Hooves pounded through leaves and steel sliced through rough, bristly skin. Another vermin down, another nest decimated. Thranduil flicked the thick, sticky blood off the blade of his sword and swung it back around to fell another. They'd been at this for hours already today, branching out every day in new directions in farther distances to clear the wood once and for all of the spider's taint. He would no longer allow the oppressive darkness of the past to shadow his kingdom, no longer dim love's light from his heart.

He drew back on Cílon's reigns, careening him around to address his soldiers.

"That is enough for today. We will retreat to rest and-"

Faster than any of them could react, draw a sword or knock an arrow, a spider that had been hiding away much higher in the branches fell on Thranduil, knocking him from his elk and his sword from his hand. The spider landed on top of him and screeched an unholy screech. It reared back, bearing its fangs, prepared to drive them through his neck. For just the briefest of moments, he thought about letting it. Considered allowing this creature to be his gateway to the next world, to the other half of his soul. But then the face of his son, even now risking his life to help bring light back to all in the world, flashed through his mind and he decided no, not yet. He still had work to do. He elbowed it sharply as it descended, rolled out from under it as it recoiled, swiped up his sword, and skewered the spider through the head.

He met the eyes of the closest member of his guard, who had begun approaching with his own sword to save his lord. There had truly not been enough time to react, the whole ordeal taking less than a few, rapid moments. He noticed his other guard members in various other stages of defense, some with swords half drawn, others with arrows just meeting bows.

He straightened his armor and brushed some dirt from his cloak before finally addressing them, shocking them with the small twinkling of amusement in his eyes.

"Bothersome creatures, are they not?"

He turned to remount Cílon, and made his way past his guard and toward his castle.

The remaining soldiers stood silently, looking at each other in confusion before also turning to follow their King back.

'Had he just... made a joke?'

Legolas stood off to the side of the room of the holding they were currently waiting in, as alone as possible, feeling tense and nervous. His feelings were reflected by the straight, rigid line of his shoulders and his stern expression, ensuring that most of the humans gathered and milling about gave him at wide berth.

He had known, of course, that this would not be an easy journey. He had anticipated death, darkness, struggle, but he was having trouble actually wrapping his head around just how much had unraveled, and so quickly. The only seeming bright spot now, was that Theoden King was no longer possessed, and the hobbits had a good chance of being alive.

He took out the necklace he'd had stashed in his pocket and ran the pad of his thumb over the jewels embedded in it. He hoped beyond all hope he would not be holding on to this necklace for much longer, but he wasn't sure if humans were sturdy enough to survive a fall off of a cliff the size of the one Aragorn had been pitched over. But then he'd also been fairly certain their little hobbit friends would not be able to survive capture by orcs, so his tiny seed of hope did not die.

A commotion at the entrance drew his attention, and what he saw caused his heart to grow much lighter.

Aragorn strode in looking so much like he'd crawled out from under a rock in a swamp.

He rushed over to embrace him, relief squeezing him all the way to his soul.

"Aragorn! You look terrible!"

They shared a laugh and he passed over the Evenstar necklace he'd taken from the orc on the cliff, which Aragorn clutched to his chest in relief.

Legolas had a sick feeling that things were about to take yet another turn into darkness, so he'd hold this small boon close for now.

Kagome's arrow sliced through a small group of low level youkai effortlessly and they turned to sparkling ash that floated down around them, adding a macabre sense of beauty to the gruesome fight they were currently engaged in.

They'd decided to stop in a village to fish for shard rumors, all except for Sesshoumaru and Koga who'd had no desire to deal with humans and their prejudices, when they came upon a large swarm of low level yokai that had descended on a small village in their path, wreaking all sorts of havoc and causing detrimental chaos.

'This must be one of Naraku's swarms.' Kagome thought to herself wearily. The swarm was doing major damage to the outer lying huts in the village, as well as some of the crop fields and livestock. It was impossible for Inuyasha or Sango to escape the center of the swarm with their weapons designed to clear huge swaths of such demons, as the were currently fighting back to back right in the center. Miroku was using his wind tunnel as much as he could, but Naraku had made sure to send his hell wasps out as well, meaning the monk would be in danger from using it too much.

Kagome glanced around her quickly taking stock of their situation from all angles. Something had to be done about the village perimeter. She noticed a small pen off one side of one of the larger huts. It housed a pig and a horse tied to a stake. She felt that tell-tale tingle in the back of her skull, the one that had been happening pretty regularly lately, telling her to do something she didn't consciously know she knew. It was like some muscle memory took over. She followed it, as it hadn't steered her wrong yet, and jogged over to the pen and untied the horse.

She mounted him, though he had no saddle, and carefully steered him out of the pen before flicking his reigns and setting him off at a quick run. It felt just like riding a bike for the first time in a while, even though she'd never done this before, in this life anyway. It was perfect for covering the ground she needed to cover quickly and secure the outer perimeter of the village from the stray pairs of yokai that had broken off from the larger swarm. She quickly caught up with whatever instinct was helping her even stay on the horse, and soon she was able to draw her bow once more, rapidly firing several more glowing arrows into the main melee and clearing out a nice chunk of the swarm and allowing her friends in the middle a chance to breath and gain a bit of an upper hand.

She set her sights elsewhere, then, drawing the sword she'd brought from home, charging it with reiki much like her arrows, and slicing through any low level vermin that flew into her path. With the sizeable chunk of jewel around her neck, that meant all of them. Once she'd finally finished off all of the spare strays, she turned the horse around and road into the main battle to help her friends finish off the main swarm.

They were greeted by the village headman once their extermination job was finished, and he regrettably had to inform them that there was no longer a place for them to stay, as their inn and larger buildings suitable for hospitality had been destroyed. But since he'd noticed they had three users of holy power in their midst, he offered them something else.

"One of our children found it playing near the river, and it has caused nothing but trouble for us since. Would you perhaps be able to make use of it?"

He held out a hand, and in his palm rested another shard.

"Oh!" Kagome exclaimed, "this must be why Naraku sent this swarm." She quickly snatched the shard away, which purified at her touch, and placed it in her glass vial at her neck.

"Thank you sir. We've been on a journey to gather these. They're shards of a very dangerous jewel, it's best you don't keep any here, if possible. They only spell disaster."

"Indeed they do, miko-sama, Indeed they do." He sighed regrettably, taking in the damage done to his small village. But he was certain they would have been flattened completely if these strangers had not shown up when they did.

"I must thank you all, though I have nothing to offer now. We most surely would have decimated to the very last of us had you not shown up. What a fortuitous occurrence."

"Keh, don't need nothin'. Gettin' another shard outta that bastard Naraku's grubby hands is good enough for me."

After assuring the group that they needed no help rebuilding, as they had much to take stock of before even beginning such a feat and he had no desire to delay them any further, the group of shard hunters moved on to the road leading out of the village, were they once again joined their two full yokai companions. Kagome turned to Kikyo to ask a question that was suddenly bothering her a great deal.

"Kikyo, if that shard was there the whole time, why didn't we sense it?"

Kikyo took a moment to consider and shrugged.

"It's possible that we were simply overwhelmed by the much more imminent danger of the youkai swarm and we simply did not notice. It is also possible that the increasing split of our shared soul is now equal enough between us that neither of us will be able to sense the jewel very strongly until one of us holds the greater share again. I have been pondering on the affects of our situation for a time now. Perhaps we are now seeing some of them."

Kagome's brow crinkled in thought and slight worry. That, along with the constant distraction of her many other changes, could prove troublesome in the near future if they weren't very careful.

"You may be right. We'll have to be careful if that's the case. Hopefully it's not, but... who can know?"

They made camp and settled in, and shortly after dinner, Sesshoumaru spoke up with an interesting change of plans.

"I know someone we can speak to who might hold valuable information for our fight against the spider. We should change course first thing tomorrow, and I will lead us there."

"That's great Sesshoumaru-sama! Anything is better than wondering around with no real destination at this point. Today was a lucky break, helping that village and gaining a shard. But we spend too much time just walking and hoping we stumbling into something useful."

Surprisingly, even Inuyasha agreed, so the night, especially for her, ended peacefully, her lap full of children demanding a bed time story and then cuddling them as they drifted off to sleep in the calm of their little camp site.

She fought off the feeling of dark foreboding and ignored everything but the steady breaths and peaceful faces of Shippo and Rin as they slept cuddled in her arms.