Dying to Live
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
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ENTR'ACTE: NARAKU
Almost six months before his defeat by Inuyasha and Kagome…
At his phantom castle…
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Naraku calmly placed the thick leather strap between his teeth and bit down. Then, wrapping the fingers of both hands around the spot just above his left knee, he tore off his own lower leg. There was no blood— only a dry, splintery, cracking sound, like old wood breaking. Even though the pain was electrifying, he just dug his teeth deeper into the leather in his mouth and tossed the discarded part across the room, just as it began to transform back into the disembodied, bluish tentacle of some lesser demon he had melded to his body long ago.
The flesh, which had begun to harden inexplicably whilst still attached to his body, now started to sizzle and turn ugly where it lay, and an acrid, dead smell entered Naraku's nostrils. But the hanyou was already deftly attaching the leg and clawed foot of a badger demon he had just hunted down. He dropped the leather strip from his mouth, as he watched the unfamiliar muscle start to bubble and melt into place with his own flesh. Finally, it morphed to match the outward appearance of the rest of his body.
Well, that was done. Naraku got up and stepped over to the window. He looked out for a change of scenery, but still he saw no escape from the larger problem.
At first, it had been just one and then two fingers on his right hand that were affected. That was followed by a few toes. Then, it was his whole left hand, and after that the entire right foot. One day recently, he noticed that a few strands of his normally shiny, wavy, midnight black hair had suddenly turned white and kinky; furiously, he had instantly torn them out. Now, his whole lower left leg had begun to petrify, aggressively growing stiff and immovable like all those other parts before, and again he had had to cut off and replace the offending part. But how much more could the spider hanyou, Naraku— the one known as the "devil" incarnate—continue hacking himself up before he couldn't anymore? The loss of an eye or an ear would be much more complicated than a simple amputation could resolve. No, something terrible was happening to Naraku, and for first time he was beginning to get this strange, unwelcome niggling feeling deep inside him that his mighty reign of terror might actually be at a permanent end.
For a moment, Naraku found himself distracted as his vision caught on the slightest movement in the tall grasses in the bog that stretched out below this southern facing window, where he now stood contemplating. A thick, heavy mist was rising up and out of the stale, dark waters below so that the small disturbance in the rushes was barely noticeable. Suddenly, the half-demon watched a stout, round-bodied, little marsh-wren scurry out of the protection of the rushes. Pressed low to the ground and inspecting the area timidly, she turned her tiny bird head back and with a furtive squawk, she signaled her tiny young to follow her across the small opening.
One, two, three, Naraku counted the number of offspring of the idiotic creature, as he watched them disappear back into the dry, brown rushes. Then, without thinking, Naraku felt his hands close crushingly on the window ledge. As his nails dug into the wood, his spit turned bitter, and he seethed inwardly: Even the stupidest creatures of the swamp can produce fully functioning, fresh bodies and that make better followers than mine!
The thoughts that made him most angry these days as he became more and more aware of this impending failure already unpenned, he remembered what he thought he might achieve when he made Kanna and Kagura. Although he had created the wind demoness second, he thought of her "birth" first.
His vision when he took a piece of himself off to shape Kagura had been to make a perfect puppet body, a being that had enough independent thought and personality to possess all his strength and wit, but with minimal will aside from following his every directive. Needless to say, Kagura had been a total failure in every regard. Disappointingly, she turned out to be a useless ornament, beautiful, but unruly, weak and dull, and –he was learning— deeply deceitful.
As his first and original attempt, Kanna had been much better. Her skills were more in touch with deeper, darker sources of power. In her, he had left no potential for deviation in loyalty or personal desire, but Kanna had also showed no inclination for independent thought. She, too, could not be the perfect puppet he had wanted, for he feared Kanna could not grow to accumulate much more power and, without her mental connection to him, would dissipate into nothing at all.
And so now, when Naraku found himself with only two clear options ahead, to meet his death or to find a new, demonic body strong enough for him to inhabit—which he should have had!—he had nothing at all.
Curse them to all the hells! Naraku wanted to scream and tear everything around him apart. For a second, even the image of his failed incarnations' blood running hot and satisfying over his pale hands and arms flickered across his mind, but he reminded himself that now he needed to be calm and clever to solve his problems. Bloodshed could come later, he reassured himself.
Creating incarnations from his current body was just not enough. In fact, Naraku had known for a long time, this body was just not enough for any of his purposes. He even began to wonder if the energy and flesh he had taken to make Kanna, Kagura, Goshinki and then all the other lesser incarnations, born and unborn, hadn't finally put him in his current situation – his body slowly freezing over like a spent corpse…
But even if he'd had the right body, Naraku wondered if he could have really made the perfect incarnated servant – his second self, which could go on ruling the dominion they could have seized together, long after these disgusting remains of Onigumo had become food for the worms… Still, it seemed like he was always trying to guess about a recipe for a food he knew should be a certain way, but the final product never came out right because something essential was missing.
Creation and destruction had been the domain of the spirits and gods since the dawn of the cosmos, Naraku knew. It was a secret concoction they held close for millennia, guarding jealously. Confidently sly and cruel, though, Naraku had been threatened at the thought of losing everything he'd clawed and worked for, but he had never feared anybody, god, man, demon, or other… And now with absolutely nothing left to lose, he decided he would give it one last, all-important try before he was finally dragged down to hell.
Naraku would go find a god.
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It was said in the spirit world, that the Forest God was one of the oldest gods still residing on Earth. In legends now only remembered by immortal beings, the Forest God appeared as a very old man, with long wrinkles in his amply, white-bearded face. They said, too, that he had deep set, half-hooded eyes the color of acorn shells that could see anything that happened in nature whenever he willed it. Finally he wore robes made of dark-green moss and a hat woven from dried, marsh rushes and topped with a massive, crimson Okinawan hibiscus blossom, for that was one of the last places he finished cultivating the islands' forests. When his initial work was finished, and the Japanese woodlands were well underway in their growth for nearly one-hundred years, the ancient immortal finally retired to the most thickly vegetated area of Shikoku Island. That then was where Naraku began his search.
Naraku knew that to get the answers he wanted he would need one of the ancients. The Forest God seemed the most natural choice, as he was one of the few immortals still remaining in the mortal realm, although Naraku couldn't imagine why he had stayed. The old kami was almost never seen by anyone, spirit, demon, or man, and Naraku figured that with the way earthly time had of wearing on all things, even a god's body would eventually begin turning to dust as well.
As Naraku moved deeper into the Shikoku forests, the leaves and branches subtly grew larger and thicker, until he suddenly found that although it could only be around mid-day, it had grown almost dark as nightfall beneath the heavy canopy of foliage, making everything glow a rich, dim shade of emerald. He also noticed that his pace had been considerably slowed, as he had duck, bend, and pick his way around the living wood that twisted up and down and all around. He turned irritably, and viciously broke a young, green twig between his fingers for pulling a thread on his violet colored silk vest. Forced to pause in middle of the wretched tangle, he looked over his shoulder as a bird called somewhere in the distance. He realized he was being watched.
Two large, soft eyes as dark as coal glittered as they gazed unblinking in his direction. A white-tailed doe had spotted him from behind a tree and, frozen with curiosity, stopped to watch him. Naraku scoffed at the dumb animal and unthinking struck out glowing fingers, releasing a violet beam of light in its direction. He grinned meanly as the flash of light dissipated, and the deer had vanished, probably fallen to the ground, stunned from the direct hit. Heady now from striking the deer, he began slicing through the vegetation in his way with his beam attack and smirked as the plants fell quickly out of his way in smoldering heaps. However, what Naraku didn't realize was that it was not a deer at all that had been watching him and that he had dared to strike…
"Coming, all is clear, no
doubt about it. Going, all is
clear, without a doubt.
The voice came from above, and Naraku looked up. There in the branches of a massive pitch-black barked tree, its trunk easily four or five men across, sat an old, wrinkled man with leaves tangled in his long white hair and beard and wearing robes of moss. Beneath the shadow cast by a slightly absurd looking, red-flower topped hat, his ancient eye-brows were so long, and his eyes looked almost closed as the ancient seemed to look out at some point high above Naraku's head.
There was no one else this could be. Still, Naraku asked, "Are you the God of the All Forests?"
"What, then, is all?" the old one finished quoting instead, ignoring the question. "You know, that was said by a dying mortal nearly 200 years ago?" he asked at last, finally looking down at Naraku for the first time.
Naraku's brow lowered darkly. He hadn't come to fool around with an old fool, immortal or not. "I have no interest in cryptic words," he replied stiffly.
"Do you know what is 'all'?" the ancient asked, undeterred by Naraku's response. "The ningen who spoke those words must have known," the Forest God mused.
Naraku only clenched his teeth impatiently but reminded himself to stay calm because this old fool might still have something he needed.
"I've come seeking an answer to a question," Naraku called up into the branches.
"Seek and ye shall find," the immortal replied, twiddling his thumbs and looking out at some high up place again.
Still not satisfied that he had the god's full attention, Naraku still barred his teeth at this ridiculous sounding response, angry that he couldn't tell whether the god intended to help him or not. "I need the secret to making new life for I need a fresh body," he told the old god.
For what must have been nearly ten minutes, the Forest God neither moved nor said a word. There was only the distant call and response of birds between the trees, as Naraku's blood began to boil in his veins. His eyes nearly flashed red and he was about to scream out, "Do you not know who I am, you old fool?!" when the Forest God suddenly raised a single, weathered hand. Slowly and determinedly like a plant turns its leaves toward the sun to catch the life-giving rays, the Forest God turned his gaze on the furious Naraku. The heavy white eyebrows lifted, and suddenly those two penetrating, acorn hewed eyes opened wide as they looked down on him.
"Naraku— hanyou, devil incarnate; part spider demon, part ningen bandit Onigumo; maker of the living incarnations, Kanna and Kagura; and nemesis of the late Inu no Taisho's sons, Sesshomaru and Inuyasha– the stench of rotten corpses follows you around like a fragrant perfume that cannot be washed away. There is not a soul in the spirit world that does not know what you seek. Yes, I know you, Naraku," he finished, lowering his eyebrows, just as Naraku began to feel something very unsettling about the old god's glare.
Softly, he cleared his throat. "Then," Naraku asked, "Will you tell me the answer?"
The Forest God spoke quickly, his response a single monotone stream: "Go to the island of Megijima, off the northern coast Shikoku. Deep in the forest beneath the cliffs, inside the largest tree, there dwells an ancient spirit who once knew the most about such things. Perhaps, she can give you the answer to your question."
Luckily, Naraku had listened keenly to the ancient's words, knowing that he was unlikely to repeat himself.
"Then, I take my leave," Naraku replied, not bothering to express any thanks, as he turned to go. Unable to resist, though, he stole a quick glance over his shoulder. The branches of the great tree were now empty.
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Note 1 (Shorter chapter but a lot of announcements this time for you all! ^o^):
Well, here we finally begin to unpack what Naraku was up to before his death!
Mwah HA HA! It actually, took me a while to decide whether I wanted this chapter to be next right after the wedding chapters, since I was toying with giving you sort of a closing chapter to "Part 1: Living to Die", but then I thought a good cliffy would be better! I think I began taking on some of Naraku's evilness I was writing about him…
Anyway, tons of love to my beloved reviewers! On the previous chapter, I got one of the most wonderful and moving pieces of praise I have ever received for my writing from hon-kyogen. Also thanks for a nice discussion with animefollower101! Finally, hugs to Taraah36 who has been hanging in and reviewing this story for ages ~ so happy to have seen in your most recent review that you're still with me :D
Big thanks to everyone else for favoriting and following! Keep it up, and peace 'til next time! Origamikungfu.
Note 2: Megijima (女木島) is a real island between Honshu and Shikoku. On Google Maps it looks super tiny and it's close to the main island, which originally was all I was really looking for. But then I spotted this island's name, and it was just too good. It is apparently featured in some Japanese folk-lore about ogres and the current population is only about 200 (thanks Wikipedia!) Aside from that, I haven't done more research on it, but the name was just right – the kanji literally mean "Woman Tree Island". Maybe I shouldn't just begin rewriting myths, but hey, this is fanfiction and I ask, Where better for Naraku to continue his search for a female spirit residing in a tree?
Note 3: The death poem quoted by the Forest God (who, I should mention, is totally of my creation, not from any particular folk-lore) is credited to Hosshin, circa 13th century.