"Uhm, hello?" ventured Naruto, looking around.
It was a garden in a forest clearing. Except everything was dead and recently dead at that. Not all the leaves had fallen from the trees, but they had browned and curled and were ready to drop. The flowers withered, the grass brown and brittle. In the center of the clearing, cracked stone plinths describing a circle and a single statue in the very center of that.
Naruto went to that statue, somehow feeling the voice had come from that.
The statue's head had been cut from it and lay on the ground nearby. The body of the statue was webbed with cracks that he could see creeping towards each other slowly.
Reaching down, he lifted the head of the statue and regarded it. He noted the cracks had started from the cut neck and were likewise spreading through that.
"Uhm. Hello? Where is this? Who are you?" asked Naruto.
"Again I offer greetings. This, as you put it, is a symbolic representation of a non-spatial extratemporal location. I am Eilistraee."
"I don't understand," confessed Naruto.
"That is good. So few humans have the humility necessary to confess when they do not understand. This is a - I guess you would call it an illusion of a distant location. That is a bit oversimplified, but it suffices. Odd how contemplative one gets when one's death is near."
"Okay, sort of a genjutsu then," said Naruto, fitting it into his own worldview. "Except I'm seeing something that's real elsewhere."
"If that works for you. Then it works."
"Okay, and your name is Eilis... Ale-ess. Aye Lay Stray," tried Naruto.
"I would stand amazed if I could stand. How can one mispronounce a name when communicating telepathically?"
"No clue," confessed Naruto.
"That aside. Ouch. Don't ever believe it when someone says dying doesn't hurt, hero. In any case, my name is Eilistraee. You do something few have done, hero. You stand witness to the death of a god. I was a goddess who was the patron of heroes and those who sought to protect and redeem. With my death I redeemed many and I am satisfied with that, but-"
Naruto listened to the voice trail off, feeling the regret and loss and yearning in that voice. "You wanted to do more."
"Yes."
Naruto shrugged, not really understanding a lot of this. "Wish I could help." And he was sincere in that. He understood the desire to do more, to be more, to accomplish things. Besides, whoever this was had already acknowledged him as a hero-in-training.
"Perhaps you can."
She'd come into the temple and saw the whole thing. Naruto slipping and falling, the mask dropping, and Naruto vanishing when the mask fell into place.
She examined the masks on that partition herself, noting the empty spot where one had hung. Several were cracked slightly, weathered looking as they were directly under a hole in the roof.
One looked particularly interesting, a combination of fox mask and maiden mask. Unlike the typical Noh mask - this one had a wig of red hair and a more modern look to it.
She noted that there was a sigil on the inside, a spiral and the word "Naruto" at the center.
On impulse, she put it on. Just as she settled it into place, she realized that this might not have been her most intelligent move.
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(Posted Fri, 02 Jan 2015 22:23)
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