A/N: Thanks for staying. :) Italicized is Kagome's thoughts.

The Last Fragment

The rain washed away her blood, draining in great amounts from her still-repairing body, flowing like a steady stream downward the thousand steps. It reached the foot of the hill, and the immortal Asphodelus despaired.

Her master's precious blood was soaking into the dirt ground.

The Jotun dropped all her illusions to gather her strength. With the entirety of Asphodel under a heavy downpour, her roots tensed, and from the ends of her tendrils she forced herself to regenerate. New vines and flowers crept up the stairs, untroubled by the taste of thick malice that the Elioud's presence gave off.

It was to her surprise, when she reached the gates of an estate where the blood was the heaviest, to find her master standing on both feet, steadily on the ground, a broken sword on her hand.

Her eyes were an unearthly deep vermilion despite the lack of light. "Did my blood bother you?" Kagome asked, the mere tone of her voice so different from what Asphodelus was used to.

*No, there is no curse in it. You are able to control your blood's will.*

"I surmised." she answered. "I will be more careful with my intentions next time. I will not be cursing anyone into the Dark Void." The blood from the wound in her chest was slowly receding.

*From the amounts of blood that reached me, I thought you perished.*

Asphodelus earned a chuckle from the woman. "I have the notorious reputation of coming back from the dead."

*Kagome-sama,*

Kagome clutched Sesshomaru's broken wakizashi tighter. "No, I don't remember anything about myself yet. But someone whispered to me, when I teetered in my own unconscious. It was not Sesshomaru,

but someone else... someone too familiar. He told me to not to fear, for I am right where I want to be."

She strapped the wakizashi in her obi, to where the small blade was hidden in the material's folds.

"I remember, Asphodelus, what was so special about his ninety-eighth lifetime. It is his final fragment."

Kagome shifted her gaze uphill, towards the temple. "The familiar voice, he told me: the Elioud and their terrible reign, I can end it. I can end it before day breaks, if I wanted to." She moved forward, but paused. "Stay there, unless I call you."

Kagome did not want to stain Asphodelus with her blood.

The twenty Elioud had circled the sleeping Sesshomaru's form, having already started the ritual of bloodletting. There was a sickening gash on his throat, from where blood was trickling out, controlled by the mere magic of the cursed clan. Their leader, who stood before the doomed warlord, hovered a hand over the exposed wound and a silver thread glistened under the light of his spell.

He took a step back, shocked. "His soul," he started, and the remaining Elioud leaned forward in anticipation. "He is bonded. He shares a soul bond to someone.."

The wooden doors opened with a jolting bang, and from the shadows emerged the bloody form of Kagome. She was drenched in rain, her thin yukata indecent and tattered. She staggered forward in slow, careful steps. Her eyes scanned the room before her. Five magically-able, high-level soldiers on the doorway, and twenty Elioud. They were old, with their wrinkled faces, weary eyes and pruned hands.

But their aura was formidable. She planted her feet on the ground firmly, bracing the tremble that was threatening in her spine. "Get your nasty hands off him."

"The Inu's woman!" The soldier from earlier blurted out from the side. "I thought I killed her earlier!"

Kagome lurched forward, and two soldiers appeared from each side. The guard held Kagome's hair from the back of her head and slammed her face into the ground, another summoning a ribbon bind that came shooting out.

Kagome struck the palm of her hand on the floor and buckled her legs, hoisting the soldier who held her head down, effectively knocking him back and narrowly avoided the binds. She darted away from the two.

"Seize her," The main Elioud commanded. Another soldier struck his sword, a rush of deadly stone spikes tore through the wooden floor. With little effort Kagome raised her bare hands and blocked the spikes and it shattered before her, her skin rupturing in splinter wounds. Her eyes narrowed from another surprise that materialized before her- two soldiers, swords raised to strike.

She evaded the strike in a split second, stealing the soldier's sword and struck with a powerful blow on his back.

With two fingers she drew in the air, binding ribbons appeared, exactly like theirs. The ribbons shot haphazardly across the second soldier's hands and he was pulled to his knees. A powerful spell of subjugation: he opened his mouth in astonishment as color had drained from his cheeks, entire strength leaving him.

"Monster..." The soldier spat out.

Kagome stepped back in retaliation. The remaining soldiers consolidated, creating a human barrier between her and the Elioud. "Get out of my way, " She warned.

The soldiers lunged at the same time. She skirted through her attackers, delivering a blow the third soldier's midsection. She mercilessly bashed the fourth soldier's head and twisted and detached the fifth one's arm, his sword falling with a clang on the floor.

Two Eliouds appeared before her, but she was enveloped in a bright light. She disappeared into a portal, reappearing before one of the nobles and grabbed him by the neck.

Kagome sliced her own arm, leaving a streak of dark blood on the deadly metal, and she plunged it into the Elioud's throat. Blood spattered on her face, and she only watched in an eerie calm as she allowed her ill will to manifest into her blood.

It was then that the silent Elioud witnessed their deepest, most anomalous desires come to life: the struck clansman convulsed from the condemnation of a hundred forbidden curses.

Their lips curled into a malicious smile.

Torrents of binding ribbons shot from every direction, all imbued with ten times the amount of subjugation. Kagome tore loose and spun around, leaping towards another clan member.

Without any hesitation, she beheaded the elder.

The dismembered head landed in a thump on the wooden floor, the headless body slumping on the ground.

The thick, sanguine liquid pooled on Kagome's bare feet.

The binding ribbons yet again seized her extremities, but before she tried to rip away again,"Are you sure you want to do that?" came the baiting voice of their leader. The woman turned around, and her eyes widened. He was holding a blade across Sesshomaru's throat.

Her teeth clenched. She steeled herself for another teleportation but the Elioud chuckled.

"If you are able to kill ten of us, our Ill Will combined will create a gateway to the Dark Void, and chains will drag you into its depths." Kagome then saw the vision of the night with the Baphomets, their colossal bodies imploding in her own blood from heavy, gigantic chains.

His baited smile challenged her. "Precious Matriarch, it's no use. You will be condemned into the Dark Void even before you are able to kill us all." He noticed the woman's sudden stillness. He smirked... She was complying.

"Now shall we continue?" With a flick of his wrist, he stopped the blood letting. But then he summoned another spell, to Kagome's ire. He was starting with the fast draining of Sesshomaru's energy.

Kagome's fists shook. They were indeed wicked...

And immensely selfish. Her stillness had indicated her consensus: They knew they already had her.

So why would they continue to drain him, then, if they already had their Matriarch?!

Their selfishness... how she despised them. How her blood boiled,

how her very soul shook in loathing.

How stupid it was for the Commander of Shamayim to show them mercy, for they truly deserved to be willed to extinction.

"Do it." She suddenly said.

The Elder's eyes cast a glance on the woman, and he dropped his hands, dropping the spell. She was holding a broken wakizashi across her throat.

She was threatening to take her own life.

"Do it. You kill him, you lose me.

So go ahead... do it."

He stared in disbelief at the woman, but her vermilion eyes were steeled. She pressed the blade against her skin, drawing blood. The Elioud audience leaned forward, cringing at the sight of the precious sanguine she was wasting. When Kagome was sure that the main Elder stopped the ritual, she lowered the sword.

"If I am to be your Matriarch,

I am not the one to bend to your will. Your pathetic selves should be on your knees."

The binds on her person eased away, and the nobles begrudgingly complied, kneeling in prostration. "Do not fast-drain him further." Kagome commanded firmly, and the main elder stepped back. He bowed his head. "If that is what our Matriarch wishes."

"Now tell me... how deep you bound his energy to your clan. Tell me everything."

"We drifted into this rift a hundred years ago, resigned to the fate that Michiel had unfairly condemned us with." The Elioud started, and Kagome, who had sat before them with the slumbering Sesshomaru on her lap, couldn't help but grit her teeth.

Unfair? You pests should have been wiped off the face of Erets forever.

"I was a mere infant at that time when the Commander of Shamayim came and delivered judgment. And so time passed, and our mortality was our own demise. We tried countless experimentation- to youkai, faery, humans... even celestials, to try and pass on our precious cursing blood, and ultimately have our revenge on that commander who reduced our proud clan to sniveling, hiding animals."

The commander gave you a chance to redeem your souls. Yet after all these years, all you seek for is revenge? How many beautiful souls have you destroyed?

"Until one day fifty years ago, a being fell from the sky into the lake between the borders of Rune and Asphodel. This... being held a great amount of celestial energy. We would have just killed him then, for even when he held such power, it was no use to us. Our numerous experimentations to other celestials had failed.

And he is a mere fragment. His soul is scattered throughout different dimensions and times, not meant to be found, not meant to be completed."

But I searched for him... throughout dimensions I collected each and every fragment.

"But when we started to snuff out his life, we noticed one anomaly: his soul, although celestial in nature, had unseen ties to the Dark Void. We had to research him further. And because of his connection, it served as a hook to anchor our mortality to his energy. It was amazing, we were able to use his life as a source for our own. And when our blood mixed with his, it introduced our malice into his system, triggering his own Blood of Ill Will."

Kagome shifted. "The lake. Was it always like that?"

"No. When he fell in the lake, we figured there was a rift directly above it. So we thought... from wherever he came from, surely there would be more? So we impregnated the lake with our strongest curse, to drain and rob any other celestial energy that comes across it."

Kagome's eyes narrowed. So it only affects celestial energy.

She remembered the moment she fell into the lake, how it burned her entire body, how it tried to drain her soul. Was that what happened? Did they try to steal my life energy?

Then why did it fail?

"But still, it was no use. All other celestials that fell into the trap, we could not bind. They had no connections to the Dark Void. And so we fell back to the original plan and use him as our life source, until we finish our research with his own ties."

"But you already have your Matriarch." Kagome ran her hands gently through Sesshomaru's soft hair. "Release him. You don't need him anymore." With a bitter taste in her tongue, she stated, "He only has less than ten years left to himself. Your bind to him is draining his life slowly, and with that, he may not even last one."

It was then that the Elioud grinned, a chilling smirk that made Kagome shudder in loathing. "Precious Matriarch, when the bind to his energy was created, we made the terms permanent. The only way to unbind him is to kill all of us Elioud."

The audience gloated in her silence. The Elder cast his sight on the woman, expecting her to be in a desperate state. It was to his surprise that her eyes remained steeled. It still held that eerie calm.

He told me I can end it before day breaks, if I wanted to.

Kagome bent down and planted a tender kiss on Sesshomaru's lips. Hovering to his ears, she whispered so quietly, "And that is what I plan to do. Wait for me."

Kagome rose from her position, gently laying his head on the floor.

"Where are you going?" one of the clan said. Not even bothering to look behind, she merely paused.

"For a walk."

The elder deliberated at the odd timing of her activity. "Very well then. We shall make our preparations for your binding to us. Come back before the day breaks."

She had reached Sesshomaru's estate. *Kagome-sama, the blood- * Asphodelus worried on the sight of her form, and the malice emanating from the Elioud's sanguine. How was her master even able to walk with the weight of the curses?

"They said they will bind me to them," Kagome informed her calmly as she reached the gate.

*Do you fear?*

"No. The voice that whispered to me, I trust him." She held her gaze up, to the heavens. The rain was receding, and the twilight sky was showing light. It was almost daybreak. "I know that I trust him, more than anything else, even more than myself."

She proceeded to enter the estate, past her own room, into his. She opened the door, the scent of their sex from earlier still wafting in her nose. She saw her yellow ribbon lying neglected on the floor, images of their lovemaking flashed in her mind.

Somehow, she had searched for him throughout the millennia, in between different dimensions. She had been collecting his fragments, waiting for him to surrender his soul to her in the brink of his death.

That was why her memories were filled with him in his last moments.

But this ninety-eighth lifetime was different. This time, she did not need him to die. This time, he should live. It was his core soul, where his true nature was revealed; the only fragment where his celestial energy had manifested. His body was also his final vessel, to house all other ninety-seven fragments.

Once his soul was to be completed, he would have lived as a celestial, an immortal watcher from Shamayim.

But now, his core soul was already bound and plundered by the Elioud.

He was still fated to die.

"I have a gift for you, Onna." his parting words reverberated in the immense silence. Kagome strode forward to his dresser and opened a drawer. In the very corner was a jade box. She ran her fingers through it gingerly. "Open it, it is yours to keep."

When her hand reached the lock, it clicked open, and when she lifted the lid, she found a piece of old parchment. The material was old, the language was even older. But she understood it, and it simply said,

"I lift the veil that has been clouding your memory,

I unlock the spell that has been hindering your mind."

It suddenly dawned on her.

She had just read the contents of the Scroll of Memory. He did not use it, he saved it for her. And in that moment, everything rushed into her, and she finally remembered.

A/N: Long Summary?

Kagome seems to be unaffected by death, and she has superior control over her blood's intentions. Someone encourages her in her lowest point, she gains confidence and attacks the Elders directly. Being able to kill two elders reveals her connections to the Void, but she is stopped. If she kills more than ten elders, she will be dragged into the dark void, very much like what happened to the baphomets - and she will forever lose the chance to unbind Sesshomaru.

Sesshomaru is a fragmented soul, his pieces scattered in different dimensions and timelines, and Kagome has been collecting these pieces throughout the millennia. His ninety-eighth lifetime is his core, and it is his final body. But his core is already bound by the clan, and the only way to break the bind is to kill all of the Elioud, which leads us back to the same problem: if she does it, she will be dragged into the void before even killing half of them.

Even then she does not seem to lose hope, trusting in that someone's message. She finds Sesshomaru's parting gift and opens it. It is the Scroll of Memory, and she finally remembers everything.