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| | Western Mountains Qåuls is a language spoken along the ridges of the Western Mountains. It is bordered on the north by Inland Qåuls (or, more commonly, Qóll), on the west by Seashore Wargish and on the south by Swamp Wargish. |
| He could take no more.
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| It was Tanabata, and the warmest of summer breezes were maneuvering his unkempt yet spiked hair. Forcing hiself to breathe was taking too much a toll on him. Blood was already pooling underneath, leaking profusely from myriad open wounds. Glancing down, he saw what he instantly reckognised as muscle tissue, covering everything below his neck.
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| His brain had been blocking pain out for some time, for what he was unmeasurably grateful. Realisation hit him like a hammer - he had been skinned alive.
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| Screaming almost on instinct, try as he might, his voice couldn't break the cacophony of tens of thousands on stalls around the village. Coughing out a considerable amount of blood, he collapsed. His back against a wall of some nondescript building, he pushed himself into a comfortable position, or, into a position as comfortable in which a half-gutted teen could be. His black pants weren't even truly black any more - the invasive, sticky life fluid absorbed into the linen, dyeing the fabric a deep burgundy.
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| Curse the skies, his life was venomously bad, more bitter than a rotten peach, more sour than raw lemons. He had been kind of content with it, though, no matter its dislike of him. He skimmed over his life - no parents, nobody to take care of him, less than a hand's worth of people who cared about him.
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| It was a pretty low insult from the heavens, even to an orphan. | |
| His breathing was pretty raspy, and down his chin flowed a very thin thread of blood. He attempted to lift his hand to his mouth, to wipe the blood away, but no matter how he tried, he could barely even lift his arms above his stomach.
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| In waves, his nerves began function once more. Slowly, bit by bit, he was dying of pain which only kept worsening.
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| He glanced up.
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| The skies were magnificent. Stars were falling from the heavens, one by one, dimming away, as the North Polestar grew in brightness in each passing second.
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| Even though it was a cloudless night, no moonlight was present. Soon, the winds died away as well. The night was simply breathtaking, and, even through his sore and clogged-up throat, he even managed a "wow".
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| Feeling his strength fading away, he closed his eyes for a moment. And some more. And soon, the moment stretched out over several moments, and then seconds, a whole minute.
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| "One last wish you have to grant me," he mouthed to the heavens above. "Just one more... I want you-" - he coughed out a considerable amount of blood - "-... I want you..."
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| He sighed, not knowing what his final wish would be.
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| "I want you to surprise me!" he managed to utter, and was faced with an impossibly painful attempt at coughing out his lungs.
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| He tried opening his eyes but was too weak to even part his eyelids. With another sigh (or was it a shallow exhale), he finally let it be as he understood - this were the last moments of the amazing and unpredictable Naruto Uzumaki.
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| What a poetic last line, he thought - his conciousness was slipping by now. He was sleepy, and his head felt far too heavy for what it was worth.
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| He slowly faded into a drunken sleep...
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| They called it death.
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| With a serene smile covering his face, he collapsed, falling over. It would be not until daybreak until he was found...
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| With a gasp for air, he woke up.
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| Nothing. All around him.
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| Not just black, it was nothingness, almost condensed and dense enough to be sliced apart with kunai. Glancing down, he was garbed in the black clothes he wore before death, only devoid of blood and scarring.
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| He was amazed.
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| Running his fingers over his cheeks, he felt nothing unusual - no whiskers! And on his stomach, no scars, no bruises, nothing, not even his seal. Further down, he noted his fingernails were neatly shortened, which made him blush in shame. He was declawed now, and by supernatural force, not his own.
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| Supernatural.
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| It hit him, he had died.
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| Died. Death. Unusual word, a bit sourly tastin, and more than a little bleak and gloomy.
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| Where was he, now that he died? Where was the big, purple, clawed and still-fanged fellow who certainly lurked history books and was rumoured to await you after death?
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| Naruto sat down. Feeling the ground with his hands, he felt it impossibly solid, yet jelly-like in texture. Raising an eyebrow, he wiggled his hands around, waving them without purpose. Somehow, the air itself felt evil and solid.
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| He sniffed it. As if on cue, his gut twisted and turned, and inside his head he heard an maculate scream.
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| And he waited. And waited.
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| ...
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| Some time had passed since his arrival, when he heard something he could only describe as an audible sneer. Turning around, before him sat an immensely tall, black-skinned *something*, dressed in a plain white robe.
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| Not only that, he was sitting in a chair as immense as he, behind a desk just as immense.
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| Towers of paperwork stacked on the desk were quickly being emptied - h-... it clawed across the paper, and an incredibly bright blue light shone out.
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| It lifted its head up at the boy.
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| To get a sense of scale, Naruto compared him and his height to ten Kyuubi, but even that was little.
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| His head was amazingly endowed with four eyes and a long, demonic tongue which came out of his gaping, incredibly sharp-toothed mouth.
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| He had four arms, two on the desk and two behind, which the blond just noticed.
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| Hooked on his two "outer" arms, were two incredibly pretty and pale women, drooling over him - one Naruto reckognised as Amateratsu herself!
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| "Name, age and that shit," its incredible and horrible and booming voice demanded. It was staggeringly loud, almost loud enough to physically push the boy away.
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| Naruto's mouth was left ajar.
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| Staring into the... what was it, Shinigami? ... he tried voicing his thoughts.
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| "Come on, speak up," it commanded. Its voice was more vile than evil itself.
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