A/N: Umm... hello again? :) This will be a detailed read.
Jotunheim- land of the giants, an entirely different dimension outside the current one our characters are residing in.
Disclaimer: I do not aim to represent in any accuracy any names or places used. These are used solely for fictional purposes only.
The Tree of Wisdom, The Flowers of Illusion
(Bokuseno and Asphodelus)
"We are sitting under an ancient fire tree, in the middle of a great lake." Miroku started as Ayame leaned on him, a content smile on the wolf youkai's lips. "We are surrounded by thousands of fireflies, the night sky is clear and abundant with stars." He allowed himself to lean against the old tree.
Kagome held her hand out, catching the falling leaves that were gently raining down on them. She had laid herself under the fire tree's shade, her black hair fanned on the grass, long enough for the ebony strands to reach by Sesshomaru.
The stoic warlord observed her and her odd attachment. She laid close by his feet, like a loyal puppy guarding her human.
"We are sitting under an ancient fire tree," Kagome confirmed, "but the night sky is riddled with rain clouds, and we are surrounded by yet another span of violet flowers."
"Flowers?" Ayame echoed, scanning the perimeter around her.
"Yes, flowers." Kagome answered, preoccupied with catching the falling leaves, and something else unseen. "In my eyes, Asphodel is a vast field of violet flowers. During night time, there is rain. Either a downpour or a light drizzle... and during daytime, an inferno. Anywhere the violet flowers do not touch, the ground consumes with fire."
"Kagome-chan..." the wolf youkai murmured, "is that what you've been seeing all this time?" Kagome could hear the worry laced in her voice. The ebony-haired girl smiled bitterly. She was about to apologize for her mental abnormality when a soft hum of energy met her ears. Before she knew it, a physical barrier appeared above them, arching into a dome that kept them protected from the rain. She tilted her head towards her lieutenant friend.
"There." The lieutenant boasted with a fanged smile. "Hey, I feel less damp myself!" She gave Kagome a cheeky wink and settled herself on Miroku's lap, closing her eyes as sleep started to claim them.
In the dim of the night, Kagome couldn't help but smile.
"The fire," Sesshomaru's baritone startled her elated thoughts. "You said at daytime, the ground consumes everything with fire?"
Kagome sat up and faced the troubled warlord. "Yes."
"I have had dreams," he closed his eyes, leaning on the further side of the big tree. "since my first night in Asphodel. I dream of waking up to a blazing inferno." To say it was a dream was an understatement. It was more like a nightmare, every night, with no fail. It had hindered him from sleep countless of times. But ever since the onna had slept close by him, he found himself falling asleep and waking up uneventful. In all his fifty years of consciousness, these past three days had been dreamless, restful nights.
He allowed the lull of her warmth wrap his own energy.
"You dream of the fires?" Kagome coaxed, leaning closer to him. His eyes were closed, his breath steady, and he did not stir. She smiled softly, he was asleep.
"We are almost at the borders of Niflheim," she whispered to no one in particular. "Where are you? Bokuseno, please, reveal yourself..." As Kagome slowly drifted away to sleep, she did not notice the faint shimmer of light that appeared by the edge of their little island.
That certain shimmer ripped into a small fissure, and it stayed, waiting.
Kagome awoke at the early hours of dawn, when the rainclouds were clearing and she really could see a starry sky peeking from behind. It was still dark, that was why it was not hard for a small shimmer of light to catch her attention. It was slowly disappearing, and Kagome shot up and bound closer.
"Sesshomaru-sama," she called out from the edge of the island, but he looked so peaceful asleep. Could she just go ahead and check the rift? She then recalled their conversation last night. "Sesshomaru-sama," she repeated, a tone of urgency in her voice. "Miroku-sama! Ayame,"
Kagome grew desperate. The fissure of light was getting smaller and smaller. Instinctively she reached out to catch it, but she was sucked into the crack yet again, her hanbok-clad self disappearing in the darkness as if she had never existed.
"You summoned me?"
Kagome found herself in the middle of a clearing, free of violet flowers aside from the border, before a giant magnolia tree with a hardened face and a gentle smile. She heard a whispering again, this time it was of one individual voice, and it seemed distant. Although the language was all mixed up, she was able to make sense of it.
'Bokusen-o.'
"You answered," Kagome exclaimed breathlessly as she knelt on the grass. Bokuseno's massive branches reached out towering towards the receding moon and stars, stretching as if he had woken from a century-old slumber.
"I heard your call."
Kagome's heart felt as if it ran a hundred paces faster. This was it, their week-long journey almost concluded. "Do you know me?" She tried. The tree only smiled, humored.
"You are pushing your luck. I know a lot of things, but I don't know everything." Bokuseno gave a deep chuckle, its leaves raining down on Kagome like a gentle drizzle. Kagome looked around and it dawned on her,
there was no rain,
not even the kindling of fire that she usually saw in accompany with twilight.
Perhaps it was the absence of the flowers?
The wise tree shifted its branches. "We are in a rift within a rift, as you can see, Asphodel's territory ends in the border." He chuckled.
"What is Asphodel?" The girl finally asked.
"Asphodel is a dimensional rift between Rune and Niflheim-" the wise tree answered.
"No, what is Asphodel?" Kagome turned to the carpet of violet flowers behind her, bending to the will of the wind. "the flowers..."
"Ah, so you can see her? I am surprised, little onna, that you can figure through her wiles. I can see her too, only because of the wisdom my age has granted me. Her flowers render the strongest illusions that could fool the most formidable creatures in our own dimension."
Kagome felt as if something was caught in her throat. "You mean to say, that what I see, the endless flowers, the fires at day, the rain at night... is the real terrain? and what everyone else is seeing is an illusion?"
"Yes. Asphodelus is a powerful entity from Jotunheim, brought in by a traveler two thousand years ago for reasons beyond my knowledge. From her core she is protecting something, what it is I do not know, nor can I ever find out. She is from another dimension, the Jotun speaks in a different language. But she speaks to you. I can see it by the way you looked at her flowers when you came in, she probably told you who I was."
Kagome pondered quietly at all that has passed. That single, individual voice that she could decipher from the hundreds of voices that whisper to her in times of duress was the voice of Asphodelus. "I listen to her because I can hear," she whispered.
"You hear her because you understand." Kagome was left pondering in silence. The great magnolia tree gifted her with a flower, catching her attention.
"When you called for me, you also spoke in a language, my language, that I thought had been dead for a thousand years. You even saw my rift...
That is why I had to meet you. It's as if you are not bound to the limits of Erets and Niflheim. Even the watchers of Shamayim are limited to the language of this dimension. But you, " he smiled gently. "You are unlike any other I have encountered."
Kagome shook her head. What the tree of wisdom said had revealed a lot of things about her, yet at the same time it had revealed nothing. Her thoughts wandered to her companions. Will they even accept what Bokuseno had said about Asphodelus and her illusions?
She lifted her gaze beyond the shelter of the ancient magnolia's canopy. The stars were fading, and light had cracked on the twilight sky. Pretty soon her companions will awaken, and find her missing. She had to haste.
"Who are the Elioud?" she recalled the heavy aura that washed over her during the parade. "Why are they hiding from the outside domain?"
"Let me tell you a little story. When Elohim, the one kami had redesigned the world, he had to find a place to dispose of the multiple deities that were threatening his superiority. So he created the Dark Void- a dimension where time and place did not exist."
Kagome felt a chill from the twilight breeze and she had to embrace herself to keep warm. A dimension where time and place did not exist?
That must have been...
lonely.
"Now to attain balance, he created monstrous entities known as Gluttons to inhabit the forsaken place. Their blood was tied to the Dark Void itself, and they were equipped with immense power and an insatiable appetite, to fulfill their sole purpose- devour the ancient youkai, the powerful titans, even the Old Gods that were thrown into the Void.. Once it was done, Elohim could rest and say that the old world had finally been cleansed, and can draw a clean slate for the new."
"What does that have to do with the Elioud?" Kagome fidgeted, restless.
"Patience, little Onna. I am starting from the beginning so you can fully understand. Everything I say is connected to what I will reveal." Bokuseno paused.
"Those ancient beasts fulfilled what they were created for. Having nothing to devour in the void, they started to eat each other, until only one was left, alone, fated to slowly whither off in its own terrible hunger. That is where the Elioud comes in."
Bokuseno shivered in his own trail of thought. "The Elioud was a wicked human clan, proficient in arcane magic and the forbidden arts. One of their most powerful ancestors, a priestess, was able to somehow steal a vial of the last Glutton's blood, and the entire clan congregated on the entity's ties to the void.
They experimented on it, to the point of fusing a part of the stolen blood to their priestesses in hopes of gaining the same power the Glutton had possessed.
It had no effects to their females, but to their offspring was a terrible mutation: their sons possessed indelible blood that when spattered, inflicts the victim with a hundred forbidden curses. That was how the Blood of Ill Will was formed.
They called the women who gave birth to such abominations Matriarchs, and they procreated, leading to the rise of their terrible reign.
But Elohim sees everything. And when he found out, he willed their wicked race to extinction. He ordered Michiel, the commander of the Hierarchy of Shamayim, to pass judgement on them. The commander, though, was lenient: to the Matriarchs, the watcher stripped them from their abnormal blood union to the Dark Void, disabling any procreation.
To the Nobles, a warning: to never use the Blood of Ill Will else they shall be wiped off the face of this dimension with a strike of its sword.
Because such time has passed, and considering the human lifespan, Little Onna, I believe that the Elioud race had slowly died off, and such a clan remains alive only as a legend."
But they are alive, Kagome thought in horror. Somehow they are thriving- a wicked race damned to extinction was defying Kami's will.
A realization suddenly struck the girl. Sesshomaru-sama... he was not human, and had only came fifty years ago.
And the Elioud... they were supposed to cease in existence by now, but somehow, they were surpassing their human life spans.
could it be?
"Bokuseno," Kagome stood up, an urgency like never before in the tone of her voice, "do you know where the Scroll of Memory is?"
She needed to find it. She had to.
It would be his only chance.
"It is kept close to the heart of Asphodel herself. You can find her directly in the bottom of the abyss that leads to the portal towards Niflheim. " He revealed, not-so-cryptically to Kagome. "But please, do not reveal to anyone where her heart is. She will not appreciate it.
I surmise she is eager to see you, I can see it as her flowers dance in anticipation with the wind."
His branches lurched forward, showering her with white magnolia blossoms, filling her senses with his happiness. "It has been a long time since I have conversed in my language. Ah, I feel nostalgic. Thank you for such an opportunity."
Kagome bowed in return. "No, the pleasure is all mine."
When she told them about everything that the wise tree said, Sesshomaru remained uncharacteristically silent, not even stopping to comment or ask about any more details.
About Asphodel and her illusions,
about the Elioud and their condemnation, and why they were hiding from the world.
After all was relayed, he quietly withdrew to himself, and they walked further more southbound without any more conversation.
The sinking feeling in Kagome's soul that started on her realization back at Bokuseno's rift had only gotten heavier with each step they took. It was when she tugged at the sleeve of the Inu Warlord's kimono that he finally halted.
They had been walking nonstop for three days.
"Sesshomaru-sama," she peered in concern. He was avoiding her gaze, the warmth in his eyes was completely masked.
He was wearing that cold exterior the day she saw him in the parade.
"We shall head straight to the portal that leads to Niflheim and retrieve the Youkai Hime." he commanded, and withdrew from her grasp.
"What about the scroll?" She grabbed him again in frustration, pulling like a little girl refusing to give in to her elders.
"What use is it now," He answered with the same collected detachment he was always associated with. "If I remember, where will it lead me? It will not change anything."
She let go when his amber eyes flashed with a violent fire she had never seen before. As she watched his receding form, her resolve only strengthened.
It may not change a thing,
but at least he will have something to hold on to.
"Is this it?" Ayame concluded, breathless, as she stood before the immeasurable distance between them and the portal to Niflheim.
Unlike the steppe where they could see the other end, the expanse between the cliff and the other side was too far for even a giant Inu could leap to. Ayame stared at the impossible blue sky.
"Kagome-chan, tell me this is all an illusion, and we could actually walk through the air to reach the other side."
"No," Kagome inched closer to the edge, a wonder to her voice. "We are seeing the same thing," she leaned forward, and her throat leapt at the sight of the immeasurable drop below. A squall suddenly blew, catching the ridiculous amount of cloth in her hanbok and pushed her forward, almost knocking her off the cliff.
Had it not been for the strong grip of Sesshomaru on her arm she would have fallen.
He glared at her recklessness. "Sometimes I wonder if you will be the cause of our demise." Sesshomaru scolded, but the girl was looking at him with wide eyes, as if she were to figuratively step off a cliff.
"Do you trust me?" She vaguely asked, and her question took even her other companions' attentions. He released her hand.
"Why are you asking, Onna?" his eyes narrowed.
Kagome remembered Bokuseno's favor, to not reveal Asphodelus' heart. "Do you trust me?" she asked again, the question not directed to the Inu Warlord alone but to the rest of her companions.
"Yes." came the decisive answer, and that was all Kagome needed.
"Then wait for me. I won't be long." She promised, and before they could even comprehend her displaced question and even more askew answer,
with two large strides her feet left the security of the ground and she leapt off the cliff,
plunging herself into the abyss, a ruffle of cloth and silk tailing on her wake.
A/N: Okay, so that was a mouthful of dialogue with the tree. Haha.
She finds Bokuseno, and he points out to her she is, in a way, not bound to the limits of their current dimension, as she is able to see Asphodel's flowers, hear and understand her language.
So the flowers are actually real, her eyes had been telling the truth, and everything else is an illusion, not the other way around. Asphodel did so to protect something which we will find out soon. :P
Eliouds are a human clan whose ancestor stole the now extinct Glutton's blood. They fused the blood with priestesses who they call their Matriarchs, who give birth to abominations carrying the Blood of Ill Will. ( Elioud Nobles). They are supposed to be an extinct race, because of their ' wickedness' during their reign, and judgment has already been handed to them. But somehow, they managed to live up until now, hence their hiding from the outside world.
Kagome realizes something on the way. She finds their final obstacle, Asphodel.