[Red Sands: In Search of the Scarlet Dawn]

Darkness swirled behind the panes of glass still intact, and Sakura could only eye it apprehensively as she climbed back to her feet with a soft huff. “Am I allowed to say I told you so?” she asked, staring at the home she had just leapt out of and praying all the while that her eldest brother was okay in the depths of all that murky darkness.

“Not right now,” Ren grumbled, running a hand through his long hair and sighing deeply. “We have a pressing situation on our hands which requires us to work together – and not be snippy with each other. Give it twenty minutes – then scream at me to your heart’s content,” he said, hand curling around the sword that Ichiro had thrown his way before they had split off from him. “How did you run on the wall?”

Sakura folded her arms, one eyebrow raising. “We have a pressing situation on our hands, brother. There’s no time to explain,” she said like the petty creature at heart she was.

“And you are very correct,” Ren said, sighing once more and looking that much more nervous all of a sudden. “The first port of call would be the wardstone—”

“Uncle went there when I told him what was going on,” she explained succinctly. “He went to check before anything could supposedly happen. Said something about there being more demons waiting outside, since it’s likely a Controller-Manipulator Class.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go,” Ren decided, tightening his grip on the hilt of his sword, glancing towards where Sakura presumed the wardstone to lie. “It’s better if we group up… especially when we don’t know what’s already made its way onto the estate.”

“I’ve only been seeing the blob one,” she said, glancing back at the building. “The one which possessed me and Itsuki.”

“It possessed you?” Ren froze, sharp green eyes fixing on her and all Sakura could do was stare right back. “Why didn’t we hear the screams then?” he asked, something like horror and worry written across his face. “The first possession of someone with the Holy attribute…”

“It didn’t hurt,” she said flatly, wondering then why her brother had thought she’d have screamed. Though something forcing its way down her throat was probably scream-worthy… Then she remembered what Sasori had told her relating to possession of holy-attribute mana users. “At least no more than it forcing itself down my throat. It was uncomfortable… and irritating to have the control of my body stripped from me… but I’m getting off topic. Don’t we have an uncle to—Ren, why are you drawing your sword?”

Her brother scowled. “No reason. I just think I might have to pay the academy a visit after this situation is dealt with,” he muttered, something in his eyes promising murder even as he started speed-walking in the direction she thought Sasori had gone earlier.

“Because I was possessed there?” she asked, staring at Ren and the uncanny resemblance he had to their uncle all of a sudden. And wasn’t that a perturbing thought? “Uncle said… that the first possession of those naturally born with the holy attribute is the most painful thing…”

Screams echoed in her ears for a fraction of a second, and Sakura shivered all of a sudden, heart beating fast as she remembered the door with that strange sigil.

“Let’s not talk of such dark things,” Ren murmured, lips curling into a frown. “I’m keyed into the wardstone – the same as father, uncle, and Ichiro – so I’ll be able to gain us access if Uncle keyed it shut behind him.”

“So me and Itsuki are the only ones who aren’t keyed into the wardstone then?”

“Yes,” Ren answered, leading the way through a copse of trees, and Sakura eyed the flat, one-story, circular building that she thought was their destination. “Not even the butler or head maid have access. It falls upon the Duke, his heir, or the spare in the worst case… and well, we have Uncle Sasori too who’s allowed access – though we don’t go spreading that fact around because technically as a foreign dignitary he’s not supposed to have access.”

“Are the butler and head maid…?” she trailed off, glancing back in the direction they had come from.

“They’re employees of the Haruno Estate, sister dearest,” Ren said matter-of-factly. “We only hire the best, and naturally that means every worker on this estate has reasonable self-defence skills. It’s why we have less staff than, say, the royal palace.”

“That, and the Haruno Duchy is smaller than the royal palace,” she muttered, frowning then. “How’d I know that?” she mumbled, scratching at her head.

“Because evidently your subconscious mind remember more than your conscious mind does,” Ren said, pausing as they arrived outside the small, round building. “We’re here, Sakura,” he stated, swallowing thickly, and Sakura wondered what exactly what he was expecting to find behind those doors.

Cautiously, Ren grasped a hold of the handle, frowning as he pulled open the door. Almost hesitantly, he stepped inside the strange circular room made entirely of stone and mortar which had a set of stairs at its centre, leading downwards – below the ground, and Sakura didn’t need to guess that was where the wardstone lay.

Yet there was no sign of Sasori, and that fact made her hair stand on end.

Doors slammed behind them with a loud thud, and Sakura spun around as a clank of a lock sounded. “Get out, quickly!” Ren hissed, sprinting for the door, bodily slamming into it to no avail. “No, no, no…” Ren murmured under his breath, and Sakura could only blink and wonder what the bloody hell was going on before the ground dropped out on her.

It was as if someone had opened a trapdoor – a trapdoor which led to a strangely warm and wet slide. Her stomach twisted, part of her immediately knowing what the texture of the pulsing walls around her reminded her of. Flesh. She had been a medic for long enough to become intimately aware of the texture of skin – and the texture of organs, the latter being what that strange surface she was sliding down on felt like. Chakra pulsed in her hands, and Sakura only blinked as she felt that energy automatically sapped away from her hands. It didn’t stick, and so she could only fall further down that fleshy slide.

Darkness gave way to light, the solid surface beneath her feet giving way to air, and then she felt herself fall and land in a strange, mushy wall which pulled her into its surface ever so slightly. The world around her was the pulsing pink-red like Naruto’s heart. Only that wasn’t quite the right organ… “A stomach…?” she mumbled, hearing another sickly wet thump, and then Ren was stuck to the same fleshy pink-red wall as her.

“Congratulations – you aren’t blind,” a dry acerbic voice sounded, and Sakura glanced to her other side to find her uncle considerably more sunken into the living wall behind them that pulsed rhythmically.

“What the bloody hell just happened?” Sakura hissed, struggling as much as she could against the sticky, slimy wall which felt as though it were sucking her in.

“You were just swallowed by a Gluttonous Lurker – Greblin Type Seven, if you want to use the technical term. One of the Lurker-Consumer Classes,” Sasori explained with a soft sigh. “The wardstone’s been compromised. For how long, I have no idea, but this thing was lying in wait and swallowed me when I tried to access the wardstone.”

“Greblins aren’t intelligent enough to know where the best place to lie in wait is,” Ren muttered. “In fact, they tend to avoid mana-dense places like wardstones and their housings…”

“And that is why, darling nephew, we hate Controller-Manipulator Classes with a raging, burning passion,” he said flatly, and Sakura was almost hoping that her uncle would get himself out of that demon’s stomach – if only so she could watch him unleash his rage on the demon that Ichiro had last been seen battling. “It’s a cunning one, and I can only surmise that it’s at least a greater demon… though at most a Tier Three one, which is a small mercy… and the fact that it’s definitely attacked a protected area before,” he explained. “That’s the only reason I can think of how it knew to trap the wardstone.”

“Yet that’s hardly going to help us escape,” Sakura grumbled, gritting her teeth when all her movement seemed to do was make her sink into the fleshy wall by a few more centimetres.

“Greblin Types require a specific way to escape, Sakura,” Ren said, and Sakura glanced over at him to find him closing his eyes and sighing. “That is – with the assistance of a person on the outside or the outright slaying of it from, again, outside. The stomachs of Greblin Type Demons are… very resistant to attacks from inside.”

“What he means to say is that Greblin Types were typed under one grouping by their extreme ability to absorb large quantities of mana – and a Type Seven can absorb even Holy Magic which is lethal to most other demons in far smaller quantities,”  Sasori explained. “So, in other words, we’re doomed so long as we’re stuck inside its stomach.”

“If we can hold out from being digested for fifteen or so minutes, then we might be rescued,” Ren said, sounding incredibly grim. “But the absorption rate is… well, dependent on how much mana you have. Certainly uncle and I could potentially last fifteen more minutes, but… Sakura. Sister. How quickly are you sinking into the wall?”

Sakura bit her lip, swallowing as she noted the pulling feeling at her back. “Too quickly for my liking,” she murmured.

“Well, that’s to be expected,” Ren murmured, gritting his teeth. “Mana grows exponentially on your eighteenth birthday. Uncle… are you sure there’s no other way we can use to escape?” he asked, desperation seeping into his voice. “I… do not intend to see my brother without our little sister – who he entrusted to me to protect.”

Sasori scowled. “Well—Sakura.”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember I spoke to you about constitutions?” he asked, and Sakura could only side-eye him as best she could from where she was slowly being sucked into that fleshy wall. “And how I suspected that you might have a special one?”

“What of it?”

“Let’s pray I’m right, darling niece,” Sasori spoke quickly, dark eyes locked on her green ones. “I know you’ve only just begun playing around with mana, but you need to open your holy gate – but don’t push your mana out. Open the gate…”

“You can’t be serious, uncle,” Ren hissed. “You know how rare the constitution of an Exorcist is – the Holy Lands only have three!”

“And yet your sister survived possession as a human with a natural holy affinity,” their uncle shot back. “Not to mention that’s the only constitution which can absorb a Greblin from within their stomach and trap the demon within them until they can purge it… not that many know of that fact because the constitution is so rare. Cycle your mana in your core – envision the gate room and fall into it within your mind. Exorcists tend to have better visualisation and realisation of what is called the mindscape.”

“How do I do that?” she demanded, feeling panic surging in her throat because she was in a precarious situation where she might get digested in a matter of minutes. Any chakra she emitted was absorbed into that stomach, and she had little doubt her mana would experience the same fate if she exuded it as well. Not that she could work chakra and mana in tandem. Yet. Though she was getting ahead of herself with those kinds of thoughts because she had yet to master either in that body of hers.

“Usually you’d spend years meditating and manifesting your visualisation of the gate room, but we’re going to have to try and speed the process up,” Sasori informed her, pursing his lips. “Close your eyes,” he ordered, and she did as asked, knowing then that it wasn’t the time to complain or pepper her uncle with her many, many questions. “Feel the mana inside you – inside your core. Remember whoever first helped you access your mana core. Remember the feeling and colour of your mana as it came out of its gate for the first time.”

Ren had been the one to do that, she recalled with a distinct clarity, remembering the purple-white of her mana contrasting the green-blue of her chakra. Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears, fear writhing in her chest at the thought of dying again. She didn’t want to die in the stomach of a demon. Just like she hadn’t wanted to be crushed by a truck. She breathed out, desperately trying to calm herself as she was held there, even as a familiar well of spite surged within her.

It was almost like her life was flashing before her eyes, the words of her uncle and her brother fading out of her hearing as she turned her focus inwards. She reached for that purple-white—

“Not like that,” a soft, almost familiar voice whispered, and the world faded away, replaced by darkness all around her – an infinite horizon speckled with tens of thousands of stars.

Laughter echoed from behind her, joyful and free, and Sakura turned to glare at whoever was behind her. Only to stop short and stare at the strange figure dressed in plate armour which almost seemed to gleam and glimmer beneath the speckled starlight. Long pink hair which was tied back in a single ponytail shifted as the lady in front of her moved, and those familiar, piercing green eyes which met her own in a resolute gaze through stray, straggly strands of hair which fell in front of her face.

She knew that figure, and she knew that face – how could she not when she saw that reflection in every single mirror she looked into?

“This way,” the weirdly-dressed version of herself said, gesturing to the infinite darkness beneath their feet.

“Inner?” she asked, remembering that weird voice in her head – who’d been with her since the very beginning, before fading away as she had grown into herself that much more. She hadn’t heard a peep from that strange second voice who’d used to yell shannaro in her head before she’d started speaking that aloud.

The strangely-dressed version of herself only smiled. “Come on. We can’t have you dying on us so soon,” she said, holding out her hand. An offer of something she didn’t quite understand.

“Us?” she echoed, frowning at that familiar stranger who looked at her and beckoned to her.

“Can you not see them?” she asked, tilting her head and looking behind herself then, as if to show her where whatever she meant lay. Yet all Sakura could see were vague shadows with fuzzy outlines, and part of her could only wonder exactly what was supposed to be there. “Never mind. This way, silly,” that strange version of her who she decided she was going to call Inner said, grabbing her hand and pulling her down into the darkness.

She landed atop still waters with a soft splash, chakra thrumming in her feet as she stared around the space which had suddenly appeared amidst the darkness. It was a near-circular hall, or perhaps a heptagon in shape, grand and imposing, tall with ceilings impossibly high, and impossibly tall doorways set in those stone slabs of walls. There were seven doorways in that room, each door having a colour and a strange symbol drawn on it.

“Gates,” she realised with a start, even as she found herself alone in that grand room she somehow knew to be the mental realisation of her mana core. “The holy gate,” she reminded herself, her sense of urgency returning as her gaze fell upon the grand white gate. Her uncle had said that she needed to open it – and so she would, she mused, craning her head back to look at the sheer height of the gate before scolding herself.

This was within her mind – perhaps a construct of mana – which meant it was hers and hers alone to control. Didn’t it? She raced across the room, ignoring the outcrops of rock which stuck out from the lonely-looking lake in the very centre of the room she’d landed atop of. Was that the representation of her mana? Sakura could only tilt her head and abolish the thought. She needed to focus. Her life was at stake, no matter how peaceful her current surroundings seemed.

“Pull them open,” a voice whispered in her ear, warm breath brushing against her ear and making her shiver. Yet when she looked around her – the place was empty besides herself.

Though she supposed that familiar voice had a point, she mused, grabbing a hold of the two circular loops which made up the gigantic door handles. Gritting her teeth at the weight of them, she pulled back, digging her feet in as she heaved the gigantic doors open to welcome something in. She was inviting that demon in, and it would be on her own terms that time around. She was there to trap it within herself.

Yet that particular demon absorbed mana – and chakra too, it seemed – so wouldn’t inviting it into that gate room – a visualisation of her mana core… Her thoughts trailed off, and she gritted her teeth, knowing she had to trust Sasori and his words then. That would have been unthinkable weeks before, and yet her uncle as he was right then and there – she thought him trustworthy.

Sakura blinked, letting go of those door handles to instead position herself between those partially open doors to shove them open that much more. How open did they have to be to work? she wondered, chewing on her lip as she pressed her entire weight against one of those doors and shoving it backwards as best she could. Stone scraped across stone as she hefted each door open, and it took her longer than she’d have liked to stand there with that white door fully opened inwards.

“Now what?” she mumbled, frowning when a length of chain shimmered into existence, slamming against the ground with a metallic thud.

“Pull it in,” that same voice ordered, and Sakura reached down to grab a hold of that silvery chain. “Quickly.”

“Fine,” Sakura muttered, grabbing onto that chain and yanking it towards her as fast as she had once hauled Sasori’s puppet body away from old lady Chiyo. Only she wasn’t one-hundred percent certain of what was on the other end of this chain – though she was ninety percent certain it was the Type Seven demon whose stomach she’d been in only moments before. Her fingers were aching by the time the fleshy blob of a demon was hauled inside her gate, arms aching from the exertion, and part of her mused on how that was possible if that wasn’t her physical body.

Her eyes narrowed on the demon, stomach churning at the apparent size of the thing – yet it didn’t move to swallow her once more. It just lay there, in front of her closing holy gate, looking like the hybrid lovechild of a stomach and an eggplant. Yet where the stem should have been – if it had been an actual eggplant over seven times the size of her – there was a flat top with a flap which seemed to open.

A loud shriek rang out, and Sakura clapped her hands over her ears as the thing screamed all of a sudden.

“Sakura!”

Reality returned to her with a stinging cheek, and she narrowed her eyes at her uncle whose hand was far too close to her face. “Was the slap really necessary?” she grumbled, clutching at her cheek and freezing as arms wrapped around her and yanked her into a seated position.

“You’re okay….” Ren murmured, and Sakura could only blink at the glimmer of tears in his eyes. “And you actually have the constitution of an Exorcist…”

“Obviously,” Sasori remarked, climbing to his feet and looking around the large, long stone-brick room they were in warily. “Otherwise she’d be dead.”

“Wait, what?” Sakura demanded, side-eyeing her uncle then.

“I told you, darling niece. The only way to safely check if you have the constitution of an Exorcist is to go to the Holy Lands and get them to run some specific tests,” Sasori said, pulling her mind back to the conversation they’d had what felt like hours ago. She wondered then if it had even been an hour since she had found out that her uncle remembered his life as a shinobi. “The less safe way is to attempt to absorb a demon. If you live, it’s because your mana core has a specific flow which prevents demons from draining your mana from inside your core. If you die – it’s because you don’t, and the demon drains you of all your mana.”

“That’s why it was so risky—” Ren interjected.

“Yet if she hadn’t we’d still be in that stomach, and my darling niece – your sister – would likely be dead. As it is, I have some rather nasty burns on my back from its stomach acid, and I dare say yours are worse,” Sasori said, looking at her pointedly, and Sakura winced as the adrenaline started to fade from her system – the pain at her back becoming evident.

“Of course it had stomach acid,” she muttered, wincing as she felt blood running down her back, her skin feeling raw. Part of her didn’t want to look or even touch her own back. She could already see her uncle’s back; skin glistening pink and raw, little sores weeping thin trickles of blood. She could feel fluid running down her own back, and she could only grit her teeth at that.

“It dissolves the skin to pry away the main defences around the mana core – and then absorbs the mana when the prey is nothing but bone and organs, which it then expels,” Sasori explained, his words painting a gruesome picture. “It’s why in kingdoms or territories where you’ll be likelier to find Lurker-Consumer Classes, it’s generally mandated that you go out in groups of at least three.”

“We can continue the demonology lessons later, uncle,” Ren interrupted, picking up his sword from where it had fallen. “You can sense them too, can’t you?” he asked, glancing at their uncle even as a faint sheen of mana coloured his blade.

“I can,” Sasori remarked, glancing behind them at a large crystalline dome sunk into the floor. “The wards are down. Something deactivated them fully while we were busy being digested,” he said, pulling two short daggers which gleamed with a purplish light. “We have company.”

“And sister cannot use mana right now…” Ren murmured, and Sakura shot him a look.

“I can’t?”

“No – you are currently containing a demon in your mana core, so obviously you can’t push mana out of your core without providing the demon with a route of escape,” Sasori stated, even as a faint click of feet against stone echoed around the room they were inside. “Such a pity that you don’t have a handy source of energy stored in, say, your naval area,” he remarked, and Sakura felt both relief and annoyance course through her at that as her chakra surged to her fists. “Now, darling niece, on a scale of one to I could throw Uncle Sasori a kilometre, how strong are you feeling?”

Ren visibly paused. “Uncle, what kind of question is that?”

Sakura tilted her head. “I could probably manage about fifty metres as I am with the appropriate throwing technique,” she said flatly.

“Excellent, then you’ll be fine,” her uncle stated. “Now, I think it time we got out of this dreary building—”

“But the wardstone—”

“The Holy Knights can reclaim it when they get here – it’s too much of a target for us to defend. Especially seeing as we’re all mildly injured from being in that Greblin’s stomach,” Sasori said matter-of-factly. “It’s not a location that was designed with fortifications against demons – the wardstone was designed so no demons could enter in the first place, but now they have…”

“So where are we going? Or are we planning to fight out in the open for however long until those Holy Knights get their backsides over here?” Sakura asked, raising an eyebrow at her fellow former shinobi – and her uncle, not that her mind would ever stop reeling over that very fact.

“It’s simple,” Sasori said, his eyes fixed on the dark doorway – the only one in the room. “We aim for the servant’s quarters. The staff of the estate should be there, along with some medical supplies… Plus that building was first designed to be an emergency shelter in case of a disaster befalling the estate… but first—”

A foot impacted her chest, sending her skidding back a few metres – just in time for something with far, far too many legs to drop down from the ceiling where she had just been standing.

“Is that a giant centipede?” she hissed, skin crawling at the way those numerous legs clacked their pointed tips against the stone floor.

“Centipedes don’t grow that large,” Ren hissed, and she spotted the flash of a blade as her brother engaged with the latest demon to come across their ragtag group of three. “Centren Demon – Lower Demon, Tier One—”

“Sakura, punch it,” Sasori ordered. “My poisons won’t do much against it, and neither will Ren’s blade. It’s armour is more vulnerable to blunt force!”

“Ugh,” she grumbled, fist clenching, even as her stomach twisted. Yet needs were as needs must, and shinobi weren’t called upon for the nicest of jobs. “I don’t like bugs,” she said, chakra surging to all of her limbs as she danced away from its surging attack, gritting her teeth and screwing her eyes shut as she brought her fist down on where she thought its head was with an almighty squelch and a grim crunch.

Yet closing her eyes didn’t take away the pulpy texture she could feel beneath her fist, nor did it hide the way the thing squirmed and screeched beneath the heavy blow. It writhed around her arm embedded within it, numerous legs moving. Her eyes snapped open, part of her despising overly large demon bugs in that instant – despite that being the first bug-looking demon she’d encountered – as she lifted her other fist and slammed it down. She wasn’t entirely certain how many blows it took, only stopping when those unnatural numbers of legs were still.

“I hate bugs,” she muttered decisively, feeling the way her arms were painted in black, almost gelatinous blood which felt far too sticky and smelt absolutely rancid.

“Centren Demons generally travel in packs of two to seven,” Sasori informed her, looking the slightest bit glib and gleeful at that. “So I recommend we get out of here,” he said, ushering them out of the sole doorway and down the righthand corridor. “Hopefully the rest of its pack is behind us.”

Silently, Sakura prayed to whatever deity was there that it was the case, even as she ran behind her uncle and brother as they made for the stairs leading up to the exit of the wardstone area, mentally readying herself all the while for whatever lay outside that building in the depths of the estate.