the castle of sand and moonlight [Hanako/Magnolia]

Moon lit nights surrounded by towering, endless sand. Broken castles, standing resolutely from era’s long passed. Silence, so suffocating that it seemed to stretch into eternity--this was hueco mundo. The land of the forsaken, forever-hungry beings known as hollow. Poor unfortunate souls that more often than not would remain as mindless, heartless killers. Some had been fathers who had come back to kill everything they held dear, others were beings that had died with regrets. All were souls worthy of pity and liberation--atleast, that was what Magnolia thought.

The silence of the night was broken as a towering being burst forth from those endless sands, it’s serpent like body immense, like a behemoth out of the old legends of greece. The large mask that adorned it’s head the only thing that separated it from one of those mythical beasts. It’s grating cry was the only thing to pierce the darkness, a blast of sound in the otherwise soundless abyss.

The gleaming moon overhead illuminated an infinitely smaller figure, whose golden eyes pierced the darkness like sunlight. Her sword was a flash of mercury in the starlight, a fleeting flash that was accompanied by the head of the behemoth, serpent-like hollow which crashed into the bleach-bone white sands below. Blackened blood spattering the otherwise unmarred sands as the warrior stood forward from a sekaimon which opened up behind her, blackened amethyst butterflies fluttering past to do reconnaissance in the realm beyond.

”Magpie, I think your aims getting rusty.”

Raijin’s familiar tenor rumble was full of mirth as it rolled within her mindscape with the subtlety of an avalanche. To which Magnolia had no good response other than a soft, grumbly.

”Shove it old man, The customs here do not favor wanton shows of might when they are not called for.”

Magnolia’s golden gaze scanned the ruined spires of las noches, the broken dome which once held the dreams of a king that thought he would rule these lands for eternity, and then a being that thought he could breach the limits and become a god. The impressive shell of a once mighty regime, it awed her but.. That was not why she had come here.

”Hanako, you can come through now.”

Magnolia’s voice was soft and magnetic, and yet in these silent, wind-blown sands, it carried for miles. There was very little else to stop her voice from echoing, and yet, all that did was add to the feeling of loneliness, the feeling of desolation that pervaded this place so deeply. Maybe that was fitting though, that such lonesome, solitary sands, held beings of such supreme misfortune--and ravenous hunger.

After checking to see that Hanako had joined her, the Sekaimon that they had come through would’ve shut, closing them off within this desolate realm. Only after did magnolia take a step forward, dry rock-like twigs breaking underfoot as she made her way towards the looming structure of las noches.

Magnolia inhaled, taking in the purity of the air that lay unmarred by the pollution that she had come to expect in the soul society, and the land of the living. The simplicity of the realm before her brought back a feeling of comfort that she had not felt since crossing over from her own reality, from a much simpler time when revenge and prestige were the only things that had mattered to her.

”Magpie, do you regret it?”

Raijin’s words lacked the mirth and sardonity that usually accompanied them. Instead, they were soft, full of emotions that Magnolia could do without at this moment.

”No, I regret many things, but choosing to stay, to abandon that lonely existence is not one of them.”

Magnolia said within her mind as she swallowed back the lump that lay within the back of her throat and her husky, raw voice slipped out, so many of those emotions lingering on the tip of her tongue. Yet, it was clear those emotions were not rejected, but instead they were a part of her--and she was unafraid of hiding that hurt.

”Why do you think I brought you here Hanako?”

Magnolia’s body stopped and turned to face the woman, her golden gaze studying her faintly as her arms crossed underneath her breasts. Waiting to see what kind of answer that her student might give.

.

As soon as she stepped through the senkaimon, she felt the difference of the place. The strangeness. With her eyes closed she could have told that this was not the Soul Society. It made her skin crawl. She could feel the goosebumps on her arms, her back, her breast, legs, neck. She rubbed her own arms as if a cold wind had touched her, although she wasn’t cold at all.

Hanako looked about her. She knew it from textbooks, from stories. But it was the first time that she herself had ever set foot in this strange land. A vast desert, endless, stretched from horizon to horizon. Nothing but sand, dead trees, ruins and a dark night sky with a pale moon above everything. And the castle that was known as Las Noches, a gigantic structure, too big to comprehend or describe with normal words. A whole city would have fitted into the walls of this one castle.
If nothing moved and nothing cried out there was an eerie silence on the land. The stillness would almost make one’s ears throb, abd Hanako would have loved Hueco Mundo for that alone. But there was something, something beyond sand and silence, that made her uneasy.

“I honestly don’t know.” said Hanako to answer Magnolia’s question.
“There is something about this place… I don’t know how to describe it.”

She spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper, as if afraid to disturb something, although there was nothing near them at the moment.

Something inside her mind began to stir, a memory and emotions, caused by the intensity of something that could nowhere be felt but here. They were still contained, still unconscious, still in the blackness where Hanako dared not look. Yet it was only a thin veil that separated these from the conscious mind, a paper screen that held them back. And the very moment Hanako’s first feet touched the sands of Hueco Mundo they were inevitably awoken. Even if she had known, there would be nothing she could have done.

"You didn't bring me here to hunt, did you?" She asked, finally turning her eyes away from the landscape and to her lieutenant. It was a bit unreal, the two women standing there in a vast nothing, seemingly the only living things, although Hanako was sure that was not so.