STLS 8 (Patreon)

Sukuna stood above him like he owned the whole damn universe, and knew it. 

Those four crimson eyes shone with the ancient light that made Ryo's skin crawl, and the blood-red fire was still burning in his palm. "Others are born gods."

The words echoed.Bouncing off the bone walls in the vast dead space he knew was his soul and sinking back into Ryo's own bones. 

He barely even noticed the shudder that rippled across his body as he stared at the flame in Sukuna's hand. God… a tongue ran across his lips, Ryo finally blinking for the first time since Sukuna had summoned it. God, I want that.

Just looking at it made him feel. Feel in a way he hadn’t since he’d been marked, since he’d been buried alive; something that wasn't just irritation or a flat nothing sparked in his chest, burning as bright as the fire. Hope, maybe? 

If it was that, then… it felt weird. 

Like wearing shoes that didn't fit right, but in a good way.

"So you'll teach m-e?" The words came out before he could stop them, nervous and shaky toward the end. He knew how eager he sounded and he hated it, but… fuck it… he couldn’t help himself. "You'll teach me how to do... that?" Please don’t be fucking with me right now.

Sukuna's smirk got wider, something he knew was never a good sign. The fire in his palm just vanished, there one second and gone the next. "Teach you?" He let out this low, dry chuckle that sounded more like rocks grinding up on each other than anything else. "No. I will not 'teach' you anything, brat. Teaching is for a master who wishes his student to succeed."

Of course. Of fucking course.

 "I, however, find the prospect of your success utterly... uninteresting.” The demon took a step closer, and his presence hit Ryo like a physical weight, making the air feel thick and hard to breathe. The kind of pressure that came before storms, before bad shit happened. “I am simply bored. And the weakness of my body is an embarrassment to me."

Of course. Ryo's hope fizzled out as his shoulders physically drooped, expression flattening once again. My fault for thinking something different… 

Because it wasn’t like he didn’t know he was dealing with Satan wearing his own face; a guy who apparently ate people when he was still alive. The same guy who'd spent ten thousand years finding new ways to tear him apart for entertainment.

"What I will do," Sukuna continued, his voice dropping as he tilted his head to the side, "is provide you with opportunities to learn. I will break you. I will grind you down to your very bones. And if, in that process, you happen to stumble upon a sliver of the power that is your birthright... then perhaps you will be slightly less useless."

Ryo didn't have time to respond, didn't have time to think or breathe or even blink.

Not as Sukuna blurred.

Air exploded from his lungs as something slammed into his gut, the taste of blood filling his mouth with nothing but copper and iron and pain. The world went white and Ryo spun, eveyrhting tilting sideways as the ground beneath his feet vanished.

Something stopped him.

His back.

His face.His skull.

His eyes creaked open to see the massive crack in one of the white bone ribs holding up the sky, the thing smeared with fresh blood. …oh. Then he was falling, spinning through the air before splashing into the warm, thick blood below.

Half-drowned in blood, the boy just lay there, half-deaf, half-blind and in too much pain to process. His ribs were screaming, probably broken. Again. 

The seventy-eight time? Eighty-secondth? He'd stopped counting somewhere around getting his spine snapped for the seventh time in a row.

Welcome to Sukuna School 101. After minutes, hours, who knew how long, he felt the pain recede properly as his body pulled itself back together. The first lesson is, your teacher is an asshole.

He pushed himself up, hands and knees trembling as a stream of blood slipped from his open lips. A ragged breath left with it, Ryo unable to do anything else but stare down as the red inside him joined in the endless pool of red beneath him, little ripples looking back at him. 

"Get up," Sukuna said, like Ryo hadn't just gotten punched through a giant bone. "Lesson one begins."

Another breath dragged itself out before he could even lift his head, before he could even say another word. "L-lesson one on what? Why you’re a dickhead?"

"Lesson one on why you are a failure," Sukuna corrected, his tone casual as it always was, not even bothering to hurt him again for the insult. "You wish to wield fire like the little princess, yes?" One hand gestured to nowhere, nothing; fingers splayed out and pointing off into the darkness. "Go on, then. Show me. Bend."

Wait, what?

Ryo stared at him. "You just said I c-can't. Like a minute ago."

"And you believed me without testing it for yourself?" All four eyes narrowed on him again, the glow brightening for a single instant. "You are even more pathetic than I thought. You will learn nothing if you accept the limits others place upon you. Now, bend."

This feels like a trap. But then again, everything with this guy feels like a trap.

What choice did he have, though? He tried to remember how the guards moved, how Azula stood when she was about to torch something, as he dropped into what he hoped was the right stance, feet wide, hands up.

Harmonious chi or whatever.

He reached inside himself for something, anything that felt like those benders. Focused on the heat around them, the warmth of the blood lapping at his legs.

Come on. Just once, let something work out.

He thrust his hands forward, copying a move he'd seen one of those Ri Qiang guys do before Sukuna turned him into chunky salsa.

A puff of warm air drifted out from his hands, barely managing to even stir the blood.

That was it.

Well, shit.

Sukuna stared at him for what felt like forever. Then he started laughing, the sound a heavy, booming full-throated thing that echoed off the bone ceiling and made the blood ripple around them. 

"That," the demon finally gasped, wiping a tear from one of his lower eyes, "was the most pathetic thing I have seen in a thousand years. It is confirmed. The world's harmony wants nothing to do with you."

Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual.

Ryo’s skin went tight, wetness pooling in his eyes as heat crawled its way up his neck. He couldn't tell if it was shame or anger and he didn’t want to think about it as he stared daggers at the only person in the world who could make him feel like he was five. "Y-you told me to try, you asshole!"

"And you failed spectacularly," Sukuna shot back, amusement vanishing like someone flipped a switch. "Bending is an act of asking the world for its power. You are asking, and the world is telling you to fuck off. Do you understand now? Your very nature is anathema to it."

Great. So I'm literally too fucked up for magic to work.

"So what then?" The words tore out of his throat, raw with frustration that had been building for weeks. "What's the other thing? The 'sorcery'?"

"Ah, yes. The power of defiance." Sukuna's smirk crawled back across his face, slow and predatory. "Bending is harmony. You bend with the world. Sorcery... is dissonance. You bind your will against it."

The devil circled him, Ryo’s eyes tracing Sukuna’s path with tensed muscles as the monster took slow patient steps that made ripples in the blood around his feet. Like a shark. 

"A firebender feels the heat of the world and guides it,” Sukuna almost spat the word, something darker flickering onto his face. “A sorcerer feels the heat of their own soul and forces it to burn the world. Bending is defined by what is. Sorcery is defined by what you want."

The circle tightened, step by step, until Sukuna now walked around him with only a few long strides from the tall man. "And what do you want, boy? Right now, in this moment. What is the one thing you feel?"

Ryo stared up at him, ribs still aching from getting punched through a giant bone, body covered in bruises that were already fading thanks to whatever bullshit healing this place did to him. His mind felt raw with everything; ten thousand years of getting torn apart, three weeks of being a fancy pet, and now this.

"I wanna kick you in the dick," he growled back. He meant every word too. Paying Sukuna back for every second of pain and torture would only be the start of what he’d do if he even had anything close to the chance.

The grin that spread across Sukuna's face was too wide, too open, too wrong, the expression stretching his face into something that didn’t even look human anymore.

T-too many teeth.

Ryo couldn't stop himself from taking a shaky step back, blood sloshing around his ankles.

"Good," Sukuna almost hissed, still grinning that nightmare smile. "Use that. The anger. The frustration. The sheer, unending boredom of your pathetic existence. That is your chi. Not the harmonious bullshit of the world. Yours. It is born from the filth of human emotion. It is negative. It is cursed. And it is your only weapon."

My only weapon is being pissed off. Figures.

Sukuna's voice dropped, became almost conversational. "Focus on that feeling. Gather it. Feel it swirl in your gut like something foul and rotten."

Ryo closed his eyes, fists clenching so hard his knuckles popped. He thought about almost a month in that fancy prison. The polite smiles of his jailers. The way they treated him like a dangerous pet they had to keep happy. The way Ozai had looked at him like he was a bug that might be useful. The way Sukuna was looking at him right now, like he was entertainment.

God, I hate all of this.

He felt it building. A bitter and raw feeling that tasted like pennies and disappointment he could trace back to something that felt like it was around his stomach; a hot, heavy ball of something angry and dark deep deep down inside him.

"Now, release it," Sukuna demanded. "Flow it down, through your arm. Into your fist. Make it a weapon."

Ryo focused, trying to push the feeling down his arm. It was like trying to force sludge through a straw; thick and wrong and fighting him every inch. His arm started to tremble, muscles spasming under the strain. Something flickered around his knuckles, faint and blackish-red.

Almost...

"Pathetic." Sukuna's sigh was disappointed, bored. "Your control is nonexistent. You need a stronger stimulus."

What do y- Pain hit him like lightning as Sukuna's hand snapped out. Ryo glanced down, already gasping with pain and his mouth opened, trying to form more than gasps as he saw those clawed fingers digging into his flesh. “Wai-!”

Then, with a casual, brutal twist, those same fingers tore his arm free from his shoulder.

A raw animal sound scraped his throat bloody, Ryo stumbled backward, nearly falling to his knees as he stared at his empty limb. Blood spurted and fountained from the empty socket, raw bone visible, as the pain made it impossible to think.

But underneath it, something else erupted. 

"NOW!" Sukuna's voice roared in his head, cutting through everything else. "KILL ME!"

No thought as his hand clenched tight enough for more blood to spurt free; just rage, pain, hate, murder, all of it focused into his remaining fist. The blackish-red energy exploded into life, thick and violent, wrapping around his hand and forearm like liquid hate.

The boy lunged forward, roaring, and threw everything he had into the punch.

It missed, of course.

Sukuna barely had to even move to avoid it, a simple sidestep enough. Even still, the force of the blow hit the surface of the blood ocean and it shook. Three or four times his height, a wave of crimson liquid erupted upwards, red rain falling down on them both. 

Ryo stood there, breath still ragged and heavy, thoughts still coming in slow and in pieces.

His left arm was still open to the world, a bloody stump already starting to itch, feeling more like a living beehive than a limb as it slowly but steadily healed. The other glowed with dark energy that made the air around it shimmer, the dark chi yet to return back to his gut.

Sukuna looked at him, those four eyes flickering with something that maybe possibly could have been something close to approval. "Better. That is the nature of our power. It is fed by pain. By misery. By hatred. To be a sorcerer is to embrace the very worst of yourself and turn it into a weapon."“...I’m gonna kill you one day.”

The devil was all smiles again, grin wide as he looked down at him like he wasn’t complete trash. "I would expect nothing less."