Episode 203: Chainbreaker
Her previous experience with Fluttershy’s ability to soul delve gave Gilda some notion of what to expect. Even so, she wasn’t wholly prepared to be exposed to the cloying stink of so much death in so instant a transition. One moment she’d been standing across from Guto, clashing gazes with her former Espada as Fluttershy tied the golden threads that’d send them to a final confrontation within their own soul, then the very next thing she knew she was surrounded by piles of Hollow corpses in a place of darkness, illuminated only by the faint glow of ebony torches.
She did her best to get her bearings, looking left and right. She stood on hewn stone, and around her, like hills, Hollow after Hollow had been piled high, all of the lesser variety. The stink of their rotting blood was such that it all but coated the ground in a faint miasma. A clatter above startled her and she looked up to see a bridge of more carved stone crossing over the pit-like area she was in, the bridge itself strung between opposing walls of some large, underground catacomb. The clatter had come from more corpses falling down, being tossed there by other Hollows who pushed a cart of wood and bone that itself was laden with dead.
The Hollows wore strange robes of black, not the usual white clothing of Las Noches. Where was she? It wasn’t her memory, clearly.
“Hmph, of all places to see again, that stupid child’s power had to send us here.”
Gilda whirled about just in time to catch Guto’s attack. She didn’t remember drawing it, but her Zanpaktou was in her hand all but instantly, although it was in its sealed state rather than her Resurreccion form, which she noticed she was no longer in. Neither was Guto as he struck, his own sword stabbing for her neck in a straight thrust that she parried up and to the side as she spun away. She growled and retaliated, leaping forward and blurring from view with a Sonido that took her in front of him, but down low as she crouched then slashed up with her full body strength. He braced his sword with both arms and blocked, grunting with effort as she pushed him back into one of the corpse piles.
“Where is this?” she grunted, still straining to push her blade against his, perhaps enough to sink it in, “It isn’t Las Noches.”
His nostrils flared as his mouth twisted in a mocking grimace, “What good would knowing that do you? We are here to kill each other, not explore our pasts!”
To emphasize this, his body flared with a yellow aura that then manifested several Bala around his body that shot down at Gilda from several angles, forcing her to break off from him and dance backwards. She deflected several, but felt the stinging bite as one of the Bala crashed into her stomach and knocked her through one of the corpse piles. She retched as the horrible scent of the rotten viscera got all over her, and she kicked bodies aside as she surged to her feet, clutching her wounded stomach.
Guto, smirking, raised a hand to charge up a Cero... and halted.
A pair of Arrancar with emaciated, thin bodies that were almost skeletal moved across the space between Gilda and Guto. They didn’t look at either of them, as if the battling pair weren’t present. One of them looked younger than the other, a girl with a wild head of gray hair and intensely sparkling green eyes. She was all but pulling her companion along, a scrawny runt of a young man who, if it wasn’t for the eyes, would never have occured to Gilda was the same as the man she hated.
“Keep up, Guto!” said the girl, “We’ve gotta pick the best out of the Pit for Lord Bray. Our offer is gonna be the best, and then we’ll get chosen, you’ll see. Chosen by Lord Bray!”
The smaller Arrancar that was Guto was looking about with trepidation, hand never straying far from the hilt of his dirt coated blade, “We’re not the only ones looking, Gabby, so could you keep it down? If we run into one of the bigger acolytes, we won’t live to be chosen for much of anything.”
“Heheh, always the worrywart. We’re here right as the collectors are dumping the newest bodies. Almost everyone is gonna be busy at mass. We’ve got a head start.”
The young Guto looked at Gabby with a flat stare, “I can never tell if you're optimistic, stupid, or both.”
“Well, you always come with me, so who’s the real stupid one, hmm?” Gabby shot back with a cheeky smile and continued to drag the memory of Guto along until the pair vanished around another towering pile of death, Gabby’s chatter still echoing off of the artificial valleys of Hollow bodies.
Gilda just blinked, then looked at the real Guto, whose lips were pinched in a sour look.
“I really hate that damn girl who convinced us to do this,” Guto said, “I can kill you without needing to be reminded of every damn step I took to get here.”
“Well, can’t say I give the slightest crap about you or your past either,” Gilda said, readying her blade once more, but not quite charging back into the fray, but rather holding a steady stance and eyeing him closely, “But I respect Fluttershy, and she wants me to understand you before I finish you off. Fine. So spit it out. What is this place?”
Guto spat, “You can talk and fight at the same time. I’m not wasting a moment here longer than I have to.”
He came at her in a ferocious deluge of buzzing, Sonido enhanced thrusts that magnified his blade a hundredfold. Gilda kept pace with him, parrying like mad, sparks flying as she worked to keep the tip of his sword from gutting her. As if to further demonstrate his point, Guto spoke as they went through this furious exchange.
“We’re in the depths of ‘Lord’ Bray’s territory. A Privaron Espada, a self-absorbed fool who reached beyond his station, yet was cunning and ruthless enough to survive Tirek’s ire and carve a place for himself far from Las Noches. Tambelon, this rotting city in the ground is called. This lovely place is the Pit, where Bray’s corpse collectors dumped their various finds. We acolytes who served him would pick from the corpse piles to make offerings to Bray.”
He lashed out with a sudden fist that smashed the ground and ripped out a portion of hewn stone over a dozen meters wide and hurled it, with Gilda on it, towards a corpse pile, “We were foolish and devoted enough ourselves to believe he elevated his chosen to positions of luxury and honor.”
Gilda sliced through the stone before it smashed her into the corpse pile and flowed with a blurring motion to appear above Guto, aiming her Zanpaktou down as she charged up a Cero, “Sounds familiar. What, copied your old master’s homework, is that it!?”
Her beam of scarlet power flashed down in a destructive torrent, and Guto flung himself to the side as the beam exploded in a harsh detonation of blood red power. The explosion did more than demolish a good chunk of the corpse laden area around them, it was as if the whole world flickered and suddenly they were standing in Guto’s arena.
There were still bodies, however, only now the bodies were not of old Hollow corpses but freshly slain Arrancar children. The arena was thick with the remnants of the bloody battle where young Arrancar fought to the death as Guto presided over the scene of carnage from his throne. Gilda looked at him with eyes of hot rancor as she pointed at the bodies, and at the image of her bloodied, younger self, shaking from the ordeal.
“We thought you’d elevate us, too. Me, Greta, and how many others!? How could you do all of that to us if you suffered the same?”
Guto briefly looked over the blood soaked arena, nose wrinkling, then eyes hardening, “You think this is the same? You were starving wretches before I came upon you! Afterward, warriors, fed, clothed, and respected as long as you knew your place and obeyed. I never lied about what you were receiving, child. Unlike my so-called ‘master’, who built all he had upon deceiving the weak and desperate.”
There was an immense, acidic hate in Guto’s voice as he spoke, and it was as if the hatred spilled from him in a golden aura that turned the arena around him, bodies and all, into the glitter of gold, “I swore I would never again be weak. Never again be deceived or deceiver. I would surround myself with only the strong, only the loyal, proven by blood.”
Chains of gold emerged from the increasingly metallic arena floor and Gilda jumped up away from them as they came for her. Her blade slashed in a blinding streak as she sliced down golden links and manacles trying to catch her as she dashed up the side wall of the arena. It looked as if she was about to be surrounded, by her own feelings of righteous fury boiled inside her. She reminded herself this was a battle of wills, and Fluttershy had given her this opportunity to use that will to overpower Guto in a way beating him physically simply wouldn’t.
She let her pure anger build within her as she thought of all she, Greta, and countless others endured under Guto, and she let it burst out of her in a thick red storm of blood acid. In this space, just as Guto didn’t need Resurreccion to access his powers of gold and chains, she too did not need to transform to let her acidic blood flow forth in a surging wave. The red acid melted chains and gold alike, and Guto hissed as he had to leap back from the flood. With a sweep of his blade he created a whirlwind of gold dust that solidified into a heap of chains now bearing curved spikes that used their combined mass to hammer through Gilda’s acidic waves of blood.
“Tell me, Gilda, when did I ever lie to you!? From the moment I saw you and Greta’s weak, rail thin bodies alongside countless others, did I once say it would be easy to earn your place!? Did I once utter a word of false compassion!? False frivolity!? I told you that if you survived the harshness of my trials that I would make you strong. So tell me, where was my lie!?”
Even as the gold was tarnished by the corrosive hiss of her acid, the spiked chains came at her like a nest of grasping vines, and Gilda kicked off of the arena wall to dive through the mass. Her sword carved ahead of her in swift swings that cut chains down, even as the spikes cut at her body. In the real world this may have instantly transmuted parts of her into gold, but in this space of mind, soul, and wills, her focus and tempered rage were an armor better than her Hierro. The acidic blood poured over her in a protective shell that melted more gold as she dove through the mass and delivered a punishing knee kick to Guto’s jaw and knocked him through the arena’s opposite wall.
The whole scene cracked and shook like glass, and it was as if both of them were shunted into a new place.
Guto, grunting and rubbing his jaw, used his sword to push himself back up to his feet, even as both he and Gilda looked around at their surroundings.
Gilda saw the same bleak stone walls and floor of the catacombs of Tambelon, but this place was somehow both more dour yet also grand compared to the corpse laden Pit. This chamber could only be described as a temple, with ornate columns of stone carved with skulls and skeletal figures, and walls decorated with altars bearing statuettes of worked stone made in the likeness of an... equine skull?
Around them were dozens of Hollows, some Aduchas-class, others Arrancar, but all wearing thick folds of black robes as they held their heads down and chanted while holding forth stone bowls filled with various parts of what Gilda assumed were once other Hollows.
Walking among these prostrated Hollow worshipers were others in robes adorned with white horns painted upon their hoods, almost all of them Arrancar. These seemingly higher ranked individuals would inspect the “offerings” of those gathered, and by criteria that Gilda couldn’t fathom, they would choose one and bring it forth to the end of the chamber. Here a pair of immense stone doors stood open leading to a stairway that slanted up at a sharp angle, through which Gilda could see what appeared to be the top of some tall structure like an underground tower.
Among those prostrating on the ground, she recognized the younger Guto, and his companion Gabby. Both of their bowls were already empty, if slick with blood from whatever offering they’d obtained in the Pit. Both were also wounded and battered, as if they’d been through a fight.
One of the horn adorned acolytes stepped down from the stairs that led to the exterior tower and approached them, speaking in a thin voice from behind his hood, “The Master has expressed his pleasure at this one’s offerings. They are to be chosen for... elevation.”
Gabby and the young Guto looked at each other, the former sporting a bright grin as she whispered, “Told you we’d make it, Guto. Totally worth a little scuffle.”
“Nearly got killed, you mean, but you’re right, it was worth it. Elevation, finally. No more starving on scraps.”
As the pair moved to rise, the acolyte that had approached them held out a hand wrapped in fraying strips of cloth and shook his head at Guto, “The Master seeks but one to elevate.”
“What? But we both made the same offering!” Guto said, and Gabby was quick to nod her head in agreement.
“That’s right, prelate! We searched together, even fought those who’d have taken our choice offering, and cut the pieces ourselves for the richest centers of reishi. Guto and I couldn’t have made such good offerings if we’d tried to do it alone.”
“It matters not,” responded the prelate, “The Master requires one, and only one.” He pointed to the Zanpaktou both younger Arrancar wore, “Either decide which of you is worthy, or make it so there is only one of you to choose. But do so quickly. The Master is not patient.”
Gabby stared with her mouth twitching in an attempt to form words, but clearly looked utterly confounded by the choice in front of her. Guto’s younger shade gazed at her for a moment, then rolled his eyes and elbowed her, “Stop gawking and go.”
“Huh?”
“You deaf? I said go. You can be chosen this time.”
“No way,” Gabby shook her head, “Nuh-uh, I wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t had you backing me up all this time. You deserve it more. Food forever, luxury forever, eternal comfort at Lord Bray’s side. I’m just some dumb orphan who wandered in here. You earned being an Arrancar by evolving into it. I’d totally be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
“Yeah, because I’m strong,” Guto insisted, “Which is why I can tough out more than you can. I’ll get another offering another year, and join you in Lord Bray’s tower later.” He glared hard at the prelate, “She’s the chosen. Take her.”
There were mutterings from the other worshippers who weren’t chosen as Gabby, with still some reluctance, stood and followed the prelate up the vast stairs towards the tower beyond. She looked back once as the stone doors closed, leaving Guto behind with the angry stares of other, more jealous acolytes.
As the scene played out, Gilda side-eyed the real Guto, who had watched everything occur with a look of contempt etched on his bronze features.
“Who was this Gabby?”
“An optimistic fool,” Guto replied, barring his sword once more with a feral growl, “And I, no better. All these memories illustrate that I was right to learn my lessons from this place. The weak have no place to complain about their lot, and those with strength are the ones who craft whatever steps the weak must undergo to survive. I resolved to make the steps to survival in my world simple, clear, and without deceit.”
“Save for the lie that you were the only one worthy of following, or with any worth at all,” Gilda said back with scathing heat, and came at him with a potent combination in which she led with her sword carving a trail towards his neck, but then dipped it low to aim for his legs while using her left leg to spin into a kick that’d target his jaw once more.
Guto was almost taken off guard by the switch, but his experience allowed him to catch the shift in Gilda’s stance at the last second and he used his foot to strike the flat of her Zanpaktou and push it into the ground while using his right arm to block her kick. The intercepted kick still struck with concussive force that shook the ground, although this had no affect on the images of the chamber’s memory. Guto pushed off with his arm, knocking Gilda off balance while he slashed down hard with his own Zanpaktou.
She twisted back from the blow, but was a shade too slow, feeling the biting cut that formed down her chest. It was just shallow enough to avoid being critical, but blood flowed all the same as she ran some of that blood over her fingers and flung it at Guto’s face. This did manage to catch him off guard as the blood splattered across his features, and then the acid kicked in, sizzling as he yelled in pain. Gilda rushed him. and cut sideways with both hands on her blade.
He blocked, but the force of the blow sent him flying back through the same stone doors that had been closed earlier, and he crunched right through them and into the stairs. As Gilda charged across the temple floor at him, Guto, eyes red and bloodshot now, glowered towards her and unleashed a storm of Bala that exploded from a cloud of spheres that formed around him.
Gilda’s charge was halted as she was forced to start blocking like crazy, sword a flashing glint as she cut down Bala as fast as she could, but the thick flock of attacks was so intense that one by one shots got through and started weakening her. A knee, an arm, her hip, the side of her face, bit by bit she was struck as Guto laughed and kept firing.
“Say what you will, but I know my strength. From this shithole to Las Noches, I’ve scraped my way higher and higher. Oh, there are those with more power for now. That cocky newcomer Adagio, or old guard like Torch and Catrina. Freaks like Chrysalis or Lament. Even Tirek, who stands as King above all. But none of them, not even Tirek, understand what I do. Real strength is not simply destructive power or fighting skill, it is the ability to force the world to obey your will. Every inch of it. Every iota. No lies, no trickery, just utter, harsh, uncompromising domination. Conquest, in its purest form.”
With his words it was as if each one hammered a golden stamp across the frozen scene in the chamber. Columns, altars, the prostrate acolytes, even the younger version of himself, all were slowly transmuted into effigies of gold. Gilda saw this aura of gold coming at her, and could all but feel Guto’s maddened will in it, seeking to overcome her as chains rose from the scene like blooming sores.
She tried to lash out with both blade and blood, severing chains and melting golden manacles as they came, but it was like trying to push back a tide with a shovel. It was as if Guto was drawing power from seeing images of his past, reinforcing his own personal delusions bit by bit that empowered the energy he was using to chip away at Gilda’s own will of indignant rage.
With a feral shout she felt herself getting dragged down as if sinking into murky water, all of it liquid gold. Only encasing herself in a cocoon of melting blood did she keep from being overcome entirely as she felt herself being pulled down by countless chains and then slammed bodily into a solid surface with the kind of force that would split bedrock.
Coughing, feeling the pain mounting inside her very soul, she gave a roar and let her blood burst outward around her in a whirlpool that joined with her blade as she cut in a circular slash, finally severing enough chains to stand. By now the scene had changed around her and saw the younger Guto of the past digging through piles of corpses in the Pit once more, apparently seeking another offering.
In a flash of flickering imagery, she saw past Guto being surrounded by other acolytes in the Pit, ones whose eyes glowed with jealous anger as they set upon him half a dozen to one.
“There’s always going to be weak souls who act like animals to get what they want,” spoke the real Guto from behind Gilda as he advanced on her, gesturing at the scene of his younger self desperately fending off his multitude of attackers, “They’ll follow any master who offers them enough scraps from his table and tells them what they want to hear. No loyalty. No discipline. Just dogs, fighting over pieces of meat.”
As the young Guto of the past barely managed to cut down one of his enemies, making the rest of the pack back off for a moment, he looked up to see several higher ranked acolytes, the prelates, walking across the bridge above. Gilda could see them as one lifted the hood of their robes; Gabby, gazing down at Guto with an expression completely stone-like and guarded compared to her open brightness and energy from before.
Gilda could see the hope in the younger Guto’s eyes as he reached up towards her, as if asking for help, and his expression faltered as she pulled her hood back up and walked away across the bridge with her fellow prelate without looking back.
She heard Guto, the real Guto, step up right behind her, voice drenched in bitterness, “Reliance on anything other than yourself breeds weakness.”
Without hesitation, Gilda slammed her elbow backwards with all the force she could muster, and managed to catch him in the sternum with a thunderous blow that swept away the imagery around them. Blood boiled and sizzled around her arm and sword as she brought it around and sliced towards him, and he blocked with a blade now covered in golden chains, more of the clanking, glittering manacles rising around him like a cloak of living serpents. With a bellow she raised her Zanpaktou and brought it down with tremendous speed and force, her will laced with denial of his words as much as fury at this attempts at justifying himself.
“So what!? You had it rough!? You got betrayed!? What does any of that do to make the shit you did to us right!?”
Again and again he managed to block her attacks, but he was driven back step by step as the world around them cracked and split like a crumbling mountain, replaced by growing sea of bubbling blood amid melting towers of gold, all in the shape of either Guto’s tower, or the strange, conical ziggurat that Gilda recognized as Bray’s tower. They both landed atop one of those ziggurat copies of Bray’s tower, the air fetid with the stink of melting metal as the burning sea of acid blood beneath them now surged slowly higher, while the sky above was black as Hueco Mundo’s.
“All you did was take what one man did to you, and copied the same style of abuse and control, and thought changing around a few details somehow made you better than this Bray asshole,” Gilda said past clenched teeth, to which Guto sneered. His body had several burns across its bronze chest from her blood acid and a few slashes of her blade that had gotten through, but she felt his reiatsu and will holding against hers as if like a walking corpse that refused to die.
“You have no idea how much better than Bray I am!” he said in a hiss of heavy breaths, eyes twitching, “If I were like him, you’d have been dead ages go, or worse. You think Gabby betrayed me!? It’s so much worse than that...”
The roof of the ziggurat beneath them suddenly flared open, and Gilda found herself dropping down alongside Guto as they both landed in the lavish scene of an immaculate throne room that looked as if it belonged more in a cathedral than in an underground catacomb. The tall, vaulted ceiling had a dozen chandeliers hanging down decorated with horse skulls that bore flickering torches of red light. Red carpeting covered the floor, save for the space near the throne of tall, black stone where a massive circle was cut into the floor in the center of which was a stone slab stained red with blood.
Guto’s younger self stood with a broken arm and a bloodied face, his body in it’s Resurreccion form. Gilda was surprised to see the young Guto’s Resurreccion form was creating chains, but they were not gold, but dark iron. He faced off against a huge, hunchbacked figure wearing incredibly ornate black robes. The Hollow, no doubt an Arrancar from the partially human face Gilda could see beneath a mask of a equine’s skull bearing long, curled horns, let out a raucous, dry laugh.
“Geheheh, did you really sneak into my sanctum, boy, to talk to one of my meat sacks? Hah! Hahaah! That’s so sweet it makes me want to bring her in for you. What was your name, meat?”
“Guto, bastard, now where is Gabby!? I don’t care about giving you any more offerings, I just want to get an answer as to why she’s ignored me every time I see her outside your tower.”
Again the Arrancar, Lord Bray, gave a guffawing laugh, his whole body shaking with the sound of rattling bones. Gilda saw that his hands were thin and skeletal, and carried a Zanpaktou shaped like some long staff that ended in a pair of spiked iron clubs that split and curved like horns. “Geheh, you’ll get an answer alright. Why not give an answer to a dead man walking? Hahah, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages, and you’re just going to give me a free show, like all the other suckers down below.”
Bray tapped his staff on the ground, and a burst of sickly pale violet energy flew outward from him like smoke.
Soundlessly Arrancar wearing the robes of prelates entered from shadowed side passages, among them Gabby, who only slightly looked Guto’s way as she entered. Guto’s past self looked at her and took a deep breath, chains poised to strike at Bray but not taking his eyes off his former companion, “Gabby. I need to know. Why won’t you speak to me? I get it if you have duties or something, or are forbidden from helping lesser acolytes, but you at least owe me a straight answer so I understand.”
Silence greeted him, and the young Guto’s expression grew ever more desperate, “Answer me! Say something!”
But all that happened was that Bray threw back his masked, robed head and laughed so loud and jovially it rattled the iron chandeliers above, “Bwahahaa! Oh, it’s so rich! I can’t take it! Hey, meat sack formerly known as Gabby.”
Gabby turned like a doll on strings, eyes unblinking, much to the dawning horror on young Guto’s face.
“Yes, Master,” said Gabby with a tone lacking any and all of her previous, bright inflection and passion.
“Cut off your own arm.”
“As you command,” she said, not even blinking as she drew her Zanpaktou and raised it to strike at her arm. However a series of iron chains snapped forward and wrapped around her and her blade arm, yanking Gabby back towards the young Guto as he held her suspended amid his chains.
“What the hell is this!?” Guto’s past self breathed, “What did you do to them? To her!?”
Bray spread out his left hand as if making an inviting gesture, his shadowed face beneath his mask grinning, “Elevated them, just like all of you simple minded suckers wanted. Free of pain, free of fear, free of hunger. I mean, sure, also free of thought and personal will, but hey, small price to pay for never having to worry about anything ever again, am I right? Geheheh!”
The horror on past Guto’s face was mirrored by Gilda, who knew that there were no shortage of terrible souls among Hollowkind... but from what she was seeing here, this Bray gave the likes of Grogar and Chrysalis a run for their money when it came to being awful. She wondered if Adagio, in her search for allies among the Privaron Espada, had made contact with Bray? Gilda wasn’t privy to just everyone Adagio was planning, but had a feeling that if she survived this battle, she needed to have a chat with the Sixth Espada.
Bray pointed at young Guto, “Now then, let's elevate you, shall we? Take him!”
The other prelates, nearly twenty total, all moved as one to rush Guto’s past self. He, in turn, spun around and fled as fast as he could, his body all but turning in a streak of motion with Sonido as he dragged Gabby along with him. The scene all but broke apart in a blur, leaving Gilda now standing on an island of Hueco Mundo’s white sands amid the sea of bubbling red blood that was consuming the towers of gold. This sandy island of bare white sands, clearly a fragment of a past scene from Hueco Mundo itself, had the young Guto standing upon it with a silently struggling Gabby still bound in iron chains.
“Snap out of it...” the young Guto said, reaching out a hand to touch Gabby’s head, “Whatever he did to you, you can’t be like this forever.”
But still mindlessly operating under the last orders Bray had spoken, Gabby still struggled to break out of his chains. He had her bound tightly, however, with her Zanpaktou held separately from her hand so she couldn’t release it’s power. For long minutes the image of Guto’s past remained still, until he brought one of his arm blades to Gabby’s chest, poised to strike.
“I couldn’t do it.”
This was the real Guto, standing on the opposite side of the memory’s image as he looked at the scene, watching his past self lower his arm.
“I remembered too many times she had gotten me through another day serving Bray, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I should have. Gabby wouldn’t want to live that way. But I was still weak. Yet this was the turning point, where I vowed to cut out my weakness, and surpass anything Bray could hope to create.”
Gilda saw the golden aura suffice the young Guto’s body as he screamed a noise of pain and rage, his iron chains flowing into shining gold. This gold wrapped around Gabby as well, as both the sands, and her, were turned into solid, eternal gold. The young Guto left her there, like an enshrined monument, untouchable. The last thing Gilda saw of the image of Guto’s past was his changed self marching across the sands towards an image of distant Las Noches.
With a sweep of her sword and her will she banished the image, the ground shaking as the island grew in size from the melting sea of blood. Conjured by her own memory, the sands around them swirled up to take the shapes of young Arrancar, all of them exhausted and bloodied from dozens of wounds carved upon their bodies as they relentlessly drilled in combat with one another, overseen by older Arrancar who swiftly delivered blows against any who wouldn’t get back up to keep training. A young Gilda and Greta, more bruised than the others, received the attention of Guto himself, the past image delivering particularly punishing strikes with his sheathed Zanpaktou whenever either girl so much as showed a moment of hesitation.
“I remember what you built, Guto,” said Gilda as the images dissolved into sand, the sands shifting to become scene after scene. Her and Greta as children with hands rubbed raw from pushing immense blocks up a dune. Her with her head bowed to the floor of Guto’s chambers, prostrate in apology for some perceived failure as a merciless foot kicked her in the ribs repeatedly. Greta and her watching another batch of children forced to fight to the death in the arena, and Greta looking away as Gilda blocked Greta from Guto’s view so he couldn’t witness her weakness.
“You didn’t surpass Bray. You became him.”
Her words stabbed into Guto as hard as any blade could have, and his teeth flashed in a grimace of fresh anger. Gold flowed from around his feet and slid up his body like armor, chains rattling in a chorus of hungry denial as his will howled forth akin to a wave of spiritual pressure. Gilda felt the world shift as the golden towers rising from the blood sea started to rise alongside Guto’s ire as he came at her in a golden streak. His sword was coated in liquid gold as both blade and chains struck in a savage flurry.
“What place have you earned that you can judge me!? I am nothing like Bray! Everything I have I took openly and with my own two hands! My warriors worship me because I am strong, not because of false promises! Who are you to tell me otherwise, Gilda!?”
She did not retreat from his brutal assault. Pain was slowly ceasing to mean anything to her as she understood better and better than in this place of conjoined souls, it was her desires and will that manifested through her blade more than any matter of raw strength. She met Guto’s sword with her own, steaming blood bursting from her back and arms in wild arcs of acidic speed. Shining gold and ruby red clashed in a tempest of matched ferocity between the two as they exchanged equal blows with equally relentless intensity.
“I am someone who lived through your reign, and suffered every inch of it believing it was to make me strong. Only now, after learning so much about what real strength is from the human who bested both me and you do I understand that all the shit you did was never to make us strong, but to run away from your own weakness. In all these years did you ever even think about going back and taking Bray down yourself!?”
Her words were sharply punctuated by a torrent of acid blood coiling in a wave around her sword as she pushed a thrust past his guard, severing a score of gold chains in the process, and a geyser-like burst of the crimson liquid exploded upon him like a pressure hose. Guto was thrown back, so fast and so hard that his body created twin waves across the blood sea as he was thrown into the base of one of the golden towers.
His body indented into the side of the tower, bending it and causing the whole edifice to lean. Gilda flew after him with a prodigious leap, raising her sword and bringing it down in a massive vertical slice. Guto’s chains sprawled forth both from his body and the tower and coiled in front of him in their hundreds of multitudes. Golden sparks flew as Gilda’s sword and the wave of blood that came with it was halted by the chain’s, Guto’s seething will refusing to give in. She felt it, a seething ocean of ire, ambition, and voracious hunger for power and recognition, all covering his shame and fear.
“Go back...? I have always intended to go back, when the time is right, when I have all of the power, and the perfect army,” Guto said past bloodied lips as he reached back and placed one of his hands on the tower behind him, “When everything was perfect, I’d march on his pathetic hole in the ground, drag him from it, drag him to her grave of gold, and devour him right in front of Gabby. That’s why... that’s why... I’LL NEVER LOSE!”
The tower trembled and melted into rivers of gold that flowed into him as a will of pure, mad desire pulsated from Guto’s core. For a man who lost what little he had, the singular obsession to control and grab hold of power in all of its forms was the only thing left to drive his soul. The heart of his power as a Hollow; conquest.
The gold formed into a new solid shape around his body, giant wings and talons spreading as the image of a tremendous eagle appeared in the air. Gold chains flowed like contrails from feathers sharp as blades, and eyes stained red with red focused on Gilda as the massive eagle flew into her with streaks of destructive light flowing from both chains and talons as they struck. There was barely time to register the impact as she was thrown down into the blood sea, creating a towering stream of blood as she sunk down into scarlet depths.
Yet this sea was hers, made from her scathing, long denied feelings of abuse and inadequacy, and tempered by the growing belief forged in her by Fluttershy that strength did not come from one source alone. She could feel Fluttershy, like a distant shred of sunlight, and knew the girl was watching all of this.
I still don’t know if I’ll ever understand the seemingly bottomless well of your empathy and kindness, Fluttershy. Even now, understanding his soul, I can only respond by putting everything I have into taking him down. I’m a Hollow, and I thought the source of my power as one was my rage. Maybe it still is, but I don’t think it's alone anymore. I don’t have a word for what I’m feeling, but it’s telling me to break them... all of these chains that he put on us, and got put on him.
The blood around her of this seemingly depthless sea began to glow brighter red and fill with power alongside a deep, thrumming noise like a colossal heartbeat. Gilda felt as if she was melting into that blood, and that heartbeat, even as she felt herself rising faster and faster towards the surface.
This feeling is telling me to shatter every chain I ever see!
The golden eagle that Guto had become circled the blood sea in search of Gilda’s body, and saw the stirring of the ruddy waves just a millisecond before the blood erupted upwards in a maelstrom funnel that crackled with emotion and power. In the span of moments the blood took form, gained definition, becoming a powerfully muscled yet lithe feline body with glittering ruby claws. A darker saffron mane flickered with power and hissed with heat around a lion’s face with gleaming purple eyes. A long tail ending in a spear point cracked the air with a pressure wave of force as the lion roared, Gilda’s heart and power at its center.
“You already lost to Fluttershy, Guto. Can’t you see why!?”
With the surging speed of a peal of lightning the red lion pounced with claws of rippling blood. The eagle screamed defiance and swooped forth to meet the lion in a blaze of golden light. Claws and talons flashed with the clash of the two Hollows’ desires, one to consume and conquer in order to overcome long buried fears and shame, the other to rip apart the very symbol of the abusive power that stirred that destructive cycle. The air was rent asunder with the sound of tearing metal as those ruby claws melted through golden talons, and the lion buried its fangs deep into the eagle's neck.
Defiant, the eagle, even as it bled gold, stabbed its beak into the lion’s breast, talons raking its stomach in a wash of bleeding gold power.
“And why is that!? I refuse to be conquered! I will conquer instead! That is what it means to be strong in this world! And I am strong.”
The two tumbled across the air, smashing through golden towers as they tore upon one another in ever growing fury. The lion’s jaws tore chunks away from the eagle and roared as claws battered the eagle's chest with ragged wounds. Gold splattered over the lion’s face as chains wrapped its muzzle and neck, squeezing tight as the bound combatants slammed across the surface of the blood ocean, arching into another tower that shattered like fragile glass.
“Maybe you are. But not enough to get over your obsession with control, and that means you don’t even have the strength to let go of the chains you put on others, let alone the ones you wrapped yourself up in. Which is why I’ll break them, along with you.”
Rising from the fragmented remains of the tower they just plowed through, the pair stabbed and slashed at each other in a blizzard of brutal blows, tearing gouges across each other's bodies until Guto's eagle form broke away from the lion and flew low across the blood ocean at high speed. He streaked between other golden towers, and chains spiraled from his wings to hook into those towers while Gilda pursued him with her lion's form bounding across the air. The chains from Guto's wings hauled upon the forms of half a dozen of the golden towers and tore them upwards into the air, and one after another he spun them about to fling the at the lion, each tower filled with his conviction to conquer and control.
The lion's throat issued forth a challenging roar and with strength born of the will to shatter and break the chains of control, she did not even try to dodge the towers being flung at her. Claws flowed with ruby blood and power, seemingly extending into blades of scarlet might. They slashed into the towers as they came at her, and the golden edifices of Guto's making were broken and severed one after another in cacophonous showers or broken gold fragments.
Screeching fury, the eagle banked around and, wings folded, dove upon the oncoming lion. More chains bloomed from the eagle's wings, a rain of manacles that converged on the lion. In response, the lion did not even slow down, rushing up to meet the eagle in a final charge of determined fury and focus.
As the lion that was Gilda spun her body in a tearing corkscrew motion, her claws tore a path through the flurry of chains that surrounded her. She then impacted with the golden eagle that was Guto. His beak tried to pierce her chest, but her spinning motion deflected the blow into her shoulder, and in turn her glowing crimson claws ripped through the wings of the eagle as they tumbled together and then spun downward. In a final blast of supreme, savage motion she drilled into him, claws like a blender that sent waves of blood red shredding across his body as both of them flew downward right back to the island of white sands. In a final impact, both gold and blood burst apart in a steaming shower of sparks, and just like that the inner world went silent and still. Gold towers turned to faded, cracked stone and fell into the sea of placid, graying blood.
Gilda stood above Guto’s body, lion and eagle gone, just her sword now piercing through his chest as it pinned him to the sands below.
Guto, breathing shallowly, looked at the sword through his chest, and exhaled slowly, “...Fuck... I keep losing... to Bray... to that human girl... now you. Why do I keep losing... always losing...”
“Yeah, sucks, doesn't it? That’s how it goes when you don’t learn from anything and just pretend to be great without honestly looking at yourself and your screw ups. I was lucky that Fluttershy got to me early enough before the cycle went any further and I became another Bray, just like you did,” Gilda said, face showing relief, and exhaustion, both in roughly equal measure. She looked up and then said, “You watching this, right Fluttershy?”
A small mote of golden light appeared, and from it a translucent growth of lines appeared until the shape of Fluttershy was sketched in like a glowing pencil drawing. The girl wore a heavy cast of solemn understanding on her soft features, “I have.”
The world around them seemed to let out its own exhaled sigh, a rattling shudder, followed by a cold wind. Fluttershy looked down at Guto, “What transpired here is as it would have been in the real world. A mortal wound.”
“Hmph... as if I needed you to tell me that...” Guto said, spitting blood out of his mouth, and turning a hard stare towards Gilda, “You know what comes next. Don’t disappoint me by wasting the opportunity.”
Gilda growled, kneeling down and pressing the sword a little harder into him, “Even in death, you can’t get over yourself, can you?”
“Well, you did say I became Bray... and Bray is an utter ass...” Guto said, his breathing slowing to a crawl, “So don’t make the same mistake.”
“I won’t,” Gilda said, eyes shifting to Fluttershy, “You don’t have to watch this, you know.”
Fluttershy gave the barest of nods, “I know, but I intend to. I mean to work towards peace with Hollows, and I can’t do that by averting my eyes from Hollows. Do as you feel you must, Gilda. I won’t look away from you. And Guto... you were a wretched person, but I won’t look away from you or what made you. I will tell you this much, before you’re gone...”
Fluttershy’s eyes held a radiant ocean within them as her voice held the sincerity of a promise, “I will see to Bray, and if possible, find a way to restore Gabby.”
“Huh...” Guto breathed out one last time before going still, his face showing a moment of bewilderment, as if he truly couldn’t understand the human girl and whatever emotions drove her.
Then, with time short and the inner world crumbling, Gilda picked Guto’s body up and brought it to her mouth. Fluttershy kept her word and did not look away as Gilda did as Hollows did, and proceeded to eat. Amid the bloody affair, Gilda felt Guto’s fading essence and power seep into her with each bite. Just as delivering the deathblow in this inner world had translated into very real world consequences, so too was consuming Guto’s body no different than if she’d done so in the spirit world.
By the time Gilda’s conscious mind snapped back to physical space within her own body, standing upon the sands of Las Noches, she’d nearly consumed him all. In the real world she was still connected to Guto through Fluttershy, but the process of consumption had led to his body losing chunks of itself in conjunction with each of her bites, with his flesh dissolving into crimson streams that flowed into her until nothing was left but a few scraps of clothing and fragments of dust that joined the sand.
Fluttershy let go of the golden threads that had tied them together and let out a long breath, clasping her hands together briefly and closing her eyes for a moment before looking at Gilda, “Will you be alright?”
Gilda almost laughed, but now that she was back in her body she was feeling all of the damage she’s taken from taking on Greta now layered on top of the strain placed on her by facing and defeating Guto within the arena of their own souls. While she could feel Guto’s power merging with hers in a settling quiver, it wasn’t as if all of her injuries were going to be erased. Yet even so, she let that power flow, and her spiritual pressure rise from her. She couldn’t afford to rest quite yet.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, turning to face Greta.
Greta looked on with a face drained of color and instead painted with shock. She stared at the space Guto had occupied a few moments ago, and seemed to just sag in place, collapsing onto one knee as she breathed heavily, “He lost... he lost...? How? This can’t be happening. Lord Guto doesn’t lose. He’s the greatest leader and warrior among us. Other Espada are higher only by power alone, not from skill or discipline...”
A deeply exhausted and frustrated sigh escaped Gilda as she knelt down in front of her friend and put a hand on Greta’s shoulder, “That was what he wanted all of us to see him as, so we’d follow him forever and prop up all the ego he’d built around himself to escape how much he hated himself for not being able to stand up to a Hollow named Bray.”
“Bray...?”
“A dead man walking, if I have my say,” Gilda stated flatly, and cast her eyes towards Guto’s... now her, tower, she supposed. Her’s, if she could get control of the situation. Guto’s army of warriors had scattered around the top of the tower, here Gilda could no longer sense any fighting. Had Twilight’s team managed to escape, then? That was good, but it meant all of those Arrancar warriors could now be turning their attention towards the fact that their Espada’s reiatsu had vanished, and Gilda’s own reiatsu had just risen higher by similar proportion.
On top of that, Pinkie Pie and Hydia’s reiatsu remained clashing within the remains of the arena, and it felt to Gilda like that fight was reaching a feverish pitch.
“Greta,” she said, “You heard it yourself that Guto accepted my challenge and the conditions of it of Fluttershy acting as a proxy to link our souls. You know then that his loss to her, then to me, is legitimate.”
Her friend’s face twisted with too many conflicting emotions to count, but she nodded, reluctance strong in her voice, “I heard, and saw. You won... against me, and...him.” She shuddered, and forced herself back to her feet, holding back her emotions, “By right that makes you his successor.”
“Tirek will need to rank my new power, but yes, by right, I can claim Guto’s seat, and horde,” Gilda said, keeping her own tone free of any hard edges, meeting Greta’s eyes with as much of a level stare as she could manage, “Greta, I’m not Guto, and I don’t want to be. I won’t command you. Instead I’ll ask you, help me get the others under control.”
“What of the human still fighting Hydia?” Greta asked, and Gilda shrugged.
“What about her? Hydia and Pinkie can finish their fight. I don’t want any of us interfering with that,” she shot Fluttershy a meaningful look, indicating that applied to Fluttershy, too. The human girl simply return her a small, knowing smile.
“I understand. I have no fear that Pinkie is going to lose.”
“Makes one of us,” Gilda said, “Hydia might have been lower ranked than Guto, but she’s a whole unique bag of nasty on her own, and not sure your giggly friend is as strong as you are, Fluttershy.”
“If there is one thing nobody should ever do, it’s underestimate Pinkie Pie,” Fluttershy replied simply, to which Gilda shrugged.
“And if there’s anyone who’s word I’ll take without much question, it’s yours, Fluttershy,” she said, watching the distant Arrancar warriors carefully. Some remained to secure the tower, but many more were filing back down to either surround the remnants of the arena, or surround the area she, Greta, and Fluttershy stood in. There was hesitation in the movements of the warriors, as if they expected to see their Espada, Guto, appear before them from somewhere, and were only growing more confused by his absence.
“Right, let’s get this over with,” she said, mostly to herself, then to Fluttershy, “I’m going to want to have a serious talk with you about Bray and that remark you made about restoring Gabby. But right now, I have to clean up this mess. Stick close to me, and hopefully I can get my former comrades to not dogpile us for killing their Espada.”
"Are they likely to do that?" asked Fluttershy, showing a hint of concern, although whether it was for her own safety, Gilda's, or the well being of Guto's former warriors whom they might need to fight was hard to tell.
"They won't," Greta said without enthusiasm, but also certainty. "As long as I tell them... it was a fair win."
For a moment or two she and Gilda shared a long stare of silent understanding. Greta had the ability to very much ruin Gilda and Fluttershy's victory if she simply incited Guto's warriors to violence by stating that Guto was killed by some manner of treachery or foul play, rather than a fair challenge. Even with her strength increased and some of her stamina restored from consuming Guto, there was little chance Gilda could take on hundreds of Arrancar warriors all at once, and Fluttershy was too drained to make up the difference if it came to a fight.
Greta shook her head, "I'll tell the truth. I had my chance to kill you in the arena, and you beat me. I'm not a backstabber, anyway. But once this is done I don't know if I plan to stick around. I have to... think."
"I get it," Gilda said, "Believe me, I get it. Work it out in your head, Greta, and whatever you eventually decide to do, hopefully I'll still be around for us to hash it out."
Because, besides the challenge ahead of her of trying to take command of Guto's horde while somehow trying to alleviate all the lessons he'd hammered into their heads, there was the entire other matter of Adagio's ambitions, Tirek's invasion of Equestria, and now Bray to deal with all on the horizon. Gilda almost had to laugh as she considered the number '10' etched onto her body, likely soon to be a different number. She'd striven so hard to become an Espada, only now to understand how little that title mattered in light of all challenges ahead of her and the source of real strength needed to overcome them.
But somehow, looking at Fluttershy and Greta by her side, Gilda had a feeling they might just make it.