Post by Schultz Silverhult on Mar 1, 2012 0:16:15 GMT -5
Schultz’s technique failed, but he hardly noticed the pseudo-Kurosaki completely breaking apart from his lack of focus. Crimson eyes dilated as images started hitting Schultz all at once. Fire, brimstone, hatred, pain… words and sounds blended into meaningless noise in his ears as he started shaking. The scholar wanted to scream, but he couldn’t work his jaws out of their locked position to force words out. Even if he could, his voice seemed to freeze in his chest, and the slightest sounds that made their way past that block were lost in the sudden silence that seemed to grip him in a vise of steel. Every breath that came was forced through those same barriers, causing a rattling sound that whispered of death in the Espada’s ears, even as he tried to force himself to move.
There was no way to describe it. Neither the countless disjointed and floating cays of torture, nor the barren and magma-filled wasteland could be accurate descriptions of it. A single look, and a feeling of sickness would come over Schultz. It would hit him like nothing else had. His insides would feel like they were burning. His body would force continuous throwing up down to throwing up even blood. His eyes would feel a burning sensation, and of course his body would be forced to shiver.
And indeed he shivered. He shivered worse by the moment as he tried to reach up with his hands to claw out his own eyes. Pain seeped through every nerve and pore in his body as he struggled to remove the terrifying images, no matter what the cost. His fingers curled like claws, and the blades attached to his back were whirling about crazily, striking at anything and everything. One sliced through his shoulder, while another cut a furrow through his back. Blood began seeping down, the crimson even darker than his already red skin, and Schultz felt the warmth only seem to intensify, as if his own blood were boiling magma breaking through the surface. He tried once more to scream, but the sound would not come. It was as if someone had a grip on his lungs and was squeezing them empty so that there was no air to use, nor breaths able to be drawn into his suffering form.
This very reaction hit all of the Zero Division members, none of which would ever truly know what to make of the place. Though it was noticeable that Old Lightning was the exception, and able to stand his ground and simply close his eyes, Schultz would find the same reaction as all of those who'd not been Old Lightning. Tears. Tears of agony, of hatred, of disgust and of depression. Tears of shock, and tears of utter and absolute hopelessness.
Tears. Tears streamed down Schultz’s cheeks, but they weren’t normal tears. Blood poured from his sockets as eyes strained, bulging out as if they would free themselves from the shell that could no longer be called living. Red drops stained his pants, the ground, the very soul they poured forth from. Another rattling, ragged sound was supposed to be a sob of pure and utter desolation, barely ripped from between teeth that would crack soon if those jaws didn’t unclench. Muscles were afire with pain, but the nerves were dead to the scholar as he tried to fight off the utter pain that was filling him. Slowly, he forced his jaws open, the muscles cramping and spasming as they tried to shut them closed again in that tortured expression of pain.
And then he screamed. No, screamed wasn’t even the right word. Every ounce of sensation he felt in those few tortured moments when Kurosaki’s memories completely destroyed him from the inside out was put into the sound that erupted from his lips, a sound so feral and inhuman that anyone who had heard it might give pause. Perhaps only Grimoire would ignore it; he knew all too well what Schultz was going through, what he had been through. But everyone else would feel the absolute pain that welled up from inside the scholar as his mind, his body, and his soul were all torn to shreds on the claws of despair. And even then, they would only know a fraction of what completely broke him.
With that scream seemed to come the rest of Schultz’s bodily control. But even then the horror still gripped him as the curse of perfect memory that was etched within his grimoire struck at him, and he screamed again. Fingers damp with blood where the tips had dug into his palms came up, and they started scraping at his eye sockets as if they would tear out the images from the surface of the orbs. Bloody scratches ran down his face, and the crimson liquid flowed in streams along the curves of his face. His pupils were so dilated that they were scarcely pinpoints in the deep red pools of his irises, as if the surface of his eyes were drowning in blood as much as the rest of his face.
And then, he was suddenly silent. Suddenly, without a word, there were no more sounds. Schultz’s arms just dropped to his side as his damaged face stared blankly out into nothingness. Blood still flowed freely from his injuries, but the tension seemed to be starting to slowly fade from his body. Tears started flowing from his eyes, real tears, stinging across the scratches in his face and mingling with blood both dried and fresh, creating a reddish, dirtied haze across his features. A sob wracked his frame, and another, and in a moment he was suddenly slumped over on the ground, crying shamelessly. Pride, strength and confidence were ripped away as the Espada fell over, a shell of what he was but a minute ago, everything stripped away but a husk that was broken and weeping.
Schultz’s grimoire, which had fallen to the ground about three feet away, suddenly closed itself. The crimson Reiatsu that had been streaming from it since his Resurrection began just vanished, and the scholar’s skin began to return to its normal pale shade. The chains receded into his back along with the blades, and in a moment he was kneeling there in his normal form, his release ended by sheer force of will that somehow managed to survive amidst what should have completely erased him. And with the closing of the grimoire and its ever recording pages, the memories of Hell itself were sealed away… but only for now. Should Schultz activate his Resurrection, those memories would be slammed back into his skull, to leave him a wreck once more. Would this be the end of his abilities as an Espada…?
Without a word, and with agony coursing through his body, Schultz made his own exit. His whole being was a mass of pain and torn muscles, terror fresh on his mind, but the scholar, through some sheer determination that somehow remained, grabbed his grimoire and dragged himself onto a Garganta platform he made. As the entrance sealed behind him, the scholar never looked back. There was nothing more he could do here.
After all, he was nothing, now.
Schultz’s Reiatsu: 1,600/4,000
Resurrection Ended