Hi List-buds,
This is the first time I'm mailing to the list so please be lenient if I 
goof up. Thanks
 
Jien

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Disclaimer: The characters of Rurouni Kenshin are copyright of Nobuhiro 
Watsuki, Shueisha, Sony Entertainment, etc. I don't own them but I 
wished I did. *whips out calculator* Ummm. Royalties! Usual inspiration 
of extreme pain, dank, dark rooms and excess cappucino. I don't know 
what a dark fic is, but this MAY be a SADfic. I don't know. The problem 
is that since the story wound up at my doorstep, I may be failing the 
chracters themselves as they can't approach any of the all-time greats 
such as Tae, Pan, Kaoru-sensei, MadmaHydra and Miss Hideki on the list 
who have probabbly been booked straight for a year of weekends. If you 
feel that I'm not giving the characters enough credit or if they are 
beginning to act OOC, please, please tell me. Critism, constructive or 
not, is always welcome. Thank you.

More than Mortal
by Jien
Prologue

	It was not true darkness. Even in the deepest depths he could see 
variations in it like a pattern in a child's shadowbox diaroma. Fog 
roiled over the ground concealing it but he could smell the stench, the 
odour of death and decay, could feel the dampness of cobblestones 
beneath seep through his slippers into his tabi. A fogbank rose before 
him like a towering tsunami of silver gray but it dissipated before the 
descending waves could crash on to him. The mist dimmed, receding to the 
edges of his vision revealing familiar shadows. 

	He knew this place. Rude shacks of roughly hewn timber stretched 
forward until they became houses of increasing grandeur and met the 
horizon as tiered and many-storeyed temples and pagodas. He had seen 
this place in morning light and dew, as though awash in blood and fire, 
and he had seen it draped in midnights' clouds and moonbeams as he had 
stalked furtively through the streets but he had never seen it in hell. 
For now it truly was hell. In the dim light, each ruined building seemed 
to glow with a sickening greenish white glow like decaying fungus. His 
mind recoiled as he inspected the buildings closely. Every brick, every 
stone had been replaced with bone. The city shivered and whispers rose 
from each nook and cranny. The whispers were tinged with longing and 
hunger. Something a distant part of his mind recognized and craved along 
with the outcast whisperers. 

	A tendril of fog rolled out from a window, never wavering, creeping 
forward to meet another that inched out of a gaping maw of ruined hut. 
The twain met and rose together in a cloud of choking gray. Slowly it 
began to ebb away leaving a presence before him. Yet this was unlike any 
of the others he had encountered before. A face worn with care and 
worries yet as beautiful as an immortal. A pair of sad and mystical eyes 
of an alluring red and purple. The phantasm reached out with one hand 
and spoke.

	"Come home..."

	The dreamer screamed. As he did, he fell backwards away from the hand 
offering forgiveness and his eyes fled from that pale visage and locked 
on to the sky. There were no stars. Only a grimacing face that glowed as 
blood ran down its sides, that contorted as it screamed in silent 
anguish. It was his own.



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