Coming of the Storm

To the Sound of Violins
Pale fog filled the canyons and valleys of Hueco Mundo. The peaks of the Forest of Menos barely piercing above the mist, tips raised toward the everlasting night sky.

Slowly, as if afraid of the jagged, mineral-like tree tops, the crescent white light sank in the sky, bathing the Northern Pass in waning light.

Brasi Luca recovered his breath. Leaning back against the roughly hewn wall of the watchtower, he cupped his hand to his white mask and shaded his eyes from the unaccustomed light. The ascent had been grueling and his zanpakutō weighed heavy on his worn legs.

Never before had he witnessed the moon ever change its shade until these last few days, or heard of such an event.

Only a few orbits previously, the fortress, which had been built with the ascendance of the late Queen of Hollows, had been attacked without warning. Many had lost their lives in the battle, but the young and inexperienced were the first to fall. Then came the sickness. No one knew where it had sprung from, but it preyed on the hollows, sapping their strength, clouding their vision, and enfeebling their hands.

And so it was that Brasi, despite his wounds, was guarding the gateway at this hour. Two vast slabs of solid rock stemmed the tide of invading forces. For some the sight of the imposing gateway was not enough of a deterrent; bleached bones and twisted scarps of white clothing were all that remained of them now.

The solitary arrancar turned to the north, his hidden eyes weeping the tree pass, thirty paces across, that led from the watchtower into the Fores of Menos. No one knew what lay there anymore or controlled it. It wasn't long ago that hollows was still able to use it as a safe haven, but with the rise of the civil war had created a new way of life and the few who returned from the forest once they ventured inside.

He scanned the pass carefully. The enemies learned nothing from their defeats. Their vicious, choleric minds compelled them to throw themselves against their defenses. They were bent on destroying anyone and anything in their path. Their raids were conducted in blind fury. Raging and screaming, the beasts would scale the walls. A tide of red blood would lap against the impregnable gates, while battering rams, skulls and projectiles shattered as they hit the stone.

This remnant of Harribel's armies, suppose Nelliel's now, suffered casualties, deaths, and crippling injuries too, yet it never occurred to them to that hollows of such ferocity would even exist, even by their own standards.

"And yet we were almost defeated." Brasi's thoughts turned again to the strange arrancars that had invaded the underground halls, killing many of his subordinates. No one had seen them approach. Outwardly they resembled any other arrancar: tall, white clad, and with a more humanoid appearance, but as fighters they were savage and ruthless.

Brasi was almost certain that the creatures were not arrancars. There was no love between the hollows and their cousins. Their differences had resulted in feuds, the occasional skirmish, and naturally death, but never something like this since even before the war began.

"Then again," he thought critically, "I might be wrong. Perhaps The Usurper hate us enough to force insanity upon his own subjects just to get rid of us — or maybe they’re after something else."

A bitter wind whistled round the tree tops, gusting through Brasi's mask. Suddenly, his brow furrowed angrily behind it as his could hear their shrieks being born anew. Brasi did not wait for the ragged banners and claws to appear over the final incline of the path. Standing on tiptoe, he placed his callused hands on the coarse bone made horn.

The arrancar's lungs began to fill and bring the instrument of war to his charred lips, only to produce a constant stream of air. Gathering in volume, the sound became a single piercing note, loud enough to rouse the soundest of sleepers. They were being summoned to fulfill their duty as Chapultepec's protectors.

Sweating from the exertion, Brasi glanced over his shoulder.

These berserkers had formed a wide front and were marching on the gateway, more numerous than ever before. Shinigami would have fled to the woods and a man’s heart would have stopped at the sight of the monstrous hordes. The arrancar stood his ground.

The attack on the gateway came as no surprise to Brasi, but the timing was unsettling. The coming battle would stretch the hollows’ resources more than usual. More bloodshed and more death.

The defending soldiers lined up on the battlements on either side of the gateway, their movements slow, thy were lurching rather than walking, weak fingers wrapped loosely around the hafts of their zanpakutō's or enclosed fists. The band of arrancars' and hollows' stumbling to the defense of the gates numbered no more than a hundred souls. A thousand would have been too few.

Brasi’s watch was at an end; he was needed elsewhere.

“Don’t forsake us, Hallibel. We’re outnumbered,” he whispered, unable to wrest his head from the shrieking sound of their enemies along the path. Grunting, shouting, and jostling, they headed for the gates. The bare rock cast back their bestial cries, the echo mingling with their belligerent chants.

The strident noises jangled in his mind, and it seemed to him that the beasts had somehow changed. There was a palpable air of confidence about the raging, shouting mob.

For the first time, he was afraid of the beasts.

With growing dread, “Don’t abandon me now,” he enjoined the blade softly, before turning and hurrying down the steps to join the small troop of defenders.

He reached them just as the first wave of beasts struck the wall. All manner of projectiles rained down on their position. Ladders were thrust against the walls, and enemies hastened to scale the wobbly rungs, while arrancars' prepared launched cero's projectiles to reinforce the bombardment.

The first salvo was aimed too low, but the dark hordes were undeterred by the sight of their front line burning in a storm of concentrated spiritual energy. Nothing, not the battery of stones nor the torrent of molten ore, could check their rapacious zeal. For every enemy that was slain, five new aggressors scaled the walls. This time they were determined to breach the defenses. This time the gateway was destined to fall.

To be continue...