Hey there once again! Time for chapter two! Yay! Hopefully people will start reading this story… And the story continues!
This is crazy! So this means Princess Kaguya is real? Then it wasn't just some stupid fairytale? Sango's mind was racing as she followed Kaoru to the rotunda. As she passed one of the blue poles that encircled the floor of the rotunda and the glass ceiling, she thought she spotted a monk. Before she could turn her head to double check, a pink light shone from the glass ceiling, and Sango saw the same bubbles and sparkles that she had seen earlier. "Kaoru, how are we going to find Kaguya's dimension?"
Her melodic voice answered, "The same way you got to our dimension."
Sango could have sworn Kikyo wasn't there, for there had been a lack of rude comments, but there she was, hair swirling in the wind that didn't seem to come from anywhere.
Their bodies lifted off the ground, and there was a great flash of pink light, and then they were gone.
Barely a moment had passed before Sango found herself in a new place. And it was definitely stranger than the last. From what she could tell, she was either in a large castle, or a magnificent shrine. The dark wood on which she lay on shone, and cherry blossom petals were scattered over the wood. A red pole that held the ceiling had writing on it, and it glittered brightly. It read:
To meet nevermore;
Tears of sorrow overflow deep within my heart;
What good this potion of life?
Nothing matters now;
I will never see Princess Kaguya again;
The tears of sadness overflow so much that my body would float;
What good is the use of the elixir of immortality?
I have no use for it now;
Oh, arrow of mine,
With power pure and immense to slay the dragon;
Do your good deed fast and swift,
Grasp the crystal in its neck;
I ventured to see,
If what I had heard was true;
But this jeweled sprig with leaves so real,
'Twas nothing more than empty words;
The limitless heat of my love for you,
Cannot burn this cloth of fur;
My raiment sleeves dried of tears,
Now on this day I don it;
Could you have but known,
That it would burn so swiftly,
This raiment of fur;
You would not then have sat with such little show of concern;
Time has swiftly passed,
As I have waited to see this shell you promised;
They say that I wait in vain,
Now could this be truly so?
I hoped there would be,
The glow of the falling dew;
But nothing I can see;
So why did you go yonder to the Mount of Ogura?
The time is now come;
Behold the robe from heaven to drape upon me;
And for you,
It is only this deep sadness that I feel;
Kaoru was reading it as well, "It's a sad poem isn't it?"
Sango shrugged, "Well, I don't really know what it's talking about… I mean, I know it means Princess Kaguya, but I don't understand anything else."
Kikyo decided to illuminate the answer, "It was written by the emperor." Her eyes softened, but she still stared at the poem, never looking at Sango, "Long ago, when Kaguya lived on Earth-"
"Kaguya lived on Earth?"
"Then I guess I better start at the beginning." This time Kikyo looked at Sango, but it was merely to mock her. "I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I'll give you the summary. Long ago, there was a bamboo cutter. One day, while he was cutting bamboo, he found a young girl inside, no bigger than his thumb. He and his wife were kind people, so they raised her. Over the years, she grew bigger and more beautiful, until she had grown into a beautiful young girl. Her beauty had been whispered about across the lands, so suitors came looking for her, to marry her. When they found her, she gave them difficult tasks they had to complete to marry her. None of them succeeded. Soon, word of her beauty had reached even the emperor, and he set off at once to find her. When he did, she gave him the same tasks to complete. I don't know if the emperor succeeded or not, but maidens from the moon came to get Kaguya, they dressed her in a fine robe, then took her to the moon. And Kaguya never married anyone."
"So in other words, she dumped them all?" Sango asked.
"Kikyo, you didn't include all the finer details." Kaoru scolded as she bumped Kikyo with her elbow, "One thing Sister Kikyo didn't mention was that the emperor of that time loved the night sky. We don't know why, but it might have been because he knew Kaguya had come from somewhere out there. And as you can see, the poem is written in something very glittery. Do you know what that is?"
"…"
"It's written in stardust. So Kaguya knew that the emperor wrote this poem, and that he liked the night sky. So what did she do? She wrote his poem in stardust, for him. Not only that, but it's in display in her home. Maybe her story was told by so many people, that it was shaped into something else. So she and the emperor could have already had plans to marry." A sympathetic look crossed Kaoru's face. "It makes the poem even sadder knowing this."
A moment of silence drifted, seeming to pass by like gentle wind.
Sango stood up of the ground, brushing herself off, "I'd really like to meet this Kaguya person, can we go?"
"Follow us please." Kikyo and Kaoru stepped forward, both stepping at the same time.
*
Mist drifted under Sango's chin and clung to her hair, but the air did not feel in the least bit gloomy. Magic seemed to spark everything in the castle aglow, and Sango felt like a young child at a theme park, wanting to see everything, and was sure to get lost. It did look easy to get lost in the castle, the hallways curved in many different directions, and yet, Sango could see no rooms they could lead to.
"Please do not wander Sango; Kaguya's castle is an enchanting place indeed. The fly will find a spider's web just as enchanting." Kaoru's gentle and firm warning dimmed the magical mood Sango was in, and she stopped lagging and hurried after the two women.
It was not long after Kaoru's warning that Sango could see something coming up ahead. From what she could tell, the hallway widened to make a large room. She could see a few steps providing an entrance to the room. At the far back of the room there was a blue wall that had the symbols of the five elements in a circle on the wall. On the floor in the middle of the room was a pool of water, it also had the symbols for the five elements, but the symbols seemed to be the border of the water. All of the elements were connected by a single pink star within the pool. And standing in the middle of shallow water was a person.
A mirror floated in front of her, and her eyes were closed, as if she were concentrating hard on something.
Kaoru and Kikyo had both stopped side by side, and Sango stopped a few feet back from them, in the middle. "Kaoru, is that…?"
Kaoru started to answer in a tone she would use to explain something to a child, but Kikyo interrupted, "The Princess of the Heavens, Kaguya."
As if someone has screamed her name, Kaguya's eyes opened. She raised her right hand and pointed her index and middle fingers up, and held her hand close to her face. Her mirror flipped over to face the onlookers as she chanted something in an ancient language. It glowed a bright, white light, and the second Sango's eyes met the mirror, her face was reflected. A pink star resembling The Star of David shot out of the mirror and hit Sango. A circle surrounded the star, and the next thing she knew, Sango's arms were held out, restrained by two points of the star, and her feet were held together and were held to the circle around the star. She was stuck. (AN: This is how Kaguya held Kagome captive in the movie, and I hope you can tell that they are in Kaguya's castle, just like in the second movie.)
"You are intruding; the likes of you should not be here without my permission." Kaguya hissed dangerously as she walked down the steps toward Sango, getting ever closer. "I do not tolerate such nonsense."
At first shocked by the violence of the fabled princess, Sango's temper flared back up as soon as she got a firm grip on what was happening, "You don't tolerate? I don't either! That's not very kind of you to attack me before you even know I'm an intruder! Let me down right now!"
"Perhaps it wasn't kind of me to do so, but I protected you."
"You did?" Sango felt that hard to believe, that star had hit her very hard as it was flung toward her.
"Because you came here uninvited, you did not come with the proper protection."
Kikyo cleared her throat and played with the string of her bow, pulling it far back, then letting go, the sharp sound seeming ominous.
Kaguya listened to the sound for a moment, "Fool, not all protection means weapons."
Kikyo stopped pulling the string, but the twanging, vibrating sound still echoed.
"How so, you ask? I am the Princess of the Heavens, Kaguya, and because of that, I live very differently than you mortals. Unlike you, I do not have one time period I belong to. I exist in all realms of time. And also in my own. My own time exists in my castle. No others may enter my time, it exists only for me. Every other realm exists in this celestial water I stand on. You would be allowed to stand on the water, because you belong in one of the times that exist in the water." Sango raised her eyebrow. "I am not done explaining. As you can see, there is also a star in the water. That star also includes all realms of time, you are suspended on one of these stars at this very moment, and so you are safe."
Kaoru spoke up first, "If all this so, how did you protect my sister and me?"
"I cast a spell on you and all of your friends in that school, and you are now free to enter any time period you want with no danger inflicted upon you."
Sango looked at Kaguya, who was currently facing Kaoru, If she just cast that spell to protect me now, then why wasn't I destroyed when I first entered her castle? Or even the school?
Kaguya was obviously having the same thoughts, "As Kaoru has already suspected, you have special powers. Because the flow of time is different around you, you alone are unaffected by different time periods." She snapped her fingers, and the star holding Sango vanished, but Kaguya had failed to notice that the star had been in the air, and in making it disappear, Sango ended falling flat on her own face. "Please forgive me for my earlier actions, but it was for your own safety."
"Yeah, thanks." Muttered a sarcastic Sango as she spit out a mouthful of splinters.
"Um, Princess Kaguya?" Kaoru asked, stepping forward timidly, "By any chance, is there a way to send Sango back to her own time?"
Without a word, Kaguya walked back to the water, the mirror close behind her. She stepped into the water, and into the middle of the star, finally turning back to Sango and the others. "I suppose I could, but the girl puts up a time barrier. If she can repel a spell that freezes time, would her powers do the same in reverse?"
"Um, what was that you were saying?" In other words Kaoru was asking, Why didn't you answer my question, and what are you babbling about now?
"Oh come on, isn't it obvious?" Kikyo had been quiet for too long, and her snippy attitude had come back, "The girl deflected a spell that was supposed to freeze time. Princess Kaguya can send the girl back to her own time, but would the girl's powers also deflect the spell that started time back up? Then she would be frozen in time, thus the whole thing would be pointless."
Everyone blinked a few times in surprise. Kaguya looked the most surprised of all, "Come now, don't tell me, you're actually using that head of yours?" She shot a nasty grin at Kikyo.
"I see you've been studying human sarcasm."
"It's required."
*
After Kaguya and Kikyo finished their little insulting match, Kaguya decided she had to do something about Sango's predicament.
"Sango?" She asked.
"Y-yes?"
"Would you be so kind as to answer a question?"
"I'd be happy to."
Kaguya turned her mirror toward Sango. "Can you think of any point of your life where you remembered something strange? Or had a strange dream?"
"Sometimes I have dreams about one boy. He's younger than me, but his face resembles mine, and I feel as if I know him."
Kaoru cocked her head, "A family member perhaps?"
Sango shook her head and focused on the shiny wood board beneath her, "I don't have any relatives that I know of. I've always been alone."
Kaguya decided to prod further, "Have you ever seen this boy's face before?"
"I don't know. I think I've only seen him in my dreams, but I feel as if I knew him long ago. And I don't always remember what he looks like; sometimes I can, when I'm doing something familiar. But if you asked me to describe him right now, I don't think I'd be of much use."
Kikyo accidentally muttered something out loud, "It's like something is stopping her from remembering." Kikyo, Kaoru, and Kaguya looked at each other for a long time; all trying to figure out what was going on.
Shrugging, Sango lifted her head back up, "Oh well, it's probably nothing."
Kikyo "accidentally" muttered something out loud again, "Probably."
Sango shot her a glare, but it didn't even faze Kikyo. She held her stony expression out against Sango's attack.
Kaguya turned her mirror so that it was facing her, "Kikyo, you have something special here, I suggest that you ask her if she would like to join."
"Join what?" Sango asked curiously.
Kikyo rolled her eyes and felt the urge to shoot a sacred arrow at Princess Kaguya, "Kaoru and I are building an army. An army of demon slayers."
Sango looked at Kikyo carefully, "So that's what those people were."
"Yes, but they need much more training."
Sango cocked her head, "They seemed plenty strong to me." Then she grew a teasing grin, "Oh I get it, you think they're nothing compared to you, so you want them to keep training until they finish, like you already have."
"I haven't finished. I'm not even close."
Sango blinked and realized that she offended Kikyo in some way, even though it was clearly a compliment, "Why? You seem really strong to me."
Kikyo turned her head and looked at Sango sadly, "I thought that too a long time ago. But… Demons…" Kikyo's grip on her bow tightened, and her hand trembled, and her eyes reflected anger and sadness, "Are much stronger than they appear. I thought I had the strength to take them on… But I was naïve. They are so terribly clever, and it takes mental training to realize if they are deceiving you."
Sango flinched; apparently she had hit a sore spot. What do I say now? But I don't see why she's making such a big deal out of it, it couldn't have been that bad, she's still alive after all.
Eventually Kaguya decided to break the silence, "Listen Sango, it could take me a while to find out how to send you home, so you may want to do something until then."
"About how long do you think it'll take?"
"About two months." Before Sango could hit the ground in a dead faint, Kaguya rushed to correct herself, "Well, I have a lot of stuff I have to do! There's the occasional wish to grant, life to save…"
Sango crossed her arms, "So I'm not number one on your list of priorities?"
"Alright, I was just teasing! But it actually may take me a while to find out, so it's better to do something until then."
Sango turned to eye Kaoru and Kikyo, then made up her mind, "Well, I'll give it my best shot!"
Kaguya smiled, and cherry blossoms started to swirl around her, "That's the spirit. I'd better go get a head start on searching for a way. Please hurry and go, and don't touch anything. It could send you off to an unknown time or dimension." And she vanished, cherry blossoms still swirling where she had been, then they too vanished.
"Come along Sango," Kaoru called as Kikyo walked ahead, "We have much to teach you!"
No sooner than Sango had gotten to her feet, a tremor went through the floor. They all froze like deer in headlights. Sango looked carefully around her, "What was-?" A cracking sound was heard from above her head. A small piece of wood fell from the ceiling and crashed through the floorboards in between Sango and Kaoru.
Kikyo was close to them in moments, "I knew we couldn't trust that stupid woman, her whole castle is falling upon us." She did a quick 360 of the room, "We have a minute or two before things get serious, so we better hurry to the exit."
Sango was confused, "Why is Kaguya destroying her castle?" She asked as she dodged several pieces of falling wood.
Kaoru grabbed Sango's arm and pulled her forward, "This dimension belongs to Princess Kaguya alone, now that she is not here at the moment, this dimension will simply turn into a void. Once Princess Kaguya returns everything will return to how it was, but we don't know what will happen to us if we stay."
The sound of falling and cracking wood seemed to follow Sango's feet like a shadow, and she hurried her pace when she saw Kaguya's poem written on the pole in the distance. Once they had stopped beside it, the ground vibrated so violently that they all had to grab the railing to regain their footing. "Hang on; I just have to hit the right point so we can leave." Kikyo shouted as she pulled an arrow from her quiver.
"W-what are y-you talking about?" The ground was vibrating so hard that it was hard for Sango to speak.
Kikyo drew back her bow string until the arrow's feathers nearly touched her cheek, "In Kaguya's poem, there is a very bright speck of stardust that is much brighter than the rest. I have to strike it with my sacred arrow to get us back home, since Kaguya didn't offer to send us home herself."
Sango noticed this was Kikyo's last arrow, "What if you miss?"
Kikyo narrowed her eyes as she concentrated on the one spot, "I don't."
Sango watched as Kikyo tightened her grip on the arrow, and Sango knew it would be a second before Kikyo let go. And out of pure stupidity, she jumped forward toward Kikyo, hand outstretched to push Kikyo to stop her from shooting. "No! You're going to miss!" Her hand collided with Kikyo's shoulder, and Kikyo started to fall. Her finger slipped, and the arrow shot forward, off the course Kikyo had been trying to make it follow.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion; Kikyo watched the arrow get closer, inch by inch, "You fool!" She shouted at Sango, who was also falling. Kikyo turned to look at the arrow, to see if, by chance, the arrow had actually hit its target. It hadn't. She grabbed Sango's hair and pulled it toward her, "Why did you do that? How are we supposed to escape now? WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"
Sango stared ahead defiantly, "You were going to miss."
"Are you sure? I could tell I was perfectly on target! And if I was going to miss, YOU DIDN'T MAKE IT ANY BETTER DID YOU?!?" She had almost never felt this, enraged. This girl made her nervous; she just couldn't put her finger on it. "Answer me!" She yanked on Sango's hair harder.
Sango continued to stare straight ahead, "If you're finished yelling at me, then it wouldn't hurt to look at the arrow." Sango was right, the very tip of it was glowing, and the light eventually expanded, then the next thing she knew, Sango found herself back in the rotunda. Sango turned to Kikyo, "For some reason you couldn't see there was a brighter star. So you did miss after all."
*
Kaguya floated in outer space, hair swaying from side to side, she was watching Sango in her mirror, "This girl," Kaguya muttered to herself, "How did she know that there was a hidden sparkle in the stardust? She also changed the course of Kikyo's arrow, and made it hit where she wanted it to." I wonder if this is the extent of her powers…
*
