DICHOTOMY

Pain

Unfathomable pain.

His brain was melting and his arm was on fire.

It was as though his skin was repeatedly ripped off his tender flesh and regrown, only to be ripped off again.

"AAARRGH!! FUCK! SHIT!! AAAH!"

Athos spewed curse after curse as he slowly came to his senses. He lay spear-eagled on the cave's floor and his body was covered in sweat.

Just what had happened? The last thing he remembered was a giant a- Gaaaaaah!

Yet Another bout of pain ravaged his brain as foreign memories suddenly rushed in. Memories of that blasted Oni, Shuten-Doji.

They were fragmented and incomplete. Centuries worth of memories reduced to the most impactful ones.

He saw through Shuten-Doji's eyes as he went about his life. He felt his emotions. His pain, his joy, his anger.

From the mischievous intent, he felt when he wore an Oni mask to scare his friends, to the terror he experienced when he couldn't take it off. From the rage, he suppressed when being scorned by the monks, to the glee he relished when ripping apart innocents.

From the scorn, he had when confronted by a warrior in vermillion armour, to the fury he experienced when his head was cut off. From the boredom, he endured when being sealed in his own head, to the indignation he felt when being traded like an item.

From the elation when he found a suitable host, to the fear when he realised that the host was not so suitable after all. He experienced all of it, all that was left anyway.

The memory that was most clear was of his last moments. The confusion, dread and pain he experienced while his essence was literally ripped apart by darkness, was particularly vivid. His soul was torn apart bit by bit, leaving a faint, lingering thought that shone the brightest, the very last one he had. It was a word. A word that not many Gods dare utter.

'Khaos-kin'

***

"Khaos-kin", Athos mumbled to himself as he clutched his head while his left hand continued burning.

'...Your soul is tainted by them...'

Tainted...so it was Khaos who 'tainted' him. It made sense why Gaea claimed to be the only other being to have that privilege. After all, she was practically its first creation, but only if the greek myths were taken into consideration...

Khaos was an entity tha-....well, Khaos wasn't an entity per se. To define it as an 'entity', would be implying that it exists, and at the same time has a distinct and independent existence, but Khaos was best described as indescribable, a shapeless void that existed below even Tartarus, a rudimentary mass of being that albeit without intelligent thought, had sporadic bursts of emotion, mainly boredom, one of which, lead to the unintentional creation of everything there was, is and will be.

Even though Athos was in pain, with his head pounding and his skin in agony, he could most certainly say that being tainted by Khaos was an accident, at least as far as the non-entity in question was concerned. It was not responsible for his outburst against the Oni either, not directly anyway.

Why did he think that way? The reason was the patchy and fragmentary memories that were unceremoniously jammed into his brain. He knew that the complex spell that the Oni had cast would've stopped the interference of any foreign entity or, at the very least, detected it, especially if it was Khaos, since the Oni had a meeting with the non-entity as well. The memory was a little murky due to it being centuries old, but was most definitely related to the Oni's practice of dark magic.

Dark magic, unlike the one Hecate, the Titan of Magic, stood for, was intrinsically linked to Khaos. It was looked down upon and feared by mortals and Gods alike due to its unstable nature and the fact that it was abnormally powerful. The reason for this was that Khaos was the exact opposite of all creation or Ma'at or Order, even though it was its sole progenitor. After all, it was once a nothingness that yearned to 'be', and for it to truly 'be', it had to create something that wasn't itself.

***

"Hah!", Athos huffed as the pain in his brain dulled. He forced his eyes open, immediately grabbing his left arm and holding it up to his face. What he saw shocked him greatly.

A lifelike, detailed Oni mask was tattooed on his forearm, and the skin around said tattoo was slightly sizzling. It was not unlike the mark of the death eaters. One half of the mask was blue while the other was red, unlike the mask of Shuten-Doji, which consisted of only one colour.

Speaking of Shuten-Doji, his mask was nowhere to be seen. The cave floor before Athos was empty, the only Oni mask being the one tattooed on his forearm. Soon enough, he realised that the mask had integrated itself within him after the Oni's soul-devouring spell backfired, and it now felt like another...limb. It felt familiar, yet foreign. Normal, yet alien.

He quickly grabbed a bottle from his backpack and poured some water on his forearm, hoping to lessen the pain, and after a few long, excruciating seconds, it did. He sighed in relief and shakily got to his feet, slinging his backpack over his shoulders.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, internally feeling out the mask. He mentally willed it to appear and sure enough, an electric-blue, Oni half-mask materialized around his mouth, comfortably fitting his face while appearing out of seemingly nothing. It had four tusks, looking identical to the mask of Shuten-Doji, and had quite the menacing appearance. The moment the mask enveloped the lower half of his face, he felt his body become far more robust, his skin becoming akin to steel, while his thoughts flowed smoother, soothing his frayed nerves.

He raised an eyebrow in surprise, not relating 'calmness' to the monstrous Onis, beings of death and destruction, but it made a lot more sense when considering the red Oni's counterpart, the blue Oni, which represented serenity and control. An odd dichotomy indeed.

After a few minutes of experimenting, he came to realise that the mask could do a lot more. It could switch between being a half-mask and full-mask, and switch between being blood-red and electric-blue, every mode having its own unique power-ups. The electric-blue full mask let him turn invisible, not unlike Annabeth's cap, embodying the original meaning for the word 'Oni', being 'to hide' or 'hidden from sight'. The red half-mask gave him a passive boost to his strength and the red full-mask, enhanced his strength to insane levels for a short amount of time while draining him of almost all energy afterwards, leaving him defenceless. Just how much stronger he got with the enhancement and how long he could sustain it for was still a mystery. He didn't activate it as he didn't want to bring the cave down on itself.

He grinned and grabbed the other two items he'd found in the cave and proceeded to make his way out. He knew what the sand dollar was but had no clue what the blue liquid did. Whatever it may be, fighting Anteas and almost getting pulverised by a sand monster was worth it. The Oni mask by itself was valuable enough. He kicked a helmet that was in his way and quickly made his way out of the cave and down the tunnel.

It was time to cash in a favour from a God.