Update: 8/13/17: I am now editing this entire story, slowly but surely, before going on with the updates. My writing style has changed a lot in the past three years, and if I were to continue this from the last chapter it would be a bit incoherent. Plus I foreshadowed too much and all the surprises I had planned for the later chapters won't actually be surprises at this rate. So just bare with me if the later chapters don't make much sense with the earlier ones: it just means I haven't edited them yet. I'll put this note at the beginning of each edited chapter to let you know which ones they are. Happy reading!

-oOo-

Last Time…

Kagome's face lit up. "So we can use your library?"

"Of course. Everything in it, you are welcome to." He smiled warmly. "I would also like to hear the tale of how the five of you came to be traveling together. How about we discuss everything over supper?"

She grinned. "You have no idea how great that sounds."

-oOo-

Chapter 10: Aura

As per usual, Kagome did the talking. As she related their tale to the monk, her traveling companions settled down and began eating, save Sesshoumaru, who merely sat in the corner, inserting comments here and there when the curse won out over his willpower. Kagome found herself telling the monk more than she had planned, from her true origins to the part of her soul that now resided in Kikyou's clay body. She couldn't help it—it felt like she was talking to her own grandfather. Maybe she just had a soft spot for old people. She finished with her and Sesshoumaru's trip to the future and the appearance of the trio of neko youkai and fell silent, waiting as the monk contemplated what she had told him.

Finally he spoke. "Usually the only miko capable of cursing are dark miko, who have summoned a youkai and formed a contract with them—power for their soul," he said softly.

Kagome opened her mouth to protest, but the monk once again held up a hand to silence her. "I know you have not done such a thing, Kagome, or your aura would be that of a dark miko." He paused. "However, your aura is not the same as any holy miko I have seen either, and I have seen many a miko in my lifetime. You are truly unique." His eyes traveled over Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha in turn. "It seems when you 'curse' someone you leave trace elements of your aura on them. I believe this is the reason Inuyasha-sama and Sesshoumaru-sama are able to pass through the well with you."

Sesshoumaru's brow twitched. "Then I am walking around with her aura on me?"

Kagome shot him a look. "You don't have to sound so annoyed about it."

"I have a human's aura on me…" he said to himself.

"More like she stamped your aura with a part of her own," said the monk. "Your aura is still clearly visible—light gold. But now it has some pink in it here and there if you look closely enough."

"So, if I follow you, that's what's keeping the curse in place?" asked Miroku, having finished his meal.

"That is correct."

"But how am I supposed to reverse this?" said Kagome. "I don't even know how it happened! It's not as simple as Inuyasha's curse—all I have to do to remove his is get rid of his subjugation necklace."

The monk sighed, his eyes falling to his tea. "It is not possible for you now. Your powers are strong, yes, but you are untrained. You could end up reinforcing the curse, making it even stronger. Sesshoumaru-sama, I presume you have been meditating almost constantly to prevent saying anything and everything you think?"

Sesshoumaru nodded. "Yes. Would this cause that to be impossible?"

"I believe it would." The monk looked back at Kagome. "Or it could completely reverse it. I don't suggest taking that chance, though. It's too risky."

"What do you suggest, Houshi-sama?" Sango asked. "We naturally must return to our search for the shards soon."

"Hm… I'm sure you have heard of a shard that has appeared somewhere in Kyoto?" The group nodded, and he continued. "While you search for it, I suggest Kagome stay here and train. The monastery is a safe place for your shards, and whoever is in possession of the one here in Kyoto may sense the others and come looking for it here. What better place to lure a youkai than a monastery? The monks here are highly trained."

The travelers exchanged glances. Inuyasha seemed a bit reluctant, but Kagome looked at him with pleading eyes, and he finally consented. She smiled happily. She hadn't had much time to train with Kaede because she was always out shard-hunting with Inuyasha, and this was a great chance to hone her powers. Moreover, while she was here she'd have access to a great library; maybe she'd come across a more definite way to break the curse.

"That sounds like a good plan to me," said Sesshoumaru.

Inuyasha glared at him. "No one asked your opinion."

"You're forgetting I don't need to be asked anymore, half-brother," the taiyoukai replied.

Kagome laughed uneasily. "Maybe we should get started right away."

-oOo-

The next couple of weeks flew by in a blur of training, research, and shard-hunting. Every day for two hours before dawn, Kagome joined a group of monks training in hand-to-hand combat. The head monk informed her that all the monks at this monastery trained in martial arts for discipline and strength. It was tough going. Even though it was a beginner-level class, the rest of the students had obviously been training for at least a year, and the entire two hours consisted mainly of her being beaten up by boys who were Souta's age. Those little suckers were fast.

After breakfast, the head monk trained her personally in channeling her spiritual powers. This wasn't as exciting as she'd thought it'd be, as most of what they did was meditate. At first, she'd questioned how effective this would be, but once they got started Kagome developed a new respect for all those monk-on-a-mountain-with-a-super-long-beard-guys—it was harder than she'd thought to meditate for such long periods of time. However, she had never walked away from a challenge before, and she wasn't about to start now, so she always tried her very best to focus on… focusing on nothing.

The head monk told her that it would be more difficult for her than most because her soul was not whole, and she could definitely feel the effects of that. She hadn't really noticed before, but now that she was going through serious training she could feel the shattered edges bouncing around inside of her, never quite filling her entirely. She wondered vaguely what it must be like for Kikyou, who had wound up with a considerably smaller portion of their soul.

After lunch, she joined the rest of her friends in exploring Kyoto in search of the shard, but no luck had come their way so far. She could feel the shard's presence tapping at the back of her mind, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from. It was as if no matter where she went in the city it was the same distance away, always behind her, tickling her consciousness, like an itch that wouldn't go away. When she tried to explain this to Inuyasha, he had said it was all that meditating making her shard-detecting go wacky. She had promptly "sat" him into the road. He'd spent hours filling in the hole to appease an angry old woman who lived along that street.

Sesshoumaru spent most of his time in the library, pouring over books on miko and spiritual powers and the Shikon no Tama. Very little information was offered on curses, however, except that the only miko who were known to curse were dark miko who had sold their souls to very powerful youkai in exchange for their superior strength. After days of searching, he finally found a book detailing various curses and how their respective rituals were enacted, but none seemed even remotely similar to Kagome's curse.

First, the curses listed in the book were all along the lines of causing extreme pain or controlling the subject (he refused to think of himself as a "victim", as the book seemed to think he was), but Kagome's curse on him was different. It never caused him any pain, other than the pain of having all the thoughts he had so preciously guarded revealed. In addition, it said that the person who was the subject of a curse would likely suffer illness or even die, but if anything, he had felt stronger these past few weeks, as if she was lending him her power in some way. He was not sure he liked that idea; he didn't want to rely on anyone or anything else's power to make him strong-that was why he had never sought out the Shikon no Tama. He was strong on his own, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Regardless of Sesshoumaru's feelings on the matter, it was obvious that this was no ordinary curse. He discovered several more books and they all seemed to agree. They claimed the subject would feel out of place, as if he had been invaded by the curse's power, and be able to detect the curse within him as if it was a tangible thing, but Sesshoumaru did not feel that way. It was as if, instead of forcing the curse upon him, Kagome had changed his very nature to fit her purposes.

But aside from the dark nature of normal curses, there seemed to be yet another discrepancy when it came to Kagome's curse. The books he read listed long, complicated rituals to curse someone, along with the ways the curse must be changed depending on the subject: Was he male or female? Was he youkai or human? What kind of youkai was he? Was he a human with spiritual powers? Had he been cursed before? How powerful was he? Upon finding the simplest curse—one that caused the subject's hair turn green-calculated the time it would take to curse him.

Three months. It would have taken a dark miko three months just to make his hair change colors, and Kagome had somehow managed to make him go against his very nature in a matter of seconds.

The fact that she was a holy miko made the whole matter even more puzzling. All the books seemed to agree that due to the dark miko's powers being supported by those of the youkai, dark miko were naturally more powerful than most holy miko. He'd found no books that contradicted that point, so why was Kagome able to curse him in less time than it would have taken a dark miko, even though she was holy? The monk had said her aura was not that of a dark miko, and Sesshoumaru couldn't see her making a contract with a youkai anyway, but he'd also said that she had an aura unlike that of any holy miko he'd seen. Through his research Sesshoumaru found that humans with spiritual power had blue at the center of their auras, and the stronger they were the darker it got. Normal humans had normal auras that changed according to their mood, and youkai had different auras depending on how powerful they were.

He smirked when he read that the most powerful youkai had light golden auras, but his satisfaction quickly faded when he remembered that the monk had said that Kagome's aura had left a pink mark on his. "I don't remember there being any mention of pink auras in this book," he muttered under his breath. It was his new technique to one-up the curse: say everything you think, but really quietly, so that no one could hear it. It came in handy when he was around humans, whose hearing was naturally lacking.

He went to researching auras after that, but there was no mention of any auras that were pink anywhere in the books he read. Kikyou's powers, he remembered, were blue, so he assumed that was an indication of her aura, but Kagome's were definitely pink.

"This is useless," he murmured, his lips barely moving. "I'm getting nowhere." He returned his large stack of books back to the shelves one-by-one. "I wonder if she's made any progress with the monk so we can be rid of this curse and I can get back to my life."

But for some reason that didn't sound as comforting as it had before.

-oOo-

Thanks for reading!