Chapter 29 Regrouping
In the depths of the bone eater's well, Sesshoumaru hunched over the Tensaiga, directing its life giving energies across the centuries to Kagome. Although rills of sweat poured from his brow and stained his shirt, he did not welcome the cool darkness of the well. It actually provoked an irrational fear that silently crept out from the dark corners of his mind; the fear that Kagome would be lost in the coffin like confines of the well set 500 years in the past.
He kept seeing himself collapsing in exhaustion and Kagome's wounds ripping open and bleeding out in crimson torrents.
No.
He could see her whispering his name as her heart gave one last beat and the darkness embraced her completely.
Stop it damnit!
Sesshoumaru forced himself to stop his self-torture with despair inducing visions and considered Wei.
Self-confidence had never been an issue for Sesshoumaru, yet Wei gave him pause. Wei had, if not defeated him outright, out maneuvered him with apparent ease and seemingly without using the full extent of his power.
He also got hit by a train full on and came back for more.
When he did face Wei again, and Sesshoumaru was certain he would, he was at a loss for how to kill him.
There is also his sword, the Shining Hate.
Sesshoumaru felt certain he had received only a small taste of the devastation that sword could wreak; the explosion on the subway platform that erupted as he pursued the Wei with Kagome was impossible to miss.
Beyond that and perhaps more disturbing was the mimic body he had fought and which was clearly an extension of Wei. Either it was being controlled with ease like a puppet or it acted independently and Wei had nary a fear about rebellion. Even Naraku, famed as he was for creating 'children' did so with caution. Even then control was a serious issue, especially with Kanna's sister Kagura and her brothers Juuromaru and Kageroumaru. For Wei to be able to create others and control them flawlessly was deeply worrisome.
If this Wei is like Naraku, and can create incarnations of himself, it may be that like Naraku he has only one weak point. Something like a heart that has to be destroyed to crush him...
His incarnations though, they keep forming and reforming...pulverizing one with a train was merely inconvenient. There was not so much as a hint of fear in the face of any threat...Naraku always used his incarnations as a shield to protect himself and his heart...If Wei has a trail that can be traced to his origin...the means to his destruction may lie there.
Sesshoumaru's thoughts shifted to the brief conversation he'd held with Wei. Clearly Wei knew of the well and had set as his goal rewriting history by exterminating the Japanese.
What is he exactly? Why does he hate us with such intensity?
Like all Japanese, Sesshoumaru knew a large amount of the bitterness that persisted between China and Japan was a result of his country's invasion of China decades ago.
Wei looks like he is in his twenties...although considering how I look that doesn't mean anything...Is he just some sort of insane Chinese nationalist...
Sesshoumaru went over the brief snippets of conversation he and Wei had again and again, but could not find any meaningful clues to answer the questions surrounding Wei. The only thing that he knew for certain was that time was slipping away from him while Wei pursued his genocidal dreams.
It must be my lucky day, Wei thought as thousands of his bodies crowded into a dark cave rife with the smell of decomposition and filled with the scattered remains of youkai. One in particular, was quite impressive.
While many monks and priests were able to kill youkai, only one woman, a priestess, was able to bring balance to the souls of the youkai and thus nullify them completely...
The dark scales of its mammoth coils stretched throughout the cavern, frozen motionless in bluish crystal while in the process of trying to devour a woman
The youkai hated and feared her, and so they resolved to create a monster so massive and so evil that it would be almost impossible to purify...
One of Wei's bodies looked into the horrified and shame filled eyes of a man, an actual human, who seemed to be fused at the molecular level with the beast.
Unknown to the priestess Midoriko, a local villager had fallen in love with her. The youkai snuck into a crevice in his heart, and using him as a crucible, combined to form a truly abominable creature...
In the dim light of the cavern, one of the Weis studied a fist-sized hole in the armored torso of the priestess.
For 7 days and 7 nights the priestess and the youkai did battle. When at last the youkai was within reach of triumph over Midoriko and was about to consume her, she used the last of her strength to absorb the youkai's soul into her own and expelled both from her body in the form of the Shikon no Tama...
Wei stared at the silently screaming priestess, frozen for decades in crystal while in the midst of being eaten by a youkai without equal. A youkai whose body was nothing more than a hollow shell now because the most critical component, the soul, was missing. For all the tentacles, claws, and multiple fang-filled heads, it might as well have been nothing but an oversized paperweight for its spiritual void.
I, of course, can fill that emptiness...
The normally silent confines of the cavern suddenly became filled with wet sloshing sounds as Wei broke the forms of thousands of his bodies and forced them down the throat of the soulless youkai in a torrent of red.
A moment of perfect and ominous silence passed...and then another...
Then a tremendous crashing sound was heard, as though a mountain of glass had been shattered by the sledgehammer of an angry god as Wei flexed the beast's muscles and broke free from its imprisonment.
The earth shuddered and the cavern groaned like a massive vault unwillingly being forced open. Cracks and fissures split the mountainside in which the cave had been formed and sent animals scurrying every which way to find safety.
Then the mountainside exploded outward in a colossal booming of boulders, trees, and confused animals and rained earth everywhere. Adjusting to the senses of his newly acquired body, Wei paused for a moment, trying to not be overwhelmed by a body that seemed as awkward to him as a bicycle would be to a fish.
This is going to take some adjustment, Wei thought to himself as he tried to measure the responses of the alien body to his command. As his will and power flooded through the monster born from an impossible love, the muscles twisted and bunched as Wei tried to make sense of the confusing labyrinth of bones, blood, and flesh. Restoring a life to the creature was an exhausting process of learning. Each time he sent a command down and through the beast's nerves, some portion would twitch and spasm as though struck by an electrical shock. Until he could figure out how to manipulate the beast properly, all Wei could do was invoke seemingly mindless thrashing from it and send tremors resonating through the ground as he moved.
After nearly an hour of slamming the ground with ungodly force from the ungodly creature, Wei gained enough experience from his efforts that he was able to bring a semblance of order to the amalgam from hell and control it sufficiently to send it slithering to the east. Wei felt certain that a beast of this power would be able to fly, but was not immediately able to figure out how to get it to do so.
The hell with it, the ground will be good enough for now Wei conceded in temporary defeat as he propelled himself along on the creature's underside as a serpent would.
I will master this thing though, Wei vowed solemnly to himself.
For Kagome, thousands of years seemed to pass before she opened her eyes again. In that millennial sleep, she spent thousands of years dreaming alternatively of angels cast in moonlight and blades forged in blood. For a millennium, she was bound in those dreams, unable to speak, to move, to see or to hear.
Then a muscle twitched in her back. It took a century to isolate that muscle and make it contract again and then expand. As the decades grew into another century, Kagome gradually became aware of the surrounding muscles and began to manipulate them as well. The chrysalis of sleep in which Kagome had retreated began to rip and tear as she clenched her thigh and arm muscles. With a surge of effort she broke free of her imprisoning sleep and opened her gentle brown eyes to the waking world.
A world that was now a nightmare. A world in which a super powered psychopath was on the loose five hundred years in the past and was doing who-knew-what to the delicate threads of history.
Got to stop him...
Forcing action from her lethargic muscles, Kagome hooked one barely responsive hand after another on the ropeway out of the well and into the daylight.
