A.N.: this was inspired by a very weird song that made me feel very weird. It will be angsty and... weird. I'm sorry.
C.W.: MAJOR. CHARACTER. DEATH. MAAAAJOR. A major character DIES in this chapter. You have been warned!!!
It was time.
At long last, Naraku had appeared. No more puppets, no more monster-of-the-week incarnations, no more illusions or traps or rumors.
It was him, in the flesh, standing before them and ready to battle to take the rest of the Shikon.
One way or another the fate of all on the field, all in the world would be decided. They would leave the battlefield winners, or they would not be leaving it at all.
He released miasma, he released hordes of flying, screeching demons, he released attack after attack after attack, but they persevered.
And they would prevail.
Kagome paused her volley of arrows to wipe the sweat off her brow and check on their progress and her friends' well-being.
Sango and Miroku were holding there own against a horde of low level demons, pushing them back and advancing on Naraku himself, while Sesshomaru and Inuyasha finished off Hakudoshi. She could send an arrow through the rest of the horde and get them that much closer.
She pushed up the sleeves of the Miko clothes she wore now. Once she'd graduated highschool and no longer had a uniform to wear, she took to dressing as a miko for ease of travel as they continued their quest.
But it certainly made for sweaty battle gear.
She took one more moment to swipe across her forehead again and then took her stance, aiming toward the horde Sango was even now finishing off with hiraikotsu. She took a breath in, drew back the string of her bow and let her reiki flow into the arrow, and then….
A harsh shove on her back caused her to pitch forward onto the ground, the vial holding the last pure and unclaimed shard of the Shikon fell out of her neckline and rolled away. Swooping from around her, an incarnation she'd never seen before flew down and scooped it up.
He smirked, his red painted lips stretching smugly while his purple eyes glittered with malice.
He flew to Naraku's side and passed over the shard, and just like that, the jewel was whole.
She scrambled to her feet and raced down the hill she'd been standing on, skidding to a halt next to Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, and without a word they began charging their respective weapons, summoning all their power, making their swords and arrows and entire bodies glow with blinding reiki and yoki. They'd discussed this very thing happening, and they were ready to combine their abilities into an attack that would no doubt mow Naraku right over and out of existence.
Their only fear was that it would set the entire battle field ablaze and kill them all. They'd all agreed it was a worthy sacrifice should Naraku get the jewel.
They could read the panic in his eyes as they prepared to send their waves of power to twine together and rip through his body. He whispered fervently, trying to wish faster than they could fight, and victory sang through their blood as they were assured there was no way he would make it.
And then a beam of light burst out of the jewel in Naraku's hand and shot toward them, engulfing them in a searing heat they feared would melt their skin from their bones.
The ground disappeared under them and they plummet through darkness for several seconds. Kagome screamed; Inuyasha alternated between yelling for her and yelling at Naraku; Sesshomaru snarled in unbridled rage.
The darkness around them began to glitter with distant pinpricks of light, and then they flew so fast the lights streaked across the black, and Kagome struggled to pull her hands up and cover her mouth as her stomach lurched. She was dizzy with the speed they were traveling, and so desperately confused as to what was happening. She closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders, prayed silently that whatever Naraku had done to them would be easily undone, if they survived it, and tried to locate Inuyasha and Sesshomaru. They were still next to her, though they were going too fast to see clearly, and she wished more than anything she was able to reach out and grab their hands.
Suddenly another light flashed, and the weird void they'd been traveling through opened up and they fell out, tumbling in heaps across the ground. Kagome tried to remain boneless to avoid as much injury as possible, but the initial landing jammed her shoulder painfully.
When she came to a stop she sat up gingerly, careful not to jostle her throbbing shoulder, and her eyes widened at the trees stretching up into the sky in front of her.
At least she thought they were trees. Long, wide stalks grew up from the ground as big around as the Goshinboku and three times as tall, though they didn't have bark. They appeared slick, like a flower stem, and they were bright green and seemed to glow from the inside with a soft, yellow light. She followed the stems up to the top to see where they ended, and they seemed to taper off into rounded points.
A gurgling gasp drew her attention away and she glanced behind her, shrieking in terror to find Inuyasha impaled on a large, sharp vine of some kind, the jagged tip plunging from his stomach as blood seeped into his fire rat and from his mouth.
"NO! Inuyasha!"
She ran to him, and Sesshomaru was at her side immediately. He helped her pull him from the spike and lay him carefully to the ground where her hands fluttered nervously, peeling away the layers of his clothes to inspect his wound.
"It's fine. It's fine. You've healed from much worse than this. YOU'LL BE FINE!" She cried hysterically, hands shaking and tears pouring from her eyes. She pushed open his under kosode and stopped cold.
"Oh. Oh no…."
Around the jagged borders of the hole through his guts, the skin was turning black and green, dark veins stretching out and spreading farther every minute.
Kagome choked out a sob, and then felt the light, tentative touch of Inuyasha's hand on her face.
She turned to him and the light of acceptance in his eyes punched a matching hole through her very soul.
"NO!" She shouted, smacking his hand away. "You don't say goodbye. You aren't dying!"
Despite the pain, the burning of poison, and the feeling of his heart crumbling into dust at the despair he knew she felt, he did his best to smile.
"K-gome…" he whispered, struggling around the blood welling up in his throat. "I…. I… lo-lo-l…".
The light in his eyes faded, and he fell slack to the ground.
The world stopped. All her thoughts and feelings paused as she waited for him to finish, searched for the fire that always burned in his eyes, and then the dam on her heart snapped. She turned rapidly to Sesshomaru, willing to demand he use tensaiga on threat of purification when she found him staring at it, already drawn, frowning in confusion.
"Hurry up and use it before it's too late!" She cried, desperation making her voice shrill and her words rushed.
"I… I cannot." He replied, and the tone of his voice was so shockingly small she didn't retaliate as she'd been ready to.
"What do you mean?" She asked quietly, and when he met her gaze she gasped at the open vulnerability plainly evident on his face.
"There are no underworld imps. I must kill them with tensaiga to revive him. They are not there. Tensaiga will not work."
She stared at him for a moment, mind whirling painfully as she tried to make sense of what he'd just said.
She turned slowly and looked back at the strange forest she'd landed in front of.
She'd never seen trees like that, not in any book, not in any nature documentary, not in any website.
She glanced down at Inuyasha, looking passed the look of peace on his face, the awful hole in his abdomen, the bloody plant that had been his demise.
'No imps of the underworld?'
She walked to the vine that had stabbed through her best friend, her most trusted person, her first love, and knelt by it to look more closely. Under the coat of blood she saw a veiny pattern glowing with the yellow light she'd seen in the trees. She followed it all the way down the vine, and then she stood and whipped her head around in all directions.
The dirt was grey. The clouds were purple. They sky was blue but currents of glowing yellow swirled through it, sparkly and sheer as tulle. She could hear her heart beat, the blood rushing through her ears, every panicked thought screaming through her brain as the puzzle pieces of evidence clicked together to reveal the consequences of Naraku's wish.
She sobbed and slapped a hand over her mouth, sinking to the ground as all the strength left her legs.
"You have had a realization miko, you will tell me."
A bug walked by her, small and silver with glowing yellow spots. It was a sharp, triangular shape so different from the rounder, more organic shapes of the bugs she was used too, the bugs back home.
Slowly, she lifted her head and met Sesshomaru's eyes, her own drenched with tears and swirling with exhaustion and sadness and fear.
"Sesshomaru…" she whispered, knowing he could hear her no matter how quietly she spoke. "I… I don't think we're on earth anymore."
His eyes widened with a look of shock, and then they bled red.