Luminescent

The Artificial Gate Incident

Well, they succeeded.

It was difficult and mind scrambling and tiring, but they succeeded.

Rin lay in the thick cover of ashes on the ground below where the Artificial Gate used to be, slowly being buried in the still-falling ashes and cinders. He didn't remember falling, but his body sure did.

It was hard to keep his eyes open and it felt like his head was being split open by an oncoming migraine. Due to the migraine, he deduced he must have had to use his power over damned souls to win the battle, but he didn't remember how or why.

Eventually, he tried to sit up and take a deep breath in, but inhaled ashes and coughed for a good few minutes before he could breathe again. Blood splattered across the ashes next to him as he hacked.

His senses all seemed to be dulled. His hearing was muffled and there was a piercing ringing sound in his right ear. As soon as he registered that he was sitting up, his vision tilted to the side and he had to clench his eyes shut both against the blinding sunlight making itself known to his retinas and the tunnel vision sudden dizziness gave him. His body moved irritatingly slow every time he tried to get up and get just kept ending up falling back down and stirring up more ashes and debris.

Finally, he just stayed down and groaned, throat feeling sore and dry. He curled up on his side and did his best not to breathe in any more ashes as he took deep breaths to keep the bile in the back of his throat from rising any further.

Rin had no idea how long he laid there, but the sun slowly went down and the sky was a pink-purple, just on the edge of dusk. He could finally open his eyes again once the sunlight was gone.

He looked around as best he could without moving so as not to make the pounding in his skull come back after it had settled once he'd stopped moving around earlier. He could see lumps in the ash-some pieces of the Gate, some Exorcist equipment, and others were bodies. He could feel some anguished souls trapped in some of the bodies-their owners hadn't been ready to die and tried to stay even after their bodies passed. Some were still dying, ever so slowly, as they suffocated under ash or bled out from wounds or their crushed bodies tried to pull them free of fallen debris.

Rin, without thinking, tried to reach out. He broke off a piece of himself to find the souls trapped on the battlefield and guide them where they were meant to be.

He sent the ones who were innocent of evil, but also innocent of good, to Asphodel. Others, he dragged their dark souls that glowed with negative light down with chains and weights, sending them falling to the pits of Tartarus.

In the middle of his work of freeing the dead abd seemingly being the Grim Reaper, Amaimon found him and the Earth King signaled Bon. The piece of him guided them to Rin's body and he smiled tiredly up at them.

"Oh, Rin." Bon dropped to his knees and carefully scanned Rin's body. It seemed to be physically fine as far as wounds went, but mentally, he was off. "It fought back at you until you destroyed it." The boy realized.

"Don't remember it at the end." Rin murmured, though his hearing was still messed up.

"Let's get you home and see what we can do for you back at home, yeah?" Bon suggested. Rin avoided nodding to keep the pounding at bay, but made a noise of agreeement and clenched this eyes shut in pain when he was picked up. Amaimon snapped them home and Rin was able to calm somewhat with the familiar scents and colors of the Manor washing over him.

It took a spell of Balance and two restoration potions from Amaimon to get his senses back to being operational and a full day of sleep to get him perfectly healed. During his day-long rest, he contemplated the day before.