I already wrote the chapter before I wrote this thing, so this is kind of
pointless...oh well...guess I'll talk about other stuff...
I got a new Dragon Knights book today, number 5. Now I have 1-5 and 7-8.
Kind of an odd order, but I get whatever I can. I love Dragon Knights! Yay
Mineko Ohkami! Yay Rumiko Takahashi! Yayyy!!
I'm going to the comic-con in San Diego (where I live) next weekend as a
battlemage. Anyone else going? Tell me and I'll look for you! I'll be the
tall chick in the green cloak and beige medieval dress, slavering over Inu-
yasha dolls *wink*
Well...I'm quite pleased with this chapter...so, without further ado (oh that's so cliché...), onward:
Disclaimer: Inu-yasha, badass and wonderfully cool as he is, does not unfortunately belong to me. He belongs to the manga-ka Rumiko Takahashi, as do his brother Sesshoumaru and his father Hanyou. The idea of this fic, though, well...it's all me, baby :p
*---*
The kobold's skin gave off a small "spluch!" sound as the nail punctured through, leaving a black indentation that grew darker as the vile creature's faded grey-green blood seeped throughout. Inu-yasha swung again, this time raking his claws just under the kobold's right eye, and the kobold screeched as it suddenly found itself noseless. His hand was around its throat before it could even finish screaming, and in a matter of seconds, the kobold was dead, its throat rendered holey as a cheese grater. The young man stepped back, flicking blood off his hands with an irritated shudder and turned round, traipsing away from the scene with a decidedly fastidious air.
"That should teach you gutless monstrosities to stay away from her grave," Inu-yasha growled in a voice thick as spoiled meat. "And tell your worthless compatriots to disappear out of my forest before I kill them as well!" The object of his rantings, the sole survivor of his massacre, fled the area in a bloody, armless haze. He couldn't leave any one of them untouched; it simply wasn't in his character. Even the hostage he had to mutilate, simply for being there, simply for getting near the grave, *her* grave. The fact that they were creatures of the Fae world meant nothing to him. Anything, Fae or mortal, was forbidden from his shrine, so help him Goddess.
A loud crunching on the ground caused Inu-yasha to whirl about, his lip curled and his claws at the ready. After a few moments of tense but disoriented scant looks about the area, he located the encroacher: a small, amazingly fearless sparrow had ventured into the clearing and started pecking at the exposed tongue of a dead kobold. The bird apparently found the meat not to its liking, for in a sudden flash of brown and white, the sparrow took to the air and left Inu-yasha to his own devices. The man watched after with a strange mix of aggravation and longing, his eyes trailing after the bird until it disappeared among the forest foliage.
All the kobolds except for one where dead; peace had been restored to the dell. Inu-yasha took a moment to drag the corpses away and throw them unceremoniously into the bushes, then returned to the large, misshapen boulder that rested in the very center of the oblong clearing. His feet came to a pause and he stood staring, his eyes beginning to show the smallest allusion to wetness. After a moment, he gave a deep sigh and bowed twice, first curtly and with almost no emotion, then slowly, languidly, yet somehow pain-infused.
"I will return tomorrow, as usual. Goddess be with you, my love." The dead patches of grass crumbled noisily as he strode past.
...
The time was approaching again. Inu-yasha could feel it eating away at his skin from the inside; the thought of it always made him sick to his stomach, and more than just a little afraid of what he might do. He was always unpredictable when it happened, and he had no idea how to stop it once it came. He barely even remembered the events that occurred each time; maybe it was his brain's way of keeping him from committing suicide out of shame.
Still, he couldn't just pretend nothing would happen until it finally did. He had to make the proper preparations, which he had had to learn all by himself after much trial and error. His father and siblings were no help; as full demons, they had no such problem. But for Inu-yasha, it was worse even than a female's menstrual cycle; at least that was his opinion.
"Alfred," Inu-yasha barked impatiently, startling the servant out of his reverie by the doorway. The unappreciated underling regathered his wits and came forward, bowing quickly before sending his master an inquiring look.
"Alfred," Inu-yasha repeated. "Get me a bath. I'm going to lock the door tonight. Don't try anything funny this time, all right? I was not amused when you sent the stable hand's son through my window to check on me," he announced with a discouraging growl. Indeed he *had* not been amused: luckily his cycle had been nearly over when the boy had approached, and Inu- yasha had rid himself of the bothersome lad with a mere insane baying from the darkness of the room's corners. Sure it had scared the shit out of the little scamp, but the boy had been suitably frightened into leaving. Whether the townsfolk spoke of Inu-yasha as a possessed agent of Mephistopheles or the most benign of saintly leaders hardly mattered to him, as long as they stayed loyal. Of course his utterly apathetic brother Sesshoumaru was far more meticulous at keeping his demonic heritage in secret, but then, everything Sesshoumaru did seemed to be for a higher purpose. No. Inu-yasha shook his head suddenly, violently, startling his servant. He would squander no more time thinking of that abhorred waste of demonic flesh.
"Yes, Master Inu-yasha. At once." Alfred bowed with a diluted flash of red and exited the room, hesitant to be around his lord when Inu-yasha was in one of his 'moods'. Actually, Alfred was the most tolerant of his servants, having served the family devoutly for two generations. Most, if not all, of the other servants were afraid of Inu-yasha, some to the point of hiding when they heard his voice draw near.
It used to irritate Inu-yasha, but now it amused him, now that he knew why: Inu-yasha was notorious for his temperament and it was rumored that he would kill his servants without a second thought, if they caught him at just the wrong moment. The rumor was absurd, of course; Inu-yasha had no extra fondness for mortals, but he new how indispensable they were in regards to keeping up the castle, and he had no taste for their flesh, besides. Still, he refused to actively put forth an effort in stopping the rumors, as long as they didn't affect his subjects' loyalty.
Inu-yasha leaned against his bedside and relinquished into its softness with a sigh. What a bother mortals were, so obsessed with appearances and proprieties. The world would be a much more peaceful place if all of them should happen to mysteriously die out. Peaceful, but boring as all nine hells mixed into one. It would be an ideal situation for his brother, who hated humans and their kin with a passion unlike any Inu-yasha had ever experienced, but-no. No more talk of Sesshoumaru. Inu-yasha would deal with him when he had to, in one week's time. Until then, Inu-yasha had other problems to deal with.
...
The changes began as soon as the last of the sun's light faded into the blue-tinted, slightly iridescent glow of the incoming moon. First went his eyes, the deep, rich amber crawling away from the edges and on unto itself, then disappearing in a wash of black and red. Then came the tips of his hair, fading from the artificial crow-black of his human guise to the white of his normal form, then immediately after into a deep, oddly solid silver that positively glittered with life and electricity. As it changed color, it shortened, and spread about his body, catching like wildfire as it thickened along his back and limbs.
Inu-yasha resisted a cry of disgust as his jaw popped and disjointed itself, the canines pushing into the flesh of his gum for several moments until his jaw became larger and widened into a set of jowls made for ripping limbs off and rendering flesh with a single bite. The ground was suddenly a close neighbor as Inu-yasha fell hands-first into the carpet, landing on his chest with an uncomfortable "oomf!" His spine cracked and sent waves of strange, distant pain to his skull as it curved and forged itself into the spine of a quadruped. At last what remained of his lips parted and he let out a low, desperate sound not unlike a whimper, just as his intestines rearranged themselves and became those of a canine.
Finally, after only a few minutes short of an hour, the transformation was finished, and Inu-yasha forced himself off the ground with an unsteady lurch as his new body felt odd to his human-conditioned muscle structure. Inu-yasha whimpered again and crawled onto the bed, laying down with a heartfelt groan and pulling his limbs to him. His dark red eyes felt sore, overused, as his vision attempted to straighten itself. The rays of moonlight did not illuminate his room this night; the lack of its radiance shone even more piercing as Inu-yasha's eyes flickered about involuntarily and saw only black. The itchings of a howl prickled in his throat, but Inu- yasha resisted; no need to alarm the villagers. He would just have to suffer it in silence.
It wasn't fair for him to have to deal with this alone. It wasn't his fault he was the bastard son of a demon and a human. It wasn't his fault that for one day and night, during each new moon, he was forced to lose all semblance of humanity and sink into the wild rapacity of his demonic heritage. Sesshoumaru and his father had this form, but they had always had this form, and knew how to deal with the emotions and needs that came with it. Their morphings were voluntary. His were not.
It wasn't his fault he was forced each cycle to become a dire dog.
...
She was black and white and sweetness. Sweetness wasn't a color, but that didn't seem to matter; she was as inseparable with her character as she was with her physical description. She was the sweetest, kindest and most loving of humans, and oh, how he loved her. It was because of her that he had begun to appear before humans with other than foul intent; before he had fallen for her, he either attacked or fled all humans, finding no other purpose to their existence then as prey or threats. It was she who had tamed him, made him the loving, simpering fool that didn't even mind when he was neglected for his oddness, avoided for his strangeness and his tendency towards violence. It was she who had saved him, both from his demise at the hands of others and his own self-destruction; had she come even a year later, he would most likely have already killed himself.
And she was his mother. At least, that had been his original opinion of her. All the clues, all the mysterious insinuations to his past, all of them appeared to point to this one human woman. She was obviously very fair, though it embarrassed Inu-yasha to admit this about the woman he thought of as his mother. Her material assets were few, but in spirit and beauty she had an abundance and yet more to spare; she was far more compassionate than anyone Inu-yasha had ever had the fortune or misfortune to meet. She was kind, and yet instructive; she taught the village children, who came to her secluded grotto for aid, how to grow and tend their own herbal gardens, and even taught the older children a few magical incantations of healing. Whether or not the incantations worked was not the point; simply the fact that she paid honest, undiluted attention to these children meant so much to them, as there was no other adult in any of their lives that did. Inu-yasha was so in love with this woman he did not know, forced to watch her from afar from fear of scaring her away.
And then one day he had, to his surprise, given away his position, and she had, to her surprise, met him. And she had loved him. Despite his inhuman ears that flopped atop his head like a puppy dog's and the slightly wolflike influence of his claws and teeth, she had loved him, treating him just like the children of the village. And he had loved her. First as the caring, maternal figure he had always longed for, then, later, as the beautiful, amazing woman she was. Had Inu-yasha known ahead of time how powerful and blinding his love would become, he would likely have never sought after her in the first place; but it was too late, he was already in far over his head, and there was nothing he could or wanted to do about it.
And then, in a flash, she was dead. She was dead, after trying to kill *him*, and in her betrayal, she left him alone. Alone and dying. Alone and broken. But mostly, alone.
Forever.
*---*
Well, what did you think? My father says the part where he talks about the stable hand's son is "Vulgar and cliché", but that's how Inu-yasha is, isn't it? I don't know. I like it. But, whatever. You tell me.
I really got into the writing groove with this chapter. I should have been in bed an hour ago, but I stayed up to finish the chapter, just for you people. Aren't you pleased? I think it turned out well. Rather wordy, but I like it...
Anyway. Please, PLEASE R&R. Until next chapter, ciao!
Well...I'm quite pleased with this chapter...so, without further ado (oh that's so cliché...), onward:
Disclaimer: Inu-yasha, badass and wonderfully cool as he is, does not unfortunately belong to me. He belongs to the manga-ka Rumiko Takahashi, as do his brother Sesshoumaru and his father Hanyou. The idea of this fic, though, well...it's all me, baby :p
*---*
The kobold's skin gave off a small "spluch!" sound as the nail punctured through, leaving a black indentation that grew darker as the vile creature's faded grey-green blood seeped throughout. Inu-yasha swung again, this time raking his claws just under the kobold's right eye, and the kobold screeched as it suddenly found itself noseless. His hand was around its throat before it could even finish screaming, and in a matter of seconds, the kobold was dead, its throat rendered holey as a cheese grater. The young man stepped back, flicking blood off his hands with an irritated shudder and turned round, traipsing away from the scene with a decidedly fastidious air.
"That should teach you gutless monstrosities to stay away from her grave," Inu-yasha growled in a voice thick as spoiled meat. "And tell your worthless compatriots to disappear out of my forest before I kill them as well!" The object of his rantings, the sole survivor of his massacre, fled the area in a bloody, armless haze. He couldn't leave any one of them untouched; it simply wasn't in his character. Even the hostage he had to mutilate, simply for being there, simply for getting near the grave, *her* grave. The fact that they were creatures of the Fae world meant nothing to him. Anything, Fae or mortal, was forbidden from his shrine, so help him Goddess.
A loud crunching on the ground caused Inu-yasha to whirl about, his lip curled and his claws at the ready. After a few moments of tense but disoriented scant looks about the area, he located the encroacher: a small, amazingly fearless sparrow had ventured into the clearing and started pecking at the exposed tongue of a dead kobold. The bird apparently found the meat not to its liking, for in a sudden flash of brown and white, the sparrow took to the air and left Inu-yasha to his own devices. The man watched after with a strange mix of aggravation and longing, his eyes trailing after the bird until it disappeared among the forest foliage.
All the kobolds except for one where dead; peace had been restored to the dell. Inu-yasha took a moment to drag the corpses away and throw them unceremoniously into the bushes, then returned to the large, misshapen boulder that rested in the very center of the oblong clearing. His feet came to a pause and he stood staring, his eyes beginning to show the smallest allusion to wetness. After a moment, he gave a deep sigh and bowed twice, first curtly and with almost no emotion, then slowly, languidly, yet somehow pain-infused.
"I will return tomorrow, as usual. Goddess be with you, my love." The dead patches of grass crumbled noisily as he strode past.
...
The time was approaching again. Inu-yasha could feel it eating away at his skin from the inside; the thought of it always made him sick to his stomach, and more than just a little afraid of what he might do. He was always unpredictable when it happened, and he had no idea how to stop it once it came. He barely even remembered the events that occurred each time; maybe it was his brain's way of keeping him from committing suicide out of shame.
Still, he couldn't just pretend nothing would happen until it finally did. He had to make the proper preparations, which he had had to learn all by himself after much trial and error. His father and siblings were no help; as full demons, they had no such problem. But for Inu-yasha, it was worse even than a female's menstrual cycle; at least that was his opinion.
"Alfred," Inu-yasha barked impatiently, startling the servant out of his reverie by the doorway. The unappreciated underling regathered his wits and came forward, bowing quickly before sending his master an inquiring look.
"Alfred," Inu-yasha repeated. "Get me a bath. I'm going to lock the door tonight. Don't try anything funny this time, all right? I was not amused when you sent the stable hand's son through my window to check on me," he announced with a discouraging growl. Indeed he *had* not been amused: luckily his cycle had been nearly over when the boy had approached, and Inu- yasha had rid himself of the bothersome lad with a mere insane baying from the darkness of the room's corners. Sure it had scared the shit out of the little scamp, but the boy had been suitably frightened into leaving. Whether the townsfolk spoke of Inu-yasha as a possessed agent of Mephistopheles or the most benign of saintly leaders hardly mattered to him, as long as they stayed loyal. Of course his utterly apathetic brother Sesshoumaru was far more meticulous at keeping his demonic heritage in secret, but then, everything Sesshoumaru did seemed to be for a higher purpose. No. Inu-yasha shook his head suddenly, violently, startling his servant. He would squander no more time thinking of that abhorred waste of demonic flesh.
"Yes, Master Inu-yasha. At once." Alfred bowed with a diluted flash of red and exited the room, hesitant to be around his lord when Inu-yasha was in one of his 'moods'. Actually, Alfred was the most tolerant of his servants, having served the family devoutly for two generations. Most, if not all, of the other servants were afraid of Inu-yasha, some to the point of hiding when they heard his voice draw near.
It used to irritate Inu-yasha, but now it amused him, now that he knew why: Inu-yasha was notorious for his temperament and it was rumored that he would kill his servants without a second thought, if they caught him at just the wrong moment. The rumor was absurd, of course; Inu-yasha had no extra fondness for mortals, but he new how indispensable they were in regards to keeping up the castle, and he had no taste for their flesh, besides. Still, he refused to actively put forth an effort in stopping the rumors, as long as they didn't affect his subjects' loyalty.
Inu-yasha leaned against his bedside and relinquished into its softness with a sigh. What a bother mortals were, so obsessed with appearances and proprieties. The world would be a much more peaceful place if all of them should happen to mysteriously die out. Peaceful, but boring as all nine hells mixed into one. It would be an ideal situation for his brother, who hated humans and their kin with a passion unlike any Inu-yasha had ever experienced, but-no. No more talk of Sesshoumaru. Inu-yasha would deal with him when he had to, in one week's time. Until then, Inu-yasha had other problems to deal with.
...
The changes began as soon as the last of the sun's light faded into the blue-tinted, slightly iridescent glow of the incoming moon. First went his eyes, the deep, rich amber crawling away from the edges and on unto itself, then disappearing in a wash of black and red. Then came the tips of his hair, fading from the artificial crow-black of his human guise to the white of his normal form, then immediately after into a deep, oddly solid silver that positively glittered with life and electricity. As it changed color, it shortened, and spread about his body, catching like wildfire as it thickened along his back and limbs.
Inu-yasha resisted a cry of disgust as his jaw popped and disjointed itself, the canines pushing into the flesh of his gum for several moments until his jaw became larger and widened into a set of jowls made for ripping limbs off and rendering flesh with a single bite. The ground was suddenly a close neighbor as Inu-yasha fell hands-first into the carpet, landing on his chest with an uncomfortable "oomf!" His spine cracked and sent waves of strange, distant pain to his skull as it curved and forged itself into the spine of a quadruped. At last what remained of his lips parted and he let out a low, desperate sound not unlike a whimper, just as his intestines rearranged themselves and became those of a canine.
Finally, after only a few minutes short of an hour, the transformation was finished, and Inu-yasha forced himself off the ground with an unsteady lurch as his new body felt odd to his human-conditioned muscle structure. Inu-yasha whimpered again and crawled onto the bed, laying down with a heartfelt groan and pulling his limbs to him. His dark red eyes felt sore, overused, as his vision attempted to straighten itself. The rays of moonlight did not illuminate his room this night; the lack of its radiance shone even more piercing as Inu-yasha's eyes flickered about involuntarily and saw only black. The itchings of a howl prickled in his throat, but Inu- yasha resisted; no need to alarm the villagers. He would just have to suffer it in silence.
It wasn't fair for him to have to deal with this alone. It wasn't his fault he was the bastard son of a demon and a human. It wasn't his fault that for one day and night, during each new moon, he was forced to lose all semblance of humanity and sink into the wild rapacity of his demonic heritage. Sesshoumaru and his father had this form, but they had always had this form, and knew how to deal with the emotions and needs that came with it. Their morphings were voluntary. His were not.
It wasn't his fault he was forced each cycle to become a dire dog.
...
She was black and white and sweetness. Sweetness wasn't a color, but that didn't seem to matter; she was as inseparable with her character as she was with her physical description. She was the sweetest, kindest and most loving of humans, and oh, how he loved her. It was because of her that he had begun to appear before humans with other than foul intent; before he had fallen for her, he either attacked or fled all humans, finding no other purpose to their existence then as prey or threats. It was she who had tamed him, made him the loving, simpering fool that didn't even mind when he was neglected for his oddness, avoided for his strangeness and his tendency towards violence. It was she who had saved him, both from his demise at the hands of others and his own self-destruction; had she come even a year later, he would most likely have already killed himself.
And she was his mother. At least, that had been his original opinion of her. All the clues, all the mysterious insinuations to his past, all of them appeared to point to this one human woman. She was obviously very fair, though it embarrassed Inu-yasha to admit this about the woman he thought of as his mother. Her material assets were few, but in spirit and beauty she had an abundance and yet more to spare; she was far more compassionate than anyone Inu-yasha had ever had the fortune or misfortune to meet. She was kind, and yet instructive; she taught the village children, who came to her secluded grotto for aid, how to grow and tend their own herbal gardens, and even taught the older children a few magical incantations of healing. Whether or not the incantations worked was not the point; simply the fact that she paid honest, undiluted attention to these children meant so much to them, as there was no other adult in any of their lives that did. Inu-yasha was so in love with this woman he did not know, forced to watch her from afar from fear of scaring her away.
And then one day he had, to his surprise, given away his position, and she had, to her surprise, met him. And she had loved him. Despite his inhuman ears that flopped atop his head like a puppy dog's and the slightly wolflike influence of his claws and teeth, she had loved him, treating him just like the children of the village. And he had loved her. First as the caring, maternal figure he had always longed for, then, later, as the beautiful, amazing woman she was. Had Inu-yasha known ahead of time how powerful and blinding his love would become, he would likely have never sought after her in the first place; but it was too late, he was already in far over his head, and there was nothing he could or wanted to do about it.
And then, in a flash, she was dead. She was dead, after trying to kill *him*, and in her betrayal, she left him alone. Alone and dying. Alone and broken. But mostly, alone.
Forever.
*---*
Well, what did you think? My father says the part where he talks about the stable hand's son is "Vulgar and cliché", but that's how Inu-yasha is, isn't it? I don't know. I like it. But, whatever. You tell me.
I really got into the writing groove with this chapter. I should have been in bed an hour ago, but I stayed up to finish the chapter, just for you people. Aren't you pleased? I think it turned out well. Rather wordy, but I like it...
Anyway. Please, PLEASE R&R. Until next chapter, ciao!
