you curry the attention and favor of a cat fat. Art is not cheap and it often doesn't put food on the tablet either."
"Then why do you care, if it is so lacking in value?"
"Now you are just putting words in my mouth. The answer should be obvious, your cretin. It is why you bothered with it in the first place, why you stayed for me, why you helped out; thanks, by the way. Pain and suffering are synonym with life itself, this is an unescapable truth. The question then, isn't why or how to escape from it but what is it worth for."
That got a reaction out of him, these words hurt hit deeply in a place he scarcely dares to touch, even if he had no concrete idea of why. "You are playing a dangerous game. There is nothing that I hate more than to be left waiting. Your detour already toke my entire day and now you talk nonsense and insult my art."
I raise my hands in surrender, "Easy there, friend. What is art, really? If you had to express to me in one sentence, I feel that you wouldn't really be able to compress it, would you? That is the sight of a true artist, someone subsumed by its medium. Art is the granulation of experience inside of the self until if crystalize and is discharged through the artist's medium as a wisdom that comes from so deep inside, every other words they had ever spoken sound like a lie."
The now redhead man looks at me. There is a gleam in his eyes now. "That is what you did, then? Do you consider your resurrection ninjutsu art?"
I freeze under the weight of his expectations. This is the decision point, I feel. Said that, this is a difficult question… meh, let's see what comes out of my mad ramblings then, "Art is joined at the rip with beauty and both have an intrinsic value on their own. If a person has secured food and shelter, its next priority is entertaining. If she has no clear path to either, then said entertaining becomes an escape. Art is a balm that redeems life, justify the suffering for beasts cursed with knowledge such as ourselves. Art is the action of affirmation of life but not every action affirmative of life is Art."
"And that is why I said you are a mad fool. Affirmation of life? Life is fundamentally transient and ephemeral. Art is superior to life, for it is eternal and ever-lasting!"
"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, if there is nobody to appreciate it, then what is it good for? It is meant to be shared."
"That is why I call you naive; I have no need for acknowledgement."
"Then why are you here, then?"
…
"The truth is that humans are made for trouble. We are the ones born to 'struggle with the divine' as a matter of course. The experience cannot be inherited either, so every human is condemned to yoke under these questions. Even if granted salvation by a godly device we would break it just to see if something interesting and unexpected happens."
"What are you implying here?"
"That is why I went after you despite knowing from the get go you are nothing but trouble… and that is why you went after me, despite knowing the same."
…
"You are a great artist, even if your medium is something I never had particularly interest before. That said, you spent too long under your own counsel, struggling without respite. Even if this suffering allowed for the creation of great art, I fear for you, friend. That you will lose your way back from the cavernous deeps we call our minds, back to us. It's a more common end for artists than people realize, and the world would be poorer without you in it. The artists are the ones that open the way in the pilgrim's journey, the painter are the vanguards, followed by the musicians, then the poet and only then do the lowly philosopher such as myself map the way back, always lagging behind."
…
"These feelings are something I can only put into words thanks to you. This is my heartfelt gratitude."
"So, what? Are you going to 'fix' me or something?"
"What? No way! I am a miracle maker, not a god. I lack the capacity and interest to save you. The fact is you are killing yourself, though. So I am going to round out your rough edges so that you can go on for longer."
"Isn't this the same as saying you want me to suffer for longer?"
"Yes, please!"
…
…
"My real name is Sasori."
"Nice to meet you Sasori, my real name is Megumi."
"Sasori of the Red Sand."
"Nice epithet, mine is Panacea."
"You have no idea what that means, do you?"
"Should I?"
"Whatever! Fools cannot be saved anyway. Just so you know, I am not cheat though. If you waste my time you will regret it."
"Dude, you think money is a problem to me? Money can't buy My time."
We walked inside.
-//-
"Well, are you ready to start?" Kurama inquires, clear anticipation in his voice.
"My, my. I do seem to remember you were the one voting against rushing just weeks ago. Saying I should take my time." I could not help but pipe in. After I was bathed and rested Kurama toke the earlier opportunity to drag me, back to our 4D-dimensional mansion. He knew that I was ready to brand myself with the Magnum Opus Stigmata after my epiphany.
"Shameless until the end, I am saying what you already know. Since you insist in being this petulant about it, let me satisfy the childish petulance of yours: you are ready. The person you are right now is different from the previous self. You realize what humans have forgotten and burst past the bottleneck that held back both your power and your personal development as a person. You accepted yourself as a denizen of this world, and here is where your journey truly start. You answered to the call of adventure!"
"Thank you." I say easily, making little of his speech even though his words filled me with warmth. He sees through me and just roll his eyes at my petulance. He is right about everything after all.
What the practitioners of the Extreme Lotus call Gate of Life, located on the spinal cord, just below the throat, aligned with the center of the collarbone. The Vishuddha chakra, meaning Purest. It's element is the Aether, referred to as Akasha. It's a point of conversion of the previous Chakras, being known as the purification center, thus all five senses previously managed by the bellow chakras converge. In its most abstract form, it is associated with higher discrimination and is associated with creativity and self-expression. It is believed that when Vishuddha is closed, a person undergoes decay and death. When it is open, negative experiences are transformed into wisdom and learning. The success and failure in one's life are said to depend upon the state of this chakra, whether it is polluted or clean. The feeling of guilty is given as the most prominent reason for this chakra to block the Prana moving upwards.
I have long since decided the foundation that said charka would have. However, I lacked the experience to properly make it. This chakra is where the elixir of immortality of the gods drip down from. Know in India as Sanskrit, sharing the same Indo-Aryan etymologic roots as Ambrosia.
Sometimes being referred in legend as Amrita or Soma, it alleged had the power to covers the naked and heals all who are sick: the blind man sees, the lame man steps forth. Capable of let those who seek find what they seek, let them receive the treasure, let him find what was lost before, let him push forward the man of truth. It is capable to grants speed and strength to warriors, excellent and righteous sons to those giving birth, spiritual power and knowledge to those who apply themselves to the study of mysteries.
It's what the gods of Olympus and Indian pantheon use to fight off the shadow of death itself and medium of countless forms of miracles. In addition, it is said that those that consumed it had their crimson blood turned into golden ichor, something toxic to humans yet capable of grand transformation, springing magical herbs when it touches the ground.
Due to these properties, I deemed it fundamental quintessence akin to the Philosopher's Stone. The central Mystery of Alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, heavenly bliss and chrysopoeia, the artificial creation of gold. It is Prima Material, the source of all earthly elements that first sprout from Primordial Chaos. That is also, why the Philosopher's Stone is considered a homonym to Alkahest, the universal solvent.
The Magnum Opus was the "Great Work" required to manifest this key wonder. In the more alchemical tradition, the process is ruled by the precept of the four humors, being created by the order of black, white, yellow, and red that it was governed by. But the Esoteric Hermetic alchemists tradition reject work on exoteric substances, instead directing their search for the philosopher's stone inward. The transmutation mediated by the stone is interpreted as a psychological, theological, philosophical, and aspirational process.
Something I had forgotten, thinking that I would find the answers by toiling into uncovering the secrets of the soul. As if the answer, and maybe even the soul itself, could be measured and broken down in a periodic tablet. That is why I thought it would take years to complete this Stigmata once upon a time.
The Vishuddha Chakra also represent the Third of the Four Noble Truth – nirodha (cessation, ending, confinement): dukkha (suffering) can be ended or contained by the renouncement or letting go of this taṇhā (craving); the confinement of tanha releases the excessive bind of dukkha.
Nirodha, refers to a state of cessation of perception and feeling. It is the out-of-body experience where mental formation cease and the body in in a Flow state, where the practitioner performs activity fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and deriving joy and rapture in the process of the activity.
Alas, instead of find nirodha through confinement I found it through liberation: Catharsis. Literally meaning purification and cleansing, it is the purification and purgation of emotions through climax, in whatever form it may take. Artistic (Spirit) or Hunger (Eros). The inflation of the soul until it break the limits of the Logos and burst free. A Tragic Disposition, in real life men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean. Affirming life at its peaks and in its abysses, the fullness of life and the violence of death, the world a mystic temple and hall of doom. The tragic contrast that everything has its opposite within itself, paradox and duality.
This Divine Madness is no sickness, no debility in life, but companion of life at its healthiest. It is the tumult which arrive from its innermost recesses when they mature and force their way to the surface. It is the madness inherent in the womb of the mother. This attends all moments of creation, and ushers in primal salvation and primal pain – and in both, the primal wildness of being.
What the last disciple of Dionysus called the Great Health and Carl Jung called the Treasure of Rebirth and Renewal. The treasure hard to obtain found during the travel to the Underworld of the Archetypal Hero's Journey. I descended into the chthonic deeps and laid eyes into its foundations. Guided by the divine inspiration, I traveled through the road one must go alone, no guides, no helpers, no markers, and risking to lose oneself in the hidden deeps of one's own mind.
All who travel into the abyss of death do die, a person cannot visit the same river twice. The triumphant hero that emerges experience an amazing transformation. It qualified as a form of rebirth, to reemerge from primordial chaos. A rebirth, as if one is their personal dying-and-rising god.
Meditation upon the Vishuddha Chakra bring about various epiphanies and occult powers: vision of the three periods, past, present and future; freedom from disease and old age; destruction of dangers; and the ability to move the three worlds.
The three worlds are physical and objective world, the psychological and cognizant subjective world and the world of concepts, abstractions and creation. The visage of every true god is the visage of the world, the world reveal itself through the god. Humans too, carry within an immeasurable world. The god-that-is-me. Therefore, humans are a holy trinity upon themselves, three gods in one godhead.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Zeus, Dionysus/Zagreus and Hades. Picking between the figure of Jesus and Dionysus daunting task. They are so close to one another that it put into perspective all those critics about Hellenization of the Catholic Church, especially in the Orphic version of the human creation myth. From the fact, they are both gods that justify and redeem suffering, the ritualistic connection to wine, and the following symbolic omophagia connotations to communing with said god by consuming and being possessed by its spirit. The fact both were considered subversive by Rome is the cherry on top. What bring Dionysus the victory here is his validation to the concept of Metempsychosis, the first western theory of reincarnation through palingenesis.
According to this myth, the infant Dionysus is killed, torn apart, and consumed by the Titans. In retribution, Zeus strikes the Titans with a thunderbolt, turning them to ash. From these ashes, humanity is born, tainted by this sin of murder. In Orphic belief, this myth describes humanity as having a dual nature: body, inherited from the Titans, and a divine spark or soul, inherited from Dionysus. In order to achieve salvation from the Titanic, material existence, one had to be initiated into the Dionysian mysteries and undergo a ritual purification and reliving of the suffering and death of the god.
The uninitiated in Orphic cult, they believed, would be reincarnated indefinitely, as the well of rebirth would keep on turning. The newly dead who drank from the River Lethe would lose all memory of their past existence. The initiated were taught to seek instead the river of memory, Mnemosyne, thus securing the end of the transmigration of the soul. Orphics believed that they would, after death, spend eternity alongside Orpheus and other heroes.
This came before the mortal Selene and Zeus' thigh pregnancies, by the way, talk about a guy that never got a break even before being born. But this is why Dionysus is the "confidant of the dead", another thing he got in common with Jesus, who die to cleanse mortal sin and allow salvation and liberation. The Son is the medium between the Chthonic (Hades) elements and the Olympian (Zeus) in the mortal realm, that is why Dyonisus name mean not only the Son of Zeus but also Young Zeus. The fact the New Testament was first written in Greek really does not help the critics of Hellenic contamination. Humans really are consigned to live in the catacombs of theirs ancestors, nothing ever ends. I guess this is another sign of the Eternal Recurrence.
As the important final part is that his death is the catalyzer to Apollo and Hermes involvement in his legend. Apollo's actions of burring Zagreus allowed for his reincarnation as Dionysus, giving him the title of Bestower of Dyonisus, both because his action symbolize the reversal of the Anima Mundi back toward unification and because he embody the principle of individuation, the Ego and respectively, the Logos. The dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian can be compared to the structure of the right and left side of the brain, and Tragedy is the synthesis of these two sides, walking hand in hand… well, that didn't hit home at all.
Apollo as the god of all shaping energies is also the soothsaying god, the shining one that rule over the fair appearance of the inner world of fantasies. The call for Higher Truth, and the following rapture its perfection inspires is contrasted with the only partially intelligible and chaotic everyday world. Promoting healing and dreaming, symbolized with its attributes as a soothsayer, and consequently, the arts through which life is made possible and worth living.
A dangerous dream-like artist. There is a reason Paradise Lost was successful enough to affect the Christian zeitgeist, becoming an apocrypha of the faith despite being objectively an ancient fanfiction of the same caliber as the Divine Comedy. It capture in its narrative a self-evident Truth that all can recognize but few can put into words. That the philosophical thought overgrows art and forces it to cling tightly to bough of the dialectic, the apollonian tendency is concerned with its logical schematicism.
Hermes is messenger god, serving as the bridge between the creator and the created. His name means both "heap of stones" and "boundary maker", making him a symbol of the spirit of truth hidden on Earth, given to mankind by the gods. He also has connection to the underworld, the bridges and guider the soul of the dead along the road between "the Under and the Upper world".
The fact his roman counterpart is called Mercury tell everything one needs to know about its involvement with alchemy, he is the verb that denotes change. The union of opposites in the pursue of encompassing totality, the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury can be said to contain the totality of the psyche, both the unconscious and conscious mind, the know and the unknown, and the light and dark within. A trickster that show people boundaries and deficiencies in oneself and wider society in search to reestablish balance.
Apollo is the pin holding the wheel of life of three godheads in place while Hermes is the substance circulating through it all as a medium between the other four. Five gods in total, an auspicious number, five senses and the elemental pentagram. Western occultists make various differing Kabbalistic associations with Vishuddha chakra. Associating it with the hidden sephirah Da'at, where "wisdom" and "understanding" are balanced in the supernal realm by the aspect of "knowledge", a tangible idea which is then expressed, leading to the act of the creation.
But that is not where it ends, I didn't research Ninshu for the last year for nothing. The Vishuddha chakra is the point where the balance of Ying and Yang essences flip, being decidedly more Ying. The fundamental revelation of the bodhisattva only remembered as the Sage of Six Paths is the Creation of all Things. It can be said to be the fundamental mystery of the Ninshu, and its study is the fundamental purpose of its cult; a virtuous human is the one that struggle with god, the search to comprehend it is a virtuous one.
In D&D terms, the Creation of all Things could be conceptualized as the 9th level spell, Wish. What I am aiming here for is the watered down version of the jutsu, Limited Wish, a 6th level spell that basically can replicate any spell of 5th level or bellow, of even restricted spell lists. Considering "Raise Death" was a 5th spell that I now can cast, this goal seems achievable. If Kurama's Mythos Exultant is the power to turn every ticket in the lottery box into a winning one, then this power would be of always take out the one lottery ticket among the countless one. Transmutation of Phenomenon, basically, Marble Phantasm to his Reality Marble. It is broader but more limited, the narrow ones path is the further it goes. This is by no mean a loss.
-//-
Conceptualization completed, I reach for it, willing it so. That is when, to my surprise, I fell Kurama pushing at our connection and then before I can realize what is going on my body is flooded with his chakra. Wha-
"Brace yourself, Megumi. While that little plan of yours is now viable, it still is going to suck." He smiles jovially at me as I fall to my knees in pain, "and remember, you literally asked for this."
Dick.
Is that what being a jinshuriki is like? I feel like a balloon about to pope, the power coursing through my body is putting a stress over my chakra network no human is designed to handle. All my nodes are being pried impossible wide. This must be what it feels like for Shirou to perform spells beyond his, I feel like I am about to break. I knew enough about ninja culture and forbidden jutsu to intellectually know how real that dangers where, but this is my first time meeting them personally. The only respire is that while Kurama is pushing his chakra on me; he is also pulling my pneuma to himself, giving me more room even as it gives more room in myself for his power to scorch me.
His chakra excels my body's capacity to handle and it escape my body, creating a cloak of chakra around me. Instead of relief, it bring even more agony. It is more as I am in a pressure cooker, my body trapped into a vicious circle of destruction and renewal. My body is breaking down and being recreated, yet the pendulum definitely is pending toward the destruction side of scales. Through the razy fog of pain I am vaguely aware that I am being unraveled, my skin is being peeled away and rising to the surface of my aura, where it escape as smoke… and I am bleeding golden blood?!
At some point, the chakra reach such density it collapse into itself. What once was more like an ethereal mist then spurred by Kurama into a pseudo-liquid state now reach the final stage. I am past the point of pain, maybe past madness too. I guess the nerves that transmit pain have already being fried, like third degree burns. Despite all logic I also still here, even if I feel like my physical body was destroyed. Despite that I simple can't move, my hyper dense body keep me rooted to my spot. Despite no long having eyes I can still see. I look at myself and perceive a golden being made of pure light, liked a flayed god. Indescribable power course through me and I feel my childlike frame expanding and maturing. This form kind of remind me of Gon in his final transformation against Pitou… so this is the famous Body Reformation all those xianxia novels talk about.
Like the birth of a star, the energy discharges into a final conflagration that rockets the world, threatening to collapse the imaginary space we created.
I look down into myself and see once again the being of light that I was when I confronted Kurama the first time we met. This is not a mindscape but the real world. I remember with my Rikugan that some changes have ensued though; I now have a giant blind spot bellow my chin, damn these Senju genes! My cleavage entered a fight against the Golden Ration my body was supposed to by cast under and it barely lost.
The woman under the starlight guise was like the blessed immortals in appearance. Like Zeus's hardy daughter, Athena, this body resemble one of those famous marble statues, powerful yet lovely and as flawless… to the Hellenic people pain is sacrosanct, thus a sexual symbol is a holy one. The pain of the woman at childbirth sanctify all following pains of life!
I guess that is what I get for using the Greek gods mysteries to perform my Body Reformation; it is less that I am an beauty to break all hearts and more like the pain ensued to get me here made me real in a way that mortal people can never dream of being, therefore beautiful. Beautiful is the only word I can think to describe the experience involved at looking at myself. In a sense, beauty is synonymous to the gods' control over mortals. Virtue is performative excellence; the attribute was elevated to the realm of mystery, an appearance that induct catharsis.
The fact I stand a head over the Raikage in height also helps to make me look impressive. My Yamato like ethnic features of my likely Iron Country heritage mix with the Senju striking features to give off an aristocratic and noble but warm appearance, with smile that comes easy and raven black straight hair that cascade to the waist. Natural four-pack, I only ever managed to have it Before for a brief period in my late teens, but this ones look natural. Indeed, this body can best be described as a lioness.
"Have you finished gawking at yourself?" Kurama's voice break me out of my musings, but his appearance completely push it out of my mind.
"You look dead warmed up!" This isn't a hyperbole either, while once his very presence invoked fear, as if his own casting was designed to be a symmetry of dread, cruelly predatory and powerful, now is a disheveled and emancipated, skin and bones, like the survivors of famine.
I rush over to him, among the gifts Kurama has granted, my divine panoply, one stands for the Virtue of Compassion, the moral foundation of Care. The Cup Grace, something that exist no for my own sake but as something to be offered and given up for the sake of others. I invoke it to my hand and it take the shape of an azul lapis lazuli horn carved with golden embroiled patterns. It is basically a Cornucopia, a horn of plenty, the reason the bull is a symbol of Dionysus, the giver of wine, is because it traditionally used as wine cup.
I startle him by pushing the cup over his lips, but when the coruscate vermilion red ambrosia touch his lips he drink deeply from it. When his strength return to his limbs he take the cup from my hand and gorge himself on it with deep gulfs. By the time he put it down, his frame is once again filled to healthy, though still puny for him.
"And this is why I tell you that you have to learn to look before you jump. You have no self-control, any experience of anxiety is enough to spurring you to act before you can think."
"Are you better now?"
"Yes."
"Good," I punch him in the arm. "What the hell were you thinking? Acting like that without a heads up. You looked dead!"
"It was temporary. This transformation of yours is maintained by the virtuous circulation of our essences, as you take more of mine I too feed on your power. I just had to pay an initial fee as investment to bring you up to a level comparable to my own. You had already acclimated to my chakra over the years and the Magnum Opus Stigmata excelled my expectations, to the point it was worth accelerate your grow so you could then accelerate my own restoration."
"…fine, I can feel what you are talking about. Though I never thought to use our bond as a two-ways street for something besides telepathy. You know anything about this Light form?"
"In fact, I do. It is the power the ancestor of your people, Ashura, achieved after he became the successor of the Sage of Six Paths. Though as you chakra is white while his was yellow, your form is a bit different."
"Wow, talk about hitting the nail in the head. Wait, so you actually met that guy? Didn't you say the Sage was from before your time? And more importantly, are you saying I achieved some form of Ancestral Return hidden power of my bloodline?"
"No…"
"You are not dealing with the average senju anymore, Kurama."
"No…"
"I have achieved the legend, the one that you feared."
"No…"
"I have become the Legendary Super Senju!"
"I hate you."
"Do you hate me because you are envious of my super senju swag or because you are the only person in this realm of existence capable of understanding this reference?"
…
…
"Amazing Chest Ahead."
"That is sexual harassment!"
[AUTOR'S ROOM]
This chapter is dedicated to the nameless beggar violinist. Yeah, he is real. I searched for covers to show you people but the best link I found simple didn't capture the raw emotion the man had put into it, so post a second of a pianist capable of it so you get the idea. He is the man that made understand why people could believe the greatest art is born of the greatest pain.
Here are the links:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XneQd0D5SQ8
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyp74H3kMdI
Now, to the elephant in the room, resurrection. There is a reason people are hesitant to introduce it in stories, Dragon Ball is the cardinal example of the damage it can do to the stakes, ruining tension and cheapening drama. That is why kishimoto always attached it to a ruinous price. The thing is, it is in the power of chakra to bring back the dead. When Nagato used it, he did not resurrect one person, but thousands. Is the price of opening the gates of death that kill the target so he can resurrect as many people as he wanted or he could actually survive it if he went easy? If so, why not to resurrect his friends and Akatsu members?
But more than that, Chion was the first to introduce the possibility of a resurrection jutsu and she doesn't have any bloodline to justify it, she just created it. Could someone do to Chion what Kabuto did to Impure World Resurrection? If she could bring back to life even a cold turkey Gaara, that was dead for more than a day, what if the person is in better conditions? If the person is just a little bit dead couldn't she just die a little bit to bring the person back to life?
That said, there is no logic in the power of resurrection, it is the bonafide textbook definition of a miracle. This excel human reason, so I went all out to give it the proper gravitas. Megumi got enough experience out of it to jump a lot of levels. It is a 'treasure that is hard to attain', in a figurative and real way.
This mark the end of Megumi's childhood to express how transformative said experience was. She is letting go of old attachments, the modest goal of living something like a cosmopolitan life in that world was a holdover from the past. God may be dead in our world but it is very much alive in the Naruto world, it is not something to be experienced on Sundays in God's crypt but a constant companion of every action of every day. As she said, humans are made for trouble, and she is ready to usher a new age of Madness and Glory.
By the way, she denounce the only thing Madara ever bothered to say to the Kyubi in this chapter, a preview for things to come. Incidentally, about my description of the dangers of the god Apollo and how much it actually match our own. I will just remind you that Hashirama dreamt to make Konoha his entire life, and in the end he betrayed his consciousness to preserve it: he killed Madara where before he had Konoha he spared him then followed this by imprisoning Kurama just because his power 'could' be a treat. The fact he proceeded to reincarnate as the vessel of the beast he wronged and experience the prejudice Madara warned him about can be described as nothing but Karma.
This was a heavy chapter but I wrote it in basically two days. What was mean to be a short interlude took on a life of its own. I could say the Muses went amazon position on me and I am pooped.
Of course, as the resident doctor panacea, where do I fit in it? To whom are the victims of this attack and their loved ones rushing for help? If the words patient triaging does not evoke existential dread and panic attack in you, then you are not a real medical professional. Every injured person dragged themselves and their loved one to my doorsteps. My humble clinic ended looking like an underworld clandestine hospital or a medic tent of a war zone. People I have come to know laid in my tablet with desperate, pitiful eyes.
All these shinobi I contracted came through here, at least. Some among them are veterans that had true first-hand experience of the last war. After the battle was won, and I made clear I would be helping out, they made the executive decision of coordinating things. Taking upon themselves to organize the mobs, raise extra tended and coordinate with other medics and nurses of the city. Their actions saved as many lives as mine own; I might be good but not that particularly fast, so my talent was best served stabilizing patients in critical condition. Life was to be prioritized as there is no injury beyond my capacity to heal so.
Except one, that is.
Death.
I am in no way, shape, or form an emergence room doctor, my job is closer to physiotherapy. I do the cleanup and mending, but now I have people blow open, with all sort of injuries, bleeding at my therapy turned surgery tablet and my professional seniors are looking at me for directions. I can barely tolerate blood! I get nauseous just passing by the butcher story! In my head stakes grown on trees! I have half dozen live chickens back home that are giving me eggs because I couldn't man up enough to kill and clean them! And now people want me to pull a Grey's Anatomy!?
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!
Nevertheless, I am the only one that can do it. Forget social repercussion, I would never forgive myself if I backed down.
Therefore, I did it. I put everything into mending others, getting blood up to my elbows weaving broken bodies together as if this was a fast-food chain. At some point, I notice Apollo gently pulling aside the distraught family member of a patient. Kurama must have brought him back. Good.
My Original One also walked through the door at some point, completely shell-shocked, covered in injuries and blood, being almost dragged by a tall grey wolf friend she made today. Our information sharing is mechanic at this point, something I will pat myself in the back latter, as she look done for. As most of that blood wasn't hers, I now have to look up to the nightmare of tonight's synchronization to boot! I just mended the surface of her injuries, provided some clean cloths and set her in one corner where she won't disturbs my work. She was well enough physically to help, but I cannot even afford to let her on her own at this point. I have my own nightmare of real Trauma Center role-play to deal with!
Of course, minds are in no way as malleable and easily mended as bodies. The festival of violence Kurama instigated might have won the day but left people in their last nerves afterward. Something I apparently had a first-hand experience today. Victory was had, but moral is bottom low, and despite the indiscriminate execution of tragedy that happened today, people started to demand privilege treatment in the triaging, forsaking any solidarity. They might have justified it is due to whatever reason they could come to; to their standing, class, money, to the usefulness of their skills.
As if the measure of a life could be quantified. As if the people that caused this were right in their calculations that led them to think this attack was justified. As if there is nothing sacred in life. Again, who is the worse one then? The one who commits evil in ignorance or the one that sins in abstention despite knowing better?
I tell myself that my hands are already full, that any diversion from my task could not compensate the loss of live that hang at the clock's leg. The worse part of it all by far is that I killed today, that much was obvious. I now am letting go of people I could save, that are being pushed to the wayside because I am too afraid to rock the boat. A lifetime of instincts as a cog in the machine raise its head, rooting me on the spot. Am I 'going native' in the worse way possible?
Everybody want to be a hero but nobody wants to die. The idea of acting like a big shot main character has been beaten out of me so long ago I don't even remember when I lost it. Despite growing up with tales of great and virtuous people that went against the grain to uphold higher ideals it was also expected to 'adulting'. Society was not perfect, but there are proper and proven channels of change, and they exist for a reason. Everyone at least once in their lives think that if given absolute power they could be the ones to usher a utopia. History is full of cautionary tales about those that failed to grow humility and see their shortcomings, becoming willing facilitators to of demagogues that exploit said political ignorance to accrue power.
A single person, no matter how gifted, cannot measure up to the collective brainpower and processing capacity of the collective common sense. It take millions of hours of countless people to lay the groundwork to manifest a single genius. They are the exception that proves the rule. Yet, doesn't that mean that people of Konoha are right, then? Isn't this the same situation of two years ago when Apollo was consigned to a life of isolation? Are these people less deserving of salvation than he was? Isn't anyone out there, that loves them just as much as I love my son, going to lose said love for my cowardice? What changed? Did I change? Would the me of today have saved Apollo?
These are the thoughts running through my head as I pretend to not hear the commotion outside. Mister Fugimaru is screaming himself hoarse with the voluntary nurses, security closing in to detain him for obstructing things. He is a hardy and hardworking person that works as a freelancer drayman in the commercial district. I know him personally because one of his sons had become fast friends with Apollo, leading us to meet and perform the 'parenting networking' that got him to regularly cart supplies to my clinic. But I guess our relationship will come to an end.
In his arms is little Keyko's listless body. He probable got trapped in the rubble of the initial explosions. He lasted a good while but got held back in one of the distant tends due to be low priority. Not even a medic ninja there to keep patients stable, just volunteers. Because they are nobodies.
The chain of events is evident. Without magical assistance, they had little way to deal with the brain damage from oxygen deprivation. As the damage mounted, the brain capacity to regulate bodily functions such as breathing was compromised, creating a vicious circle that resulted in a slow draw out death. While the technology capable of saving him was common in my old World, in this one I have only seen in Konoha so far. His condition worsened and his father only managed to get this far inside by pulling favors.
To no avail, he was dead on arrival.
This is on my head! This is what playing along and letting myself be dragged by the current got me! I could have saved him! But I didn't even try because I was scared of stepping on some toes! All has gone to shit and there was nobody I can run to for help. Not with this. This isn't like back home where I could justify my inaction in my powerlessness! I have power! Even the strongest being in the continent, probable the world, acknowledge me. Why don't I activate these special eyes I am so proud of to take stock of how many more people I have let down!? How do I dare to think that the power of chakra is wasted on these people when I am no better!? I used this gift to kill my enemies and refrained from using it to help someone in my capacity to save.
…
Am I not exactly the same?
I tried to be rational and reasonable but in the end, I turned in just another hypocrite. This result was obvious from the beginning; I just chose to turn away from it. Because I was afraid. I was afraid of being the especial one. The savior the future of this world rest up. Stalked my power as coincidence instead of divine providence and walked along my way. Because otherwise I would either be wrong, another fool of history books and cautionary tales, or I would be right and the weight of the world wound be mine to bear.
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.
As it turns out, no choice is also a form of commitment with its own repercussions. This is like the a macabre parody of Jonah, the foolish prophet that that tried to abandon his divine mission; then I guess I am at the part where he was thrown overboard and to pacify a divine storm and was swallowed by a giant fish.
A shame real life is not as idyllic as fairy tales are. Everything Jonah had to do was repent and promise to return to his mission for God to forgive him and have the fish spit him out. My own remorse and regret can't bring the boy back to life. I cannot undo my mistake, my sin!
My hands stay stead as I keep to my tasks but my legs feel like giving out under me. Please, someone, anyone. Save me from this.
Like thunder, the sound of the wooden chair hitting the floor break me out of my funk. It was my Original, stands up so fast that the chair was toppled. Her eyes assume a crazed mania as she looks at me and the pungent and sweet smell of alcoholic fruit linger in the air. Did she never stop turning that power on herself?
"The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom." She hit me in the head with it. Words I said to myself once before, now so laced with so much meaning it is like a hammer to the knot of thought my mind was wringed into. I must be getting drunk myself, because I got it.
Who is it that said that there is no cure for death? How can I say such thing without even trying? Why am I dismissing the possibility out of hand because of old bias that said this is a miracle or fairy tale? The resurrection of the dead is definitely something beyond human wisdom but is it beyond the grace of the divine? Magic and Mysteries itself are the providence of the gods. Give the divine fire by Prometheus' sacrifice, yet humans fancy themselves the masters of power they do not really comprehend.
I fell to Socrates' seduction, the sweet traps of dialectics. The blind faith that reason is virtue upon itself; indeed, the highest of virtues. Proceeding then to strap the Spirit and the Hunger, putting said reins in Logos hands. As if those irrationals Instincts of Life could be measured as nothings but an unstable force, lacking purpose and meaning, and which only worth could be found as the slavish servants of Reason.
If Nietzsche was the last disciple of Dionysus then Socrates was the Light-Bringer's first disciple, the Spirit of Rationality, and it's tendency of producing all-encompassing, totalitarian systems that encompass everything then fall in love with them. At some point, I believed I had "figure out" chakra, that in time all its secrets would be mine to command. Like a scientist dissecting nature under the scalp and microscope.
At the end of this road is Hell. Nothing above or outside the control of the rational is ever allowed to exist. It denies man as anything but a sterile caricature deprived of vitality and aspirations. The seed of nihilism that denies and smother live at the cradle. It uses the existence of pain and suffering to denounce any god and world that allow and abide to it. Not for the existence of pain and suffering on itself, but for the temerity to exist as something beyond its power to control and arbiter as it sees fit.
I don't want it.
That, if nothing else, is the Truth.
God exist in the Realm of Mystery. By whatever form or culture it was understood, The Divine existed beyond the grasp of human wisdom. And yet humanity exist as part of it, something we can experience. Rituals and ceremonies exist to convey something that is impossible to directly describe. That said, sometimes these experiences do not need to be induced, circumstances align to promote it naturally, like lightning out of the blue sky.
What exactly constitute death when magic get involved? It is obvious when you think about it, if modern medicine can restart a heart that has stopped then what does it matter to be brain dead when magic that can reverse necrosis and regrow what has been lost is possible?
This can only end in tears, to raise a false hope to then topple it down, but I simple could not dismiss it when lives where at stakes. As it turns out, it comes down to the soul.
I turn around so sharply that my assistants look at me now, thinking me also mad. They might not be wrong. Some distant memory of my catechism classes remind me of obscure vesicles that basically states: to experience the rapture of God is to lose you good sense, this is why you depend on the good neighbor to return you to your sense. I appreciate the concern, but for now I will ride this dragon until the work is done.
The Original Self and I push the door down, cutting the confrontation that was taking place before it escalated. Maybe it was the palpable madness around us, but even the grieving father stood to attention.
Before any disturbances could take place again I declare, "Bring him in, now."
My words aggravate the already recalcitrating staff. The medic ninja I first meet with A try to make me reconsider, "He is already-
"Did I stutter? You are wasting time we might not have. Come!" I am beyond caring for good bedside manners now. The father didn't need to be told twice and bolted with the boy inside the room with all haste. Hope is the last to die, we will find out if it is a blessing or the vilest of evils, that which extend suffering.
The boy is now on my tablet. It's show time. I breathe deeply, letting go of every thought and distraction, and surrender to the experience. This Epiphany, the ecstasy of the divine frenzy that transcends beyond the rational and gives up the mind to be medium to the Divine: theophany. I collapse upon myself, the World that is me, for the face of God is the face or a world, if there is a god that is mad then there is a respective world that is also mad. Time to go down the rabbit hole.
O, Sheol.
Deep below the earth, where the spirit of the deceased reside.
A world of darkness and silence.
I have come down here, simple chasing a single butterfly like a child.
Eternal Pain, an inescapable despair, makes its way in with each breath.
How should I call out to my familiar parents if I am to meet them again?
I run in the surface after a long time, gathering limitless knowledge from all cultures.
The Devil's Wisdom.
The ultimate formula that even he cannot scratch the surface of.
I search for an answer.
A single solution all beings can follow.
Blessing. The blessing of being alive.
The absolute blessings of humans, whose colors never fade.
However, the unstable flutterings of a butterfly's wings trigger infinite possibilities.
The Truth of Nature laughs at a thousand years of human wisdom, distancing itself as it nestles closer.
No matter what kind of answer is found, poverty remains, and humans begin to hate one another, become diseased, cry, and walk the path of death.
Ah, Sheol.
Merciless god of the underworld, the shadow of death, listen to my prayer.
Listen to the sorrowful breaths of children.
The corpses of the butterflies you have captured,
Search for the pieces of broken wing, even if it has to break their death's pallor.
The one who struggle, betting their lives, are right here.
Watch!
The forms of the courageous insects who once again take to the sky!
Turning even the shattered dreams and the remains of the setting sun into dazzling rays.
Spread your wings gallantly again, with a smile on your face!
Fly! Butterfly of Despair and Triumph!
In the end, the body might be just the vessel of the soul but it is still a sacred temple. It bears a 'living essence' that qualify it to house the soul. Once the vessel is broken its content spill out and it takes all my effort just to stop it from leaking out as I mend it. The act of gather back the spilled content is beyond me and its loss will show side-effects that are yet beyond me to restore.... but this is still honest to God's resurrection! My pneuma is living to its name and breathing live back into the deceased!
I watch in rapture, as life returns to the still body, once stilled chest rise and fall once again. Breath and living pallor return to the boy. He stirs up and groggily open his eyes, as if death was just another form of slumber. He look up to the bright sailing, eyes stunned by the light, he turns aside, locking eyes with mister Fugimaru.
"Father?" This did it, the father jump into the tabled embracing the son whose voice he thought would never be heard of again, saying those simple words that mean so much. If the previous whales were ugly and heart wresting, now it is a discharge of gratitude and happiness a person is considered luck to experience once in his life. The son he considered lost returned to him. This is what this gift is for, to bring people happiness.
Thank you, thank you so much. Somehow, looking at this, I feel I am the one that was saved.
"What are you…" the awestruck voice break my musing and I turn around.
Ah.
It seems that my earlier display caught a lot of attention and the lack of closed doors gave the awaiting patients first row to my little miracle. I… really didn't think this through.
"They are the bassarids." From the back, Kurama oppressive presence is heard. Despite this, his smile is positively feral, full of unquestionable pride. Behind his leg is the small ball of happiness and sunshine, smiling to me just as he did the first time we meet. It fills me with pride, knowing I am still able to elicit such joy from them, that I am still worthy. I am not done though.
"Review the triaging. Less than half an hour, but at least ten minutes, depending on how strong they are of body. Anyone in that window, I can resurrect them for sure if I reach them in time. So Please, help me save everyone!"
My pronouncement lights a fire under everyone, and they all started running around like headless chickens, frenetically talking to rash out the new trial. Maybe the madness really is contagious, but experiencing this small miracle seems to have filled them with resolve to do more too. In the end, maybe what everybody need is just a little push.
-//-
The following hours were grueling, until even my superhuman endurance gave out and I was forcibly but gently packed back home.
Over my unfortunate trial and error, I narrowed down the timing of my resurrection to between nine to around twenty five minutes, depending on how strong the deceased was. Nobody lasted more than thirty minutes, no matter how strong, and they are seriously debilitated afterward, something priceless and precious lost during their death experience. But this still basically 5th level spell Raise Dead. This has become the talk of town, and if people were friendly before, they are almost worshipful now. I can't really fault them, I guess this is the normal behavior for this sort of situational. The way humans deal with mysteries is by insolating themselves from them. Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom. Words to live by.
That said it would be bad manners to forget of those that I met before my apotheosis. Just as I reach home I turn back to greet my newest friend. "Good to see that you stuck around. You have no idea how aggravated I would have been if you had actually baited."
"I also would have liked to be thankful you stayed the same busybody and aggravating mad woman that I meet in the morning. But that would have been a lie."
That got me laughing. Deep, from the gut. A hearth laughter that echoed through the street at the daybreak. Even after I was done, the smiling disposition remains. I feel that I could laugh like this again at any minor surprise. I feel different, light, as if something has been knocked loose inside myself, bringing great relief, joy and happiness.
"So, you are coming inside or not?"
"Why would I follow you exactly?"
"Isn't it obvious? I am your new sponsor and friend. Artists like you are nothing but vagrants until you curry the attention and favor of a cat fat. Art is not cheap and it often doesn't put food on the tablet either."
"Then why do you care, if it is so lacking in value?"
"Now you are just putting words in my mouth. The answer should be obvious, your cretin. It is why you bothered with it in the first place, why you stayed for me, why you helped out; thanks, by the way. Pain and suffering are synonym with life itself, this is an unescapable truth. The question then, isn't why or how to escape from it but what is it worth for."
That got a reaction out of him, these words hurt hit deeply in a place he scarcely dares to touch, even if he had no concrete idea of why. "You are playing a dangerous game. There is nothing that I hate more than to be left waiting. Your detour already toke my entire day and now you talk nonsense and insult my art."
I raise my hands in surrender, "Easy there, friend. What is art, really? If you had to express to me in one sentence, I feel that you wouldn't really be able to compress it, would you? That is the sight of a true artist, someone subsumed by its medium. Art is the granulation of experience inside of the self until if crystalize and is discharged through the artist's medium as a wisdom that comes from so deep inside, every other words they had ever spoken sound like a lie."
The now redhead man looks at me. There is a gleam in his eyes now. "That is what you did, then? Do you consider your resurrection ninjutsu art?"
I freeze under the weight of his expectations. This is the decision point, I feel. Said that, this is a difficult question… meh, let's see what comes out of my mad ramblings then, "Art is joined at the rip with beauty and both have an intrinsic value on their own. If a person has secured food and shelter, its next priority is entertaining. If she has no clear path to either, then said entertaining becomes an escape. Art is a balm that redeems life, justify the suffering for beasts cursed with knowledge such as ourselves. Art is the action of affirmation of life but not every action affirmative of life is Art."
"And that is why I said you are a mad fool. Affirmation of life? Life is fundamentally transient and ephemeral. Art is superior to life, for it is eternal and ever-lasting!"
"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, if there is nobody to appreciate it, then what is it good for? It is meant to be shared."
"That is why I call you naive; I have no need for acknowledgement."
"Then why are you here, then?"
…
"The truth is that humans are made for trouble. We are the ones born to 'struggle with the divine' as a matter of course. The experience cannot be inherited either, so every human is condemned to yoke under these questions. Even if granted salvation by a godly device we would break it just to see if something interesting and unexpected happens."
"What are you implying here?"
"That is why I went after you despite knowing from the get go you are nothing but trouble… and that is why you went after me, despite knowing the same."
…
"You are a great artist, even if your medium is something I never had particularly interest before. That said, you spent too long under your own counsel, struggling without respite. Even if this suffering allowed for the creation of great art, I fear for you, friend. That you will lose your way back from the cavernous deeps we call our minds, back to us. It's a more common end for artists than people realize, and the world would be poorer without you in it. The artists are the ones that open the way in the pilgrim's journey, the painter are the vanguards, followed by the musicians, then the poet and only then do the lowly philosopher such as myself map the way back, always lagging behind."
…
"These feelings are something I can only put into words thanks to you. This is my heartfelt gratitude."
"So, what? Are you going to 'fix' me or something?"
"What? No way! I am a miracle maker, not a god. I lack the capacity and interest to save you. The fact is you are killing yourself, though. So I am going to round out your rough edges so that you can go on for longer."
"Isn't this the same as saying you want me to suffer for longer?"
"Yes, please!"
…
…
"My real name is Sasori."
"Nice to meet you Sasori, my real name is Megumi."
"Sasori of the Red Sand."
"Nice epithet, mine is Panacea."
"You have no idea what that means, do you?"
"Should I?"
"Whatever! Fools cannot be saved anyway. Just so you know, I am not cheat though. If you waste my time you will regret it."
"Dude, you think money is a problem to me? Money can't buy My time."
We walked inside.
-//-
"Well, are you ready to start?" Kurama inquires, clear anticipation in his voice.
"My, my. I do seem to remember you were the one voting against rushing just weeks ago. Saying I should take my time." I could not help but pipe in. After I was bathed and rested Kurama toke the earlier opportunity to drag me, back to our 4D-dimensional mansion. He knew that I was ready to brand myself with the Magnum Opus Stigmata after my epiphany.
"Shameless until the end, I am saying what you already know. Since you insist in being this petulant about it, let me satisfy the childish petulance of yours: you are ready. The person you are right now is different from the previous self. You realize what humans have forgotten and burst past the bottleneck that held back both your power and your personal development as a person. You accepted yourself as a denizen of this world, and here is where your journey truly start. You answered to the call of adventure!"
"Thank you." I say easily, making little of his speech even though his words filled me with warmth. He sees through me and just roll his eyes at my petulance. He is right about everything after all.
What the practitioners of the Extreme Lotus call Gate of Life, located on the spinal cord, just below the throat, aligned with the center of the collarbone. The Vishuddha chakra, meaning Purest. It's element is the Aether, referred to as Akasha. It's a point of conversion of the previous Chakras, being known as the purification center, thus all five senses previously managed by the bellow chakras converge. In its most abstract form, it is associated with higher discrimination and is associated with creativity and self-expression. It is believed that when Vishuddha is closed, a person undergoes decay and death. When it is open, negative experiences are transformed into wisdom and learning. The success and failure in one's life are said to depend upon the state of this chakra, whether it is polluted or clean. The feeling of guilty is given as the most prominent reason for this chakra to block the Prana moving upwards.
I have long since decided the foundation that said charka would have. However, I lacked the experience to properly make it. This chakra is where the elixir of immortality of the gods drip down from. Know in India as Sanskrit, sharing the same Indo-Aryan etymologic roots as Ambrosia.
Sometimes being referred in legend as Amrita or Soma, it alleged had the power to covers the naked and heals all who are sick: the blind man sees, the lame man steps forth. Capable of let those who seek find what they seek, let them receive the treasure, let him find what was lost before, let him push forward the man of truth. It is capable to grants speed and strength to warriors, excellent and righteous sons to those giving birth, spiritual power and knowledge to those who apply themselves to the study of mysteries.
It's what the gods of Olympus and Indian pantheon use to fight off the shadow of death itself and medium of countless forms of miracles. In addition, it is said that those that consumed it had their crimson blood turned into golden ichor, something toxic to humans yet capable of grand transformation, springing magical herbs when it touches the ground.
Due to these properties, I deemed it fundamental quintessence akin to the Philosopher's Stone. The central Mystery of Alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, heavenly bliss and chrysopoeia, the artificial creation of gold. It is Prima Material, the source of all earthly elements that first sprout from Primordial Chaos. That is also, why the Philosopher's Stone is considered a homonym to Alkahest, the universal solvent.
The Magnum Opus was the "Great Work" required to manifest this key wonder. In the more alchemical tradition, the process is ruled by the precept of the four humors, being created by the order of black, white, yellow, and red that it was governed by. But the Esoteric Hermetic alchemists tradition reject work on exoteric substances, instead directing their search for the philosopher's stone inward. The transmutation mediated by the stone is interpreted as a psychological, theological, philosophical, and aspirational process.
Something I had forgotten, thinking that I would find the answers by toiling into uncovering the secrets of the soul. As if the answer, and maybe even the soul itself, could be measured and broken down in a periodic tablet. That is why I thought it would take years to complete this Stigmata once upon a time.
The Vishuddha Chakra also represent the Third of the Four Noble Truth – nirodha (cessation, ending, confinement): dukkha (suffering) can be ended or contained by the renouncement or letting go of this taṇhā (craving); the confinement of tanha releases the excessive bind of dukkha.
Nirodha, refers to a state of cessation of perception and feeling. It is the out-of-body experience where mental formation cease and the body in in a Flow state, where the practitioner performs activity fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and deriving joy and rapture in the process of the activity.
Alas, instead of find nirodha through confinement I found it through liberation: Catharsis. Literally meaning purification and cleansing, it is the purification and purgation of emotions through climax, in whatever form it may take. Artistic (Spirit) or Hunger (Eros). The inflation of the soul until it break the limits of the Logos and burst free. A Tragic Disposition, in real life men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean. Affirming life at its peaks and in its abysses, the fullness of life and the violence of death, the world a mystic temple and hall of doom. The tragic contrast that everything has its opposite within itself, paradox and duality.
This Divine Madness is no sickness, no debility in life, but companion of life at its healthiest. It is the tumult which arrive from its innermost recesses when they mature and force their way to the surface. It is the madness inherent in the womb of the mother. This attends all moments of creation, and ushers in primal salvation and primal pain – and in both, the primal wildness of being.
What the last disciple of Dionysus called the Great Health and Carl Jung called the Treasure of Rebirth and Renewal. The treasure hard to obtain found during the travel to the Underworld of the Archetypal Hero's Journey. I descended into the chthonic deeps and laid eyes into its foundations. Guided by the divine inspiration, I traveled through the road one must go alone, no guides, no helpers, no markers, and risking to lose oneself in the hidden deeps of one's own mind.
All who travel into the abyss of death do die, a person cannot visit the same river twice. The triumphant hero that emerges experience an amazing transformation. It qualified as a form of rebirth, to reemerge from primordial chaos. A rebirth, as if one is their personal dying-and-rising god.
Meditation upon the Vishuddha Chakra bring about various epiphanies and occult powers: vision of the three periods, past, present and future; freedom from disease and old age; destruction of dangers; and the ability to move the three worlds.
The three worlds are physical and objective world, the psychological and cognizant subjective world and the world of concepts, abstractions and creation. The visage of every true god is the visage of the world, the world reveal itself through the god. Humans too, carry within an immeasurable world. The god-that-is-me. Therefore, humans are a holy trinity upon themselves, three gods in one godhead.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Zeus, Dionysus/Zagreus and Hades. Picking between the figure of Jesus and Dionysus daunting task. They are so close to one another that it put into perspective all those critics about Hellenization of the Catholic Church, especially in the Orphic version of the human creation myth. From the fact, they are both gods that justify and redeem suffering, the ritualistic connection to wine, and the following symbolic omophagia connotations to communing with said god by consuming and being possessed by its spirit. The fact both were considered subversive by Rome is the cherry on top. What bring Dionysus the victory here is his validation to the concept of Metempsychosis, the first western theory of reincarnation through palingenesis.
According to this myth, the infant Dionysus is killed, torn apart, and consumed by the Titans. In retribution, Zeus strikes the Titans with a thunderbolt, turning them to ash. From these ashes, humanity is born, tainted by this sin of murder. In Orphic belief, this myth describes humanity as having a dual nature: body, inherited from the Titans, and a divine spark or soul, inherited from Dionysus. In order to achieve salvation from the Titanic, material existence, one had to be initiated into the Dionysian mysteries and undergo a ritual purification and reliving of the suffering and death of the god.
The uninitiated in Orphic cult, they believed, would be reincarnated indefinitely, as the well of rebirth would keep on turning. The newly dead who drank from the River Lethe would lose all memory of their past existence. The initiated were taught to seek instead the river of memory, Mnemosyne, thus securing the end of the transmigration of the soul. Orphics believed that they would, after death, spend eternity alongside Orpheus and other heroes.
This came before the mortal Selene and Zeus' thigh pregnancies, by the way, talk about a guy that never got a break even before being born. But this is why Dionysus is the "confidant of the dead", another thing he got in common with Jesus, who die to cleanse mortal sin and allow salvation and liberation. The Son is the medium between the Chthonic (Hades) elements and the Olympian (Zeus) in the mortal realm, that is why Dyonisus name mean not only the Son of Zeus but also Young Zeus. The fact the New Testament was first written in Greek really does not help the critics of Hellenic contamination. Humans really are consigned to live in the catacombs of theirs ancestors, nothing ever ends. I guess this is another sign of the Eternal Recurrence.
As the important final part is that his death is the catalyzer to Apollo and Hermes involvement in his legend. Apollo's actions of burring Zagreus allowed for his reincarnation as Dionysus, giving him the title of Bestower of Dyonisus, both because his action symbolize the reversal of the Anima Mundi back toward unification and because he embody the principle of individuation, the Ego and respectively, the Logos. The dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian can be compared to the structure of the right and left side of the brain, and Tragedy is the synthesis of these two sides, walking hand in hand… well, that didn't hit home at all.
Apollo as the god of all shaping energies is also the soothsaying god, the shining one that rule over the fair appearance of the inner world of fantasies. The call for Higher Truth, and the following rapture its perfection inspires is contrasted with the only partially intelligible and chaotic everyday world. Promoting healing and dreaming, symbolized with its attributes as a soothsayer, and consequently, the arts through which life is made possible and worth living.
A dangerous dream-like artist. There is a reason Paradise Lost was successful enough to affect the Christian zeitgeist, becoming an apocrypha of the faith despite being objectively an ancient fanfiction of the same caliber as the Divine Comedy. It capture in its narrative a self-evident Truth that all can recognize but few can put into words. That the philosophical thought overgrows art and forces it to cling tightly to bough of the dialectic, the apollonian tendency is concerned with its logical schematicism.
Hermes is messenger god, serving as the bridge between the creator and the created. His name means both "heap of stones" and "boundary maker", making him a symbol of the spirit of truth hidden on Earth, given to mankind by the gods. He also has connection to the underworld, the bridges and guider the soul of the dead along the road between "the Under and the Upper world".
The fact his roman counterpart is called Mercury tell everything one needs to know about its involvement with alchemy, he is the verb that denotes change. The union of opposites in the pursue of encompassing totality, the Philosopher's Stone. Mercury can be said to contain the totality of the psyche, both the unconscious and conscious mind, the know and the unknown, and the light and dark within. A trickster that show people boundaries and deficiencies in oneself and wider society in search to reestablish balance.
Apollo is the pin holding the wheel of life of three godheads in place while Hermes is the substance circulating through it all as a medium between the other four. Five gods in total, an auspicious number, five senses and the elemental pentagram. Western occultists make various differing Kabbalistic associations with Vishuddha chakra. Associating it with the hidden sephirah Da'at, where "wisdom" and "understanding" are balanced in the supernal realm by the aspect of "knowledge", a tangible idea which is then expressed, leading to the act of the creation.
But that is not where it ends, I didn't research Ninshu for the last year for nothing. The Vishuddha chakra is the point where the balance of Ying and Yang essences flip, being decidedly more Ying. The fundamental revelation of the bodhisattva only remembered as the Sage of Six Paths is the Creation of all Things. It can be said to be the fundamental mystery of the Ninshu, and its study is the fundamental purpose of its cult; a virtuous human is the one that struggle with god, the search to comprehend it is a virtuous one.
In D&D terms, the Creation of all Things could be conceptualized as the 9th level spell, Wish. What I am aiming here for is the watered down version of the jutsu, Limited Wish, a 6th level spell that basically can replicate any spell of 5th level or bellow, of even restricted spell lists. Considering "Raise Death" was a 5th spell that I now can cast, this goal seems achievable. If Kurama's Mythos Exultant is the power to turn every ticket in the lottery box into a winning one, then this power would be of always take out the one lottery ticket among the countless one. Transmutation of Phenomenon, basically, Marble Phantasm to his Reality Marble. It is broader but more limited, the narrow ones path is the further it goes. This is by no mean a loss.
-//-
Conceptualization completed, I reach for it, willing it so. That is when, to my surprise, I fell Kurama pushing at our connection and then before I can realize what is going on my body is flooded with his chakra. Wha-
"Brace yourself, Megumi. While that little plan of yours is now viable, it still is going to suck." He smiles jovially at me as I fall to my knees in pain, "and remember, you literally asked for this."
Dick.
Is that what being a jinshuriki is like? I feel like a balloon about to pope, the power coursing through my body is putting a stress over my chakra network no human is designed to handle. All my nodes are being pried impossible wide. This must be what it feels like for Shirou to perform spells beyond his, I feel like I am about to break. I knew enough about ninja culture and forbidden jutsu to intellectually know how real that dangers where, but this is my first time meeting them personally. The only respire is that while Kurama is pushing his chakra on me; he is also pulling my pneuma to himself, giving me more room even as it gives more room in myself for his power to scorch me.
His chakra excels my body's capacity to handle and it escape my body, creating a cloak of chakra around me. Instead of relief, it bring even more agony. It is more as I am in a pressure cooker, my body trapped into a vicious circle of destruction and renewal. My body is breaking down and being recreated, yet the pendulum definitely is pending toward the destruction side of scales. Through the razy fog of pain I am vaguely aware that I am being unraveled, my skin is being peeled away and rising to the surface of my aura, where it escape as smoke… and I am bleeding golden blood?!
At some point, the chakra reach such density it collapse into itself. What once was more like an ethereal mist then spurred by Kurama into a pseudo-liquid state now reach the final stage. I am past the point of pain, maybe past madness too. I guess the nerves that transmit pain have already being fried, like third degree burns. Despite all logic I also still here, even if I feel like my physical body was destroyed. Despite that I simple can't move, my hyper dense body keep me rooted to my spot. Despite no long having eyes I can still see. I look at myself and perceive a golden being made of pure light, liked a flayed god. Indescribable power course through me and I feel my childlike frame expanding and maturing. This form kind of remind me of Gon in his final transformation against Pitou… so this is the famous Body Reformation all those xianxia novels talk about.
Like the birth of a star, the energy discharges into a final conflagration that rockets the world, threatening to collapse the imaginary space we created.
I look down into myself and see once again the being of light that I was when I confronted Kurama the first time we met. This is not a mindscape but the real world. I remember with my Rikugan that some changes have ensued though; I now have a giant blind spot bellow my chin, damn these Senju genes! My cleavage entered a fight against the Golden Ration my body was supposed to by cast under and it barely lost.
The woman under the starlight guise was like the blessed immortals in appearance. Like Zeus's hardy daughter, Athena, this body resemble one of those famous marble statues, powerful yet lovely and as flawless… to the Hellenic people pain is sacrosanct, thus a sexual symbol is a holy one. The pain of the woman at childbirth sanctify all following pains of life!
I guess that is what I get for using the Greek gods mysteries to perform my Body Reformation; it is less that I am an beauty to break all hearts and more like the pain ensued to get me here made me real in a way that mortal people can never dream of being, therefore beautiful. Beautiful is the only word I can think to describe the experience involved at looking at myself. In a sense, beauty is synonymous to the gods' control over mortals. Virtue is performative excellence; the attribute was elevated to the realm of mystery, an appearance that induct catharsis.
The fact I stand a head over the Raikage in height also helps to make me look impressive. My Yamato like ethnic features of my likely Iron Country heritage mix with the Senju striking features to give off an aristocratic and noble but warm appearance, with smile that comes easy and raven black straight hair that cascade to the waist. Natural four-pack, I only ever managed to have it Before for a brief period in my late teens, but this ones look natural. Indeed, this body can best be described as a lioness.
"Have you finished gawking at yourself?" Kurama's voice break me out of my musings, but his appearance completely push it out of my mind.
"You look dead warmed up!" This isn't a hyperbole either, while once his very presence invoked fear, as if his own casting was designed to be a symmetry of dread, cruelly predatory and powerful, now is a disheveled and emancipated, skin and bones, like the survivors of famine.
I rush over to him, among the gifts Kurama has granted, my divine panoply, one stands for the Virtue of Compassion, the moral foundation of Care. The Cup Grace, something that exist no for my own sake but as something to be offered and given up for the sake of others. I invoke it to my hand and it take the shape of an azul lapis lazuli horn carved with golden embroiled patterns. It is basically a Cornucopia, a horn of plenty, the reason the bull is a symbol of Dionysus, the giver of wine, is because it traditionally used as wine cup.
I startle him by pushing the cup over his lips, but when the coruscate vermilion red ambrosia touch his lips he drink deeply from it. When his strength return to his limbs he take the cup from my hand and gorge himself on it with deep gulfs. By the time he put it down, his frame is once again filled to healthy, though still puny for him.
"And this is why I tell you that you have to learn to look before you jump. You have no self-control, any experience of anxiety is enough to spurring you to act before you can think."
"Are you better now?"
"Yes."
"Good," I punch him in the arm. "What the hell were you thinking? Acting like that without a heads up. You looked dead!"
"It was temporary. This transformation of yours is maintained by the virtuous circulation of our essences, as you take more of mine I too feed on your power. I just had to pay an initial fee as investment to bring you up to a level comparable to my own. You had already acclimated to my chakra over the years and the Magnum Opus Stigmata excelled my expectations, to the point it was worth accelerate your grow so you could then accelerate my own restoration."
"…fine, I can feel what you are talking about. Though I never thought to use our bond as a two-ways street for something besides telepathy. You know anything about this Light form?"
"In fact, I do. It is the power the ancestor of your people, Ashura, achieved after he became the successor of the Sage of Six Paths. Though as you chakra is white while his was yellow, your form is a bit different."
"Wow, talk about hitting the nail in the head. Wait, so you actually met that guy? Didn't you say the Sage was from before your time? And more importantly, are you saying I achieved some form of Ancestral Return hidden power of my bloodline?"
"No…"
"You are not dealing with the average senju anymore, Kurama."
"No…"
"I have achieved the legend, the one that you feared."
"No…"
"I have become the Legendary Super Senju!"
"I hate you."
"Do you hate me because you are envious of my super senju swag or because you are the only person in this realm of existence capable of understanding this reference?"
…
…
"Amazing Chest Ahead."
"That is sexual harassment!"
[AUTOR'S ROOM]
This chapter is dedicated to the nameless beggar violinist. Yeah, he is real. I searched for covers to show you people but the best link I found simple didn't capture the raw emotion the man had put into it, so post a second of a pianist capable of it so you get the idea. He is the man that made understand why people could believe the greatest art is born of the greatest pain.
Here are the links:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XneQd0D5SQ8
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyp74H3kMdI
Now, to the elephant in the room, resurrection. There is a reason people are hesitant to introduce it in stories, Dragon Ball is the cardinal example of the damage it can do to the stakes, ruining tension and cheapening drama. That is why kishimoto always attached it to a ruinous price. The thing is, it is in the power of chakra to bring back the dead. When Nagato used it, he did not resurrect one person, but thousands. Is the price of opening the gates of death that kill the target so he can resurrect as many people as he wanted or he could actually survive it if he went easy? If so, why not to resurrect his friends and Akatsu members?
But more than that, Chion was the first to introduce the possibility of a resurrection jutsu and she doesn't have any bloodline to justify it, she just created it. Could someone do to Chion what Kabuto did to Impure World Resurrection? If she could bring back to life even a cold turkey Gaara, that was dead for more than a day, what if the person is in better conditions? If the person is just a little bit dead couldn't she just die a little bit to bring the person back to life?
That said, there is no logic in the power of resurrection, it is the bonafide textbook definition of a miracle. This excel human reason, so I went all out to give it the proper gravitas. Megumi got enough experience out of it to jump a lot of levels. It is a 'treasure that is hard to attain', in a figurative and real way.
This mark the end of Megumi's childhood to express how transformative said experience was. She is letting go of old attachments, the modest goal of living something like a cosmopolitan life in that world was a holdover from the past. God may be dead in our world but it is very much alive in the Naruto world, it is not something to be experienced on Sundays in God's crypt but a constant companion of every action of every day. As she said, humans are made for trouble, and she is ready to usher a new age of Madness and Glory.
By the way, she denounce the only thing Madara ever bothered to say to the Kyubi in this chapter, a preview for things to come. Incidentally, about my description of the dangers of the god Apollo and how much it actually match our own. I will just remind you that Hashirama dreamt to make Konoha his entire life, and in the end he betrayed his consciousness to preserve it: he killed Madara where before he had Konoha he spared him then followed this by imprisoning Kurama just because his power 'could' be a treat. The fact he proceeded to reincarnate as the vessel of the beast he wronged and experience the prejudice Madara warned him about can be described as nothing but Karma.
This was a heavy chapter but I wrote it in basically two days. What was mean to be a short interlude took on a life of its own. I could say the Muses went amazon position on me and I am pooped.
