Sukuna: The Last Sorcerer 16 (Patreon)

The caldera of the Fire Nation capital was home to as many secrets as it had servants, and servants liked to talk.

Through those mouths and ears, whispers eased through the palace, catching in the corners of the palace where courtiers and cleaners thought nobody was listening. Stern-faced generals stomped through heavy halls, almost vibrating out of their armor as the days went by and more news drifted in through the cracks. 

Stories about a whole armada moving north to start a siege, with industrial amounts of dead bodies to be stacked up high in the snow. 

Ryo sighed, shoulder leaning against a carved stone pillar in Azula’s private courtyard. Not my problem. The stone was hot enough to cook an egg as it baked under the morning sun. but the heat rolling off the center of the yard was something else entirely. 

She was violence.

Death wrapped in silk.

Every transition between each stance was as close to perfect as a person could get, not a single inch of space wasted as she kicked blue fire into the air. Azure arcs burned silent afterimages into his eyes, and probably the eyes of all the guards watching too. 

She trained. He watched. 

And whether he wanted to or not, he paid attention to every single motion his princess made in the training court.

The way her weight shifted from the back of one hell all the way to the ball of her front foot kept her perfectly agile, grace so stupidly on point that it was insulting to everyone that wasn’t named Azula. It shouldn't have been possible to throw that much raw destruction around while you moved around like you were performing a ballet recital.

Damn. Ryo shook his his head. If even one percent of the Fire Nation’s as good as her…

Well, it wasn’t really a surprise as to how these people conquered half the world.

He knew he couldn’t bend, and that he definitely couldn’t pull off firebending. That ship had caught fire, sank, and was already eaten to nothing by sharks the second he started his own sick training. The bastard taking up space in his head had made that boundary crystal clear. 

Even still,  watching Azula was damn-near hypnotice.

More than it usually was, at least. It was like seeing a masterwork sword being forged right in front of him; all that deadly razor-sharp elegance compressed down into one pale arrogant (and possibly evil) princess.

This… Even as he watched, he clicked his tongue. This frickin’ sucks.

Ryo hated it as much as he hated having to follow her around like a puppy.

He hated it because it reminded him of exactly what he was. 

A club. 

A heavy simple weapon that just swung until whatever was in front of it stopped being a problem for him. Usually, that was after they stopped breathing. 

His princess, on the other hand…

Well, she was a katana.

And that katana knew how to cut. 

As Ryo watched, Azula shifted her rhythm, those sweeping kicks and the sharp little hand jabs stopped as the blue fire died down with it. Sucked back into her, the princess’s breath deepened as she widened her stance just a bit and her hands drew lower even as they tightened, both of them nearing her hips. 

Her fingers curled up, rigid, locking into a weird-looking claw shape.

What the… Ryo looked down at himself, red eyes wide. All at once, the hairs on his arms stood up as straight as they could go, what he could only describe as static charge crawling over his black tattoos.

He looked back up as Azula brought her hands together, something crackling in the air as Ryo blinked her way. What kinda firebending…

Two fingers snapped out towards the sky.

The sky screamed back at her.

Lightning exploded from her fingertips, ripping the air apart as it spat from Azula’s outstretched limb. What the fu- It wasn't the jagged stuff that fell out of rain clouds. No, this was a single hyper-focused blinding line of blue-white fury that popped his ears.

Holy shit! His mouth hung open wide, the residual flash still a bright purple streak across his vision. She can shoot lightning.

Ryo blinked it away, one hand rubbing at his eyes as he stared up at her. Of course she can shoot lightning. Why wouldn't the scary fire princess be able to shoot lightning? 

Just add it to the damn list of insane things the evil magical girl could do. Next time, I turn around, she’ll be flying too.

All jokes aside, like everything else he’d seen Azula do, the lightning-spell was flawless. On top of that, the power output was stupid high too. She probably could have dropped one of those armored rhino-things they kept in the stables right where it stood. 

Azula held the same stance for a second longer, a perfectly controlled breath leaving her. At the same moment, a single strand of black hair came loose and fell across her pale forehead.

Ryo pushed off the pillar, hands coming together as he started clapping loud enough for it to echo off the walls. “Yooo, princess!” The words bounced across the courtyard, loud and as hyped as he felt. “You just straight-up Thor’d that shit! You didn’t tell me you could do that!”

The royal guards stationed around the courtyard — all six of them wearing those stupid skull masks — didn't even twitch, yet it was Azula that cracked. Golden eyes snapped his way as annoyance flickered bright and quick across her face like a lit match.“At the risk of repeating myself…” Fingers grabbed that loose piece of hair, Azula quickly tucking it back into her topknot without missing a beat. “What is wrong with you?”

“With me? I’m doin’ good, lil hungry but good.” He walked out onto the baking white stone, bare feet against the rock. “But we’re on you and that… whatever that was. Badass ightning, princess. I thought you were a fire girly.”

“A special technique of the royal family.” Azula’s left eye twitched. Barely any movement, but considering this was Azula, she might as well have thrown a middle finger his way. “It was imperfect.”

“Im…” He stopped just a few paces away from her, the smell of ozone almost thick enough to choke on. “Imperfect? Princess, you just shot a laser beam at the sun. How much more perfect can you get?”

“A stray hair signifies a flaw in breath control.” She wasn't even looking at him anymore, eyes aimed past his shoulder as she lectured the air. “A flaw in breath control signifies a wavering of intent. Wavering of intent in a true battle means death.”

Ryo just stared at her.

“Nah, princess,” Red eyes blinked as a crooked grin pulled the corner of his mouth as high as it could go. “I’m pretty sure the other guy would be way too busy being a pile of smoking ash to notice your hair was a little messed up.” 

The look she aimed his way could have frozen a volcano.

As honest as he could be, Ryo offered a lazy shrug. “Still looked cool as hell, though. Solid 9.9 out of 10.”

“Your approval is…” The pause from her stretched out long, Azula visibly pulling back the full depth of her disgust. It didn’t take that long to know Azula well enough to track exactly what sort of wheels were turning in her head. “…appreciated.”

She turned her back to him, conversation clearly over as she launched herself into a new combat kat. The movements were sharper this time, more complicated; blue fire spiraled its way up around her legs, whipping into a localized storm that traced patterns he didn't even try to follow.

Whatever. Ryo clicked his tongue. Be pissy about a haircut.

He turned his back on her and wandered toward the far wall, coming to a stop at a spot where the stone was just slightly less likely to make him sweat. With a grunt, Ryu dropped to the ground, legs immediately crissy-crossing their way into apple-sauce formation. She wants to obsess over being perfect, she got it.

Besides, he had his own shit to worry about; a whole different kind of training. 

One that would fuck up a lot more than a single hair.

With a sigh, Ryo closed his eyes and let himself go, body falling backward off a ledge into the pitch black of his own mind.

All of a sudden, the baking heat of the Fire Nation courtyard vanished.

The suffocating wetness of Sukuna’s world replaced it.

Bare feet hit the liquid with a heavy splash as Ryo opened his eyes again to find a knee-deep ocean of warm blood lapping at his legs. He didn’t need to look up to know the sky above was constructed entirely from the ribcage of some massive beast he couldn’t believe ever actually existed. 

The air here was thick where the outside was dry, the smell of old iron and exposed marrow weighing everything down. 

Home sweet home… As sickening as it sounded, it actually did feel a lot like home. Yeah, really not sure how to feel about that.

“Back so soon?” 

Ryo looked up to where a mountain of skulls rose out of the red water, just about a hundred feet away from where he stood.

“I was just beginning to enjoy the quiet.”

Four crimson eyes lazily tracked Ryo’s approach as their owner’s voice rolled down towards him.

The robed demon he wished was just imaginary lounged atop the bone throne at the peak of skull mountain, sitting exactly the same way he did every time Ryo showed up here. He’s gotta be doing that on purpose to look cool. Chin resting heavily on one fist, the other arm was draped casually over the knee of his crossed leg. 

I hate that face so much. His own face, even. If therapy existed, I would need so much of it.

“Yeah, well, sorry to interrupt your busy schedule of sitting around and being evil,” Ryo shot back as he waded forward, thick and sticky blood dragging at his shins.“Thank you for being so considerate. Now leave.”

“Oi, I’m here for a reason!” He came to a stop, craning his neck up. “I need you to teach me something.”

Sukuna didn't move, one eyebrow going up as high as it could. “The vessel presumes to make demands of its master. How presumptuous.” 

“I wanna learn fire,” Ryo pushed on, choosing to ignore the obvious threat he could hear aimed his way. “Real fire. I know you can’t bend but I remember… I remember you did something at the volcano with fire. I want that same kind of pretty deadly shit Azula does.”

A hand went high into the air, gesturing vaguely toward the invisible ceiling of the domain. “She moves like she’s dancing, and then actual lightning comes out of her fingers. I move like I’m having a seizure, and maybe something explodes if I’m lucky and I get pissed off enough to force it.”

Sukuna laughed, the sound echoing loud and coming from everywhere at once. “You wish to match the elegance of these modern benders.” Sukuna leaned forward just a bit, the heavy robes shifting over the four arms he kept hidden. “You wish to bridge the gap between your pure brutality and their… artistry.”

“Something like that, yeah.” Ryo crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m tired of being the guy who just hits things really hard. I want finesse.”

“Finesse.”

The word echoed on Sukuna’s tongue as he spoke it slowly, two syllables tasted carefully like a strange fruit.

“An amusing concept,” the King of Curses mused out loud as those eyes slid his way, “coming from a vessel who has spent the last month learning to reinforce his bones simply so they do not shatter when I demonstrate proper technique.”

The insult hit exactly where it was aimed, Ryo’s jaw tightening under the too-true insult. It was nothing he could deny, especially when every single lesson in this bloody hellscape ended with him getting violently dismantled. 

Torn apart, broken, ruptured, and forced to stitch himself back together with cursed energy before he actually died. 

Sure, he was getting better at it. He was faster. 

But it was the bare minimum of survival, and nothing close to actual control.

“Look, four eyes, are you gonna teach me or not?” Five fingers formed a tight fist on both sides of him. “Because if you’re just gonna sit up there making smart-ass comments, I can wake up and go back to watching someone who actually knows what they’re doing.”

Sukuna’s expression changed as those four eyes narrowed, red irises burning hot against the black sclera. The temperature around him spiked, the blood ocean around Ryo’s calves beginning to simmer.

“You only had to ask.”

Ryo blinked. “What that m-”

Fire ignited in Sukuna’s palm, the blaze he held up high a deep churning crimson, every part of it shot through with veins of writhing black. The kind of fire that existed in the mind, in thought, before humanity learned to build walls, compressed into a jagged, unstable sphere no bigger than a baseball. It radiated a heat that felt less like temperature and more like pure, concentrated malice.

One second, the demon was simply sitting on the throne, and then, without a single moment of movement in between, he was standing directly in front of Ryo.

Red eyes didn’t have time to widen and the boy didn't have time to flinch, unable to even pull the cursed energy from his gut to reinforce his ribs. He didn't even have the millisecond required to drag breath into his lungs to scream.

The sphere of black-red fire slammed itself directly into the center of an unprotected chest.

Flesh failed instantly. Muscle gave in a split-second after.

The ribs beneath gave way with a wet crunch that was immediately drowned out by the roar of the dark chi detonating inside his chest cavity as the world dissolved into a blinding, white-hot absolute.

He fell backward into the boiling blood ocean, his body seizing violently, arching off the surface of the liquid as his nervous system completely short-circuited under the catastrophic overload.

Sukuna’s dry, breathy laughter echoed out.

“Lesson one.”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating through the bone sky as Ryo choked on his own boiling blood.

“Fire… like everything else in this world… does not care about your comfort.”

Black-and-red flames crawled up Ryo’s neck, sinking into his jaw as the skin melted off his cheekbones. He tried to thrash, tried to pull the energy to fight back, but the fire just burned the healing away the second it manifested.

“It is an agent of consumption.” Sukuna’s cadence remained perfectly controlled, each syllable calm and clear. “It obeys only strength. Only absolute dominion.”

The pain was an ocean. There was no surface. 

And he was drowning at the very bottom.

“If you wish to wield it with elegance, you must first survive its fury. You must become the thing that fire itself fears.”

Ryo couldn't hear the rest over the sound of his flesh cooking. The dark chi tore through his chest, demanding he rebuild himself faster than he was being destroyed.

He had asked for finesse.

Apparently, to get that, he had to learn it while he was being burned alive from the inside out.