Lord Sesshomaru looked upon his father's old palace with dull eyes. Jaken had recommended that he rebuild the collapsed left wing and renovate the rest of the castle in order to make it official that he was, in fact, a lord. His boredom and the wisdom in his imp's words had driven him here, with a couple thousand capable demons to begin working on the palace. They hadn't necessarily volunteered but they would work none the less.
The dog demon walked up to the front gate and gazed at the ruined planks of wood. When his father had died the castle had only been taken care of for about two years before it had been attacked and taken by his father's rival. Sesshomaru had killed the demon shortly after but hadn't bothered with the palace; a kingdom was just too much trouble when he had better things to do. Until now, that is.
His feet didn't make a sound as he walked across the gate and into the first hall. The walls were high, their color a pale cream that had been augmented with blood and mildew, some of the walls were falling apart—only one still stood whole. The ceiling was almost completely gone, which explained the large sections of marble littering the floor and making it hazardous to walk.
"Lord Sesshomaru?" the high-pitched voice of the human child that Sesshomaru had saved long ago broke the silence of the palace and echoed off the broken walls with a mournful peel.
He did not turn to her as he answered. "Yes?"
"Rin was wondering…" she stopped, her eyes wide with awe and her mouth hanging open. "It's so big!" she cried with excitement and the echo was much louder this time. Sesshomaru winced slightly, his sensitive ears echoing the sound back to him many times before it would finally go away. He felt he loved the child—in some remote way—but that did not mean she did not have faults that bothered him.
Sesshomaru walked away, listening to her small feet padding along behind him. He knew that whatever she had been about to ask him was long gone from her young mind. He explored the castle, picking out rooms for certain uses and having a servant record his wishes to pass along to his workers. He took his father's old room as his own, with Rin's to his left. His study was on the floor below his room and he had made sure that no one was to even go near that room's door. He would fix his study himself and fill it with secrets he had only learned a week before his father died.
"Rin is very happy with her room," the little girl smiled up at Sesshomaru, her front tooth missing and her brown hair scruffy and long.
She was adorable, even the demon could see that.
"This Sesshomaru is happy to hear that," he would not usually say such things but he saw no harm in showing Rin these rare moments of tenderness when he knew they were alone. She was the closest thing to a mate he would ever allow himself to get and he wouldn't lose her just because he never showed her kindness. Or at least as close to kindness as he could get.
"My lord," the imp named Jaken bowed before the dog demon, waiting to continue. When he received a nod as response he relayed his message, "There seems to be a problem in the cellars."
"What kind of problem?"
"Well, there's something down there, something still alive."
Sesshomaru had Rin wait in her room as he walked down to the dungeon with Jaken in tow. The creature imprisoned there was retched, its body twisted and deformed, signs of terrible and ancient abuse ravaged its body and it wheezed with each breath. The bodies of the other prisoners that had been left there to die littered its cage along with the skeletons of many rats and other small mammals and reptiles. Sesshomaru wondered how it had managed to get to the other prisoners without breaking free of its own binds but didn't really much care; he would deal with this thing quickly.
"This Sesshomaru wants to know who you are."
It blinked its large eyes at him, their whites bloodshot and their irises shrunken to an unhealthily small size. "This creature has no name. This creature does not need a name." Its voice was thin and wispy but it had changed dramatically when it spoke its second sentence. Sesshomaru guess immediately that it had twin personalities.
"What is your purpose here?"
"I am the seer," it rolled its eyes as its voice deepened once more, "I see all but speak of little."
"Did Orotoku leave you here to die?"
"You, Lord Sesshomaru, slew him before he could free me. But I knew how to survive, I knew what I needed to do because I had to live."
"Why did you have to live?" Sesshomaru still looked bored and the creature laughed a dry laugh at him.
"To see your misfortune. You believe you will never mate yet I know who you will be with, I know how twisted that union will be, I see how it will tear you away from everything your noble upbringing has made important to you, and I see your demise in the woman."
Sesshomaru glared as the thing cackled, throwing its head back as its small mouth hung open with its amusement. Its small nose and small mouth added to the depth of its huge eyes that were easily the size of Sesshomaru's head each. They watched his every movement and, were Sesshomaru any less of a demon, he would have shivered at the attention.
"What has made you like this?"
"I was born as such, put here to see what needed to be seen. My time here has ended, I see now that I was born to tell you that you are not alone and that the person who keeps you company is someone you love and hate. Or is it someone you will love and hate?" the seer paused, searching his mind but he could not find the answer.
"I will take my leave now, seer," Sesshomaru turned his back to the thing and left without giving it or its words another thought. The creature was just delirious, driven mad by hunger and loneliness.
Sesshomaru was stopped at the entrance of the cellars though.
"My lord," a demon was kneeling before him, eyes averted to the floor in respect of their different ranks: he a mere general and Sesshomaru a lord.
"Yes?" Sesshomaru was beginning to get annoyed with all the interruptions.
"You asked for me to tell you when we saw Inuyasha's group in an area near a Shikon no Tama you had placed in."
"Which one?"
"The one near the fern," only Sesshomaru would know which fern in all of Japan had the shard within its bark. Not even his general knew, only the vague location of it had been divulged to the demon.
"This Sesshomaru had a feeling they would go there first."
"What do you plan on doing?" Jaken was not expecting a response and he did not receive one as the regal lord began to walk away.
"My lord," called the general, not daring to look up. "There is something else."
"What?"
"Two people have joined their group since we last viewed them. A female hanyo and a human male."
Sesshomaru paused before turning and leaving, not giving the two newcomers a second thought. It wasn't like a hanyo and a human should mean anything to him.
