Chapter Text
It’s too still, he thinks to himself; the grass of the field stings at his ankles as he pours chakra into his legs and puts on a burst of speed. Uneasiness builds in his gut, and when he reaches the western lookout tower, he scales its height without a pause, clambering up the wood to swing into the nest at the top.
The sentry only gives him a cursory glance, turning his attention back to the treeline immediately.
“What is it?”
“Not sure, Kakashi-sama,” the sentry replies. He shifts a few inches to the side as his prince crowds to the edge, golden eyes scanning the trees.
“There’s nothing moving out there.”
“The animals are all hiding.”
“But from what?” He shrugs his longbow off his shoulder, drawing an arrow from the quiver at his hip and setting it ready; the silence is far too tense, the normal noises of nature all eerily silent. “They’re as quiet as rabbits hiding from a hawk--”
As if to answer him, something screams in the skies above; both men jerk their heads out from underneath the covered nest’s roof, eyes turning upwards in surprise.
There’s a… a birdlike thing in the air above the forest; it banks on wings wreathed in writhing, wormlike shadows and the very air shifts around it, warping as though heated. Baleful red eyes stare at the ground below, and the creature--the demon?--screams again, the noise like steel scraping against steel, like the crunch of bones breaking, like the wails of the dying all rolled into one.
“What is--” the sentry manages, before the monster spots them, folding its wings with another cry and plummeting into a dive. “--gck!”
The shadows strip away from the creature as though torn off by the speed of its descent, exposing a massive eagle, its beak easily as long as Kakashi’s arm and its wingspan large enough to block out the sun. Rage and pain and three black tomoe swirl in the scarlet depths of its eyes, and Kakashi instinctively knows it will kill them here and slaughter those in the village and continue on in its blind wrath if not stopped or turned aside, and instead of retreating or bowing to the instinctive fear rising in his chest, he leans further out of the sentry’s nest, nocks, aims, and looses the arrow at his bow in one smooth motion.
It whistles past the eagle’s head, startling it; it squalls in response, the shadowy tendrils catching up to its form once again, wreathing it in wriggling shapes, and the gale from its wings as it falters and claws for altitude is enough to make the wood of the tower creak around them. Kakashi snags the back of the sentry’s shirt and leaps out as the floor buckles below them; they land in a tree, the leaves and branches snapping at their bodies, but a little chakra to his feet allows Kakashi to regain his stability. He leaves the sentry on a limb and descends to the ground as quickly as he can, hitting the grass running.
He can hear his pack barking and howling in the distance, and as he emerges from the shade, his eyes sweep from the blurry black shape of the demon coasting above him to the path to the village. There’s figures running away from the changed eagle, fleet as rabbits, and he recognizes the fleeing girls, pours chakra into his legs to close the distance faster in response.
“Unknown god!” he yells as he runs. He’s still too slow, despite the strain he can feel in his legs and his lungs; he throws his voice at the sky anyway, grasping at straws to delay the destruction. “Return to the shore or the mountains of your home and leave us in peace, I beseech you!”
One of the girls trips.
She painfully skids to a stop in the grass, and the other two running halt as well; Kakashi nearly howls like one of his dogs from frustration as the demon-god ignores his words and stoops into a dive. One of the girls still standing throws her straw hat aside and draws the tanto at her hip, staring up into the sky at it; it’s Rin, Kakashi sees, Rin with an expression of fear and determination on her face, her stance textbook-perfect just like he’d taught her, and everything in him rebels at thought of her dying in this field today.
Something in his knee gives, screams at him in protest as he uses too much chakra, but his last leap is enough to close the gap and he’s firing another arrow before he can think, running solely on adrenaline-fueled reflex. The steel-tipped arrow arcs up and buries itself in one of the eagle’s massive eyes in a blossom of scarlet; it wobbles in the air as it screams in pain and falls, trying to slash at Kakashi with its talons as it descends.
He skips out of their range and can hear his dogs darting into the gap he’s made in the flow of battle, herding Rin and the other girls away; Kakashi keeps his eyes fixed on the floundering eagle as it's grounded, bracing himself against the wind it raises with its wings. It’s in its death throes, the arrow piercing deep into its brain, but dying animals can still kill and he won’t relax until it’s lifeless.
He doesn’t see the shadowy tendril soon enough to dodge back; he ducks under it instead, moving closer to the eagle’s body, and gets the second to the face, the shadows moving absurdly fast. It scrapes against his left cheekbone, his eye, his head, and it hurts like paper-thin blades parting his skin, the wounds burning with agonizing fire; he drops his bow, draws his tanto, and slices into the pseudolimb in one movement, twisting his body, and comes face-to-eye with the eagle as the tendril dissolves under the assault, the demon stilling.
“I’m sorry,” something makes him say; he watches the red drain out of the former god’s remaining eye, leaving it an empty pool of black.
“You’ve ruined me,” it says back, and Kakashi can hear his people’s cries behind him, the gathered making way for the village holy woman, escorted by his pack. His eye hurts, he thinks distantly, but he can’t look away from the god’s final moments, the shadows dissolving away from it in a growing pool of dark liquid that stinks like days-old blood. It’s killing the grass, and that thought is distant as well.
“Unknown god,” says the holy woman; Kakashi can hear the rustle of her clothes as she bows. “Proper rites will be performed for you, and a shrine built upon this ground. Please, be merciful and do not hold your grudge against this place into death.”
“You’ve ruined me,” the eagle repeats, and its eye is fixed unwavering on Kakashi. “And you will bear the burden of my curse, my hatred, my pain. You will know the true agony of the world before the merciful illusion of death takes you, and you will suffer as I have suffered.”
And Kakashi feels the weight of its words sink into his bones.
The eagle dies between one syllable and the next, its flesh and feathers rotting away from its body to leave just its bleached-white skeleton behind, and silence descends upon the assembled.
His knees buckle, and the world tilts down and away, arcing around until the sky and sun are all he can see (it’s an oddly nice day, he thinks, to find out he will die begging for death), and unconsciousness and pain slam him into red-tinted darkness before he can think to fight.