Ink Stained

19: guess who*

誰だ推測

From the thick shadows of the trees that grew chokingly close to one another on the steadily sloping rise of the large hill, he watched the group of five trekking up the mountain. It was amusing to see how relatively unguarded they were as they hiked up at a steady pace, to see how confidently they carried themselves in the surety that they could handle any danger thrown at them.

They had no idea what was coming for them.

The forests surrounding the mountain, growing thicker and lusher the further out from the city one got, was large and bountiful. The trees were taller than usual, the brush bigger, the animals more private and aggressive to strangers encroaching on their territory. Maybe it was because of the group of Hengen living on this small mountain that had affected their surroundings, powerful as they were.

Their presence here made everything about this forest more than it already was.

The group had strayed from the well-worn path that led up to their destination. It wasn't because they had gotten lost in the wild density of the forest. It was done to deter the unwanted attention of any that might have been following them from where they came from.

He watched as the man who brought up the rear of the group expertly hid their tracks; fixing the broken branches to make them look like animals had trampled past, trudging over their footsteps in the grass to raise the blades up so as to look like no one walked by, using the dung of some animal and wiping it across the bottoms of the barks of trees to hide their scents.

They were fully in their human form, dressed simply in washed-out jeans, t-shirts, and jackets. Each wore a baseball cap, and the shadows from the hoods of the caps hid their faces. They had no travelling packs on their packs, and though they couldn't be seen, he knew that they carried hidden weapons.

Even without any weapons, each individual of the group would prove to be an exceptionally skilled fighter. Their kind were fierce and merciless in the heat of battle. They had endured far worse conditions to achieve the status of Clan warriors he knew them to be, from the tattoos on their necks and their high, proud foreheads that he had already spied.

His eyes glowed a fierce shade of red that he didn't think to, nor want to, hide. His nature had been suppressed for long enough. He didn't want to sink back beneath the layers of civility and control he had been kept under ever again, all these long years. His first experience of freed had only been an hour, if that, and even after that the times he was let out were tempered, watched, controlled – by that fucking Mask.

This, this, was his first true taste of what freedom could be.

Now, for the first time in his life, he could see clearly, even with the red tinge in his sight, the haze of vengeful lust that shrouded him as he foxed on the quickly moving group of travellers. For the first time in his life, he knew exactly what he wanted in this moment, his desire unclouded by the cluttering thoughts of concern over others – and it was within his grasp.

It was right there for the taking.

As he kept a close on the group's progress, his thoughts idly drifted to the girl with strange white hair and a beauty that lay in the soul that shone through her eyes. He remembered her frail body, lying on that hospital bed, broken from a fight with a lowly Shimo Oni.

He remembered looking into the girl's eyes through Shin, seeing the faint traces of something there, something not quite sane, lurking beneath a thin veil that managed to keep it at bay, an aberration born from a deep-seated hatred, a darkness that lived in the quietest depths.