Chapter One: Ill-Met by Moonlight
Stillness hung in the air. Not death, Kikyou decided, but stillness, which was worse. At least with death—most deaths—there was a sense of finality; any suffering that may have been occurring had ended. This place was suffering, frozen forever in a single moment. It was loneliness and emptiness given shape. Which was rather surprising, considering that yesterday it had been a nice, inviting little forest on the outskirts of a village at which she'd been staying.
"Who goes there?" a woman's voice called.
Kikyou slowly turned to the approximate direction of the voice. "I."
A demon appeared before her: a heavily armored, winged woman with a sword and antennae. She coldly looked Kikyou up and down, and then a cruel laugh escaped her lips.
"So I've caught a human in my trap. Run away, little priestess, and maybe I won't hurt you."
"I assume you're the one who did this to the forest."
The demon rose into the air and circled Kikyou, who nocked a glowing arrow in her bow.
"So you challenge me? A little village priestess like you?"
"There's more to me than meets the eye."
"I see. I am Lady Leiko, last of the moth demon clan. I thought you'd appreciate knowing the name of your killer, little priestess." She darted forward, blade out, as Kikyou fired off the arrow. It severed a lock of her long lavender hair as she dodged. The priestess's next arrow, nocked with incredible speed, was aimed at her heart.
Leiko threw back her head and laughed. "So I underestimated you." She fired a glowing ball at Kikyou; it struck her in the chest, and quickly a cocoon wrapped itself around the struggling woman.
"Not the prey I was hoping for, but I can avenge my clan yet," Leiko said to herself, watching with only the barest interest the battle occurring in the cocoon. "Such a troubled soul."
Kikyou rose unsteadily to her feet, noting with some surprise that her skin was warm and her heart was beating. A heavy and hopeless aura suffused the air around her; opening her eyes, the priestess saw that the ground around her was littered with the bodies of the fallen.
"Why didn't you save us?" rose a pained voice above the continuous moaning. Kikyou parted her lips to respond, but found that she could neither speak nor move as the bodies piled up around her.
A young girl, clad in the ill-fitting robes of a priestess, emerged from the dull mist and carefully picked her way through the corpses and near-corpses. Her oversized outfit would have been comical if not for the bloodstains. As she drew closer, Kikyou could see that her head was bowed and she carried a bucket of bloody water and bandages to tend to the wounded. The girl—probably no older than eleven—stopped directly in front of Kikyou, and when her head snapped up, Kikyou found herself staring into the one-eyed face of her younger sister, blood dripping down from her wound into the water.
"It's because you weren't good enough," Kaede said spitefully. The fog hanging over them darkened, and Kaede coughed and fell to the ground as her lungs filled with the miasma.
A white shadow drifted toward her from the dark clouds, and Kikyou reached to her back to find her bow and arrows missing. She turned and ran, wincing in pain as the old wound in her shoulder reopened and stained her white kimono shirt with more blood.
Then, abruptly, found herself tumbling over the edge of a sheer cliff. The priestess stared up through her streaming dark hair to see the ghoulish face of Naraku staring back at her, smiling as it melded with Kaede and the wounded men.
"Inu-yasha!" she finally screamed. "Inu-yasha!"
Her fall continued for endless minutes, and Kikyou barely felt anything as she found herself landing, and then sinking farther, in a bloody river of miasma and into a dark grave. As she screamed she felt her mouth fill with the dark, oppressive soil that surrounded her.
Inu-yasha… The grave was silent, and Kikyou was still. Inu-yasha… I couldn't save them. I couldn't save him. The force of the earth began to crush her clay body; she could feel cracks spiderwebbing across her skin. Darkness filled her senses, and still she didn't struggle. He's not here... He hasn't been here. He won't be here. No one is coming to save me.
Her eyes snapped open, and Kikyou began to push at the soil with her hands, first weakly and then with more urgency. No one is coming to save me. The undead priestess flailed, slowly but surely clawing her way out from the grave, dirt staining her hands and fingernails. No one is coming to save me! She caught a faint glimmer of light above her.
Kikyou burst from the cocoon, sparking with spiritual power, and purified the shocked Leiko with her bare hands. With harsh motions she tore the remaining webbing from her clothing. Eyes forward, the priestess walked away as around her the forest shed its stillness and life, for better or worse, resumed.
"No one is coming to save me…" she mused as she headed away from her village.
Inu-yasha gazed at the ceiling, head spinning with incomplete thoughts and hand still tingling from where Kagome had touched him earlier. He wasn't quite sure how he was feeling, an all-too-common situation with which he was growing annoyed. He sighed, turned over, and almost screamed when he found himself staring into the red eyes of a soul collector.
The half-demon glanced around the old hut, making sure the others were all asleep. His gaze lingered for a moment on Kagome before he rose quietly to his feet and followed the creature out the door and into the forest.
"Look, don't just creep up on me like that, got it!"
The soul collector hissed at him, expressing very clearly that it felt he should be grateful that this time Kikyou had actually summoned him.
"Yeah, back to you." The conversation, such as it was, ended abruptly when both entered a clearing in the trees. Kikyou, stoic as usual, stood in the center. Beams of moonlight played across her dark hair. There was something about her, with her unearthly paleness and surrounding ring of soul collectors, that seemed almost ethereal.
Inu-yasha was the first to break the silence. "Is everything okay, Kikyou?"
The tragic priestess opened her eyes for the first time. "So you've arrived, Inu-yasha." She paused for a moment and looked past Inu-yasha into the trees. "You may show yourself; this concerns you as well."
Kagome stepped into the clearing, the look on her face a mixture of fear, sadness, and sheepishness. The otherworldly atmosphere seemed to lessen; somehow ethereal didn't really mix with Kagome. "Um, sorry, but you woke me up and I was kinda curious so…"
Kikyou glared at her until she quieted down. "Inu-yasha. You swore to protect me. You swore to love me. You've done a rather pathetic job at both. What do you have to say in your own defense?"
The response was instantaneous. Kagome gasped, a disbelieving look flitting across her moonlit face before anger replaced it, and Inu-yasha seemed to crumble.
"Kikyou…" he finally whispered. She concentrated her dark glare on his teary eyes, and finally he looked down.
Kagome walked closer, fueled by desperation and anger; her determined expression and clenched fists were belied by the way she trembled despite the night's warmth.
"Kikyou," she began, "I know you're in pain—" The priestess let out a humorless laugh. "But you can't blame Inu-yasha."
"Oh?"
"He," Kagome gulped, blinking back tears, "he loves you, Kikyou. Really."
Kikyou smiled at her, not kindly; it was the smile of the only person who gets the joke, and doesn't find it very amusing. The priestess tipped up Kagome's chin to stare into her eyes. "I'll put this in simple words. Tell me, have you ever once been betrayed? Abandoned? Has there ever once been a time when no one saved you?" Kagome shook her head. "I thought not."
Kikyou turned and walked away from the two of them, though in the moonlight she seemed almost to glide. "You have given me much to consider. Inu-yasha, return to your companions. Do not follow me."
A solitary soul collector darted back over, hissed, and ruffled its fins menacingly before falling back into formation around Kikyou.
Kikyou paused in her journey as she came to a small waterfall. The rising sun had painted the sky pink and yellow, in stark contrast with her mood. She stared at the falling torrent of water and wished for perhaps the thousandth time that she could cry. If she had been prone to displays of that nature, the priestess would have violently smashed the water's surface with her fist; instead, she merely trailed a slender finger along it.
The deep cloud of melancholy still hung over her. Worse still was the hatred, dark and raw, like a knife twisting in her gut. Kikyou cupped her hands beneath the waterfall and let the cold water run along her face. The drops felt alien.
"Am I so consumed by hatred that even tears are unfamiliar to me now?"
Number 14 nudged her with her head and whined, eyes wide. Do not be sad, Mistress.
She did not attempt to smile at her. "I appreciate your sentiment, but I wish to be alone."
Kikyou sat beside the river, eyes closed in contemplation. The wind rustled her dark hair. Coupled with the sunshine and birdsong, the motionless priestess seemed to be a picture of tranquility. The only thing out of place was her solemn frown and the few droplets of water still clinging to her eyelashes.
I have only two purposes for remaining alive. An ironic smile curved on her lips. Or nearly so, at any rate. To revenge myself upon Naraku and reunite with Inu-yasha. A frown returned to her face. But why? Only I can defeat Naraku. Only I can save myself; that much is certain. Every day Inu-yasha's heart moves further from mine. Is it worth chasing any longer?
An hour or so passed, Kikyou not stirring from her spot by the river. A sudden violent hissing and string of curse words disrupted the stillness of the scene. The priestess rose to her feet as a red-clad figure stumbled into the clearing.
"You've blundered into the soul collectors? I told you not to follow me, Inu-yasha."
The half-demon pulled back a tattered sleeve and rubbed at a fresh bite on his arm. "Kikyou…"
The priestess, still not turning to face him, stared out across the river and into the forest, where Number 22 was clutching a piece of red cloth in his mouth and doing a victory dance. "It is of no matter; I knew that you would. Inu-yasha, I have meditated upon my circumstances."
He walked to her side, face grave. "Yes?"
"I have been able to continue my existence partially because I knew that you loved me, and in the end we would be together. I see now that this will not come to pass. Perhaps it was mere arrogance on my part, but I assumed that since I had followed you into death, your life was mine. Inu-yasha…" She turned to him, face unreadable. "I have died and I have been reborn, and I have struggled and I have fought for every breath, and you were not by my side. I know that you have loved me. Never doubt that I have loved you, Inu-yasha. Never doubt that I continue to do so. But now, my life is my own."
When Kikyou left this time, Inu-yasha did not make an effort to call after her.
Kikyou smelled the smoke and blood before she heard the moaning and hushed conversation, so it didn't surprise her that the next village she arrived at was in a state of demolition. The few villagers tending to the wounded nodded gratefully to her as she pulled herbs and bandages from the recesses of her kimono shirt and leaned over the nearest body. This one she could probably save.
"What happened here?" she asked the girl who brought her a bucket of water and rags.
"A snake demon, priestess. It attacked the village and killed most of us. Then it just headed off that way. For no reason, priestess!"
"I see," Kikyou replied, avoiding the girl's gaze. Every young girl she met watched her with the eyes of Kaede, and now of all times she couldn't bear it. She finished bandaging the wounds in front of her, then stood and gazed off after the demon.
"I'll attend to that shortly."