Sesshoumaru cared little for humans, and even less for the minutiae of their daily lives. But as he approached the sprawling village, he began to feel something was amiss. The sun was only just setting, yet the village seemed almost deserted. He knew human villages kept to a predictable routine, of waking, working in the rice fields, of times for eating and resting. There should still be men returning from working in the rice fields, women in the streets attending daily chores, the sounds of children at play.
And yet…it was quiet.
Sesshoumaru could sensethat humans were here, a great many of them. And yet, the presence was…stifled somehow. As he walked into the village proper, the wind kicked up, and a scent rose around him, so strong and palatable that it was like crashing into a solid wall of it.
The scent of rot and death.
Tenseiga began to rattle in its sheath, Sesshoumaru feeling the sword react to the aura of death around it. He placed his hand on the blade's hilt to still it, but he was momentarily surprised when he found his hand hadn't been resting at his side – it had been stretched out, laying gently on Rin's back.
He couldn't remember laying his hand on her. And why would he have done such a bizarre thing in the first place?
Any further thoughts were put aside as a man in peasant garb shuffled around a corner, who stopped and startled at the sight of the daiyouki standing proudly in the dusty road with a dragon and a second, smaller youkai waiting on his heels.
"Where is the healer of this village?"
The man only gaped, and Sesshoumaru smelt fear mix into the surroundings. He didn't like being forced to repeat himself, but he found he had no patience to wait for the human to regain his composure.
"This girl is sick. Where will I find a healer?"
The human began to mumble, not managing to speak but only half-turning and gesturing weakly towards what looked like a small shrine in the distance. Sesshoumaru was already on his way, and the peasant stumbled out of his way, watching the strange procession as it passed.
A few minutes later, Jaken raced ahead of his master to pound his staff on the door to the small temple, announcing his lord's arrival and demanding attention. As Sesshoumaru approached, the door slid open to show a young monk who jumped at the sight before him, fumbling with a set of prayer beads. Jaken immediately began squawking and declaring his master's desires.
Sesshoumaru ignored the two of them for a moment as his gaze was drawn further up the hillside. It reeked with the scent of freshly turned earth, and he could see the graveyard behind the temple was filled to the point of overflowing, the mounds of many fresh graves laying just outside the low fence that marked its boundaries. Many of the graves didn't even have proper headstones, only wooden stakes with hastily carved names to identify the soul resting beneath.
"What kind of monk are you? Besides that, you dare to refuse Sesshou-"
"Enough, Jaken."
If the small youkai had startled the monk, then Sesshoumaru simply terrified him, approaching with such a forceful bearing that the rest of the world melted away while he spoke.
"Is there a healer here, or not?"
"M-my teacher is d-dead, claimed by this plague. I've done what I can, but…"
"But?"
The single word from the daiyoukai was decidedly sharp in it's pronunciation.
Barbed and poisoned, too.
"T-t-the shipment of healing herbs we expected from another temple was waylaid by bandits! They've demanded an exorbitant price for the herbs that we simply have no way to pay. Without them, all of the people in this village may…"
"Where are these bandits to be found?"
"Ah…a ravine in the forest to the south, but…"
Sesshoumaru was already gone, leaving the monk and the youkai to stare at the suddenly empty space.
Jaken looked askance at the monk. The human was equally uncomfortable. Then, wordlessly, they went about their ingrained habits, the monk taking Rin into the temple while Jaken took Ah-Un's reigns, leaning on his staff and waiting patiently for his unquestionable master to return.
Sesshoumaru passed by the wagon train that the bandits had raided. He sorted through the faded scents and found the correct trail among the false ones the bandits had laid to confuse pursuit. Deep in the forest, he was a blur between the trees, moving silently but for the rush of air at his passage, until his speed slowed to a walk. The mouth of a large cave loomed before him, echoing with the sounds of life. Filthy, drunken life that insulted Sesshoumaru by simply being near him.
A group of men, who might have trying to pass as sentries, leapt out as he climbed the stones towards the entrance, yelling challenges that were cut off mid-word. As the bodies fell away in tattered strips and added a crimson tint to the night's mists, Sesshoumaru finished the climb with a single jump, more then fifty feet straight upwards to the cave's entrance.
He hadn't the patience to find another way, so as to avoid getting any blood on his person, and just standing there to let their viscera rain down on him was simply out of the question.
"Boss! BO-"
Tanaka had been the leader of these bandits for more then ten years. He'd raided villages, murdered, raped, tortured, seen a hundred ways a man could die, and invented a few new ones himself. When he heard the first scream, he sent a few men off with a nod. When the screams didn't stop, but grew louder and closer, the men around him reached for their weapons. He smashed the jug of sake he'd been drinking from over the head of a man who'd begun to back away, and left him on the ground to paw at the cuts on his face. He wouldn't allow a show of cowardice, or allow a chance to show his own power over them pass by.
He picked up his sword, a fine ancestral blade he'd taken from a young nobles corpse, and a look from him froze his men in place and drove any thoughts of retreat from their minds. It was a testament to his ruthlessness as a leader that they didn't move even as Tanaka's best swordsman returned missing both arms.
Fighting his way through those men had been like wading through filth, and when he stepped into the largest room in the cave, Sesshoumaru saw the king of this place sitting on a rotting throne with a stolen blade. Sesshoumaru had met with the leaders among the tribes of other Youkai. He had always been given due respect and shown proper reverence, his power clear to all but the most dull-witted youkai. In those other times he'd deigned to speak with the 'nobility' among humans, even when surrounded by their armies or within the walls of their own castles, he had heard the respect in their voices and seen the fear in their faces.
But this man, this thief, this lord-of-trash looked at him as if he was less than nothing, not a guest or an enemy or even as a threat. The expression he wore told Sesshoumaru he regarded him as something on the level of…an irritant.
Smoke rose at Sesshoumaru's feet, as venom leaked from his claws and ate into the stone.
"You stole a shipment of medicinal herbs. Give them to me."
Sesshoumaru thought that he'd been quite clear in his intent, and seriously expected the man to regain his senses from wherever he'd left them, to return the herbs if only for a small chance to escape death.
"'Yer a youkai, huh?"
For just a moment, perhaps the first such moment in his life, Sesshoumaru experienced complete and utter bewilderment.
…Oh.
The man was insane.
Obviously.
"Damn, whenever one of you come around…"
Sesshoumaru stepped forward, hoping one of the other humans would be more lucid, even as the man grasped a moldy rope hanging by his side.
"It's always a mess to clean up!"
The rope was pulled, and ragged cloths on the walls, like tapestries, fell away. Sparks flared, the room was bathed in light, and Sesshoumaru felt a powerful wave of energy that hammered into his soul and pushed him down.
"Used to be a temple. Took good care of it too, just in case."
Somehow, against all reason, a rock was thrown at Sesshoumaru, and he couldn't avoid it.
"Even got a monk in here to bless it now and again. You never know when some monster's gonna crawl out of the forest…"
The bandits were around him, and Sesshoumaru saw the fear was gone from their faces. Even as the light from the prayers and sutras burned white-hot on his skin, Sesshoumaru lifted his hand to the small spot of pain from where he'd been hit.
He'd been hit?
There was motion, and Sesshoumaru moved, but not fast enough. Somewhere in the haze, a man laughed, and he smelled something he was not accustomed to.
His blood.
Hisblood.
The bandits spat curses and insults as they closed in, emboldened by the youkai freezing in place as so many others had done before it, before they had stepped in, laughing and mocking the crippled beast as they had killed each one in turn. But none of them noticed the ancient etchings were beginning to smolder, no one heard when one of the incense burners cracked.
This boDY iS beING sTRuCK byFILthy disGUSTing…
"What's wrong, youkai?!"
One of the men reached down, grabbing the limp form by the hair, yanking the head up so he could brag of spitting in a youkai's face as he killed it.
"Nothing to s-"
The man's body exploded, coating his friends with blood and marking the ceiling with his death. The Pillars that bore the sutras shrieked as they fractured and fell to pieces, the men crying out and stumbling as the cave shook and darkened.
After the ground stilled, the leader of the bandits stood up at last, coughing and waving dust away from his face. He immediately tripped over something in the gloom and grunted as his knee hit the floor. He cursed in the dark and reached back on pure stupid reflex to see what it was, and his hand came back with something wet, fleshly, and completely unidentifiable.
"What is this?"
There was something else. A sound. It was low and quiet and cut through the dark and the surprise and the ache in his knee. It drew his gaze past the dying fire in the center of the room; past misshapen lumps that streamed in the cool cave air. It brought him to a shape that twisted as he watched, as too-big fangs forced their way out of a mouth that struggled to grow fast enough to hold them. Brought him to a pair of eyes that glowed red with bottomless malice.
"Humans…"
A short while later, the forest shook as trees were uprooted, birds taking flight and animals scattering for cover for miles around. Rock groaned and split, tumbling down to fill the space beneath. Sesshoumaru stepped out of the once-cave as the earth rumbled around him, and his clothes ruffling were the only effect the booming of collapsing rock seemed to have on him.
All of that, and the herbs had been taken from that place shortly before he'd even arrived. He lifted his hand, just once, to brush at the dirt on his body before getting his bearings and setting off. The castle was a fair distance away, and he didn't care to waste any more time.
He'd allowed himself some time to correct the human's lack of etiquette, of course, but that had been a necessary delay.