According to His Will

by: CrimsonShiva

Author's note: I don't own Inuyasha!

Chapter 1: "The Road not Taken"

It was a warm misty night. The gentle flow of the breeze rippled through the trees producing a rasping noise with the leaves. The stars glimmered in their obsidian void and the full moon glowed with all the brilliance of a single flash light in the dark. Kikyo's cold brown irises stared vacantly at the rocky trail that guided her feet through the dense forest. Her soul collectors slithered through the mist around her giving her the picturesque appearance that alluded to her mysterious past. Their blue light radiated lightly onto her back and shoulders, darkening her face.

"I feel a demonic aura" she thought as her eyes narrowed, "it's not far off." Her feet shuffled lightly on the ground as she trod through the underbrush. She pushed back a branch and poked her head around a tree trunk. A demon was comfortably sitting propped up against a tree with his legs open and one knee bent up. He rested his head against the bark with his eyes closed. He had a humaniod appearance and Kikyo took a mental note that would be more adept than most demons. He had long deep cerulean blue hair that was accentuated by the moonlight.

Kikyo's eyes gauged every detail of the man, from his innocently relaxed position to the faint drops of blood that had stained the inside of one of his sleeves. Had it not been for the surplus amount of souls delivered to her by her collectors recently, she would not have been so cautious in this area. In fact, she probably would have let her guard drop. This was Inuyasha's Forest after all. It would be only too easy to delve into distracting memories.

Kikyo stepped out from behind the tree to stand in plain sight of the demon. Her bow was gripped tightly by one of her cold earthen hands.

"What is it that you want here?" she questioned him. She saw his eyebrow twitch.

"You are the priestess who stood guard over the sacred jewel, are you not?" the man retorted. "Yes" he answered his own question, "you must be her." A cruel smirk corrupted his flawless visage. She met his arrogant assumption with an indiscernible glare. "I met a friend of yours recently, she said she didn't know where you were, but I can see now she was lying. Good thing then that I punished her properly." Kikyo's eyes flashed dangerously. She drew her bow as the demon stood erect with unperceivable speed. "The villagers said she was related to you somehow, but I didn't see any resemblance," he continued.

"Hmmm..." she thought, "this may not be as simple as I hoped...I'll just have to try something else." She observed that his stance spoke the depths of his training. He was prepared for battle. Her eyes narrowed only the slightest bit as she concentrated. His grin widened, revealing three pearly whites, one of which was an elongated canine tooth. His right foot made the softest of inclinations to step toward her. She pulled back and quickly released her quiver. He bolted past the assaulting arrow, that he had anticipated, and charged her unwavering form.

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. Time seemed to stop. He had awaited that moment with utmost glee to see the churning mixture of surprise and fear glaze over her eyes when she realized he was too much for her. Then he would cut her down and absorb her sacred powers. She would be much more entertaining than that sad excuse for a priestess that the villagers talked about. This one pulsed with the deadly precision of experience, training, real talent, and a pure internal strength. Clearly, she was the superior choice for his purposes. It gave him a deep thrill to ensue in a fight with her.

He felt the arrow's heat graze his cheek as he agilely dogged it, but the concern he longed to see in her eyes was missing. The other woman had succumbed to him and released those emotions, but not Kikyo. His brow furrowed as their stares interlocked. He leapt up with his knees pointed at her and his feet only a foot from the ground, the perfect vantage point to attack. Her arm that held the bow fell to her side, while the other raised up to his face in mid air. Her hand was relaxed and looked almost limp as he broke the deadlock stare to glance her upturned palm. His eyes suddenly widened, their pupils shrank to slivers before vanishing into the nothingness of their orange-amber irises. His mind went blank as he lost consciousness.

Kikyo stood there a moment after his body crumpled to the ground. "That was close..."she thought, "too close..." She retracted her arm, held her hand palm up, spread her fingers, and regarded her hand. It was searing white. Her purification powers had almost been refracted back onto her. Surely that's what the demon had intended. She would have been paralyzed. She clenched her hand into a fist and it hissed as a white steam frothed forth.

She focused on a small trinket resting near the blue haired upstart. It was a necklace of some kind. She reached down and gracefully snatched it up. Her lips parted and her eyebrows raised a bit. This was once her necklace. Kaede gave it to her many decades ago. It was a gift, sister to sister. Sister to sister... were they still really sisters?

She walked on, unfazed by the near end of her existence experience, specifically stepping directly over the fallen demon. Her eyes were determined and she set off treading down the path to the village. She could care less if the demon survived to terrorize another day. She knew too much about death to deny life. She granted him the second chance at life that she had never received.