Warnings: Blood. Violence. Lots of it.
Disclaimer: In chapter 1
Chapter 4 - Soul Harvest
From ghoulies, and ghosties,
and long legged beasties,
and things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us.
.: Scottish-Gaelic Prayer :.
Shippou squawked as he tumbled into the first box, landing amidst a colorful spray of silk streamers and carefully packed Noh masks. He kicked at the air for a moment, scrambling to right himself, before feeling hands around his waist and heard laughter in the air as Kagome hoisted him out. Shippou sneezed and coughed, clearing his nose and lungs of a year's worth of dust, most of it scented like dry grass, as Kagome knelt beside him, and brushed at the fine film coating his clothes and hair.
"Stick to the shorter ones, okay?" Kagome grinned. "I found a few blankets on the other side of the room. Help me carry them, will you? Inuyasha and Miroku will be drenched when they get back, so we'll need them."
Shippou nodded and continued beating at his sleeves to remove the dust that was clinging to the damp fabric, and managing to turn the dust into splotchy mud. Kagome set the lantern on a lower stack of boxes, and stretched above her head to tug at the folded piles with one hand, while keeping the other ready to catch any cascades. The blankets resisted for a few breaths before slithering from their places with a rasp of sliding fabric and a soft whomph when they landed in Kagome arms. She dropped to one knee, allowing Shippou to grab one thick enough he could barely see over the top of it, and they carried the bundle back to the doorway.
Kagome sat next to the doorway, where she could easily see out, and wrapped one of the blankets around her shoulders, staving off the chill. Shippou settled next to her, cuddling as close to share her body warmth until she opened one arm, wordlessly inviting him to share the blanket. The wind had ceased howling, and now rushed through the trees in a raspy, slithery sound, like serpent scales on stone.
Kagome hugged the blanket closer on her side, closing up the gaps until only one hand peeked into the open air. The rain seemed to be lessening, and Kagome thought she could hear voices. She rose, letting the blanket drop from her shoulders, and leaning down to tuck it around Shippou. He looked up, confused, and she smiled to reassure him. Leaning out the doorway a bit, she strained to make out words in the odd cadence that rose and fell with ritual regularity. Shippou snatched at her hakama, trying to pull her back inside, and Kagome dropped to one knee beside him. "Can't you hear that?"
Shippou nodded and took a step backwards, further into the dubious protection of their shelter. "And I think we should leave it alone."
Kagome hesitated, looking forward, and out to where the creepy sounds were joined by a rhythmic, scraping, clack. Then she nodded and stood again to move away from the doorway. Air flowed around them through the open door, swirling around their hands and infiltrating their clothes. Kagome shivered and stumbled when her foot caught on something and twisted, throwing her to the floor. Shippou gasped and ran to her. Kagome waved him off and rubbed at her ankle, looking for the splinter that she had landed on when she fell. She could feel the itching prick of it in her skin. She frowned as clean-swept floor met her search, and she couldn't feel anything still in the wound.
An incandescent flash of light silhouetted the wind-tossed trees, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the windows in their panes. Kagome ducked, curling herself around Shippou's shaking form, and clenched her eyes shut. She could feel her hair rising from the discharged electricity and knew the lightning had struck nearby. Shippou quivered in her arms, and Kagome silently begged Inuyasha and Miroku to hurry back. She'd long outgrown fearing the dark, but waiting out the storm and its lightning strikes in the little-used storage shed had her imagination in overdrive, and there was comfort in numbers – numbers she desperately wanted when she finally registered the silence that had descended after the lightning.
The eerie silence echoed with sinister menace; all the more frightening in its lurking absence. Then the rain started again, thudding against the wood roof and walls. Kagome hissed and pulled the hem of her hakama up as the itching pain in her ankle flared into a throbbing burn, as though someone had dug a splintery shard of wood into her leg, and then poured acid in the wound.
She blinked as unmarked skin met her gaze. She could feel the fiery pain pulsing with every beat of her heart, intense enough that dark spots were beginning to dance in front of her eyes. But, it was a phantom wound. No angry red marks marred the surface, despite the fevered heat she could feel invading her limbs. There was nothing there but skin splashed by traces of mud and smudged by her hems.
Dimly, she heard Shippou asking if she was all right, but she had to ignore him in favor of clinging to consciousness. The burning had spread from toes to fingertips, and the edge of her vision was blackening. Something was very wrong, and a dark chill of panic overtook her. Shippou's questions escalated into an upset wail as her breathing constricted – switching from deep, even breaths to shallow pants. Cool wood pressed against her flushed face before her murky mind registered that she was laying on the floor. How had she ended up on the floor? She struggled to lever herself back into a sitting position, but her arms refused to cooperate. Kagome coughed as she sucked a bit of dust into her lungs, and the scent of wood stain curled up into her nose from the boards.
Kagome saw two small feet pad up to her, and Shippou's green eyes appeared a moment later, looking frantic as he reached out to shake her. She managed to reach out to him just before her vision blacked out and she succumbed to the press of oblivion.
------------------
Shippou shook Kagome harder, keening softly in worry as her body relaxed under his hands, and her eyes slid shut. He looked out into the rainy night, hoping to see Inuyasha or Miroku returning through the mist. He didn't know what was wrong with Kagome, but he did know that she was too big for him to move by himself. And, he didn't like the sent of the magic crawling through the night. It reminded him too much of the stagnant blood he'd smelled the night his parents were killed.
Sniffling from the dust, cold, and memories, Shippou set to turning Kagome over on her side. His feet scrabbled against the floor as he shifted her, and she had tiny snags in her clothes from his spell-hidden claws by the time he managed to move her, but she looked more comfortable with her head pillowed on her arm, and her legs tucked to one side. Shippou flopped down next to her and considered the tattered katana leaning inconspicuously beside the door.
He couldn't go for help, because the barrier emanating from the sword kept him in just as surely as it kept any other demon or vampire out until Inuyasha returned. The building had windows, but the barrier had leeched into the wood, glass, and metal, so even if he managed to find an opening other than the door, Shippou knew he would still bounce right off with a warning for his trouble first, and magic burns if he was persistent.
Shippou sighed, pushed himself back to his feet, and retrieved a pair of blankets from the pile they'd made. He spread one over Kagome and then tucked himself next to her with his own wrapped around him. It was warmer this way for both of them, and keeping her warm was the best he could offer.
The silence and the warmth lulled Shippou into a drowsy state of boredom, and he had pulled out a small top to spin across the wooden floor to play with when he felt the girl behind him stir. Perking up, Shippou looked over his shoulder and found Kagome's eyes slowly opening. A scrapping clatter alerted him that his toy had foundered and stopped, but Shippou ignored it.
Instead of waking up alert and confused by her collapse, or even rousing in fevered pain, Kagome looked composed and distant, as though she was sleeping with her eyes open. Her pupils dilated, leaving a thin ring of brown nearly eclipsed by pools of black. Her face was relaxed and expressionless, and Shippou could feel a subtle tension thrumming through her muscles as she rose to her feet. The air whispered with latent magic, making his fur stand on end, but this was a different sort from the darkness that still oozed around them.
Shippou yelped as the blanket she'd been covered with buried him and he scrambled to burrow out from under the swath of fabric. Shippou fought his way free of the folds just as Kagome passed the sword guarding the door and disappeared from view.
"Ack! Kagome! Where are you going?!" Shippou squawked, shaking the last clinking bit of fabric off his foot to race after her. The barrier crackled as he crossed the threshold, then sparked and tossed Shippou back several steps, forcing him to windmill his arms to catch his balance. He sprang back towards the door, pulling up short before running into the magical wall again and chancing more than a "stay back" rebuff. He stared out into the storm, trapped in safety and unable to do more than call to her without expecting an answer, or cry for Inuyasha who was still out of earshot.
------------------
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew it should be raining. Flashes cold and snippets of eerie chanting surfaced distantly in her mind, until those thoughts were disinterestedly pushed aside and forgotten. It was not raining here. The wind that blew was dry and chill, tugging at her hair and clothes and leaching away the setting warmth of the sun until slim hands on her shoulders pulled her away from it.
"Stay out of the wind," a tired voice advised, as the owner of the hands stepped away from her. "He has too many spies in it."
She wondered what great secret he thought the creature of miasma's spies would discover. A tiny handful of wounded humans awaiting dark fall? She made a mental check of her remaining weapons: a bow across her back, taken from a fallen warrior when her own snapped in the earlier battle; the katana against her hip, cleaned now of gore and ichor, ready for use once again; and the flawlessly smooth jewel with its contrastingly sharp-edged chain resting in her left hand, glowing softly in the gloom of the cave.
"Midoriko," a sloshing, half-filled water-gourd was pressed into her stomach, as a leather-wrapped arm ending in a desert-tanned hand pulled her around and pushed her towards a cleared section of the floor. "Save your irritating fidgeting for Naraku."
She smiled weakly, the expression fighting its way through the lingering pain and exhaustion, and sank against the wall but did not sit. There was no time for proper rest. The wind was rising now, howling past their brief sanctuary, and on it carried the fell voices of waking undead. The host was coming.
------------------
Inuyasha cursed the rain and its ability to wash out scents as he approached the storage shed. He glanced downward to check the magic holding his demon side at bay. Dawn was coming within the next hour. He could feel the rising influence shifting him, and he could already smell and hear elusive traces of things that had been absent since sunset. He wouldn't change completely until it broke, but he was losing the fight to appear human.
The shed seemed quiet, and he could see a pile of what looked like abandoned blankets or sheets mounded in the doorway. The wavering hint of distortion around the windows and doors reassured him that Tetsusaiga's barrier still held despite the silence.
"Inuyasha!" Shippou shrieked, lunging forward as Inuyasha passed the threshold. Inuyasha looked down at the red-haired burr clinging to his waist before looking up to scan the rest of the room; the otherwise empty room: Kagome wasn't in sight.
Inuyasha pried Shippou away from his clothes, and hoisted him up to eye level. "Where's Kagome?"
"She left!" Shippou's hands flailed and his feet dangled. "I don't know what happened! I think she got hurt and she was rubbing at her ankle like it was bothering her. Then she passed out and when she woke up she didn't see me! And then she left!"
Inuyasha took a breath, and his face darkened at the taint of dark magic clinging to the air in the memory of the dust. With sinking worry, he realized that the ghouls may have been a distraction. There was almost no reason to strike at Kagome; no reason that didn't make it a better idea to strike at Miroku or Kaede.
Shippou leapt for Inuyasha's shoulder the instant his hands loosened and the kit steadied himself while Inuyasha slid Tetsusaiga into his obi. "Which way?" A small hand, tipped in a tiny claw that was edging out of the concealing glamour, pointed out the door.
"That's the path I saw her take. I couldn't follow, so I watched."
"Probably better you didn't." Inuyasha stalked forward, ignoring the pricks as Shippou's claws dug into his shoulder. As soon as they reached one of the trees scattered thickly around the shrine, Inuyasha leapt into the branches. "I can't leave you behind, so keep your head down, Shippou. If anything comes close, nail it with foxfire and run."
"What's out there?" Shippou asked, a trace of worried whine leeching into his voice. Inuyasha's answer was blunt, but not harsh.
"Ghouls. The Geas-bound and I already tangled with a few, but there has to be more. Whatever's controlling them is out there too."
------------------
Miasma choked the battlefield, staining the air with cloying darkness overlaid by blood and strangling the feeble light filtering into the cave. Rough-edged rocks bit into her legs as Midoriko collapsed against the cave wall, her breaths coming in labored gasps that gurgled unpleasantly in her aching chest. The coppery tang of blood stung the back of her throat and her voice did not seem to work properly. Her coughs brought up flecks of blood that spattered wet crimson across her hands, hands that were dangerously pale beneath the coating of sweat and grime. Her vision was fading, doubling and at times tripling before she wrestled it back into focus.
And then he came.
Naraku's eyes scanned the carnage with little interest lighting them as he passed casual attention over the broken remains of the destroyed mortals to fixate on her, the last one that breathed. Her blood scented the damp air and her sight was dimming noticeably as he approached, though she struggled against the encroaching darkness. Her right arm twitched, trying vainly to lift the shattered remains of her sword while the left hand remained clamped tightly against the deep wound on her side.
His long-fingered hand cupped her chin, forcing her face higher, and her neck to an uncomfortable angle. His garnet eyes glittered in mad triumph. "Again, and again, and again, your lives play themselves out into others' hands. What is it like being mortal, my Lady? I do hope it's painful."
Her eyes brightened with fury, reviving some of the fading light as she focused on his face. He frowned as she attempted to pull away from his touch and her mind denied any hold he exerted over her will with a surge of rose-tinted light. The light that seemed to be intensifying as Midoriko's life faded. She managed to rasp something unintelligible before a cough shook her body and fresh blood flecked her lips and his hand.
Naraku's thin lips stretched into a wicked smile as his long-nailed hand dropped from her face and wrapped almost caressingly around her throat. The life that had danced in her eyes began to flicker as she lost focus and Naraku's hand tightened around her neck. Midoriko struggled to draw breath and allowed her eyes to close, knowing what was coming with unusual foresight. Her neck would snap, crushed by his unnatural strength, and this life would end.
Her eyes snapped back open at the unexpected feel of a blade against her unprotected belly, and the wrenching agony as it plunged into her flesh. Her breathing took on an ominous gurgle as blood filled a pierced lung, and the jewel, coated in a slick sheen of blood, fell from her hand with a soft click of stone against stone.
Naraku released her, allowing gravity to slide her body off the blade and leave a sluggish fall of blood to drip from the steel as she collapsed. Her head cracked against the cavern's stone floor, and the world fragmented, shattered, and fell to pieces around her. Her sight blanked out in a blaze of pain and light, and nausea assaulted her stomach.
The faint breeze that reached them brought a taste of rain into the surrounding scent of deep earth and blood. Her armor dissolved as the lethargy she only now noticed began to lift from her mind. Shattered thoughts cut into her mind with glittering shards of confusion, and her eyes adjusted to the flickering light thrown by the ranks of candles rising around her.
A rustling scuff of movement caught her attention, drawing her eyes to the bloody blade clutched in a pale hand, and up a lithe body wrapped in a dark kimono. A feminine body at odds with the masculine one that had been there a moment before. A dream, something inside her whispered. Another dream like Kikyou's death.
And, at that, the dream shattered. Naraku's black hair and glittering crimson eyes shifted, bleaching to white hair and darkening into flat ebony eyes as Kagome snapped fully back into herself where she sprawled against the wet stone with the racking pain and terror from the wound beneath the spreading stain of blood on her chest. The ranks of pinpoint light from the candles – agonizingly bright even in their soft-glow light – etched out details of the creeping things lurking in the shadows beneath them and illuminating the woman's bone-white hair with shards of orange and gold.
Kagome tried to scream, and couldn't, found that anything beyond a whispering gasp was inaudible, as though her vocal cords had been sliced. Though, her throat felt intact, and was one of the few places that didn't hurt.
The woman stooped, her mouth twisting into a cruel smile of triumph, as she scooped something off the floor that caught the light and glittered. "Shikon no tama," she intoned, looking up so her dark eyes caught Kagome's and the confusion that fought with the agony in them. "And you have no idea what it is, do you?"
Kagome blinked at the conversational tone. The woman placed the glittery thing in a bleached bowl that looked eerily like the top of a skull, painstakingly carved into a latticework pattern of arcane symbols. The bowl was then set at the apex of one of the sunken lines Kagome could see snaking out from beneath her.
The lines – really more grooves carved into the dark rock, betraying paler stone beneath the polished surface they were carved into – wove and twisted with a sinuous, unspoken, malice, and darkened with the creeping stain of her blood. But not all of it. Kagome could feel the rattle of blood in her lungs with every hitched breath as surely as she could feel the cooling drip as it bled from her body. The pain kept her from hyperventilating by shooting tendrils of agony through her with even shallow breaths.
Her torturer watched dispassionately, and began a sibilant chant in a harsh, hissing language that carried with it a hint of brimstone rising into the air. Sound was fading, making everything seem distant, and Kagome's terror ratcheted upwards as the pain began to fade, and darkness encroached on her vision.
------------------
"At least it stopped raining," Shippou said, holding a hand up into the air to see if it could catch any raindrops he wasn't feeling.
"Then you won't get wet staying here," Inuyasha grunted and reached up to pluck Shippou off his shoulder and drop him on an taller cluster of branches that formed a twisting hollow near the trunk of the tree.
Shippou clung to the branches, his eyes widened as Inuyasha took a step further along his own branch and looked down to see if it was clear. "You're leaving me?"
"I'm not taking you in there," Inuyasha pointed at the maw of a cave that he'd never seen on the shrine grounds before. It looked torn from the surrounding earth, with broken trees and shattered stone littering the entrance where torn roots dangled. "And I'm sure that's where Kagome is. Just stay here. The rain is screwing with their tracking just as much as it is with mine, so nothing can scent you unless it comes through the trees. And remember what I said: if something comes, try and kill it, then run. Find one of the Geas-bound or Kaede."
Shippou quivered a bit, but dug his tiny claws into the bark and nodded firmly before dashing into the hollow. "If you're not back in ten minutes, I'm going after them anyway," he warned. "And then I'm going to go find Sesshoumaru and make him come save you."
Inuyasha snorted and dropped out of the tree, flexing with the impact to land easily and silently. He looked upward to make sure Shippou had disappeared before turning to face the darkness.
The air crawled with stained magic, tainted and foul where it oozed around his senses. One clawed hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, and he walked tense and alert, grateful for the familiarity of the steel humming in eager response and ready to be used.
Inuyasha approached the unnatural cave's mouth, and felt the tell-tale crackle of magic the moment before a barrier sprang up, sealing his path. Inuyasha temper flared at the obstruction, and he reached down to pick up a stone from the ground to throwing at the barrier to test its magic. The stone sailed through the wavering air marking the barrier's presence without remark, and Inuyasha frowned. Reaching out cautiously, he tapped a finger against the same place the stone had passed, and skidded back as a backwash of energy surged towards him.
Part of his mind ran through, and suggested, ways to disable the barrier quietly and avoid alerting whoever had placed it. Inuyasha ignored that part and drew Tetsusaiga.
The battered katana blazed into life, transforming into a massive iron fang, and a shimmering red hue glittered into being around the blade. It was not the most subtle way he had of slashing through the barrier, but the fastest, and he was no longer in any mood to find the spell's trigger and outsmart the ward.
Tetsusaiga's light refracted off the pools of rainwater scattered around as Inuyasha raised the blade and slashed savagely at the barrier. Blade and barrier met and clashed, snarling at one another in a blaze of light before Tetsusaiga tore through and bit deeply into the stone beneath. Inuyasha wrenched the sword out, but didn't re-sheathe it as he stalked deeper into the darkness. There were more ghouls lurking in the shadows, and the twisted creature who had sacrificed so many lives to create them as well.
The air within the cave felt still and dim light flickered in the distance. Inuyasha caught the wafting scent of melting wax and candle-smoke along with the gagging stench of the dead and dying. Cleaner earth scent also clung to the inside of his nose, and his ears caught the dark tones of a woman's voice speaking in measured cadence.
Inuyasha's hand tightened around Tetsusaiga's hilt, and he wanted nothing more than to unleash one of the sword's devastating attacks down the narrow corridor he stalked. The taste of Kagome's blood hung in the air, and the fluttering emotions that filtered through to him proved she was still alive. The amount of blood he could make out through the miasma of other smells told him she wouldn't remain alive much longer.
A breath of displaced air and a scattering fall of sharp stones warned him an instant before ghouls rained around him, dropping from the ceiling, and intent on feeding their terrible hunger with his life, and protecting their mistress. If he'd been human, with a human's senses and blind in the darkness, they'd have torn him apart.
Inuyasha slashed through the first, Tetsusaiga cleaving dead flesh from bone and splashing stilled blood across the living stone of the cavern. He felt cold sticky drops impact with his skin and fall in his hair, and a clawed hand snatch at his clothes, ripping a trailing sleeve before Inuyasha sliced through the grasping arm, beheaded the third ghoul, and returned to impale the second. The creature's rattling moan cut off, and the unholy glow in its eyes dimmed, then flickered out. Inuaysha yanked his blade free, letting the ghoul's body crumple to the floor.
He wiped at a trail of blood that was creeping down his face and flattened himself closer to the wall. The corridor bent here, and reflected candlelight glowed on the opposite wall. The chanting he'd heard earlier had stopped, distracted by the noise of the short fight or the annihilation of her creations. Inuyasha eased around the bend, to see into the room. More ghouls' eyes glowed in the darkness – the easiest part of them to see where they lurked beyond the candlelight – and he swore under his breath at the number.
A ritual was laid out, carved into the floor in a complicated array, and illuminated by dozens of candles. Kagome sprawled in the middle of it, pale and still with a frightening amount of crimson staining her clothes and glimmering where it pooled. Her blood seeped steadily from several wounds beneath her slashed clothing and crept sluggishly into channels carved into the cavern floor. Inuyasha tensed, trying to filter through the distraction of freshly spilt blood, pain, and fear to find the source of the dark magic swirling thickly through the air.
Dawn pulled at him, driving urgency through his veins, clashing against the terrible certainty that rash heroics would result in both his and Kagome's deaths. Ghouls were mindless slaves: insane, bestial souls, mutilated before being enslaved in their former bodies. They were dangerous, even with Tetsusaiga backing him up because unleashing the sword's power in the cavern wasn't an option. Even if he didn't collapse the entire place on top of them, Kagome would end up caught in the deadly blast.
Worse yet, whoever had created the wasn't mindless, and was probably overseeing the ritual. The woman's scent that he could pick out to match the chanting was saturated with the ozone and blood stench of blood necromancy. Her death would break the ritual, Inuyasha guessed – rituals never outlived their caster without being anchored to something – but he had no idea what that would do to Kagome.
The amount of blood he could see spilt already told him she needed a hospital, and a stray option ribboned through his mind at the thought. Inuyasha mentally savaged it, ignoring the instincts that were trying to overrun his rationality. Instincts that reasoned that Kagome, as a human, was fragile, but that she didn't necessarily need to remain human.
Snarling at his vampire side, and clenching his fist more tightly around the rough wrappings of Tetsusaiga, Inuyasha tensed. Magic-user first. If he could take her out fast enough, the ghouls would fall relatively easy. At the very least, he wouldn't have to worry about directed magic catching him in the back.
A final Word snarled through the air, almost knocking Inuyasha off his feet as the magic washed over him. Then, a weak rattle of dying breath caught his attention, and Inuyasha focused his full attention on Kagome. She'd grown unnaturally still, and the lack of even a weak and thready heartbeat resounded in the silence for a suspended moment.
Inuyasha snarled and dashed forward, planning abandoned in a single driving need to destroy. A white-haired sorceress crouched over a carved bowl at the tallest apex in the spell array and looked up as he entered. Her black eyes widened, surprise, puzzlement, and a touch of fear playing over her face.
Kagome's shriek startled them both, shattering the tableau, and Inuyasha wheeled to the girl he'd been certain was dead. Her back arched at an almost impossible angle and her eyes snapped open to stare, sightless and leached of color. Bloody tears escaped and traced haphazard paths down her face, leaving trails of viscous crimson in a gruesome spider's web across her skin.
"If you're here for her you're a little late," the sorceress told him. Inuyasha responded with a wordless snarl and dodged aside as the gathering of ghouls came at him. Grasping claws with unnatural strength, powered by broken souls, attacked, forcing Inuyasha's concentration to sharpen into the unending now of survival.
Tetsusaiga pulsed in his grip, demanding to be unleashed. Inuyasha clamped down on the sword's power by force of will. More than half the ghouls were dismembered, released to the afterlife and unable to recalled. Inuyasha was diving for the remaining few when a tremor rocked the cavern. Stones and earth fell around him, and a shaft of earth punched upward.
The stone column slammed into him, and Inuyasha felt several ribs give under the blow with a sickening crack and a blaze of agony. Blood rush into his lungs, forcing a hacking cough to clear them. Inuyasha levered himself up and almost collapsed again as he found Kagome's shallowly-breathing form stretched out beside him.
Wiping blood from his mouth, Inuyasha finished climbing to his feet, and stood close enough to Kagome to feel her against his heels. The sorceress stood before him now, hand raised from casting and surrounded by her remaining creations, and watched him with barely disguised annoyance. The blow would have killed him if he'd been human; shattering bone and rupturing veins. But Inuyasha wasn't human and he was difficult to kill.
"Kaze no Kizu!" Inuyasha swung his blade down, and released the golden power that pushed against his soul just as the unseen sun broke the horizon.
The world shifted and Inuyasha staggered as a cold fire rushed through his veins, throbbing like the pulse of the world. He crashed to one knee, the point of Tetsusaiga's blade buried into the stone. Darkness leeched from the hair that fell unbound around him, spreading like white ink over black parchment.
Inuyasha ignored the deep furrows that tore into the stone, still glowing with the golden residue of the sword's magic, and the scattered explosion of ghoul pieces and dropped to his knees beside Kagome. The smell of death magic had evaporated along with the witch and her ghouls and left behind the more cloying scent of mortal death.
Kagome's limp body was traced with a network of bruises and small cuts, as though she'd fought through a pitched battle and barely come out of it alive. Her shrieks from earlier had subsided to a pained whimper. Her eyes remained open, but had shifted from draining of natural color to taking on an ominous glow. Whatever the sorceress had done was far more involved than utilizing the power of a tormented death. Magic still twisted through Kagome's form, and breaking the ritual hadn't stopped it.
"Shh," Inuyasha soothed, wiping the blood away from her throat and feeling for a pulse. He found it: all but gone, and slowing with each beat. Inuyasha cursed silently and gathered the dying girl to his chest.
Kat's Notes: Reposting because the site's being buggy again, and not sending out update alerts. Personally, I depend on them to know when something's been updated that I'm reading. That's why they're there! So I apologize.
Let's see ... added in larger spacing for the scene switches, which the site's buggery idea of formatting promptly ate. I think I have it fixed. If someone would let me know how it's working for everyone? Easier to follow? If not, let me know, and I'll go figure something else out that's more noticeable.
Not much else to say on my end. I attracted my very first flame for this story last chapter. I'm so proud of it! I'm leaving it right where it is because I think it's funny. Until next time everyone! It's about time to check in on Miroku, I think.
