Words spoken in anguish were words scarcely to be heeded.
When pain touched the weak of mind, fear and groveling were bound to follow. But when pain touched the strong of will, the desire to bite back often prevailed in the form of suicidal retaliation or empty threats. Whether spoken words deemed a person a helpless coward or a courageous fool, in the eyes of the unconcerned, the words were meaningless.
It was common for a curse to fly from the tongue. Curses were whispered about to gullible children, exchanged amongst the superstitious, and uttered by the crazed and the furious. It was exceedingly rare, however, for a curse to leave the lips of someone with the power to cast it.
The air had been thick with mist, veiling the sky and its every star.
Three hulking forest beasts charged through the wood, over the bodies of their fallen brethren. They had been sent for him, he knew. The army of ogres, eyes bulging with injected magics, had intercepted Sesshomaru on the journey back to his lands. His vassal gasped behind him as the last of the beasts closed in on them. With no more effort than he had expelled to fell the other beasts, Sesshomaru raised his sword, Bakusaiga, and the blade began to glow once more, setting their surroundings awash with green light.
The surprise of the attack had worn off, and something burned inside Sesshomaru. His grip tightened and greater power flowed into Bakusaiga. It was far more power than he would need to kill this enemy. It was all the power he would need to obliterate it.
Sesshomaru swung the blade only once, releasing a surge of youki that ripped through the ground. Even barrelling forward with great momentum, the hulking bodies four times Sesshomaru's size disintegrated on the spot without a moment to cry out, and a long stretch of the forest went with them.
Gazing upon the wreckage for no longer than the time it took for him to sheathe Bakusaiga, Sesshomaru turned to scan the area for any other creature who dared challenge him.
Jaken was dazedly lifting himself off the ground with his staff, having been blown over by the force of his lord's last attack.
The grinding and toppling of stone nearby was the only warning before a sharp wailing pierced through the night's near-silence. Tensed for another attack, Sesshomaru's head snapped to the side, his gaze landing upon the damage that had occurred to the left of the scar in the earth created by Bakusaiga. A rockslide had cluttered the path between two steep, looming mountains that would lead him closer to his homelands. Was it the aim of even the gods to delay him?
Sesshomaru glided towards the pile of fallen rock. There, he discovered the source of the piercing sound.
A young female human knelt in the mud beside one of the larger felled boulders and her wailing continued. Her hands had shoved and beat at the solid stone until they bled, her scent mixing with the scent of a man whose lower half had been completely crushed beneath the boulder. It was a futile attempt.
The woman's wild eyes did not miss Sesshomaru's approach. It was unclear whether or not what he was had yet dawned on her. Perhaps she was too desperate to care.
Still on her knees, she begged. She cried for his help. When he paid her no heed, his attention on the boulders scattered beyond them, she stood on unsteady legs.
"You can't, you did this!" the woman screamed.
Sesshomaru continued to walk.
He had known there would be no help for the man trapped beneath stone. Not that Sesshomaru would have lent his assistance otherwise. To the uninvolved, the man was already dead. Removing the boulder from the mangled lower half of his body would only have caused the human to bleed to death faster. No reward would have been given for further dirtying his hands, and the woman would likely have wailed harder at the sight of the damage.
She hurled mud in Sesshomaru's direction, tempting him to remove her head from her shoulders. Did she not realize she would have died as well without his power? She would have been torn limb from limb. Despite her blatant disrespect, Sesshomaru had elected to lengthen the distance between himself and the insignificant, dirty shape in the path.
"There is nothing inside of you," the distant shape spat as though she possessed the ability to see beyond his flesh.
Nothing the woman had said or done would have made her worth his time while the mountains and forest of his homelands awaited him and the sweat of battle still clung to his skin. Sesshomaru was no stranger to the sight of suffering. A suffering human was as commonplace as a broken tree branch. The powerless would always suffer, and no amount of good deeds would change that.
From behind him, the woman's shrill words had carried on the wind…
Become the monster that crawls beneath your skin.
Weak and grotesque, you will rot within your cage.
Be free in death, though your own will cannot end you.
Be free in life when new love bestirs your black, shriveled heart,
And when fate strikes that creature down.
Even now, in the wake of the following morning, the words echoed in Sesshomaru's mind as though a part of the spell had been to forever burn them into his memory. Sesshomaru had felt nothing at the time the words had been spoken. And now, as his hands shook and as he breathed heavily after merely ascending a hill, he wanted nothing more than to tear out the witch's throat. But it was too late. All of it.
Too late for vengeance. Too late for regret. Too late to run.
His vassal had vanished. Erased from existence in the blink of an eye, or scurrying through the forest for his life.
Where he stood now, Sesshomaru realized, was as far as he was able to go in this specific direction. Somehow, he did not know where this was. Unseen, a magical force began to solidify the air in front of him. Another step forward and he would be thrown back as he was the first time he tried to push his way through. You will rot within your cage, the woman had said.
Weak and grotesque…
Seething, Sesshomaru raised the trembling hands that could not have belonged to him but did. He stared, reaffirming the permanence of it all. The clawed fingers were unnaturally long and thin. The flesh, white as milk, was gnarled like the bark of an old tree with many layers of scar tissue. Not just his hands, but his arms as well, and presumably his entire body was afflicted. The demonic markings of his noble birth were gone. Wicked, unnatural veins stretched across his skin as a dark indigo, tattered webbing.
Sesshomaru peered down into one of many forest pools. The flesh of his face was twisted and wrong, as though someone had long ago attempted to erase his identity by flaying and searing it. All hair was completely gone from his swollen, knobby brow, and the length growing from his head was black and unevenly ragged. His mouth was a grisly mess of crowded, pointed teeth, and one ear looked as though something had taken a bite out of the shell. The only recognizable parts of his face were his eyes. Golden eyes, narrowed in denial of this nightmare.
No longer was he dressed as a lord, or even as a warrior. His armor, his pelt, Bakusaiga, and Tenseiga were gone. The loss of the blades' comforting weight at his side made him feel naked and devoid of a limb. All that covered him now was a plain gray robe of coarse fabric. A peasant's garb.
He opened the robe and let it fall to the ground, exposing all he had become. What he saw reflected in the water truly was a monster. And he no longer had the inner power to match it.
If Rin could have seen him now, it was doubtless she would have fled from him in terror, Sesshomaru realized numbly. If Rin saw him and somehow knew who he was, she would weep. A child would weep for him.
Not that it mattered anymore. He had wandered from the path back to his lands. No one knew he was here. Even if Jaken were still alive, Sesshomaru would not be found. No soul alive would recognize him.
How long would his absence be questioned? How long would he waste away? No one could free him from this invisible prison.
No one would try.
