Darkness of the Unknown, To Glory, Brothers in Arms, The Chosen Ones.
This chapter is a short break from the plot to just highlight the effect of last chapter on the rest of the cast. I think it goes together better than chapter 24 did.
And frickin' hell, 4th year English is intense. I barely remember to make my updates here, I haven't had a chance to even TOUCH chapter 27 yet...
To Make Things Right
In Chains
Damn it.
"Kohaku!" He failed, that was all Kohaku could think of as he braced himself on one knee, the ground smouldering and the air filled with smoke from the fight he'd just lost. The woods surrounding the highland rise were on fire, their red light spilling like blood in the night. The heavy scent of char and smoke made it a bit hard to breathe, but the sore pain of his slashed forearm was worse.
"Uncle!" Not looking around from where he'd dropped his kusarigama, Kohaku managed to lift his eyes to the blackened cave resting in the cliff just over-head. The hovel was still gushing smoke, the weapon in front of the Slayer still resonating with anger and vengeance over the destruction of its unformed siblings inside. The heat and intensity of the Phoenix Fire had destroyed all of Totosai's enduring projects.
Kohaku had been sent by Lord Sesshoumaru to collect Totosai, and he'd failed. The Swordsmith wasn't dead, but he'd been taken away by the group of fire-birds who had beaten Kohaku to the cliff. Just because he hadn't actually seen Sesshoumaru before receiving the order from one of the palace servants didn't mean he felt any better about having failed.
"...Damn it." He hadn't been there to help Lady Kagura during the attack, and now he'd failed to protect Master Totosai.
"Kohaku!"
Standing up and cradling his wounded arm against his side, Kohaku picked up his weapon and turned to face the voices calling him. Kirara had reverted down to her smaller form, sensing no more danger as the fires would burn themselves out around them soon. The kitten bounced on her black paws and cooed at the sight of Miroku running up through the darkness, his three eldest children following close on his heels: the twins and Kohaku's nephew, Mushin. The young monk reached him first, one hand extended towards the wound dripping blood onto the ground.
"Uncle, you're hurt..." Mushin looked a lot like his mother.
"I'll be fine." He couldn't look at them, it wasn't what he wanted right now. To vanish from family and friends for three years only to reappear in the wake of phoenix fire and destruction, it was not what Kohaku could have hoped for. "Kirara, let's go."
"Kohaku no." Miroku was close enough now to state the words firmly, the fire-cat at the Slayer's feet cooing again as if asking whether or not he was sure. "Come back to the village and let us take care of your wound. Tell us what's going on."
"I can't, I have to report back."
"Back where, Uncle?" He looked to his nieces, both girls were dressed in the white and red of shrine-maidens, but even in the darkness and light of the calming fires he could see the protective arm-bands of their armour peeking out from under their sleeves. "Please come with us!"
"Kohaku, all of the village dogs have gone wild. Even Inuyasha's household was filled with chaos when we went there- and now this?" Now the fires. It must have been a terrible sight from the village, watching the flames rise up into the black sky. Miroku's face was grim, his dark eyes set firmly on Kohaku as the Slayer couldn't decide whether to go or stay. He had to report back with what had happened to the sword smith.
"Lord Sesshoumaru has declared war." He stated, not sure why he regretted the words so much, but they passed. "He's begun calling demons to him to help destroy the Phoenix clan."
"So those were fire-birds! I thought they were all defeated after-?"
"I have to go." Cutting off Mushin's exclamation, Kirara gave a soft growl and then ducked her head a little, her tiny body tensing up before a cyclone of fire ripped up over her body. There was no need to fear being burned by the crimson flames as they vanished, Kirara's yoki was something she knew how to control perfectly and keep from harming the friends around her.
"Kohaku!" No, he was leaving. Climbing quickly onto Kirara's back, the two-tailed cat leapt up into the air and circled tightly around, right over-head so he could answer Miroku.
"Tomorrow at dawn Lord Sesshoumaru will begin summoning a great army. If you want to join him, then bring your warriors to Katanakaji volcano! That's where the Phoenix Lord and his people have hidden themselves- it's where they've taken Master Totosai so they can force him to forge a weapon of power for Ryokijin." A weapon reforged from Tenseiga, that was the fear Kohaku had expressed to Kanna when he arrived at the palace and had heard of the sword's disappearance. He didn't know why he hadn't seen Sesshoumaru when he was there, but if the General had been injured in the attack on his home then it was better that he'd rested these past four days.
Tomorrow the war would become real. The fires that had crept across so much land would start up again and every beast would begin fighting one another for supremacy and survival. Lord Sesshoumaru had neither called on nor accepted help from others when he reclaimed the Western Lands the first time, but this time things would end much faster. The violence would be condensed down to two massive bodies out to annihilate one another, and the landscape surrounding the battle would be forever altered in the memory of it.
Wheeling Kirara around one more time through the smoke, he saw Miroku's face and understood what his brother-in-law was going to say before the words even left the monk's mouth.
"What about you!" Kohaku was human, he didn't have a place in this war. He wasn't drawn to the yoki of either Demon Lord, he wasn't even expected to survive if he showed up on the side of the volcano. But that didn't matter. The last time a single demon had been responsible for this much chaos and death, it had taken efforts from every powerful or simply note-worthy demon in the land to bring Naraku down.
"I fight for the Lady of the West, Miroku- I choose this!" He would help slay Ryokijin. It was his duty as a Demon Slayer, it was his life and honour and purpose all combined together.
He would not fail.
It was a shiver down the spine that hung on and coiled around the legs, a howl in the wind that wouldn't fade even hours after it had ended. The dawn was still bright in the east, the sky clear as the air rippled, distant sounds and familiar scents mingling to deliver the message.
It wasn't a polite request, the Dog General was down right insulting in his volume and tone, but that was the point. Lord Sesshoumaru of the West wasn't asking for help, he was demanding that any mutt worth his own fangs get their shit together and run with him. Dogs, wolves, foxes, raccoons, he didn't give a damn who came and who stuck their head in the ground pretending there was nothing going on. Koga wouldn't admit it, but he kinda liked that attitude.
You heard stories of the Old General, the one who sealed the Dragon Ryukotsusei, the one who repelled the Panther Devas the first time they attacked, the one who slew the Moth King Hyoga. When Koga'd been a pup those stories had circulated constantly about the mighty Inu no Taishou, with pains taken to differentiate between him and his successor in the West. It hadn't been until the return of the Panther Demons that Koga had figured out that the almighty Dog Demon had been Inuyasha's father too, but whatever. It wasn't Inu-korro giving the commands here, it was his brother.
So Sesshoumaru was the one who'd defeated that damn Fire Bird Ryokijin three years ago, eh? Well he'd sure done a crappy job of it as far as Koga was concerned. The dead don't go coming back to life, and just chasing enemies away was never good enough to kill the threat entirely. Koga would know, he'd lost enough wolves to the new Western Lord ever since Sesshoumaru returned from whatever journey he'd been on. Everyone'd been convinced the mutt was dead.
Guess being out-lived by the Half-breed would've been too much for him to bear.
"Move faster, mutts!" Pounding the sparse plains with his feet, wolves and demons together were spread out behind the Prince of Wolves. Two tribes had originally set off with him from the eastern mountains where they made their home, but following the resonating cry of the Dog General's summons had led them across several other wolf packs. They were even running with wild dogs now, not just wolves, and as Koga peered over the next rising hill he could see a scrambling patch of orange fur and long tails: foxes.
"Koga!" What the hell? Letting the winds around him dissipate, Koga slowed down enough to give his companions the time to start catching up, snarling over his shoulder and making a bold motion with his arm so they understood that they weren't going to stop here. The Dog General wanted them to attack the Phoenix's volcano to the north-west, the high eastern corner of Sesshoumaru's own territories, and they were damned-well gonna get there in time for the fight.
"Kid, what the hell're you doing here?" Shippo, the orange-haired fox demon who'd always travelled with Kagome and Dog-breath. Twenty years isn't that long, especially for a kitsune. Shippo was barely up to Koga's hip as the wolf stopped, the fox waving his friends on as they melded in with the running wolves, yips and barks rippling through the legion of fur and fangs.
"I was summoned!" Shippo hadn't changed his appearance too much in the last decade, the young fox wearing the same blue, yellow and orange outfit of years before, just modified to accommodate slightly longer limbs. With his green eyes and bushy tail, there was nothing intimidating about the kit, and his declaration just sounded stupid.
"You don't even have your second tail yet!" He sniped, prepared to give the kit a good kick to the back of the head and send him away. "Go home before I get crap from Kagome about letting a kid like you go to war." Shippo just bared his teeth at him, Koga prepared to ignore him when he saw the erratic twitch in the fox's tail.
"Hey! I've got a rank too, y'know!" Rank? And was the Dog General seriously calling on children to- "Kitsune Promotion! I'm already rank nineteen, Koga, I'm running with foxes two and three times my own age!"
'Being skilled at illusions doesn't mean he can just go off and-' Hey!
A cloud of grey smoke swallowed the fox-child in front of him, and a moment later Koga was looking at his own backside as Shippo turned and bolted away into the pack. The wolf prince took off after him, barking at other running mutts to get out of his way, but even as a whirlwind grew out from around his fast-moving legs there was another vortex already spinning several hundred yards ahead of him. Since when had the kit had that sort of power- the kind to go and mimic another demon's abilities?
Maybe that was why Sesshoumaru of the West was calling him. But damn Koga if it still didn't reek of a bad idea. Stupid dogs, but who knew: maybe the Great General had been a selfish moron too.
"They threw a child into the river every three days until the dam was built!" Oh, shut up... She didn't want to hear it anymore, she didn't want to- "They enslaved all the village men, and they torched the elders one by one as examples!"
Kagura closed her eyes again in the dark, her body sore and filthy resting on her knees. Her feet had been blistered by the heat of the wall behind her, chains binding her wrists and locked around her throat, keeping her from moving inside the white cage maintained over her. Her hands were left hanging at the same height as her shoulders, the air hot and still as she just focused on breathing; tried to feel her own breath.
Domed over her head and wrapped around her chains was the faint light of a barrier, paper charms clinging to her bonds so she couldn't fade into the air and slip out of them. The priestess holding the spells in place was seated on the stone floor several feet away from Kagura in the dark. Her hands were clasped and fingers woven together around a charmed rosary. The woman's face was strained, another set of chains holding her ankles but hidden from Kagura's view where she was kneeling. Her wide red pants were burnt and torn around her legs, a sleeve of her soiled white robe missing. A prisoner to hold a prisoner, there were lines of grey feathered through the woman's black hair, strands hanging wild and unkempt around her face. If she squeezed her fingers together any tighter, they'd pop off.
"Even if you look human, even if you sound and act like a woman, you're still just another demon- another creature like those horrible birds!" Kagura didn't want to hear this anymore. When she'd first been brought down here and chained up she'd rebelled. She'd screamed for the wind to come down and cut her free, she'd demanded the world shift and the walls fall over from the furious storm of yoki she had unleashed. It hadn't worked, but Kagura hadn't given up: she'd only been quiet now for a few hours, exhausted and desperate to regain some of her strength before trying again. She would be free of this place.
The human seemed to think Kagura had given up for good, hence the lecture. Kagura didn't even have to open her eyes to hear another string of words building up in the priestess' throat, but she tried tuning it out for now:
'Sesshoumaru.' Freedom, she needed to escape from this place, to be free once again... 'Don't be too late.'
From the time Kagura had woken up and found herself trapped by the priestess' sutra until now, Kagura's marks and the world within her heart hadn't had any comfort to give her. Moving her mind from her real body and focusing instead on that sunlit meadow within her had left her alone. Not abandoned, but still without him. Instead- and Kagura wasn't quiet sure how real this was, she could have sworn she had seen Kanna's mirror glinting between the flowers. It hadn't made any sense to her, but any attempts to pick up the item had jarred her rudely back into her tiny prison.
The heat of this place was stifling, she couldn't stop sweating. Even when the water dripped off her nose or chin and managed to find its way to the hot stones beneath her, they just hissed and bubbled up as steam. The air was foul-smelling, both from the number of humans who had been left down here in chains with her, and from the corpses of those who had expired while waiting. There were only about three others still alive, not counting the priestess; they seemed convinced that keeping Kagura in her chains would convince the Phoenixes to let them go.
So far they had been rewarded with pithy rations and no water, and it wasn't just the heat that was killing the humans off either: it was the toxins seeping through the stones and filling the air. Whatever diseases they might pick up from the rotting flesh wouldn't kill them before the sulphur from the volcano did the job instead.
'Ryokijin was always painted as soft-hearted, Sesshoumaru. Something's changed if he's willing to let so many be slowly gassed to death in his own house.'
Something had changed today, because it even felt like a new day. Something had calmed Kagura and it had come in two parts: the first was how, although she still couldn't see or contact Sesshoumaru directly through that inner world, she could sense him again. It was like whenever he left on a conquest of some kind, how the meadow would grow impossibly vast in her mind's eye like it was trying to represent the physical distance between them. He was apart from her, but she could sense him again; his rage wasn't close enough for her to feel it on her skin, not strong enough to bleed into her heart, but she knew it was there.
He was out there, he was furious beyond words, and he was coming for her.
'Us, he's coming for us.' And she didn't mean the priestess and her dying villagers. 'Little one, not even living yet and still ready to fight...' A new day outside this prison had brought back her awareness of Sesshoumaru, but it had also done something strange to her womb.
She could feel it, a restlessness, a power, a need. It wasn't quite an emotion with a name: not something like fear, or rage, or excitement. Instead, Kagura could feel all of the potential enclosed within her body, and in return her flesh stopped rebelling so harshly against her bonds; it focused internally instead. Sesshoumaru's child was barely alive, hardly real, but it was already willing to answer him, to return something else for his rage and pride. It just didn't know what yet, making it something for Kagura to focus on and deal with instead.
So now all she needed to do was make sure that power enclosed within her remained satiated. It was more important that it be nourished by her flesh and yoki than to have Kagura waste her energy against bonds that wouldn't break. There was almost a gross satisfaction in providing for Sesshoumaru's young in the heart of Ryokijin's castle, a blatant denial of whatever suffering the Phoenix was trying to inflict on her with these chains and the woman's endless prattling. Once the priestess succumbed to the heat and toxins of this miniature hell, Kagura would be free. For this, she could be patient.
"What are you smiling for, yokai?"
"Daiyokai." She corrected, because patience didn't necessarily include silence. The priestess almost seemed to shake at the sound of her voice, and Kagura very slowly opened her red eyes, not bothering to lift her head more than half-way up so she could see the human's trembling hands. "I am no weak spirit, human. I've almost killed you at least four times now, and you can't even break your meditation long enough to close the eyes of your dear apprentices."
It hadn't taken just one priestess to seal Kagura's powers and put her in this wretched position, and as she spoke the Kaze-Daiyokai let her gaze slide over the still bodies flanking the woman. The two young girls had been struck down over the last four days, one on purpose by Kagura when she had come closest to freedom, the other had simply succumbed to the fumes hissing through the stones. Kagura hated looking at dead children, in fact she didn't like being too near the dead in general, but the priestess really was too terrified of her to unclasp her hands and close the eyes of the rotting apprentice.
Sightless dead eyes, she hated the look of them.
"For their sake, I won't allow you to break free, yokai." Daiyokai, was this woman deaf? Kagura felt a very small spark of power peel away from the mark on her forehead, the smallest breath of wind trying to move down over her sweating brow. It was cast down by the purifying energy arcing off her chains, an irritating effect of the spell.
"You're running out of time." It was terrible, but as much as Kagura had managed to forget of her life with Naraku, some things were simply too useful to let go of. Knowing how to terrorize others was a skill she sometimes wished would fade with time, but her sense of the woman's emotions was as strong as ever. "You're running out of people to save. What will you do when it's only you and I left, miko? Your village is all gone now, so tell me-"
"Shut up!"
"So tell me..." She had only waited so long to try undermining the woman because her outrage had been too strong before. It took a calm mind to read and pick apart another person, it took the self-confidence necessary to convince the other person that you had all the time in the world, whereas they had none. "Did you ever send for help, Miko? Your village was over-taken by Phoenixes, not something a few priests and some prayer could fix. Did you ever search for the Demon Slayers? Did you ever-?"
"The Taijiya live amongst demons, they obtain strength and abilities no normal humans could ever possess- they're no better than Half-demons, corrupted creatures with only partial-souls." Mm, well that was an interesting way of looking at things. Kagura didn't want to laugh, but she chuckled, she made the sound rise up and licked one red lip with her tongue, running the tip over one of her sharp teeth to form a false grin.
"Better to die in agony than take help from half-demons." If that was a common sentiment amongst humans, then perhaps Kohaku's decision to leave his people behind made sense. It didn't have to be true, it just had to scare people. "Did you even know who killed the Phoenix Lord the first time..?"
"The Western Demon Lord..." Very good... "Are you saying that that's where we should have gone? Surrendered our souls to some wild devil-!"
"I'm saying you should have gone, because then you would have learned how the Lord of the West doesn't care for human souls or human problems." Lifting her eyes up just enough so she could see more than the priestess's legs, Kagura didn't have to look over the woman's shoulder to know she had the attention of another human as well. A man who had knelt by his dying wife and two dead children for days now had calmed his sobbing, the woman had stopped breathing not long ago, but Kagura could now feel his attention now firmly set on her. There was one more child and two adults sitting in the dank prison, her enraptured audience.
"Then what good would there have been in going to him?" The priestess demanded, Kagura's eyes not flickering from where they'd been resting on the woman's hands still. She waited a few moments, counting idly in her head and stroking the soothing warmth in her flesh with another flare of yoki. Feed, grow, be strong.
"The good would have been that I, the wife of the Western Lord, hate each and every branch of the Phoenix Clan." Kagura let the words roll over her tongue like a warm sweet, not smiling, but purposefully planting an ounce of cruel amusement in her voice. "And the only thing my husband loves more than me is hearing any excuse to go to war."
What she was saying didn't dawn slowly on the woman listening to her. The priestess wasn't stupid, she may have taken care of and lived within a small village, but she was no fool. The implications were obvious, and before the woman's black eyes could turn from muted horror to affronted anger, another voice broke in.
"Lady Koyumi." A more important voice than Kagura's, because she was still, after-all, just a demon. Watching the priestess' back stiffen as her fellow human called her name was far more rewarding than having Kagura continue to taunt her. She'd said enough.
"Ganju-"
"Is it true?" The priestess couldn't move without releasing the spell on Kagura, or at least not without drastically weakening it. "She's his wife?" Lowering her head back down the way it had been before, Kagura kept her face from smiling but didn't find the demand taxing. It was harder to feel good about using Naraku's style of manipulation than it was to actually use it. But she had to be free.
"Ganju, demons don't marry the way humans do, they-" Hmph. Kagura kept silent, but she stiffened her jaw instead and listened for the sound of the man rising up for the first time in days. She didn't need to see the sores that had opened on his legs from kneeling in filth, or the sickly palour of his face from bathing in toxins. The stench was enough to paint the picture, and in the unrelenting heat and still here there was nothing to mitigate the effects.
"Is he coming for you?"
"Ganju!"
"Shut up! Is the Western Lord coming for you or not, Kaze-Daiyokai?" Oh, so that question hadn't been meant for the priestess. Kagura closed her eyes again, remembering the feel of the wind across her face, imagining herself walking at peace through her flowers.
"Of course he is..."
"Lady Koyumi, when he gets here and he sees what you're doing to her he-"
"Ganju stop. If I let her go they'll kill us-"
"We are already dead!" Kagura flinched- if only the fool could keep his voice down. She refused to look up through the dark and find the narrow stairs that led into the rest of the castle. If a guard heard them yelling then Kagura would need the human to move faster. He didn't have to kill the woman, just strike her down, just do something to shatter what was left of her concentration.
'I will be free.' Sesshoumaru would have his war, but Kagura would not just sit here complacently and wait to be rescued. 'I will be free, and I will watch Ryokijin die for real this time. Let me out of here!'
Kagura saw light flare at the top of the stairs and she instantly knew it wasn't meant to be. The human lunged at the priestess and the spell wavered dramatically- but before Kagura could force her own power to rise up and shatter the barriers and charms keeping her in place the man- Ganju, fell back in a wailing heap. Light flashed over the piled corpses and the hot stones, an arrow spitting fire out of the man's chest where it had lodged itself in his heart. He was dead before the Phoenix guard even reached the floor where Kagura was still kneeling, her plan foiled and the priestess gasping and sobbing for breath. She hadn't thought it possible, but the air stank even worse now than it had a few minutes ago.
Four humans all together, now down to three.
"Up, wench. Lord Ryokijin demands to have the prisoner brought to him." The guard was speaking to the priestess, kneeling down and unlocking her chains from the wall that kept her tethered there. Kagura could only watch as the woman struggled in her own filth to rise up, her legs and feet cooking slowly through from the constant heat. The priestess was the one, key in hand, who detached Kagura's chains one by one from the wall- starting with the one that held both her throat and wrists. They didn't actually remove the manacles from her skin though, the priestess passing the heavy iron links over to the Phoenix instead.
He couldn't hold them for long though, they were too heavily charmed and once the barrier came down the woman took the two of them up again. The Phoenixes were clever and cruel about prisoners, the heavy collar around Kagura's throat had two incredibly short chains attached to the cuffs around her wrists. She could bend her shoulders, not her elbows, and the muscles were weeping from the need to move. Only one chain connected her top half to the wall. The one binding her legs was the same set-up: only a few inches of chain between her bound ankles, her knees impossible to bend so long as she was restricted by the top chains.
But Kagura was a powerful demon, her body could endure things a human could never imagine. Four days without moving left her in horrible pain, but still allowed her to rise without trembling or falling over herself. She'd seen it enough times with Sesshoumaru to know how it was done; you simply commanded your body to move, and then moved, fortifying limbs and joins with yoki was only necessary when you really couldn't do it on your own. She spared some energy for herself now, but with the purifying energy still lancing through the chains like an electric current, the effects weren't as strong as she could have liked. The barrier was re-established before Kagura was even all the way up-right.
"Walk." So she did. And the human woman wept silently behind her.
How do you hold onto a creature that can instantly turn itself into thin air? T'was the best I could come up with, really. Lemme know what you thought in your reviews!