A/N: Hi, just an update on my life in case you're interested. Currently writing this as a freshly-minted wife and on my husband's underused gaming PC. I've been instructed by my government to stay home for two weeks after getting back from Switzerland for my honeymoon due to the coronavirus (I saw snow for the first time. I can't believe I've been writing about snow without actually seeing it.) Don't worry, we're both fine, feeling no symptoms, thank god. So obviously I am on a writing spree right now. I also reckon I might prolly be giving birth in nine months; a coronial child.

Anyway, welcome to the fifth arc of Binded. This is crazy.

'The Saika Ikki or Saiga Ikki (雑賀一揆), based in Ōta in the Kii Province (now part of Wakayama Prefecture) of Honshū, were one of many ikkō-ikki mercenary groups in feudal Japan led by Suzuki Magoichi, better known as Saika Magoichi. Their unnamed men and women informants were said to have been called "Magoichi" by their clients. In particular, the members of the Saika Ikki, along with the monks of the Negoro-ji, were renowned for their expertise with the arquebus and for their expert gunsmiths and foundries.' (Wikipedia contributors. "Saika Ikki." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 8 Mar. 2020. Web. 20 Mar. 2020.)

Under the Magnolia, By The Arakawa

During the year 1569

"Our spies have returned last night," she told him, "and every word they proclaim is more or less the same. There is one among us providing assistance to the human warlords."

"One among us?"

"Of bakemono blood. A tengu, to be precise."

Sesshoumaru strolled to the banister lining the castle corridors, his hands kept tightly behind his back. An inscrutable flicker seemed to pass his face, or perhaps it was the play of shadows, furnished by the burning lantern hanging above.

"What do we know of this tengu?"

The sleeves of his mother's kimono rustled quietly from behind. "Hijikamon of Mount Takao," she said. "You must know about him."

Hijikamon was an ancient bird, revered in the demon circles for his prodigious powers, art of combat and wisdom. A thousand years ago the devout ascetic had lent strength to the West when the demons from the dark continent came to attack.

She spoke again. "The most highest class of tengu he is, he fancies himself so divine he has proclaimed himself a god."

"And the reason he is helping the humans is because..."

"Because they have promised their subservience to him." His mother smiled. "That is all you ever need for a god, isn't it? Worshippers. Now Sesshoumaru, I want you to weed out Hijikamon in his little nest and do what you must."

"Mother. You wish for me to kill Hijikamon?"

Her voice rose sharp to cut against his own. "I am not your mother. I am ordering you as the Dowager Lady of the West. Find Hijikamon and end him. It is not an amusing sight to see human soldiers flailing their paltry weapons with bakemono power against us. The Castle of the East has surrendered, the North is buckling on their knees. It leaves us and the Southern Cats to act. And act we must."

A night breeze came, gentle and light, whispering into the castle. Sesshoumaru closed his eyes, allowing its feathery tendrils to trace his face and neck. It was quiet and sedentary in the castle, and hard to believe that only a few miles down the rocky mountains, westwards, a terrible war was tearing the country apart.

Fight. Fight against the humans. Never would he thought the day would come when he would have to recognize the trifling critters as an enemy. Ten years ago one man by the name of Oda Nobunaga had rose in power, bringing along a dream of unifying the land under one rule—a human rule. It was a declaration of war between the scattered feudal lords, a conflict of ideals and interests. And yet if anything did unify them, it was their goal to cleanse the lands of anything inhuman. Because they bred like the vermin they were, their numbers multiplied larger than anyone could count, steadily toppling youkai empires that had lasted thousands of years before them.

Now Sesshoumaru himself was embroiled in this battle as a lord of his own empire, in which he was pressed to not only protect himself, but his whole kind.

He soothed his temples. The matter had only been a little niggling at the back of his mind when the first hearsays reached the castle. Now the joke had gone stale. Somewhere, a wind-chime chinked softly as if signaling someone's arrival.

A spy came to reveal himself, one commissioned by the castle, materializing in the air in a swirling shadow. His mother did not bother to hide her snort upon his appearance, and it was not just due to his untimely manner. This spy was different from the ones his mother had dispatched. His name was Oka, and he only knelt to Sesshoumaru. At first his mother had been amused by the role her son had designed for him, but over time it grew into resentment.

"Really, Sesshoumaru? At a crucial time like this? Stop dipping your feet into two rivers at once!"

She walked off down the corridor, briskly, the long train of her robe trailing behind her feet. Sesshoumaru watched her. Her words echoed hollow from the distance.

"Our kind, before everything else!"

"Did I come at a wrong time, milord?" Oka whispered.

Sesshoumaru turned back to face the mountains.

"You would not have known. Now speak quickly."

"I bring urgent news, milord. Rin has been afflicted with great harm and insists on your audience."

It felt as though the night breeze had turned into a splash of water, cold and wet on his face.

"What... How?"

"She was sent in disguise to tap on a human soldier serving under Ieyasu Tokugawa's liege. Unfortunately he saw through her ruse and had her cornered with his other companions."

Sesshoumaru whipped to Oka, his eyes alight with unconcealed fury. "In disguise? Who? Who sent her?"

"The Saika Ikki, milord. They are a mercenary group, led by a man called Magoichi Saika...her husband."

Sesshoumaru's voice caught in his chest, speechless with surprise.

Oka quickly continued. "But Rin is a crafty one—she's managed to escape. I revealed myself to her and she has sent you a message. She will wait for you under the magnolia tree by the Arakawa. She says you know where it is."

The magnolia tree. It had been their meeting point when she still lived at the village orphanage before it was razed to ashes, a disaster that claimed his half-brother's life. Under the magnolia tree—that was how he had discreetly lavished her with resplendent gifts, until the day she told him a prosperous suitor had asked for her hand.

"The village will benefit from the marriage, he promised me so," Rin said. Sesshoumaru was surprised then not by the sudden news but by his own callous reaction. He had scorned her then; called her an ingrate. Her ties to him as his loyal ward were promptly severed. When he returned to his castle, sober, sad, he called for a spy to watch over her. Oka had been doing so secretly for years.

A kanzashi hair pin, made of gold and encrusted with three different jewels. That was the last gift he imparted to her.

Sesshoumaru blinked.

"Hurry, milord. She is on the move as we speak."


He could smell it even before he reached her, something not even the river could mask: the scent of her blood mixed with tears. Rin had always smelled of many things as she stood beside him growing up, of soil, sea-salt, and ash. But it was the scent of these two things, of her own blood and tears, that he could never keep a straight face to, be it a year, or seven years in passing.

And when he saw her at last he could not even speak, a crushing lump in his throat, and suddenly his knees felt so weary from the journey that he needed to fall upon her lap.

Except that her lap was soiled, stained and bloodied. His stomach churned.

Rin who had been sitting under the magnolia tree, face towards the idle river, her features shadowed, turned meekly at him. She moved to bow with a soft whisper of his name, but he quickly held her. She laid to rest against his pelt, like she used to during the hot days of summer, shaded under the trees. Something glittered in her hair outside the shadows.

"I see you are wearing the hairpin I gifted you," Sesshoumaru said. It was a foolish sentence to start, one of a thousand he should not have spoken, but he was not in the right frame of mind, though right enough to know it was wrong.

"I hadn't planned to wear it for this reckless meeting."

"It is beautiful, regardless."

Rin breathed a smile. She missed the comfort of his pelt; it was warm and soft and she could stroke it like a living animal, invoking her lost days of youth, of innocence and naivete, of guilelessness and carelessness. And she was allowed to feel all of those things, because back then there was always someone to pull her back if she ever stepped too far. Didn't she once swear that she would stay her whole life with her lord?

That night it was as though she had jumped from a nightmare straight into a dream.

She lifted her head to look at him out of curiosity despite her condition. She saw the way the moonshine glowed on his face, the way none of his features barely changed despite seven years after their last meeting, still poised and beautiful, while she laid there, disheveled and aged and half-dead. The world was a little unfair like that.

"Hush, Rin. Try not to move."

She heard the shredding of cloth which made her shudder. "Those men. They were evil."

"Hush, I say. Not a single word."

Sesshoumaru tightly dressed the bleeding wound at her hip. She had been stabbed deep when she showed resistance to the soldiers. How on earth did she walk all the way in her condition was beyond him. Humans and their varying degrees of strength unnerved him sometimes.

He watched with dread as her blood seeped through the silk bindings. Rin was looking at him with flat eyes, her lips pale and her breaths shallow. Tenseiga in its sheath continued to feign ignorance with nary a pulse, mocking him.

Twice. He had cheated Rin twice of Death. And each time felt more important than the last one. Could he do it again?

Could he defy the rules of Life and Death when he most needed it, for the third time?

He felt the night breeze caress his face again, white petals twirling in the air.

"You know, when I was a child, I used to think the world was a beautiful place."

"It is, Rin. It still is. Just perhaps...the time is not right."

"Will it get better?"

"Yes. Yes it will. It will get better if you simply wait. And if you do...this spot here will be the safest place for you in this world. Under the magnolia, by the Arakawa." He felt himself clench with emotion. "This Sesshoumaru swears upon it."

Rin was silent for awhile. When she spoke again, her words faltered though her breath. "The soldiers told me...that it's going to be a long war." She placed her feeble hand on his. "Sesshoumaru-sama, if I die now, I'll be reborn in a better time, wouldn't I?"

She held his wrist and carried his hand to her throat. Sesshoumaru watched, incredulously, how her tears gathered before dripping like drops of dew under the still moonlight.

"I don't want to die from a silly wound. I don't want to die and dry up like a cicada."

"No, Rin," he said. "Just wait for awhile. A little while."

He pulled away but her hands gripped him with their uncanny strength. He was forced to feel just how small the girth of her neck was.

"Please," and she had never begged him before, "You presented me with this life. It's only right that you take it back."

"Rin," Sesshoumaru called again, but she was no longer listening, steeped in her own mess.

Please, take it back.

This life, I don't want any of it.

In the end he could only comfort himself with the thought that he had been merciful, that he did save her somehow from the more wicked things that might have laid in waiting. And then the more he looked at her still body, the stronger the urge came. He wanted to remember her, keep her close to him, inside him. So delicately he bared her chest and split it open.

Her heart was still warm, and it jerked a last dying beat when he bit into it.

It took Sesshoumaru three days and three nights to build the bridge. He picked her dainty bones judiciously, and cast them into the stone to prevent them from turning into dust. His weary knees giving way, he succumbed to sleep for another three days.

When Sesshoumaru woke up, upon the orders thrust to him, he trudged up Mount Takao bleary-eyed and of unsound mind to seek Hijikamon the tengu, who would later deal him with such a fatal blow, it became the catalyst to his downfall when Magoichi Saika and his men found him.

To be continued...

[A/N: Obviously there's a lot of things to talk about in this chapter but I've always been one to avoid serious conversations *inserts see-no-evil monkey emoji*. Alright how did the idea to use the Saika Ikki came from? Magoichi Saika first appeared in Binded Chapter 29: Ordainment, as Rin's husband who ultimately killed Sesshoumaru. Obviously there were questions like how could Sess die in the hands of a human—I hope this chapter clears this up, he was already physically and mentally weakened by that point. And yes, Magoichi's gun was blessed by Hijikamon so that's a doublefold.
So yeah, to answer the question of how the Saika Ikki came about—I was very attracted (as a kid) seeing Magoichi's character in the Samurai Warriors game franchise. So I did a little more research for this fic. That's it. I'm shallow like that. (must be the big gun)

Lastly, the practice of eating the dead in a manner to express grief and love—has its roots in endo-cannabalism, a ritual practice in some tribes. In particular, the Fore from Papua New Guinea. I had the luck to catch a documentary about them years ago, and there was a scene where they were eating the dead person's organs after the funeral. There's a very deep meaning to it aside from showing grief. It's very interesting. This is probably the most serious thing I've said in relation to this fic. Have a good day y'all, and stay at home.]